Overture 04-55. On Appropriate Language to Describe the Ministry of All Believers—From the Presbytery of New Brunswick.

The Presbytery of New Brunswick overtures the 216th General Assembly (2004) to request the General Assembly Council, through its Office of Theology and Worship, to do the following:

1. Create a study document that would set forth the Reformed-Presbyterian understanding of the relationship between Baptism and the ministry of all church members both ordained and not ordained. Such a study document, field-tested in a number of congregations and then distributed to sessions and presbyteries, would provide a common language for the various ministry activities of those governing bodies.

2. Suggest the language appropriate for expression of these relationships.

Rationale

The words we use and misuse when we speak about the ministry of the people of God need attention and clarification. When we speak, we enjoy the possibility and run the risk that our words will teach and edify. Often, our careless or unknowing choice of words teaches what we do not or should not intend.

As examples: to whom do we refer when we speak of ministers? Who do we believe receives a call to ministry? Are there Christian vocations for ministers of Word and Sacrament, elders, and deacons, and something else for everyone other than an ordained person? Does vocation refer only to work carried on within the corporate body of the church?

It has always been the teaching of the Reformed tradition that all Christians are Christ’s ministers in the world. By virtue of the Sacrament of Baptism, all baptized persons have a vocation, a call to make Christ’s ministry their own. Baptism acknowledges God’s claim upon us as well as our commissioning for ministry in the name and for the sake of Jesus Christ. In baptism we have been enlisted as Christ’s own people to minister in the world. Baptism defines the shape of our lives and all that we do as God’s children because it defines who we are. As Christians, our primary identity is found in our belonging to the Triune God, not in what we do. Who we are in Christ Jesus—the new life we have been given in our baptismal vocation—is about who we are and not what we do.

In considering our baptismal vocation, we are claiming the Reformed notion that our identity must flow from the knowledge that we are the beloved children of God. We call this our baptismal vocation because it is in our baptism that God brings us into covenant with Godself. From that moment on, we are the redemptively called people of God. But for what have we been called? As Presbyterians, we say we have been redeemed for service in the world; such service is not limited to the ordained but is the property and privilege of all of us who have been baptized into the saving love of the Triune Lord. Therefore, the phrase “a ministering Christian” is as redundant as speaking of a “running jogger.”

Vocation—our God-given calling—is not measured by the particular occupation we choose or by the so-called “productive years” of our lives. Our baptismal vocation encompasses our whole lives for our whole lives.

The New Testament teaches us that gifts are given to each for the common good. Each of us is an important part of God’s mission in the world regardless of whether we are an ordained minister or a nonordained minister. Every Christian is a minister by virtue of his or her baptism into Christ Jesus. A greater awareness of our baptismal vocation of being Christ’s ministers is deeply needed within our church. We need to again contemplate what it means to find our identity in our belonging—in body and soul, in life and in death—to the God revealed in Jesus Christ made known by the Holy Spirit. This would be greatly assisted by a biblically informed and theologically grounded understanding of our baptismal vocation as the basis of our common ministry as Christians. Such a study document would be a gift to the teaching, preaching, missional shaping of the church.