Explosions and explosives:
Lay pastoral ministry in the new century

Some few years ago, I was invited to teach a course in liturgy at an east coast seminary. I was happy to accept the offer and delighted with the group of graduate students. But to my surprise, the class was composed entirely of lay people. The seminary had been built early in the last century and, according to my count of seating in the chapel, the builders had expected just over 200 seminarians. At the time of my count, there were only about a sixth that number, but I never met nor saw even one seminarian at any time during the semester. One of the lay students was concerned that his large eastern diocese, one of the seminary's sponsors, would have no ordinations that year for the first time in their history. "And my parish has only two priests!" he added with some alarm.

"What a coincidence," said I. "My own, small, rural, Midwestern diocese has only two parishes with two priests, and many of the rest of the priests have two parishes. My uncle, a pastor for many years, was assigned to four parishes, but instructed by the bishop to close one of them."

It does not take a rocket scientist, psychic, prophet or seer to note that there is something afoot here. Some people insist that this is a paradigm shift in ministry, or that the Holy Spirit is at work prompting a new way to use our available priests or, perhaps, issuing a new call for an expansion of ranks ("And the One who sat upon the throne said, 'Behold, I make all things new'" [Rev. 21:5]). Others insist that it is business as usual or that we might look back to 1957, which some regard as the church's finest hour ("What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun" [Ecclesiastes 1:9]).

In a recent article for Listening: Journal of Religion and Culture ("Lay Ministry in the United States and the Association of Graduate Programs in Ministry [AGPIM]," Spring 2002), Maureen R. O'Brien notes that an explosion of ministries is one of the most positive outgrowths of the Second Vatican Council. O'Brien, assistant professor of Theology and director of the Graduate Pastoral Ministry Program at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, is a past president of AGPIM. She writes, "New ministries and new ministers burst forth in response to the Council's affirmation of the universal call to holiness and the mission of the entire People of God in priestly, prophetic, and kingly dimensions. In this process, theological education for ministry and theology itself were redefined."

Clearly, something new is afoot in God's church. That something new has been a recurring theme in this magazine, and itself inspired the evolution of the magazine since its inception. Writing on that theme in these pages in Jan. 2000, I noted that pastoral ministers today move with the confidence not of doing Father's work, the things the beleaguered pastor cannot get to, but their own duties among God's people. These pastoral ministers are undertaking their tasks not in place of priests, but side by side with priests, involved in many aspects and areas in which they have both special competence and a specific vocation. They undertake these ministries as a consequence of baptismal commitment with a dignity that comes from Christ who claims us and commissions us to "go out and teach all nations" (Matt. 28:19).

The questions surrounding this explosion in ministries today seem to be:

What has been the inspiration for the more than 50 programs currently offering education and degrees to almost 5,000 pastoral ministers? What are their goals? Problems? Aspirations?

Who does not favor such education? Why?

Beyond the classroom, what about formation for ministry and development in spirituality?

What are the problems and considerations surrounding the fact that there is currently no rite of public acceptance or installation of these ministers?

What are the problems and possibilities on the horizon as pastors who were instrumental in fashioning and welcoming this explosion of ministries retire and give way to a new cadre of pastors who may have a new vision and different style?

What considerations and questions are prompted by gender?

What's going to happen tomorrow?

Inspiration

The Church's mission of salvation in the world is realized not only by the ministers in virtue of the Sacrament of Orders but also by all the lay faithful; indeed, because of their Baptismal state and their specific vocation, in the measure proper to each person, the lay faithful participate in the priestly, prophetic and kingly mission of Christ.

The Pastors, therefore, ought to acknowledge and foster the ministries, offices and roles of the lay faithful that find their foundation in the Sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation, and indeed, for a good many of them, in the Sacrament of Matrimony.

-John Paul II, Christifideles Laici (23)

As a diocesan priest, I enjoyed ten years and 17 days as a pastor, and look on that era as a special time of grace. Since then, I have been in college and university classrooms, teaching on the way in four different graduate programs of pastoral ministry, and two programs that do not grant degrees, in the East and Midwest and South Pacific. I feel that I have some acquaintance with the students and the ministers, the folks in the pews, the problems and the possibilities.

After my tenure as a pastor, I was fortunate to be offered a scholarship to study at Fordham, the Jesuit University of New York City. While there, I was invited to teach liturgy in the summer session of the Institute in Pastoral Ministries of St. Mary's University of Minnesota (www.smumn.edu/ipm). This program was early, experimental and nontraditional. Then, as now, students spent just two weeks on campus during three summers, forming an academic and prayerful community, with the requisite hours in classes as required by the University's accrediting agency. They received syllabi and assignments in February, started to read and study, came to campus for two weeks in late June and early July, went home and completed their papers and assignments by November. Between the summers of the second and third years, they completed self managed Integrated Pastoral Research courses which showcased their Master's level abilities while serving their local church, often as part of their employment in ministry.

I was not sure that such a program could have academic respectability but reluctantly accepted the invitation to teach. I was a convert within days. Most of these students were already employed in pastoral ministry, and were doing good work, but without the credential that one expects of professional people. Most of them had families and careers, and could not have the leisure to be away for a six week summer session as had been the custom with religious or clergy in a previous era.

The students completed six theology courses and three research courses in three years, and were awarded a Master of Arts degree in pastoral ministry. While innovative in a way that discomfited graduate education traditionalists, this new program served a real need for good people and for the developing church. The choice seemed to be that either these students had an opportunity to complete a degree in a nontraditional manner, or they could stay home, read books and go to workshops.

My own experiences, study, and pastoral and theological reflections, have shaped me and helped shape the graduate program I worked to establish at Caldwell College (www.Caldwell.edu), a Dominican College in New Jersey. Asked to establish a program in pastoral ministry there, I followed the lead of St. Mary's. I called to mind a former member of my former parish, a Franciscan Sister with a doctorate who chaired the nursing department at the local Catholic College. Deciding that it was time for a career change, she went off to study pastoral ministry. Imaging that she and I had been about to work together in our former parish, I designed a degree that would expose her, or someone like her, to the disciplines in theology, scripture and ministry that would acquaint her with the issues and the methods. I recognized that a 30 credit MA is far different from a four-year program of seminary formation. Students were to learn that they become Master-level scholars not by having read every book in a particular field, but by learning better how to find, evaluate and use texts and other resources that will be helpful at various stages and in the different situations they will encounter in ministry and leadership. Classes combined lectures with interactive exercises, dialogue and seminar-style discussions. A final project provided opportunity to demonstrate Master-level skills. I am proud of the number of students who not only did fine work, but have found publishers quite eager to publish their work as articles, manuals and books.

Some programs, such as that at St. Mary-of-the-Woods College in Indiana (www.smwc.edu), offer distance learning. Others, including the Institute of Pastoral Studies (IPS) at Loyola University of Chicago (www.luc.edu), are more traditional in their classroom approach and scheduling of classes. There are any number of approaches, but it seems clear that we who are involved have clearly done a good thing.

Who does not favor such programs?

One diocesan bishop told me quite frankly that he has no interest in graduate programs of pastoral ministry. This is a man who enjoys a fine reputation as a pastoral and sensitive shepherd, but one who has not encouraged higher education among his priests and who does not favor it for lay leaders. He would like, instead, a series of talks given in different places in the diocese which would provoke deeper spirituality and prompt greater involvement in the tasks of the church. Who can argue with the last part of his vision?

The great success of the Annual Spirituality Convocation of the Center for Theological and Spiritual Development at the College of St. Elizabeth (www.cse.edu) in Convent Station, New Jersey, suggests that there is a need, hunger and willingness for ongoing education in the faith. They welcome about 3000 people annually, turning away another 2000 for lack of space. Clearly not all Catholics or even church employees want or need a Master of Arts degree. But many want more nourishment than the Sunday homily, the diocesan press, and an assortment of books and periodicals might provide.

Most of the graduate programs (a list of all the programs affiliated with AGPIM can be found appended to O'Brien's article) are quite small, many of them under 100 students. Many students do not receive financial assistance to work toward a degree and, usually working for a small salary, find the cost prohibitive. It seems to me that if the local bishop is not eager to send students, the programs will remain small. Colleges and universities are unwilling or unable to cede academic decisions on staffing or course content to bishops or chanceries as seminaries, of course, must do. Consequently, these programs may offer a prophetic voice about the shape of the coming church, but will be small and, even with generous discounts to students from universities and colleges, remain expensive.

Pastors often welcome these graduates, glad to have staff members who appreciate the professionalism of the call to ministry and have demonstrated an aptitude for dealing with an increasingly complex church.

Some pastors must depend on untrained folks, or volunteers. They cost less.

Other pastors, may their number be small, prefer untrained staff and volunteers. They expect these people to be less threatening. A graduate of one of the programs who routinely earned A's in her classes called me with a tale of distress. Her pastor had asked to see the papers from my class which had earned her an A. He read them, pronounced me too generous, and scoffed at her degree. She did not know, as I did, that this pastor, a genuinely good man, had worked for years after his seminary formation to complete an MA. He could not manage it, and the degree was never awarded. He was in no position to judge whether an A was earned by someone else (not having seen many himself), and was apparently uncomfortable with someone working with him who had completed what he left unfinished.

These problems or attitudes illustrate, I think, why programs educate far fewer people than actually are employed as ministers. The same problems and attitudes will keep programs small and ensure that some close down and few new ones begin.

What about formation for ministry and development in spirituality?

But what about spiritual development? The folks who run the programs of academic formation for lay ministers recognize that they are not seminaries and that the students they accept tend to be adults who, presumably, have already been formed in the practice of their faith. Whence will come ongoing spiritual direction and impetus, not to mention resources, for spiritual growth? These are issues yet to be addressed definitively. In periods of rapid growth and change, all matters cannot be settled at once. The Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes) of the Second Vatican Council speaks to the issue of ongoing development in decreeing that "new conditions in the end affect the religious life itself." Development of and in lay ministry is clearly the work of God's good Spirit, and we, all of us, are all called to cooperation.

On the forefront of these considerations is Zeni Fox, associate professor at Immaculate Conception Seminary, Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey. She is the author of New Ecclesial Ministry: Lay Professionals Serving the Church, and numerous articles on religious education, lay ministry and leadership in ministry. In a companion piece to O'Brien's recent article in Listening ("Recognizing, Naming, Developing and Fostering a Spirituality for Lay Ecclesial Ministers"), Fox points to the 1999 Subcommittee on Lay Ministry of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops which issued a report entitled Lay Ecclesial Ministry: The State of the Questions. The report makes clear, she writes, "that there are ambiguities about how these laity [in ministry] should be understood in relation to laity in general, and how they should be incorporated into the relational (especially with the bishop) and organizational structure of the diocese, and questions about what formation is appropriate for them. This newness, these ambiguities, these unresolved questions are part of the context for exploring the question of their spirituality for ministry."

Fox concludes that because lay ecclesial ministry is a new development in the life of the church, the task of recognizing, naming, developing and fostering a spirituality for their ministry is also new. She suggests that "the process of drawing on the tradition of the Church and attending to the realities of the lives of these ministers has already borne fruit in the faithfulness and fruitfulness of their ministry. Certainly, this work will continue."

Why no rite of public acceptance or installation for these ministers?

Here is an article waiting to be written, a study waiting to be undertaken, a concern not yet well articulated, an idea whose implications are not yet fully understood.

As a pastor, I resisted the Director of Religious Education's annual fall suggestion that we install our parish religious education teachers, as I resisted diocesan norms for instituting extraordinary ministers of the eucharist. Met with the request, I would routinely ask what exactly Catholic people were called to do by virtue of baptism. It is clear that the church thinks the baptized are "God's holy people, set free from sin by baptism" (Blessing of the Water), and "a new creation … clothed … in Christ" (Clothing with a Baptismal Garment), as well as "children of the light" (Presentation of a Lighted Candle).

If that is who the folks are, what are the consequences? To what are they called? How are they to exercise the excellence to which they are called and with which they are gifted?

If pastors are first ordained and then installed, but those in lay ministry simply hired and put to work, do they have popular support or public recognition? Without the public recognition of this ministry, do they serve simply at the pleasure (or, worse, whim) of the pastor?

Ought there be some form of installation, distinct from ordination, that marks the entry of lay pastoral ministers into the service of a particular community? I look forward to reading articles or books that deal with these questions.

In Part II of this series:

What are the problems and possibilities on the horizon as pastors who were instrumental in fashioning and welcoming this explosion of ministries retire and give way to a new cadre of pastors who may have a new vision and different style?

What considerations and questions are prompted by gender?

What's going to happen tomorrow?

Fr. William C. Graham is a priest of the Diocese of Duluth in Minnesota, and professor and chair of the Theology Department at Lewis University in suburban Chicago. He is author, co-author and editor of several books, including: Sacred Adventure: Beginning Theological Study, published by the University Press of America. He is also an Assistant Editor of Listening: Journal of Religion and Culture.