Patterns of Ministry (original) (raw)
Related papers
Lay-Prophet-Priest: The Not-So-Fledgling "Office" of the Worship Leader
Liturgy, 2017
Due to the worship leader’s increasing professionalization and multivalent functions, the Evangelical worship leader role has necessarily morphed into an “office” in the last thirty-five to forty years. This office is one of “Lay-Prophet-Priest.” Although I admit to being cheeky by suggesting a threefold office for the worship leader (a corollary to Christ’s office of Prophet, Priest, King), these three categories considered together summarize the worship leader’s function in the congregation. Worship leaders are laypeople insofar as they belong to a community––both the concrete, contextual community and the broader imagined community of Evangelicals. In other words, who is in the room and in the broader Evangelical network, in part, form the identity of the worship leader and the worship culture of a congregation. Worship leaders are prophets insofar as they are bearers of charisma whose presentation of self and performance has an effect on the gathered assembly. Worship leaders are priests because the worship leader makes important liturgical structuring decisions and mediates content like musical dynamics, lyrical curation and dissemination, and transitional elements. The threefold office of the Lay-Prophet-Priest worship leader is the result of years of preparatory groundwork. It is the purpose of this article to unearth some of this history of nomenclature, and to describe this threefold office as it appears in present form.
Antiphon: A Journal for Liturgical Renewal, 2019
This article considers the concepts of priesthood and sacrifice in the Judeo-Christian tradition as a manifestation of the call of humanity to enter into the dynamic of giving and receiving for which we are created as those who bear the image and likeness of the biblical God. From this perspective we can better appreciate the enduring significance of the ordained priesthood and the sacrificial dimension of the eucharistic liturgy in Christianity. What is more, it helps us avoid the trap of thinking about the male-only priesthood and the distinction between laity and ordained through the distorted lens of a neo-Marxist power paradigm, restoring our sense of the dignity of every holy state of Christian life.
This article suggests that the threefold order of church officials, which is universally found early in the second century AD, is anticipated in the social structure of the churches of the New Testament period. Many of these met within households. They were overseen by an authoritative class of itinerant apostles, prophets and teachers, who anticipate later bishops. House-church meetings were relatively small, numbering often no more than one or two dozen believers, who met for the Christian meal in the dining room of the house. These small meetings were usually overseen by their patron-householders, who anticipate the elders of later Christianity. Household servants, and perhaps some trusted guests too, assisted at the meal. These anticipate the deacon order of the later Church. Occasionally multiple house-groups joined together to hear a visiting peripatetic in the courtyard space of a larger house. As the number of believers in a particular city or town increased, heterodox teaching emerged, and the early peripatetic class died away, larger permanent meeting spaces were created, to facilitate regular gatherings of several hundred believers, which became the norm. Monarchical bishops authoritatively taught the apostolic tradition but presided over the taking of the symbolic tokens of the eucharist only, rather than a full meal. Each city’s householders/elders/overseers came to form a gathered council of elders who supported the singular presiding bishop, who was assisted now by a large group of deacons/servants.
ANOTHER LOOK AT THE ROLE OF PRIESTS AND
JSEM
In some recent targumic studies it was contended that a priest-centred society continued to control the synagogues in Post-Temple Judaism, while rabbis saw their main institution as the beth midrash. The distinction between the roles of rabbis and priests after the destruction is contrary to the standard scholarly picture. The new theory has direct implications for the question of contextualisation of Pentateuchal targums. The paper re-investigates the roles played by priests and rabbis in the age of formative Judaism in Palestine in the contexts of the beth knesset, beth midrash and beth din. It looks at the functions of Judaism's main institutions in the post-destruction era, asking who the teachers/leaders of the Post-Temple synagogues and academies were and what happened to the priesthood in the wake of the destruction. The evolvement of the title of "rabbi" also comes into the discussion.
'Ministries' in J. Day and B. Gordon-Taylor eds, The Study of Liturgy and Worship: An Alcuin Guide (S.P.C.K. / The Alcuin Club, London 2013), pp. 89-90.
The Church Shaped By Missional Liturgy
In recent decades the relationship between mission (usually cast as evangelism) and worship has been the subject of much debate. The fair and appropriate critique of so-called "seeker-sensitive" worship has rightly taken the Church to task for its lack of missionality. Yet, the Church has taken the seeker movement to task for the limited scope of its liturgical theology. This paper attempts to begin to bridge the divide between the Church as a worshiping community and the Church as a missional community. It explores a theology of missional worship rooted in Israel's Sinai encounter with God in Exodus 19, which it then applies, generally, to the Church in describing the contours of a missional liturgy. Finally, the paper explores elements of the historical liturgy in an attempt to discern their role in a missional liturgy.
Roots and Realities of a Priestly People
Along the Way: The Life, Lessons, and Legacy of Father Hugh F. Crean, 2022
Osborne in this case addresses the naming of " e Twelve" as well as "Apostle," both attributed to Jesus. Osborne suggests that the pastoral needs of a particular community resulted in the ministerial functions described herein. 21 Nichols, 9. Nichols continues, explaining that this Hebrew Bible connection is further elaborated on in the First Letter to Clement and the Letter to the Hebrews. 22 Nichols goes on to explain the role of the original Twelve and those added as "auxiliary apostles" or "apostolic delegates," who served the Church in a similar role; however, they were expected to maintain the tradition as Jesus' rst students aged, passed, or were martyred. One such example is Timothy, appointed as a "regional vicar" for "the apostles, acting for them over areas considerably wider than a local church yet less than the Church universal. .. they had two speci c tasks.. .. First, to be custodians, guardians, of the apostolic deposit. .. [and] Secondly. .. to organize the local apostolic ministry in the particular churches: that is, they were to ordain," in ibid., 16-18. Quotation, 17-18.