On Opposition to so-called Lay Presidency (with a possible solution)

 

 

I

I am sure that no one who reads this blog would be shocked to find out that I am adamantly opposed to the notion of “lay presidency” at Holy Communion. In fact, I have to be honest and say that I had no idea that lay presidency ever occurred in the Lutheran Church until about 5 years ago. Granted, some would say that this is due in large part to my own East Coast Lutheran biases, which tend by reputation to be clergy-heavy and more high church than not. This may be. I mean, I can own it if this is the case. It could be that those who chiefly influenced my own formation in Lutheranism merely passed on biases rooted in ethnic and national identities about which I was not aware when I both committed myself to the ELCA and began formation as a pastor. Heck, it was the summer prior to seminary before I knew that some Lutherans used individual cups. I am digressing, of course, but do so only to confess my own bias in this discussion and to give some explanation to the starting point in my thinking about this and related issues.

 

When I was discerning the ordination process, my pastor told me all about his formation. He came from a rather low church Finnish background, and spoke with sparkling eyes about his discovery of high church Lutheranism. As he told me about his internship, he described his different functions and the learning that accompanied the assignments. I recall as clear as day asking him, “Did you get to celebrate the Holy Eucharist while on internship.” He looked at me aghast and explained that such things are not done, that only ordained pastors preside at the altar. That moment (and that assumption) really stuck with me.

 

II

In the ELCA, the normative practice is that it is an ordained person who presides over worship. There are some regions of the church, however, where Bishops do allow for lay presidency. This is most commonly in situations where the churches in question are small and located in rural (or even isolated) communities. Even it that situation there are many in the ELCA who think this is a bad idea, with me being least among them. For me, this is cleared up very simply in CA XIV, which states that no one should preach or administer the sacraments without a call. The common response to this is that people preach in the church all the time without a regular call, and it is much more likely that a person can do damage through a sermon than through consecrating and administering the sacrament. Furthermore, we allow our interns in the ELCA to preach with regularity. Thus it should follow, as the argument goes, that a lay person should also be able to consecrate and administer communion.

 

The line of thinking may seem reasonable, but with a key difference, one rooted in identity. The identity of an intern is that he or she is aspiring to become vested with the sacred trust that is given to the pastor. That trust, however, is not yet granted. Interns are in a liminal state to be sure. One is being formed to live with that trust, and part of that formation includes preaching. Yet even this preaching is not done under his or her authority. It is done under the authority of the pastor. It is the pastor who is still ultimately given care for the souls of the congregation and the pastor who is accountable. If heresy is spewed from the pulpit, hopefully the pastor/supervisor is there to correct and admonish. Certainly the internship committee would also include this in their reports to the seminary. Much like those tribal traditions that grant to those in the liminal state some – but not all – of the rights of adulthood, so the intern is trusted with some – but not all – of the duties of a pastor.

 

Concerning other lay preaching outside of internship situations, a pastor has a great responsibility here as well. In my case, when lay people have been asked to preach, it has been a very selective process and they are in the pulpit only after we spend time together discussing the message they are to present. If this sounds like a big brother or an authoritarian approach, then so be it. At ordinations and at pastoral installations we take vows which bind our souls and our consciences, especially in regards to the use of the means of grace. No one else is held under these same vows, and far be it from me to say it, but this does in fact matter.

 

III

Rather than think about this in terms of hierarchical relationships, it is really best to think of it in terms of charisms, or gifts. Calling to mind the teachings of St. Paul in I Corinthians, we are reminded that everyone in the Christian church, but that the gifts of the Spirit are different for different people. “God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers…” and so forth. With each spiritual gift comes spiritual responsibility of stewardship of the mystery of that gift. Some of us are called to be pastors; most are not. The role of the pastor is to be a servant of the Word in very specific and concrete ways that others are not called to. This includes preaching and presiding at the altar. This does not make the ordained pastor “better than” any other Christian in the church. It does not make them holier in the sense of personal sanctity. It simply makes pastors responsible for things that others are not responsible for by virtue of the gifts they are given.

 

The church catholic seems to have understood this well until the Reformation. Even as early as AD 96, when Clement is thought to have written his letters to the Corinthians, there is a clear understanding of order in the church. Clement would not stand idly by while the usurpation of clergy took place by angered laity who wanted to change apostolic order. In that sense, succession (not as in the Historic Episcopate, a later and distinct idea) dates back to the earliest fathers of the church. One is hard pressed to find lay presidency in the first 1500 years of the church’s history. Even after the Reformation occurred, it was the radical reformers that Lutherans rejected that pushed for things like lay presidency. Examining the ordination rites of the early Lutherans shows that while the understanding of ordination may been undergoing renewal, it was still held to be sacred. One church order used in Hamburg in 1535 even referred to ordination as a “second sanctification”. A perusal of other ordination rites from the era show a firm understanding of ordination as a sacred trust with great responsibility, and at no time do any hint that the lines between the role of the clergy and the role of the laity are to be blurred.

 

IV

 

Shifting gears, allow me to re-situate myself as part of a conversation occurring in response to this post by Eric over at The Heart of a Pastor, and to the subsequent comments that follow his post. I think what Eric is doing is writing in a way that reflects the name of his blog. His concern about lay presidency, and his support for it, seem to be a pastoral concern about people having access to the Holy Sacrament. In truth, there are many folks who would go a series of weeks (perhaps months) without receiving Holy Communion if it were not for lay presidency. Believe it or not, I appreciate the concern. I wish other pastors demonstrated the level of concern he has for those in need of God’s grace. However, what it stirs up in me is not a questioning of the normative practice of clerical presidency, but a question about the call and ordination process in the Lutheran Church in general.

 

It seems to me that the question of lay presidency is the wrong question to ask. The question that we need to be asking is if a four year residential Master of Divinity, a unit of CPE, and an internship are really required to be a good pastor. Yes, theological training is essential, as is ongoing spiritual and academic formation, but are we married to a process that ultimately hurts our churches? Perhaps the answer lies not in licensing lay people, but in carefully selecting, training, calling and ORDAINING people at the synodical level to be bi-vocational pastors. I would like to see a dual practice of ordination in the ELCA. Those ordained in individual synods to serve the churches of those synods only, with the understanding that this is specialized ministry to be carried out in those communities where it is hard to attract those ordained under the current national system. This may be either rural or urban centers. The bishop would oversee (imagine that!) their training and ordination, and under normal circumstances these people would be bi-vocational pastors that could only serve in their own synods on an as-needed basis. They would also be recruited on the ground; in other words, coming from within the communities in need of a pastor of this sort. This would work hand in hand with the current system of national ordination, which would still require all the hoops, but would allow one to be “employed” full time in church service and would also allow for national (rather than simply synodical) mobility. What this system still does not allow for are things like an intern celebrating communion, or a lay person “filling in” for the pastor while he or she is on vacation or at synod. There is no good theological or practical reason for either of those two cases.

I know this is not a proposal for a perfect system, and some would argue that it would create an underclass of synodical pastors, but at this point, it seems to me to be the most faithful approach given our confessional understandings and our catholic inheritance.