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Transform the world as adult disciples of Christ

Short essays about observed trends in Roman Catholic life - Pastoral trends

WHAT IS “LAY MINISTRY”? Is it what the director of religious education or the youth minister does? No! Ministry means service, and service is something we all do. Yet when Catholics are surveyed about lay ministry, they tend to name what unordained professionals do in church or a church setting. Depending on how one counts, there may well be more than 60,000 of this kind of minister in the country. There are more than 60 million of the kind that the term lay minister really refers to—Catholics who are living their faith in the world. This is why official churchspeak calls paid professional ministers by that infelicitous term “LEM,” or lay ecclesial minister. The point about service, after all, is not so much what we do in church, but what we do outside of church. That’s how the world gets transformed. And that’s what lay ministers do: transform the world as adult disciples of Christ. Words and phrases are important, because they shape how we see the world. Perhaps the most noteworthy power God gave Adam in the creation story, after all, was the power to name. In our Catholic tradition, it is remarkable how important the right words can be. The particular words and phrases, shapes how we experience the world and empowers—or restricts—us as actors in the world. To what degree does imagining lay ministry as something that is only for those in church restrict us from truly acting on our faith as the world-transforming ministers we are called to be? Probably about as much as imagining that God only has a “vocation,” or special calling, for those who turn to priesthood or religious life. In the year 2003, about 645,426 people were confirmed as Catholics. If only about 544 go on to be ordained as priests, the number ordained in 2003, does that mean that almost 645,000 of these Catholics have no calling in life, no vocation? Perhaps it means that their vocation is to lay ministry as defined above. Words are powerful. If we don’t name a reality, we can’t make it happen. © 2005, Bryan Froehle.

Authors Bryan Froehle

lay ministry lay ministers Service

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Word of the Week

17 November 2024

Presider’s Chair

\'pri-sīd-ərs 'cher\

Also known as the presidential chair, the seat in a parish church from which the celebrant leads the assembly during Mass. Its meaning derives from the chair, or cathedra in Latin, from which the diocesan bishop presides (from Latin meaning “to protect” or literally “to sit before”). The chair is a liturgical symbol of authority and pastoral leadership.

Pronunciation Read more

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