THE STUDY OF MINISTRY A comprehensive survey of theory and best practice EDITED BY MARTYN PERCY WITH IAN S. MARKHAM, EMMA PERCY AND FRANCESCAPO First published in Great Britain in 2019 Contents Society forPromoting Christian Knowledge 36 Causton Street London SWlP 4ST www.spck.org.uk List of contributors ix Copyright© Martyn Percy, Ian S. Markham, Emma Percy and Francesca Po 2019 1 The authors of the individual chapters included in this work have asserted their right under the Introduction: The history and development of ministry Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as such. Martyn Percy All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any formor by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any informationstorage Partl and retrieval system, without permission in writing fromthe publisher. UNDERSTANDING MINISTRY SPCK does not necessarily endorse the individual views contained in its publications. 1 The developing philosophy of ministry 15 John Fitzmaurice The author and publisher have made every effortto ensure that the external website and email addresses included in this book are correct and up to date at the time of going to press. The author 2 Hermeneutics of ministry and publisher are not responsible forthe content, quality or continuing accessibility of the sites. 28 Ian Tomlinson . British LibraryCatalo guing-in-Publication Data 41 A catalogue record forthis book is available fromthe British Library 3 Anthropology of ministry Abby Day ISBN 978-0-281-08136-3 eBook ISBN 978-0-281-07301-6 4 Sociology of ministry 56 Douglas Davies Typeset by Manila Typesetting Company First printed in Great Britain by TJ International 5 Congregational studies and ministry 70 Subsequently digitally reprinted in Great Britain David Gartner eBook by Manila Typesetting Company 6 Psychology of ministry 89 Produced on paper fromsustainable forests Fraser Watts 7 Ministry in fiction 102 Catherine Wilcox 8 Ministry in television and film 114 Joshua Rey and Jolyon Mitchell Part2 MODELS, METHODS AND RESOURCES 9 Global and ecumenical models of ministry 135 Ian S. Markham 10 Clerical and lay models of ministry 147 Andrew Todd List of contributors Contents 11 Non-parochial formsof ministry 161 24 Pentecostal-style ministries 355 Chris Swift Benjamin McNair Scott 12 A collaboratively shaped ministry forthe coming Church 174 25 Anglican theologies of ministry 372 Stephen Pickard Tess Kuin Lawton 13 Psychotherapy and ministry 190 26 The parish church 388 Robert Roberts and RyanWest Alan Billings 14 Leadership studies and ministry 204 27 Contested Church: mission-shaped, emerging and disputed 403 Keith Lamdin Justin Lewis-Anthony 15 Digital media forministry: key concepts and core 28 New ministries - new ministers 420 convictions 217 Tom Keighley Kyle Oliver and Lisa Kimball 29 Critical paradigms of ministry 432 16 Digital media forministry: portraits, practices and John Fitzmaurice potential 233 Kyle Oliver and Lisa Kimball Parts ISSUES IN CHRISTIAN MINISTRY Part3 MINISTRY IN CHRISTIAN TRADITION 30 The challenge of preaching 449 Ruthanna Hooke 17 Scripture and ministry 253 31 Ministry among other faithtraditions 463 Hywel Clifford Bonnie Evans-Hills 18 Liturgy and ministry 269 475 James Farwell 32 Discrimination and ministry Ian S. Markham and Allison St Louis 19 Missiology and ministry 279 490 Robert Heaney 33 Gender and ministry Emma Percy 20 Ethics and ministry: witness or solidarity? 292 Robin Gill 34 Missionary wives and women's distinctive contributions to mission 500 21 Politics and ministry 304 Cathy Ross Susanna Snyder 35 The dynamics of power in churches 514 22 An ecumenical theology of ministry 323 Martyn Percy Robin Greenwood 36 Safeguarding in the Church of England 527 Rupert Bursell Part4 STYLES OF CHRISTIAN MINISTRY 37 Ministerial stresses and strains 537 23 Roman Catholic pastoral theology 341 Amanda Bloor Tom Hughson Contents 38 Conflict,reconciliation and healing 549 Sarah Hills 39 Spirituality, health and ministry 560 Mark Cobb 40 Chaplaincy and healthcare 574 Mark Newitt and Sally Ross 41 Ministers and employment law 587 Norman Doe 42 Canon law in global Anglicanism 599 Norman Doe 43 Money and ministry 612 Barney Hawkins Conclusion: Interdisciplinary methods - the role of the minister and the study of ministry 623 Francesca Po and David Gartner Afterword:The futureshapes of ministry 639 MartynPercy Selected bibliography 643 Further reading: Bibliographical sources for the formation, presence and engagementof ministry 667 James Woodward Copyright acknowledgements 681 Index of names 683 Indexof subjects 691 30 The challenge of preaching RUTHANNA HOOKE The perennial challenge of preaching Judging from job advertisements for ministers and priests, preaching is central to the ministerial vocation. Congregations often list compelling preaching as one of the principal abilities they seek in a new pastor. In some denominations the minister is given the title 'Preacher', signalling the centrality of preaching to the ministerial role. Even in liturgical trad­ itions, in which the sermon is not the only or even the chief focalpoint of the liturgy, the task of preaching is considered a crucial part of the voca­ tion of pastor. These job advertisements also suggest that the task of preaching is difficult, that it can be hard to find someone who fulfils the demand for excellent preaching. Ministerial job descriptions emphasize this aspect of ministry in part because painful experience reveals that it is all too com­ mon for preachers to fall short of these ideals. The title of a recent collec­ tion of essays about preaching, What's the Matter with Preaching Today?, captures a widespread sense that preaching is not what it could be. The volume's title is a quote from Harry Emerson Fosdick in the early part of the twentieth century, suggesting that this concern about the quality of preaching is a matter of at least a hundred years' duration.1 The importance of preaching as an aspect of ministry, and the diffi­ culty of preaching, are two sides of the same coin - what makes preaching difficult is also what makes it important. In this essay I will consider the perennial difficulties of preaching, and then focus attention on the chal­ lenges of preaching in the particular cultural context of consumer capi­ talism, a set of cultural forces that profoundly shapes preaching in North America, Europe and increasingly around the globe, and which poses unique challenges forpreachers. 1 Mike Graves, ed., What'sthe Matter with Preaching Today? (Louisville,KY: Westminster John KnoxPress, 2004). 449 Ruthanna Hooke The challenge ofpreaching A perennial challenge in preaching is that of enculturating the gospel of our personhood in preaching, that too is a personal statement in which into the lives of present-day listeners, executing the hermeneutical task we are implicated. Thus, preaching is inescapably personal. of linking the horizon of the Bible and the Christian tradition with the This highly personal nature of preaching crystallizes one of the issues horizon of the listener's life-world. To many contemporary listeners, it ✓ with which this volume is concerned - namely, the complex relationship is not self-evident that a two-thousand-year-old text, and the tradition between the subjective and objective dimensions of ministry. The min­ springing fromit, would speak so decisively to them as to transformtheir ister is subject to the 'panopticon', a figure on public display at all times. very existence, and yet this is the audacious claim of the Scripture and Nowhere is this sense of being on display more pronounced than in tradition of the Church, and the case which the preacher has to make. preaching, because it is a moment of public manifestation of the preacher's When the preacher preaches in the context of the liturgy, the liturgy faith and conviction. For this reason, there is inevitably tension between itself assists in making this case and presenting this claim, and yet the this public display and the subjective experience of ministry. The preacher crucial insight of the Protestant Reformers is that the liturgy itself, and seeks to symbolize as well as transmit the Christian tradition, but, as a the sacraments, require the proclamation of the gospel in order to make fallible human individual, how can he do so adequately? More than this, this claim convincingly. 2 The sermon is crucial in speaking the promise how can or should the personal existence of the preacher be used as a lens of the gospel clearly, and enabling this promise to touch the hearts of through which to understand the gospel? worshippers. Despite the challenges of negotiating the hermeneutical gap between the A further difficulty has to do with how preachers enculturate the world of the text and the world of the reader, the deeper difficulty of pre­ promise of the gospel, namely, by passing it through the lens of their senting the claims of the gospel has to do with the radically counter-cultural own personal existence. In liturgically oriented traditions, the liturgy demands of the Scripture and tradition themselves, which have been a is often largely set by denominational bodies. The sermon, however, is challenge to every age in which they have been preached. The proclama­ an unscripted moment; it is a moment in the liturgy when the preacher tion that the same mind must be in us that is in Christ Jesus, who took on speaks her own words, not those inherited from the tradition, and seeks the form of a slave and died on the cross, will always be challenging. The to show how these traditional forms ought to transform the lives of her demands of radical love, of the giving away of self and of life itself, are dif­ hearers, by showing how they have first transformed her. The preacher's ficultfor any culture to hear and accept. own life is a lens through which to view the gospel, and an example of how the gospel ought to shape the lives of listeners.