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Letting the Laity Pastor
The best measure of a church is how many people walk out to be the royal priesthood on Monday.
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I had a chance to meet Donald Peterson just before he retired as chairman of Ford Motor Company. He'd been chairman when Ford ebbed to its lowest point economically and also when the company had turned around and reached its apex. "How do you account for what happened?" I asked him. "Was it robots, mechanization?" "No," he said, "it was two less tangible things. First, we redefined our goal. We said our goal was to build a car free of construction errors. Second, we gave our people the power to build it. We gave all our workers the authority to stop the line whenever they found something wrong. When we did that, we went from an average of forty-seven flaws per car to one flaw in every two cars." The key to renewing Ford Motor Company was getting back to basics—building a flawless car. In much the same way, pastoral care for church members begins when the congregation is brought back to its basic mission. What is the bottom line for the church, the true measure of its success? Some churches measure success by buildings, size, staff, budget, or how many missionaries they support. Some churches inspire, inform, and educate. All that is fine. But to me the church is not primarily an institution and not primarily in the inspiration business or the information business or the education business. Great sermons or fine buildings don't matter if the church isn't becoming a kingdom of priests. In the Old Testament, God chastised his people because they refused to be priests. The best measure of a church is how many people walk out to be the royal priesthood on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday. To me, then, the basic product of the church is people in ministry. Unlike Ford's product, the church's product cannot be precisely measured. But keeping that goal clear remains crucial for me. People in ministry becomes the goal of our worship and education. And people in ministry becomes the measure especially of pastoral care. Pastoral care includes visiting the sick, weeping with the grieving, praying with the concerned. But to me its ultimate purpose is to get lay people involved in ministry to one another and to the world. Pastoral care is not just care done by the pastor but care given in a pastoral way by anyone. People involved in ministry, then, is not only a goal of my pastoral care but also the way my pastoral care is broadened geometrically. What Is Ministry?If people in ministry is the true measure of the church, then we need to define ministry. When I did a Bible study of "ministry," I found more models than I expected.
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