Copyright: © 1999 Paul F. Bosch.
This document may be freely reproduced for non-commercial purposes with credit to the author and mention of the Lift Up Your Hearts web site http://www.worship.ca/ as the source.

Forty-four years ago this month, I was finishing my last courses at Seminary, with ordination a little more than a month away. My older brother, Bob, and I, in those days, were reading together the essays of H. L. Mencken, and cracking up in laughter by quoting Mencken to each other: his slightly cynical view of human nature, his magisterial command of the English language, and his acerbic wit had us convulsed with mirth on an almost-daily basis. I remember one essay with great vividness through all these years. Mencken was describing the exterior of the home of a Protestant clergyman -- its peeling paint, its un-mowed lawn -- and Mencken concluded, from what he saw in front of him, that here was a cleric unable to support himself adequately "by his ghostly science". It was that term "ghostly science" that broke us up, Bob and I: "ghostly" of course in its antique sense of "spiritual"; and "science" in its sense of "learning." And Bob, himself then a teacher of high-school history, took more than one occasion to remind me that I was, at Seminary, pursuing studies in "ghostly science". I still laugh out loud every time I think of it.

And I ask myself: Granted that our theology allows for a "high" view of ordination and of ordained ministry, are there aspects of our current practice that actually subvert the work, and indeed the identity, of laypeople?

We are living, after all, in the Age of the Laity, as several contemporary theologians have taken pains to tell us. Even Roman Catholics have reclaimed, in our day, an understanding of the Priesthood of All Believers. And the LBW has restored to laypeople their rightful (and historic!) responsibilities in the leadership of worship.

(A footnote: My mentor, J. A. T. Robinson, reminded me once that you can have as "high" an understanding of ordained ministry as you want, so long as your understanding of the Church is higher; and you can have as "high" an understanding of the Church as you want, so long as your understanding of the Kingdom of God is higher still!)

So I ask myself: Is there anything in our current practice, as ordained ministers, that corrupts, or compromises, that splendid vision? Let me identify three major frustrations to the work, and indeed the identity, of laypeople in our day. They are 1) vestments and the clerical collar; 2) the chancel, or a two-room worship space; and 3) multiple Sunday Services. And let me confess, up-front, that I think we are stuck with all three, for the foreseeable future. Further: I see palpable advantages, at least to two out of the three above. So I'm trying to raise questions and identify problems in these paragraphs, and I'll admit I don't have any very good answers or solutions.

1) Vestments and the clerical collar certainly put distance between the ordained and the laity. And maybe they should; maybe that distance is appropriate. As for me, in our era, when tales of clerical sexual abuse are recounted in almost every daily newspaper, I'd be certain to wear that collar in every clerical counselling situation, as much to remind me as them who I am, and Whose I am. But in other situations, I find that collar conspicuously off-putting.

Even the term "priest" I find offensive: the whole church is a nation of priests, after all, not just its clergy. I suppose you could say the same of the term "minister": all Christian people minister, not just the clergy. And "celebrant" is a lousy term, too, if it's the Presiding Minister you're speaking of: all of us "celebrate" at Mass, laypeople as surely as their clergy.

As for the Presiding Minister -- nice term! -- in Christian public worship, that's a horse of a different colour (collar?), so to speak. I love those vestments; and, if the whole truth were told, I love Playing Dress Up. And I like to remind worshippers that one reason I wear these outrageous garments is so they don't have to. I get dressed up for worship for them, that is, on their behalf. I like the vicariousness of that, the representality of it.

And these outrageous garments do have a trans-cultural aspect. See Essay 21, in this series. And they do announce that this worship-event is not a TV talk-show. And they do contribute to the ambiance of celebration!

Still, those vestments mark me as different. Is that difference ultimately indefensible?

2) In any case, my second choice, the chancel, is definitely indefensible, in my view. I'm speaking here of what architects have come to call a two-room worship space: the chancel here, for the really holy people, and the really holy stuff ("Do not enter!"); and the nave there, for the peons, the peasants, the un-washed. See my Essay 2 in this series. No matter how much you preach and teach about the Priesthood of All Believers, your chancel contradicts you. You may finally get the message across, but you're fighting your architecture every step of the way. (Are we talking "cognitive dissonance" here?)

3) As for multiple Sunday Services, I've addressed this issue before as well in Essay 20. Suffice it to say here that multiple Sunday Services send the message that the clergy have something that laypeople don't have; that they need; and that they must get from their clergy, at one "worship opportunity" or another on a given weekend. Clergy have become the owners and operators of the local "God business," Lutheran "franchise," or Presbyterian "franchise," or whatever.

I don't have a good answer to this one. I can't imagine most of the churches in my town being able to schedule just one Service; I'm only trying to point out the price you pay for that scheduling. "There's no free lunch."

Well. In the spirit of acknowledging the approach of the season for ordinations across the Church, let me close with this gift to you, gentle reader: An "Ode to an Ordinand," composed by my brother Bob, 44 years ago:

Soon you will join the saintly bands
By laying-on of priestly hands.
I ask you now, without defiance:
What have you learned of ghostly science?

I wonder if you know my wish is
That you could do that bit with fishes,
And from good work with Ladies Aid
Present a banquet fully-laid?

Or can you, with a tone oracular,
Proclaim a message in vernacular,
With texts and verse of Adam's Fall,
Or Tribulations of Saint Paul?

I know that you will be a winner
With heretic and luckless sinner,
And hope you'll never have to deal
With Doctor Norman Vincent Peale.

Hoo Hah! And have you heard the one about the Neo-Orthodox theologian who found Paul appealing and Peale appalling? And again I say: Hoo Hah!