Shared Ministry
Ministry is the work of everyone. Ministry is what we create and do together.
I believe that all people, lay and ordained, bring gifts and responsibilities to the work of the church, to the ministries we offer together. As a professional minister, part of my role is to support others in their work in the various ministries of the congregation. My view of our shared ministry and the meaning of ministry is wonderfully expressed by Gordon McKeeman in his work, "Anyone's Ministry."
Anyone's Ministry
By Gordon B McKeeman
Ministry is
It is speaking and living the highest we know and living with the knowledge that it is never as deep, or as wide or a high as we wish.
Whenever there is a meeting that summons us to our better selves, wherever
Learn more about my approach to ministry on these pages:
Pastoral Care
Lifespan Religious Education
Social Justice and Public Witness
Denominational Involvement
I believe that all people, lay and ordained, bring gifts and responsibilities to the work of the church, to the ministries we offer together. As a professional minister, part of my role is to support others in their work in the various ministries of the congregation. My view of our shared ministry and the meaning of ministry is wonderfully expressed by Gordon McKeeman in his work, "Anyone's Ministry."
Anyone's Ministry
By Gordon B McKeeman
Ministry is
- a quality of relationship between and among human beings that beckons forth hidden possibilities;
- inviting people into deeper, more constant, more reverent relationship with the world and with one another;
- carrying forward a long heritage of hope and liberation that has dignified and informed the human venture over many centuries;
- being present with, to, and for others in their terrors and torments; in their grief, misery and pain; knowing that those feelings are our feelings, too;
- celebrating the triumphs of the human spirit, the miracles of birth and life, the wonders of devotion and sacrifice;
- witnessing to life-enhancing values;
- speaking truth to power;
- speaking for human dignity and equity, for compassion and aspiration;
- believing in life in the presence of death;
- struggling for human responsibility against principalities and structures that ignore humaneness and become instruments of death.
It is speaking and living the highest we know and living with the knowledge that it is never as deep, or as wide or a high as we wish.
Whenever there is a meeting that summons us to our better selves, wherever
- our lostness is found,
- our fragments are united,
- our wounds begin healing,
- our spines stiffen and
- our muscles grow strong for the task,
Learn more about my approach to ministry on these pages:
Pastoral Care
Lifespan Religious Education
Social Justice and Public Witness
Denominational Involvement