The uniqueness and centrality of the official preaching of the Word is diminished when we  equivocate between the official, public, ordained administration of the Word and the unofficial witness to the gospel by the laity. The tendency among evangelical is to describe all those acts as “preaching.” This move is part of the democratic, populist spirit of modern spirit of evangelicalism. When I say I “modern” I don’t mean last week. Nathan Hatch has shown that, in American evangelicalism this has been the dominant pattern since the 1820s. Arguably, that pattern has roots in the so-called “First Great Awakening” almost a century before that.

It is universally assumed among contemporary evangelicals that Scripture teaches what is widely known as “every member ministry.” I understand how folk come to that conclusion and, over the years, I’ve been on both sides of this question. I’m back where I started. I don’t see it. If I can be brutally honest when I embraced the “every member ministry” model during my pastorate in Kansas City it was because we were a small church and we didn’t seem to be growing and, in response to the tremendous internal and external pressure felt by most pastors to “grow the church,” I adopted a series of “new measures.” I became a predestinarian evangelical. I fiddled with the Regulative Principle and I made friends with the so-called “church growth” movement and I let those things color my biblical exegesis. I read a series of distinctly modern assumptions back into Ephesians 4.

The “every member ministry” model hangs by a very thin biblical reed. It depends upon how one reads Ephesians 4:11–12:

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ…(ESV)

It depends on a comma. Did Christ give the various offices listed “to equip the saints to do the work of ministry” or did he give them “to equip the saints, for the work of ministry….”? In other words, are these two phrases to be taken as a list of things to be done by these special offices or is the purpose of the offices to equip the laity to do the work of ministry?

Well, first of all, Paul didn’t use a comma. The earliest NT texts had no such punctuation. The comma is an interpretation by editors of the Greek text and the English translations. It might be right, it might be wrong but it’s an interpretation. I certainly won’t pretend to sort out this question in a blog post. It is worth noting, however, that any view that hangs on a comma supplied by editors, is not well grounded in the text of Scripture and the flow of redemptive history.

I think the “every member” model probably has a lot more to do with democratic populism than it does with the biblical view of the church. Our Lord did not give the keys of the kingdom (Matt 16) to every member but to the apostles, the first officers in the visible, institutional church. The “every member” model fits well into the program-driven approach adopted by virtually all evangelicals since the 18th century but does it fit Paul’s view of the church elsewhere? It seems to me that, if Paul had such a view, he would have expounded on it in detail in other places but he did not. He did, however, spend a considerable amount of space detailing the nature of the special offices. 1 and 2 Timothy were written to a young pastor. 1 Timothy 3 is about the offices of elder or overseer (vv.1-7) and deacon (vv.8-13). Most of 1 and 2 Timothy are about how Timothy should conduct his office as pastor. Much of Titus 1 is taken up with the matter of elders and Titus 2, again, is about the conduct of pastoral ministry. 1 Peter 5 is devoted to the office of elder. In other words, we have extensive revelation about the special offices and precious little about so-called “every member” ministry.

I’ve heard it argued that Acts 8 reflects the apostolic approach to “every member ministry” in as much as the church was scattered and “those who were scattered went about preaching the word.” One difficulty with the application of this narrative to this question is that the only Christians named in the narrative are special officers (Stephen and Philip). The first example of this preaching to which Luke turns is Philip. It is not at all clear that the intent of his narrative is to supply a ground for the “every member” ministry model.

This is not to say that there are not other ways of communicating the Word of God outside of the official pulpit ministry of the visible, institutional church. It is to say that, however, if we are to think biblically about this question, then we must be honest with the biblical text. I confess that, in the past, for the reasons I’ve given above, I haven’t always been completely honest with the biblical text. I regret that very deeply.

Why would Paul turn to “every member ministry” in the midst of a discussion aimed at and about the ministry of special officers? In the verses before Ephesians 4:11-12 he’s speaking to Timothy about the conduct of his office and the first thing he says in v. 13 has to do with the public administration of the Word. In short, the every-member interpretation of Eph 4:11-12 doesn’t seem to fit even the immediate context.

Finally, on this point, how likely is it that Paul is saying that Timothy and the other officers are to train what was almost certainly a largely illiterate congregation to do the work of ministry? We’re reading a great deal of modern life back into first-century Asia Minor when we read those verses to speak about every member ministry. Universal (or near it) literacy is a very recent phenomenon (which is probably behind us already). Whereas most of us can read and most of us have several English Bibles, most people in Timothy’s congregation not only couldn’t read but they didn’t have a portion of Scripture to read.

Therefore, I think it’s helpful to speak about the witness of the laity to the faith (that which is objectively revealed in the Word and confessed by the Reformed Churches) and their witness to their faith, i.e. to their subjective appropriation of the biblical faith. Yes, we should speak to our neighbors, friends, and co-workers about the faith and our faith, but we should distinguish lay witness from the official proclamation of the gospel. God the Spirit is free to act through popular witness or public proclamation, but as has been noted, it is to the latter that he has attached promises.

I realize this is heresy in contemporary evangelicalism, but not everything every Christian does is “ministry.” The baker has a vocation to bake to the glory of God but baking is not his ministry. We need to recover the idea of vocation. Calling the daily work of Christians “ministry” is intended to elevate it but it actually accomplishes the opposite. It devalues it by implying that anything that isn’t “ministry” isn’t valuable significant in itself. Really, what the EMM model has done is to take us back to the pre-Reformation view of the church in which there were two classes of Christians. The Keswick Movement did the same thing. Again, folk were thinking of two classes of Christians, those who have the blessing and those who don’t. The EMM movement implies that unless what someone does is “ministry” it isn’t really significant.

This approach is closely related to that pietist stream of neo-Kuyperianism that seeks to baptize everything that Christians do (whether softball or painting) as “ministry.” It suggests that there is something unclean about extra-ecclesial vocation so it makes everything ecclesial. Thus, we have Reformed Churches spending offerings on dozens of good works by private persons and societies and because they are “ministries.”Did our Lord really institute all the alphabet soup of “ministries” in evangelicalism today or did he institute the visible church (Matt 18)? Did he commission every layman in the world to preach, teach, baptize, and make disciples? Not even the most committed EMM congregation has (yet) free-for-all baptism parties where anyone can baptize anyone else. If it’s happening, I really don’t want to know.

I wasn’t always a stuffy high-church Calvinist. I came to faith in the context of a revivalist Southern Baptist congregation. I learned quickly as an evangelical that I needed to have a “ministry.” It wasn’t enough simply to be a teen-ager and to learn the basics of the faith and to go about my daily life trusting Christ, dying to sin and living to God. No, I had to have a “ministry.” So we took “spiritual gift” tests. The test said that I had the gift of prophecy. I’m still waiting for that one to kick in. In order to be regarded as full-time, sold-out, born again Christians, one had to have a ministry. So, with other students, we started a campus bible study at the local public school (which was contested by the Nebraska Civil Liberties Union the next year!). I was at Campus Life and if not there then at Youth Group or at a FCA (Fellowship of Christian Athletes) or Campus Crusade (I was a religious over-achiever) meeting at the University or every week. My last two years high school was a blur of religious activity. When I got my first radio job helping to produce and then to host a Sunday morning gospel show on a local country station, my well-meaning youth pastor told me that it was okay to miss Sunday AM services because I had a “ministry.” Conway Twitty had a way of making even “Just as I Am” sound lecherous. Call me a Donatist, but there’s no way playing Conway Twitty is “ministry.” It was a job. Don’t get me wrong. I loved every minute of it. It was a lot more exciting than sitting through another altar call and not walking the aisle again.

Strictly speaking, ministry is what ministers do. They administer the Word of God. They fulfill their calling just as God’s people, who hold the office of believer, fulfill their callings (vocations) to bake, to pave streets, or even do radio shows to the best of their ability, before the face of God, to the glory of God. Not everyone in the congregation is a “minister” and frankly that should be a relief.

[This post first appeared in 2007 on the HB]