theology of priesthood
Tom has been doing some thinking on the way orders of priests have developed in the Church of England – rightly pointing out that OLM, NSM and Stipendiary have to a large extent becme hierarchies of priests (in fact long before I was ordained I remember having a discussion with someone about the new "OLM" idea, and thinking that theologically, either you are a priest or you aren’t…
Anyway, his thinking is creative and good (IMHO) establishing the difference between priesthood and specific roles within the Church. It probably won’t interest readers who are not Anglicans/don’t believe in priests anyway, but for those to whom these issues are alive, Tom is worth a read. (And, Tom, I’d like to read more as you develop the idea) Link: Bigbulkyanglican: Priests today.
Edit: Definitions: an OLM is an Ordained Local Minister – for a definition, the Guildford Diocesan vocations booklet is clear and concise.
Stipendiary means that a priest is given enough material benefits that they can manage without having a paid job and concentrate their energies entirely on the Church and her mission. A stipend is not a salary, and it’s not much to live on, but that’s partly the point! Receiving a stipend also usually means promising not to receive any additional income from other sources.
NSM means non-stipendiary minister. In practical terms re. ministry within the Church setting that can either mean someone who devotes all their time and energy to the ministry but for whatever reason does not need a stipend, or it may mean someone who has a paid job, either full or part time, and devotes whatever time they can above and beyond that to the Church. However this definition fails to account for the fact that many people become NSM’s because they feel that their priestly ministry is specifically lived out in the mission context of their "secular" setting. There is a debate there that needs to be had more thoroughly – it would be valuable a) to challenge the idea that the work of a priest is confined to the CHurch, but also b) that there is any distinction between the vocation of an NSM who is a priest-at-work, and the fact that all Christians in work have a vocation, both to their work and to the context in which they do it. But for this blog, at least, that’s a debate for another day!
The development of all these categories, like everything else in the physically manifest church, has been affected both by theological reasoning and by practical necessity. Any revisions to them should also take both of those things into account, since we do actually live on earth and not in heaven.
15 Responses to “theology of priesthood”
Comments
-
author musician theologian
Maggi has kept a blog since September 2003, writing about theology and faith, the arts and literature, and a little about life and random nonsense...
In an increasingly secularised society few people have a good working knowledge of the Bible. Yet a great deal of our culture is built on stories or ideas that come from the Bible. Literature, art, music, language and even the fabric of our society - such as our justice system - are built on Christian concepts and biblical references. The Writing on the Wall provides a fascinating introduction to the Bible's best-known, and most influential, stories. Each chapter gives some background to the text of the Bible, and shows how the stories have become enmeshed in Western culture. Adam and Eve, the ten plagues of Egypt, The Prodigal Son and Mary Magdalene all feature - along with how the Bible has influenced everyone from Shakespeare to Monty Python, and Caravaggio to Banksy. 
Giving It Up explores the Lenten idea of 'giving up', taking it beyond the traditional idea of simply abstaining from something, and suggesting instead that what we need to give up is our existing ideas about God. With a daily readings for each day of Lent, from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday, it follows the heroes of the Bible who had to give up their own too-small ideas about God.
This is Maggi’s bestselling book of daily readings for each day of Advent, Christmas and Epiphany. Advent is the beginning of the Church year, and marks the anticipation of the coming Messiah. These readings explore how beginnings and endings in our own lives are illuminated by the different Gospel narratives of Christ's coming.
-
Search
-
-
what do OLM, NSM and ’stipendiary’ mean? (I know what the word ’stipendiary’ means, but how is it different from the others). I’m not thinking NSM might be non-stipendiary minister?
andy – see the edit above and links
Excellent! The explination of the titles is longer than the actual post – ooh just like the church in general!
warm regards
John
Congregational not Anglican but definitely interested! Why the fuss? J H Yoder does set the notion of priesthood of all believers beautifully. Not the individuslistic id before God but the one priesthood that includes all. Jesus is the priest in whom we belong and no one person can do the job of his priesthood and so it takes all of us living our calling in him. You might keep the titles to help the jobsworth maggi, but the reality is that Jesus is the priest in whom we are priested by faith.
Personally, I think the Church went wrong when it introduced the third and most recent order, the presbyters. (No offense intended towards the blog keeper or priests who join the discussion, please!)
But I think all you need is a leader, the bishop, and people who can spend more time to assist the community and world, the deacon. We do however have priests and will have to live with them, but anything we can do to flatten the hierarchy helps.
While I don’t like much of what the Diocese of Sidney does, I find their experiments in lay presidency interesting. Why should only the priest celebrate the Eucharist and give absolution-rather than any representative of the community? It turns the priest into something of a magical figure, which many people like, but I don’t think Christianity is about magic.
However, and this is a big however, if we didn’t have priests we’d probably have to have more bishops, and you know what trouble they can cause!
Thanks Maggie for link and the explanation of the jargon which I have copied and added to my post.I was not really getting into a discussion about what priesthood is (in the sense of should we have it)- more that some of us exists and how therefore do we best serve the Church. But can’t resist responding to Neale by saying that I hear that some of the initial work undertaken by Sidney Diocese in defining which lay representatives (assuming that you don’t just draw lots each time)is appearing remarkably like an Anglican definition of a priest – but infinitely more complicated and bureacratic involving endless committees which I think are the real enemy of the modern church)
I think it was Oliver Cromwell ( or perhaps John Knox??) who is credited with saying that there was only one thing that he “hated more than those cursed priests and that was those who arose to replace them”
Sorry forgot to say what does (IHMO) mean?
Not being Anglican causes me to ask why people in other chuchs don’t have a preisthood. I have grown up in the Baptist tratdition and in my whole life I never herd preisthood preached upon. I have heard preists at the bunt of a joke, but why, what is the belived?
One of our priests is an OLM, and for years we’ve all believed it stood for “Ordained Lay Minister”. I shall have to spill this revelation at our next Shared Ministry meeting…!
Tom – IMHO = In My Humble Opinion.
As an Anglican in Presbyteral orders [!] who currently is working in secular employ, I’d like to say that I prefer ’stipendiariness’ not to be the norm by which my church status is defined. So rather than ‘non-stipendiary minister’, I’d prefer ’self-supporting’…
Andii and Dave’s points are well made. I would prefer not to use NSM – had I not changed to stipendiary during selection I would have been a “Priest in Secular Employment” or a “PSE” since “self-supporting” still focuses on finance rather than ministry. Of course the cruellest misconception was perpetuated in my then Diocese when NSM were introduced with the horrendous nickname ” Non sacrificial minister” – we have come a long way from those days. Dave I think that OLM will gradually disappear as a category (not the person or the calling to a local setting) because of the weakness of territorially defined priest who in theory cannot move to the next parish.Chase in effect your minister is the priest just a different name and understanding. Glad to know what IMHO means – was genuinely puzzled and not getting at Maggi – just seemed a comfortable place to share my ignorance!
hello all – Martin, I don’t think that an order of priests and a priesthood of all believers are mutually exclusive, and neither idea negates nor threatens the priesthood of CHrist. They can all co-exist quite happily, although of course it does require a particular take on your thelogy of ordination. Lesslie Newbigin’s I have always found rather helpful.
Tom, when I started blogging I was constantly baffled by the Txt shorthand – took me ages to figure out what IMHO meant! It’s one of my bywords at work that there is no such thing as a stupid question – the only stupid thing is not to ask when you don’t know or understand.
Re. Andii and others on NSM – I agree that there should be a much richer discussion about what it means to be a priest in “secular” employment, and about a permanent diaconate, and quite a few other aspects of this; and although practical considerations are inevitable, we should certianly not be making up our theology merely to suit our economic situation…
I am fairly familiar with txt language but not IMHO – I guess most of the people who text me tend not to have humble opinions – they tend to be hounding me, alerting me, or in the case of the sprogs saying “can you pick me up from . . . “. I gather from an email that the Church of England house of bishops have or are about to commission their own review of NSM and OLM ministry. A House of Bishops review focuses on practice and though non-obligatory on the Bishops can lead to quicker conclusions about future practice.
Good grief yes maggi. When I married Catherine we worshipped at her church in Didsbury M/cr for eighteen months. The workers in the parish were ordained and lay and I served in the youth work while there. I don’t see exclusivity in any regard when someone is called to serve God in the church. Clerical orders are a means to an end in a church organ. The tension that arises in ordained ministry (which we do not follow but calling) is when the church excludes not based on discernment or gift from God but on an institutional bias. Pax