Title: Members are ministers : the vocation of all believers /
Authors: Goetting, Paul F.
Publisher: Cascade Books,
Year: 2012
Subjects: Pastoral theology Lutheran Church; Lutheran Church Clergy; Lay ministry Lutheran Church; Priesthood, Universal.
Abstract: Cultural changes and social conditions today give evidence of a growing disregard of traditional authority and an increasing distrust of institutions. Relations between pastor and people are changing. In many situations, the practice of top-down leadership appears no longer to be effective. Members Are Ministers identifies the positive change necessary to achieve greater unity and to reduce conflict within the church. This book promotes an approach that generates a greater sense of community, enables a clearer corporate and personal witness to the faith, and reduces the social distances between pastors and people. Above all, it recognizes the Word as crucial for effecting change in our emerging new culture. Paul Goetting works from a biblical base that shapes the Christian ministry of all people through their various vocations, and equips them for a clearer witness to the Christian faith and to issues of injustice. The family, the workplace, the political arena, and the church are seen as the primary contexts for authentic servant ministry of both clergy and laity.
Contents: Introduction and overview -- Ordination and the office of public ministry -- Baptism : ordination for our common ministry -- Our common calling and our callings -- The creation : the context of our callings -- Discerning our callings and serious considerations -- Four "stand outs" in our discernment -- The struggle for a prophetic church -- Working toward an inverted church -- The art and science of inverting the pyramid -- The callence of change in a conflicted culture