Serving the People of God's Presence

A Theology of Ministry

Terry L. Cross

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781540960580
• eBook ISBN: 9781493426980
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

Leading theologian Terry Cross articulates the doctrine of the church's ministry from a Pentecostal perspective, demonstrating how Pentecostals can contribute to and learn from the church catholic. This companion volume to Cross's previous book, The People of God's Presence, proposes a radical revision of the structural framework of the local church within the often-overlooked corporate priesthood of all believers. Cross explores principles for leadership and ministry from the New Testament and the early church, helping all believers to do the work of ministry.

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A Biblical Background to Ministry

Introduction

A common paradigm for ministry today among many churches in Western societies is to relegate the majority of ministerial work to paid clergy whose professional training has (hopefully) provided them with the tools to do the various forms of work we call ministry. It is this widely accepted model for ministry that I believe needs to be reconstructed so that the church may rise to its calling in this century. It is my proposal that the structural framework of the local church and the paradigm for leadership must be radically reformed so that a more authentic form of ministry may flourish among God’s people.

In this chapter, we begin an investigation for a different framework by engaging in a theological inquiry into ministry. To do so, we will return to scriptural examples of ministry as well as trace some historical trajectories from the early church in order to see how ministry functions developed over several centuries. Before proposing new paradigms for leadership and ministry among God’s people, it is necessary that we excavate the early sources in order to discern any principles that may be found there for God’s people today. While it will be clear that we cannot retrieve some pristine form of New Testament government or leadership per se, it will also be clear that we must retrieve something of the theology of ministry and leadership that is present there in order to function today as the people of God’s presence.1

Some Biblical Foundations for Ministry

Diakon– Words

One place to begin a theology of ministry is with an understanding of the terms used for this activity in the New Testament. Perhaps the word that best characterizes the activity of the people of God’s presence is found in the word “ministry.” The people of God minister to the Lord, to one another, and to the world. Rooted in words that underscore the concept of serving others, the English verb “to minister” comes from the Latin word ministrare. In the New Testament, the concept is rooted in three different sets of Greek words. The first and most prominent set stems from the Greek noun διακονία | diakonia2 (“service” or “ministry”) or the verb διακονεῖν | diakonein3 (“to serve” or “to minister”). Related to these words is διάκονος | diakonos, which is usually translated as “one who renders service to another” or “a minister.” From these basic diakon– root words we get our English word “deacon.” For over a century, scholars have understood the primary or basic meaning of this word to have arisen from a concept of service in which one “waits at table” for others.4 Acts 6 has provided the paradigmatic example for this type of diakonia: Hellenistic Jews complained that their widows were overlooked in the “daily distribution of food” (ἐν τῇ διακονίᾳ τῇ καθημερινῇ | en tē diakonia tē kathēmerinē) (Acts 6:1). This situation is described more fully in Acts 6:2: “So the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, ‘It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables [διακονεῖν τραπέζαις | diakonein trapezais].’” Compared to the ministry of the Word, to serve tables is a mundane, menial task.5 However, since 1990, with the appearance of a thorough linguistic study of diakon– words from classical and Hellenistic Greek by John N. Collins, there has been significant debate and revision about the meaning of these important words in the New Testament.6 Collins suggests that diakon– words “must be removed from the semantic field of caring service.”7 From extrabiblical Greek sources, Collins found some evidence that placed diakon– words within the semantic range of meaning for “servant” or “service,” but most evidence supported their primary translation as an official representative or a “go-between” rather than “menial” servant.8 Hence, Collins argues that this word group signified activities more along the line of delivering messages or being an agent for someone.9 Instead of meaning “slavish service at table,” diakon– words were “freely applied to activities by people of eminence” and sometimes in connection with religion.10 Most importantly for Collins, the term diakonos “always looks back to a person, persons, institution or physical dependency.”11 Collins believes that among Christians, the person to whom a diakonos always looks back is the bishop (ἐπίσκοπος | episkopos)—both in the New Testament and the early church.12

Without engaging in excessive discussion concerning the proposal of Collins’s work, it remains important to demonstrate how this key concept of diakonia is related to the meaning of ministry in this chapter. Since diakon– words are fundamental for understanding “ministry” in the New Testament, I need to interact with some aspects of Collins’s proposal. First, Collins has pressed for the semantic range of diakon– words in the New Testament to be expanded beyond menial service; he has not argued that diakon– words never have the meaning of service. He argues instead that they do not carry the primary meaning of menial service. Therefore, he proposes that the “lexicographical range for the words” is “much broader than the traditional one.”13

Second, the preponderance of linguistic evidence that Collins presents from classical and Hellenistic Greek surely demands a broadening of the usual definition of diakon– words, but I would suggest it does not eliminate the narrower sense of serving at menial tasks. Each passage in the New Testament needs to be considered within its context. While I agree with Collins in his effort to expand the potential semantic range of these words, I am concerned that he does not acknowledge the legitimate role that the servanthood of Jesus Christ may have played in shaping the semantic range of meaning in the New Testament.

Third, the major criticism that I have of Collins’s work comes mainly from his tendency to read into the New Testament the later role of deacon and allow that to determine the interpretation of several key passages where diakon– words occur. For example, Collins reads the third- or fourth-century idea that deacons were to serve the bishop as attendants and finds this suitable with the Hellenistic meaning of diakonos (namely, one who represents another in an important task). However, just because we find “attendant” or “representative of someone else” in the extrabiblical Greek literature does not mean that we can justify taking the third-century-CE bishop-deacon relationship and overlaying it back onto the range of meaning in New Testament contexts (e.g., at Phil. 1:1).

As I will show, it is extraordinarily difficult to discern precisely what was occurring in the first-century church in terms of leadership functions. To assume the way deacons operated in relation to the bishop at the beginning of the third century is the way they operated in Philippians 1:1 (where Paul greets the “bishops and deacons” [NRSV]) is to read too much back into the first-century text and situation. Collins’s work allows us to understand broader dimensions of meaning in the term diakonos, but it cannot give us a definitive comprehension of the functional tasks assigned to the term in the New Testament itself.

Fourth, Collins desires to use the New Testament texts to determine a theology of ministry for today, especially in terms of bishops, priests, and deacons. Coming from a Catholic approach to the question, Collins suggests that ministry is not for everyone.14 Along with Anglican scholar Paul Avis, I think that the logic of Collins’s view leads to a result that “most Christians . . . do not or cannot have a ministry.”15 Such a view is opposite to my understanding of the New Testament and of the church today. When Collins moves from linguistic study to an attempt at theological assertion based on that study, something seems missing from the overall meaning of ministry.16 One cannot help but feel this is a theological presumption imposing itself on his assessments of biblical texts with regard to diakon– words. For example, when interpreting 1 Corinthians 12:4–6, Collins notes that the phrasing in the NRSV is as follows: “There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. A Biblical Background to Ministry
• 2. A Historical Background to Ministry
• 3. Toward a Theology of Ministry among God’s People
• 4. The Praxis of Leading the People of God in (Their) Ministry
• 5. The Role of Women in Leading God’s People
• 6. The People of God’s Presence Participate in Practices Ordained by Christ
• Conclusion
• Select Bibliography
• Author Index
• Scripture and Ancient Sources Index
• Subject Index
• Back Cover