Every member ministry

Paul has strong things to say about involvement in church.

Those parts of the body that feel important, like hands, mustn’t go telling other bits, ‘I don’t need you!’ Nor should parts that feel insignificant, like feet, take themselves off in a sulk because they don’t feel valued. Every bit is needed. No one is redundant. Every member has a ministry.

Yet our vision of that involvement can be strangely unrelational. Ministries are oddly discrete. I do the preaching; you do the tea and coffee. She does the music; he does the crèche. Church life is conceived in functional and business-like ways – the emphasis is on jobs. Yet in the New Testament the church is powerfully relational with an emphasis, not on individual roles, but on the connectedness of all the varied parts.