Article 15: Ministry and Leadership - the priesthood of all believers

Article 15: Ministry and Leadership invites us to consider our gifts and how we are called to serve in ministry, whether this be as teacher, preacher, servant or leader. We all have gifts and we are all called to use them in ministry within the congregation and beyond. Doing so should involve being held accountable for the use of our gifts by the community of believers and sometimes being stretched to accept a call to serve in ways that may be outside of our particular gifting.

I Peter 4:10-11 admonishes us to use the gifts that God has given us in service to each other. We should speak as one speaking the very words of God and serve with the strength of God. It is not enough to simply use our gifts or to rely on our own strength or ability in doing so. We are to use the gifts to the best of God's ability within us. Thus we need to seek accountability and encouragement from the congregation to use our gifts well.

Yet the call to ministry is often more than the use of our gifts. In Romans 12:3-8 , Paul uses the imagery of many parts of the body with different roles to help us understand the various roles that we play within the body of the church. In one sense this is another call to use our gifts and to use them well. But his focus on roles also seems to be an encouragement to fulfill our role or our call regardless of what our area of gifting may be.

We often try to limit our acceptance of a call to those areas that match well with our gifting. Yet many in scripture were called to serve outside of their gifting. Moses was called to speak on behalf of God, yet he clearly did not see this as a gift of his. Gideon was called to deliver his people from Midian, yet he responded that he was the least among his family. In both cases, the call was there despite one's gifting. In fact because of their perceived lack of gifting, one could argue that those men had to rely on God all the more in order to carry out their callings.

It should also be noted that one call that some receive is to take on roles of leadership. This is not to elevate them above others but to fulfill a particular call of leadership which is similar to the other calls that we all receive. Moreover, the call to leadership is not a call that is meant to remove responsibility from others to carry out their particular calls or to use their particular gifts; but rather it is a way of empowering everyone to use their gifts and fulfill their calls more fully.

Mennonites believe in the priesthood of all believers. This is the belief that all who have faith are called to serve as priests to one another and to the world. We are all called and we are all gifted. Ministry is not only for the leaders or the pastors. We are all to be "priests" of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Because of this, when we witness someone accepting a call to lead or to serve in some other way, we should not breathe a sigh of relief that someone is in place to take care of that for us. Rather we should take a deep breath and dive back into carrying out our call as we are spurred on to recommit ourselves to the work God has before us.