I've been challenged to look seriously at Methodist thinking about Local Ministry, so when I saw this book in SPCK in Cambridge (quite an achievement to find a book in SPCK these days) I picked it up.
It's a collection of essays about local ministry from a variety of methodist theologians and practitioners, including my old New Testament prof, I. Howard Marshall. His essay was the most interesting and I've already passed it to few others to look at. It's basically a challenge to traditional concepts of ordination which raises some very significant questions. He points out that many people in the NT were set aside for particular ministries through the laying on of hands. Why do we limit such "ordinations" to a few "professionals"?
He was writing in 1986, of course, but this is a useful discussion to run alongside Steven Croft's Ministry in Three Dimensions, which focusses on a dynamic understanding the traditional "orders" of deacons, presbyters and bishops (1999).
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