Twenty Years with Local Shared Ministry

Of course the Episcopalian Church in Alaska and Nevada takes credit for being first in the field but my own pilgrimage in Local Shared Ministry took a decisive turn two decades ago.
I’d been involved in preparing candidates for “local” ministry in their home settings since 1982. Unpaid volunteers, without the full range of theological and biblical studies available to full-time students in the College, they nevertheless were ordained and commissioned for specific part-time ministries usually in their own congregations.
But as the programme advanced through a decade, one thing became apparent: the ghost of stipendiary ministry remained hanging around. Most congregations projected onto our "home-setting" students all the expectations they had of a full-time stipendiary minister. They seemed delighted to have "a minister" but often also quite content to leave everything to that one person.

Gradually I came to see that the model of just one person in specially authorised ministry, whether academically trained or not, whether paid or not, whether full-time or part-time, was actually part of the problem. So I conceived the strategy of five or more volunteers sharing the work of modeling and supporting the ministry of the whole congregation. After writing my first paper on it I discovered that the model was already alive and well in Nevada.
Happily, when I left the College position, I was offered a part-time position in a small parish which could never afford paid ministry and might consider the LSM concept. In 1992 we commissioned the first Presbyterian or Methodist LSM team in the country, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Today, temporarily back in the saddle, I’m looking forward to “enabling” the monthly support team meeting. They’ll pray together, share their achievements, concerns and help each other find solutions. And we’ll talk about some mundane things like understanding the parish accounts and making claims for expenses.

And central in their pastoral concerns, they’ll remember Lesley, on the other side of the world, supporting her seriously ill mother.