Models of ministry for a Changing Caribbean (Total Ministry)

Rt. Rev. Robert Thompson
Suffragan Bishop of Kingston
Diocese of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands

PREAMBLE

The House of Bishops of the Church in the Province of the West Indies (CPWI) in preparation for the Provincial Synod in Guyana, December 9-12, 2009, requested that a paper be prepared on “New models of ministry for a changing Caribbean”. These reflections must be accepted as provisional. Nevertheless it is hoped that the thoughts shared will set the stage for charting a way forward.

Ministry, we understand covers all those activities in which the members of the church offer their gifts for worship, community life, caring and nurture, as well as the organization and administration that are necessary. It is neither embraced nor exercised on the individual’s behalf but on behalf of the Church. That is to say, ministry takes place when a person, whether lay or ordained, performs a role or task on behalf of the Christian community which the community recognizes as its own work. “Ministry is found where there is authoritative commissioning and responsible agency on behalf of another, either in the form of ordination or in some other way.”¹

Obviously the ordained and the non-ordained have different functions within the life and witness of the church. However, since Clergy and laity are united in a common calling, a partnership with one another and with Christ, I will address the subject as the collective ministry of the people of God, which in any event transcends the distinction between lay and ordained. The second point I wish to make is the fact that the life of the church does not exist for its own sake. As the Body of Christ, it exists primarily for the sake of God’s mission. The church is sent:

• to make known the good news of God’s total love as revealed in and through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and
• to be servants of God’s children, binding up their wounds, breaking the chains of those who are oppressed and participating in establishing the kingdom of God on earth.

All members are called to discover, with the help of the community, the gifts they have received and to use them for the building up of the church and for the service of the world to which the church is sent.² If the truth be told we haven’t been doing too great a job on both issues.

THE CPWI IN CONTEXT

Two papers were presented at the Thirty-fifth Triennial Synod of The Church in the Province of the West Indies held in Belize in 2004. One by Professor Neville Duncan on the State of the Caribbean Issues and Challenges, and the second by Professor Patrick Bryan addressed the subject of Anglican Identity in Today’s Caribbean. Professor Neville Duncan argues that despite relative economic growth experienced in several countries in the Caribbean and improvement in certain aspects of the quality of life, nevertheless the region is still characterized by high (and growing) inequalities both in the distribution of wealth and in access to opportunities. He concluded his address to the 35^th Triennial Provincial Synod with the following challenge to the Church. “In a context where the Church of God had 21.2 % of denominational membership in 2003, Baptist 8.8; Seventh Day Adventist 9.0; Pentecostals 7.6 and the Anglican Church accounting for 5.5 per cent, it means that Anglicans have a tremendous responsibility to reach out beyond the limits of those who claim membership”. ³(Other denominations and some spiritual cults accounted for 34.7 per cent).

The challenge is that if the church finds itself operating in a situation where less than two thirds of the population is Christian the language and the modus operandi cannot be “business as usual”. The challenge facing our church is that despite the shedding of our colonial shackle, and despite disestablishment, what the Anglican Church represents to the majority of Caribbean people remains alien to their experience. As Professor Patrick Bryan in his paper states; “Early Anglican identity must be explained as a mirror of the colonial enterprise, in which religion was extended to the Caribbean as a part of the institutional transfers that took place in the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries.” Because of this, Professor Bryan argues that the perception is that the Anglican Church has kept itself aloof from the Caribbean cultural zone within which it functions.⁴ However, despite this perception of aloofness, built within Anglican self-understanding are the theological tools necessary to promote the kind of social transformation that is badly needed.

Anglicans embrace a spirituality that is rooted in the incarnation, and therefore, can neither be world-denying, nor can it be reduced to some private relationship with God. It calls us to be transformed into the life of the divine so that in turn the life of the world might itself be transformed. To engage one’s social context theologically, along with its culture and all the ambiguities that go along with it, means to become the place where God’s story of the world and our culture’s evolving story encounter each other. It is never a very safe or a very comfortable place to be. But we need to remember that the key to every theological interpretation is Christ, and it is the very uncomfortable and unsafe places within his own culture that engaged his transforming presence.

At the heart of Anglicanism is a living tradition that is in constant transformation. A process that began not just by the English reformation but also by the changes resulting from the missionary initiatives that emerged at the turn of the 18^th century and subsequently developed into autonomous provinces and creating its own adaptation of Thomas Cranmer’s 1662 Book of Common Prayer. The Anglican tradition has demonstrated a remarkable capacity to embrace change as a means of remaining faithful to its mission in the world. Its pragmatic sensibility and freedom to adapt are the very things we are being called upon to demonstrate even as we remain faithful to the tradition which we have inherited.

Anglicans have never viewed tradition as something that is fixed, but rather as a process that is dynamic, relational, contextual and catholic. South African theologian, James Cochrane expresses this process in the following way:

There are two important implications arising from the way in which we have defined universal truths of the tradition. When we lay claim to being Christian, we insert ourselves into the inherited language of the faith. As we search this heritage to make sense of our Christian identity, so we sink our roots into its universals. Further, we necessarily contribute to the establishment, confirmation, or alienation of these universals by constituting them in relation to our own experience. In this Christians continually participate in the development of tradition. This dynamic is its truth.⁵ (James R. Cochrane, Circle of Dignity, p.,68)

It is this dialogical approach to the inherited tradition which we must keep in mind as we search for new models of ministry that might best serve the cause of the Gospel in a rapidly changing Caribbean. Unless and until we are prepared to insert ourselves into the process of ‘traditioning’⁶ we are not likely to move beyond lovely worded recommendations.

The Provincial Commission on Mission, Renewal and Ecumenism in its report to the 35^th Triennial Provincial Synod held in Belize 12^th -18^th November, 2004, recognized that our models of ministry within the CPWI need to be re-defined in order to “facilitate our engagement in mission.⁷ It stated in part that “The Orders of Bishops, Priests and Deacons, need to be defined and re-defined in terms of their role and participation in mission and the overall empowerment of the church. The rigid hierarchical structure sometimes hinders mission.” In addition “The ministry of non-stipendiary clergy must be taken seriously and there must be openness to the development of new patterns of ministry. The concept of Team Ministry of both ordained and non-ordained was highly recommended. Specialized ministries should also be encouraged. There is need to draw on the resources of those who are involved already in team ministries”. Despite raising these issues as holding the key for engaging Caribbean society with the Gospel there were no suggestions as to a possible way forward. Consequently the House of Bishops request for a working paper on “Models of Ministry for a Changing Caribbean”

The idea put forward by Professor Bryan that the general perception of Anglicans being aloof from the social context might sound strange to a poor rural grandmother who has faithfully attended church for the last sixty years. She feels special because of her proud Anglican heritage. What she does not understand is why her grandchildren do not feel the same way. They periodically attend church, but their voice is muted. Bryan’s observation should therefore be taken very seriously. Our task is not to become defensive, but instead to acknowledge our Church’s disconnect from the majority of the population and especially the marginalized, and find new ways of reaching out. I believe that this is our greatest challenge, and not ours alone, since it is an experience shared by many Christian denominations which had their origin in the missionary expansion of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The real challenge is how to communicate the Gospel so that it is heard as Good News not only by those who already feel they belong but especially by those who have not yet heard the gospel as Good News.

The poor in every culture have proven that however powerful the forces that are working against them, they will always find the resources to act creatively in their own interest. Social scientists have long recognized that “while people are socially constructed, they are also capable of critical evaluation and intervention in the social world.” But they must first feel they have a stake in their own future and in what is going on around them. Studies among poor Jamaican women have shown that once the subjugated are given voice, that is to say, equal partnership in the conversation, they are capable of accomplishments, independent of the social forces that seek to marginalize them. The perceived aloofness that Bryan speaks about may very well have to do with the fact that Anglicans seldom take this group seriously as a worthy target for evangelism. Certainly, we organize social programs for them, but not with the expectation that one day they too will be members of the Mothers Union.

JESUS AS THE MODEL FOR MINISTRY

The Church in the Caribbean today, by its very call to be Christ’s Body in the world, needs to make the necessary changes to its institutional life, and its very approach to the study and proclamation of the Word, so that solidarity with the “least of these” might become a real possibility. It has been proven over and over again that when the poor or oppressed discover through the aid of scripture, that their context does not define their sense of self, new social relationships can begin to emerge. The most fundamental truth about ministry, whether ordained or lay, is that it is the ministry of Jesus Christ.

None of us believe that Jesus simply wanted an opportunity to have some food and drink for the fun of it why he associated with the poor and marginalized sinner. His intention in doing so was simply to affirm them in the gift of abundant life. He knew that the only way you can invite people to change is by giving them back their self-worth which is usually crusted over by their own self-hatred. The story of Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well illustrates the point. The woman lost her self-worth and in our Caribbean society she would be regarded as a “nobody”. That is precisely why she visits the well during the middle of the day when it is anticipated that no one but herself would be there. Yet Jesus does not allow her to claim her status as a “nobody”, instead he affirms her as equal by asking her for a drink. When we are able to accept a gift from people who claim an inferior status we immediately create an open space for dialogue to take place, and through that personal transformation, Jesus did precisely that for the Samaritan woman. As a result she became ready to accept an alternate story for her life. “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” “Sir” the woman said, “give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” The end result is that the woman returned to the community from whence she came and ministered to them.

If we belong to nothing, there is no reason to make sacrifices that will benefit others or contribute to the greater good of all. The incorporation of the marginalized into the community of God’s people, and the reassurance of self that comes with it, was in fact, Good News. Once you are proclaimed to be a somebody, not because of what you possess in material wealth, or how well connected you are, but because you are the beloved of God, washed in his blood, you can start living as a free and transformed person. To be free is a wonderful thing – and even more wonderful when we discover that it is not something we have to compete for, since it comes through the unconditional love of Jesus Christ.

A CASE FOR NEW WAYS OF DOING MINISTRY IN A RAPIDLY CHANGING ENVIRONMENT

Members of the Anglican Consultative Council at a Meeting in Jamaica in May 2009, made a critical observation following their Sunday Encounter in the parishes. Members commented that from what they had observed the Diocese had done extremely well in preserving the Anglican heritage. However, what remained the Church’s greatest gift, or strength, was also its greatest hindrance, or weakness, for promoting mission. Some believed that much of that heritage is being carried in colonial vessels. Yet despite what might often appear to be a disconnect between the crucible of Anglican Tradition and the local context, there is still a residual trust in what Anglicanism has to offer. Many congregations may not be viable financially and leadership resources for carrying on God’s mission may be scarcer still, yet, they nevertheless contain real seeds of power. They can become transformational systems within the community they serve. What is required is a radical shift in mindset. As a friend commented recently, “many clergy today are following a model of ministry that became obsolete 70 years ago – busy doing the same old thing and expecting a different answer”.

In preparing congregations to welcome the ministry of new rectors, I engage them in an exercise of re-visioning by “letting go” some of the old ways of doing things. It is an idea I borrowed from Roy D. Phillips in his work on Transforming Congregations for Ministry. Phillips describes a process by which congregations may begin to grow out a concern for maintaining the ecclesiastical organization and into a transformational orientation. That process, he claims, requires four shifts:

• From membership, in which congregants understand themselves as recipients of spiritual care from professional providers, to ministry, in which they carefully discern their gifts and the responsibilities to which these gifts correspond;
• From entitlement, in which congregants remain members because they are given standing influence over some piece of the congregation’s life, to mission, in which they become mindful of calls to serve both inside and outside the congregation;
• From education, in which congregants are consumers of a curriculum designed and delivered by others, to spiritual development, in which they interrupt the frenetic “doing” of contemporary life in order to attend to the movement of the spirit in their lives and the response the spirit asks of them;
• From toleration, in which congregants politely allow otherness but keep it at arms length, to engagement, in which they embrace diversity as a source of ongoing spiritual transformation.

What is being suggested here is a new way of ‘being church’ and of exercising ministerial leadership. Once the congregation is seen as the center for spiritual development and for ministry, the laity will begin to view themselves not as consumers but as “partners in mission”.

TOTAL MINISTRY

During the last fifty years or so, several significant developments have taken place to transform congregations for ministry. An example of this development is “Total Ministry”⁸ or what is called in some dioceses, “Mutual Ministry”. Some twenty-three dioceses across the Anglican Communion have already adopted this model of ministry. It sees ministry as the activity of the whole people of God, not just of the ordained clergy. Many of the congregations in which we serve are ready to make the paradigm shift from membership to ministry. The task of the ordained is not only to help congregants discern the gifts they will need to make that transition, but to provide the framework and structure through which those gifts can be used effectively to carry on the mission of God in the world.

Total Ministry is an exciting way of “doing church”. It is a way of seeing church as “a ministering community rather than a community gathered around a minister”; one way of “operationalzing” the catechism’s definition of ministry. Specifically, the catechism and baptismal covenant give insight into and support for the idea of Total Ministry.

In the section on ministry in the Catechism, found in The Book of Common Prayer (BCP, p.402). The first question asked is: “Who are the Ministers of the Church?” Answer: “lay persons, bishops, priests, and deacons”. Notice that laypersons are listed first. We need to consider whether being a layperson is simply a default, or is there an actual call to be a layperson. For many, being a layperson is a considered decision, they do not desire ordination, but nevertheless wish to acknowledge the gifts they bring to the body of Christ, and therefore the next question addressed by the Catechism is important.

“What is the ministry of the laity?” The response is “The ministry of lay persons is to represent Christ and his Church; to bear witness to him wherever they may be; and, according to the gifts given them, to carry on Christ’s work of reconciliation in the world; and to take their place in the life, worship, and governance of the Church.” Within this call lay people who have a recognized ministry of the word, who assist with the ministry of the sacraments, in administration and in pastoral responsibility have a notable representative function as they are called to speak and act on behalf of the Church.

Where does that authority to speak and act on behalf of the church come from? Is it given at baptism or confirmation? Ministry, we have stated is not simply a personal matter which the individual takes on to himself, but a task carried out on behalf of the body, and recognized by the body. The 39 Articles of Religion, make it clear: “It is not lawful for any man to take it upon him the office of publick preaching, or ministering the Sacraments in the Congregation, before he be lawfully called, and sent to execute the same…by men who have publick authority given unto them” (Article XX111). Total Ministry offers a concrete and expanded context within which the laity can live out their ministry knowing that they have received the authority and the full mandate of Church.

In Total Ministry, instead of a priest or pastor being in charge of a congregation’s ministry, the congregation takes responsibility. A ministry team selected by the congregation shapes and manages their ministry instead. The rector/priest in charge serves as mentor and guide to the ministry team and the congregation. Total Ministry involves the members of the congregation listening to each other and figuring out who has what gifts. Who is called to do what? The question isn’t “We need a teacher; who volunteers?” It’s “Who has the gift and passion for teaching?” Total Ministry trusts that God has put all the gifts needed by a congregation in that congregation.

I was introduced to the idea of Total Ministry six years ago by Rev Thew Forrester, who at the time was the Ministry Development Coordinator for the Diocese of Northern Michigan. What follows is an adapted summary of the seven stages involved in becoming a Total Ministry congregation. The details of each stage may be adapted depending on the perceived need of each diocese.

Introductory process

1. Start

The leadership of the congregation, the vestry or Church Committee and the priest in charge joined with that congregation, determines that they want to consider becoming a Total Ministry Congregation. The Church Committee as representatives of the congregation may enter into a covenant with the bishop as to their intention to explore Total Ministry. A facilitator or mentor appointed by the bishop will be assigned to the congregation to assist them in the next stages. This facilitator may also serve as a liaison with the diocese within which the congregation is considering Total Ministry. The facilitator or mentor will meet with the diocesan representative, the priest and the lay leadership of the congregation to evaluate the congregation’s strengths and weaknesses.

2. Explore

The congregation explores together what it means to be a Total Ministry congregation. During this stage members are given assistance to identify their gifts and callings, and explore how they may begin to assume responsibility for their ministries in the context of church and community. The facilitator will typically help the congregation progress through the study process.

The following areas are examples of topics that might be covered during this stage:

• Understanding servant leadership
• Exploring the Baptismal Covenant
• Shifting our models of ministry
• Prayer, spirituality, and discernment
• Learning to make faithful daily decisions based on scripture, tradition and experience
• Congregational dynamics
• The nature of gifts
• Gifts discernment
• Challenges facing the wider community

3. Decide

After gaining an understanding of what becoming a Total Ministry congregation would look and feel like, the congregation with its vestry/church committee and priest needs to make a decision. Are they called to become a Total Ministry congregation? If the answer is yes, the congregation may enter into a new covenant with the diocese or bishop as to their intention to call a ministry team. This process could take up to two years.

If the answer is no, the time is probably not right to move into being a Total Ministry congregation. However, it is important to remember that the congregation may be called to Total Ministry in the future. They should remain open to that possibility and not say, “We tried Total Ministry and it didn’t work.”

4. Call

Once the decision has been made to move forward to becoming a Total Ministry congregation, a ministry team needs to be called. All baptized believers are potential ministers. All are called to minister in one way or another. But that call needs to be issued and received and tailored to meet the needs of the individual congregation.

Then the congregation with the priest and diocesan representative proposes members of the congregation to be on the ministry team. This selection is based on their gifts, recognized and acknowledged during the previous Explore stage. The focus is on “are they called?” not “will they volunteer?” Potential team members are approached and respond yes or no. Once the ministry team is selected, they may be presented to the congregation.

5. Educate

Although a ministry team is selected based on their calling and gifts it is likely that most have not previously worked on spiritual formation as members of a ministry team in this context. In addition, there are usually areas where further experience and education are needed. Topics to be addressed might include the following.

• Scripture
• Pastoral care, community, & communications
• Church history & polity
• Ethics and issues
• Congregational dynamics and decision making
• Liturgics & music

6. Assess

Once the ministry team has completed its team formation and study, the readiness of the team to formally take on ministry team responsibilities is assessed. Assessment may be accomplished by the Diocesan Commission on Ministry or some other group not directly associated with the congregation and its journey towards Total Ministry. Assessment addresses whether the team member has completed the education and spiritual formation necessary for their position on the ministry team and whether they meet canonical and other training requirements. For example, preachers, priests, and catechists are likely to be covered by canonical requirements. A team member focusing on pastoral care might be required to take training specific to that role. This assessment is usually performed on-site in the context of the congregation who has called the ministry team. Also important is continuing education for the ministry team. Based on assessment of the current training, continuing education can be tailored to meet the ongoing needs of each ministry team member.

7. Commission

The ministry team having completed its training and formation is ready to serve the congregation that called them. The bishop of the diocese commissions the ministry team. This may include the ordination of person/s called to be priests for the local congregation.

Continue to Grow in God’s Grace

The congregation is now considered a full-fledged Total Ministry congregation. It is served by a ministry team and a priest who is a ministry developer or missioner. The gifts God has placed in its midst are exercised in service to God, the church, and the world. The congregation provides a context for all its members to live as ministers, fulfilling their baptismal calling.

The preceding discussion on Total ministry can be seen as a constructive response to social and economic necessity and the discovery that dependency on a stipendiary clergy based church often results in a diminishment of local church capacity. Both are compelling reasons for the CPWI to consider as we search for new models of ministry in a changing Caribbean. It also challenges us to reassess the training program presently being offered to our stipendiary clergy. Are they being trained to be team leaders and mission enablers?

Many parishes within our respective dioceses are finding it difficult to support the ministry of full time rectors and are increasingly relying on non-stipendiary clergy or commuting clergy to fill vacancies. Where this is the case, congregations are hoping the status quo never changes. They hardly see themselves as having the resources to ever be in a position to afford a full time “rector”. The question remains, should a rural cure consisting of four or five financially challenged congregations be asked to support a theologically trained clergyman, who has all but assimilated the “taste” of city life?

The second and perhaps most compelling reason to pay some attention to Total Ministry as a model for ministry in the Caribbean is the priority it gives to the local community taking responsibility for mission and ministry, and building up of their capacity for that task. Building the capacity of the local church to assume responsibility for mission is the surest way of getting the church reconnected to the people whom it is called to serve.

CONCLUSIONS

I am convinced that the church’s witness as a whole can be greatly enriched by the experience and by the questions and insights that will no doubt emerge by exploring new models of ministry. I have attached to this paper the experience of Anglican Dioceses in New Zealand which have tried a similar approach to ministry and which has brought new life to the Church’s mission. It is not just that the church now has an evolving new methodology – a way of being active in the world that is quite distinct from patterns that have prevailed for over a century. It challenges all of us to face up to a need for a fresh ecclesiology, a renewed demand for learning and for the kind of support local people need in being the church. If the process validates local leadership for God’s mission then it would have accomplished its task.

The growth of the Pentecostal Movement has created a crisis of confidence among many Anglicans within the CPWI. In some dioceses those who identify themselves with Pentecostalism has grown within the last two decades by some 200%, whereby on the other hand the number of persons who identify themselves as Anglicans has declined by some 50%. I dare say this crisis of confidence is even present among many of our clergy some of whom believe that by adopting the secularized strategy of popular evangelicalism they will at least win back some of those we lost. I am suggesting we do no such thing. But this does not mean that we simply continue on the same track, doing worship in the same way, and reading scripture as if we were English men supporting a status quo that long lost its power to inspire.

To say to the youth on the corner – “this is what we have to offer: take it because you need it”, will not work either. On the other hand we will need to give up on the idea that we will ever succeed in recreating the Christian culture of which our predecessors dreamt. In a context where Governments no longer believe it is a political liability to ignore the voice of the church, we can no longer rely on their patronage for a safe place to carry out God’s mission. Those who are in control of media, entertainment and social life are not required to pay attention to the Church and often they don’t. They are winning the hearts and minds of Caribbean people in ways with which we are not able to compete.

The fact is we have now reached that point when we must say to ourselves we can’t do much to fix the damage done by those competing for the secular and cultural spoils. What is within our reach, however, is to wake up and recognize our core business, and put in place systems that will make that core business deliverable. Our core business is to point people to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the source of their transformation, to wake them up by helping them to keep hope alive. “If the processes are in place to achieve that, the output will be good. And if the output is exceptional, it will be easy to attract the resources that will help us to produce even more.”⁹ What we gain primarily from the church when it is serious about doing its core business is the ability to see the world as God sees it and to respond to the invitation to live by an alternative script to the one the world wants us to live by. I trust that the suggestions put forward in this paper will reiterate the hope that a new and different way of looking at ministry is possible. If it achieves that then perhaps it may inspire us to begin the real work of finding the model of ministry that will best suit our context, and so engage our people in God’s Mission.

APPENDIX

Anglican Church of Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia

A significant movement has developed in the Anglican Church in this country which has its equivalent in several other parts of the world. Drawing on the writing of Roland Allen in the 1920s the movement has sought to establish forms of ministry which are both true to an Anglican understanding of church and sacrament yet are not dependent on stipendiary and seminary trained ministry.

The movement was encouraged by some key leaders of the New Zealand Anglican Church attending a conference on the work of Roland Allen held in Hawaii in the early 1980s. In the Diocese of Waiapu appropriate people in local Maori communities were ordained as priests with the support of their community to serve without stipend. They were known as ‘minita-a-iwi’ (ministers of the people).

In the late 1980s David Moxon visited the Diocese of Nevada and studied the developments there called ‘Total Ministry’ which had been pioneered by Wes Frensdorff, the bishop. David Moxon was director of Theological Education by Extension (TEE) for the Anglican Church in New Zealand. He began to share some of the Total Ministry thinking around the dioceses of New Zealand.

The TEE position developed in the early 1990s into the Distance Education and Formation Training Unit (DEFT) and the new director was Paul Dyer who was the first of several New Zealand visitors to study developments in the Diocese of Northern Michigan. His study leave report became a primary reference document for developments in some dioceses in this country. The Northern Michigan approach was called ‘Mutual Ministry’ and acknowledged debt to and kinship with Nevada’s Total Ministry.

Since then, New Zealand dioceses have developed their own local variants of these approaches. Development has been shaped both by local decision and by national networking and conferences. Currently six of the seven pakeha (not maori) dioceses have forms of ‘Mutual Ministry.’ In November 1996 the Tikanga Pakeha Ministry Board representing all the pakeha dioceses adopted a set of guidelines for Mutual Ministry.

Mutual Ministry is described in the guidelines as, “…a way of thinking and of ordering ministry that seeks to locate responsibility for the mission and ministry of the church in the local worshipping community.”

Mutual Ministry is characterized by eight foundations.

1. Congregational choice for this approach.
2. The primary ecclesial relationship is between the diocese and the congregation.
3. Educational focus on baptism as the mandate and foundation of mission and ministry; ministry is the responsibility of all the baptized.
4. Identify local mission and what is needed to support it.
5. Identify individuals who have the confidence of the congregation to support their mission; people for specific ministries to support the mission.
6. Authorize ministries; some by local recognition, some by Episcopal license, some by ordination.
7. Develop and encourage mutuality in ministry; no individual substituting for the responsibility of the whole.
8. Education, support and oversight provided by some extension of the episcopate through appointment of stipendiary and trained enablers.

Paper prepared by Rt. Rev. Robert Thompson, for presentation to the CPWI Provincial Synod, December 9-12, 2009 in Georgetown, Guyana.