What is Total Ministry?
Total Ministry is a term used to describe an overall approach to being “church.” Since we believe that all the baptized are gifted by the Holy Spirit with spiritual gifts for the work of ministry, each church needs to strive to equip, encourage, and support its members in using those gifts in every area of their lives, both within and outside the “organized church.” This radical, all-inclusive nature of the concept is the hardest aspect of understanding Total Ministry. Total Ministry is collaborative in nature. Instead of seeing the church’s pastor as the congregation’s sole “minister,” all the members of a congregation are “partners in God’s mission.” Where in the past one person attempted to do the church’s ministry on behalf of the entire community of believers, now a team of gifted people, ordained and lay, leads the community in developing, equipping, and sending ministry teams to carry out God’s work. Total Ministry approaches can be developed by a single congregation regardless
Total Ministry is called by many names. It is a way of being Church which animates the ministry of all the baptized: Total Ministry, total common ministry, mutual ministry, local ministry, collaborative ministry — and there are many more! Briefly, Total Ministry is: the cooperative effort of all the baptized to accomplish Gods purpose in their lives as best they understand it. Total Ministry is not primarily a program for ministry renewal or congregational rescue. It is a central principle of Christian living: that persons converted, in the context of Christian community, are drawn naturally ever deeper into participation in the mission and ministry of Jesus Christ in every component of their lives. It happens not by choice, but, as Roland Allen puts it, by a compulsion of the Spirit. Total Ministry is the creative response of the Church organizing to respond to that reality. A definition of ministry development developed by Sindicators in 1985 is a good one for Total Ministry as well
Total Ministry is all the baptized members ministering together. It prepares members of a congregation toserve as a team in the ministerial leadership roles traditionally filled by a seminary-trained priest. Total Ministry may also be called “mutual ministry,” or “collaborative ministry.” Congregations that cannot find or afford a seminary-trained priest may then have the full range of traditional ministries regular Eucharist, original sermons, and personal pastoral care. Instead of paying a priest to minister for us, we are able to do the ministry ourselves. 2.
Total Ministry is a “different way of doing church”. It is a gathering of ministers rather than a minister gathering people. It takes different forms in different places, but its basis is spiritual, focusing the people both inwardly and outwardly. Total Ministry makes everyone take their spiritual gifts seriously and are held (and helped) to be responsible for their use.
