I spent the day today with the Uniting Church’s national task group on specified ministries. We were commissioned by the last Assembly (mother of resolution 84) to sort out the growing complicated mess that’s developed around the status and roles of lay pastors, community ministers, youth workers and various lay assistants.

Many youth workers find themselves boxed into roles that don’t allow for ministry to the whole family or whole congregation – they can’t lead sacraments or celebrate weddings. Lay pastors and community ministers are often confused with each other.

So our proposed model is that we have three types of specified ministries in the Uniting Church in Australia: ordained (Ministers of the Word and Deacons), pastors (people who are responsible for pastoral oversight and ministry on behalf of the Uniting Church, and lay preachers (people who have been trained to lead worship and preach). Ordained ministers and deacons are available to serve with the church throughout their lives and exercise a ministry to the whole church through several placements. Pastors are so-called while they serve in pastoral roles recognised by the church. Lay preachers carry their accreditation with them.

So the implications?

Existing youth workers can stay on as youth workers. But we’re suggesting a couple of years in which youth workers will be offered the choice of being ordained to a wider ministry or to short term pastoral roles. Lay pastors and community ministers likewise will have the choice of status quo, transition to ordained ministry or pastoral role.

The category of ‘pastor’ could and should pick up a number of people who are working in that role presently without recognition. This would include children and family workers, evangelists, counsellors, music directors, small groups coordinators, community ministry coordinators.

There are implications for recognition and training of course. At present most of our energy goes into training people for ordained ministry. Ordained ministers in this scheme would be sharing responsibility with others for the training of God’s people for ministry. We’d need a lot more flexible competency-based training that equipped people for particular specialist roles.

We’ve received a lot of feedback from around Australia. Now we have the task of collating our report for the Assembly being held in Brisbane in July. We’re using a private site at Wikispace to edit each other’s work.

The web site is at assembly.uca.org.au/converse