This is the fourth article in a series on the Team Ministry collaboration between Messiah, Chester and St. Mary’s, Sparta. See also: Parish collaboration: An introduction, Parish collaboration: A warden’s experience, and Parish collaboration: A priest’s experience.
As many of you probably already know, Church of the Messiah, Chester and St. Mary’s, Sparta share a priest and a deacon. What you might not know is part of the memorandum between the parishes that created this new way of doing church included a recommendation for each congregation to raise up a lay pastoral leader. What, may you ask, is a lay pastoral leader? Good question! I will try and answer that question by way of my journey to becoming one.
My home church is St. Mary’s, Sparta. In September of 2022, our rector accepted another call and left St. Mary’s. At that time, I was the Senior Warden. And, as anyone who has ever been a Warden when your priest leaves knows, it is daunting. We often had difficulty getting supply clergy when our Rector was on vacation so I would occasionally lead morning prayer while she was away. It made sense to get my lay worship leader license. After our rector left, it was even more difficult to get supply clergy, and I found myself leading worship almost every Sunday. Retired or supply clergy did not want to travel to Sparta. Since we had no clergy, I became the de facto pastoral leader.
During the transition period the vestries of both churches, together with Canon Clark, worked very hard to make this collaborative ministry a reality. After several months we were blessed to have Mother Elizabeth Ivell agree to take on both churches as priest-in-charge. We were also blessed to have Deacon Gail Kertland agree to join our team. But we still needed to raise up our lay pastoral leaders. Since I was already kind of doing that, I volunteered and after a discernment interview with Mother Elizabeth I was accepted into the brand-new School for Ministry. It was after that, I found out the course started in May and ended in May of the following year. The first part was getting the lay worship leader license. I already had that license but needed to take this part again. The second, and to me, most daunting part was lay preaching. I did not know when I volunteered to be our lay pastoral leader that preaching was going to be a part of that. To be honest, this is the part I struggled with and continue to struggle with to this day. It is an awesome responsibility to preach and not one I take lightly. The last part of the training was pastoral care. This part was much more familiar to me as I am a Stephen minister and have been serving St. Mary’s as a lay Eucharistic minister, a lay Eucharistic visitor and healing minister for many years.
My understanding of the role of a licensed lay pastoral leader is to be the eyes and ears of the church for our clergy; to be in church week after week, either leading the service or participating in any way that is needed. Since we do not have clergy every Sunday it is important for the congregation to know that there is someone who is there looking out for them and addressing anything that needs attention or following up with clergy. I believe accepting the call to this ministry has been the answer to what God has been calling me to for most of my adult life.
So far, this collaborative ministry seems to be working. It is my fervent prayer that it continues and that other congregations may be inspired to consider different collaborations.
