Who Does What 2 - Priests

Lots of Christians don't really like using the term 'priest' for church leaders anymore. This is because of the Old Testament connotations where the priesthood can appear largely ritualistic, the fact that the New Testament talks about the 'priesthood of all believers' (cf. 1 Peter 2:9 - although I am aware that the common interpretation of the phrase 'royal priesthood' is far from universally accepted) and just because of the current connotations of the word 'priest' - we tend to think of an old man who is either exceedingly soft and cuddly or else quite rigid and grumpy. The Anglican Diocese of Sydney has even begun using the non-translation 'presbyter' instead of 'priest' which is fine at one level, although if the aim was to avoid confusion, I'm not sure it's achieved all that much.

In the Anglican Church, ordained 'priests' are those people given authority to preach and administer the sacraments and whose general duties include leading and pastorally caring for a local church. I say 'general' duties, because there are actually lots of other ways that priests can be deployed. For example, they can be assistants to the head priest in a parish (the vicar or rector), chaplains in a wide range of contexts or workers in parachurch organisations. But even when a priest isn't a vicar / rector, it's still expected that they have all the qualifications and have met all the requirements for that 'standard' priestly role. This goes back in part to the idea of equivalence of ordination throughout the worldwide Anglican Communion.

One thing that I find really disappointing is that many priests give only a small amount of energy to their bread-and-butter work of preaching, presiding and pastoring. It would be easy to just highlight the five minute sermonettes that are offered in some liberal parishes or the infrequency of (and sometimes near-irreverent attitude towards) communion in some evangelical parishes, but the problem goes beyond these. So many parish priests these days find themselves so tied up in governance, management and administration tasks that time for sermon preparation and pastoral meetings seems to just get squeezed out. In many cases, this is genuinely grieved as priests long to get free of their ever-growing list of additional duties and to get on with the work they entered the priesthood to do. But there are others who I fear have forgotten their first charge and embraced an altogether different model of priestly leadership that isn't centred on pulpit and parishioners.

So what to do? The first thing is just to recognise the different roles that different members of the church are meant to fulfil and then to ensure that each person is focussing on the right thing. John Stott addressed exactly this issue in his chapter 'Ministry: The Twelve and the Seven' in one of his final books, 'The Living Church' (which is very worthwhile reading).

After this, priests then just need to employ the disciplines necessary for them to prioritise the priorities. A great example for me is a priest I know who simply set a firm time-limit on how much administration he would do during the week. Once the time was up, it was up and if some things didn't get done, they didn't get done. He had made a decision that he wasn't going to let management tasks impinge on the time that he committed to preparing sermons. He was an Anglican priest practically committed to doing the work of a priest.