What is Secular Ministry (2)

Section One of this series dealt with what I miss now that I am doing "secular" ministry after thirty years as a parish pastor. Section Two was about what I don't miss. Section Three is talking about "secular ministry."
Links to earlier sections:
Introduction
1. What I Miss: Part 1, part 2, part 3
2. What I Don't Miss: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
Interlude
3. Secular Ministry: Part 1,
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I have to admit that a great deal of my current thought on "secular ministry" following years in parish ministry has been influenced by Barbara Brown Taylor’s amazing memoir, Leaving Church, especially the sections that deal with her new life outside the establishment. It has given some focus to a lot of things that I had rumbling in my mind for the first two years after my moving outside.

Here are some of her thoughts:

• The job of a priest is to recognize holiness in things, hold them up to God and to speak of them to others so that they can recognize the holiness in those things, too. A priest is a priest no matter where s/he happens to be. Outside the church, s/he is working without a net. (pp. 204-205)
• I knew that while the scenery had changed, my vocation had not. I was still on holy ground. All the familiar human sorrows were in that room, all the human hungers for meaning and love. I was still in the privileged position of choosing words that fell into deep water and asking the kinds of questions that mattered. (p.208)
• I was in a room full of 18 and 19-year olds, a group of people most clergy see very little of in church... (p. 208)

As I reflect on those thoughts in my own "secular ministry" I realize again and again that we are not different when called into secular ministry. The setting is different, though. When the world was "officially Christian" ministry took place in and through the church. It was the left-over of a different world. Today when so few (relatively) avail themselves of that ministry it may be time to think again of the model of Jesus' ministry. It was outside the institution- which is where he found the people.

Does this negate the "internal" mission and ministry? Not at all. It simply places it into a new perspective of a postmodern world where the opportunities for ministry are far more varied and less apparently "holy." All the more need for a priest who can reach out and discover the holiness and hold it up to be seen in whatever ways the world may be ready to see.

I, too, am still on holy ground. When I walk into my group room at 6:00 each evening or 9:00 on Saturday morning I am walking into a place where God already is. I may not use "holy" language or "religious" ritual or even "traditional" sacraments. I do come to minister in its best and holiest ways. I am not there to convert or convince or evangelize. No, I am there to feed and clothe and visit and heal. I am bringing into reality the possibilities that God (however they may understand God at that point) has a better and deeper and more peace-filled way of life. I bring grace to a group that may not have heard that such a thing could even exist- especially in their lives.

In our postmodern world we "secular" priests/pastors/prophets are working in places that don't look holy but are just as filled with holiness as any other place in God's presence. I am working with people most clergy would love to see in church, but won't. Like Barbara Brown Taylor's classroom, my group room or counseling office become sanctuaries- safe places. They become holy ground where I stand in awe of God's power at work day in and day out.

One more quote from Leaving Church.

• I saw that my humanity was all I had left to work with. I saw in fact that it was all I had ever to work with. There was no mastering divinity. My vocation was to love God and my neighbor and that was something I could do anywhere, with anyone, with or without a collar. My priesthood was not what I did, but who I was. In this new light, nothing was wasted. All that had gone before was blessing and all yet to come was more. (p. 209)

I guess maybe my cutesy introduction to secular ministry a few weeks ago may not be as far from the truth as it felt. Secular ministry may very well be nothing more- and nothing less- than doing ministry just like Jesus did it.