Dave Andrews

Let me tell you how I engage the church as an amateur elder rather than a professional cleric.

Most clergy I know are aware that, though I am a Christian anarchist, opposed to ordination because I consider it as elitist – and detrimentally exclusive of the laity – I am supportive of clergy as people. 

A few years ago, my friend Justin Duckworth was appointed as the Anglican bishop of Wellington, New Zealand. I sent him a text that said, “You know I can’t imagine Jesus ever wearing purple, but if anyone can bring the spirit of Jesus to this role, you can.” He used to say publicly that I was the only one, of all the hundreds of people who contacted him, that did not congratulate him. But one of the first things he did as bishop was to invite me to help his clergy think about how they could minister in their churches with unaffected heartfelt vulnerability. Justin knew, that in spite of my reservations about ordination, he could trust me to treat his clergy unreservedly well. 

These days I facilitate the local ministers’ meeting in our area. We don’t call it a ‘fraternal’ because the meeting includes female as well as male ministers. Our group includes Anglican, Uniting Church, Evangelical, Charismatic, and Catholic clergy. And, believe it or not, an Excommunicated Catholic priest. So the fact I am not ordained is a comparatively inconsequential matter. 

In the ministers’ meeting we assiduously avoid any formal, institutional, denominational emphases. Instead we intentionally emphasise an informal, personal and relational approach from beginning to end. We start with check-ins, then pick up on any personal concerns people have. Occasionally as coordinator I will ask open questions about what personal challenges they are facing and what personal approaches they have found helpful in overcoming these challenges – and so on. 

We discourage people promoting pet subjects, sectarian agendas, and theological debates. Rather we keep the tone generous, gentle and easy going, allowing the interaction to move back and forward from light humorous superficial exchanges to heavy heartfelt in-depth conversations. Consequently all the ministers – including the Russian Orthodox and Ukrainian Catholic priests in the group, whose ethnic, national and ecclesiastical affiliations are currently involved in such violent conflict – say that the group is so safe, accepting, respectful, supportive and encouraging, that it is by far the best ministers’ meeting that they have ever been a part of. 

The ministers’ meeting is more a fellowship group than an organising group, but different ministers will help each other out, share resources with each other, and invite others to join with them around specific activities. The joint ecumenical activity, which most ministers choose to get their members involved in, is the very moving spiritually-sensitive socially-relevant public Stations of the Cross event the Uniting Church conduct in the main street of our neighbourhood on Good Fridays.

Being an amateur elder on the margins of the church life, rather than a professional cleric at the centre of church affairs, means that I am in a great position to not only work with people involved in the church, but also work with people alienated by church organs and para-church organisations. 

These days I facilitate two peer support groups of profoundly disappointed, disillusioned and disenchanted pastors, chaplains, missionaries and other church and parachurch community workers who have been badly damaged by the way the religious institutions they work/ed for treated them. 

These groups function like the ministers’ meetings. Culture is primary and structure is secondary. 

In terms of culture, we emphasise the personal and relational, keeping the tone generous, gentle and easy going, allowing the interaction to move back and forward from light humorous superficial exchanges to heavy heartfelt in-depth conversations. 

In terms of structure we start with check-ins and pick up on any personal concerns people have and then focus on one of these points of pain, reflecting on what personal challenges they are facing and what personal approaches they have found helpful in overcoming these challenges – all the time discouraging people from trying to fix one another or give each other advice, but instead encouraging the person who is the focus of concern to trust the spirit to be an inner guide to lead them into truth that others can affirm and confirm in their own experience. Including the person who had been the principal of a theological college and who had subsequently lost his faith in God.

In these support groups people find a safe space to be brave enough to honestly acknowledge and creatively engage their anger, doubt and despair. The feedback from participants is that these groups have been very helpful for them. One person said the group provided him with what he never expected, but desperately needed – a sweet personally transformative ‘disembitterment process’.