What we need today is churches of the people rather than churches for the people. In general terms, churches are no more small communities of Christians who have grown individually and collectively in their faith commitments; it is no more an assembly of people worshipping God and glorifying His name; it is not a place any more where they try to interpret the gospel in the day-to-day realities of their lives and developing a lifestyle in the reality of the gospel. But it is a place for investing in self interests of one sort or another and a battle ground for propagating a multiplicity of self interests. It is a place where one surrenders one set of freedom for instant recognition and societal approval; it is a place for exercising power and authority; it is place where one willingly surrender the God-given power to think and allow the hierarchy to do thinking for oneself; it is a place where God-given talents are allowed to decay and degenerate; it is an arena for manipulating people by ‘playing games’ to extract energy to survive at any cost in the way James Redfield described in his book, ‘The Celestine Prophecy.’ [1] This may seem quite unreal and therefore, let me at the very outset admit that there may be many exceptions to my gross generalisations. But I am concerned with the general perception created by churches in our neighbourhoods. These days, main line churches are not necessarily involved in the everyday concerns of people of a locality and it is not part of the community. It is more and more remotely controlled by the long arms of establishments; it is controlled from Vatican, Canterbury, St. Petersburg, Athens, Antioch, Kottayam, Tiruvalla or some such place. Church hierarchies are settled in their comfortable ways of providing the necessary fabrics and rubrics of a church for the people rather than church of the people. The tragedy is that many of these churches pretend that they have a democratic administrative style as well. But as the Nobel laureate, Octavio Paz[2] wrote: “Of course, democracy also can be tyrannical, and the dictatorship of the majority no less odious than that of a single person or group. Democracy is not a panacea that cures all ills and automatically guarantees social justice.”

In an ideal communitarian church we may find a shared leadership; in such places every one is equally responsible for the proper functioning and well-being of all its members. Anyone who takes a designated-task accepts it with humility on behalf of everyone, but not as a status symbol or a power broker. The essential characteristic of such a faith community is the decentralisation of power. By seeing every part has a significant role to play for the co-ordinated activity of the entire group, no one person is likely to dominate the group and all members begin to value their worth as individuals and skills they have to bring. Recognising the special gifts that people possess is important because such skills are likely to be needed at different times. These gifts are endowments for the future growth of the church and should be invested profitably for the common good of all the members. Those who are gifted with special skills can help others, particularly young people, to gain similar or better skills for the growth of the church. This fits in with the idea that Church is very similar to family, a family of believers. One of the cardinal principles of Luther’s reformation in the 16th century was the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. He saw Church as a spiritual community, but not as a hierarchical structure.

The notion of special God-given talents is particularly relevant to the context of a discussion of ministry of the local parish. In the first letter to the Corinthians St. Paul stresses the theology of giftedness when speaks of the variety of ministry: “There are different gifts but the same spirit; there are different ministries but the same Lord; there are different works but the same God who accomplishes all of them in everyone. To each person the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.” (I Cor. 12:4-7) Thus from the earliest of time the Christian community has considered ministry as a response to needs and as a response made possible because of the special gifts bestowed by the grace of God on the members of the local fellowship. Structured organisational development and official affiliations to larger faith communities were a later development in the history of the Church. In an effort to grow, we have forgotten who we are and where we come from.

The early church with all its troubles and tribulations experienced an amazing time in the life of its members. However, even in this golden age of the spiritual growth, in the New Testament times, there were differences in emphasis. There were at least three kinds of identifiable emphasis in churches or Christian communities: firstly, Pastoral Letters highlight the importance of teaching, structures and pastoral care; secondly, Ephesian and Colossian churches looked at the Church as Christ’s body and His bride. Finally, in Acts we see an emphasis on accommodating both charismatic and the institutional nature of the churches. Hence the ideas about Church as a ‘people of God’, ‘assembly’, ‘faith community’, ‘body of God’, ‘bride of Christ’ ‘family’, and other understandings developed. These and other differences between Jewish and gentile Christians, and an apparent rivalry that existed between Apostles and early Christian pioneers raise a question mark about unity and the idea of ‘One Church’ in apostolic times. ‘The One Universal and Catholic Church’ is an invisible Church and a spiritual reality of a different kind. Despite these differences, certain common elements of faith such as Jesus as the Messiah and Lord; the sacraments of baptism and Eucharist; and the expectation of the imminent coming of the Kingdom of God united them to a certain degree. However, the unexpected postponement of the second coming of Jesus created uncertainties of a colossal dimension.

The early charismatic expectation slipped into a longing for security and survival. Principles of sharing disappeared; building boundaries and consolidating power became important. Emperor Constantine initiated and built structures for the Church and he housed the wealth of Christian fellowships in secure buildings. It is the beginning of the institutionalised churches and these churches were structured for the people, as thought fit by the leadership of the time. Within these Church structures individuals lost their community spirit and begin to build walls of separation and ego boundaries. Fellowships degenerated into ego building and worship. Hostility replaced hospitality. This is the domain of a privatised religion, making churches into Christian private clubs with exclusion limits. What is missing in this situation is a sense of belonging, of community; and love for one’s neighbour; neighbourhoods became in accessible due to demarcation lines and boundary walls. We need to recover the vision of the church as a family. We also lost one of the most fundamental tents of Christianity in the process, the Eucharistic hospitality. Even last sixty years of ecumenical endeavours of the Wold Council of Churches and the formulation of Lima liturgy have not helped us in finding reconciliation at Lord’s Table.

The emphasis of this article is to draw special attention to the necessity of distinguishing church for the people from church of the people. Church for the people caters for the presumed needs of its members and it has a very structured, standard operating protocols. On the other hand church of the people allows the real local needs of its members in designing structures in a more flexible and modular way. The implication of this is the need for a change in our attitude towards pastoral ministry, which should be in tune with the needs of the local community and should be flexible in allowing needs to affect structures and protocols. But this is not happening in the main line churches because of the fear and resistance of the hierarchy. The hierarchy usually relates to elite or power groups because the power blocks oil the system, which allows the church to function in a safer mode. However, there are dissenting voices from the hierarchy as well and it is gratifying to see Archbishop Pedro Lopez Quintana [3], the Vatican envoy to India, making the same point in the context of educational institutions run by his church. He has cautioned the Roman Catholic Church in India to shed an elitist tag it has gained regarding education. He said, “In spite of all our idealism and good intentions, we are too well aware that many of our educational institutions are largely at the service of the dominant rich and of the neo-liberal and capitalist system that controls our society," Metropolitan Chrysostom of the Mar Thoma Church had often spoke about the need for para churches [4]. Societal changes are accelerating, but the pace of structural changes in the churches are very slow. As we have seen early, St. Paul recognised administration as one form of ministry, though he did not regard it as the most important one. A move from centre to periphery is a way of creating church of the people. This allows fellowships for people on the margins of the institutionalised churches and of society.

Today the churches are faced with an important challenge for developing an effective lay ministry and begin the transformation of churches into churches of people. It is important to recognise the worthiness of men and women who have proved their competence in various fields who are eager to share their talents with clergy in their pastoral ministry. There is no point in planting the seeds of the gospel in lay people if they are not allowed to root, flourish and produce fruits. However, it is up to the lay people to articulate their needs, fears and hopes. The future shape of the churches will very much depend upon how we ourselves submit to God’s grace and wait in humility and prayer to feel the burden of this ministry within each one of us. I am very much convinced that it is such a burden, which prompted Dr. Rajan Mathew of Philadelphia, a member of the Indian Orthodox Church, and the global-wide multi-denominational authors' team to invest so much of their time, talents and money for systematically producing a very useful, truly ecumenical, ‘Light of Life’ electronic journal. Let all of us, who regularly use this ministry, pray for Rajan and the entire team who are engaged in it to make this a wonderful medium for building churches of people in places and situations where we are placed. In the 16th century, recognising the power of the printing press for his reformation movement, Martin Luther King called the use of printing press as ‘God’s latest and best work to spread the true religion.’ Now we have this electronic medium to do God’s work, but we need to get used to the idea that ministry is the work of all Christians, not just the ordained. Certainly ordained ministry is not the only sort of ministry needed today to express the love of God seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. We should move away from the idea that church is a place where we gather for safety and security or showing off our religious and secular credentials once a week on a Sunday morning and consider it as a mere operational transit lounge from where people are directed to real life situations to reveal God’s love. Where love is God is.

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