You: the Modern Priesthood, by Daniel Montgomery

Martin Luther was totally punk rock. That’s my clever attention-grabber that will hopefully convince you to read on. So let’s talk about the Reformation. (Unless you’re a total history geek, you now see why I needed the clever opener to hook you.) Once, the church was made up of a strict line drawn between the clergy and the laity, the priests and the rest of the people. The Catholic church was the dispenser of grace.

Well, Martin Luther’s big, anti-establishment, punk-rock biblical revolution was that the gospel, not the church, was the means of salvation (and the fact that the church was oftentimes selling grace for a fee probably added a little bit of punk to his attitude). His words, ‘Everyone who has been baptized may claim that he already has been consecrated as a priest, bishop or pope,’ probably upset the Catholic pope a bit. EVERYONE is a POPE. This was an important recovery of biblical Christianity, groundbreaking in the fact that, by Luther’s understanding, the gospel reached all men through all men. The hierarchy of the longstanding Catholic church was false, the sharp line between the priests and the ‘laity’ was actually non-existent. This probably upset more than a few bishops, but then so did the Sex Pistols.

So, the revolution was completed. The priesthood of believers was reclaimed and all was well forever, right? Not exactly. Here’s what writer David Watson has to say about it:

Most Protestant denominations have been as priest-ridden as the Roman Catholics. It is the…pastor who has dominated the whole proceedings. In other words, the clergy-laity divisions have continued much the same way as in pre-Reformation times, and the doctrine of spiritual gifts and body ministry have been largely ignored.

Those words ring true, don’t they? Even Martin Luther, Mr. Reformation, said, ‘We are all priests…but those whom we call priests are ministers selected from our midst to act in our name, and their priesthood is our ministry.’ It seems Luther lost steam.

Of course there are leadership roles within the church, and there is authority that rests with elders and deacons. That’s clearly modeled in Titus, I Timothy and elsewhere. The elders, the preacher, however, are not called to handle every spiritual ministry. If they were, the church would be very sick because there wouldn’t be enough elders and enough time to minister to everybody. The way Paul writes about spiritual gifts and ministry in Romans paints a clear picture of the body of Christ, the whole body, ministering to each other as an organism, not an institution.

Still, something in our human nature desires structure that enables us to be passive receivers rather than active participants. Maybe it’s spiritual laziness – people just want to sit back and be fed, but not challenged to act. Maybe it’s fear of taking the relational risks necessary to actually be a believer-priest. And on the other side, maybe protestant ministers enjoy their authority and are content to be the head of their church. Regardless of the reason, though, the call is clear. Believers, all of us, need to seize our faith and the promises given to us in the Word and live the transformed life we claim and be the Body of Christ.

How can we seize this sluggish revolution and flatten out the ministry of the church? How do we live out our priesthood as believers? The easiest first step is to jump in a community group. In a community group setting, there is space for all of us to minister as priests to each other. We can minister the word to each other. We can confess sin to one another. We can serve one another and be served. We can minister to the poor, the needy, the hurting.

Community group is the primary way to live out the message in sermon, the readings and the songs we sing on Sunday. It is the primary place where we see people being equipped and trained in hands-on priesthood. Community group is the front line of the believer-priest revolution at Sojourn. If you want to go deeper in your faith, to live it out, this is the place. (Find a community group here.)

Let’s hear from those who know. How has community group given you the opportunity to be a priest to your fellow Christians? How has your community group been a priest to you?