Clergy and Laity-A Disastrous Concept

I have watched the hierarchy of the church over the years and it has frustrated me to the point that I’ve had to walk away several times. My departures were like mental health breaks but my heart always wanted to see things change. The church seems completely oblivious to this deep-seeded problem. The hierarchy system that exists seems to have been birthed by the concept of Clergy and Laity. I have seen the discouragement and apathy that has resulted from this. The clergy are defined as the professionals and the laity are the common people. The professionals are hired to do the real work of the ministry and the laity are there to assist them at a lower level. That might have been the original concept but the reality of this separation is that we have put the majority of the church to sleep and handed the ministry over to a few. We have converted the majority of God’s flock into apathetic spectators. They watch the preacher preach. They watch the choir sing. They watch the teacher teach. They watch the Pastor pray. They watch. They listen, and then they go home. We try to get people to do more but they refuse because the church has convinced them that the ministry doesn’t belong to them. Their best efforts only qualify them as “lay ministers”. They didn’t go to seminary or Bible school and so they are not qualified. The church has sown this concept and we are reaping the horrendous results . You will not find this concept of clergy and laity anywhere in the Bible.

We often talk about the loss of the un-born child through abortion. It is heart breaking enough to think about the deaths of the unborn let alone the fact that we will never get to see what affect they would have had on the course of history. The same thing can be said about the church with the concept of the clergy and laity. This concept has aborted much of the flow of life in the Body of Christ. People have been put to sleep and the traditional church is slowly dying because of it.

Here’s when it all began according to Church Historian Charles Jacobs:

EARLY CHURCH HISTORY

So when did this unbiblical distinction between clergymen and lay persons come about? Church historian Charles Jacobs, in The Story of the Church, writes: "In the beginning most of the work of the congregation was done by people who had no official position. It was voluntary service, freely rendered. By the middle of the third century, it was done by the professional clergy. Between clergymen and laity there was a sharp distinction. The clergy, too, were divided into higher and lower grades. In the higher grades were bishops, presbyters and deacons; in the lower grade sub-deacons, lectors, exorcists, acolytes and janitors. All of them were inducted into office by some form of ordination, and the idea of local organization had gone so far that in some churches even the grave diggers were ordained. Thus the work of the Church was passing out of the hands of the many into those of the few, and these few were coming to be regarded as belonging to a higher class.