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Thompsett, Fredrica Harris: "The Laity", in Sykes, B & Booty, J (eds) The Study of Anglicanism (London, 1988) pp 245 - 260
Richard's notes to the question: What is the ministry of Lay Persons?
All the baptised are called to exercise at least some of:
  1. receiving insights from the world and sharing these with the people of God
  2. helping each other to witness in the world to the insights of the Gospel
  3. nourishing and strengthening the life of the people of God
  4. leading and supporting a congregation in worship fellowship and service
  5. evangelising secular communities
Importantly the Baptised choose to credential the Clergy into a presidential function in the celebration of the sacraments. Down through history the Laity have continued to support permanent presidency in the rites of the local Church. and the ministry of the sacraments emerges as Christian symbiosis. In the early Church distinctions between ministries was a question of function rather than status. Emerging patterns in late New Testament times - as evidenced for example in the pastoral epistles -- suggest that the Holy Spirit may be conferred on individuals by rites such as laying on of hands. When they acquired the right to dispense the rite of ordination as well as to receive it the Clergy became a defined stable and self-perpetuating class. It was a class which for thirteen hundred years exercised an equally well defined ministry.

Theological developments with decline in the sacrificial conception of the Eucharist eventually destabilised the exclusive character of the Clergy's ministry. By Reformation times social change had influenced the world outside and the attitude of Laity and Clergy to each other's role. Through Synods and other councils power shifted back and forth between Clergy and Laity the monarch in parliament being a major focus of Lay power. To carry out its own ministry to an increasingly well-informed Laity even in the face of Lay clericalism the Clergy let go some functions it had hitherto considered exclusively its own.

The understanding we have today of ministry as a task shared between Laity and Clergy is articulated for example in the ordination rite for a priest

"By the Holy Spirit all who believe and are baptised receive a ministry to proclaim Jesus as Saviour and Lord ...Christ gave gifts abundantly to the Church. Some he made apostles some prophets some evangelists some pastors and teachers ...Holy and living God ... equip your people for their work of ministry and give to this your servant now to be ordained the gifts of grace s/he needs." [Quote pp 900 902]

The clergy at ordination make a commitment to

"work in partnership with their sisters and brothers in Christ's service."

If distinctions must be found within this partnership we may say that the Clergy's task is to concentrate the Body of Christ; the Laity's task is to disperse it.
The Clergy exists for the Laity; the Laity exists for the World to the greater glory of God.