[This reflection was published in the weekly news bulletin of Horley Baptist Church, November 2019]
Some years ago I had arrived at a crematorium to take the cremation service for a member of the church we were attending at the time. I checked the list outside the chapel and found that leading the service was “Reverend Michael Goble”. I joked about this with the crematorium administrator before the service and she replied, “Well you’re doing the work of a minister and therefore you are a reverend.”
I thought about this afterwards and agreed with her in a way. The church didn’t have a minister at that time and it fell to me to do the things that a minister would normally do, like weddings, funerals, baptisms, dedications, just because no one else felt able to do them, although neither did I! But I wasn’t sure about being called a reverend. It’s right that the person chosen by Jesus to be responsible for leading a church should be recognised by a title, e.g. “Pastor”, but I didn’t think that Jesus wanted the leaders of the first churches to be called “Reverend”, i.e. a person to be revered. I suppose that this goes back to the time when priests, then vicars and ministers, were considered to be superior to the ordinary Christians in the congregation.
I do not believe that this is true of ministers in the church, as all of us who truly believe in Jesus as our Lord and Saviour are described in the New Testament as being priests.
“You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light.” (1 Peter 2:9 NLT)
“All glory to him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by shedding his blood for us. He has made us a kingdom of priests for God his Father.” (Rev. 1:5-6 NLT)
That means that we are all ministers and therefore whenever we do anything large or small to serve Jesus, then we are doing the work of a minister, whether in the church, or at home or at work, or in the community. This doesn’t mean that we don’t need Martin as our leader to encourage us as we serve Jesus here, to help us grow as a church and in our Christian faith and love, and to lead us into God’s will as we become living sacrifices. But we need to support him in that work in whatever way we are able with the strength that God’s Spirit gives us. In that way in a sense we become joint ministers. We should all be doing the work of a minister, but we don’t all need to be called reverend.
“For the Son of Man will come when least expected. If the master returns and finds that the servant has done a good job, there will be a reward.” (Matt. 24:44,46 NLT)
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Contributed by Michael Goble; © the Author
