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Ministry or Apostolate?: What Should the Catholic Laity Be Doing
What should we be doing? Russell Shaw gives a surprising, provocative answer to this question -- one that encourages us to make the Church the salt of the earth again
128 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2002
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May 4, 2016
(NB: This is more a sharing triggered by reading this book than a straight review.)
As a youth growing up in my parish, I belonged to a youth group, facilitated the youngest group in RCIA, and served as a lector for the Mandarin-language mass. I remember vividly the exhortations from the pulpit for parishioners to serve the Lord by joining a ministry and getting more involved with Church. I spent my 20s abroad and often felt guilty about not serving God because I was not involved in ministry even though I was extending hospitality to fellow foreign students, mentoring juniors, and running sessions and workshops in leadership and team-building for younger students.
When I turned 30, I entered full-time ministry in a parish, and I remembered that in the first year, I was still clueless about what "lay apostolate" meant. (To this day, I come across adults who have been heavily involved in ministry all their lives who do not understand what the lay apostolate is and how it differs from ministry.) During the almost 6 years I spent in lay ecclesial ministry, I came to realise that the heart and crux of all my ministry is meant to help the laity grow in discipleship and make the journey of living out their personal vocations. THIS, for every lay person, is primarily meant to be in the secular world - at home, in schools, in the office, out on the streets and markets. I came to realise that for the Church to be evangelising, the laity cannot be absent from living out their mission and witnessing a radical counter-cultural life outside of parish walls. Yet this was a message that was strangely lacking in the Catholic consciousness, and the much louder message was one of getting Catholics to be more involved within the parish and the institutional Church.
The premise of Russell Shaw's book is that since Vatican II, there has been so much emphasis on lay ministry that the lay apostolate has suffered. One of the results of this is that many Catholics separate faith from life. This is evident from the many Catholics who believe that all God asks of them is an hour a week for Sunday Mass and some additional time of service in church. Much fewer are the Catholics who understand that being a follower of Christ means to be transformed into Him and to make Christ present in every place and relationship and situation they are in.
All lay Catholics are called to the apostolate, not all are called to ministry. Some are called to both, and while some may be called to ministry at different seasons in life, ALL are called to the apostolate for life. I remember an incident where a parishioner who was already very involved in the parish asked the parish pastor how else she can serve God. The priest, who knew that she had been neglecting her family, asked her to go home and love her husband and children. She was mightily offended by that response! Perhaps it would have helped if she had understood the distinction between ministry and apostolate, and that living a life of love and sacrifice as a wife and mother could be for her the most powerful way of witnessing to God's love!
Russell Shaw has given us a very important book. He explains what is at stake when we neglect the lay apostolate and argues for a better balance between ministry and apostolate. I shall end with a description of this book on a website that sells it - "Not everyone will agree with this book. In fact, we're sure it will start some heated debates. And that's exactly what it should be doing. Read this book, then agree with it or disagree with it. But you can't afford to ignore it."
As a youth growing up in my parish, I belonged to a youth group, facilitated the youngest group in RCIA, and served as a lector for the Mandarin-language mass. I remember vividly the exhortations from the pulpit for parishioners to serve the Lord by joining a ministry and getting more involved with Church. I spent my 20s abroad and often felt guilty about not serving God because I was not involved in ministry even though I was extending hospitality to fellow foreign students, mentoring juniors, and running sessions and workshops in leadership and team-building for younger students.
When I turned 30, I entered full-time ministry in a parish, and I remembered that in the first year, I was still clueless about what "lay apostolate" meant. (To this day, I come across adults who have been heavily involved in ministry all their lives who do not understand what the lay apostolate is and how it differs from ministry.) During the almost 6 years I spent in lay ecclesial ministry, I came to realise that the heart and crux of all my ministry is meant to help the laity grow in discipleship and make the journey of living out their personal vocations. THIS, for every lay person, is primarily meant to be in the secular world - at home, in schools, in the office, out on the streets and markets. I came to realise that for the Church to be evangelising, the laity cannot be absent from living out their mission and witnessing a radical counter-cultural life outside of parish walls. Yet this was a message that was strangely lacking in the Catholic consciousness, and the much louder message was one of getting Catholics to be more involved within the parish and the institutional Church.
The premise of Russell Shaw's book is that since Vatican II, there has been so much emphasis on lay ministry that the lay apostolate has suffered. One of the results of this is that many Catholics separate faith from life. This is evident from the many Catholics who believe that all God asks of them is an hour a week for Sunday Mass and some additional time of service in church. Much fewer are the Catholics who understand that being a follower of Christ means to be transformed into Him and to make Christ present in every place and relationship and situation they are in.
All lay Catholics are called to the apostolate, not all are called to ministry. Some are called to both, and while some may be called to ministry at different seasons in life, ALL are called to the apostolate for life. I remember an incident where a parishioner who was already very involved in the parish asked the parish pastor how else she can serve God. The priest, who knew that she had been neglecting her family, asked her to go home and love her husband and children. She was mightily offended by that response! Perhaps it would have helped if she had understood the distinction between ministry and apostolate, and that living a life of love and sacrifice as a wife and mother could be for her the most powerful way of witnessing to God's love!
Russell Shaw has given us a very important book. He explains what is at stake when we neglect the lay apostolate and argues for a better balance between ministry and apostolate. I shall end with a description of this book on a website that sells it - "Not everyone will agree with this book. In fact, we're sure it will start some heated debates. And that's exactly what it should be doing. Read this book, then agree with it or disagree with it. But you can't afford to ignore it."
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