Both Lungs: Laypeople and Pastors Breathing (and Leading) Together

By Tyler Boyer

“Habemus papum!”

On May 8 of this year as 133 cardinals worked behind closed doors to elect a new pope, faithful Catholics looked to the chimney, hoping to see white smoke and hear the words “Habemus papum” or “We have a pope.”

With the election of Pope Leo XIV, well-worn questions emerged regarding what the relationship between the new pope, head of the Roman Catholic Church, and the patriarch of Constantinople, spiritual leader of the Eastern Orthodox Church, will look like. Christians around the world look on and wonder if these two branches of the church — torn apart by schism in 1054 C.E. — will somehow draw closer to one another and reunite. In 1995, writing of his hope that union between East and West would be possible, Pope John Paul II stated, “The church must breathe with her two lungs!”^[1]

Borrowing this metaphor, I wonder if the Free Methodist Church — the denomination in which I am a superintendent and a pastor — has been trying to breathe with only one lung for too long. It is possible to apply this metaphor to several leadership relationships within the church. Rather than the Eastern church and Western church, for Free Methodists, one lung could represent white pastors and the other could be pastors of color who are appointed with far less frequency. We might embrace this metaphor in such a way that one lung represents male pastors and the other lung female pastors. In either case, until we come to breathe in the fresh and liberating air of the Holy Spirit with both lungs, we will continue to struggle.

On an even more basic level, the church must breathe with her clergy lung and her layperson lung. Failure to do so will leave our church and our movement aspirations gasping for air and perpetually winded. We cannot reasonably expect health in our leadership pipeline unless we first include, empower and equip the lay women and men who are our leadership baseline.

Inflating Both Lungs

In 1858 while B.T. Roberts and other ministers who sought to reform the Methodist Episcopal Church were on trial, laypeople (who agreed with the spiritual depth of the old school Methodist vision of Roberts) were mobilizing. The laypeople who led the Laymen’s Convention in December 1858 demonstrated that Free Methodism did not just emerge from a catalytic B.T. Roberts in response to an unjust church trial. The early Free Methodist Church was more than a leader. It was a people who understood that both as followers of Jesus and as those who embodied Methodist ideals, they should be at work in the ministry of the church. In the minutes of this first lay convention, it is noted,

“Neither the brethren expelled, nor any of the members of the Conference had anything to do whatever with calling this Convention. We mention this fact, because the insinuation is frequently made, that the people can do nothing except at the instigation of the preachers. We are not papists, requiring to be instructed by the priesthood at every turn what action we shall take, or what papers and books we shall read.”^[2]

The ability of these early laypeople to serve and act on behalf of the church beyond the “instigation” or orchestration of a pastor did not diminish their support of the mission of the newly forming church to lean into holiness and care for the poor. It was this Spirit-driven agency among the early Free Methodist laypeople that allowed them to effectively care for and support the pastors who were expelled from the Methodist Episcopal Church. The lay convention noted, “We look upon the expulsion of brothers Roberts and McCreery as an act of wicked persecution, calling for the strongest condemnation.”^[3]

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“Free Methodism is most itself when both lungs, clergy and lay, are breathing in union with the Holy Spirit.”

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The Methodist Episcopal Church had in fact been diminishing the scope and importance of the work of the laity for some time. Exerting their newly stirred agency, such disregard for the work of the people led the Lay Convention to agree upon the following resolution…

“Resolved, That the laity are of some use to the church, and that their views and opinions ought to command some little respect rather than that cool contempt with which their wishes have been treated by some of the officials of the Conference, for several years past.”^[4]

In 1860 as “Roberts meets with 15 preachers and 45 lay persons in Pekin, NY,” both lungs were breathing in unison, clergy and laypeople. A “cool contempt” for laity would never have allowed for enough of the breath of the Holy Spirit to give birth to the Free Methodist Church. Both lungs, lay and clergy breathed in the Holy Spirit, through attending to the Word, prayer and all the ordinances of God. Both lungs, lay and clergy, breathed out the Holy Spirit doing all the good they could for all of the people they were able. Both lungs, lay and clergy, enriched the life of the church and world by doing no harm and avoiding evil of any kind. Free Methodism is most itself when both lungs, clergy and lay, are breathing in union with the Holy Spirit.

One-Lung Ministry

George G. Hunter III, an Asbury Theological Seminary professor, observed in his book, “The Recovery of a Contagious Methodist Movement”…

“No one in the early Christian movement was ordained, in the sense that any tradition now means it, until the early third century. As a lay movement, early Christianity exploded across the Judean hills and, in time, won a majority of the urban citizens of an empire by persuasion alone.”^[5]

This can be difficult for us to take in. Often we read back onto the biblical text our own ideas about what leadership is and should look like. We live in a world where a clergy-driven church is the norm. If asked who the leader of your church is, you will likely point to the pastor: a trained, ordained, paid professional.

There are moments where churches become inseparable from the personality of the pastor who is leading the congregation. Sainted superstars and CEOs provide the model of what pastoral ministry should look like at its best. When this view of professional pastoral ministry is normative, it is no wonder that when we read the Scriptures, we imagine the first apostles to be the trained and paid ministry professionals with everyone else just following along in awe of the miracles they perform. We have somehow come to believe that ministry work is best left to the professionals.

What would it do to our understanding of ministry if we came to recognize that, at the beginning of Acts, the same Holy Spirit that filled the apostles also filled all the other followers of Jesus who were present? The people from other countries in Jerusalem that day did not just hear their languages being spoken by 12 professional preachers but by over 100 faithful followers.

Acts 2:17-18 says, “In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.”

How does it sit with your soul that these verses refer to you?

What if the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers from Ephesians 4 that we have been looking for are laypeople sitting in our seats every week waiting to be allowed to breathe?

The Methodism of John Wesley and B.T. Roberts soundly rejects one-lung ministry confined to clergy only. As Methodism was taking shape under Wesley, most of the preachers were lay preachers. Lay women and men were the stewards of societies. Frequently it was not the pastor, but laypeople who would visit in homes and care for the sick and imprisoned. It was not professionals who would lead class/band meetings. These evangelistic and spiritually formative groups were overwhelmingly led by laypeople.

These works of ministry happened because laypeople were equipped by clergy to enter into every facet of ministry work. Undergoing spiritual training and oversight in classes and bands, laypeople served with hearts that had been shaped by the love of God. Wesley required the early Methodists to attend to their heads and the life of their minds. He advised, “Spend all the morning, or at least five hours in twenty-four, in reading the most useful books, and that regularly and constantly.”^[6] With hearts and heads prepared, the beautiful and enduring work wrought by the hands of Methodist laypeople unfolded.

George Hunter observes, “Wherever most of the ministry that matters is assigned to pastors and other religious professionals, the church is stagnant or declining; and wherever most of the ministry that matters is entrusted to the laity, the church is growing, even in astonishingly difficult circumstances…”^[7]

Both Lungs

Have we come to a point where, “the people can do nothing except at the instigation of the preachers.”^[8] Have we come to embody the “cool contempt” for the laity felt so acutely by the early Free Methodist laypeople? Have we come to believe that equal representation on church boards and committees is all the air of the Holy Spirit that our lay lung can handle? If so, our breathing will grow more and more shallow and our church life more and more dim.

“To bring wholeness to the world by loving God, loving people, and multiplying followers of Jesus” will require the church to breathe with both lungs. It will require lay preachers and lay teachers. It will require the lay women and men whom God has called forth to be prophets, apostles and evangelists to employ their Spirit-empowered agency, rise from their seats and move to the streets. It will require lay class leaders and lay care givers.

To bring wholeness to the world will take wholeness in the church marked by clergy who equip and include; who minister not from the front and not from behind, but side by side with the people of their congregations. Even amid the difficult circumstances of our modern world, may today’s church grow as laypeople join clergy in leading the way as we breathe in the fresh and liberating air of the Holy Spirit.

^[1] Dominic Cerrato, Deacon. Breathing With Both Lungs. the-deacon.com/2019/01/01/breathing-with-both-lungs/

^[2] B.T. Roberts, Why Another Sect. www.swartzentrover.com/cotor/E-Books/freemeth/Sect/WAS_09.htm

^[3] Ibid.

^[4] Ibid.

^[5] George G. Hunter III. The Recovery of a Contagious Methodist Movement. Abingdon Press. www.abingdonpress.com. Pg. 14

^[6] brianghedges.com/2013/10/john-wesley-on-discipline-of-reading.html

^[7] Ibid. Hunter 14.

^[8] Why Another Sect, Chapter 9.

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