In the Introduction of his book, The Lay Centered Church, Leonard Doohan urges every baptized person to accept responsibility for his/her faith, and for each one to form a "reasoned, well founded view" of what it means to be baptized.

I am using this issue raised by Doohan, which is basically that of a spirituality of the "laity", as a jumping-off point for the focus topic, Rethinking Leadership in the Church, because it addresses the first ingredient in a consideration of leadership, which is, who is being led?

WHO IS BEING LED?

A brief glance at the history of Christian spirituality shows who we were, who we became, and who we are becoming.

Who We Were:

The post-resurrection church as described in Paul and Acts shows that discipleship was all-inclusive, and that the concept of the word "disciple" applied to all who had arrived at a faith experience and who thereby formed the People of God.  The early church esteemed the life and spirituality of all believers, regardless of their roles. Today's classifications of vocations into clerical and lay would have been out of place there. "The preaching of the apostles...was directed to an audience that had no vocational distinctions within it....and always treated the values of lay life with respect, reverence, and a positive appreciation of how a Christian approach to community, money, sex, and marriage led to God"(Doohan, p.93, 94).

Who We Became:

Three trends that contributed to the division of the People of God into "clerical and lay" were:

1. Dualistic theologies and heresies that considered matter and the material aspects of daily life as evil.  Although the heresies were condemned, the fallout was a negative approach to matter, especially the body.  Everyday life was disdained and "flight from the world" was glorified.  (Doohan, p.94).  These continued to surface throughout the centuries, even to present-day Christianity.

2. The development of monasticism, which was not without its negative influence.  "A chasm has formed in the universal audience that Jesus had addressed. Monastic spirituality from the start despised the world and ëdied to the world' in an imitation of the martyrdom of the early church". True "conversion" was still identified with entrance into religious life and the quality of commitment was measured in proportion to one's withdrawal from everyday life and entrance into a monastic environment.  A tiered approach to spirituality and leadership was in place. There were the spiritual elite, and there were the rest of the baptized (Doohan, p.95). The negative effects of the reforms of Pope Gregory VII (1073-1085) were:
• to move from spirituality to morality, that is, from Jesus' call to his commands;
• to move from spiritual growth to the avoidance of sin.  We still struggle against this spirituality of minimalism. 

3. The post-constantinian clericalization of the Church.  This development was characterized by a sharp distinction between leaders and followers; by the equating of charism with office; by an identification of ministry with the hierarchy.  One of the results has been the diminished valuing of the non-ordained. "This Church-without-the-world has led to a world-without-Church" (Doohan, pp. 95, 103).

For Richard McBrien, the fact that such a topic as lay spirituality exists "betrays an understanding of the church which is simply untenable; namely that the non-ordained constitute a special segment of the Body of Christ whose vocation, dignity, and mission are somehow regarded as a limited aspect of the total vocation, dignity, and mission of the Church" (McBrien,
as quoted by Doohan, p. 3).

And for Yves Congar, lay persons do not belong to the Church or have a role in the Church. Rather, through baptism, they are the Church. There is no particular vocation for laity in the Church.  Being Church in its fullness is the spirituality for laity.(Congar, as quoted by Doohan, p. 25).
 

Who We Are Becoming:

The People of God today are a people who are learning that, as Dick Westley testifies in his book, Redemptive Intimacy, experience is revelatory.  By that he means that God reveals God's Self to us in everyday experiences.  It is as simple, and as profound, as that.  Baptism is enough.  The only qualifying statement Westley goes on to make is that the evaluation of those experiences must be made by sharing them with other believers. It is what he calls a "communally funded" experience.  A truth is communally funded when it is validated by the experiences of many believers on a global scale, and begins to approach the "sensus fidelium", the consensus of believing people.  The upshot of this is that dialogue and experience-sharing then become a serious work of the People of God. In fact Westley holds that the Bible is actually constructed out of the human stories which the writers chose in order to best convey the divine revelation contained in the communally funded experiences of a people. And as Westley also holds, holding an ecclesiastical office does not exempt anyone from knowing and being in touch with what the Spirit is revealing to the people in their experiences (Westley, p.7).

For many of us who number ourselves among the People of God, the movement of our souls is from religion to spirituality.  It is the movement out of minimalism. What does the face of minimalism look like?  It is the hallmark of all religions because the nature of religion is that it is a human response to fear.   It is minimalism which relates to God out of fear, and out of  the need to appease an angry God; which views ourselves as unworthy in God's sight; which holds that there are two worlds, one in which we dwell (earth), and one in which God dwells (heaven); which holds that sex or pleasure or creation itself are evil in themselves.

The movement into spirituality is the movement into intimacy with God. And the first and natural dwelling place, we are discovering, of the God of our seeking, is our own deep Self.  It is the most exciting of journeys. It is the discovery of the still point within.  It is learning how to hold to the still point. 

For Matthew Fox, in "The Coming of the Cosmic Christ", a spiritual experience is a mystical experience, and an authentic mysticism has many manifestations.  Some of those that Fox highlights are:

1. Mysticism, the encounter with the Godhead within, can only be experienced personally, it cannot be learned vicariously.  Revelation of the Godhead starts with personal experience.  It is therefore expedient to acknowledge that every person is a mystic.

2. Mysticism moves us from dualisms, the first of which is the polar dwelling places of heaven and earth, to panentheism, which is God in all things and all things in God.

3. The mystic is a maker of connections with what has been lost, forgotten, or covered up, and with the deep experiences of life's mysteries.

4. Mysticism moves us from individualism to compassion, defined by Fox as the keen awareness of the interdependence of all living things which are part of one another and involved in one another.

5. The mystic is in awe of the greatness of our existence, affirms the world as whole, embraces a cosmology that believes the created, material universe conspires on behalf of our good.

6. The mystic is self-critical, recognizing that self-knowledge is the foundation of the spiritual journey.

7. Mysticism is feminist, for it yearns for a return to the source, to the source which is imaged as the mother's womb, the ocean, the Divine in whom all creation is immersed.  Mysticism is feminist for it is the act of giving birth to the true Self.  Co-creation is what happens when we give birth with God to what is divine and truly oneself.

8. Mysticism is prophetic.  The prophet is the mystic in action.

(For a more expanded list see "The Coming of the Cosmic Christ", pp.35-67).

The People of God are a becoming People, a transitioning People.  Part 11 of this article on a spirituality of leadership will address the second ingredient to be considered, "WHAT KIND OF LEADERSHIP?"  What kind of leadership will bring such a People where we need to go, which is into the Promised Land of our own souls?