Ordination and Pastoral Leadership: A Response to John E. Toews

Loren L. Johns • February 2004 • Conrad Grebel Review

 

 “The argument of this essay is that ordination for ministry through the laying on of hands as practised in the church is without biblical foundation. There is no specific and clear textual basis for the theology and practice of ‘setting aside’ for full-time ministry, for giving special status, and for legitimating authority and power for church office. Furthermore, the practice serves to divide clergy from laity, to undermine the teaching of the New Testament that leaders must be servants, and to contradict the repeated emphasis in the New Testament that all believers are called to and gifted for ministry.

 

“The question of how the church selects and affirms its leaders must be based on more than specific texts whose meaning is ambiguous. It must ultimately be based on a theology of church.”

—John E. Toews

 

Toews’s Argument Described and Considered[1]

In his article on ordination and pastoral leadership, John E. Toews identifies ordination as an odd and unbiblical practice. Tracing briefly the story of the Mennonite Brethren on this matter and his own story, which includes significant interest in and many years of service in support of pastoral leadership, Toews reviews the biblical evidence for ordination. Biblical evidence in support of our current practice of ordination is lacking—something that even strong advocates of pastoral ministry and ordination in the Mennonite Church freely admit,[2] though with different conclusions. While its practice in the Roman Catholic Church and some Protestant traditions may be understandable in light of their ecclesiologies, it clearly is not consistent with an Anabaptist or Mennonite ecclesiology.

            The problem is that

the act of ordination in many churches is viewed as a sacramental event: it confers life-time grace, authority, and status. While many Protestant churches, including Mennonite churches, have tried to de-sacramentalize ordination, the long-time underlining assumption and reality is sacramental. It continues to confer life-time status, it is understood as ‘a life-shaping and identity-giving moment’ (Mennonite Polity, 30), it places one into a special ‘office of ministry,’ and it confers special privileges and status.[3]

            Toews suggests that later ecclesiological interests in church order, hierarchy, and apostolic succession have schooled us to read some of the New Testament texts in anachronistic ways.[4] Thus, when we see references to “the laying on of hands” in the New Testament, we are tempted to think of some kind of ordination rite, even when the context makes clear that these passages (cf. 1 Tim. 5:22; 2 Tim. 1:6; Acts 8:17; 9:17; 19:6; Heb. 6:2) refer to the initiation and incorporation of people into the Christian church through the gift(s) of the Holy Spirit. The decision of the NRSV translators to substitute ordain for lay hands on in 1 Tim. 5:22 would be an example of translators going too far in their interpretation of the text as they translate—or at least of making the wrong interpretive decision in their translating.

 

Points of Critique

            In commenting on the meaning of the laying on of hands in the New Testament, I think Toews goes too far in pressing the distinction between “initiation and incorporation of people into the Christian church” and “the imparting of spiritual gifts.” He neatly categorizes 1 Tim. 5:22; 2 Tim. 1:6; Acts 8:17; 9:17; 19:6; and Heb. 6:2 as examples of the former, and Acts 6:6 and 13:3 as examples of the latter. However, even when initiation and incorporation of new believers is clearly in view and not commissioning to some specialized ministry of leadership, the imparting of the gift(s) of the Holy Spirit are nevertheless present as well (see esp. Acts 8:17; 9:17; and 6:2). Furthermore, the laying on of hands is not just a symbolic “rite of initiation,” but also an actual imparting of giftedness for ministry—ministry understood not as pastoral leadership, but as the task of every Spirit-filled believer. Even if this is a “sacramental” view of the laying on of hands, I would agree with Toews that it certainly is not sacerdotal. Nevertheless, the biblical texts seem to indicate that the rite was more than symbolic; it was also effective.

            Toews’s biblical work may seem to reflect a restitutionist hermeneutic—the view that the church order of the earliest church is ideal and that later developments in church order are by definition a fall from it. Restitutionists seek to define church order and structure by replicating a harmonized view of the church order(s) reflected in the New Testament.[5] But Toews recognizes that we do a lot today that the early church did not practice. We are not and should not be bound by biblical precedents in our conception of church order, for we recognize that God’s Spirit did not suddenly cease to function with the close of the New Testa­ment canon.

            If there is a “yawning gulf” between the early Paul and the Pastoral Epistles, or between the Pastorals and the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus over a century later, we should not assume that the later developments were necessarily a “fall” from the ideal. The developing structures and orders in the church may have been God’s gift for new times, and it is just possible that Hippolytus reflects God’s will for the contemporary church more than the Pastoral Epistles with respect to church offices. Toews’s argument is not restitutionist in character. He recognizes that it is not enough to say that ordination is not specifically taught or practiced in the New Testament. His point is that its practice is not in keeping with the teaching or practices of the New Testament. Thus, it is not just a matter of New Testament silence on the issue; it is a matter of its essential incompatibility with New Testament teaching.

            Although modern Anabaptists recognize that it is legitimate to make room for the authority of tradition and experience alongside the authority of Scripture in practical matters, it is difficult to know how and where to find the right balance. Historically, the church has suffered much corruption in taking too seriously the authority of later church tradition and too lightly the examples and teachings of the Bible. Toews would say that he is not rigidly idealizing the early, but recovering a biblical ecclesiology that is thoroughly grounded in biblical conceptions of the purposes and callings of God for it.

            The question is whether Toews’s call for our discontinuation of ordination responds flexibly and appropriately enough to the needs of the church in today’s context. Answering such a question requires careful listening to the Holy Spirit as well as to church tradition and experience.

 

Assessment of the Argument by Means of Practical Considerations

            So how should we interpret the Bible in light of the realities of our culture today? By focusing on what does and does not follow from Toews’s reading of the Bible in terms of practical implications, I hope to clarify and test his reading of the Bible. On many of the issues he addresses, I believe Toews is on target—correct in the observations he makes and in the conclusions he draws for the life of the church. A consideration of several practical questions might help to test this assessment.

 

  1. Does Toews really want us to do away with ordination? In challenging the very practice of ordination on the basis of its sacramental character in many traditions, is he not in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater?

 

Yes and no. Toews would say that we need some way to bless, commission, install, and publicly recognize the particular calling and role that a pastor has, but that we should modify its practice, our understandings of it, and our terminologies for it to bring it into line with the Bible and with Mennonite ecclesiology.

            It is clear to me that in the New Testament, church leaders laid hands on others to commission or authorize them for specific ministries. In so doing, gifts of the Spirit were imparted, just as they were imparted to all believers for ministry. Toews does not challenge the validity of recognizing and authorizing individuals for pastoral ministry or other leadership roles in the church; what he is objecting to is primarily the elitist and classist implications that often accompany ordination.

            How we have ordained and what we have made of it is admittedly problematic. However, since Toews does not challenge the idea that we need pastors or that they should be installed, blessed, and commissioned in some way, cannot we work at investing new meanings and understandings into our rituals of installation/blessing and even in our use of the word ordain? Toews emphasizes the significant problems with doing so. He says that the word ordain has been so irretrievably sacerdotalized in its implications that we can no longer reinvest in it a more proper understanding of what the rite does or entails. The very words ordain and ordination carry with them notions of lifelong class, status, and a formal distinction between clergy and laity. These associations are not biblical and not in keeping with Anabaptist ecclesiology, he says. As a result, we need to learn to use other words like bless or commission in its place.

            I used to agree with Toews on this point. However, several considerations have helped me change my mind. First, many ordinary Mennonites would say that when we ordain, we are setting a person apart for a particular ministry—not in the sense of creating a class, status, or formal distinction between clergy and laity, but in the sense of recognizing and authorizing individuals for pastoral ministry or other leadership roles in the church. That is what we are doing in ordination. Second, many Mennonite churches have already made progress in creating new understandings of the word ordain. For instance, in most of the conferences I know, ordination is no longer for life, but implies and entails accountability to the church. I am thus more optimistic than Toews is about the possibility of changing our understandings of ordination in a more biblical direction while retaining our practice of it as well as the terminology of ordination.

            I was ordained for pastoral ministry in 1978. When I left the pastorate in 1985 to become theology book editor for Herald Press, the conference of which I was a part thought there was some reason for retaining my ordination credentials for the ministry to the church that I was doing as book editor. Even so, I was required to periodically engage in conversations to ensure that I was being appropriately accountable to my local congregation as well as to the broader church in my ministry as theology book editor. I welcomed that accountability and respected the expectation. It helped establish an understanding of ordination credentials as conferring authority and leadership responsibilities, while at the same time undercutting elitism or personal status. Today as dean of AMBS, my ordination credentials are renewed annually for similar reasons.

            If we can invest in the word ordination proper understandings that are in keeping with our ecclesiology as a Mennonite church—and that is one of the key questions here—then there is much to be gained in retaining the terminology. This is work that we can do—work that has already been done. I like John Esau’s attempt to define ordination in ways that are appropriate to our ecclesiology:

Ordination should be interpreted within the church to be about responsibility and account­ability. It is a rite that belongs to the church by which the church lays claim upon those who would serve in ministerial leadership roles. It is intended to clarify relationships, roles, and responsibilities. Another way to say this is that the office of ministry belongs to the church, not to those to whom it is entrusted and symbolized through ordination.[6]

Ordination is thus not “about me” so much as it is about how my ministry is recognized by the larger ecclesiological movement of which I am a part. Dorothy Nickel Friesen defines it similarly: “Ordination is a churchly rite that connotes power, authority, and responsibility to the Body of Christ, to the call of God, and to the release of spiritual gifts possessed by the individual. This three-way combination needs and deserves a status that is unique and honorable.”[7]

            It is not as important for me as it once was to be ordained; the church has already com­mis­sioned me, authorized me, and installed me as academic dean, making my ordination credentials somewhat superfluous.[8] If I were to give up or lose my ordination credentials, I do not think that this would weaken my standing in the church or my ability to operate effectively as a seminary dean. This is not the case for young pastors or for women or for others who more pressingly need the clear commissioning and authorizing of the church that ordination provides. My concerns about ordination do not derive from my own privileged status or power. It is not as though I now have the luxury of being able to question the value of ordination, now that I no longer have the need for its authorization; I have long had deep convictions about the radical nature of the New Testament view of giftedness and ministry and have written about these matters in the 1980s. With or without ordination, leaders need the formal affirmation and authorization of the community. But such affirmation and authorization do not convey status, except insofar as all believers have special status, given their unique gifts and callings.

            Finally, Toews does not adequately consider the ecumenical challenges that dispensing with ordination would entail. In most ecumenical contexts, ordination is synonymous with the church’s authorization of an individual to play a representative and leadership role. Without “ordination,” pastors in the Anabaptist family of churches would need to try to explain again and again how and why it is that they are properly recognized and authorized as leaders in the church and why it is that we nevertheless do not practice “ordination,” but we do practice something like it. Eliminating ordination would cut us off from our shared understandings, even if we maintain important differences in our understanding of the word and of the rite. Critical theological self-differentiation is important, but certainly not for its own sake. As Diane Zaerr Brenneman asks, “Dare we be so different in the way we credential leaders that post-modern Americans cannot figure out how to navigate our churches?”[9] John Esau is right when he says that what we Anabaptists share with our brothers and sisters in other theological traditions—both in critique and in affirmation—is greater than what we differ on. Servanthood understandings, the priesthood of all believers, accountability, the call for a life consistent between profession and practice—all of these are common themes.[10] We must be careful about smug confidences about having a corner on the truth in these matters.

 

  1. Does Toews wish to eliminate the clergy/laity distinction?

 

Absolutely! This essentially classist distinction owes itself historically to the influence of high church ecclesiologies that, in both their Constantinian and Magisterial Reformation forms, were highly invested politically in a disempowered laity. I fully agree with Toews that it is time for contemporary Mennonites in the Anabaptist tradition to repudiate such an unbiblical distinction. Classism does not empower the pastorate nor does it meet the needs of the church for effective leadership. The answer to this problem is not to disempower the pastorate as we did in the anti-authoritarian egalitarianism of the 1960s and ’70s, but to place a respected and honoured pastorate within the context of empowered congregations full of gifted and ministering believers. Active Spirit-empowered congregations are a gift to pastors.

            Empowerment and disempowerment are both relative and subjective. Depending on one’s perspective, the empowerment, recognition, or honouring of any person or persons in the church automatically entails the disempowerment, lack of recognition, or dishonouring of other persons in the church. I don’t believe it. Surely we can do better! I like how Keith Harder has put this matter in an e-mail he sent to me in response to my comments on ordination:

In taking this step [i.e., in accepting ordination], I was keenly aware that the congregation would tend to see me primarily as a paid professional doing ministry on behalf of the church, which would tend to compromise and undermine my deeply held conviction that all are called to ministry and service. But I came to see that one of the best reasons for me to accept ordination is that it would actually help and empower me to equip and empower others for their ministries. It was not ultimately about the power that accrued to me in being ordained but it was much more about empowering others for their ministries that we might all embrace the task of building up the body of Christ and her witness to the world.

As I reflected on my previous ministry experience and on other churches that had rejected ordination, it was not obvious to me that they were any more successful in calling and equipping everyone for ministry. The rejection of ordination too often was coupled with suspicion of leadership that seemed to compromise the ministry of all even more than the practice of ordination. The challenge for those who are ordained is to use their ‘office’ for what it is intended—to equip the saints for ministry. I have come to believe that ordination can actually contribute to that end, if the ordained are clear about this purpose and actively work to equip others for ministry.[11]

 

Power itself is not the problem. Certainly it is subject to misuse and abuse, but “we still need and value power, whether in persons who use it accountability or in institutions that use it for the common good.”[12]

 

  1. If Toews is correct in his assertion that our current understandings and practices of ordination are so unbiblical and out of sync with our ecclesiology, how did we get to where we are today?

 

This deserves a fuller recital of history than I am able to provide and the answers undoubtedly differ somewhat for each of the streams in our Anabaptist-Mennonite family. Toews referred to the “Concern Group,” debates in the Dean’s Seminar at AMBS, and the work of John Howard Yoder, all of which served to raise questions in the Mennonite Church tradition about ordination similar those Toews raises in his essay. I would suggest that in the last twenty years the church has ignored its misgivings about ordination for pragmatic reasons.

            First, we wanted to honour pastors and the pastoral ministry, and so have been reluctant to do anything that would undermine the class distinction to which ordination contributes. Second, the rite of ordination has been experienced as empowering by pastors. When they have had doubts or misgivings about their calling, its memory has served as a reminder that, yes, God and the church had indeed called them to this task. We did not want pastors to second-guess their callings. We have other means at our disposal to confirm and reassure pastors in their callings besides resorting to classist structures. Third, the Mennonite Church has been busy courting and marrying a General Conference tradition that has not generally shared these misgivings. I am convinced that the old MC and GC traditions still have things to learn from each other on this score—not because the truth must be in between somewhere, but because their differing histories have taught differing lessons that are important and valid. Fourth, women have always needed to deal with an inferiority of class imposed both within and without the church in ways with which men have not needed to contend. As women have been received as pastors to greater or lesser extents, ordination has served to confer and confirm their class superiority along with ordained male pastors. Without ordination, women in ministry would face a continuing challenge of class and status that men in ministry simply would not need to face.

            It is true that our perceptions of what corrections are needed, and are thus prepared to argue for, are dependent to a great extent upon our particular experiences of life and the lacks we have experienced. Some of us are much more impressed with the dangers of authoritarianism and status than we are with the post-modern morass. For others, it is the opposite. As Andy Brubacher Kaethler has observed, “Some post-modern pastors are so inherently sceptical of institutionalized authority that the danger we face comes from the other direction of not taking it seriously enough. ‘Set apart’ does not necessarily mean ‘set above.’”[13] We need to pay attention to what the Spirit is saying to us, keeping our ears open especially to those with experiences different from ours. While pragmatic considerations are understandable, we must not be opportunistic in our consideration of the theological and practical issues here.

 

  1. Won’t Toews’s proposed elimination of the clergy/laity distinction harm our efforts to develop and sustain a culture of call in today’s church?

 

No. It will actually support and enhance it. I lament when people ask whether God has “called them to the ministry.” It is a bad question and harmful to the church, since it wrongly implies that the answer could be no. The New Testament affirms that every believer is called to ministry for the sake of the church. As believers, we should not attempt to discern whether God is calling us to ministry; God is always calling all of us to ministry. The much better question is, To which ministry is God calling me in this time and place? I am not suggesting here that the Holy Spirit calls or give gifts in only episodic ways; I believe that some callings and gifts have some dur­ability and portability. I am suggesting only that the call to ministry requires the ongoing dis­cernment and affirmation of the church. In perhaps more ways than Toews allows, the church is already functioning accordingly: we routinely evaluate the effectiveness of our pastors’ ministries.

            When I was in college, three other guys and I lived off-campus and led a weekly worship and Bible study for some of our peers at Goshen College. This went on for three years. Every week we provided leadership as the group got together, prayed, sang with guitars, studied the Bible, supported each other, and sought God’s will. In the course of those three years, each of us began to sense a call to ministry. As it turned out, all four of us later served as pastors. Although none of us are currently pastors, I believe that each of us is continuing to fulfill our calls to ministry. Even as I was wrestling with that call in college, I believed that my call was to a ministerial leadership role in general, rather than to pastoral ministry specifically. (As it turned out, I have “ministered” as pastor, theology book editor, college Bible professor, and seminary dean—and just as importantly in other, nonprofessional ways, such as listening friend.) This made that call no less important to discern. I do believe that God calls some people specifically to pastoral ministry. But I also believe that the future of the church and of God’s unfolding reign on earth depends much more on every believer hearing and responding to God’s ongoing calls to ministry than it does on future pastors hearing the specific call to pastoral ministry.

            The clergy/laity distinction actually makes it much more difficult for young people to consider the call to pastoral ministry for a variety of reasons. First, some seminary students struggle with the discernment because they find it hard to believe that God is calling them to be like the pastors that they have experienced. At AMBS we occasionally emphasize that God may be calling our students to serve as pastors even if they do not look or act like the pastors they have known—or want to do so. Congregations and pastorates are marvellously diverse in character; how much more are the gifts of the Spirit in empowering all of the members of the Body! Second, we are not used to affirming on a routine basis the responsibility of all believers to fulfill their calls to ministry in general. As we correct this—as we begin to expect, experience, and benefit from the ministries of all believers, it will be much easier to affirm youth (and others) in their actual practice of various ministries. It will become much more natural for the church to recognize the gifts of leadership in a few and it will be easier for the youth to imagine themselves in those ministries. Third, ministry experiences help one imagine pastoral ministry as a calling. That is what happened to me in college. There is a kind of natural progression from ministry to leadership in ministry to pastoral ministry. As youth grow in ministry experiences, it will be easier for them to imagine added leadership responsibilities in those experiences, and eventually the pastoral role.

 

  1. Do pastors have a unique calling and a unique role to play in the church that deserves honour and respect?

 

Yes. Here I imagine that Toews would say that the pastoral role is unique—just as every other role in the church is unique in its own way. The church needs leaders and the New Testament recognizes and affirms that need for leaders. However, Paul takes pains in 1 Corinth­ians 12–14 to establish that all of the gifts and offices in the church are deserving of honour. “Our presentable parts need no special treatment” (1 Cor. 12:24, niv). Even if Paul can identify some gifts as worthy of more honour than others (“God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers …” [1 Cor. 12:28]), no one can say that he or she does not need the less honorable gifts of the body. Those who are pastors or overseers do deserve honour, but so do all of the members of the body. What is most important is love (1 Cor. 12:31b–13:13) and whatever equips and builds up the Body of Christ (Rom. 14:9; 15:2; 1 Cor. 14:1-5, 12, 26).

            In my introduction to Erick Sawatzky’s The Heart of the Matter: Pastoral Ministry in Anabaptist Perspective, I asked a series of rhetorical questions:

Is it possible to reform our understanding of ministry in such a way that recognizes the particular calling and giftedness of pastors while empowering the laity to exercise their own gifts as well? Can the church believe in and practice the priesthood of all believers without the anti-clericalism and disregard of the gifts of leadership and its authority that has often accompanied it? Is it possible to affirm and esteem the particular gifts and calling of the pastor in such a way that honors both the individual and the office without dishonoring or disempowering the members of the body?[14]

Although I cringe now that my uncritical use of the word laity implicitly recognizes the category, I believe that the answer to each of these questions is Yes! And I suspect that Toews would agree.

 

  1. Does Toews think that God calls people specifically to pastoral ministry today?

 

Toews would caution anyone about “calling” understood as an “inner sense” of calling. I am not as worried as Toews about that. While the external call provided by the discernment and confirmation of the church is important and supported biblically (see, e.g., 1 Cor. 14:29; Gal. 2:2b), biblical evidence in support of the inner call is just as strong and more pervasive. Even if our language about one’s “sense of call” is inextricably linked with the heightened introspective consciousness of the West, many of the biblical call narratives include notes about the significant existential processing of those calls. I believe Toews would say that through the church God calls some individuals to pastoral roles for specific times and places.

            The most fundamental and most important call is the one we know from the gospels: “Follow me.” This is where it all starts. The fundamental commitment to serve God in response to God’s marvellous grace outweighs in importance—and in its implications for the Reign of God—any specific calls to pastoral ministry. It is the task of believers to test and weigh prophetic words, and that includes calls. I believe that we weigh calls relatively well with regard to pastoral ministry, but not with regard to all the other forms of ministry in the church. When someone says, “I feel called to be a pastor,” one of the tasks of the church is to weigh how much ego is mixed with the genuine call of God. I believe that the New Testament is remarkably consistent in insisting that all believers are called to ministry—that each has received a gift that is designed to build up the body through ministry to one another. Most of our congregations have a long way to go in honouring the Holy Spirit in this regard. We just don’t think that way: we don’t actively look in an ongoing way for how God is using others or us as vessels for the grace God wishes to show. We don’t typically think about exercising our gifts as a matter of stewardship or potentially withholding God’s grace from someone if we don’t exercise our gifts (cf. 1 Peter 4:10).

 

  1. Doesn’t such a view of ministry and of the church’s validation of ministry make questions of authority somewhat messy? Doesn’t it imply that we will have to work hard at discerning the Spirit?

 

Yes.

 

Conclusion

            In conclusion, I fully agree with Toews that “the question of how the church selects and affirms its leaders must be based on more than specific texts whose meaning is ambiguous. It must ultimately be based on a theology of church.”

            However, I would modify Toews’s statement about the implications of the foregoing for ordination as follows: Ordination for ministry through the laying on of hands as practised in the church is a proper and legitimate extension of the biblical witness. There is a clear textual basis for the theology and practice of formally honouring, recognizing, and authorizing leaders for ministry in the community—and no compelling reason to avoid using the language of ordination in doing so. Such recognition can easily lend itself to an unbiblical dichotomizing of clergy and laity, to elitism, and to an improper exalting of the status of pastors, but it need not do so. An Anabaptist ecclesiology recognizes and honours the power and authority of pastors while also monitoring them and keeping them in check. The church urgently needs pastors who humbly but confidently embrace the authority conferred on them by God and by the church, but just as urgently does it need an active and empowered Body in which all believers contribute their gifts in service to Christ. Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers have no higher calling than to equip the saints for their various works of ministry (Eph. 4:11-12).

 


                [1] I consider the matters addressed in Toews’s article to be very important and worth careful study and deliberation in the church. In considering the issues raised by John E. Toews in his provocative essay, I have benefited greatly from sev­eral rich conversations on the topic of ordination. Among those particularly helpful in these conversations have been John E. Toews him­self; Diane Zaerr Brenneman; Dorothy Nickel Friesen; John Esau; my father, Galen Johns; Keith Harder; Andrew Brubacher Kaethler; and Rebecca Slough. The thoughtful care and insightful responses they gave have prodded me both to sharpen my thinking and to change my mind about some things. Thank you! If the published results of my thinking remain problematic, it is not their fault.

[2] For instance, John Esau has noted that the biblical literature on this subject was relatively early in the development of church tradition and in its need to address issues like church order and structures—too early, perhaps, to sense the needs for structures of accountability. For various reasons, much of the church’s thinking and listening to the Spirit on this matter post-dates the New Testament writings.

[3] Toews, “Toward a Biblical Theology of Leadership Affirmation,” p. 1.

[4] See Toews, “Toward a Biblical Theology of Leadership Affirmation,” p. 5. For a similar argument about how contemporary ecclesiological and political interests may have influenced King James’s translators’ use of the word ordain in widely disparate contexts to translate more than a dozen different verbs in the New Testament, see my essay, “Ordination in the King James Version of the Bible,” in The Heart of the Matter: Pastoral Ministry in Anabaptist Perspective, ed. Erick Sawatzky (Telford, Pa.: Cascadia Publishing House; and Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 2004), pp. 105–117. That essay lists the many Greek or Hebrew words that were translated ordain in the King James Version, while giving some attention also to the New International Version and the New Revised Standard Version. It also briefly explores potential theological, ecclesiological, and political reasons behind those translation decisions.

[5] Toews does not make the mistake that Conrad Grebel did in his letter to Thomas Müntzer, when Grebel said, “Whatever we are not taught by clear passages or examples must be regarded as forbidden, just as if it were written: ‘This do not!’” See Conrad Grebel’s letter to Thomas Müntzer, in Spiritual and Anabaptist Writers, ed. George Huntston Williams (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1957), p. 75.

                [6] John Esau, in a personal e-mail dated February 14, 2004.

                [7] Dorothy Nickel Friesen, in a personal e-mail dated February 15, 2004. My greatest misgiving here has to do with Dorothy’s use of the word status here. Although I believe that the church should honor pastors—and the pastorate—and recognize their ministry as unique, right along with all of the other unique gifts and callings, I believe that attempts to establish or maintain the unique status of the pastor are potentially unbiblical and spiritually harmful for the church.

                [8] I do not claim certain tax benefits available to ordained ministers serving in the United States, such as housing allowance. I am ambivalent about whether it is appropriate for pastors to do so. Although I feel better about not claiming those tax benefits, I am not ready to argue that this should be the norm. I do claim “professional” expenses as any professional would.

                [9] Diane Zaerr Brenneman, in a personal e-mail dated February 12, 2004.

                [10] John Esau, op. cit.

                [11] Keith Harder, in a personal e-mail dated February 11, 2004.

                [12] John Esau, op. cit.

                [13] Andrew Brubacher Kaethler, in a personal e-mail dated February 13, 2004.

[14] “Introduction,” in Sawatzky, Heart of the Matter, p. 13. I recognize here with appreciation the caution offered by Keith Harder that the phrase “priesthood of all believers” should not be taken as an attempt to eliminate priests from our midst, but rather help us understand that we all are priests.