Every church has far more work than any one person can do. Even a team of professionals is not enough. The New Testament solution was for every member to be a minister. Though the priesthood of all believers was a key idea in the Reformation, it is little practised today. Following secular models, churches usually organize around the clergy, who are paid by the laity to do the ministry. Paul Stevens argues that, according to Scripture, the primary task of a Christian leader is not to do the work but to equip the saints to do it. Exploring new options for pastors, tentmakers and laypeople, this book provides structures and strategies to best equip all the saints for ministry.

A passionate call for a new liberation movement, this time within the church in North America.... The genius of 'The Liberation of the Laity' is not so much that it provides new information or even an entirely original thesis, but that it lays piece after piece together until the pattern emerges for us, and we have the eyes to see the repetition and extension of that pattern in our own experiences of church life. Books and Religion The author, in this deeply felt and powerfully argued book, tackles the issues of the nature of ministry, priesthood, ordination, lay theology, a spirituality of life in the world. The argument is clearly expressed, draws upon a wide range of scholarship, the example of the early church as well as the experience of the author.... I cannot be dispassionate in recommending this book. It provides a model of what a theology of the people should be like in the way it argues the case for such a theology. Zadok Perspectives - a quarterly journal of the Zadok Institute for Christianity and Society (Australia). If I could have one wish fulfilled - I'd wish that Anne Rowthorn's 'The Liberation of the Laity' would be required reading for Christians everywhere! She is a voice for the church's voiceless. Irene V. Jackson-Brown 'The Liberation of the Laity' will irritate, inform, and inspire. And it should be read by all - lay and ordained - who are willing to have their eyes, and most especially their hearts, opened a little wider. Virginia Seminary Journal 'The Liberation of the Laity' is a provocative book that challenges the clericalist culture of the church, and provides practical advice and sound counsel toward a more inclusive future. Further, the book affirms the history and theology of the ministry of all baptized persons in a deep and thought-provoking way. 'The Liberation of the Laity' will spark conversation and reflection among those most concerned about the future of ministry, and the need for the church to support the vocations of all the baptized. Sheryl A. Kujawa-Holbrook Director of Congregational Studies Associate Professor Episcopal Divinity School

Theological reflections explore the genuine role of the Catholic laity, leading to proposals for a "lay liberation theology" and structural reform of the Catholic church. "Throughout, Lakeland does an admirable job of balancing his style to make the work useful for both general and specialized readers. Lakeland surveys the contributions of an impressive number of historical and contemporary writers on the laity."QWilliam A. Clark, "Catholic Books Review."Continuum Books

The Church gets into trouble whenever it thinks it is in the church business rather than the Kingdom business. In the church business, people are concerned with Kingdom activities, all human behavior and everything God has made.... Church people think about how to get people into the church; Kingdom people think about how to get the church into the world.

The present crisis in the American Catholic Church stems from a two-fold source: lay people are powerless while the bishops are accountable to no one but the pope and the curia. While the number of lay people exercising ministries in the church has grown enormously over the past thirty years (largely due to the shortage of priests), there has been little or no theological reflection till now on the genuine role of the laity. It is only from such reflection that structural reform of the church will come.The first half of The Liberation of the Laity concentrates on the fortunes of the laity, theologically speaking, between Vatican I (1870) and Vatican II (1962-65). It examines the growth of the "new theology" in France in the 1940s and 1950s and shows how in the work of one of its leading practitioners, Yves Congar, much of the vision of the laity expressed at Vatican II was anticipated. Seeing the years after the council as decades of missed opportunities to recognize the role of the laity, the book then turns to a series of constructive proposals for the liberation of the laity, and thus the liberation of the church. It discusses the importance of "secularity," the need for a "lay liberation theology," and the centrality of the struggles against global capitalism in the mission of the church. It ends with a chapter envisioning dramatic changes in ministry and governing structures, in which accountability will be central, "servant leaders" will include women and married people, and both ecclesiastical careerism and the College of Cardinals will be history.