Allen: sharing the experience

Sunday, March 3, 2013
Meditation:
    After this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. There he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all the Jews to leave Rome. Paul went to see them, and because he was a tentmaker as they were, he stayed and worked with them.
    —Acts 18:1-3 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Among our own people also the church sorely needs clergy in close touch with the ordinary life of the laity, living the life of ordinary men, sharing their difficulties and understanding their trials by close personal experience. Stipendiary clergy cut off by training and life from that common experience are constantly struggling to get close to the laity by wearing lay clothing, sharing in lay amusements, and organizing lay clubs; but they never quite succeed. To get close to men, it is necessary really to share their experience, and to share their experience is to share it by being in it, not merely to come as near to it as possible without being in it.
    ... Roland Allen (1869-1947), The Case for Voluntary Clergy, London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1930, included in The Ministry of the Spirit, David M. Paton, ed., London: World Dominion Press, 1960, p. 150 (see the book)
    See also Acts 18:1-3; Isa. 53:2-5; Luke 22:27-28; Eph. 4:28; Phil. 2:5-8; 1 Thess. 4:11-12; Heb. 2:17-18; 4:15; 5:2
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, am I being a minister to my colleagues? CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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