Lurking underneath so much of what we discuss on these listseves is the question of ontology. What is being, and precisely how much of it do we want to give to church? Is ecclesial being discontinuous with the divine?
Ordination, clergy-confectionability, "church-expressions", lay presidency - - all of these at there deepest are ontological issues. Whenever we speak of sacramental and quasi-sacramental institutions, we allude to divine presence, to density points of divine being within the folds of time.
There was a time (perhaps) when our ecclesia was grounded in promise. But as the eschatological promise fades in our time, the void must be filled by something: So we grant to ecclesia properties and attributes that rightfully apply only to the divine. Human beings are ecclesiological/ontological inflationists; we must have gods we can master; ones that won't present themselves as Abyss.
But many of us have followed the Reformation road to a deflationary ecclesiology. We want no props before the divine except what the divine offers in the dynamism of the Word. For us, the ecclesia shrinks to a mathematicum punctum in encounter with the God of Wrath and Grace, the God who creates, demands and redeems. Clergy, rites, institutional structures have no extension in the face of the Eternal.
Thinking through the implications of a deflated ecclesia is difficult for many who agree in principle with our general positions. The Office of the Ministry becomes divinely instituted in an ontological key that seems now to be at odds with mere congregational calling. Lay presidency is affirmed in emergency situations only for good order, but not seen as an entailment of a church shorn of ontological weight. (It may be consistent, but surely not entailed.) Church is congregationally-based, but there is a visible trans-congregational reality that carries the predicate 'holy' and expresses itself at the congregational level.
The ontological issue arises in different forms repeatedly, but underneath the question is the same: How much being do you want/need to give to the institution down here? Our task, I believe, is to give it only enough to point away from and negate itself.
An ecclesia under the Cross dies. That is what it can do. That is what it must do. The ecclesiological task is to outfit the dying church to continue its witness. So we need pastors, superintendents, lay presiders, calls, ratifications/ordinations, and whatever else. But let us understand all of these offices as interim, as ultimately empty of being.
The line is drawn and the stakes are high. Lets travel light and let the Word do its work.
Dennis Bielfeldt