reviewing lay preachers

I'm trying to finish a discussion paper that's part of a national review of the ministry of accredited lay preachers in the Uniting Church. last year we conducted national surveys of presbyteries (21 responded), lay leaders (979), ordained ministers (about 100) and church councils (about 2000. a massive amount of work and data and Lynne Taylor was been sensational to work with on this. so now there's a 20 page report with some questions about the future. it will hit cyberspace next week (available from the UCA Assembly website), but for now I'm trying to get the last few pages sorted. writing the 'options' part is the hard bit. what do you reckon should happen with lay preachers?

Comments

[darren]

a) kill it off, but that would cause our presbytery a lot of harm with it basically being run by lp's and needing some kind of training and support open to the leaders

b) open source training for presbyteries... put out a basic training module/competencies and allow presbyteries to take on the role of taking people through it, and to authorise accordingly. make the module(s) interactive and short (no under 25 will sign up to do all that work/time) and mentor/community based.

c) continuing education, perhaps we need to provide an online video collection of training resources for lp's, an annual gathering of some of us to put together some lectionary based presentations on video + audio? perhaps at firs starting with lectionary gospels (themes, readings, introduction) and Lent/Easter and Advent/Epiphany for each year...

[darren]

z) I'm sure this isn't just a UCA issue, the Anglicans at St Marks Theo College have run a lectionary based series of lectures each year, recorded it and had it available on dvd/cd. we should explore ways to do continuing education ecumenically and using multimedia etc...