Living on the Border of the Holy: Renewing the Priesthood of All [Large Print] [Paperback]

Louis William Countryman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 1999

"The first thing to say in our exploration of priesthood is this: priesthood is a fundamental and inescapable part of being human. All human beings, knowingly or not, minister as priests to one another. All of us, knowingly or not, receive priestly ministrations from one another. Unless we begin here, we are not likely to understand the confusions and uncertainties and opportunities we have been encountering in the life of the church itself in recent years. We shall be in danger, in fact, of creating makeshift solutions to half-understood problems, easy answers to misleading questions, temporary bandages for institutions that need to be healed from the ground up." - L. William Countryman There is a lot of tension in churches today about whose ministry is primary-that of the laity or of the clergy. L. William Countryman argues that we can only resolve that problem by seeing that we are all priests simply by virtue of being human and living, as we all do, on the mysterious and uncertain border with the Holy. Living on the Border of the Holy offers a way of understanding the priesthood of the whole people of God and the priesthood of the ordained in complementary ways by showing how both are rooted in the fundamental priestly nature of human life. After an exploration of the ministry of both laity and ordained, Countryman concludes by examining the implications of this view of priesthood for churches and for educating those studying for ordination.

Editorial Reviews

Review

... brilliant... offers hope, companionship, and the fruits of years of experience... This book could save the church. -- Nora Gallagher, Author of Things Seen and Unseen: A Year Lived in Faith

... magnificent... -- Witness, March 2000

... magnificent... I hope... many... will embark on this journey for if they do they will gain something of enormous significance. -- Esther de Waal, Author of Living with Contradiction

... rich, comprehensible... serious theological work in very accessible language. I read, reread it with pleasure, pen in hand." -- OPEN, Donald Schell, St. Gregory Nyssen Church San Francisco, CA, 10/07/1999

...helpful for all... to consider the meanings of priesthood... to reexamine and renew their ministry. -- Anglican Theological Review, July 2000

Bill Countryman cuts through our malaise without being simplistic or obscure, grounding his vision in the larger priesthood of humanity. -- Frederick W. Schmidt, Canon Educator, Washington National Cathedral, and author of A Still Small Voice

Thought-provoking and challenging... -- Anglican World, 07/30/1999

What a blessing ... extraordinary... I wish every self-identified 'person of faith' could read this remarkable, thought-provoking book. -- Bruce Bawer, author of Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity

From the Back Cover

"The first thing to say in our exploration of priesthood is this: priesthood is a fundamental and inescapable part of being human. All human beings, knowingly or not, minister as priests to one another. All of us, knowingly or not, receive priestly ministrations from one another. Unless we begin here, we are not likely to understand the confusions and uncertainties and opportunities we have been encountering in the life of the church itself in recent years. We shall be in danger, in fact, of creating makeshift solutions to half-understood problems, easy answers to misleading questions, temporary bandages for institutions that need to be healed from the ground up." - L. William Countryman

There is a lot of tension in churches today about whose ministry is primary-that of the laity or of the clergy. L. William Countryman argues that we can only resolve that problem by seeing that we are all priests simply by virtue of being human and living, as we all do, on the mysterious and uncertain border with the Holy. Living on the Border of the Holy offers a way of understanding the priesthood of the whole people of God and the priesthood of the ordained in complementary ways by showing how both are rooted in the fundamental priestly nature of human life. After an exploration of the ministry of both laity and ordained, Countryman concludes by examining the implications of this view of priesthood for churches and for educating those studying for ordination.

"What a blessing to have at hand William Countryman's book, which, by disentangling ordination from real ministry, does an extraordinary job of clarifying what we mean when we speak of the church, of religion, and of God. I wish every self-identified 'person of faith' could read this remarkable, thought-provoking book." -Bruce Bawer, author of Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 220 pages
• Publisher: Morehouse Publishing; large type edition edition (February 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0819217735
• ISBN-13: 978-0819217738
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #811,860 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thinking about ordained ministry? Read this book!, October 25, 1999

By 

Kevin A. Rose ([e-mail]) (Dayton, Ohio) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Living on the Border of the Holy: Renewing the Priesthood of All (Paperback)

I am a full-time church musician. More than that, it is my ministry in the church. I've been considering, with the help of my spiritual director whether or not I am called to the ordained ministry. This book helps to re-affirm the meaning of the lay ministry in the church, and sheds new light. It has helped me to discern my own vocation as a lay professional in the church.

My spiritual director asked me, "What does ordination mean, and how would it enhance your ministry?" I read this book and can answer the question now! No other resource is as clear cut.

This book is written by an Episcopal Priest, and while it is oriented toward Episcopalians, it can just as easily apply to people of other parts of Christianity. All people aspiring toward ordained ministry should be required to read this! (...as well as those discerning their commitment to lay ministy in the church.)

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Discerning the Priesthood of All Persons, August 20, 2000

By 

Charles B. Owen (Jackson, MS) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Living on the Border of the Holy: Renewing the Priesthood of All (Paperback)

The publication of L. William Countryman's LIVING ON THE BORDER OF THE HOLY: RENEWING THE PRIESTHOOD OF ALL (1999) comes at a time when the nature of the relationship between clergy and laity in the church suffers from confusion. In a society marked by shifting norms of authority and disagreement in matters of moral value, the status of ordination suffers from a crisis of legitimacy. This crisis raises many questions. Are priests and ministers different than laypersons? Are the ordained morally superior to laypersons? Are they more intellectually gifted? Should clergy be held to higher standards than the laity? Does the status of ordination mean that the ministries of laypersons are somehow less important? Does the very idea of ordination violate the status of equality before God in Christ bestowed on Christians by virtue of baptismal incorporation into the church? In light of such questions, the very idea of "priesthood" may appear irrelevant if not offensive. In response to such questions and in response to the many inadequate conceptions of the relationship between clergy and laity in Christian history, Countryman seeks to recover the multivalent and egalitarian meaning of "priesthood."

A threefold distinction between the fundamental priesthood of humanity, the priesthood of religion, and the priesthood of all baptized Christians underlies the book. The priesthood of humanity pertains to the capacity of persons to introduce each other to the "hidden things" and the "secrets" that give life its rich and mysterious meaning (p. 3). The practices of the fundamental human priesthood emerge out of the intersection of the ordinary, everyday world of human experience and the "hidden reality" of mystery that transcends, envelops, shapes, and sustains the whole of life (p. 6). The practices of human priesthood take shape in a variety of forms. They include, but are not limited to, the ministrations of parenting, friendship, mentoring, counseling, managing, teaching, and serving. Basic to all of these priestly practices is the capacity to instill dispositions of thinking, feeling, and acting that help persons grow in openness and communion with the Holy and with other persons (p. 13).

The priesthood of religion - or the sacramental priesthood - refers to the fundamental priesthood of humanity when shaped by the languages, symbols, and rituals of a particular religious tradition. For Christians, this means that the fundamental priesthood of humanity finds its meaning and purpose in the story of how Jesus Christ exercised his priestly vocation of forgiveness and reconciliation. Some readers may find the implications of Countryman's move from the fundamental to the sacramental priesthood religiously unsettling. It implies that Christian revelation of truth cannot be equated with truth as such. However, because the church has historically affirmed that human ideas of God and truth cannot be strictly equated with God and truth per se, Countryman's move is consistent with the best insights of orthodox Christian tradition. "TRUTH, as such, is beyond our grasp," Countryman writes (p. 28). Echoing the language of St. Paul in I Corinthians 13:12, he adds that, because human finitude and sinfulness "distort the lens through which we look," persons "can at most grasp lesser truths of varying degrees of inclusiveness" (ibid.). Precisely for this reason, human beings need signs and icons to point them beyond their narrow perspectives to the places where ordinary life and the Holy intersect. For this reason, Countryman argues, religious traditions - including the Christian church - set certain persons apart to serve as sacramental signs whose words and deeds point beyond themselves to the truthful and mysterious character of the Holy that transcends the finite boundaries of human concepts and communities.

Countryman's discussion of the priesthood of the Christian people - whether lay or ordained - forms the heart of the book's concerns. "There is no vocation higher than that of the fundamental priesthood, which is Christ's own priesthood," Countryman insists, adding that "vocations, including those leading to ordination, always center in the fundamental priesthood and how we are asked by God to fulfill it" (p. 144). In other words, Countryman argues that an adequate understanding of ordained ministry requires seeing how it emerges from, serves, and nurtures the priestly calling of all baptized persons to Christ's "ministry of reconciliation" (II Corinthians 5:18 RSV). This means that any conception of ordained ministry that pits priests and pastors against laypersons in the church and/or against the vocations of persons in the larger world is a self-serving betrayal of the priesthood of humanity that Christ seeks to restore to wholeness through the ministry of reconciliation.

Countryman's distinctions between the priesthood of humanity, the fundamental priesthood of the baptized, and the ordained priesthood provide an excellent context for discernment of vocational calling. It also makes clear that the ordained priesthood gains its value and dignity only insofar as it remains thoroughly grounded in and nurturing of the fundamental priesthood of all baptized persons. Countryman's book makes no bones about the fact that the general priesthood of all believers in service to the priesthood of all humanity must take priority in the mission and ministry of the church. This perspective can help keep in check the tendency of ordained priests and ministers to think too highly of themselves while laypersons think too little of themselves.

All baptized Christians interested in discerning their God-given gifts and the possibilities for ministry to which God calls them will find this book helpful. LIVING ON THE BORDER OF THE HOLY is a well-written, insightful, and theologically sound resource for helping all Christians - lay and ordained - engage the central question of spiritual discernment: "What gifts do I have, and to what ministry or ministries am I called to exercise those gifts?" If all baptized Christians take discernment of this question of priestly vocation seriously, the church will go a long way towards ameliorating the confusion and crisis of legitimacy surrounding the idea of "priesthood."

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Valuable and important discussion of ministry, April 7, 2001

By 

Sophia (the Pacific Northwest) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Living on the Border of the Holy: Renewing the Priesthood of All (Paperback)

In "Living on the Border of the Holy", Episcopal priest Louis William Countryman invites his readers into an important and thought-provoking discussion on the nature of priesthood, ministry, the sacraments and the church. In engaging such issues as the role of the laity, the function of the ordained ministry and its role in the church, Dr. Countryman reminds us that all Christians - indeed, all humans - are not only sacred, but function as priests and ministers in their own right, and each has his or her own calling.

This book strips away many preconceptions regarding ordained ministry and invites its readers into a dialogue concerning the nature of priesthood, vocation and calling. It would make (and has made) a wonderful basis for a study group, and should be required reading for anyone even nibbling away on the idea of ordained ministry. A deeply thought-provoking, valuable, and insightful spiritual resource.