A Revisit of the Ministerial Concept of Lay and Full-Time Ministers in Classical Pentecostal Churches in Ghana and its Missional Implications

In their article “Pentecostal Mission Approaches” White and Niemandt (2015, 241–269) make a case for how some Pentecostal Churches in Ghana have made good use of lay/tent ministry in their missionary agenda. However, among the Classical Pentecostal Churches in Ghana, lay ministers are not recognised as full-time ministers of the church. The understanding of these churches is that the lay/tent ministers by their definition do not operate in the five-fold ministry. In some of the churches, they are not accredited by the church to be part of their General Ministerial Council Meetings and the Annual General Meetings. Unlike the mainline churches, the lay or tent ministers in the Classical Pentecostal Churches in Ghana are also not allowed to vote or to be recommended for Executive Council positions. These issues therefore make it essential to investigate the historical and theological understanding of the concept of the lay and full-time ministers in church history, Ghanaian Pentecostals’ view of the concept, as well as the missional importance of lay ministries in the church and the missio Dei.

Shared Ministry

“We have discovered that ‘internal ministries’ and ‘external ministries’ appear to be inextricably linked. Where a congregation or its members are actively involved in ministries outside the congregation, it seems that there are always significant ministries to one another taking place within the fellowship of the congregation. … Our findings suggest that one reason the church has had such difficulty in developing the concept and the practice of lay ministry ‘in the world’ may be that too frequently we have assumed that such ministries should or could be separated from vital lay ministries within the congregation.”