We always say, and have said for some time (not
without scriptural authority, though I sometimes think that one of
the favourites is being twisted a little away from its intended
meaning) that there are many gifts of the Spirit. These are abilities
that we might put into use in the service of Truth, usually now
meaning in service of our Meetings. However, liberal Meetings have
largely grown away from recognising certain gifts. I speak, of
course, of gifts of ministry.
It is necessary here to digress slightly into what
we mean by “ministry”. It is a wonderful word, quite rich in its
meaning before we Quakers came along and bent it into new shapes,
albeit ones not inconsistent with the history or etymology of the
time. It is derived from the Latin
ministerium,
meaning the office of a minister.
Of course, what is meant by that term in Latin would not necessarily
be terribly recognisable to modern English speakers. In countries
where governmental terms derive from Britain (but a more recent
divergence than that of the United States), a minister is a member of
a government, generally one with considerable power – or at least
who likes to think they have. Certainly they tend to have plenty of
underlings. Of course, they are led by a prime minister,
often conceived of as a first among equals but generally speaking the
head of the executive element of government. In many faiths, we have
ministers of religion,
who tend to exercise authority over their flock in some way. A third
major instance of the term, much less familiar to most people
nowadays, is in the world of diplomacy. There, it is the usual short
form for the title envoy extraordinary and minister
plenipotentiary, and obsolete
but still technically extant diplomatic rank used for the heads of
missions that were rated as legations, a lower status than an embassy
(which is naturally headed by an ambassador). There was also, going
further back, a further rank of minister resident,
for missions ranked below legations – often from or to states that
existed de facto
rather than de jure,
or otherwise poor or unimportant polities. Since the growing value of
the UN in the 60s, sovereign states now generally only create
embassies as their diplomatic missions, unless there are not full
diplomatic relations between them. In that case, a mission led by a
chargé d'affaires en pied
will be established, if anything. In that case, the head of mission
is accredited between the foreign ministers involved, rather than
between heads of state.
