Lara Rusch ~ 14
I think, first of all, as a Catholic myself, we’re very lay driven, the lay leaders run
ministries; they almost, […] I don’t know, can represent the church in their
ministry and have, you know they can be creative, right? And the pastor is you
know, he deals with the sacraments and we deal with everything else around that.
Similarly, lay leader Alejandro Garcia said of his priest, “he keeps a low profile. He lets
his people do what has to be done, and he goes about doing his business, which is the
church.”
Whether clergy’s involvement is a motivator or not may depend on the presence
of an effective bridging mechanism, such as a community organizers who want to
understand and work with the congregation. When community organizers and lay people
talk about effective organizing and mobilization, they perceive denominational
differences from the perspective of someone serving that bridging role. Escareño
compared the Pope of the Catholic Church to the pastor in Baptist churches. “So I cannot
go into a Baptist church and say, would you like to be a member of the Core Team?
Right? The pastor has to be the one that says, you should be a member of the Core Team.
He assigns people to do the work.” In contrast, in Catholic churches, “I have to go in
there and find the people.”
Escareño’s description of his organizing experience disputes the idea of priestly
authority as a fundamental limitation for lay involvement or initiative. As a Catholic
himself, he argues, “we tend to be very rebellious towards our pastors, so we end up
doing some things, right? We end up taking on issues, outright, and the Baptist church is
more, […] they follow Roberts Rules of Order. […] which, as a Catholic, is hard for me
to follow, (Laughter) ‘cause we just do it.” This rebelliousness from within the
congregation family means the capacity to “take on the priest … if we think he’s wrong.”
In his words, this would “never happen” in a Baptist Church because challenging the
Convention