by Ed Stannard

[Episcopal Life] Not that they needed reminding, but those attending the 10th annual gathering of the National Network of Lay Professionals (NNLP) were given a strong message that their ministry is a call from God.

Nearly 60 members of the network, meeting at Trinity Conference Center in Cornwall, Connecticut, June 15-17, heard a keynote address that assured them that the priesthood of all believers is real. It was given by lay Canon Rick Johnson of GraceCom, the media ministry of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, which has been spreading the gospel on the Web and in other media for six years.

"Serving as a canon of a cathedral has been a challenge for me," Johnson said. "It has called me to overcome years of engrained clericalism. I used to defer to clergy automatically in just about everything. Although I knew we were all equal as Christians, the collar made some more equal than others. I still had this little voice inside of me that said, 'Oh, I can't do that ...I am but a lowly lay person, meek and mild.'"

He had to face his doubts when he was asked to preach at the Sunday service.

"During the week before I was to preach I saw a bumper sticker while driving to work that deeply disturbed me; it hit some kind of nerve. It said, 'Militant agnostic- I don't know, and you don't know either!'

"All of a sudden I thought, 'Wait a minute, that sounds like me! ... Agnostic? And I thought I was a good Episcopalian! I have my doubts, too, so where does that leave me?"

Worthy through baptism

Where it left Johnson was recognizing that he was just as unworthy - and as worthy- as any priest to proclaim the Word, that his authority came through his baptism.

Johnson challenged his listeners not to wait until they were "good enough" to take their place in church leadership.

"The access to grace is through our greatest weaknesses, our fears, our vulnerabilities, and grace comes through faith itself," he said.

Johnson also urged the gathering to speak to the culture, "those people who think religion is at best pointless but harmless and, at worst, irrational and dangerous."

GraceCom, an online spirituality magazine, reaches 60,000 Web visitors a month, Johnson said. The cathedral also "Webcasts" its Sunday choral Eucharist - live in stereo - and records evensong with the choir of men and boys. TV documentaries and ads are also part of the media mix.

Johnson told of a new member who came to Grace Cathedral after seeing its ad campaign on 400 Bay Area buses.

"He told the bishop that he never thought he would 'darken the doorway of a church,' but those bus ads caught his imagination and he visited the Web site and came to Grace Cathedral to find out who we were as a faith community." He was baptized at the Easter Vigil.

Equal justice for lay employees

In addition to inspiration and the equally important fellowship of the NNLP gathering, workshops were offered in practical issues such as lay pensions, offered by representatives of the Church Pension Fund, human resources issues and work as ministry. Another, led by the Rev. Thomas Blackmon, an urban missioner in the Diocese of Dallas and a trustee of the pension fund, focused on justice for lay professionals in pension and benefits and General Convention resolutions such as "Equal Justice and Accountability in the Workplace."

"I think our church is not treating lay professionals in a just way and I do think we need to ask ourselves, should the pension fund be asked to be responsible for lay pensions?" said Blackmon.

Pamela Ramsden of the Church Deployment Office urged lay professionals to register with the office to help discern their gifts and to have their profiles available for those seeking employees.

Positive turn in attitude

Carol Stevenson, NNLP's chair and executive secretary to the rector of Trinity Church in New York, was pleased both with the turnout and the spirit of the inference. "The attitude at this gathering was more positive than any that I've experienced," she said. "There was not as much hardness in the minds of people ... toward the ordained."

She credited new members and Johnson's keynote address as factors in breaching the divide between lay professionals and clergy.

Stevenson also acknowledged that the group has struggled since the death in 1999 of Ruth Schmidt, who led the movement to bring lay professionals into the church's consciousness. The previous gathering drew only about 20 people, but this year's showed a renewal in spirit and commitment.

"I think Ruth did a wonderful job getting the attention of the national church, getting a pension for lay people and, had it not been for her energy and efforts, that might not have happened - at least not when it happened," said Stevenson. "But we're moving forward from there."

The gathering gave the second Ruth Schmidt Award for service to lay professionals to Edgar VanDerveer, former treasurer of the Diocese of New Jersey, who has served as NNLP treasurer since its founding in 1986.

[Ed Stannard is news editor of Episcopal Life, the national newspaper of the Episcopal Church.]