"Jesus called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits." (Mark 6.7, from the Gospel for next Sunday)

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Building a stone wall turns out to be hot, dirty work, but extraordinarily satisfying.

It feels clever to dig out mower-eating rocks from our future lawn and to convert them into something useful. I tell my son that this is how his ancestors made farmable land in New Haven Colony.

Carrying the stones is one of those repetitive chores which free the mind to think about other things. As I cross the land, I begin to know its contours and to make it my home. Assembling stones is like working a jigsaw puzzle, except that the materials are forgiving.

In time, stones start their march across the ground. Various sizes, colors and textures soon form a whole, as seen from a distance.

As is usual with me, I start the work and then do the research. It turns out my intuition – mix the sizes, take care in fitting stones into crevices, test stability, work up to the largest – is on the mark.

Most satisfying is doing this work as a family. For this one day, we are like the family farmers way back in our heritage: mutually dependent, each contributing according to ability and strength.

I think this is the way Jesus envisioned ministry. Disciples working together, deriving sustenance from the land, doing what they could, trying to fit human diversity into something new and life-giving.

Instead, Christians re-created the priestly caste of the Old Testament, with an ordained class, operating in strict hierarchy, being named "ministers," and everyone else rendered an audience, an employer class, or when-it-is-convenient partners in ministry. When clergy have the upper hand, they order the laity about. When laity have the upper hand, clergy become hired hands.

We developed a taste for uniformity and perfection. Our stone walls had to be just so, as if only properly trained experts could tackle the important work, as if willingness and a good heart weren’t enough. Memberships became monochromatic.

This overstates reality, but not by much. Consider mass defections from ordained employment, constant conflict in congregational leadership over who gets to tell the other what to do, and inconsistency in energy and performance.

Consider our concern for proper equipment – technology, clever leave-behinds for calls, training classes that promote ministry as requiring expertise, electronic gear that rivals rock shows.

Consider the loneliness of the modern minister, ordained or lay, as they prepare in solitude, serve in solitude, bear a community’s pressure in solitude.

But then consider the times when we do it Jesus’ way. Working side by side at church suppers and bazaars, building houses in teams, doing missionary work in teams, putting on renewal events in teams, handling crises in impromptu teams, laughing and crying together, deriving sustenance not from expertise but from each other – this is when joy is found, and this is when we accomplish something.

Jesus sent his disciples out in pairs, because the model for ministry isn’t the paid expert driving alone to work, but the unsure deriving strength from each other.

Jesus sent them out unequipped, because gear can be a crutch, tending to gear can be a substitute for ministry, and purchasing gear provides escape from the harder work of tending souls.

Jesus told them to engage with the people, not to view them as a "market to be tapped," but as hosts, friends, colleagues. If friendship wasn’t returned, move on, because ministry isn’t something one can compel.

Our ineffective models for ministry are deeply ingrained – priestly caste, hierarchy grounded in expertise, some giving and others receiving, hired hands and those who employ them. They even have the weight of church law behind them. But they aren’t working. Jesus gave us a better way.