Since the pastor is paid to be the specialist in church operations and management, it is only logical and natural that the laity begin to assume a passive role in church. Rather than contributing their part to edify the church, they go to church as passive receivers to be edified. Rather than actively spending the time and energy to exercise their gift for the good of the body, they sit back and let the pastor run the show.

Think about Sunday morning. Parishioners arrive on schedule, sit quietly in pews, and watch and listen to the minister who is up-front, center-stage, whose presence dominates the service. They stand, sit, speak, and sing only when they are directed to by the minister or the program. Yet, in reality, what happens during these two hours on Sunday morning is only a micro-cosmic picture of the whole church reality.

If the people of a congregation began to get a vision that the church is not a formal association but a community, that gifts are distributed-apart from ordination-to each person, that everyone must actively participate and contribute for church to work, that no one's gift is more important than another's, and that everyone's participation will ensure a full, healthy church life-in short, a vision of a biblical view of church life-I suspect many would begin to ask themselves: "Then what are we paying our minister for?" And, that would be a reasonable question to ask.

Read the rest of the by Christian Smith: Church Without Clergy