Readers and Their Doings

Our Reader is brilliant. She is an academic person but when she preaches manages to wear her learning very lightly at the same time as giving people plenty of good content. It’s a great gift.

But what are Readers for? Not long after I arrived I had a consultation with Lillian about what her role in the parish might be. It wasn’t going to be taking funerals, and most of our services are Eucharistic so the scope for her to lead worship was limited. We worked out a preaching schedule and she leads Taize services every other month, and has started a Bible study group.

The trouble with Readers – who you are not supposed to call Readers, they have been Licensed Lay Ministers in this area since 2001 – is that their distinctive role has been eroded over the years from both ends. What I mean is this. In its late-Victorian origin, the Anglican office of Reader, inspired by the ancient Minor Order of Lector, was intended to enable laypeople literally to read the Scriptures in a liturgical setting where previously that job had been the reserve of clergy and parish clerks. Readers got a badge and that was it. Gradually in the 20^th century they became ‘clericalised’, still laypeople but allowed to dress up like clergy – first in a cassock and surplice, then with their distinctive blue preaching scarf. However, over recent decades the fact that laypeople are allowed to deliver the readings in services, and that a new category of non-stipendiary local clergy has been established, has meant that the Reader no longer looks quite so special. He or she is a sort of sub-vicar who can’t do anything that no one else can. One incumbent in this diocese was reported as having decided to put two parishioners who expressed a sense of vocation forward as Ordained Local Ministers rather than Readers on the grounds that OLMs would be more useful and training Readers was a waste of time; in Lamford an OLM had been ‘tried out’ by one of the previous incumbents as a Reader to ‘see how she did’ while another gentleman who had been rejected for the priesthood was advised by the same Rector to train as a Reader instead (sensibly he refused). The response to this unclarity has been to up the educational qualifications, and Readers now undergo a rather rigorous four-year theological training (probably a bit more involved than mine was!).

 At college we discussed Readers and wondered whether it might not be sensible, given that we were all being constantly told how special and wonderful the Diaconate was, to ordain all the existing ones as Deacons and have done with it. The trouble was that Deacons obviously have sacramental and pastoral roles as well as preaching and teaching ones. So that didn’t quite add up either.

 

On Tuesday I was out at a meeting for local vocations advisors, of whom I have the inestimable honour of being one, and we were addressed by the Warden of Readers for the diocese. She described Readers as ‘lay theologians’ whose ministry was specifically to make links between the lay world beyond the Church and the tradition they are charged with interpreting and reflection on. That would not result in a role which could be easily constrained, but which might lead to all sorts of involvement with groups and structures in and beyond the Church. That was the first time I’d heard it described in such terms and I’m grateful for it. Look for people who ask questions and want to make connections, we were advised: they may be your Readers.