COAH's Core Practices- Commitment to Joint Ministry

In today's American church, many use their spiritual gifts, but few actually function as ministers. To borrow military imagery, it is usually the paid staff in a church who function as the generals and the volunteers who function as the privates. Most traditional volunteer positions, such as directing traffic, child care in the nursery, running the sound board, or often even leading a small group largely augment and support the work of paid staff, and with rare exceptions, it is those paid staff alone that function as ministers in the true sense of the word. At the end of the day, it is the pastors who form ministry plans, oversee their execution, and recruit volunteers to carry out those plans; all the actual responsibility for the ministry is theirs. To the average American churchgoer, who consumeristically views church as a place to "get fed" rather than a place to give, the idea of actually owning the work of the church's ministry seems a rather foreign and strange concept.

In contrast to this state of affairs in the American church stands the Biblical model of joint ministry. Scripture tells us that as a result of their standing in Christ, all believers are called be functioning priests in God's house (1 Peter 2:4). In Christ, ranks and titles have been eliminated, and all are equal in His economy (Col. 3:11, Matt. 23:8-10). All believers have been commissioned by Christ to make disciples (Matt. 28:19). This call to make disciples is independent of one's background, training, education, or economic status, for in Christ, "there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free" (Gal. 3:28).

For these reasons, COAH strives to be a church where its members do not merely volunteer, but where the responsibility of ministry is shared between all. To this end, we have no paid pastors or staff, as we believe all believers are ministers in the truest sense of the word. We seek to be a church comprised of fully functioning priests, having the boldness and authority to represent our Savior to a watching world. We aim to transcend the arbitrary, man-made distinction between clergy and laity as each member fulfills their unique ministerial role in the Body of Christ. We commit ourselves to this effort, and pledge to hold one another accountable in this regard. May God help us in this endeavor.