Leadership is needed to assist the people in thinking through and understanding their responsibility for ministry, creating ways to translate what the church is into what the church does. Van Engen’s comment on the Laos is to the point: “With distinctions in gift, function, and ministration—but not in holiness, prestige, power, commitment, or activity … The rise of a clergy-laity distinction from the 3rd century on continues in the Protestant denominations since the Reformation as one of the main