Meticulous scholarship combines with a heen postoral concern to give a most valuable and challenging contribution to the theology of ministry. The precision of skilled biblical and historical investigation offers a resource no one can afford to ignore.

Tony Kelly CSsR

N Are All Christians Ministers? John N. Collins answers his question with an unfashionable No! and provoc-atively argues that to answer otherwise is to disturb a foundational principle of church.

The unique background in research which Collins brings to the question makes his new book a serious challenge to the modern consensus that Christians share in ministry by virtue of baptism. His ground-breaking study of 1990, Diakonia: Re-interpreting the Ancient Sources, provided an exhaustive analysis of what the first gener-ations of Christians held their ministers to be.

This book challenges the present generation of Christians to identify and reclaim an authentic model of ministry in accord with the quality and authority of the first ministries.

Are All Christians Ministers? is for all those who are today laying claim to ministry as well as for those who are concerned to see that the church is suitably equipped with ministers.