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CHICAGO STUDIES
members of his body, It is not some unexplained spiritual force, nor is it confined to extraordinary displays. Rather it is directly related to Jesus and permeates the everyday life of the Christian community. Since grace ( charis) is the new sphere which man enters through God's saving action, the various charisms become the manifestation and individuation of that grace. Thus every structure or office which arises out of the concrete needs of the church can only be seen as auxiliary or secondary to that charismatic structure which is the very foundation of the church. Charisms do not exist for the individual's glorification but are directed to the service of others. The catechist of our time is charged with understanding and explaining Christian faith -something to which he is already existentially committed. The catechist's service arises from his charism for the building up of the Christian community and must be viewed as a unique instance of that ministry of the word which was exercised in the eat'liest church by apostles, prophets, teachers and evan:gelists. We will only understand catechesis in the 20th century if we have grasped the biblical notion of the ministry of the word as first of all and fundamentally a charism flowing from the power of Christ. MINISTERS OF THE WORD
Of all the figures responsible for the books of the New Testament the only one about whom we have more than a smattering of autobiographical information is the apostle Paul. Something of a storm-center in the early church, Paul was forced on several occasions to present defenses of his apostleship in reply to attacks from those within and those outside the church. What is especially significant for our theme is that Paul conceived his own ministry as fundamentally a ministry of the word, and so we can glimpse how an individual in the decisive years of the church's spread through the Mediterranean world understood and explained this kind of ministry. While he presents striking apologies for his activity in Gal 1-2 and 2 Cor 10-13, I have chosen to analyze Paul's statement in 1 Thes 2 :1-16 because it is his earliest (written in the early 50's of the 1st century) and perhaps moot compact reflection on the ministry of the word.