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LMT Key considerations
1. The Local Ministry Team is collectively "the Minister"
Usually one of the LMT members will be the moderator or chair of the parish council or session, another the ministerial representative on the Presbytery or UDC, and another authorised and trained to preside at communion and conduct baptisms. There may also be a person on the team with special responsibility for pastoral care or parish administration, or they may be leaders outside the LMT itself.
2. The LMT is not the whole leadership team; it is usually about 3 or 4 people.
There is still a wider leadership group of elders and parish councillors with specific responsibilities. The LMT may all be on the parish council or session, but they are not the whole of the parish council or session. There are roles such as worship leaders, music leaders, parish administrators, youth leaders, who may be part of the wider team as they would in a congregation with a standard Minister.
3. Members of the LMT should not feel obliged to go to everything.
This can be quite hard as they will probably want to and sometimes it is unavoidable, but unless some meetings and events are deliberately attended by only one member of the LMT, team members will be quickly overloaded in their time commitment. Division of duties is important.
4. Communication and co-ordination within the team, with the team and others in parish leadership, and with the congregation as a whole, are very important.
Think about how often the LMT should meet, what forms of communication work best (e.g., updates in parish newsletter, monthly reports to parish leadership), and what duty rosters (including worship) are needed to make sure that people know what they are supposed to be doing.
5. Ecumenical requirements and words are similar but different, and ecumenical sensitivities should be respected.
Those in CVs know this already! There are slight differences in terminology and some concerns to be navigated. A Presbyterian LMT is an Anglican or CV Ministry Support Team. A Presbyterian Resource Minister is an Anglican or CV Ministry Enabler. A Cooperating Venture may find that there is difficulty with Presbyterian authorisation of ordained elders to preside at Communion and needs to make other provision. Presbyteries may decide to ordain rather than just commission in this situation. This would be necessary in any case if the person called to sacramental leadership was a parish councillor not an elder.
For Presbyterians the Resource Minister (Ministry Enabler) is not part of the line of authority to higher courts of the church (that is provided by the LMT member and the parish elder on Presbytery), and as a result a Presbytery may appoint a suitable Resource Minister who is not ordained. This may be different for other churches.