Existence of clerics when god walks on earth

Question

When people believe in the same god, it is possible that they found church^*. And most churches have some clerics of various degree. But most religions have some clerics, even if they are not organised rigorously.

These clerics may say how to believe in their god, or even try to explain god's words. I like Pratchett's sentence about belief from the book Small Gods, which I read in the Czech language, so I am not sure if I can translate it fully correctly:

Belief, he says. Belief shifts. People start out believing in the god and end up believing in the structure - and god dies because nobody believes in him.

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All that I wrote above is for gods that are only in the heads of people.

But how could clerics work in a world where gods walk among people (like The Visitor and The Nature from my world)?

^*: for example eastern religions are mostly more philosophical way than classical religion. But I don't know much about them.

Answer 1

Take the current catholic church and the old testament Jewish religion as examples. Both have/had a "direct access to God" kind of leader, and both are too large for all to meet with or learn under that one person. So they create a layered structure, where everything trickles down from the top, and the average follower has multiple layers of clergy between him/her and the top.

Answer 2

Exactly the same as they do in worlds where their god does not walk among them.

Unless the god is able to be everywhere, all the time, and both able and willing to interact with its worshipers on a one-on-one basis, there is still value in having a class of people tasked with teaching everyone else what to believe and how to worship, and with transmitting and explaining the god's pronouncements.

Answer 3

My best suggestion? Look at the staff that follows teen pop stars. It'd probably be very similar to that. They'd be less about belief and more about maintaining the deities image, I suspect, as well as managing mundane affairs for the deity.

Answer 4

Take a look at the life and works of Sathya Sai Baba. He was acknowledged as a god, or at the very least a man with divine qualities, by many of his many followers. He lived in a specific place (places, actually) where people came to see him, to be near him, to hear him speak, to touch him and witness his supposed miracles. As a god, Sai Baba was believed to have the power of bilocation, that is, of being in two places at once, which was "confirmed" by several witnesses, as well as clairvoyance and materialization. So he was a god on Earth, who walked among the people and who supposedly could see everywhere, be anywhere and create objects at will.

Yet Sai Baba had to set up an organization. He had people build several ashrams for his use, and people who tended to the thousand of visitors he received, and of course many people who took his "teachings" and collected them in books or in audio tapes, or simply repeated them to other people, via live speech or Facebook picture posts. Some of these people have made careers out of this; some are officially recognized by the leaders of the worldwide Sai Baba organization.

Note that all of the above is independent of whether you believe in Sai Baba, whether he's truly a god or not, and whether he could've managed without help or not.

This is just one of several, possibly many, real-life models you can study to understand how even a real god might need a priestly class, or at least an official recognized helper class.