ÆTHELWOLD'S CIRCLE did not just interact with nobles: they interacted with a wide variety of lay people, from townspeople in Winchester to enslaved dairymaids on their rural estates. The circle was very interested in pastoral care and in reforming the whole of society. Although some modern scholarship has assumed that Æthelwold and his associates were isolationists or were primarily focused on royal politics, Francesca Tinti and Christopher Riedel, among others, have shown that reformers planned for extensive pastoral engagements, pointing to the presence of baptismal fonts in reformed houses; the preaching and teaching to the laity found in texts by Ælfric, Lantfred, and others; references to monks attending the dying; and evidence for lay burials around Winchester, Ely, and other houses. Most members of the circle seem to have been qualified to participate in such activities, at least in theory: judging from the lists in the New Minster Liber Vitae, the majority of the members of the Old Minster, New Minster, and Ely were ordained, either as priests or leuitae (deacons). While ordination was no guarantee of engagement with a wider community, taken together with the evidence presented by Tinti and Riedel, the New Minster lists suggest that a large proportion of the circle's houses was at least qualified to be involved with these baptisms, burials, and other points of interaction with the rest of the population.

In addition to sacraments, there is also evidence that the circle invested time and expense into resources for the religious education of the laity at all levels, from Æthelwold's day onwards. Riedel has shown how Lantfred's Translatio functioned, in part, as a way to train monks to educate the laity. After all, reforming the behaviour of all Christians and of whole societies – not just clergy – was one of the reformers’ explicit aims.