In Anglicanism, a licensed lay minister (LLM) or lay reader (in some jurisdictions simply reader) is a person authorised by a bishop to lead certain services of worship (or parts of the service), to preach and to carry out pastoral and teaching functions. They are formally trained and admitted to the office, but they remain part of the laity, not of the clergy.

From the third century the office of reader (or lector) became recognised as one of the minor orders of the clerical state. Candidates for ordained ministry (as deacons and priests) were first admitted to the sequence of minor orders, including that of lector or reader. The minor orders have been largely absent from the Anglican Church since the Reformation (with some localised exceptions) and in the Roman Catholic Church they have also been suppressed. However, the "ministry of reader" (in the Roman Catholic Church) and the office of reader or lay reader (in the Anglican Church) represent a continuation of the reader tradition.

The office of Reader has existed in its present form since 1866. Reader ministry was originally restricted to men only. The first female readers were licensed during the First World War due to the shortage of men. The first group of women admitted were called "bishop's messengers" and they existed in 22 dioceses in England and one diocese in Canada. After the war there was a gap until 1969 when more female readers were appointed.

There are now many thousands of readers in the Anglican churches, including around ten thousand in the Church of England and around 300 in the Church of Ireland. They are equally split between women and men.

In the Roman Catholic Church, candidates for ordination as a deacon must first have been admitted to the ministry of reader (Canon 1035). Whilst Anglican canon law has no such requirement, the canons of some provinces of the Anglican Communion allow for ordination candidates to be admitted as readers as part of their preparation for ordination as a deacon; this practice is common, for example, in the Church of Ireland where ordination candidates so admitted are known as student readers; the student reader's licence permits them to serve in any diocese rather than being bound (as in the case of diocesan readers) solely to the diocese of their licensing bishop.

Following a Church of England working party report to the General Synod in 2009 most English dioceses have adopted the term "licensed lay minister".

Where the terms "reader" and "lay reader" are still in common use, they are largely interchangeable. The original term in the Church of England was simply "reader", but "lay reader" is an early and common colloquialism, which has come to have official force in some parts of the Anglican Communion.

In the Church of England the governing Canon E5 still references the office by the single word "reader". In the Scottish Episcopal Church the governing Canon 20 always refers to the office by the two-word term "lay reader". In the Church of Ireland the generic term used is "reader", but usually qualified as "diocesan reader" or, in the case of those admitted as part of their preparation for ordination, "student reader" (see above).