Pastor, do your church officers grasp the significance conferred on them in their ordination?
Church member, do you hold your church officers in appropriate esteem and prayerful support?
I grew up in a church dominated by clergy, where the pew people followed slavishly the enlightened clerics. When I later learned how my church’s history was riddled with episodes and eras of heresy and corruption, it was easy to see how that had happened. An unaccountable clique of ministerial leaders will derail the orthodoxy, integrity, and ministry of the church.
After leaving that monolithic denomination, I spent a dozen years participating in independent churches run by the members, where ministers were hired and fired at will and the pastors followed slavishly the voices of the congregation’s dominant powerbrokers.
When I finally was hired onto a Presbyterian church staff and was taken under care of the Session and presbytery, ordination exam preparations opened before me the Book of Order. As I read that book, I kept shivering with excitement at the the genius of the Presbyterian system.
What is that genius? It’s the way leadership, authority, and accountability are shared equally by our ordained ministers, elders, and deacons.
Let’s face it. Sinfulness begets ignorance and spiritual blindness. To address that, God has been revealed to us in Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit has inscribed God’s laws on the tablets of our hearts. We have been granted the mind of Christ. Still, we all see through the glass dimly.
How do we differentiate the mind of Christ from our own sin-twisted thinking? And how can we even imagine our way into an accurate interpretation of God’s will in our local congregational ministries and in our broader witness, given the thousands of ways we can miss God’s intentions?
The Episcopal system entrusts its bishops – a ministerial hierarchy – to solve it all.
The congregational system entrusts the congregation – a pure democracy – to figure it out.
We Presbyterians observe another approach in the structure of the early church: the ordaining of elders and deacons — some formally trained theologians primarily employed in congregational ministry, others who bring gifts and skills developed in their more commercial or professional vocations to the service of the church. And here’s the critical key: they serve as equals.
Once ordained and installed into office, the elders and deacons seek God’s will together. They work side-by-side in service, they promote the discipleship and spiritual disciplines of all the members, they serve the other congregation and mission outreaches in their region and around the world, and they hold one another accountable in each other’s exercise of spiritual leadership. Together they also serve in the higher governing bodies of the church, spreading ripples of influence throughout the larger body of Christ.
As I read the Book of Order that first time, biblical references kept ringing bells in my mind. I fell in love with the concept and the specific mechanisms for implementation of the Presbyterian ecclesiology. And I became fanatically committed to promote it.
Of course, the actual effectiveness of this system of church governance requires constant reconsideration, reformulation, and retraining. Is the minister serving as a humble pastor-theologian, or as a czar? Are the elders prayerfully discerning and implementing God’s plan, or are they acting like a board of directors? Are the deacons serving the needs of the congregation and community or simply as “go-fors”?
This special edition of the Outlook offers our pastors, elders, and deacons a host of insights, resources, and tips to enhance and challenge their work. Please read it carefully and ask not only how you can apply these ideas, but ask who else might benefit – from such study.
The Reformed and Presbyterian church movement brought to western Christianity a radical and amazing innovation when it revived the practice of ordaining elders and deacons. Let’s live out together that radical calling!
— JHH
