Ordination and ministry may seem like a strange tension — one not really “tense” at all. After all, isn’t “ministry” what those who are ordained do? But therein lies the problem and the tension. In fact, the answer to that question is: Ministry is what the whole people of God do, not just the ordained. Consider this language from the second chapter of the Form of Government (G-2.0102) on ordination: “The Church’s ordered ministries described in the New Testament and maintained by this church are deacons and presbyters (teaching elders and ruling elders). Ordered ministries are gifts to the church to order its life so that the ministry of the whole people of God may flourish. The existence of these ordered ministries in no way diminishes the importance of the commitment of all members to the total ministry of the church.” Do you notice the insistence that ordination exists so that “the ministry of the whole people of God may flourish”? That sentence goes to the heart of our … [Read more...]

  Most of us who have lived through the ordination and sexuality wars of past decades know the phrase “mutual forbearance.” Fewer of us know that it’s actually part of the Book of Order — F-3.0105, to be precise. Fewer still know that it’s the second half of one of the oldest and most important tensions in Presbyterian life, and that tension, we believe, ought to characterize all religious life. In the early decades of the 18th century, colonial Presbyterianism was engaged in a controversy between those in the Scots-Irish tradition who insisted that ministers strictly subscribe to the Westminster Confession and Catechisms, and those in New England who believed that individual conscience could not be bound by anything other than Scripture and the Spirit. The Synod of Philadelphia in 1729 struck what it thought was a compromise, called the Adopting Act, which required ministers to subscribe to “the necessary articles” of Westminster, but also granted some freedom of … [Read more...]