How Does Presbyterian Government WorK?
Posted on Friday, September 28th, 2007 at 10:51 am
After the last blog there may be some of you who have been wondering how our church government actually works, particularly here at the seminary. Please let me give you a thumbnail description of the Presbyterian system of government as it is practiced in the PCA and at Knox Theological Seminary.
First, the seminary, its students and its professors are under the control of the board of directors. The faculty does not have tenure at Knox and can be let go for moral indiscretion or theological error, which is defined as teaching that is not in conformity with the Westminster Confession. Knox is proudly a confessional school. We are not independent, but are bound by the confession of our denomination; the Westminster Confession and the shorter and larger catechism. If you would like to see these documents, see http://www.reformed.org/documents/wcf_with_proofs/
The board is not an end unto itself however; it is answerable to the session of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church. The session of any Presbyterian church is made up of a group of elders. These elders are of two kinds: teaching and ruling. A teaching elder is a minister, and a ruling elder is a man who has shown himself to be of good faith and Godly character who will represent the congregation in a Godly manner. The church is thus governed in a representative style of government similar to the United States. One elects elders to represent the congregation and the elders (grouped together and called the session) make many (though not all) of the decisions for the church.
The session is not an end to itself; it is answerable to the Presbytery. The Presbytery is comprised of the elders from the churches of a geographical area. Our Presbytery is South Florida and is comprised of the east coast from south Miami to Boca Raton. Every three months, each of the teaching elders from the churches and some of the ruling elders come together to discuss the business of the entire Presbytery. If a session has been out of order on any issue, the issue may be appealed to Presbytery who, if it decides to hear the matter, may either affirm or overrule what the particular session has done.
The Presbytery is not an end to itself; it is answerable to the General Assembly. The General Assembly or GA meets once a year and is comprised of elders from each Presbytery. If a session is concerned about the ruling that a Presbytery has made, it may be appealed to GA (the court of last appeal). GA may then decide to hear or not hear the appeal and upon hearing may uphold or overturn the decision of any Presbytery.
Why, you might ask, is there such need for this kind of court system? At least two reasons: First, this seems to be the kind of government that the early church practiced in the book of Acts and the Epistles of Paul. The early churches were ruled by a plurality of elders and these elders came together to rule on theological issues. Second, we are all totally depraved. Since we are so sinful, no one of us should have too much power. There should always be someone to whom we are accountable. Many, many of the problems in churches come about because the minister has too much power and becomes tempted by it. This should not happen (though it can, when things fall through the cracks) in the Presbyterian Church.
We have a BOOK OF CHURCH ORDER that tells us how things are to be conducted, how weddings, funerals, baptisms, and other things are to be done. It tells us how church trials are to be handled. It is when this book is not followed correctly, or worse is ignored that our churches find themselves in trouble.
I hope that this very small explanation of how the Presbyterian system of government works has been helpful to you. I am sure that many of you already understood all of this, but there might be one or two who did not.
Thanks for reading,
DrSamLam
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Comments
1Greg:Friday, September 28th, 2006 at 1:12 pm
Dear Sam,
If we did a pop quiz this Sunday covering the information you outlined in this article, the majority would fail. Thank you for loving us enough to educate us. If anyone has a problem with how things are done, there are procedures that may be employed to make your voice heard. This is not true of all forms of church government; we are richly blessed to be Presbyterians. But nothing happens automatically, except decay. Put more in and you will get more out. Don’t be a consumer, be a producer.
It’s easy to be critical. You can do that from a Lazyboy. However, if we are not willing to get out of the chair and help carry the load ... we must consider ourselves part of the burden.
2Helmut Schmidt:Sunday, September 30th, 2006 at 8:26 pm
If I understand our government correctly, a session cannot pass judgment on whether a pastor is confessional. Pastors are members of the presbytery not the local congregation and therefore must be judged on such doctrinal matters by the presbytery.
3Dr. Amanuensis:Sunday, September 30th, 2006 at 10:13 pm
Brother (Chancellor?) Schmidt,
I would not say you were so much “incorrect” in your understanding, as incomplete. The Book of Church Order, Part II, does provide for special rules pertaining to “pastors” (a/k/a teaching elders) at Chapter 34 (see also, 13-9a.). This chapter sets forth the procedures when “process” is to be entered against a teaching elder and this is indeed before the Presbytery, not the Session.
On the other hand, a teaching elder is paid/employed by the church he serves and he has a fiduciary, inter alia, responsibility to that church. His employer, if you will, is the church (not the Presbytery) and the church is run by the Session (which is corporately speaking a board of directors). That church, in turn, has a very important fiduciary duty to its members in the hiring and retention of employees. This places the teaching elder, in one sense, in direct submission to the Session which is well within their bounds to place any reasonable restrictions on his employment. It would be a very reasonable requirement for employment in a reformed church to insist upon an employee’s submission to the “The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church in America, which is subject to and subordinate to the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, the inerrant Word Of God, consists of its doctrinal standards set forth in the Westminster Confession of Faith, together with the Larger and Shorter Catechisms, and the Book of Church Order, comprising the Form of Government, the Rules of Discipline and the Directory for Worship; all as adopted by the Church.” (BCO, Preface, Art. III.) That a Session may require certain confessional standards of its ministerial employees is also consistent with Article II of the Preface to the BCO which specifically notes that “every Christian Church . . . is entitled to declare the terms of admission into its communion and the qualifications of its ministers . . . as well as the whole system of its internal government which Christ has appointed.” If a session can require adherence to doctrinal matters, it can certainly judge that adherence as well.
At least, that is my understanding.
4Mark:Tuesday, October 2nd, 2006 at 10:24 am
But Mr. Schmitt’s point stands as far as making a public pronouncement on a Minister’s orthodoxy. The Session and the board could have parted ways with Gage over issues, but they had no business accusing him or even hearing accusations against him the way they did. They could have pressed charges against him before presbytery or they could have made a decision whether or not to keep him. But the accusations that were made (now being publicized in all their vividness on the internet) had no business being considered by the session.
The session acted like a congregational body. I’m glad they protected Gage from what the Board was saying, but the entire process was entirely unpresbyterian as it was described here.