Three imperatives in the life of the church
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Joan Gray responded to a series of questions published in a booklet distributed to commissioners and advisory delegates prior to the convening of the 217th General Assembly. Here’s the Moderator’s response to the question:
What do you consider the most important aspect of our polity?
John Calvin had the radical idea that lay people could actually run the church. Over against more than a thousand years of clergy-dominated church life, Calvin and those who came after him envisioned a system in which clergy and elected laity make decisions together. In my estimation the single most significant fact of our polity is that in the session, elders always outnumber clergy. The practical result is that few churches will ever rise above the level of their elders.
Based on this reality, I see three imperatives in the life of the church.
First, we must take officer training seriously. No investment of a pastor’s time pays bigger dividends in long-term church health than that invested in officer training. Ten hours of training each year is a bare minimum.
If we want strong churches, we must train our officers with as much prayer, creativity, and energy as we can muster.
Second, we must challenge our officers to claim their role as spiritual leaders. The elders of old were spiritual leaders, and the pastor sat on the session as a spiritual leader among spiritual leaders. Somewhere along the way, we lost this.
Today most Presbyterian elders would be genuinely shocked at the suggestion that they too are spiritual leaders. The idea that their primary task is to seek God’s will and lead the church to do it is foreign to them. They defer to the pastor, who is expected to be spiritual enough for everybody. We must make the training of lay people for spiritual leadership and discernment of God’s will in community a priority. Until this neglected art is revived, churches will continue to flounder and even the most gifted Presbyterian pastors will be frustrated.
Third, we need to reinvent the congregation’s officer nominating committee. It is a sad fact that many a nominating committee functions as a recruiting committee to fill slots with warm bodies. In reality the task of the nominating committee in each congregation should be to discern which members of that church have the spiritual gifts, graces, character, talents and willingness to be servant leaders, ordained or unordained.
The truest purpose of our polity is to help local congregations be as healthy and vibrant as possible to carry forth God’s mission in the world at the highest level. Everything in the Book of Order is ultimately tied to this expectation. Until we start reaping the leadership gifts of our laity, ordained or unordained, we will not fulfill this purpose.
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