Henry DeMoor

Come on, everybody, Article 25 of the Church Order uses the term "retire from office."  We all know what that means.  If we want to change that, fine, let's have an overture and we'll consider it.  In the meantime, these words mean exactly what they say.

......Argh.........

Harry,

Voting delegates come to synod with credentials signed by the classis they represent.  As an opening ceremony, synod uses a "Public Declaration" and delegates rise to express their agreement with the Reformed confessions.  This public declaration is currently under review with a possible modern version in the works.  In addition, these delegates must be officebearers and they have been obliged to sign the Form of Subscripton, now known as the Covenant for Officebearers, in the church they serve as ministers or elders.

Hope this helps.

The Church Order is really remarkably silent on the question you
raise. The number of elders required in a given church is really left
to the judgment of the consistory and council. The only functioning
principle is that the needs of the congregation must be met. In other
words, there should be a sufficient number of elders so that the
pastoral care "gets done." Family visiting once a year is another
goal in the Church Order, of course, and many churches can't even
manage that -- so they find other solutions. It still seems like a
laudable goal to me as long as elders can also be creative about it --
have lunch with somebody instead of insisting on meeting at their
home, for example. If indeed you are truly feeling that more folks
are needed to do the work of the elders properly, perhaps you should
increase the number of officebearers. Another possibility is to
reduce every district by a half -- if, indeed, you still work with
districts. In that case it's not really an issue of "job sharing" but
of being more realistic about how many folks are assigned to one
pastoral elder.

The only consequence of involving more people is that they really
should all be ordained and that ordination gives them the right to be
a member of the council and of the consistory. I don't know whether
you have administrative elders and pastoral elders distinguished in
your church, so I also don't know precisely how you configure the
council and the consistory. But the principle in the Reformed
tradition is definitely that anyone functioning as an elder should be
ordained. The only thing I've seen in other churches that departs
from that principle is to have, in addition to the elders, so called
associate elders or elders' assistants. They are people who are not
ordained but "commissioned" to their task and they do much of the
routine visiting under the guidance and supervision of the elders.
This might include visiting the shut-ins and elderly, having lunch
with young people, even joining an elder at a more traditional home
visit, and looking after birthday wishes, well-wishes for the sick,
return visits for the bereaved, etc. In that case people are not
officially ordained and therefore do not have a right to be seated at
the council or consistory table.

Much of this, in other words, is left to the discretion of the local
church and not regulated by the Church Order.

And let's not forget Articles 11 and 12 of the CRC Church Order (:-).

What should be added here is that the Church Order of the CRCNA leaves the matter of making judgments about the eligibility for office to the local council. Article 3 only specifies that it must be an adult confessing member who meets "the biblical requirements." It is not surprising, therefore, that synod has only rarely addressed the matter of who might be ineligible for the office of elder by reason of that person's vocation or career or job. The only discussions I have seen are those held years ago about Sunday labor and whether or not such Sunday labor is a "work of necessity." This was about nurses and milk delivery folk, etc. I have never run into any synodical statement on a person selling life insurance or doing network marketing.

The Church Order's latest version of Article 71 concerning Christian Education was fashioned after a thorough synodical study of the matter and reads as follows: "The council shall diligently encourage the members of the congregation to establish and maintain good Christian schools in which the biblical, Reformed vision of Christ's lordship over all creation is clearly taught. The council shall also urge parents to have their children educated in harmony with this vision according to the demands of the covenant."

So, elders must encourage establishment and maintenance of "good Christian schools." Elders do that in view of their own context. Sometimes it is simply not feasible, financially. Sometimes it is not necessary (I think of the public school in one town that was explicitly Christian and Reformed without anyone objecting). When no Christian education is available and establishment is impossible, the church should "amp up" its Church Education program so that this can supplement the public education being received. In any case, it is clear that the elders together in consistory make a judgment call as to how in their own context this "encouragement to establish and maintain" plays out. If good Christian schools are available, I do not doubt that the Church Order and synod basically asks elders to urge parents to have their children educated there and I understand people who say that the elders' urging is meaningless if they do not model what they urge.

What should be observed, however, is that eligibility for the office of elder is a judgment call on the part of every council. Article 3 of the Church Order indicates only that the person must be an adult confessing member and meet the "biblical requirements" for office. As we all know, such a requirement is not explicit in Scripture in the context of eligibility for office. Councils may wish to appeal to the "ruling your household well" and especially to the eminently clearer direction in our baptismal theology, Church Order and denominational ethos (including past studies and conclusions). But then they must also go on to decide in their own context on whether a person who does not send children to a good Christian school but, for example, to a public school, is nonetheless eligible to serve as an elder. I recall a situation in my own ministry career where an elder did that purely and entirely because services for his special needs child were not available in the Christian school system and where he and his wife as well as the church were "supplementing" what was happening in the public school in question. We made the judgment that the man was behind the principle of the CRCNA but had a legitimate "exemption" from the "requirement." A synodical study recently pointed out that home schooling is also a legitimate option. That would be an example of another "exemption." My point is that these judgments are never simple. If they are made to be simple, they are usually legalistic in character. An example of that is a recent decision of the Protestant Reformed synod that one who homeschools his children and does not send them to the Protestant Reformed school (only that one, not a CRC-related "good Christian school," because it doesn't meet the standard, presumably) may not serve in the office of minister of the Word.

My plea is twofold: one, that we respect the right of local councils to make judgments about eligibility for office and, two, that we respect the denomination's stance on Christian education as much as we possibly can.

No problem, Ken.  This clarifies what you're after well enough.  My immediate response to you would be to say that in I Corinthians 11:17-34 Paul gives the early church specific instructions to celebrate the supper in remembrance of Jesus' sacrifice and as a proclamation of his life-giving death.  This is being done already, in the early church throughout Palestine and Asia Minor, and also in Corinth, and this same Scripture passage makes it very clear that early Christians were already "abusing" the sacrament, eating and drinking, as Paul says, "in an unworthy manner."  So the need for some rules is evident there already.  Paul's rule is: examine yourself before you eat and drink.  Exercise some self-discipline.  And know who you are as a church: one united body of Christ in which there should be no divisions.  There are other such passages in the New Testament.

And then comes the "history lesson" in the years beyond the times of the Bible being written.  This lesson comes in many forms of how people misused the celebration of the Supper that was soon recognized as an official sacrament, one of the two prescribed by Jesus himself (the other, of course, being baptism in his name).  Church officials were to supervise the celebration in public worship.  Sometimes they didn't do this and things got out of hand.  At other times they did, but did it wrongly, so that the plain truth of the sacrament as an assurance of our salvation was not being experienced any longer.

That's why the Reformers spent much time with the sacrament.  You could read in our Belgic Confession of Faith and in the Heidelberg Catechism the sections on the sacrament, and you would soon see how the sixteenth-century Reformation sought to restore the sacrament to its rightful place in the worship of the church.  What these Reformers tried to accomplish in this way was also incorporated in the rules for worship: what we now call the Church Order.  Since then, we have from time to time added some rules, subtracted some rules, revised some rules, but always and only to keep the church celebrating the Lord's Supper with dignity and in true biblical fashion.

Like you, I think from what you have written, I sometimes wish that we could start it all over again, reset history, as it were, but that is futile.  We need now always to examine what Christians are doing and whether their practices are in keeping with the Scriptures.  That's the point of our rules: an ongoing Reformation, if you will.

The idea that assemblies should conduct some form of mutual censure regarding the conduct of delegates at their meetings is indeed praiseworthy.  i commend "dutchoven" for raising it.  I would love to hear from a variety of folk how this could be accomplished on a regular basis.  So, by all means, let us hear your opinions.

I will now only address the factual question as to why this pre-1965 Art. 43 was dropped.  When the first draft of the proposed revised Church Order was presented in the denominational publications and in the Agenda of Synod, 1957, this article was omitted and these Agenda do not indicate why it was now omitted.  At least, I can't find it addressed there.

So "dutchoven" has answered the question well.  The only clue comes from Van Dellen and Monsma's commentary (note: it is the third edition of 1954 that has this, not their Revised Church Order Commentary of 1965): "We may note with gratitude that we have really outgrown the need of Article 43, at least as far as its first provision is concerned.  Yet the article does no harm in our Church Order ...."  This observation comes after they relate some narratives about the kinds of "atrocious behaviors" that occurred in this respect in the sixteenth century.

Frankly, I think officers of classis and officers of synod have a pretty good handle on the continued need for this when we occasionally still bend in that direction and often urge assemblies in closing exercises to find unity in the Lord and to encourage the same when they return to their home congregations.  But if there's a good way to reinstate this more formally, I doubt anyone would truly object.

So let's hear from you on the way we do our business at classis and synod and how we mutually keep each other accountable.

Erik,

Your post was attached to a earlier posts on this.

You need to contact Darren Roorda at the CRC's Burlington, Ontario office.  I believe he can help you get a license which you will definitely need in order to do this legally.

On the matter of mutual censure at council meetings and the "mumbles" that people "have nothing," perhaps the following paragraph taken from my new Commentary on the Church Order (Article 36b) may be of assistance:

"There are ways in which councils could make mutual censure a more edifying experience. Councils could change the emphasis from scrutiny of the individual to communal self-examination.  Doctrine and life still have a bearing, but the focus is on the performance of official duties.  Councils could arrange for regularity of discussion but do away with the link to the Lord's Supper.  Mutual censure is more appropriate, say, after the reading of elders' and deacons' minutes and the pastor's report.  Councils could ask in what ways their fellow officebearers are meeting or not meeting the needs of the congregation.  They could use the time to adjust present goals and objectives, if necessary.  Councils could structure each occasion thematically.  They could focus on, say, evangelism, pastoral care, proclamation, benevolence, political awareness, church education, stewardship, or discipline, and discuss these matters in depth.  In preparing for a classis meeting or for the arrival of church visitors, councils could use the appropriate guides for these events to launch the discussion.  Councils could use this slot on the agenda to discuss needs of the congregation when a pastor leaves and a mandate for the search committee is to be drafted.  In any case, councils should never place the matter toward the end of a meeting.  They should take sufficient time for meaningful dialogue and focus on the positive as well as the negative."

David,

Looks like there's no "takers" so far.  So I'll respond and see if others want to join in on it.  Indeed, Article 4 provides that the council must provide the names of nominees and then the congregation chooses.  There are models other than election.  My commentary contains quite a number of them, but in all these models it is the council that nominates.  Council means: the minister(s), elders, and deacons combined.  This is confirmed in Art. 35a where approval of nominations is also said to be a part of the common administration of the church to be dealt with by the council.  Neither the consistory (minister and elders only) nor the diaconate has the right to "trump" the council's responsibility in any way.  So eligibility for office is also decided upon by the council (all local officebearers together).  So whether women are eligible in that local church or whether drinking alcohol is tolerated, etc. -- this is all up to the council.  The only thing some councils have done at times is to leave such an issue up to the congregation at a congregational meeting where adult confessing members vote.  They decide that eligibility issues like this is a "major matter" as Article 37 has it so they let the congregation decide it after they've recommended something like this.  Other councils have argued that this should not be decided "democratically" by the congregation (even though there may be an opportunity for members to express themselves on it) but by council that is ultimately responsible for the issue and this, says Article 37 also, is possible because the "authority for making and carrying out final decisions remains with the council as the governing body of the church."

Faith Alive Resources would appreciate it if you ran out and bought the commentary or your church decided to buy a copy for anybody to consult.  I don't make any $ on royalty, so this is strictly a matter of charity to your favorite publishing house!

Grace and peace,