I realize that I raise some very uncomfortable issues for some people. For example, when I suggest that elders rather than preachers should pronounce the blessing and benediction, I am certain that many people are uncomfortable. The reason I suspect they are uncomfortable, is that I have not yet heard anyone disagreeing with that statement, nor agreeing with it either. So my guess is that they know that I am right, that there is no reason why elders could not do so; yet, they do not want to state their agreement either, because they somehow "feel" that a preacher should do those things. There is little knowledge, and much custom and superstition attached to some of these practices. We live in a way as to contradict our confessions and our church order (which contradicts itself). We do so in ignorance and superstition, which is tolerated and encouraged by many preachers and pastors, because they want the trappings and aura that our human customs brings. I believe that has reduced the strength and witness of our churches, and has encouraged the "dumbing down" of our membership.
I would be surprised that I will get a significant response to even this single point. Even though I am willing to consider other perspectives.
A couple of things to look at and evaluate critically:
Should it be required and expected that paid staff from the churches attend the Classis meeting? Perhaps it should only be elders and deacons, with no requirement for the pastors to attend, or at least not vote. And not speak unless by special request of their council reps. Some denominations operate this way.
Perhaps pastors should have their own separate meetings, dealing not with governance, policy, appeals, etc., but with pastoral issues.
Perhaps one classis meeting per year, and one synodical meeting every two years would be a more admirable goal, rather than this great preoccupation with synodicalism.
Perhaps fewer doctrines rather than more, would be admirable and desireable. Thus we could read and appreciate other confessions, and would not spend great deals of time and reams of paper discussing whether our great crc edifice should approve, adopt, or place its stamp of approval on someone else's confession. Instead, we could concentrate on encouraging christian education in our culture, witnessing to the increasing numbers of mexicans who enter the USA and Canada and who have been so misled by a perverted version of roman catholicism, and focus on establishing bible camps for children and christian radio for our travelling congregation members.
The larger the group, the smaller the percentage of people will talk. For larger groups, make sure you have mikes available throughout the room and people to bring the mikes to those who might want to say something. Perhaps use chairs rather than pews... chairs are moveable. And make sure people can move around, so have lots of aisles. If possible even 50 or more people can be seated in a circle perhaps with double or triple rows of chairs.
But the belhar is not a restorative justice issue, it is a paper issue of trying to adopt or sign something. A legitimate restorative issue would be a question like, are certain neigborhoods going down the drain because of who is renting homes there, and how do we react? or do we care more about the unknown in the foreign missions than we do about those who are different than us but who live nearby? Do we spend more time ministering to those at our economic level than to those who are wealthier or poorer? Have you been hurt by (and now distrust) a certain group of people? Has your safe church policy created an attitude of mistrust, and what can we do about it? Those kinds of things.
Perhaps your main question is: would it be harder to find elders if they felt pressure to preach a sermon once or twice in their lifetime, or once or twice a year, depending on circumstances? The question then needs to be asked, why would they be so reluctant? Who taught them to be so reluctant? As elders, they are supposed to be apt to teach. They are supposed to be able to teach and lead their households, and the household of faith. That is a main qualification. If they are reluctant to preach, are we putting unrealistic expectations on them? Do they not then have the respect they should have? Are they putting their confidence in earthly powers rather than in the power of Christ and his spirit?
The example you give of some small churches which has difficulty finding elders because they are expected to lead a service occasionally, not even write a sermon. And you say most professing adults would not feel comfortable with it. Its hard to imagine such a church; perhaps it is a brand-new church plant?
We have a small 25 year old church with only four council members. At least seven men take turns leading services and reading sermons, and i'm quite sure more would if asked. Many others take turns leading singing, children's stories, etc.
Perhaps you are referring to a church where everyone is over seventy years old, and is afraid to read?
But leading a church service, when necessary, is like feeding your children, or your neighbor's children. If you are asked to do it, you cannot in good christian conscience turn away like the levite and the priest did when the beaten traveller was lying along the road. If you cannot do this how can you be an elder? If you refuse to do this, how can you be an elder, much less a serving fellow christian who is part of the body of Christ?
If the requirement to lead and teach (which is a form of preaching) or expectation is removed from the elders, and it is only then that they will serve, do they really have the qualifications necessary? I am referring to spiritual qualifications, not to academic qualifications.
Preaching or leading services or reading sermons is not a performance. It is a spiritual service.
How do they become "equipped"? They learn by doing. Just like new parents having their first baby. First, let them read some scripture. Maybe next time let them read a prayer. Next time, let them prepare their own prayer. Next time, read a sermon. Then encourage them to read again, perhaps lead a bible study even once. Maybe after that write some liturgy, or write a sermon with some help. I don't say they should be expected to write sermons every week, or even lead bible studies every week. And if they write a sermon, it should be read and cleared first by a preacher or elder or consistory. But they should understand what it is and what is involved, because otherwise how can they understand to lead, or to share the gospel with others?
I don't thinnk it should be a requirement to write a sermon, for a person to be an elder. But it should be actively encouraged. Presently, we discourage it. This is against the message of scripture, and against what Jesus and the apostles would encourage us to do. It also makes for spiritually lazy elders, and spiritually ignorant elders.
Sometimes their wives might help them. Other times a friend or fellow elder or former elder or a preacher. In the end, learn by doing. A long process? That depends on the will and the effort. You are right that it will take some time to counter the clergy-laity exclusivity that the institutional church has institutionalized. In spite of the reformation, human nature drags us back to worshipping human beings rather than God. Or we worship academic education, or ceremony. Or titles. Ask yourself if this is scriptural. If it is godly. If it is edifying.
And if even the elders are afraid to lead, to bring scripture to friendly christians, then why should we be surprised that so many non-elders do not share the gospel, so many children fall away, and so many neighbors do not hear the word of the Lord?
Elizabeth, I appreciate your comments. They express a common perspective held by many. The problem is that we often seem to be "explaining' away the language of the church order. We turn good intentions into rules and regulations rather than suggestions and advice. This displays a lack of respect for individual congregations, and for local councils.
Certainly there are many reasons for congregations working together. Although in reality there also appear many reasons for some congregations to cut ties with a larger body. We need to be aware of when the congregations can work together, and when they need and require their individual ability to carry out their responsibilities.
We have a conundrum in our language when we describe ministry shares. We don't want to use the term "suggested contribution", and yet, that is what it is, since some churches meet it, others do not, and others exceed it. We implicitly admit they are not taxes or membership dues, but sometimes fail to be polite or considerate or respectful of the local church's responsibility to decide how to allocate its resources to various ministries, including ministry shares.
Elders and deacons will participate in classis when items are not couched in incomprehensible language, when shop talk and the club atmosphere that many pastors engender in classis and synod is eliminated, and when pastors encourage elders to speak, rather than pastors trying to imitate lawyers in their admittedly sometimes humorous and witty repartee. Classis is not a forum for pastors to outdo one another in their procedural acumen, or verbal gymnastics.
Over protection of our churches leads to churches without leaders, and to sick dependency on organizational structures, rather than on the Lord. I am not aware of an eleventh commandment anywhere that commands us to protect churches from trouble. We should provide the opportunity to help one another. We should also realize that rules initially intended to help and protect one another have unintended consequences to the spiritual maturity of the congregations. Too many rules makes the congregations progressively less mature in their spiritual lives. Eventually too many just live by the man-made rules and forgo making any significant decisions on their own.
I am not saying that common goals or hymnals or missions or relief organization is a bad thing. But we are always looking to add rules, rather than remove them, and we have professionalized the calling of the preacher, too much. We have created class distinctions and occupational distinctions that do not serve the cause of Christ.
Am I wrong or is it really true that we could not have classis and synod without the local churches? In other words, it is at the local church level that the huge majority of activity and life happens. This is where the word is preached, where catechism is taught, where songs are sung, where prayers are done, where people worship, where money is gathered. This is where communion happens, and where baptism happens, and sunday school reaches the children, and where bible studies, and choir, and cadets, and gems. This is where the grass is cut, where toilets are cleaned, and cookies are served with coffee and juice, where bulletins are printed, and where potlucks and visiting occurs.
This is where real governance happens on a weekly and daily basis. Where elders decide who will preach next, who will do the nursing home and senior's lodge services, and which community events the church will participate in. Where the church decides what preacher to call, which deacons to install, the carpet in the hall, the ministry in the mall. Where they decide which properties to buy, which mortgage to sign, which contractor to hire, which preacher to resign.
So does the church order reflect this? Or is the church order not really a church order at all, but a denominational order, a denominational guide? If you looked at the church order, and divided it by topics, would these topics be an accurate reflection of what a church should be focussing its attention on. Or is it telling us something about the health of our denomination because of the focus of the document.
Again I say, find a way to reduce the document length by half, by consolidating, removing, reducing. You will be amazed how much healthier the whole denomination will become.
As far as baptism and weddings, these are separate issues. If a justice of the peace can perform a wedding, then it is obvious that the ability to preach is not required in order to perform a wedding. This is a separate issue from the issue of elder leadership. However, there is no legal requirement even in the church order to prevent an elder from giving a message or preaching at a wedding, is there? And in a cursory look at the church order, I did not even see a reference there to ministers conducting weddings in the tasks section, but I probably missed it?
Baptism should be understood well by every elder. It is a basic sacrament. It does not require a PHD or a degree to understand it or explain it. If an elder does not understand it, how did they become an elder? Is it made more sacred by preventing elders from administering baptism? Does scripture demand that elders be ipso facto prevented from administering baptism?
I understand we want to make sure that preaching, and baptism, and communion meals do not become misused or abused. At one time, we did not allow people from other denominations to participate in lord's supper (we "guarded" the table, which some reformed churches still do). Then we examined people briefly before the communion service. Today, it is mostly a matter of a warning from the pulpit that goes along with the invitation for born again christians to participate. It is unlikely that preaching or baptism or lord's supper will be abused simply because elders do it, no more than when pastors do it today, as long as there is reasonable supervision by church councils.
Sometimes people give legal consent when they shouldn't be giving consent. It is all nice to figure out what the government says about consent, but what does scripture say about consent. Is it okay to give consent to fornication? to pre-marital sex? To pornography? At any age? I'm amused by those stores that advertise "adult" videos, which means not just restricted, but actual porn. A more accurate label would be "immature adult" videos.
Too much preocuppation with things like the laws of consent, when you are speaking in the context of the body of Christ, means that you will treat the laws of consent with more authority than they deserve. Rather than becoming restrictive, these laws become permissive, allowing young unmarried girls and boys to consent to stuff even though Christ would want them not to consent to it.
We are not unplugged here. But we have taken a similar step on a different issue. We have disconnected our TV from any and all channels. We use it only for videos, mostly DVDs. It changes our family environment by making TV a family event, constrained by our time and decisions, rather than directing our lives. And since about 90% of TV is deleterious for children, and not much better for adults, it removes the temptations, and gives us more time for networking, phoning, visiting, learning, and being productive. The news is available on the internet, whenever you want it.
One of our Sunday school classes this year had the objective for every child (age 9-11) to learn the books of the Bible by heart. I think it is a good tool for them in their confidence about the Bible as a whole.
As a small church, we have generally stopped having elections for elders and deacons. Rather, we have affirmation votes by the congregation. We do not seem to have difficulty finding elders even though we have never had females for nomination. I think possibly the reason, is that elders are seen to be leaders, and are respected for their work. The fact that they are elders does not mean that they stop being sunday school teachers, lead services in the seniors home, join in with the band or choir, or whatever else they are doing. As elders and deacons, they are expected to be leaders, to teach, to pray, to lead services, to decide on offerings and promote mission efforts, to take responsibility for various activities, to make decisions. They may or may not make home visits, but their decision is basically respected. Perhaps the role of elders and former elders in leading services, reading or preparing sermons also helps to highlight the role of elders, as this happens often in our church; between 25-50% of services are led by elders/deacons.
More respect for the office of elder might help. For example, there is no biblical reason why elders could not administer Lord's supper without the help of a paid pastor. There is no biblical reason for not encouraging more elders to lead bible studies and prepare sermons (under guidance of consistory). There is an overabundance of distinctions made between the role of pastors/ministers and the role of elders, and this is unscriptural, and leads to an abandonment of christian leadership responsibility.
One of the distinctions is that "miniisters' have a lifelong calling while 'elders" do not. This is artificial, unbiblical, elitist, and makes it seem that elders can barely carry out their duties for two or three years before begging for relief. While there may be some benefit to having on-duty and off-duty elders, there is no scriptural basis for removing them from office simply because time has run out or they will not be required to attend meetings, or re-installing them as if being re-ordained, simply because they are again attending meetings.
I've been at churches where the preachers do not administer the Lord's Supper, but elders do that instead. And at churches where as many as four or five other people (possibly elders/deacons) will lead in prayers and where elders give the blessing and benediction, rather than the pastor. This reinforces the respect for the office of elder, which is really the office that receives the most attention in scripture in the new testament. (Not the office of pastor.) And all offices are referred to as ministries (service), not just the preacher/pastor.
Posted in: Classis and Church Order
I realize that I raise some very uncomfortable issues for some people. For example, when I suggest that elders rather than preachers should pronounce the blessing and benediction, I am certain that many people are uncomfortable. The reason I suspect they are uncomfortable, is that I have not yet heard anyone disagreeing with that statement, nor agreeing with it either. So my guess is that they know that I am right, that there is no reason why elders could not do so; yet, they do not want to state their agreement either, because they somehow "feel" that a preacher should do those things. There is little knowledge, and much custom and superstition attached to some of these practices. We live in a way as to contradict our confessions and our church order (which contradicts itself). We do so in ignorance and superstition, which is tolerated and encouraged by many preachers and pastors, because they want the trappings and aura that our human customs brings. I believe that has reduced the strength and witness of our churches, and has encouraged the "dumbing down" of our membership.
I would be surprised that I will get a significant response to even this single point. Even though I am willing to consider other perspectives.
Posted in: Classis and Church Order
A couple of things to look at and evaluate critically:
Should it be required and expected that paid staff from the churches attend the Classis meeting? Perhaps it should only be elders and deacons, with no requirement for the pastors to attend, or at least not vote. And not speak unless by special request of their council reps. Some denominations operate this way.
Perhaps pastors should have their own separate meetings, dealing not with governance, policy, appeals, etc., but with pastoral issues.
Perhaps one classis meeting per year, and one synodical meeting every two years would be a more admirable goal, rather than this great preoccupation with synodicalism.
Perhaps fewer doctrines rather than more, would be admirable and desireable. Thus we could read and appreciate other confessions, and would not spend great deals of time and reams of paper discussing whether our great crc edifice should approve, adopt, or place its stamp of approval on someone else's confession. Instead, we could concentrate on encouraging christian education in our culture, witnessing to the increasing numbers of mexicans who enter the USA and Canada and who have been so misled by a perverted version of roman catholicism, and focus on establishing bible camps for children and christian radio for our travelling congregation members.
Just a thought, or two....
Posted in: Classis and Church Order
I'm not sure it is useful to define congregationalism, dutchoven. It
would be a bit of a diversion of the issue, a discussion of a word, rather
than an implimentation of an idea. For myself, I realize that
congregations are churches, and no individual congregation is the church
by itself. But then, neither is one single denomination. I prefer, and I
think our church order recognizes that the authority originates at the
congregational level, and resides in the consistory/council. I simply
maintain that more respect should be given to that knowledge. I know that
most classies do take the local churches seriously, but the church order
has written in its language certain things that do not respect that local
authority. The fact that a majority of churches may have agreed to do
this, does not make it right or healthy, nor does it then become
consistent with the general principle of local church authority.
Taking away this responsibility from the local church is harmful because
it seems to absolve the local church of responsibility in areas where it
should be responsible on its own initiative.
The priesthood of all believers is something you already know. I am not
contrasting what pastors or preachers do with the priesthood of all
believers in this case. I am contrasting what they do compared to what
the elders do. The enlarging of the responsibility of the elders, will
indeed improve the priesthood of all believers, since it demystifies the
roles and jobs of the preachers and pastors. Even the use of the term
laity hinders the understanding of these roles. Such distinctions are
worldly and not scriptural, as far as I know.
These become hierarchical distinctions modelled after worldly desires and
designs for power. They are not related to what Jesus said, "I come as
one who serves."
Jesus washed his disciples feet, to show what they should do. Jesus
expected his disciples to preach, to share, to do without, to serve. I'm
sure He expected his disciples to teach and to expect the same from those
they taught. But today, we have put enormous barriers in the way for
disciples to preach to others, to teach others; and these barriers are
identified and strengthened in the church order. The psychological
barriers of hierarchy between ministers, pastors, preachers, associates,
elders are such that these names are used for positions, rather than as
descriptions of what they do.
When is the last time you have heard of an elder baptizing someone? How
many times do you hear of an elder leading the Lord's supper? How many
times does an elder pronounce the benediction, or how often does an elder
feel comfortable in raising his hands for a blessing? Why is that?
...john..
Posted in: Restorative Practices at Classis
The larger the group, the smaller the percentage of people will talk. For larger groups, make sure you have mikes available throughout the room and people to bring the mikes to those who might want to say something. Perhaps use chairs rather than pews... chairs are moveable. And make sure people can move around, so have lots of aisles. If possible even 50 or more people can be seated in a circle perhaps with double or triple rows of chairs.
But the belhar is not a restorative justice issue, it is a paper issue of trying to adopt or sign something. A legitimate restorative issue would be a question like, are certain neigborhoods going down the drain because of who is renting homes there, and how do we react? or do we care more about the unknown in the foreign missions than we do about those who are different than us but who live nearby? Do we spend more time ministering to those at our economic level than to those who are wealthier or poorer? Have you been hurt by (and now distrust) a certain group of people? Has your safe church policy created an attitude of mistrust, and what can we do about it? Those kinds of things.
Posted in: Classis and Church Order
Perhaps your main question is: would it be harder to find elders if they felt pressure to preach a sermon once or twice in their lifetime, or once or twice a year, depending on circumstances? The question then needs to be asked, why would they be so reluctant? Who taught them to be so reluctant? As elders, they are supposed to be apt to teach. They are supposed to be able to teach and lead their households, and the household of faith. That is a main qualification. If they are reluctant to preach, are we putting unrealistic expectations on them? Do they not then have the respect they should have? Are they putting their confidence in earthly powers rather than in the power of Christ and his spirit?
The example you give of some small churches which has difficulty finding elders because they are expected to lead a service occasionally, not even write a sermon. And you say most professing adults would not feel comfortable with it. Its hard to imagine such a church; perhaps it is a brand-new church plant?
We have a small 25 year old church with only four council members. At least seven men take turns leading services and reading sermons, and i'm quite sure more would if asked. Many others take turns leading singing, children's stories, etc.
Perhaps you are referring to a church where everyone is over seventy years old, and is afraid to read?
But leading a church service, when necessary, is like feeding your children, or your neighbor's children. If you are asked to do it, you cannot in good christian conscience turn away like the levite and the priest did when the beaten traveller was lying along the road. If you cannot do this how can you be an elder? If you refuse to do this, how can you be an elder, much less a serving fellow christian who is part of the body of Christ?
If the requirement to lead and teach (which is a form of preaching) or expectation is removed from the elders, and it is only then that they will serve, do they really have the qualifications necessary? I am referring to spiritual qualifications, not to academic qualifications.
Preaching or leading services or reading sermons is not a performance. It is a spiritual service.
How do they become "equipped"? They learn by doing. Just like new parents having their first baby. First, let them read some scripture. Maybe next time let them read a prayer. Next time, let them prepare their own prayer. Next time, read a sermon. Then encourage them to read again, perhaps lead a bible study even once. Maybe after that write some liturgy, or write a sermon with some help. I don't say they should be expected to write sermons every week, or even lead bible studies every week. And if they write a sermon, it should be read and cleared first by a preacher or elder or consistory. But they should understand what it is and what is involved, because otherwise how can they understand to lead, or to share the gospel with others?
I don't thinnk it should be a requirement to write a sermon, for a person to be an elder. But it should be actively encouraged. Presently, we discourage it. This is against the message of scripture, and against what Jesus and the apostles would encourage us to do. It also makes for spiritually lazy elders, and spiritually ignorant elders.
Sometimes their wives might help them. Other times a friend or fellow elder or former elder or a preacher. In the end, learn by doing. A long process? That depends on the will and the effort. You are right that it will take some time to counter the clergy-laity exclusivity that the institutional church has institutionalized. In spite of the reformation, human nature drags us back to worshipping human beings rather than God. Or we worship academic education, or ceremony. Or titles. Ask yourself if this is scriptural. If it is godly. If it is edifying.
And if even the elders are afraid to lead, to bring scripture to friendly christians, then why should we be surprised that so many non-elders do not share the gospel, so many children fall away, and so many neighbors do not hear the word of the Lord?
Posted in: Classis and Church Order
Elizabeth, I appreciate your comments. They express a common perspective held by many. The problem is that we often seem to be "explaining' away the language of the church order. We turn good intentions into rules and regulations rather than suggestions and advice. This displays a lack of respect for individual congregations, and for local councils.
Certainly there are many reasons for congregations working together. Although in reality there also appear many reasons for some congregations to cut ties with a larger body. We need to be aware of when the congregations can work together, and when they need and require their individual ability to carry out their responsibilities.
We have a conundrum in our language when we describe ministry shares. We don't want to use the term "suggested contribution", and yet, that is what it is, since some churches meet it, others do not, and others exceed it. We implicitly admit they are not taxes or membership dues, but sometimes fail to be polite or considerate or respectful of the local church's responsibility to decide how to allocate its resources to various ministries, including ministry shares.
Elders and deacons will participate in classis when items are not couched in incomprehensible language, when shop talk and the club atmosphere that many pastors engender in classis and synod is eliminated, and when pastors encourage elders to speak, rather than pastors trying to imitate lawyers in their admittedly sometimes humorous and witty repartee. Classis is not a forum for pastors to outdo one another in their procedural acumen, or verbal gymnastics.
Over protection of our churches leads to churches without leaders, and to sick dependency on organizational structures, rather than on the Lord. I am not aware of an eleventh commandment anywhere that commands us to protect churches from trouble. We should provide the opportunity to help one another. We should also realize that rules initially intended to help and protect one another have unintended consequences to the spiritual maturity of the congregations. Too many rules makes the congregations progressively less mature in their spiritual lives. Eventually too many just live by the man-made rules and forgo making any significant decisions on their own.
I am not saying that common goals or hymnals or missions or relief organization is a bad thing. But we are always looking to add rules, rather than remove them, and we have professionalized the calling of the preacher, too much. We have created class distinctions and occupational distinctions that do not serve the cause of Christ.
Posted in: Classis and Church Order
Am I wrong or is it really true that we could not have classis and synod without the local churches? In other words, it is at the local church level that the huge majority of activity and life happens. This is where the word is preached, where catechism is taught, where songs are sung, where prayers are done, where people worship, where money is gathered. This is where communion happens, and where baptism happens, and sunday school reaches the children, and where bible studies, and choir, and cadets, and gems. This is where the grass is cut, where toilets are cleaned, and cookies are served with coffee and juice, where bulletins are printed, and where potlucks and visiting occurs.
This is where real governance happens on a weekly and daily basis. Where elders decide who will preach next, who will do the nursing home and senior's lodge services, and which community events the church will participate in. Where the church decides what preacher to call, which deacons to install, the carpet in the hall, the ministry in the mall. Where they decide which properties to buy, which mortgage to sign, which contractor to hire, which preacher to resign.
So does the church order reflect this? Or is the church order not really a church order at all, but a denominational order, a denominational guide? If you looked at the church order, and divided it by topics, would these topics be an accurate reflection of what a church should be focussing its attention on. Or is it telling us something about the health of our denomination because of the focus of the document.
Again I say, find a way to reduce the document length by half, by consolidating, removing, reducing. You will be amazed how much healthier the whole denomination will become.
Just thinking.
Posted in: Classis and Church Order
As far as baptism and weddings, these are separate issues. If a justice of the peace can perform a wedding, then it is obvious that the ability to preach is not required in order to perform a wedding. This is a separate issue from the issue of elder leadership. However, there is no legal requirement even in the church order to prevent an elder from giving a message or preaching at a wedding, is there? And in a cursory look at the church order, I did not even see a reference there to ministers conducting weddings in the tasks section, but I probably missed it?
Baptism should be understood well by every elder. It is a basic sacrament. It does not require a PHD or a degree to understand it or explain it. If an elder does not understand it, how did they become an elder? Is it made more sacred by preventing elders from administering baptism? Does scripture demand that elders be ipso facto prevented from administering baptism?
I understand we want to make sure that preaching, and baptism, and communion meals do not become misused or abused. At one time, we did not allow people from other denominations to participate in lord's supper (we "guarded" the table, which some reformed churches still do). Then we examined people briefly before the communion service. Today, it is mostly a matter of a warning from the pulpit that goes along with the invitation for born again christians to participate. It is unlikely that preaching or baptism or lord's supper will be abused simply because elders do it, no more than when pastors do it today, as long as there is reasonable supervision by church councils.
Food for thought.
Posted in: Con-cent: When Your Consent Isn't Worth a Penny
Sometimes people give legal consent when they shouldn't be giving consent. It is all nice to figure out what the government says about consent, but what does scripture say about consent. Is it okay to give consent to fornication? to pre-marital sex? To pornography? At any age? I'm amused by those stores that advertise "adult" videos, which means not just restricted, but actual porn. A more accurate label would be "immature adult" videos.
Too much preocuppation with things like the laws of consent, when you are speaking in the context of the body of Christ, means that you will treat the laws of consent with more authority than they deserve. Rather than becoming restrictive, these laws become permissive, allowing young unmarried girls and boys to consent to stuff even though Christ would want them not to consent to it.
Posted in: A Bit More on NOT Tweeting
We are not unplugged here. But we have taken a similar step on a different issue. We have disconnected our TV from any and all channels. We use it only for videos, mostly DVDs. It changes our family environment by making TV a family event, constrained by our time and decisions, rather than directing our lives. And since about 90% of TV is deleterious for children, and not much better for adults, it removes the temptations, and gives us more time for networking, phoning, visiting, learning, and being productive. The news is available on the internet, whenever you want it.
JOhn
Posted in: Jesus in Every Book of the Bible--and on the Internet!
One of our Sunday school classes this year had the objective for every child (age 9-11) to learn the books of the Bible by heart. I think it is a good tool for them in their confidence about the Bible as a whole.
Posted in: Why be an Elder? In Response to Wendy
As a small church, we have generally stopped having elections for elders and deacons. Rather, we have affirmation votes by the congregation. We do not seem to have difficulty finding elders even though we have never had females for nomination. I think possibly the reason, is that elders are seen to be leaders, and are respected for their work. The fact that they are elders does not mean that they stop being sunday school teachers, lead services in the seniors home, join in with the band or choir, or whatever else they are doing. As elders and deacons, they are expected to be leaders, to teach, to pray, to lead services, to decide on offerings and promote mission efforts, to take responsibility for various activities, to make decisions. They may or may not make home visits, but their decision is basically respected. Perhaps the role of elders and former elders in leading services, reading or preparing sermons also helps to highlight the role of elders, as this happens often in our church; between 25-50% of services are led by elders/deacons.
More respect for the office of elder might help. For example, there is no biblical reason why elders could not administer Lord's supper without the help of a paid pastor. There is no biblical reason for not encouraging more elders to lead bible studies and prepare sermons (under guidance of consistory). There is an overabundance of distinctions made between the role of pastors/ministers and the role of elders, and this is unscriptural, and leads to an abandonment of christian leadership responsibility.
One of the distinctions is that "miniisters' have a lifelong calling while 'elders" do not. This is artificial, unbiblical, elitist, and makes it seem that elders can barely carry out their duties for two or three years before begging for relief. While there may be some benefit to having on-duty and off-duty elders, there is no scriptural basis for removing them from office simply because time has run out or they will not be required to attend meetings, or re-installing them as if being re-ordained, simply because they are again attending meetings.
I've been at churches where the preachers do not administer the Lord's Supper, but elders do that instead. And at churches where as many as four or five other people (possibly elders/deacons) will lead in prayers and where elders give the blessing and benediction, rather than the pastor. This reinforces the respect for the office of elder, which is really the office that receives the most attention in scripture in the new testament. (Not the office of pastor.) And all offices are referred to as ministries (service), not just the preacher/pastor.