You're listening to the Discover Grace New Members Class, Session 5. When I was growing up, I really wanted to learn how to write music. And I can remember sitting down at the piano for hours just trying to pluck out a new chord or a new melody, figure out how to play a song that I had in my head. So at some point in my musical training, my dad, who was my primary music teacher, sat me down and told me I was going to learn music theory. And he gave me a stack of books to read and some weekly exercises to begin plowing through. And at the end of the week, he would check my work, show me what I'd done wrong, where I could have done better. Well, after about three weeks of music theory, I was ready to throw these books in the trash can. I remember finally breaking down one afternoon. sitting at the piano in the living room with my dad, I had had enough of this theory stuff. All I wanted to do was write music. And I told my dad, who by the way has a PhD in music, that I didn't see the point in learning all these rules and regulations of music. They just stifled my natural creativity. I just wanted to make music, and these rules were holding me back. Well, my dad tried to convince me of the value of learning music theory, but I was not going to be persuaded. So my dad did what any loving father would have done. He said, you're going to learn this stuff whether you see the value in it or not. Just because you don't see its value doesn't mean it's not there. Well, you know, I feel like church polity is a lot like music theory. It's the rules and regulations, the governing structure behind this community we call the church. And sometimes it feels like we'd be better off just casting aside the restraint of rules and regulations and just go do church. Sometimes it's hard to see the value of something like policies and procedures. But it's my goal this morning, in this last session of the new members class, to try and convince you that church polity matters. After several months of grueling music theory lessons, I became convinced of its value and I had to go back to my dad and admit he was right. I didn't know what I was talking about. I learned that far from inhibiting my creativity, understanding how music theory works, how intervals and progressions and rhythms and sounds work, Understanding that gave me a whole new freedom to be creative and write music I couldn't think of composing before. I think in the same way, the sense of community and friendship that we all hope will characterize Grace Church, or any local congregation for that matter, will only be fostered if there are biblical objective rules in place to help maintain that sense of community. Church polity, far from inhibiting relationships within a church, is really all about promoting and preserving meaningful relationships. So get this, church government is about relationships. Now, during our first session several weeks ago now, I made a statement. I said that a biblical concept of church must include a biblical concept of how church is to be structured and organized and governed. If the Bible includes information about how a church ought to be structured and governed, and it does, then we can't say we have a biblical view of the church if we ignore this realm, if we ignore the instruction regarding church government. We can't tell God, oh, we don't need church government, we're just going to be a family of Christians. God has said, oh, yes, you do need church government. You need to think biblically about how to structure and organize church. And so we have all kinds of instruction in the New Testament regarding the way a church is to function and be structured and be organized. So we're going to look at this whole matter then of church polity. church government, church structure. And I want us to quickly just look at three approaches to church government that have been the most representative of most churches down through the centuries, and then we're going to evaluate these three approaches in light of the key scripture passages that address church polity. And finally, we'll wrap it all up this morning by trying to draw out some practical applications for this body of believers here at Grace Church. So let's begin just by kind of looking in a survey sort of fashion, three historic approaches, and these three are Episcopalianism, Presbyterianism, and Congregationalism. Obviously we're the second of those three, Presbyterianism. But let's start by looking at the system called Episcopalianism. We could define this approach to church government as a hierarchical form of government in which certain individuals or a body of bishops are superior to the officers in the local church. In other words, there's an individual or a body that stands above the officers, the leaders, that are found in a local church. authority in this system is centralized at the top. It's hierarchical. That's the key word. Examples of this approach would be the Roman Catholic Church, where there's a pope underneath him. There are bishops underneath the bishops. There's men with less authority, less authority until you get down to the laity in each local congregation. Other examples would be the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Anglican Church, the Episcopal Church, which takes its name from this form of government, the Methodist Church, with bishops and then elders beneath them. Now, if we were to draw some points of correspondence between these three approaches to church government and various approaches to secular governing structures, we could say that Episcopalianism corresponds to a monarchy, where there's a king. He's above everything else and rules everything below him. It's hierarchical. Or an oligarchy, ruled by the many. Or, in a negative sense, a dictatorship, where there's one man in control and everyone underneath him. Those are three examples in the secular realm of what would correspond to this system called Episcopalianism. The second system is Presbyterianism. That's what our church follows. And we could describe Presbyterianism as a representative form of government in which a local congregation identifies leaders who are then entrusted with the spiritual oversight of the church. Now within a Presbyterian system, there are checks and balances that are built into the structure through a system of courts. An elder is accountable to a group of elders, and that group would be called a session. A session is accountable to a group of sessions, and that group of sessions would be called a presbytery. A presbytery then is accountable to a group of presbyteries, and that group of Presbyteries would be called the General Assembly. So this is an attempt to just create some checks and balances, some accountability within this structure of authority. Now, on a side note, there is some debate about whether ultimate authority in a Presbyterian system rests with the representatives or with those being represented. In other words, an elder represents a congregation, who holds ultimate authority? The congregation or the elder who's representing the congregation? We have that same debate in our secular government here in the United States. We elect representatives. Well, who holds the authority? Those representatives are the people beneath them. There's some debate about that. Another way you could frame that question is this, is Presbyterianism a top-down affair or is it a grassroots, a bottom-up affair? In the United States, Northern Presbyterians have tended to be top-down in their approach. An example of this would be the way The PCUSA handles congregations that want to leave their denomination. The property and grounds of a PCUSA church belongs to the denomination rather than the local congregation using it. So if a congregation decides, we want out, we want to leave this denomination and go to another one or just be independent, they forfeit their building and grounds because it belongs to the top, it belongs to the denomination. Southern Presbyteries, including the PCA, that doesn't mean that the PCA is only in the South, but its history begins with Southern Presbyteries. Southern Presbyteries have tended to be grassroots in their approach, bottom-up in their approach. If you want to leave the denomination in the PCA, for example, no one's going to stop you. or penalize you. The building and grounds belongs to the local congregation. So all of this just means that depending on one's denomination, there can be less centralized power or more centralized power within this representative form of government. Now, examples of Presbyterian kind of government. Well, you've got Reformed and Presbyterian churches all over the world that follow this approach to to church government. You'll find this church government in Scotland, Ireland, England, the Americas, Europe. Interestingly, to my knowledge, the largest congregations now that follow this Presbyterian form of government are actually in Asia. Korea has a huge growth in churches that follow a Presbyterian form of government. Now, as far as correspondence to secular government structures, probably obvious by now, but the Presbyterian form of government would correspond to a republic, a representative form of government, much like what we have here in the United States. All right, the third and last approach that is one of the three big typical approaches to church government would be Congregationalism. Congregationalism is an autonomous form of government. independent, in which there is no ecclesiastical authority, church authority, outside of or above the local assembly. Some local assemblies are led by a single pastor, other assemblies are led by a group of elders, but no one outside of the local assembly has any kind of ecclesiastical authority over local congregations. Examples of these would be Baptist churches, the Church of Christ, Bible churches, independent churches, non-denominational churches, the brethren churches. And the correspondence here to secular government would be that of a democracy. Oftentimes within these independent bodies, the majority rules. You take a congregational vote and the majority rules, so it follows a democracy. Now, having said that, it sounds all neat and tidy on paper, but we need to acknowledge that there is a lot of overlap between these three forms of government in practice. They often tend to morph into each other at one level or another. For example, you may have a staunchly independent church that would vehemently attack the hierarchy of Roman Catholicism and her Pope. And yet sometimes these independent churches are led by a very domineering dictatorial type personality, a pastor who functions very much like a little Pope in his context. Some Presbyterian churches identify themselves as independent Presbyterians, which is an oxymoron. This is a morphing of representative and independent forms of church government. theory we can easily distinguish between these various approaches, but in practice it's not always so clear. All right, so that just kind of gives us the lay of the land. Let's think now about specifically what Scripture says about church government, church polity. And I want to begin by thinking about the two offices in the church according to the New Testament. The New Testament describes two offices that God has designated to provide leadership and service to his church. Now, when I use the word office, what I mean by that is a function in the church that requires some sort of public recognition for its proper exercise. For example, preaching. You know, not just anyone can get up and start preaching on a Sunday morning. That function requires some sort of agreement on the part of the church as to who ought to be up there, who's gifted to be up there doing the preaching. All right, so that's what we mean by offices, a function that requires public recognition for its exercise. So in the New Testament, we find two offices, that of elder or overseer and that of deacon. Philippians 1.1, Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi with the overseers and deacons. So we've got two offices, overseer elder and deacon. Now just a word about the office of elder before we look at specific verses, several different titles are used to describe the single office of elder. So it can be confusing. Are there more than two offices? I don't think so. I just think there are certain titles that are used almost synonymously. And so let's just talk about those words for a minute that all describe the single office of elder. Presbyteros is a Greek word that's usually translated as elder, and it's the word from which we get our word presbytery. But this word in describing church leaders, in describing the office of elder, is really used to emphasize the dignity associated with the office. Another Greek word, episkopos. This word is usually translated in the New Testament as overseer or sometimes as bishop, and it emphasizes the authority of the office. So we've got these two terms, presbyteros, episkopos, both describing the single office of elder, but just emphasizing different aspects of it. Never are these terms used to designate two separate offices. In fact, they're used interchangeably when addressing the same group of men. Let me just illustrate that with a couple of passages. 1 Peter 5, 1 and 2. Let me read that. Peter says, I exhort the elders, presbyteros, among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed. Shepherd the flock, and that word shepherd is a third word, means to pastor, provide protection, instruction. Shepherd the flock that is among you, exercising oversight, episkopos. not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you, not for shameful gain, but eagerly." So here in just two verses addressing the same group of men, he calls them elders, he calls them pastors, he calls them overseers or bishops, same group of men, one office, three different terms. Acts 20 verse 17 says, to Ephesus and called the elders, presbyteros, of the church to come to him." Later on in verse 28, he's talking to the same group of elders, and he says, "'Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers.'" There's that episkopos word. "'To care for them.'" There's the pastor word again. "'The church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.'" So, just to help clear up confusion, the titles Elder, Bishop, Pastor are used interchangeably to describe one single office. Now, let's look at some other passages that help us clarify our thoughts on these offices on church government. 1 Timothy 3 is key. This passage describes the qualifications of these offices, qualifications of the men who were going to hold a position of authority in the church. And first, it describes the qualifications of that of elder or bishop. Let's read part of this, 1 Timothy 3 beginning in verse 1. The saying is trustworthy, if anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. Therefore, an overseer, an elder, must be, and then he begins to list these qualifications, he must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, with all dignity, keeping his children submissive, For if someone does not know how to manage his household, how will he care for God's church? He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil. Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil." Titus 1, is a parallel passage to 1 Timothy 3. He lists qualifications for elders there as well. And it's interesting that in Titus, Paul uses elder and bishop synonymously. So again, multiple titles but one office, the office of elder. 1 Timothy 3 verses 8 through 13 then describes the other office, that of deacon. Deacons is the Greek word diakonos. It just is kind of a generic term that means to serve, to minister. Deacons likewise must be, and then it goes through some more qualifications for deacons. The qualifications here are very similar to that of the qualifications for an elder. The chief difference being that only the elders are required to be able to teach. That's because I think the ministry of elder is word focused. There's a huge Part of the function is that of teaching, instructing, explaining the Word of God. The ministry of a deacon is service-focused, ministry-focused. But both have many, many spiritual qualifications, character-oriented qualifications to determine which men in the congregation are qualified to hold one of these two offices. Acts chapter 6 verses 1 through 6 seems to be describing the first selection of deacons in the New Testament, although the word deacon is not actually used here. Let me just read a little bit of this. It says in Acts 6 verse 1, Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists, the Greek Christians, arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution. So the Hebrew widows were being taken care of, the Greek widows were being overlooked. And the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, it is not right that we should give up preaching the word to serve tables. The priority of these apostles was to be instructing the church in the word, not to be giving food to widows. Not that giving food to widows was unimportant. They just didn't need to neglect what was their primary function. Verse 3, Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men, notice the congregation is involved in the selection of these men, seven men of good repute, full of the spirit and of wisdom whom we will appoint to this duty, but we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word. So notice there's a distinction made between a ministry of service and a ministry of prayer and the Word. But also notice that this distinction doesn't imply that one is spiritual and the other is unspiritual. Deacons were to be full of the Spirit because their work was spiritual. Verse five, and what they said pleased the whole gathering. Verse six, these they set before the apostles, these seven men who were chosen to be the first deacons of the church, they set before the apostles and they prayed and laid their hands on them. So there we have a public acknowledgement of their office, of their authority. Acts 14, verse 23, describes the appointing of elders. When they had appointed elders for them in every church with prayer and fasting, they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed. So Paul and Barnabas, after establishing several local congregations spread across Asia Minor, Macedonia, they begin appointing elders. It's interesting to note that the Greek word appoint here in this passage implies a raising of the hands. Perhaps a vote of some sort was being taken. Do you believe these men are set apart and gifted by God to hold this office? Maybe there was a show of hands. And again, there's a public acknowledgement that these men were set apart for a specific office or function. So let's just summarize where we've been here as we're thinking about the two offices in the church. We've seen that there are two offices, elder and deacon. One office is word-focused, The other is service-focused, but both are spiritual in nature, and both involve a recognition, if not a vote, on the part of a congregation that the men who hold the office are biblically qualified. Now, let's ask the question about authority beyond that of the local church. Elders and deacons are offices within a local congregation. Is there any precedent in the New Testament for cooperation between congregations or even submission to some sort of ecclesiastical authority outside of the local congregation? And what we find in the New Testament is, indeed, there is precedent for that. We find it primarily in Acts chapter 15. We're going to look at that for just a minute. There were those in the early church that were teaching the necessity of circumcision for believers. If you get saved, you need to keep parts of the Old Testament law. And one of those parts is that you've got to be circumcised. Circumcision is necessary for salvation. Well, others disagreed, so the question was taken to a council of spiritual leaders in Jerusalem. In Acts 15, verse 6 and 7, we read this, were gathered together to consider this matter. And after there had been much debate, and it describes a good bit of that debate, the council drafts a letter after they've debated this issue. Now this is a council of apostles and elders in Jerusalem discussing an issue that's affecting all the churches that have been established up until this point. And at the end of their debating, they draft a letter that reflects their decision, explains their thinking on the matter, and it's then delivered by the hand of Paul and others to the churches. So what we conclude from this account is that there are situations that come up in church life, maybe in which an impasse is reached or the unity of the church is at stake, and the most prudent solution involves some kind of theological discussion or debate from a diverse, godly council of men who have been recognized by the church as having gifts of leadership within the church. You know, Proverbs 11.14 says in the multitude of counselors there is safety. There are times when we need some more input than just what we have at our disposal. Presbyterians, attempting to adopt the kind of arrangement described in Acts 15, I think, have developed a system of higher courts, these presbyteries and general assemblies that we mentioned earlier. When matters of disagreement in a church seem too significant or maybe too widespread to just be ignored, these matters are taken to an assembly of men who have proven themselves to be spiritually minded, who have proven themselves to be gifted at handling the Word of God. And these men debate the issue, study the issue, a decision is made, and then that decision affects the whole presbytery or denomination for the sake of unity and purity within the church. So those are some of the verses, key passages, that should dictate how we approach the structuring and governing of the church. Certainly not an exhaustive study, but it does give us a taste and, I think, some guidelines as we think through this whole idea of church polity. Well, let's close now with trying to make it a little bit practical. Is this just all theoretical? Does this affect... the average Joe Blow person in the pew or not. Let's talk about Grace Church in particular and how these concepts come into play in church life here. First of all, how is Grace Church structured? Well, we're Presbyterian. We hold to the two offices. We have elders in our church. We have deacons in our church. PCA churches further subdivide the office of elder into ruling elders and teaching elders, and the biblical grounds for that is 1 Timothy 5.17. Let me just read that. 1 Timothy 5.17, let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, and here's this qualification, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching. Seems to be an underlying assumption behind that statement that there are some elders who are not laboring primarily in preaching and teaching. They have other oversight kinds of responsibilities, but those who labor in preaching and teaching, let them be considered worthy of double honor. So what we call them is teaching elders and ruling elders. In a Presbyterian church, in the PCA, teaching elders are men who have received theological training, they have gone through a process of ordination to the ministry, and as such they're recognized by the church as trained and gifted to be a pastor, to be a teaching elder, to bear the responsibility of preaching the Word week after week, to bear the responsibility of administering the sacraments, to baptize people, to serve the Lord's Supper, These are teaching elders. Doug is the teaching elder at Grace Church. We also have ruling elders. These are men who meet the qualifications in Scripture to be elders, and so they're put in place of leadership and oversight. They're entrusted with responsibilities of providing spiritual instruction and teaching. These are not men whose full-time job is to be in ministry. They're working secular, so to speak, secular jobs, but they have spiritual authority in this congregation, and so they are equal in authority. although not equal in function within the context of a local congregation. So we have several men in our church who have been identified as ruling elders, and they carry the same authority as Doug, but their function is somewhat different, defined differently. Now, we use the word session, and I've used it a couple of times already here this morning, but the word session is just how we describe our elders. Every elder in a church is a session. The session's responsibility is to provide spiritual oversight to Grace Church by primarily engaging in three things. By preaching and teaching the word of God accurately and thoroughly. The session gives spiritual oversight by properly administering the Lord's Supper and Baptism as Christ has commanded. And the session provides spiritual oversight by administering biblical church discipline for the sake of the purity of the church. If there is an unrepentant member in our midst, he professes to be a Christian, and yet his life testimony is not lining up with that, and he doesn't care, and he's been confronted, and still does not repent of known sin in his life, then it's the session's responsibility to deal with that, to not let that leaven leaven the whole lump. And the way that's dealt with is through biblical church discipline. The diaconate. Now, that's another term we don't use every day, but that refers to the group of deacons. All of the deacons in a church form the diaconate, just like all of the elders in the church form the session. The diaconate is responsible for facilitating the practical aspects of ministry. Remember, theirs is a service-oriented ministry. And the way they do that is by managing and maintaining our facilities for efficient ministry. In other words, they take care of the building and grounds, they take care of the vehicles, they take care of the nuts and bolts, the practical aspects of ministry, so that we can function efficiently as a church. But they also serve our body by meeting the physical needs of our membership. They are paying attention to the benevolence needs. If there's an unemployed member in our church, they are made aware of that and they make sure that person's physical needs are being met. They take care of service projects for widows, for example, that can't repair their homes or have some kind of a car repair that they can't take care of. Those are the kinds of practical, service-oriented projects that the diaconate is involved in and gives oversight to. Now I want to ask the question, to what are our leaders held accountable? In an Episcopalian system, the leaders are at the top, and anything below them can't hold them accountable because they're not at the top. In a Presbyterian system, there are standards, there are confessional standards to which even men at the top are held accountable. Scripture is at the very top, right? It is the only inerrant, infallible, inspired authority. But here's the thing, Christians can and often do disagree as to the meaning of Scripture. Just to say Scripture is our authority, everybody's accountable to that, doesn't necessarily solve all of the disagreements that come up in practical ways. And so, sometimes I think a further explanation is helpful. So along those lines, we have other standards to which our leaders are held. There is the Westminster Confession of Faith, together with the larger and shorter catechisms. This is a document that is not on par with Scripture. It's very helpful, but it's not an inspired document. We don't claim that it is. We don't treat it like it is inerrant or infallible. This document is not inerrant, but it does provide a way of defining what, at a bare minimum, needs to be agreed upon theologically for a church to function with unity and single purpose. If you go to any PCA church in our nation, you know within certain parameters what that pastor believes and teaches. I think that can be very helpful in building unity, fostering a common vision within a church. Now, certain exceptions are allowed in our denomination, exceptions to what the Confession of Faith teaches. So again, we're not treating it like it's infallible. Some men disagree on certain points that the Confession holds, and they're allowed to take exception to those things. But the general system of doctrine found in the Westminster Confession and its catechisms must be adhered to by the church leaders in the PCA. And then there's a third standard policy manual that needs to be adhered to within a PCA context, and that is what we call the Book of Church Order. Again, this is not an infallible, inerrant document, but it's a document that details the nuts and bolts of due process. Its purpose is to just ensure consistency in practice. And again, that is intended to foster unity, to build relationships and to protect an environment in which relationships can grow. For example, The Book of Church Order details how cases of church discipline are to be handled. You know, without these details in place, a session of elders might handle disciplinary cases with partiality. They may be too subjective in their judgment, but these rules that are written down in black and white ensure fairness and consistency in process. So even though these extra-biblical standards are not inspired by God, I think they are helpful in building up the church and its unity. Our culture doesn't really value authority structures, and yet God wants his church to be a place of order and unity and efficiency and ministry. The only way that's going to happen is if members of a congregation are committed to following God's pattern of church government. I want to just close this session and our new members class with an exhortation from Hebrews 13, 17. If we take Hebrews 13, 17 to heart, I believe that Grace Church can be characterized by sweet, sweet unity and fellowship. I want that, and I'm sure you want that as well. It can be a place where genuine, effective ministry flourishes and flourishes with efficiency. It can be a place where the world comes and says, you know, something's different about these folks. They love each other. They get along in ways that can only be explained in terms of the supernatural. Hebrews 13 7 says this, obey your leaders and submit to them for they are keeping watch over your souls as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning for that would be of no advantage to you. You know, I believe every one of us here this morning wants to be a part of a church community that fosters deep fellowship, that's real and lasting, a fellowship that gets the attention of the world because of how real it is. One of the keys to achieving that kind of spirit in a church is by taking to heart what God says about authority and structure. The only way to enjoy the ability to write good music is by mastering music theory. And the only way to enjoy the beauty and sweetness of Christian fellowship is by submitting ourselves to God's instruction regarding the governing of His church. so so