Photo Description: PCA Elders attend the GRN’s annual PCAGA lunch event at the 50th General Assembly
It is safe to assume that Paul’s words to his pastoral protégé in the opening verse of 1 Timothy 3 are frequently emblazoned on cover pages of officer training packets in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA): if any man aspires to the office of overseer, it is a fine work he desires to do. But what exactly does that work entail? What does it look like?
In the PCA, we recognize that Christ has given to His church two perpetual offices as a duplex gift and kingdom blessing: the offices of deacon and elder. Within the office of elder, there are two classes. We express this in our polity with the terminology “Teaching Elder” and “Ruling Elder.” These classes within the office of elder are complementary, equal, and crucial for the spiritual well-being of the church and its members. However, we often forget just how the two are mutually engaged in the church’s ministry. Both Teaching Elders and Ruling Elders are engaged in the teaching ministry of the church and in the rule – or government – of the church under the sole headship of Christ our King.
Over the next few weeks, the GRN blog will host brief pastoral reflections, biblical explorations, and theological explanations of the complementary work of Teaching and Ruling Elders. We are pleased to have made arrangements with brothers – both Teaching and Ruling Elders – from across the denomination to share their understanding and experience of service in the PCA.
Our plan is to run two blog articles (one from a Ruling Elder and one from a Teaching Elder) on each of the following subjects: Ministry of the Word, Prayer, Pastoral Care, and Church Leadership. Our goal is to shed light on the work of Teaching Elders and Ruling Elders in the PCA as we pass the fifty-year mark.
In running this series, we hope to accomplish three things. First, we hope to spotlight the oft-neglected aspects of the work of PCA elders. We are all too prone to imagine (erroneously) that the work of PCA elders begins and ends in the session meeting, at presbytery or General Assembly, or in Lord’s Day worship. In fact, there is much more to the “fine work” of being an elder in the PCA.
Second, we hope to inspire interest among young men who even now demonstrate the strength of Christian character required of prospective elders. The GRN is wholeheartedly committed to encouraging the rising generation of men in the cultivation of an aspiration and a desire to serve Christ and His church as elders (and deacons). We hope that these clear-eyed and warm-hearted reflections on our elders’ ministry efforts will fan into flame the next generation’s excitement for the very service in which many of us have been engaged for years.
Third, we hope to set forth a realistic picture of the difficulties, requirements, and expectations of eldership in the PCA. The PCA has high standards for our elders in terms of personal piety, theological acumen, prudential wisdom, household management, and other spiritual qualities as outlined, for example, in 1 Timothy 3:2-7:
An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not addicted to win or pugnacious, but gentle, peaceable, free form the love of money. He must be one who manages his own household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity (but if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of the church of God?), and not a new convert, so that he will not become conceited and fall into the condemnation incurred by the devil. And he must have a good reputation with those outside the church, so that he will not fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.
After reviewing this list, we might grow intimidated and cry out with the Apostle in 2 Corinthians 2:16, “who is adequate for these things?” Though this list of qualifications is not given to intimidate, it is given to guard the office of elder from excitable or ill-informed upstarts who can wreak havoc in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. This list – and others, such as is found in Titus 1 – is for the church’s instruction (Rom. 15:4), for the ministering elder’s good (2 Tim. 3:16), and for the edification of the saints in connection with the elders’ work (Eph. 4:12). May God be pleased to use the following eight articles toward these same ends.
