Eldership introduction
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A report to the General Assembly 2016 gave a helpful overview of the scope of elders’ service, though it is rather hidden within the results of a consultation exercise. The most useful section is extracted here. The Third Article Declaratory entails an acceptance by the Church of Scotland of ‘its distinctive call and duty to bring the ordinances of religion to the people in every parish of Scotland through a territorial ministry.’ That commitment was re-affirmed in stark terms by the General Assembly in the Declaratory Act passed by the General Assembly in 2010: Are those simply words? If not, surely that responsibility does not fall only on the ordained ministry of Word and Sacrament? The tone of recent Reports to the General Assembly seeks to recover a broad definition of Eldership duties in this context, such as within the Assembly Council Report on Eldership of 2003, describing an Elder’s position as ‘the call and commitment to undertake, along with the minister, responsibility for the life of the congregation in all aspects, including worship, mission, and service to the wider community.’ The Church thus declares itself nationally to be responsible to engage all people of the nation with the Gospel. That duty locally requires all members of the Church to be engaged in so doing, but particularly its office-bearers. The question then arises, ‘engaged in what’? What might local, contextual mission look like to reflect the expression of that responsibility by the Eldership? Since World War II, the Christian Church globally in all denominations has undergone a seismic shift in thinking about mission, based on the recognition that ‘it is not the Church of God that has a mission in the world, but the God of mission that has a Church in the world. This is described as missio Dei (‘Mission of God’) theology. The following two global definitions of ‘mission’, amongst many others, are drafted in the light of that realisation. The first definition is offered by the World Council of Churches: Therefore, under this broad definition, ‘evangelism’ by the explicit voicing of the gospel for conversion is potentially an element in the exercise of all other constituent parts of ‘mission’ but does not subsume or denigrate the other expressions such as diaconal service, prayer and worship, the Christian life, the building up of community and reconciliation. The Anglican Communion express a similar breadth to ‘mission’ in shorter compass. The Five Marks of Mission are: When considering a potential ‘missional agenda’ for the Eldership, the Missio Dei demands a more fundamental ethos and mind set to be evident beyond the definitions. Rather than being an occasional function which belongs to the Church and us, mission is ‘God’s activity, which embraces both the Church and world’. That realisation has very important consequences for the Church and particularly those who are commonly called the ‘laity’ rather than the ‘clergy. The church learns of its place in the world, as ‘it is not the church that has a mission of salvation to fulfil in the world; it is the mission of the Son and the Spirit through the Father that includes the church’. Therefore, the underlying realisation is that, in Bosch’s words, ‘there is Church because there is mission, not vice versa.’ Mission is, therefore, to be carried out by us in a spirit of ‘bold humility’ through what has been described as ‘prophetic dialogue’. Mission is exercised in ‘dialogue’ with others: listening not lecturing, being as much as the learner as the teacher, our interaction forcing us also to rethink our own understanding of the Gospel. Mission on these terms becomes a founding core of the church, and so also of its lay people. The Church exists by the community of those that have been transformed by God’s mission, which has created the Church. It will In that light, a re-focus would thus recognise that: It would follow from the above that the Elder is not simply an ordained administrative assistant dependant on the needs of the minister but, instead, by re-asserting the ‘spiritual’ nature of the office, has a dynamic role to play in shaping and flourishing the very future existence of the Church of Scotland through playing a key role in mission in all of the above terms. All duties of the Elder would then be re-assessed through a missional lens to test their ‘fitness for purpose’. Eldership as a ‘spiritual’ office would reclaim its main purpose as spiritual ‘oversight’ of both the congregation and all in the parish as it was in the immediate post-Reformation period, but by which would now be meant Therefore, as T F Torrance wrote:
Thus their specific calling is to help the faithful from within their midst. A new direction may be called for which re-focuses the meaning and purpose of Eldership beyond narrower foci viewed from the ‘inside-out’; which begins the debate with the method of engagement in the office and the precise duties of the post, and then turns outwards. Instead, we might re-orientate so as to look towards wider horizons in the first instance, and adopt that focus as normative in every decision regarding the Eldership from an ‘outside-in’ approach. The ‘outside-in’ approach encourages congregations to explore the missional opportunities of their local setting and thereafter shape the office of Eldership in this context. We might then discern which potential roles and tasks in the eldership should be kept and which discarded within the Presbyterian tradition from the many previously employed and now proposed. We would thus place mission above the internal functioning of the Church, and retain only those duties that are key to the flourishing of the mission of God in the world, whether by streamlining the internal governance of the Church primarily for that purpose, or by enabling and empowering elders to be at the vanguard of initiating and leading mission in the world. Questions1 Main things 2 Discerning a direction 3 Mission 4 ‘Spiritual office’? 5 Seeking fruit |
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