A Vision for a Parish Church

This was the magazine editorial in our parish magazine for June 2008.

I have been thinking a lot recently about the church. Not so much the church worldwide or nationally, but our local church. I’ve been thinking about and asking myself a lot of questions about us. Hard questions, like why don’t more people want to come and worship with us, or even better, join us and become part of the church family. We give thanks for those who do come with all our hearts. But why don’t more people come?

After all, I think we are a welcoming and friendly congregation and I know how eager we are to see more people coming along to our services and other events. We are a strong and committed congregation – strong in our faith and committed to doing God’s work in our part of the city. And I believe we are a loving and caring church too.

In many ways we are doing well as a congregation. But there’s a hard fact that we have to face. Year by year we are shrinking as a congregation and we have been for years. Now, I know full well that if God wills it, he can send a revival and save a thousand souls. He can fill our church with new life and new Christians by the hundreds if he wants to. And we pray that he will!

But, what if God is waiting until we show our willingness to change and go further as a congregation to bring people to Christ? God has always also worked through the work and witness of his people. Sometimes he waits until we give our lives to his service and to mission. He might be waiting to act until we decide what our priority is as a church, until we decide we are willing to change ourselves and the way we do things, so that he can then do a new thing through us. Look at what he said through the prophet Isaiah:

“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.“ (Isaiah 43:18-19, NIV)

The question we all have to face is whether we are ready and willing to change, to give up certain things, to have “dead wood” cut away from the stump of the tree so that new growth can flourish?

What things do I have in mind? Well I don’t have all the answers. I think this is a discussion we need to have with each other within our congregation. We all need to be willing to give and take, learn from each other, and take up different ideas. Here are just a few ideas to get the discussion started.

Faith. Unless we have a real, living faith in Jesus Christ ourselves, unless we know Christ as our Saviour and Lord, brother and friend, how can we really tell other people about him? Unless we understand the gospel, believe it and live it out in our lives, how can we really tell anyone outside the church that we have good news for them?

Worship. We need to worship God in accordance with God’s word. But are there parts of our worship that people from outside the church would find hard to understand, or difficult to engage with? Do we have things that are merely traditions rather than God’s commands? Could we do worship differently at some of our services if this would be more interesting or easy to understand for people who are not used to going to church?

Communication. Those of us who have been going to church for years are comfortable with church language that we use all the time. Do we need to take time to consider that not everyone knows what our church language means? Can we find ways of communicating the truth of God’s word in ways that are more meaningful to people who are not used to reading the Bible or going to church?

Prayer. Are we a congregation that takes prayer seriously enough? We need to become a praying congregation if we are going to become a growing congregation. The apostles were constantly telling Christians in New Testament times to pray for one another. Do we need a new system to enable us to pray for each other and for what we need as a congregation? Or how about coming to join the midweek prayer meeting? It’s a great opportunity to have fellowship with one another and support each other in prayer.

Fellowship. If the churches in the New Testament were anything they were communities. We are God’s family and we need to be as close to each other as any blood family. Are we ready to share our lives with each other, allowing each other to see and to share in our joys and sorrows? Or are we too proud to let our guard down? Too scared of what people will think of us, to be really honest with each other when we have problems, doubts, sadness, or pain? If we don’t live as a family, as God’s community, really loving each other and showing it, how can we convince anyone outside the church that we really love them?

Service. One of the most effective ways of touching the lives of those outside the church is by helping and caring for them in practical ways. In this Jesus is our prime example. As well as teaching people, Christ helped people in very practical ways. He cured the sick, he fed the hungry, he comforted the broken. How can we find ways of doing that for people that we want to reach and bring into God’s kingdom?

I hope this editorial will prompt discussion and, in the longer term, action. Christ calls us to “stand firm in one spirit, contending as one man for the faith of the gospel” (Philippians 1:27).

Our congregation’s history shows that we have always been willing to “rise up and build” when God calls us to work for him. I have no doubt that same dedication to hard work combined with forward thinking and a deep trust in God can see us grow as a congregation in the years to come.

Dig Deeper!

Dig Deeper!: Tools to Unearth the Bible's Treasure
by Nigel Benyon & Andrew Sach
Inter-Varsity Press 2005

This little book is a basic introduction to reading and interpreting the Bible. It is designed for anyone interested in getting more out of their time reading the Scriptures - almost no prior knowledge is assumed - though it is very much a beginners text. Don't expect a comprehensive book on hermeneutics or anything approaching it. Although I don't agree with everything they say, I think Fee and Stuart's How to Read the Bible for All It's Worth is a much better book than this while still being accessible to a similar readership.

Dig Deeper would probably be most useful to maybe teenagers looking to get to grips with reading and understanding the Bible. In fact, it is written in the kind of style that leads me to think this is precisely the intended readership that Benyon and Sach were trying to reach.

I quite liked the way the book describes each interpretative technique as a "tool" and the collection of techniques as a "toolbox" for students of the Word of God. Each tool is described simply and concisely in about six pages which include a worked example for each tool. The subjects covered are all vital for Bible readers who want to understand God's Word properly and desire to come to sensible conclusions about what they believe and what God's Word might be challenging them to live out in their lives.

Rethinking Communion

There is sometimes a danger in Reformed theology that we just assume that at an arbitrary point in time - let's say for example 1646 when the Westminster Confession of Faith was first written - the Church finally and totally sorted out its theology for ever and whatever was laid down then is the truth and any opinion at odds with it is false.

However, such a view is itself highly questionable from a Reformed standpoint. The Reformers and Puritans themselves viewed the task of reforming the church as an ongoing task that never ceases. One of the mottos of the Reformation was Ecclesia Reformata, Semper Reformanda which means "The church reformed and always being reformed". In other words, the church must always be willing to search the Scriptures and be led by the Holy Spirit to new and more accurate insights into divine truth.

This means that the work of the reformed theologian is never done. Each generation of Christians has a duty to return afresh to the Holy Scriptures and check and re-check our theology, our doctrines and our practices, to see if they are indeed in line with the inerrant Word of God, or whether we might have made a mistake in how we previously interpreted the Bible.

It seems to me that a case in point concerns the restriction in many Protestant churches that only ordained ministers can properly administer the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's supper. Although much of the following discussion would apply equally to administering baptism, we shall focus solely on the Lord's Supper in our discussion.

The Westminster Confession of Faith is, as always, nothing if not clear on the point at issue:

"There are only two sacraments ordained by Christ our Lord in the Gospel; that is to say, Baptism, and the Supper of the Lord: neither of which may be dispensed by any, but by a minister of the Word lawfully ordained."

The texts that are put forward in support of this proposition are:

1 Corinthians 4:1 "So then, men ought to regard us as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the secret things of God." (NIV)

Hebrews 5:4 "No one takes this honour upon himself; he must be called by God, just as Aaron was." (NIV)

It seems to me that these texts cannot bear the weight of doctrine that the Confession seeks to put upon them here.

In the Corinthians verse, it seems clear that the "servants of God" Paul is referring to are the apostles and the "secrets" or "mysteries" are not the sacraments of the Church, but apostolic doctrine revealed to them by the Holy Spirit for the teaching and instruction of the churches under their care. Since few Presbyterians would regard gospel ministers as being the same office as the apostles, nor do we tend to believe that our ministers are given divine revelations (at least not on a par with the truths revealed to the apostles by the Holy Spirit), it seems reasonable to say that this text does not actually prove that only ministers can administer baptism or holy communion.

The Hebrews text plainly deals with the calling to office of Jewish High Priests. The only high priest - or any priest - that the Presbyterian acknowledges is the Lord Jesus Christ. The teaching eldership or gospel ministry is not an order of priesthood, and the sacraments administered are not in any sense propitiatory or expiatory sacrifices. It does seem more like mere "proof texting" than proper hermeneutics to use (or rather misuse) this text, out of context, to prove that only ministers may administer the sacraments.

Having examined the Confession's proof texts and found them insufficient to establish the proposition in question, we must also consider some passages in Scripture that would seem to indicate that there was no such restriction in the New Testament churches. At the very least, it seems very difficult to sustain the argument biblically that the sacraments cannot be administered by all ordained elders in the congregation.

I realise that alongside this immediate question lies another, perhaps more controversial one: are there two distinct categories of elder or presbyter mentioned in the New Testament or only one? In other words, what is the nature of the distinction between a full-time minister ("teaching elder") and a lay elder ("ruling elder")? Is the main difference that the former is paid by the church to labour full-time and is more skilled as a teacher whereas the latter is not paid and works part-time, or are the differences even more substantial than this - with one group having rights, privileges and powers as elders that the others do not possess? This is certainly the case in practice, but can it be justified biblically?

This article is not the place to explore the nature of offices in the church fully but some remarks on this might be useful at this stage. The standard Presbyterian answer to this second question is that the difference lies not merely in remuneration and time but in formal function also. Ministers, though technically called "teaching elders", are not the same as ordinary elders according to what might be called "classic" Presbyterian teaching. They have a different role - they have the main or sole responsibility for teaching in the congregation and they have sole responsibility for administering the sacraments. And in practice, if not in theory, they tend to be seen as the focus of leadership in each local congregation.

However, this distinction between "minister of Word and sacrament" and other elders is certainly questionable when the biblical evidence is reviewed. When we examine the New Testament passages that deal with offices in Christ's church, particularly the office of elder or "overseer-elder," there is no indication from those passages that a minister and an elder are to be understood as separate offices with only the former having authority to teach and to administer the sacraments.

First of all, the Bible is clear that an overseer or "bishop" is not a separate office from an elder. In Acts 20:17 & 28 Paul sends for "the elders of the church" (v.17) and then in his speech to them he designates those same people as the flock's "overseers" (v.28) .

So when Paul speaks of the qualifications for an "Overseer" in 1 Timothy 3:1-7, he is describing the qualifications for the eldership also. And among those qualifications is listed the ability to teach (v.2) and to pastor the church: "take care of God's church" (v.5). This is not the qualification for a select band of elders designated a holy order of ministers, but for all elders. All elders are to be teachers and pastoral carers to some extent at least.

Similar qualifications and instructions are given in Titus 1:5-9 where again "elder" and "overseer" are used interchangeably by the apostle Paul. There he says that elders are to "hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that [they] can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it." Again this indicates a teaching and instructing role and that all elders are to share in this task and that each church is to have a plurality or team of elders to carry out the work (v.5 - "appoint elders in every town, as I directed you.")

In 1 Peter 5:1-4 the same, consistent apostolic teaching on church offices is to be found. Here the apostle addresses "the elders among you" (appealing as a "fellow-elder" even though Peter was also an apostle) and encourages them to "be shepherds of God's flock that is under your care, serving as overseers" (v.2).

Sometimes appeal is made to Ephesians 4:11 to show that the office of pastor or minister is distinct from that of elder: "It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists and some to be pastors and teachers." But once we realise that the word usually translated "pastor" in Ephesians 4:11 is the very same word translated as "shepherd" in 1 Peter 5:2 & 4 - and those "shepherds" were none other than "the elders" then such a view is difficult to sustain.

Reading all the passages together in context, it is clear that according to the New Testament, those designated pastor-teachers (or shepherds), overseers and elders are all different ways of describing the one body of church leaders envisaged by the apostles to hold office in the Church of Jesus Christ. It should be noted that this view of the biblical eldership does not mean we fail to recognise that some elders will have greater gifts for teaching or preaching while others may be more gifted in pastoral care and different elders may concentrate their efforts more towards where their greater gifts lie. In 1 Timothy 4:17 it is recognised that some elders will specialise in preaching and teaching and the verses following contain the basis for paying such elders for their teaching labours, presumably because they need time to learn and prepare lessons and sermons and so cannot work in day-to-day jobs as much as other elders. But nothing here suggests that these full-time or specialist teaching elders are anything other than elders, equal with all other elders in a church.

Turning back to our main question, not only is the proposition that only ministers can properly administer the sacraments not really sustained by the texts put forward in support of it, nor by the New Testament's picture of a single church office of elder-pastor-overseer, but more importantly there are actually strong arguments, which seem to me to be biblically compelling, for instead arguing that the sacraments can at least be administered by any elder and perhaps by any Christian when done with the approval and permission of the elders in a congregation.

The first thing worth pointing out is that the passages in the Gospels (Matthew 26:17-30, Mark 14:12-26, Luke 22:7-23) and in 1 Corinthians 11:17-34, which describe the institution of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper in the Church, do not deal with the issue of who may administer the sacrament. It would be easy to overlook this. Admittedly this is an argument from silence, but nevertheless it is striking that in these passages, particularly the Corinthians passage written to a Church, no mention is made of how or by whom the supper is to be administered. One would have thought that with all the problems that were occurring around the issue of communion in Corinth, Paul would have mentioned the minister's duty to make sure communion was conducted properly had he been the only one in the congregation administering it.

If anything, the Corinthians passage seems rather to indicate the opposite was indeed the case, and in the Church, we should expect the sacrament is to be administered by a wider circle of Christians than ordained ministers. Certainly the whole passage is addressed to the church at large and not to the minister(s) of the Corinthian church. In the passage everyone is criticised and everyone is instructed.

The indication seems to be that the Lord's supper would be taken often by Christians. "For whenever you eat this break and drink this cup..." (verse 26) might at least hint that the churches of the New Testament took communion very regularly, perhaps daily. If this is so, then it is highly unlikely that the ordained minister would always be in attendance to consecrate the elements and lead the others in communion.

It is also clear that the Lord's supper was celebrated as part of an ordinary meal shared by the members of the church. How very different is this from the very formal, symbolic "meal" that communion has become in the vast majority of churches, where it is celebrated as part of a formal service of worship after preaching of the Word of God and not usually as part of a normal, proper meal?

The picture we get of communion in the early church is further backed up from Acts 2:42-47: "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer...All the believers were together...Every day...they broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts."

We have good reason to suppose that this "breaking of bread" mentioned here is more than simply a way of saying that the believers ate together. I believe this is saying that they shared in the Lord's supper together. And according to this passage, all the believers did it, and they did it every day in their own homes not just when the whole church gathered together for worship. Once again, there is absolutely no indication that only certain Christians were permitted to break the bread when these meals took place.

Perhaps it is time for those Presbyterian and Reformed churches which do not allow anyone except ordained ministers to administer the sacraments to apply the Reformed principle of semper reformanda to this issue, time for them to stop complaining about their ordained ministers being overburdened and burnt out from stress and fatigue, time for them to abandon the misguided notion that "the minister" is a separate and special creature compared with the "rank-and-file elders". Allowing other elders and other trusted Christians to administer the sacraments would allow more fellowship meals and informal communions to be held within the life of a congregation, doubtless improving the spiritual life of a congregation while freeing up the full-time minister from having to try to fulfil every teaching, worship-leading and pastoral task that comes up in the life of their congregation.

Furthermore, it would send a clear signal to every church member and every person who has contact with the church from outside that every church has not one minister who has to be the one to attend to them but a whole team of ministers who all do God's work in teaching, caring for and guiding the congregation. In return, perhaps more "ordinary" elders would live out their calling better and really see themselves as ordained ministers or servants to God's people and not merely the spiritual management committee of the local congregation?