United Reformed Church Northern Synod

Thinking about Eldership

Some are called to be elders. They share with ministers of the Word and Sacraments in the pastoral oversight and leadership of the local churches, taking counsel together in the elders' meeting for the whole church..... - Basis of Union paragraph 23

Eldership is a lively topic in our Church just now. General Assembly 2005 launched a consultation process on our understanding of the office of elder which led to an extraordinary degree of response from churches. This culminated in a significant residential conference at St Katharine in London in October 2006.

The resultant report is currently before our churches; and as a contribution to the ongoing discussion our Synod Education & Training Officer David Peel led a consultation for Yorkshire Synod in November 2007. The talk he gave that day follows.

Download the St Katharine Report

Download printer-friendly version of David Peel's talk

 

Yorkshire Synod Consultation on Eldership - Keynote Address

An Invitation to think about Eldership

1. 1     I have been invited to get you thinking about Eldership.  That I am glad to do, because I believe in Eldership.  And I get passionate about things I believe in!  I am convinced that the ministry of Elders has a crucial role to play in providing leadership to the local church at a period of great transition.  Generally speaking this transition is marked by a steady erosion of patterns of being the church which were established during the Victorian and Edwardian eras and their replacement with alternative patterns in which the people’s movement called ‘church’, set free from institutional constraints, finds fresh purpose and new life.  In some places, all that is observable is the process of erosion, but in other situations the replacement is clearly discernable.  Did you know that one out of four congregations in the United Reformed Church is ‘fit for purpose’ – relevant and alive, faithful and growing, both numerically and spiritually?  Or perhaps this exciting news has been blocked out from our churches by all the evidence around us which tells us that three quarters of our churches as yet are victims of the process of ecclesial change sweeping though the West.  But, as is often said, it is better to light some candles than curse the darkness.  And, as I see it, one of those candles is Eldership, a ministry belonging to the Reformed heritage which has within it the potential to become the focus of leadership in local churches.
   
   
1. 2     Over the years my mind has changed over many things.  Concerning Eldership, however, my theology has altered little from the time when, as a Congregational ordinand thirty-six years ago, I looked forward to the birth of the United Reformed Church and to receiving the Presbyterian gift of Eldership.  The ecclesiology was absolutely persuasive: an ordained team ministry at the heart of each local church - supported, equipped, motivated and led by an ordained Minister of Word and Sacraments.  But the ‘theory’ never came to be matched by the ‘practice’ within most congregations.  An alternative model of being the church has held sway, one in which the ordained Minister is more central and the ordained Elders more peripheral.  In fact, I often hear Elders speaking in ways which suggest that a complete role reversal is the reality, as they view their task as one of supporting Ministers, who, as deployment pressures mount, are stretched over the ecclesiql acreage more thinly.  When our ecumenical colleagues look at our practice they are puzzled.  Upon seeing what, in many places, looks like little more than a management committee, or a pastoral care team, they wonder why ‘ordaination’ is our means of setting apart Elders.  After all, they rightly say, ‘ordination’ throughout church history has been reserved for those in the church set apart for liturgical and sacramental leadership.  John Calvin knew what he was doing when he isolated clear roles for ministers, elders and deacons in the sixteenth century Genevan church, and it is instructive for us to draw appropriate conclusions from the fact that the Reformed churches founded upon his theology reserved ordination for ministers and elders.
   
   
1. 3     By the early 1980’s the ‘one minister – one church’ model in the United Reformed Church was a luxury enjoyed by an ever decreasing number of large churches, many of them from the Presbyterian tradition.  The Churches of Christ, though, had brought with them a pattern of local church leadership quite different to anything in either the most recent Presbyterian or Congregational traditions which had flowed into the United Reformed Church: local ‘presiding’ Elders and a peripatetic ministry of Word and Sacraments focussed upon preaching, teaching and mission.  In other words, local church leadership was firmly focussed in ordained Elders.  This alternative pattern was largely subsumed in the predominant ethos of the church which the Churches of Christ joined in 1981, when many Churches of Christ ‘presiding’ Elders were, as someone recently and tellingly put it, “made up” into non-stipendiary Ministers!  A concern to provide ordained Ministers for our churches always seems to be of greater priority to us then re-discovering the possibilities of the Eldership.  While non-stipendiary ministry is one of God’s gifts to the church, its advent in the United Reformed Church had the immediate effect of transferring some of our best lay-leaders to the clerical ranks, thereby unintentionally further suppressing the value of Eldership.  But, as was patently obvious over twenty years ago, the challenge of providing leadership for local churches will not be met by outside resourcing since our capacity to generate Ministers no longer meets our perceived need for them according to present assumptions and our contemporary ethos.  The key to the future involves a re-envisioning of Eldership and the ministry of Word and Sacraments, along with a fresh understanding of the working relationship between the two, as they seek to nurture the congregation in faith and equip it for mission.  My prayer is that you will engage in thinking all that through and teasing out how it might work.
   
   
2. 1     I am sensing that many of us in the URC are now ready to engage in such a process of reflection.  What we have no longer works, and the way we are expecting ministers to work only increases the difficulties.  A recent questionnaire about Eldership sent around the United Reformed Church met with such an unprecedented level of response that we should be left in no doubt that the members of the United Reformed Church care deeply about Eldership, even though some of us are quite unsure about what it really should involve!  There is diversity of practice around the United Reformed Church; there are taxing questions facing us arising from ecumenical collaboration; and we must cultivate a genuine desire to find a pattern of local church leadership appropriate to our age and faithful to our traditions.  We now are part of a contemporary church scene in which the question of Eldership is central for us.  And, if we can raise our eyes above our major restructuring exercise, we may discover a level of excitement and hope arising from addressing that question similar to what was experienced by those who attended the Consultation on Eldership held at The Royal Foundation of St. Kathryn in October 2006.
   
   
2. 2     You will have seen the report of the St. Kathryn’s Consultation.  It is more discussion document than blue-print; it is meant to open up thinking rather than nail down firm options – not least because the context of a congregation largely needs to determine the detailed nature of its local church leadership.  The role of Assembly and Synod, I think, is to ensure that a process of thinking about the nature and role of Eldership takes place at pastorate and local church level; it is not for them to determine the precise configuration this ministry needs to take in any particular congregation.  But it is an appropriate role for Assembly and Synod to resource such a discussion to ensure it takes account of the widest possible slice of experience.  The greatest achievement of the St Kathryn’s consultation was the way in which we engaged in a process of learning which left all of us in a better place than where we started, some of us having had our eyes open to possibilities hitherto unheard of, but crucially illuminating for our contemporary understanding.  Although I have a clear overall vision concerning local church leadership, and the role of the Eldership within it, what I most want to achieve today is to excite and motivate you to engage in a thorough re-assessment of the nature and role of the Elder within the United Reformed Church, in general, and your own congregation in particular.  I do not have all the answers for you, but I am confident that I know something about the evidence which we need to bear in mind.  This evidence can be grouped together under the broad heading of ‘widening horizons’ and there are four horizons that need our attention.
   
   
2. 3.1     ‘What do you of church know who only your own church know?’  We belong to a richly diverse church and we have a lot of good experience to share with one another.  Nevertheless, one of the down-sides of our tradition of Independency is a rugged self-sufficiency which is antithetical to collaboration.  The result is that our thinking and outlook becomes hellishly parochial.  The diversity of the United Reformed Church is such that it is highly likely that the model of local church leadership needed in each congregation, is already tried, trusted and operative somewhere else.  None of us needs to re-invent the wheel in the multi-traditional and multi-cultural world that is the ecumenical United Reformed Church.  Perhaps we have to find ways of talking to one another through church structures which rely on the principles of networking?
   
   
2. 3.2     During the early years of the United Reformed Church it was a decided ‘no-no’ for anyone to introduce in debate a reference to how we did things or had held certain ideas in our previous lives as Congregationalists, Churches of Christ or Presbyterians.  We had been summoned to press forward to an ecumenical future rather than hark back to a denominational past.  Thirty-six years on it is now possible to look back without arousing suspicion of being back-ward looking.  A truly learning church will take pride in its heritage and become less obsessed with the search for novelty so typical of contemporary culture.  Way back ‘then’, the attentive observer may find, is the key which unlocks contemporary doors.  Put bluntly, the three ecclesiological strands within the United Reformed Church possess riches largely unheard of in the average congregation.
   
   
2. 3.3     ‘What do we of the Reformed church know who only our Reformed church knows?’  Within the Reformed family, in Europe but particularly in the churches of Asia, Africa and Latin America, we find patterns of local church leadership, and hence Eldership, vastly different to our own predominant patterns and hence ways of ‘being church’ that are very challenging for us.  In our so-called ‘black-led’ congregations, some of those alternative patterns are closer to hand than we usually think.  We now need a spirit of humility to learn from churches which display levels of growth and life greater than in most URC congregations.
   
   
2. 3.4     Then there is the ecumenical challenge to our horizons: ‘What do we of the church know who only know the church of our denomination?’  Our current debate about local church leadership finds parallels in other churches, where lay ministries are increasing at a breath-taking rate – almost leaving behind those whose heritage has stressed such lay-ministry!  Our thinking at the St. Kathryn’s Consultation was sharpened by the ecumenical representatives present who warmed to a reconstructed theology of eldership as much as they questioned what they had often experienced on the ground in the URC.  Of great importance for us, perhaps, is to be open in ecumenical situations to learn things from partners which help us improve what we do.  Again that calls for humility.
   
   
3. 1     If I am correct in thinking that the ministry of the Elder is a crucial component in establishing at the heart of every congregation a viable as well as visible pattern of local church leadership, and we go on to engage in a process of enquiry with wide horizons concerning the nature of such a ministry, where might that enquiry focus?  I suggest there are three fundamental areas:
   
   
3. 1.1     First we should ask: Wherein lies the roots of Eldership?  Are they to be found in management or pastoral work, as current practice might suggest?  Or, returning to parts of our heritage, might we reclaim Eldership’s roots in spirituality, worship and the sacraments?  Let us look closely at the Churches of Christ tradition as well as Reformed churches outside the West, and thereby consider a model of Eldership rather different to that with which most of us are familiar.   We may find that what we need are fewer Elders, but ones who are more thoroughly prepared for their leadership of the church’s spiritual and worshipping life.  As happens elsewhere, management and pastoral responsibilities could become diaconal functions which are taken care of by others and removed from the ministry of the Elders.  In some of our congregations, the need to apply such divisions of labour has long been recognised.  The various tasks –management, pastoral, sacramental – need different skill-sets, and they represent distinctive callings.  Ministers of Word and Sacraments, as the title suggests, have historically been particularly associated with Elders so conceived.  To such Ministers, Elders naturally will turn for support, encouragement, preparation and education.
   
   
3. 1.2     Secondly, it seems clear that the business of the election and preparation of Elders is quite crucial if this ministry is to have a position in the church of lasting worth.  Eldership is an office of the church to which the concept of ‘calling’ is certainly appropriate.  It should not fall within the domain of selecting folk for a committee.  The appropriate question is not: Will s/he serve? But rather: Is s/he called to serve?  And, if so called, will the congregation receive him/her as from God?  If ordination is about the setting apart, through prayer and the laying on of hands, for service good practice suggests that a serious period of preparation prior to ordination will be required.  On all these matters, many congregations are woefully weak at present.  It is not surprising that ecumenical partners are less impressed with the notion of Eldership than we might have hoped.  Again, re-acquaintance with parts of our heritage, as well as with fellow Reformed Christians, will help us move towards more appropriate standards.
   
   
3. 1.3     Thirdly, what part should the Synod play in the election, preparation and support of Elders?  At the moment, the role of the wider church is minimal.  The Northern Synod, perhaps like other Synods, does not even have a list of the serving Elders in its churches; it plays no part in the election and setting apart of people who are ordained to a ministry within the church which is recognized by the whole church; and our ongoing support and preparation of our Elders is at best piecemeal and at worst non-existent.  To put the issue the other way around: To whom are Elders accountable?  The answer will surely centre upon the local congregation, but the URC’s pattern of conciliar government suggests that each local congregation is also accountable to the wider family of the church.  Hence Eldership is not just a local church matter!
   
   
4. I began by telling you that I believe in Elders!  In the light of what I have said, you may well be thinking that the Elders I believe in are rather different to those at present serving URC congregations.  You would be right to think that; but that does not mean I am being negative about the good work of so many of our dedicated Elders.  What I am calling for is a process of thinking which will lead to re-direction of the functions of Eldership in such a way that they will fit the context of a church in a notable period of transition.  Many of our Elders are good at doing work which in future might possibly need doing outside the remit of Eldership.  In fact, some of our Elders already confess to being uneasy about doing some of the things presently associated with Eldership.  Their calling, as John Calvin would have been quick to point out, is perhaps to a different ministry altogether.

 

David R Peel

November 2007

 

 

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