Nov

10

Presbyterial Joy

Filed Under The Church 

You’ll noticed I missed my regularly scheduled blog post for this past Tuesday.  That was because I was at Twin Lakes Retreat Center in Florence, MS for our quarterly Presbytery meeting.  For those of you who did not grow up in a Presbyterian setting, a Presbytery meeting is where all of the elders (presbyters) within a certain geographic boundary get together in order to deliberate on the health and growth of the churches Jesus has entrusted to their care.  Some of the specific duties of a Presbytery are:

  • To oversee the training of prospective ministers
  • To receive, dismiss, ordain, install, remove, and judge current ministers of the gospel
  • To review the actions of each church’s Session
  • To establish or dissolve the relationship between a pastor and a church
  • To send out missionaries
  • To guard the doctrine of the church
  • To receive or dismiss churches from the Presbytery
  • To work toward the enlargement of the Church in their Presbytery and the world

A typical Presbytery meeting will last all day.  We take a break from business for an hour and half in the morning for prayer and worship.  I’ll have to admit that an all day meeting is not my idea of a great day.  Certainly there have been Presbytery meetings that have seemed to draw on endlessly.  But sometimes there is what I will call “Presbyterial joy”, when God’s wisdom is manifested in the way He has instructed us to govern his church.  I want to mention a few of these joyous moments from Tuesday:

  • Catching up with old friends
  • Receiving encouragement in ministry from men who are older and much wiser than I
  • Listening to 300 men sing to Jesus’s glory
  • Seeing in the midst of committee reports a zeal to be as diligent and discerning as possible that the gospel would grow in our church and all over the world
  • Seeing young seminarians come to be candidates for gospel ministry
  • Licensing a good friend to preach and seeing in him a deep, abiding love for Jesus and his congregation
  • Hearing updates on Christ’s work in our churches and through our missionaries.

It really was a blessed day.  I add these brief thoughts simply because I know most of you will never attend a Presbytery meeting (though anyone is invited to!).  I wanted you to know that the men in central Mississippi who lead our PCA churches are intensely aware of their shortcomings and are resolutely committed to the gospel of Jesus Christ.  It was truly a day for Presbyterial joy.

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