{"id":1071,"date":"2006-12-10T00:59:00","date_gmt":"2006-12-10T08:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.gajunkie.com\/?p=1071"},"modified":"2006-12-10T00:59:00","modified_gmt":"2006-12-10T08:59:00","slug":"they-are-presbyterian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.gajunkie.com\/?p=1071","title":{"rendered":"They are presbyterian?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In a conversation this morning I was talking with my church&#8217;s men&#8217;s group about the three styles of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ecclesiastical_polity\" target=\"_blank\">church government<\/a>: <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Presbyterian_church_governance\" target=\"_blank\">presbyterian<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Congregational_polity\" target=\"_blank\">congregational<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Episcopal_polity\" target=\"_blank\">episcopal<\/a>.&nbsp; A retired minister in the group told us that the <a href=\"http:\/\/ag.org\/top\/\" target=\"_blank\">Assemblies of God<\/a>, while clearly not Reformed or Calvinistic in theology and doctrine, are presbyterian in church order.&nbsp; It turns out that they have presbyteries which are composed of both clergy and lay members.&nbsp; Their candidates for ministry are monitored and certified by the regional bodies.&nbsp; And there is accountability of lower governing bodies to higher ones.<\/p>\n<p>Their <a href=\"http:\/\/ag.org\/top\/about\/structure.cfm\" target=\"_blank\">web page on church structure<\/a> has a basic outline of how they order themselves, and not surprisingly the word &#8220;presbyterian&#8221; is not to be found.&nbsp; I don&#8217;t blame them since only a GA Junkie would be aware of the specific usage of the word for church governance as opposed to a reformed theology or a denomination.&nbsp; (However, the Wikipedia entry for <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Assemblies_of_God\" target=\"_blank\">Assemblies of God<\/a> does refer to them as &#8220;mostly presbyterian&#8221; in their church order.)&nbsp; On their church structure I was struck by the fact that their opening statement is that Jesus Christ is the head of the church, just as the current PC(USA) Book of Order begins.&nbsp; (I say current because the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pcusa.org\/formofgovernment\/foundations.htm\" target=\"_blank\">current draft of the rewrite<\/a> would move that a section or two later.)<\/p>\n<p>Well, I don&#8217;t plan on following the politics and polity of the Assemblies of God, but I thought that it was interesting that a non-reformed branch had a presbyterian government structure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a conversation this morning I was talking with my church&#8217;s men&#8217;s group about the three styles of church government: presbyterian, congregational, episcopal.&nbsp; A retired minister in the group told [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,90],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church-order","category-human-interest"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>They are presbyterian? 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