Officer Training First Presbyterian Church

LaGrange, Georgia

Constitution

I. The Book of ConfessionsII. Foundations of Presbyterian PolityIII. Form of GovernmentIV. Directory for WorshipV. Rules of Discipline

Presbyterian governance grows out of our most important theological convictions, notably covenant, law, sin, calling to service, and God’s sovereignty

The New Form of Government

Some Characteristics:1. Is much shorter2. Creates “white space”3. Requires congregational bylaws4. Designated “Foundations for

Presbyterian Polity”

The session of Crosslake Presbyterian Church spent more than an hour debating whether to permit persons to smoke on church grounds. One of the elders moved that the question be put to the congregation for a vote, saying, “if we can’t come to agreement about this, why not let the whole church decide.”

The Springs Presbyterian church elected John Allen to be commissioner to an upcoming presbytery, one which bristled with several controversial issues. Just before the session meeting ended, an elder said, “Wait a minute! We haven’t given John Allen instructions about how he should vote at the presbytery meeting.”

The Crosslake Church did finally get its smoking policy in place, but at the next session meeting spent 70 minutes discussing its very limited parking problem. It was decided that the church custodian needed to patrol the parking lot and issue “friendly citations” which carried a symbolic “fine” of one dollar for violators.

Central Presbyterian Church held a 6 week adult class on the Belhar Confession which was proposed for inclusion in the Book of Confessions. Upon hearing that all the presbyteries would need to vote on the confession, Elder David Rammage expressed relief that individual congregations didn’t need to cast a vote. He liked the idea that the decision would be made entirely by theologically trained professionals.

Following Reverend Foster’s wildly liberal sermon on affirmative action, several session members got together and voted that henceforth the pastor would strictly follow the lectionary and that his sermons would be supervised by the Worship and Music Council

Flower Avenue Presbyterian Church holds its annual meeting as soon as possible after New Year’s Day so that the final budget can be approved by the congregation and the treasurer can start paying bills

During the “other business” portion of the annual congregational meeting of Shady Park Presbyterian Church, several members had an opportunity to introduce the idea of starting a nursery school ministry in the church building.

One of John Allen’s pet peeves is the fact that ministers—and he’s served under 4 of them—are very naïve about finances and cannot be trusted to spend congregational money wisely. It is John Allen’s contention that basic finance and economics must be part of the seminary curriculum.

The session of Westminster Presbyterian Church was greatly troubled by some of the developments in their Sunday School program. Unfortunately, the program had solid support from all the Sunday School teachers, the DCE, and the Education Committee. The elders simply knew that their hands were tied.

Raw Branch Presbyterian Church finally started getting sensible about elder nominees. They established a plan whereby the nominating committee would not only balance men and women, they would also be required to nominate representatives from the women’s group, choir, youth, men’s ministry, and from the Black and Hispanic members in the congregation. The goal, of course, was ao always get full representation from all the constituencies of the large and diverse church.

Over Pastor Roy’s strenuous objections, the session voted unanimously to ruduce the number of celebrations of the Lord’s Supper to 12—roughly once a month.

When Jack Ripper, a nominal member of Pine Wood Presbyterian Church was convicted of murdering his wife, the Pine Wood session voted to immediately remove Ripper’s name from the rolls.

Pastor Jill explained to one family that it would be impossible to baptize their infant daughter because neither one of them was a member of the church. Jill said that it is the same rules for everyone because there is never an instance when a child will be baptized in a Presbyterian Church when neither parent is a member.