Why Elder Subscription Is a Good Idea

Let me establish some givens:

• You care about the spiritual health and theological fidelity of your church.
• You have some kind of membership process in your church, including a basic statement of faith to which your members must adhere.
• Your church is governed by a plurality of elders, and these elders are to care for the flock of God by teaching what is true and training up the body of Christ in the whole counsel of God.

With these three assumptions in place, let me pose an important question: should your elders subscribe to a confessional document more comprehensive than the statement of faith you use for church membership? If the bar for membership in the church should be roughly the same bar for membership into heaven, should there be a higher doctrinal standard for the leaders of your church?

Let me make the question more explicit. In some Reformed or Presbyterian denominations, no church officers, other than the pastors, must subscribe to the confessional standards. In the Reformed Church in America (RCA), for example, there are no additional theological requirements for elders and deacons and no confessional vows to make.  By contrast, more conservative denominations like the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC), The Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church (ARP), and the Christian Reformed Church in North America (CRCNA) require their elders and deacons (as well as pastors) to subscribe to the denominations confessional standards (the Three Forms of Unity for the Reformed and the Westminster Standards for the Presbyterians). The United Reformed Church in North America (URCNA) requires  officers AND members to subscribe to the Three Forms, but we’ll set them aside for another day.

At first glance, there is something attractive about only requiring pastors to subscribe to one’s confessional standards. Even the staunchest Presbyterian and Reformed folks can likely think of gifted, devout, theologically minded, pastorally sensitive brothers who–though a bit squishy on all five points of Calvinism and not really convinced of infant baptism–have proven to be faithful servants and effective in ministry. It’s easy to picture dear friends and think, “I know he’s not all the way Reformed, but he really could be a great addition to our elder board.” I’m sympathetic with this inclination, not least of all because I can see many wonderful Christian friends and terrific church members in that picture. As a pastor, I’d rather tell visitors how inclusive we are as opposed to disappointing good people who have a genuine desire to use their gifts in leadership in the church.

And yet, I’m convinced–as most branches of the Reformed and Presbyterian trees have been–that asking elders (and deacons for that matter, but let’s stick with elders in this post) to subscribe to their denomination’s confessional standards is a good idea.

Here are five reasons why:

1. Elders must be apt to teach (1 Tim. 3:2). As teachers in the church, they must have a broader and deeper knowledge of the doctrine of the church. When Paul tells Titus to make sure the elders in Crete “hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that [they] may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it” (Tit. 1:9), he envisions a doctrinal precision not required of every church member.

2. In good Presbyterian or Reformed polity, the pastor is a “first among equals” with his lay elders. Whether you believe pastor and elder are two different offices, or that the office of elder can be divided into teaching elders and ruling elders, we should all agree that God instituted a plurality of elders, not a single bishop, to lead the church. When the pastor has to subscribe to documents his fellow elders can believe or disbelieve, it can lead to awkward tensions. If the lay elders have an equal vote to the pastor (or ruling elders to teaching elder), why would the latter have doctrinal requirements the former can ignore? Even more awkwardly, what’s to prevent the elders from being seriously out of step with their pastor’s theology–theology he has made a vow to uphold? Do we really want everything outside of a simple six or seven point statement of faith to be up for grabs with every turnover of the elder board?

3. It’s hard to make Presbyterian polity work at a regional level without elder subscription. The elders at a local Reformed or Presbyterian church are not just shepherds for their specific church, they comprise the membership of the classis or presbytery as well. How can the denomination be true to itself, its stated convictions, and its mission in the world if it does not know, and has no control, over the beliefs of the members of its assemblies?

4. One of the great advantages of belonging to a confessional church is that people know what to expect. True, there are still differences in worship style, and the feel and make up of any given church can vary greatly, but if your church belongs to a confessional tradition there should be a sense that you know what you are doctrinally going to get. Creeds and catechisms serve as a public confession announcing, “This is who we are. This is what we believe. This is what we are going to teach.” The confessional nature of a church is hampered when technically only one person in the whole congregation has to subscribe to the confessions. But when the officers of the church must uniformly subscribe to the same standard, the congregation inside and the world can have greater confidence that they know what the church stands for and what it will promote.

5. The confessions provide the leadership’s hopes for the congregation as a whole. That is to say, when the church officers all subscribe to the same thing it tells the rest of the church, “This is what we think is important. This is what we hope you will also come to understand and believe.” Of course, some of our church members may never grasp the finer points of the Canons of Dort or embrace infant baptism as spelled out in the Westminster Confession of Faith, but still these documents can, as Carl Trueman puts it in The Creedal Imperative, “represent the church’s doctrinal and pedagogical aspirations” (177).

And when the leaders of the church all subscribe to the same thing, it not only sets the theological direction for the congregation, it also delimits the power of the church’s leaders. If the elders subscribe to nothing, then potentially anything is a make or break issue in the church. But if they have all made vows to the Westminster Standards, for example, then to demand from the church member a certain view on Obamacare is to require something they did not sign up for and could not reasonably expect. Making our doctrinal commitments more fixed actually allows for the appropriate kind of flexibility. As Trueman puts it, “Creeds and confessions establish boundaries of belonging and, by implication, of exclusion. Both are necessary if the church is to have a meaningful corporate identity and unity” (184-185).

NOTE: In an earlier version, I stated that the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC) was like the RCA in not requiring its officers to subscribe to the confessions. This is not correct. The EPC requires its ruling elders and deacons to “receive and adopt” the Westminster Standards as containing the “system of doctrine” taught in Scripture. My friends in the EPC tell me that the enforcement of this provision is more lax than in the PCA or OPC and can vary greatly from church to church. Interestingly, the EPC requires its officers to “affirm and adopt the ‘Essentials of our Faith‘ without exception.”