The Authority of the Church in the World:  A United Church of Christ Perspective, Rev. Dr. Susan E. Davies
 

The Authority of the Church in the World:  A Perspective from the Reformed Church in America

Rev. Paul G. Janssen
Pastor and Teacher, Pascack Reformed Church 

How does the church speak with authority in the world?  The question evokes images of letters to Presidents and Prime Ministers, of Pastoral Letters, perhaps even images of popular preachers publicly holding forth on social issues.  Within the Reformed Church in America (RCA), an answer to the question is far more likely to evoke humbler images:  a local pulpit, a font, a long table surrounded by chairs where the pastor, deacons, and elders gather to discern the will of God for a local congregation, and the Lord’s Table.                 

We begin with the pulpit.  It is a common reformed conviction that the church is creatura verbi, a creature of God’s word, and that it has no life apart from the word of God.  While some will understand “word” to mean the Holy Scriptures, and others will understand “word” to mean the “word” of which John wrote in the prologue to his gospel (i.e., Christ), the Word of God in its fullest sense is the living, continuing Word of God as it is preached from the pulpit, from Lord’s Day to Lord’s Day.  Ask most attendees of an RCA service why they came to church or what they got out of the service, and they will refer immediately to the sermon.  Like most Christians, believers within the RCA believe that God speaks through the sermon, and insofar as it is God speaking (through the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit), what they are hearing is authoritative.  It may be wrestled with, or questioned, or welcomed with delight, but the sermon has a kind of gravity because it is God’s word, not just the preacher’s. 

That said, to whom does God’s word go forth?  To the gathered people of God.  To people whom God has called (in baptism) to confess the faith of Christ to the end of their lives.  But these gathered people of God are not apart from the world.  They live in the world.  They are teachers, janitors, artists, tradespersons, parents, captains of industry, and civil servants (etc.), who, in their daily lives and vocations, strive to be renewed more and more after God’s image.  The trajectory of God’s authoritative word does not stop at the back door of the sanctuary.  As they respond to the call of God in their baptism, God’s people carry that authoritative word into their homes and into whatever vocation God is calling them to fulfill. 

The sense of God speaking authoritatively to the world through the witness of God’s people is by no means unique to the RCA.  It is stressed here because within the RCA one’s response to the question must begin with the rather narrow confines of the local congregation, rather than with broad representative church-wide assemblies. 

It would be a mistake, however, to conclude from what has been said so far that the preacher stands alone as a God’s mouthpiece within the local congregation.  While the RCA has high regard for the sermon, the Word of God is not proclaimed to the congregation by means of a lone voice admonishing, exhorting, and compelling the people of God to live the gospel in their daily lives.  It would not even be accurate to say that the minister is inspired (solely) by the Holy Spirit in his/her interpretation and proclamation of the word.   

The RCA’s understanding of how the church speaks God’s voice in the world (exercised through both ecclesial and secular vocations) rests upon the foundation of the role of office in the church:  Minister of Word and Sacrament, Deacon, Elder, and Professor of Theology.  At the local level, no office can function apart from the others:   

As the three offices of deacon, elder, and minister of Word and sacrament, are united in Christ, so also in the church one office is not separate from the others. The minister of Word and sacrament does not serve without the elder and neither without the deacon. Together they enable the whole mission of the church. (Liturgy for the Ordination and Installation of Elders and Deacons)

Who are these elders and deacons?  They are men and women who serve God in the world in a whole range of vocations, who for a time bring their business sense, their compassion, their insights, their local influence, their reputations, to the table, to work together to so govern the church that not only the voice of God is heard in the church but the whole ministry of Christ is re-presented to and through God’s people.  In the RCA they are men and women who have both “secular” and “ecclesial” vocations.  While they hold office, they express in their own persons that aspect of the church that is captured by the expression “in the world but not of the world”. 

In a manner that fits with the apostle Paul’s insistence that “all things are yours,” the gathered offices bring the best of the world’s wisdom to the table as they discern the will of the Spirit, so that the word proclaimed might truly be the living word of Christ.  Reciprocally, they carry the living word of Christ back out into the world (together with their fellow members of the church), because the trajectory of the gospel is beyond the borders of the church.  The Spirit thus both brings “the world” into the church to enrich the expression of the living Word, and sends the Word beyond the church into the God-loved world.  The nexus of this reciprocal movement is the offices of Minister of Word and Sacrament, Elder, and Deacon, who, as stated above, re-present Christ through the action of the Holy Spirit. 

This Christ-centered vision of the pastorate, as a communal office consisting of the ordained offices of Minister, Elder, and Deacon, by means of which God speaks with authority to the world through the church, is peculiar to the RCA.  Because authority is exercised by those holding office, the image of the table in the Consistory room goes a long way toward responding to how God speaks with authority in the world. 

The picture of how God speaks with authority in the world is not yet complete, however, without a dynamic sense of the Lord’s Table.  In one respect, the Lord’s Table represents the fulfillment of the gathered offices, insofar as people come to the table by means of the office of elder, and are welcomed to the table by an ordained minister, and are led to extend the table’s blessings by the office of deacon.  But what happens at the table can not be reduced only to the mechanical and functional assignments of the three offices.  Rather, what happens at the table, where by the power of the Spirit, Christ is truly present to the people of God, is the enactment of that mystical communion into which God is drawing the world.  The sacrifice once offered by Christ was offered for the sin of the whole world, and the fullness of communion will only be realized when God’s kingdom has fully come.  Thus, God speaks both to the beloved, and beyond, at the Lord’s Table, beckoning “the world” to draw near and enjoy the feast. 

It may be fairly said that broader assemblies utter proclamations on social issues.  How and when they do so would necessitate a much longer, and more detailed paper.  It should come as no surprise, however, that for the RCA, the church speaks to the world authoritatively as it carries out its ministry of Word and Sacrament, which ministry is governed by the gathered offices of Minister, Elder, and Deacon, and that the Word of God finds a voice as the people of God confess the faith of Christ wherever they are called.