The Regional Church in an Expanding OPC

Document adopted by the Committee on Home Missions and Church Extension on December 11, 1996 and extracted from the Minutes of the Sixty-fourth General Assembly (1997), pp. 127-134, with minor corrections.

Introduction

God is continuing to expand the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and we must be aware that the cumulative results of his work in our midst will require changes for our presbyteries. As God continues to enlarge us it is inevitable that growth will cause our regional churches and their presbyteries to break into new units in the hope of accomplishing their work more effectively. The Committee on Home Missions and Church Extension noted that its general secretary was asked by Advisory Committee 9 of the 62nd (1995) General Assembly to provide advice and opinion concerning the proposed division of the Presbytery of New York and New England, and that the same General Assembly asked the Presbytery of the Midwest to consult with CHMCE on a matter of presbytery boundary changes.

In the light of these involvements the Committee requested its general secretary and a subcommittee to draft a study paper which would consider how the OPC could facilitate divisions of presbyteries with a view to the more effective establishment of new regional churches. The initial draft of that study paper was reviewed by the Committee in December 1995. Refinements were adopted in March 1996 and the study paper was published with a request that its general secretary distribute and present the study presbytery-by-presbytery and seek reaction and evaluation.

In December 1996 the Committee reviewed the collected reactions and evaluations, further refined the study and determined to include it as an appendix to its report to the 64th (1997) General Assembly. The Committee believes that a plan for regional church planting utilizing the observations and proposed steps below would assist the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in its desire to be more faithful to God’s Word.

Foundational to any proposal about planting new churches are key biblical principles relating to the Church’s very organizational existence. The first is that Christ is Lord of his Church and directs it through the teachings of his Word (1 Tim. 3:15; Rom. 15:4, “For whatever things were written before were written for our learning”). The second is that there is sufficient biblical evidence to indicate the existence of distinct regional churches in the New Testament (e.g. Gal. 1:2; Acts 9:31) with a group of elders to serve as the nurturing agent for the whole collection of local churches (Acts 15:1-35; 16:4). The third is that the Bible calls upon us to submit to one another in the Lord, and therefore, presbyteries are as much under the authority of the general assembly as individuals and churches are evidenced to be in Acts 15. The fourth is the overarching principle of church life, that all things are to be done decently and in order (1 Cor. 14:40).

1. Lessons Learned from Past Presbytery Divisions

To help us learn how we may establish new regional churches more faithfully, we may draw lessons from the divisions of several presbyteries in our past. As we make these observations about the perceived difficulties they encountered in some quarters, we fully acknowledge that our hindsight should in no way be viewed as criticism of the faithfulness and hard work of our fathers and their service to the OPC.

The Presbytery of California began in 1936 with just a small number of churches spread from Los Angeles to San Francisco and in 1939 was enlarged to include the states of Oregon and Washington. Though it covered an enormous area, it was a working presbytery. Many churches were planted, effective youth work was conducted and significant dollars were provided locally and denominationally for the work of the OPC.

In 1964 the Presbytery of California was divided to break off the Presbytery of Southern California from the rest, and again in 1968 to form the Presbytery of Northern California and the Presbytery of the Northwest. These two new presbyteries plateaued in their growth for five years before they began again to add churches and members. It would be inaccurate to conclude that presbytery divisions were the sole contributing factor in the plateauing of these regional churches. A host of socio-economic factors also came into play as a tremendous influx of immigrants moved to the west coast.

Three important lessons can be learned from the several divisions of the Presbytery of California which may help us to lay effective plans for the development of new presbyteries. First, much of the money in the Presbytery of California flowed from the north while most of the manpower and the church planting was in the south. No one quite realized when the division occurred that the south had plenty of opportunities but little money. It is possible that the close fellowship and the common purpose which these men of the Presbytery of California enjoyed together may have masked the efficiency with which they did their work.

Second, in the resulting divisions of the Presbytery of California, much of the initial time during the first five years was spent just getting organized. Bylaws, committee structures, meeting times, and budget allocations all had to be worked out after the presbyteries were divided. It was assumed that each new regional church would simply follow the structural pattern of the “mother” presbytery; but that did not happen. Rather, each of the presbyteries took its time to develop its own unique structure.

Third, the men in those new presbyteries had not been trained to do the jobs that needed to be done, especially in church planting, which seemed to have resulted in a plateauing of growth for five years.

A case study of the creation of the Presbytery of the Mid-Atlantic yields slightly different results. In the separation of the Presbytery of the Mid-Atlantic from the Presbytery of Philadelphia, neither presbytery plateaued in total membership, and the new presbytery, after an appropriate year of transition, experienced a significant growth in the number of churches and chapels and in total membership figures. Two factors may have contributed to this growth. First, the ministers and elders in the Mid-Atlantic region had been intimately involved in the presbytery and its committees for years. Second, church planters were already engaged in their work in the Mid-Atlantic region at the time the new presbytery began.

Several lessons may be drawn from these studies of OP history which may assist our presbyteries in planning the establishment of new regional churches and their overseeing presbyteries.

A. Insure that resources and manpower are wisely and realistically distributed among the resulting regional churches.

  1. Study the present structure of those regional churches before we propose to establish new ones. Though our Form of Government allows for lesser numbers, it will optimally require a minimum of eight churches and eight ministers as well as a budget for operations and ministries sufficient to do what we have come to understand to be the work of a modern day presbytery.

  2. Establish separate financial account records for subregions of our regional churches prior to any division. Funds can then begin to be allocated for certain church planting assistance or other regional church ministries from one or the other of those accounts, and receipts and expenditures can be tracked in advance of a division. The separated receipts can then be allocated to the subregions when the division takes place.

  3. Study the manpower needed to staff the work of a new regional church. Make sure that this is done both in terms of raw numbers of ministers, elders and people and also in terms of skills, gifts and available time. Some men have more time than others to devote to the work of the regional church. For example, the sessions in the Presbytery of the Northwest have made their pastors and some of their elders available for church planting in ways that many of our local and regional governing bodies would find unimaginable. Their ability to plant churches without the assistance of a regional home missionary is probably attributable, in large measure, to this factor.

  4. Learn how to ask the right questions concerning the structure and resources available within a regional church and how to evaluate the answers to those questions. The first step will be to send out survey forms and tabulate the results. But more important will be the evaluation of those results.

B. Train and equip those who will be responsible to care for the ministries and committees and those who will be involved in the administration of the resulting regional churches.

Identify those ministries of the regional church that will require continuity and experience and then establish apprenticeships and cooperative training for those new committee and administrative people. The work of candidates and credentials, home missions, and youth ministries require special skills. They rely on proven practices which are developed over a period of time. For instance, candidates and credentials committees must learn over time which of their members is best suited to examine candidates in church history, or theology, or the Standards. Presbyteries are quite reluctant to change their committee compositions, and it is conceivable that whole committees in newly formed presbyteries may have little or no experience doing the work to which they are assigned.

C. Predetermine, as much as possible, the organizational structure of the new presbyteries of the resulting regional churches.

  1. Make presbytery bylaws and rules of operation generic so that they may be applicable to the resulting new presbyteries. Then, adopt content specific versions of those bylaws and rules of operation in advance for each of the resulting new presbyteries by simply changing geographical designations and names.

  2. Choose the members of the committees in the resulting new presbyteries and have them work together with present committee members until the separation of the presbyteries is effected.

The men of the OPC have done what their Presbyterian grandfathers and great-grandfathers did decades and centuries ago. In time-honored fashion, when their presbyteries became too unwieldy to get things done, they simply petitioned the next general assembly to redraw the boundaries and new administrative structures were set in motion. But the Committee believes that along with discussing how they may effectively divide, our presbyteries should also be discussing the process of establishing new regional churches. Let the establishment of new regional bodies of Christ be as joyous and as well-planned-for as when a local congregation sends some of its own people out to plant a new body of Christ.

2. What Is the Regional Church?

Chapter XIV of the Form of Government (FG) of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church is titled “The Regional Church And Its Presbytery.” Sections 1 and 2 read as follows:

1. The regional church consists of all the members of the local congregations and the ministers within a certain district. The general assembly may organize a regional church when there are at least four congregations, two ministers, and two ruling elders, within a region.

2. The presbytery is the governing body of a regional church. It consists of all the ministers and all the ruling elders of the congregations of the regional church.

This simply-stated construct of a “regional church” is unique to the polity of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. The concept does not appear in any other Presbyterian system of government. But it is the logical extrapolation of the Presbyterian concept of the equality of governing powers. It may be stated in syllogistic form as follows:

Since the local church has its session, and
since the whole church has its general assembly,
then the regional church has its presbytery.

The regional church is how we begin to practice the concept of the catholicity of the Church. It is the first level of the connectional church. The presbytery functions in the capacity of the session or the overseeing body of the church regional and must perform all the functions on a regional level that the local session performs on the local level and is responsible to care for the spiritual health and protection of its local congregations.

The task of the regional church, as a body of Christ, is to perform those functions that are purely regional in nature or which the local church may be unable to do by itself, such as church planting, the training of ministers of the Word, the mobilization of its covenant youth, extraordinary diaconal ministries, problem solving and ministerial discipline. The presbytery of the regional church provides a place of appeal for the resolution of grievances and theological disputes and is responsible for the care and training of those called to preach the gospel. It is the presbytery which has ultimate responsibility to establish and oversee new local congregations and to spread and defend the gospel in its region, as illustrated by the elders of the regional body in Judea who demonstrated concern for and approval of the spread of the gospel to Antioch in Acts 11:19-26.

It is this concept of the regional church which enables us to think appropriately and creatively about the providential expansion of the OPC. When we consider the matter of dividing presbyteries we should also consider the implication inherent in the fact that the presbytery is the overseeing body of a regional church. It is, then, a new regional church which is being established along with its presbytery. We have often approached the problem of the press of work and distance traveled within the administrative presbytery systems we have inherited as the main obstacles to be overcome. But in doing so we may have given inadequate attention to the more basic consideration of establishing an effective new regional body of Christ.

Just as the goal in local church planting is not simply the beginning of a new session but of a viable body of Christ, so the goal in the establishment of new regional churches should be the formation of a functional regional body of Christ, and not just the beginning of its presbytery. And just as in local church planting, the objective is to narrow the region in which the ministry of the church takes place.

The scenario which is here proposed has never been attempted before. But while the concept of “planting” new regional churches is not expressly prescribed, it may be observed that:

1. FG XV, which addresses “The Whole Church and Its General Assembly,” provides very little instruction concerning how presbytery divisions are effected. Section 7 simply says: “The duties peculiar to the general assembly include organizing regional churches, reviewing the records of the presbyteries, and calling ministers or licentiates to the missionary or other ministries of the whole church directly or through its standing committees.”

2. There is nothing in the Form of Government which would prohibit the general assembly from following this proposed scenario.

What follows is put forward as a method by which the OPC might be able to think and act in a more consistent ecclesiastical fashion as it considers the establishment of new regional churches.

3. The Process by Which Regional Churches May Be “Planted”

FG XXIX deals with organizing and receiving mission works. The Committee believes that this chapter describes a process which is accomplished over time, and not simply a list of formal actions taken by a presbytery by which a new particular church is created. Organizing a mission work implies all of the things which are involved in working with a group of people from the time they are received as a mission work until the time they are organized as a new and separate congregation. The suggestion here is that presbyteries consider following the principles and practices involved in the planting of a church as described in FG XXIX, as they may apply to establishing a regional church.

The same evaluative questions that a session would ask before embarking on establishing a daughter congregation with some of its members should be asked by the presbytery:

After these questions are answered and the decision to establish a new regional church has been made, a proposal should be structured to the general assembly (FG XV. 7).

Step 1. Seek the general assembly’s approval of the plan for the establishment of a new regional church.

In the case of local church planting, the session requests the authorization and assistance of the presbytery. Just as the session of a local church authorizes ministries within its bound which it deems wise and appropriate, and as the presbytery authorizes the establishment of new churches and other ministries within its bounds, so the general assembly authorizes the establishment of new regional churches according to FG XV. 7.

But just as the presbytery assumes that the beginning of a mission work and its organization as a new and separate congregation is a process which is accomplished over a period of time, so the general assembly could understand the establishment of a regional church to be a similar process which is accomplished over time.

Along with the request to the general assembly to begin the establishment of a new regional church should come a proposal of specific details which should include the following:

But just as local church planting is normally done under the oversight and assistance of the presbytery’s home missions committee, so regional church planting might logically be done with the assistance, if needed and requested by the presbytery(ies) or the general assembly, or the general assembly’s Committee on Home Missions and Church Extension or of some other committee appropriately assigned.

Step 2. Allow the new regional church and its presbytery to begin meeting and functioning under the auspices of the existing presbytery before it is officially organized.

A local mission work needs to be granted the use of the name “church” in its publicity because it is not yet a mature and fully functioning body of Christ and should not bear that name inappropriately. But since it is becoming a fully functioning body and carries out many of the responsibilities of an organized congregation, it may be granted the use of the name, as long as it realizes that it ministers under the auspices of its overseeing session.

Just as the reception, care, and discipline of members, and the setting of parameters for decision-making by a mission work remain with the session of the mother church, so should the authority structure of the new regional church and its presbytery remain with the mother presbytery. There can be no “partial presbyteries” in good Presbyterian polity. How then can a new regional church and its presbytery develop?

Provision must be made to grant the new regional church and its presbytery the ability to function in’ many ways like the presbytery of a new and separate regional church before the boundaries are reset. Either through a committee structure or even through the creation of a commission, provision should be made to allow the new regional church and its presbytery time to grow and develop while it meets together prior to formal reorganization.

This procedure could provide the answer to the dilemma in which general assemblies find themselves when a presbytery asks for division. “How can we be sure that the resulting new regional bodies will work unless we let them divide? But if we let them divide and it proves to be unworkable, how will we ever be able to put the pieces back together?” For example, through the use of this procedure, the presbytery of regional church “X” can authorize some of the members of their home missions committee to work on behalf of the newly forming home missions committee of the presbytery of new regional church “Y” before there is a formal and final division.

This new answer to the general assembly’s dilemma may be: “We want to take the next year or two to plant a new regional church, the progress of which we will report to the general assembly each year, but until a new and separate regional church is formed, we will bear full responsibility for the work and oversight within our region.” It will be as if there is no new regional church according to the statistics, just as there are no session minutes in a mission work because a mission work does yet not have a session. Its minutes are found in the records of an already existing session.

Step 3. Take the time necessary to develop the new regional church into a mature body of Christ so as to insure unity and consensus among the members of its governing body, the presbytery.

As the process of “planting” the new regional church unfolds, it will be important to focus on the ecclesiastical development of the regional church itself as well as on the organizational structure of its presbytery. The new regional church should consider becoming involved in ministries of church planting, foreign missions and regional youth work from its very inception.

Just as a wise session is charged with the development of a local church, the presbytery must make sure within the church of the broader region that:

Step 4. Ask the general assembly to organize the new regional church as a new and separate body.

Just as the local session declares its belief to the presbytery that their daughter congregation has now matured sufficiently to be ready to be on her own with her officers trained and chosen, so it may be with the organization of a new regional church.

It would then be at the end of the process of the planting of the regional church that the boundaries of the regional new church are fixed, its name is assigned and the statistical report is adjusted. The difference from past practice is that this proposed last step has been the only step taken by the general assembly. Care would need to be taken to insure that all of the details of specific boundary lines, the name of the new body, the officers and the date of organization are spelled out in a well-worded overture to the general assembly in the year of the new regional church’s separate organization.

Conclusion

In order for the above scenario to be effective, presbyteries which contemplate such a process will need to develop some new ways of performing certain functions. For instance, “presbytery liaison committees” or “regional church development committees” will probably need to be created, and existing presbytery bylaws will probably have to be altered so as to allow for the functioning of such emerging new presbyteries.

What is offered here by the Committee is an attempt to find a consistently biblical and connectional response to the expansion that we face as part of God’s Church. When Paul directed the letter to the Colossians to be read also among the Laodiceans (Col. 4:16), it was apparent that at least something of a new regional connectionalism was forming outside of either Judea, Syria or Galatia. Does this passage reflect the existence of a new regional church of Asia Minor? Something of that nature had to have been effected if Presbyterian polity is actually the biblical norm for the New Covenant people of God.

December 11, 1996