01.000000. Introduction

Introduction A study relating to the Church Order does not seem so very relevant helpful to the questions we face in the daily lives we’re given live. What, forsooth, has the government of the church got to do with our labours in the factory or our responsibilities towards our children?! Is church government not simply a minister’s speciality - a field of study with which we need not burden our brains? Come to think of it, is church polity not simply church politics...?

No, dear reader, church polity is not church politics. Granted, in the church of the Lord too many situations (of the distant and the not so dis­tant past) have wreaked of politics, and I am embarrassed that it is so; in the church of Jesus Christ there is room neither for politics nor for politricks. And I grant also that the sins of leaders (of the distant and the not so dis­tant past) have eroded confidence in the value of church polity.

Yet precisely here is possibly the reason why a publication on church polity is very necessary. The temptation certainly exists to focus attention on people and their sins. Attention ought, though, to be focused on God’s instruction. That is: the accent ought not to be on how things have been done, but rather on how things ought to be done. And Yes, the Lord has given instruction about how things ought to be done in His Church. We confess together in Article 30 of the Belgic Con­fession that the "true Church must be governed according to the Spiritual ¹⁵ order which our Lord has taught us in His Word." With this statement, the Church echoes what she has heard God say in His Word, namely, that God has prescribed certain patterns of organisation and conduct for His Church. Since the Church is the Church of God, it may not happen that of­fice-bearers govern God’s Church in a self-chosen manner. It may not happen either that churches bind themselves and each other willy-nilly to particular ways of doing things. Instead, the Church must submit, also in matters of organisation and conduct, to the principles revealed by the Church’s Head in the Word He gave to His Church. It is the intent of this publication to examine what the Head of the Church has revealed about the government of the church. The first part of the study explores the prin­ciples behind reformed Church Polity. A brief overview of the history of church polity is included. The second part builds on the inheritance re­ceived from the fathers, and attempts to demonstrate by means of numer­ous references to Scripture that the Church Order of Dort reflects the Spir­itual order which our Lord has taught us in His Word.

********** A note in relation to background and purpose would be helpful. I was born and raised in the Canadian Reformed Churches, received my training for the ministry at the Theological College of the Canadian Reformed Churches in Hamilton, and entered the ministry within the bond of these churches. In 1987, after five years’ service in Canada, I accepted a call to one of the sister churches overseas, and so joined the Free Reformed Churches of Australia. From my position in Australia today I observe that the North American reformed ecclesiastical situation abounds with efforts to bring together into one bond of churches such federations as the Canadian Reformed Churches, the United Reformed Churches, the Free Reformed Churches and the Or­thodox Christian Reformed Churches. All have adopted the Church Order of Dort - be it altered to reflect their specific circumstances. A new church consisting of (any combination of) the above churches will invariably adopt also the Church Order of Dort. The thorny question will be: which edition? We all by nature prefer our own heritage....

It seems to me that in this development it may be beneficial to look at the Scriptural principles behind the Church Order. Instead, though, of working through the literal Church Order of Dort (which, to my knowledge, nobody in North America uses in unaltered form), I have opted to take a contemporary edition as basis for the discussion, and yet one not involved in the current discussions in North America. Since I live in Australia, what ¹⁶ better edition to follow than the Church Order of my own bond of churches, the Free Reformed Churches of Australia (FRCA). I see some advan­tages to using the FRCA edition of the Dort Church Order as base text for the pages that follow:

• To use the original text of the Synod of Dort would require numerous asides into the historical evolution of the Church Order, since there are various articles that have been altered, removed or replaced in any current edition used by the above-mentioned churches.

• To use a text currently in use in one of the North American churches is to lift out one edition over the other. In the current discussion, I would rather not do that.

• A Church Order is never fixed to the degree that it cannot be changed. By definition, a Church Order reflects the concrete circumstances in which the churches find themselves. To my mind, this fact comes alive quite graphically in the Order adopted by the Free Reformed Churches of Australia; witness the adaptations that have been made in relation to classes (see particularly the opening page to Part 2). Such working with the principles of Scripture may well benefit the discus­sions that will, under God’s blessing, take place in the coming years in North America.

A number of appendices and indices have been included in order to help the reader find his way through various Church Orders. Further, the reader will notice that where the text discusses a given article of the Australian Church Order, I have included cross-references to the Church Order of the Canadian Reformed Churches. This provides the reader with a North American Church Order in the body of the book itself. I have chosen the Church Order of the Canadian Reformed Churches for this purpose since the FRCA Church Or­der is intentionally similar to the Canadian Church Order (though the num­bering turns out to be different, and here and there the wording too). Where difference in content exists between the Canadian and Australian editions, both articles (or relevant parts thereof) have been printed. The reader should be aware, then, that my purpose in this book is not to provide an explanation of the adopted Church Order. Rev W.W.J. vanOene, my esteemed instructor in Church Polity while at seminary, has adequately done that in his book With Common Consent (1990). Rev G. vanRongen and Dr K. Deddens have done the same in simplified form in their Decently and in Good Order (1986). The above titles, as I see it, stand between the adopted Church Order and the practical life of the churches, and draw the link between the two. My publication seeks to take ¹⁷ a stand earlier in the piece, and draw the link between Scripture and Church Order. My primary question is not: How ought this article of the Church Or­der to function in the life of the churches? It is instead: Does this article agree with God’s revealed will?

Various persons have assisted me in the course of preparing this publi­cation. The pages that follow are the fruit of a post-confession course I taught in 1998 in my congregation of Kelmscott. The congregation, then, deserves the first thankyou for expressing such interest in the topic of the Church Order and encouraging me to study further in the field. The mate­rial I taught in that post-confession class has (again) been willingly and faithfully put to paper by Johanna vanderPlas. Thank you, Jo, for another job well done! In the course of editing these notes and preparing them for publication, I sought and received input and advice from Rev Karlo Janssen, Rev W.W.J. vanOene and Rev G. vanRongen; thank you all for your expert interaction with the material. Rev vanRongen has also kindly put the indices together, for which I thank him sincerely. I express my thanks also to Bill Gortemaker of Premier Printing for his assistance in bringing the publication to light. My deepest expression of thanks goes to my Sender and Saviour; in His grace He has given the interest and the strength to begin and complete this project. May He bless the work done, that it be of service in His kingdom and so of benefit in His church gather­ing work around the world.

Kelmscott, Australia

August 2000

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¹ Throughout this publication, all quotes from the Belgic Confession, Heidelberg Catechism and Canons of Dort come from the Book of Praise, revised edition (Winnipeg: Premier Printing Ltd, 1984), pg 440-576. The Book of Praise is copyrighted by the Standing Com­mittee for the Publication of the Book of Praise of the Canadian Reformed Churches. Used by permission

² The 1990 Synod of the FRCA commissioned deputies to "adapt the Canadian text so that it clearly reflects the specific Australian circumstances" (Acts. Article 149).