The Teaching office of the Bishop in a Free Church setting
My denominational tradition – the Christian
Church (Disciples of Christ) – doesn’t call its “judicatories” bishops. We call them General Ministers and Regional
Ministers. We sometimes jokingly call
these leaders bishops, but we don’t generally assign them the same kind of
authority that a bishop in a Methodist, Episcopal, or Catholic Church would.
For the most part we assume that
these leaders, both in regional and general expressions provide spiritual
leadership and administrative leadership, but do we affirm another aspect of
leadership that traditionally was assigned to bishops – that is the teaching
office.
Disciples embrace the idea that we
all have the freedom to explore the scriptures and interpret them. We don’t assume that pastors, even highly
educated ones, have the right to define the faith for the people. Preachers can preach and teach, but how much
authority is accorded them.
For the purposes of our ongoing
conversations about church polity – and Disciples polity as almost as flat as
anything Tony Jones can envision – can we conceive of our regional and general
leaders being called to a teaching office?
Years ago, Michael Kinnamon was
nominated as General Minister and President of the Christian Church (Disciples
of Christ). He was and is a
teacher. He has held administrative
posts (General Secretary of the National Council of Churches for
instance). Had he received the necessary
two-thirds vote, would we have accorded him this role? Would we have expected him to interpret the
faith in an official capacity?
I want to start a conversation among
those of us who participate in Free Church communions about this teaching
role. When we choose leaders for Regions
and National Churches do we look for administrative abilities or teaching
abilities? To provide us with some fodder
for discussion I want to provide a quotation from an 18th century
pastoral care manual. The author is
Gilbert Burnet, then the Bishop of Salisbury in England. He had
written this manual, which I edited a number of years ago, for the clergy of
his diocese. In this manual he writes concerning
the bishop’s role:
We have the several branches of our function, both as to preaching and governing, very solemnly laid upon us. And both in this office, as well as in all the other offices that I have seen, it appears, that the constant sense of all churches in all ages has been, that preaching was the bishop’s great duty, and that he ought to lay himself out in it most particularly. [Gilbert Burnet’s Discourse of the Pastoral Care, edited by Robert D. Cornwall, (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1997), p. 141].
Yes, when we gather at General
Assemblies the General Minister preaches (often it is more a report on the state of the church and not a teaching moment), but do we expect the same of our
Regional Ministers? Do we expect them to
not only visit and assist, but bring a word from God to the congregations,
teaching the churches the things of God? For Burnet, it was assumed that a primary vocation was to study the Scriptures and bring interpretation of them -- do theological work for and with the churches. Is that our assumption?
Comments
Anyhow, this was a robust model for us from about 1830 to 1950, so it's no surprise that sociologically, it's still strong even if relabeled. We don't have a healthy sense of a teaching office tied to that role, since their task is more one of exhortation (in our history, that is) than of instruction or even of counsel. And it's still the case that if you want to get a congregation to listen to you as a regional staffer, the best case scenario is that you come, preach their socks off, then meet with whatever the concern or committee is after lunch -- because that's what we're subtly conditioned to respect. Teaching can be threaded back through that paradigm . . . but I'm going over all this history because my own sense is that, despite what folks like Ron Allen & Clark Williamson tried to do in the 80's & Michael Kinnamon in the 90's and after, the model of "the teaching minister" let alone the teaching bishop is still an "ex nihilo" experience for many life-long Disciples & congregations led by them.
As a pastor with a Ph.D. who was a college/seminary professor before coming to the pulpit full time, it is the teaching ministry that is closest to my heart, but many congregations find it difficult to invest that in a pastor. Unfortuantely pastor as therapist is more popular than pastor as authoritative teacher.