PCA HISTORICAL CENTER
Archives and Manuscript Repository for the Continuing Presbyterian Church


The Historical Development of the Book of Church Order

Chapter 12 : The Church Session

Deleted Paragraphs

[Note : The old Southern Presbyterian Church, and briefly for the PCA in the Proposed text, there was the following statement mandating an alternating moderatorship.]

BACKGROUND & COMPARISON:
Continuing Presbyterian Church 1973, 13-5, Proposed text, p. 13
PCUS, 1933, XIV, § 64;
PCUS 1925, XIV, § 64;
and PCUS 1879, V-3-4

In Churches where there are two or more Pastors, they shall, when present, alternately preside.

PCUS 1869 draft, V-3-4
In Congregations where there are two or more Pastors, they shall, when present, alternately preside.

PCUS 1867 draft, V-3-5
In congregations where there are two or more pastors, they shall when present alternately preside.

PCUSA 1821, IX-5

In congregations where there are two or more pastors, they shall, when present, alternately preside in the session.

COMMENTARY:
F.P. Ramsay, Exposition of the Book of Church Order
(1898, p. ), on V-3-4 :
§66.--IV. In churches where there are two or more Pastors, they shall, when present, alternately preside.
That is, that one present since whom the others present have presided shall preside. And this paragraph forbids a church's having an assistant Pastor in the sense of a Pastor with less authority in the government of the church than another, however the other work of the pastoral office may be distributed among them
.