Structure
The PCA maintains the Presbyterian church government set forth in its Book of Church Order. Local church officers include teaching elders, ruling elders and deacons. Church government is exercised at three levels: the session, which governs the local church; the presbytery, a regional governing body, and the General Assembly, the highest court of the denomination. The PCA does not have Synods, which some other groups have either as the highest court or as an intermediate court between presbyteries and the general assembly.
Read more about this topic: Presbyterian Church In America
Famous quotes containing the word structure:
“The question is still asked of women: “How do you propose to answer the need for child care?” That is an obvious attempt to structure conflict in the old terms. The questions are rather: “If we as a human community want children, how does the total society propose to provide for them?””
—Jean Baker Miller (20th century)
“Agnosticism is a perfectly respectable and tenable philosophical position; it is not dogmatic and makes no pronouncements about the ultimate truths of the universe. It remains open to evidence and persuasion; lacking faith, it nevertheless does not deride faith. Atheism, on the other hand, is as unyielding and dogmatic about religious belief as true believers are about heathens. It tries to use reason to demolish a structure that is not built upon reason.”
—Sydney J. Harris (1917–1986)
“A committee is organic rather than mechanical in its nature: it is not a structure but a plant. It takes root and grows, it flowers, wilts, and dies, scattering the seed from which other committees will bloom in their turn.”
—C. Northcote Parkinson (1909–1993)