presbyterian, form of church government developed by Swiss and Rhineland Reformers during the 16th-century Protestant Reformation and used with variations by Reformed and Presbyterian churches throughout the world. John Calvin believed that the system of church government used by him and his associates in Geneva, Strassburg, Zürich, and other places was based upon the Bible and the experience of the church, but he did not claim that it was the only acceptable form. Some of his successors did make such a claim.
According to Calvin’s theory of church government, the church is a community or body in which Christ only is head and all members are equal under him. The ministry is given to the entire church and is distributed among many officers. All who hold office do so by election of the people whose representatives they are. The church is to be governed and directed by assemblies of officeholders, pastors, and elders chosen to provide just representation for the church as a whole.
Since the Reformation the various Reformed and Presbyterian churches have made many adaptations of the basic structure but have not departed from it in essentials. In the Presbyterian churches of British–American background, there are usually four categories of church government.
On the congregational level there are the session, the deacons, and the trustees. The session is made up of the elders and the pastor, who is also the moderator, or chairman. The session cares for all the religious or strictly churchly matters. It supervises the calling and election of pastors, receives and dismisses members, determines the order of the services, and exercises church discipline. The deacons, over whom the pastor is also the moderator, care for the poor and any other temporal affairs assigned to them. The trustees, under their own chairman, have charge of the property and fiscal and legal obligations of the congregation. The elders and deacons are ordained to their offices by the pastor. Ordination is for life, but the exercise of the office is often for a term of years. The trustees serve for stated terms and are not ordained.
A presbytery is formed by all ministers, in pastorates or not, of a given area, together with one or more elders appointed by each of the congregations of the area. The presbytery is responsible for ordaining, installing, removing, or transferring ministers. Ordinarily, the people may elect their own pastor, but the presbytery must give its approval and install him in office. Once installed, the pastor may not be dismissed by the people or leave the people without consent of the presbytery. The presbytery also has religious, financial, and legal authority over all the congregations. It serves as a court of appeal for cases coming from the congregational sessions. The moderator is elected annually, and the presbytery meets as often as it wishes.
A synod is made up of several presbyteries. It may be a delegated synod to which only a few representatives from each presbytery are sent, or it may be a synod to which all the members of the presbyteries belong. In either case its jurisdiction in modern times is slight. It is a court of appeal in judicial matters, and it has a certain coordinating role in church program matters among the presbyteries. A synod usually meets annually and its moderator is elected annually.
The General Assembly is an annual meeting of commissioners, ministers, and elders, elected by all the presbyteries (not by the synods) according to their total church membership. This body elects its own officers, the moderator for one year only, the stated clerk for a longer term. It has charge of all the general concerns of the church’s faith, order, property, missions, education, and the like. The missionary, benevolent, educational, and publishing work of the denomination are under boards elected by the General Assembly. The assembly also functions as the final court of appeal on all cases that come up to it from the congregational sessions, presbyteries, and synods.