Die predikantsamp. Deel 3: Die take van die predikant in die Gereformeerde tradisie histories en ekumenies beskou.

Abstract

The office of the minister. Part 3: The tasks of the minister according to article 9 in historical and ecumenical perspective.
The office of the minister of the Word is currently faced with a very demanding South African ecclesiastical context. The way in which the Bible speaks about the office of the minister, or religious leaders in general, is also very complex without any easy answers. We have however seen that the demands of the context play a vital role in defining the role of the religious leader and that there are some constant features concerning leadership in the Bible. In this article the historical development of article 9 in the Church Order of the DRC will be traced, specifically looking at early French Church Orders, the 1559 Institutes, the Church Order of the Synod of Dordt 1618/9, and a selection of South African Dutch Reformed Church Orders. The same article (9) is then scrutinised in the Reformed Family World Wide. Such a synchronic and diachronic survey helps to highlight how the challenges and demands of a specific context finds expression in the formulation of the task of the minister, it show the specific identity of the task of the minister within the Reformed tradition and some tendencies can also be derived that can serve as stimuli for further reflection. These insights must lastly be weighed against the demands of our context in order to ask whether the current formulation of article 9 meets the South African contextual challenges whilst staying within the perimeters of the Reformed tradition. This will be done in the succeeding two articles of the series.