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Ecclesiastical polity is the government of a church. There are local (congregational) forms of organization as well as denominational. A church's polity may describe its ministerial offices or an authority structure between churches. Polity relates closely to ecclesiology, the theological study of the church.
The community of faith, is also responsible for searching out and hiring church staff, including ministers, musicians and lay staff; maintenance and upkeep of their property and buildings; deciding when they worship, and how often; policies on candidacy for baptism and marriage (including, but not limited to whether the congregation will allow ...
The Form of Presbyterial Church Government describes four church officers: pastors, teachers/doctors, elders, and deacons. The pastor is a "minister of the gospel", while the doctor is a minister who "doth more excel in exposition of scripture, in teaching sound doctrine and convincing gainsayers than he doth in application". The doctors are ...
Churches with an episcopal polity are governed by bishops, practising their authorities in the dioceses and conferences or synods.Their leadership is both sacramental and constitutional; as well as performing ordinations, confirmations, and consecrations, the bishop supervises the clergy within a local jurisdiction and is the representative both to secular structures and within the hierarchy ...
Congregational polity, or congregationalist polity, often known as congregationalism, is a system of ecclesiastical polity in which every local church (congregation) is independent, ecclesiastically sovereign, or "autonomous".
The United Methodist Church (UMC) is a worldwide mainline Protestant [8] denomination based in the United States, and a major part of Methodism.In the 19th century, its main predecessor, the Methodist Episcopal Church, was a leader in evangelicalism.
Pilgrims Going to Church, a 1867 depiction of Puritans in the New England colonies, by George Henry Boughton.. The Congregational tradition was brought to America in the 1620s and 1630s by the Puritans—a Calvinistic group within the Church of England that desired to purify it of any remaining teachings and practices of the Roman Catholic Church. [6]
Each congregation should be founded on a written church covenant, [21] and the congregation as a whole should govern the church: "The meetings together… of every whole church, and of the elders therein, is above the apostle, above the prophet, the evangelist, the pastor, the teacher, and every particular elder" and "The voice of the whole ...