This wonderfully expansive chapter of Mark has many challenging pills to swallow, the call to exhaustion and even death in Christian ministry. But what a neat finish Mark gives! Our labors are not in vain. Even if we do not see all God is doing through others, he is preparing the way. He is making the path straight. And though the labor he calls us to is challenging, the outcome is huge!

Imagine your kids and grandkids “need” to move away, such that you no longer get to see them regularly, that you miss seeing them grow up. This is never easy, but at least there is payoff. Often such a move is because of a career choice, making the medicine go down. Grandparents can bear some of the pain because there is a future to this: “At least our sacrifice will be worth it! The grandkids will attend great school because of extra income. And one day family, since the family will be cashed up, will have money to be with us, they will have a big enough house to have us stay!” These are some of the pros and cons a grandparent will be able to weigh up, Christian or not.
But what happens when none of these benefits exist? What happens when everything (apparently) is negative? What happens when Christians travel overseas to dangerous countries (for example) with little hope of any financial reward? “What on earth were they thinking exposing our grandchildren to this? How selfish! How thoughtless!” Or when it comes to our own kids as they enter the prime of life: “I really wanted my kids to follow Jesus.  But no way am I going to have them waste such a good education on this. They are too smart for Christian ministry. Let someone else do it—someone with lower earning potential anyway!”
What about following Jesus into the dangerous or unstable? Particularly in the West we say we value life highly. But what this often means is valuing our own lives so highly that it diminishes our view of sacrifice for Christ.
How do Jesus’ kingdom demands impact our expectations of friends and family? This is a huge question, one Mark has been subtly developing, now unpacked in Mark 6.  Prior to Mark 6 many of these themes have already been mentioned. We know, for example, from Mark 1:14 that John the Baptist was arrested. That must’ve shaken everyone up. But what happened to him? In Mark 6 we find out, in what Donahue and Harrington in their Sacra Pagina commentary on Mark describe as “one of the great stories in world literature,” the story of John’s beheading:
The cast of characters includes the scorned woman (Herodias), the charming and seductive young dancer (Herodias’ daughter), the powerful and elite members of the Galilean society, the righteous prophet (John), the weak-willed king (Herod Antipas), and that ruthlessly efficient executioner. (p. 201)
Mark 6 is a long chapter.  Why would Mark go into such detail here? Mark wants to prod and poke on something we all must stop to ponder, the cost of discipleship. The most brilliantly written parts of Mark, meant to draw us in, focus on the cost of being a disciple.
Mark has been writing about the cost of discipleship since the beginning of his gospel.  Craig Blomberg, in his book on the Gospels, reminds us how the gospels as biography work:
Ancient Middle Eastern writers were not as bound by logical, linear thinking as modern Western ones are. The Gospels, like most documents of their day, would have been written to be read aloud… so writing had to include repetition for emphasis and rhetorical markers that would make connections between section clear. The modern commentator always runs the risk therefore, of imposing too much structure or symmetry when trying to outline these books. (p. 115)
Mark is not a scientific journal, covering bullet-points: one, two, three. It is a narrative, rich and free flowing, a narrative with wave after wave of parallel teaching designed to hit us enough times to eventually knock us over. And in Mark 6 we encounter the biggest wave in the set!
This theme, the cost of discipleship, begins right at the start of Mark’s gospel, chapter 1:
16 As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. 17 “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” 18 At once they left their nets and followed him. 19 When he had gone a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John in a boat, preparing their nets. 20 Without delay he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him. (Mark 1:16-20)
This would have been hard, leaving family business with only the hired hands, a huge financial hit to their father as well as a painful personal loss!
Later in the same chapter Jesus is kind to Simon’s mother-in-law who was sick, with the result that the family home of Simon and Andrew is overrun by the crowds and turned into a mobile hospital for sick and demon possessed:
29 As soon as they left the synagogue, they went with James and John to the home of Simon and Andrew. 30 Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they immediately told Jesus about her. 31 So he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them. 32 That evening after sunset the people brought to Jesus all the sick and demon-possessed. 33 The whole town gathered at the door, 34 and Jesus healed many who had various diseases. He also drove out many demons, but he would not let the demons speak because they knew who he was.
I wonder how Simon’s father-in-law was feeling (if he was alive and lived there, too)?
This theme reaches its climax at the start of Mark 6, when Jesus goes back to his home town.  His disciples follow him (6:1), an echo of the first disciples, when Jesus called them away from their families to follow him; this was a call to go anywhere with him. But a very complicated dynamic faces them here:
Jesus left there and went to his hometown, accompanied by his disciples. 2 When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were amazed. “Where did this man get these things?” they asked. “What’s this wisdom that has been given him? What are these remarkable miracles he is performing? 3 Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him. 4 Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home.” 5 He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. 6 He was amazed at their lack of faith.
The people cannot believe in Jesus because of family dynamics! They almost freeze him in time: “Remember ‘little Jesus’ who grew up here? Remember Jesus who was just like his siblings!” Now the locals still see those siblings and cannot believe that Jesus could go beyond the norm they have created in minds.
Such are the deep complexities of family! We can get so tied up within our families–which is not bad in and of itself–and end up limiting our future because of another’s perception. “This is who you are, not that. You are not a missionary; you are not a Christian worker. You are one of us, so stay like one of us!”
How does one navigate pushback if he or she becomes a Christian out of a non-Christian upbringing? How does one cut through expectations? Verses 5 and 6 paint quite a sad picture. The very power of God was restricted because of unbelief.  Jesus could not do any miracles (verse 5)! There is really no tying up of this mini narrative. It is simply left hanging.
Next…in a bonanza of vivid stories, the apostles are sent out on mission. The shift in storyline could not be more powerful: the narrative moves from the possible ‘stability’ of ‘home’ to utter instability, exactly the kind of issue that makes it difficult for those closest the called one to understand:
7 And he called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. 8 He charged them to take nothing for their journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in their belts— 9 but to wear sandals and not put on two tunics. 10 And he said to them, “Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you depart from there. 11 And if any place will not receive you and they will not listen to you, when you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” 12 So they went out and proclaimed that people should repent. 13 And they cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them. (Mark 6:7-13)
The history of the day helps understand these instructions.
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In summary, these changes would make the PCA a less “grassroots Presbyterian” denomination. They would have the effect of making Presbyteries weaker—weaker in comparison to the General Assembly and weaker in relation to their own judicial commissions. They would concentrate power at “the top” of our denomination, and place important powers of presbytery into the hands of “the few.” Presbyteries would be wise to reject these changes to our BCO.

Against Item 3
Among the items the 49th Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) General Assembly sent down to Presbyteries for approval is Item 3 (Overture 25 from the Houston Metro Presbytery). This overture would amend chapter 15 of the Book of Church Order (BCO), changing the way that Presbytery judicial commissions handle cases.
Under the current system, Presbyteries may commit a judicial case to a commission, but the commission cannot conclude the case it is given. Rather, after trying the case, the commission must submit a full statement of the case and the judgment it rendered to Presbytery. Then, without debate, Presbytery either approves or disapproves the judgment.[1] To put it simply, the commission does all the work of the trial, but the Presbytery approves the final decision.
The proposed amendment would change two things. First, it would make the judgment of judicial commissions final: Presbytery would not have to approve anything. Second, it would require that complaints related to the case be heard by the commission that tried the case, not the Presbytery as a whole.[2]
These changes are not flashy or outwardly exciting. They intend to simplify our BCO, making all Presbytery commissions function similarly, and removing an extra step from our already complex judicial process. However, these changes would prove inadvertently detrimental to our church and her government.
In summary, these changes would make the PCA a less “grassroots Presbyterian” denomination. They would have the effect of making Presbyteries weaker—weaker in comparison to the General Assembly and weaker in relation to their own judicial commissions. They would concentrate power at “the top” of our denomination, and place important powers of presbytery into the hands of “the few.” Presbyteries would be wise to reject these changes to our BCO.
Grassroots Presbyterianism
The PCA is often described as a grassroots Presbyterian denomination. One of the easiest ways to understand what grassroots Presbyterianism means is to look at what our Book of Church Order says about two things: power and parity.
Power
Our BCO specifies that the power to make judgments affecting the life of the church belongs to the elders of the church acting jointly in a church court.[3] The Lord Jesus has committed this power exclusively to the courts of the church, and so in the PCA it belongs exclusively to Sessions, Presbyteries, and the General Assembly.[4]
Because Christ gave this power specifically to the courts of the church, courts can never delegate this power to some other body. Just as an elder cannot delegate his preaching responsibility to a non-elder, a church court cannot delegate their responsibility to make binding judgments of doctrine and discipline to some other body of Christians.[5]
Parity
The PCA BCO also specifies that there is parity across the various courts of the church. One often hears about one kind of parity in the PCA—the parity between ruling elder (RE) and teaching elder (TE). Though TEs have been given the special responsibility of Word and Sacrament ministry, they and REs are the same thing at the end of the day: elders.
The same can be said about church courts. Sessions, Presbyteries, and the General Assembly differ in certain respects, but at the end of the day they are all “Presbyteries” in that each is composed of presbyters.[6] This means that Sessions, Presbyteries, and the General Assembly all possess the same inherent powers (BCO 11-3, 4). A Session has just as much right to resolve a question of doctrine, or judge a discipline case, as the GA, and the decision of each is equally binding.[7]
Protecting the PCA
These features of grassroots Presbyterianism aren’t just interesting “distinctives” of the PCA. They have the very practical effect of guarding the church against hierarchical Presbyterianism and oligarchical Presbyterianism.[8] These two deformities of biblical polity aren’t just imagined boogeymen. They are legitimate dangers to the life of the church, and were instrumental to the decline of both the Northern and Southern Presbyterian churches in the 20th century.
In a hierarchical polity, a higher court has more power than a lower court, and ends up dominating it. There is no longer parity between the courts. In such a situation, the General Assembly would wield inordinate power over Presbyteries and Sessions, giving it great power to steer the entire denomination. Even the barest majority of the Assembly would be able to direct the church on any ecclesial matter.
In an oligarchical polity, power resides not in courts, but in committees.[9] The courts lose their exclusive right to exercise their God-given powers, having delegated them to smaller groups of men. These groups of men functionally replace the courts of the church. Even though power formally resides in the court, the court is held captive to the committees which practically exercise all the power.
All one needs to do to see the danger of these two polity dynamics is imagine that your “side” is in the minority at the General Assembly, or the minority of the various committees of the courts. Regardless of what “side” one is on, we all should want to preserve the grassroots nature of the PCA.
Protecting Grassroots Presbyterianism
The proposed amendment to BCO 15 would have two effects that damage grassroots Presbyterianism in the PCA. First, it would weaken Presbyteries in comparison to the General Assembly. Presbyteries would lose power that the Assembly would maintain—the power to correct any perceived error in the action of a judicial commission—making the Assembly a more powerful court. Presbyteries would then have to rely on the Assembly for something they formerly were able to handle themselves. Second, it would weaken Presbyteries in comparison to their judicial commissions. Presbyteries would have no natural mechanism to overrule a judicial commission, making commissions unduly powerful and functionally independent of the Presbytery itself. These effects would make the PCA both more hierarchical and more oligarchical—the Assembly would have more power than Presbyteries, and Presbytery judicial commissions would be functionally unaccountable to Presbyteries.
A Practical Example
These problems with Item 3 might seem theoretical at first glance, and perhaps minor in nature, but they would become very real when a messy discipline case comes before Presbytery. Imagine that a discipline case arises in your Presbytery and that Presbytery refers it to a judicial commission. Under the amended version of BCO 15, the commission conducts a trial, renders a judgment, and ends the matter. But what happens if it becomes apparent to the great majority of Presbytery that the commission erred in its judgment? These members can raise a complaint, but the same judicial commission would now hear and adjudicate the complaint. If they dismiss the complaint, then there is nothing else the members can do at the level of Presbytery. The commission’s judgments on the case and the complaint reign supreme. In a real way, the commission has replaced Presbytery in the exercise of judicial power. The commission has the power here, not Presbytery. The only recourse Presbytery has now is to raise the complaint to the General Assembly. Rather than having the natural power to overrule their commission, they must rely on what amounts to a more powerful court to rectify the matter.
Now consider the above scenario under the current version of BCO 15. The commission has erred. A great majority of Presbytery believes them to have erred.  To correct the error, these Presbyters need not complain to the commission and then raise the complaint to the General Assembly if that proves unsuccessful. All they need to do is not approve the recommended verdict of the commission. They then can either assign the case to a new commission, or try the case as a whole. Presbytery reigns supreme over its commission, and it does not need the General Assembly’s help or permission to do so.
The amendment to BCO 15 would lead to powerful judicial commissions and weak presbyteries, both of which would damage the PCA’s grassroots Presbyterianism.
An Amendment Without Good Reason
Item 3 originated as Overture 25 from Houston Metro Presbytery. In the overture, two main reasons are given for amending BCO chapter 15. First, it is said that requiring Presbytery to ratify the decision of a judicial commission is “a source of confusion and misapplication by Presbyteries.”[10] While I can readily sympathize with BCO-induced confusion, I have a hard time doing so with the matter of Presbytery judicial commissions. The very first sentence of chapter 15, which has the title “Ecclesiastical Commissions,” explicitly states that Presbytery judicial commissions operate differently than all other commissions, and references the paragraph within the chapter that sets forth the rules governing them.[11] Surely at least one member of Presbytery would think to read chapter 15 when Presbytery seeks to establish a judicial commission!
Of greater interest is the second reason given in the overture. It is said that requiring Presbytery to ratify the decision of a judicial commission runs counter to the purpose of commissions in general. Commissions are supposed to “deliberate upon and conclude the business referred to it,” but Presbytery judicial commissions are not fully allowed to do so.[12] This reason is a far stronger one, as it suggests that BCO 15 arbitrarily distinguishes between types of commissions, and therefore it arbitrarily restricts the power of Presbytery to address its own business.
Nevertheless, and contrary to Overture 25, there is good reason to distinguish between judicial and non-judicial commissions of Presbytery. The key difference between these two types of commissions is how they relate to the judgments that Presbytery makes. Consider a common commission of Presbytery: an ordination commission. It deliberates upon a number of matters relevant to the business of ordination (day, time, giving a charge, etc.) before concluding the business (actually ordaining a person). However, the commission does not judge that the man is ordainable. That judgment has already been determined by the Presbytery as a whole. The commission simply carries out the will of Presbytery.
The above example helps us to see why it is proper to distinguish between judicial and non-judicial commissions of Presbytery. In the case of the ordination commission, the Presbytery has already made a judgment on the matter at hand (ordination) and the commission enacts this judgment. In the case of a judicial commission, the Presbytery has not made a judgment on the matter at hand (the guilt or innocence of the accused). Indeed, it is part of the very nature of a judicial commission that Presbytery cannot have made any judgment at all—that is what a trial is for. Because there is no judgment, the commission has no right to enact any judgment. The judgment of the commission only becomes final when the Presbytery makes it their own.
Conclusion
The PCA is not perfect, and neither is our polity. But the glorious thing about our polity is that it can be more and more conformed to the command of Scripture. The Lord Jesus Christ is King and Head of the Church, and He has appointed a government for it. It is our duty to conform our polity to the appointment of our King. While he reigns supreme over the Church as an exalted King, he administers his government through lowly elders. In his perfect wisdom, He has given the responsibility of judgment to elders acting together in courts, not acting individually. We cannot improve on this, and our polity should reflect these principles as clearly as possible.
Rather than clarifying these principles in our polity, Item 3 obscures them. Therefore, it should be defeated.
Stephen O’Neill is a Minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and is Assistant Pastor of Hope PCA in Lawrenceville, NJ.

[1] Though the presbytery cannot debate the verdict of the commission, there is nothing in the BCO that would prevent questions being asked of the commission from the floor of Presbytery.
[2] Complaints are addressed in chapter 43 of the BCO. Notable for the purpose of this article is BCO 43-2, the first sentence of which reads: “A complaint shall first be made to the court whose act or decision is alleged to be in error.” With the current language, Presbytery, not the commission of Presbytery, receives and addresses complaints.
[3] BCO 3-2 distinguishes between the “several” powers and the “joint” powers. The “several” powers are those that can be exercised by an officer individually (i.e., “severed” from the court). Preaching is an example of a several power. The “joint” powers are always exercised in church courts in the form of judgments rendered by the courts.
[4] The classic example of this in Scripture is the Jerusalem council in Acts 15. There, after careful deliberation, “the apostles and the elders” render judgment on doctrinal matters that become binding on the churches.
[5] This point was stressed by James Henley Thornwell when the 1847 Old School General Assembly considered a report on the topic of ecclesiastical commissions. Thornwell agreed that ecclesiastical commissions could exercise any power the court possessed, but not as a delegated power. Commissions exercise the powers of the court as the court itself. The commission, in a sense, is the court. An unappreciated consequence of this is that all members of church courts are, de jure, members of commissions of the court. See James Henley Thornwell, “The General Assembly,” Southern Presbyterian Review 1, vol. 2 (September 1847): 83-85. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/590be125ff7c502a07752a5b/t/5fceb7dbb4902412734c1a64/1607383005407/Thornwell%2C+James+Henley%2C+The+General+Assembly.pdf
[6] BCO 10-1 states: The Church is governed by various courts, in regular gradation, which are all, nevertheless, Presbyteries, as being composed exclusively of presbyters.
[7] This is why higher courts are instructed to grant great deference to lower courts (BCO 39-3), and why higher courts only take up the business of lower courts under specific circumstances. Either a lower court asks the higher court to take up a matter, or some allegation of error is made against the lower court and filed in due order.
[8] The PCA’s first three stated clerks, Morton Smith, Paul Gilchrist, and Roy Taylor, have all written about the grassroots nature of the PCA’s polity in opposition to hierarchy and oligarchy. Dr. Smith’s “How is the Gold Become Din,” and Dr. Taylor’s “Non-Hierarchical Presbyterianism” can be found on pcahistory.org. Dr. Gilchrist’s “Distinctives of Presbyterian Church Government” can be obtained from the PCA historical center, though it is not on the website.
[9] I use committee in a non-technical sense here, referring to any subset of a body that has been given some task, role, or power by the larger body. True committees, commissions, boards, and agencies all fall under this broader use of “committee.”
[10] Overture 25 can be found in the 49th General Assembly Commissioner Handbook, 97.
[11] The sentence reads: “A commission differs from an ordinary committee in that while a committee is appointed to examine, consider and report, a commission is authorized to deliberate upon and conclude the business referred to it, except in the case of judicial commissions of a Presbytery appointed under BCO 15-3.”
[12] Commissioner Handbook, 97. The overture references the previously cited sentence, but excludes the special provision for Presbytery judicial commissions.
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Written by Rev. J.T. Tarter |
Wednesday, June 8, 2022
Not only did Eli have the familial authority to restrain his sons, he also had the civil authority to do so. Remember, Eli was the High Priest, in charge, and yet, he chose not to restrain his sons and because of that the people of God were hurt. Eli knew what his sons were doing, he even confronted them, but he did not restrain them, until eventually he couldn’t. 

Growing up, I regularly spent time with the Berenstein Bears. You may have really loved those books—I certainly did, and do—but you may or may not be aware that the Berenstein Bears series caught a lot of controversy for being some of the first children’s books that displayed what has been called “The Doofus Dad,” the prototypical display of the dad character as being a sort of fumbling, passive, lazy, incompetent dad, a depiction of the dad character that later became all the rage in the 90’s family sitcoms. My family almost every night turned in for one of these Doofus Dads: King of Queens, Everybody Loves Raymond, the Simpsons, Family Guy, and–of course–Home Improvement with Tim the Tool Man Taylor.
The Doofus Dad makes great Comedy. I remember just howling in laughter with my family as we watched King of Queens and Home Improvement, but it makes for a really bad reality. We love the passive/dumb dad of the sitcoms…until you have one. That’s not the dad you want, and, as a dad, that’s not the dad I want to be! And, I will add, I was blessed, myself to have the opposite.
Life is not meant to be a fumbling, lazy, passive experience; it is made and crafted to be an involved experience, to be lived with intentionality. Our role as Christians is not just to get saved and wait to die. No, God calls us to intentional living. Alas, the Bible teaches by both positive and negative example, and in the pages of the book of 1 Samuel, we meet Eli, a priest and father, who is passive, indulgent, somewhat lazy, and rather content with the status quo.
Eli was a priest. The Old Testament shows us Israel, a community of people whose social identity, religious beliefs, and ritual practices were deeply enmeshed in matters related to the priesthood. Simply put, a priest was supposed to serve God and the people of God by acting as the official mediator between God and his people. Jews, from an early age, were ingrained into the reality that they, as human beings, were separated from God by sin. The sacrificial system reminded them again and again of this separation, and the priests were entrusted with a sacred duty: ensuring that this sacrificial system was done properly. They were to be the leaders of God’s people as it related to knowing and following God. In that way (but not every way!) they are similar to pastors today. Pastors don’t mediate a sacrificial system, but rather we teach God’s Word and ultimately point the Church to Christ, who is the ultimate and final sacrifice on our behalf.
To understand Eli’s story better, we must know four things about priests in Israel. First, the priests were important. The people went to them in order to understand God and his will for their lives, and they functioned as leaders in their community and even as judges at certain points on Israel’s history. Second, their rule was hereditary. They were of the line of Aaron; their sons would serve God as priests after them; and so on and so on through the generations. Third, they handled the holy things, the sacrifices, the altar, tabernacle, local shrines, and later the temple in Jerusalem. And fourth, they cared for the people. In both their words and lives, the priests were to teach and care for the God’s people, to model before them a godly life, to demonstrate the process of following God.
The first time in the Bible that we meet Eli the Priest is in 1 Samuel 1:3, where we are told not directly about him but about his sons and the city in which he was a priest, Shiloh. Shiloh was an ancient city in the region of Samaria, itself the central region of ancient Israel. The present Shilo, still called by the same name, is a small Israeli settlement (of about 4,356 residents) in the northern West Bank, located 28 miles north of Jerusalem. In Eli’s day, however, Shiloh was the main center of Israelite worship, the location of the tabernacle (Joshua 18:1). In other words, Eli wasn’t simply a priest, he was the High Priest, the most prominent representative of God in the most important religious city of the country. Under his charge were two other priests, his sons, Hophni and Phinehas.^
The main issue with Eli in not only ministry, but his entire life, was that he was simply “going through the motions” of his religious duties. We see this in 1 Samuel, chapter 1. Far more important than Eli in the overall narrative of this chapter, are two other characters, Elkanah and Hannah. Elkanah, and Israelite man, had taken two wives (something that never ends well in the Bible). As verse 2 states, “He had two wives. The name of the one was Hannah, and the name of the other, Peninnah. And Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children.”
Elkanah would go up year after year from his city to worship and sacrifice to the Lord at Shiloh. This reveals that Elkanah was a devoted Jew, not simply worshipping in his local shrine up in the hill country of Ephraim, but coming down to the main hub of Shiloh to worship and sacrifice every year.
After the sacrifice, Elkanah would give portions for the sacrificial meal to his two wives, but verse 5 reports Hannah as his favorite: “But to Hannah he gave a double portion, because he loved her, though the Lord had closed her womb.” One can imagine the rivalry, and the Bible reports it. Not only does Hannah have her own sadness, but, predictably, it reports conflict between her and Peninnah: “And her rival used to provoke her grievously to irritate her, because the LORD had closed her womb. So it went on year by year. As often as she went up to the house of the LORD, she used to provoke her. Therefore, Hannah wept and would not eat” (v.6-7).
Hannah was grieved, not only could she not have children, but she was mocked by her husband’s other wife! Hannah’s heart was wrecked:
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