Lay elder

Prior to joining the church staff, he worked for a decade in business, managing an operating unit of a large consultancy while serving his church as a lay elder. In "Budgeting for a Healthy Church: Aligning Finances with Biblical Priorities for Ministry" Pastor Dunlop draws upon his years of experience and expertise to present the church budget as a financial tool and a pastoral tool.

Richard, who taught geography in a secondary school, is World Development Officer for the Diocese of St Edmondsbury and Ipswich and is a lay elder in his church.

The office of lay elder, who bore fundamental responsibility for the enforcement of discipline in the Calvinist system, was only slowly and irregularly instituted in the Eastern European world.

The Eglises Reformees de France--the plural (not the singular, as on 132) is important since it was a federation of churches--were governed by a consistory composed of the pastor or pastors, who acted as moderators, and lay elders who were nominated by the consistory, but not by magistrates or a "magistracy" (100, 101, 102).

The two dozen members of the Consistory, evenly divided between lay elders (drawn from the city's three councils) and the city's clergy (led by Calvin) acted "at once as a hearings court, as a compulsory counseling service, and as an educational institution" (14).

Such an arrangement was contrary to a Presbyterian polity--that is, representative church government, with laymen and clergymen, lay Elders and teaching Elders, in an equal mixture.

Leaders: Governing Body at Watchtower World Headquarters in Brooklyn; Lay elders (always male) in local Kingdom Halls.

Numerous distinguished members of La Rochelle's wealthy, mercantile governing elite rallied to the new faith, enabling a small cadre of ministers to establish a complete panoply of Calvinist religious institutions in the city, including multiple congregations and a consistory, or church governing body, comprised of lay elders and deacons over which the pastors presided.

A particular focus is the growing insistence on the pastoral character of this discipline, a shift of emphasis towards a more Lutheran view of absolution and the role of ministers (pastors and lay elders) in the exercise of discipline.

Bucer wanted a structure in each parish which would give the pastor the right to discipline those who voluntarily submitted to him and which provided for lay elders elected by them to assist him, when the official elders (Kirchenpfleger) did not, although they were to be involved.