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DID YOU KNOW? What Presbyterians Believe
from the Book of Confessions
"the Book of Confessions and Ordination"
E. Other Important Uses of the Book of Confessions in the Church (part 2 of 2)
5. Pastoral care. Faithful and effective pastoral care in our time requires ministers gratefully and diligently to use the wisdom, tools, and skills of such “secular” disciplines as psychology and sociology, and (increasingly) to be able to deal with issues raised by modern medical science and technology. If pastors are to be faithful to their ordination vows and if they are to offer people in need the distinctive resources of Christian and Reformed faith, they must continually evaluate the presuppositions, claims, methods, and goals of these disciplines in light of the theological and ethical teaching of the church’s confessions. Pastors should also find guidance in the theology and language of the confessions for what they should say and do in ministering to people both in crisis situations and in situations of everyday life.
6. Evangelism. The theology of the confessions should shape the motives, content, methods, and goals of the church’s evangelistic programs. Special care must be taken lest concern for “results” or “success” lead to evangelistic preaching and techniques that compromise either the fundamental commitment of our confessions to the gospel of salvation by God’s grace alone or their emphasis on costly Christian discipleship in every area of life.
7. Mission. The church must continually evaluate its mission programs, strategies and goals to be sure that they are determined by the theology and ethics of its confessions and not by this or that liberal, conservative, or revolutionary ideology or by the cultural or racial preferences of the leaders and members of the church.
8. Administration. Governing bodies of the church and church leaders properly seek the most efficient styles of leadership, management, decision-making, and priority and goal-setting. But all administrative and operational processes and goals should be measured by the confessional standards of the church and choices determined by the “essential tenets of the Reformed faith” expressed in them. Our church will have become a truly confessional church when we no longer have to remind ourselves to test what we think and say and do by reference to the Book of Confessions, but when we do so automatically, and when it becomes so much a part of us that we are always unconsciously guided by our commitment to the Reformed tradition it expresses and serves.
https://pcusa.org/sites/default/files/boc2016.pdf
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