Resources

The standard treatment of the office from within our own tradition, tracing the elder from Israel's elders through the New Testament to the consistory room. The recommended starting point.

The companion volume on the diaconate, particularly strong on need that is not financial and on the deacon's place alongside the elders.

Written for ministers, but every office bearer will recognize himself in it. Baxter on taking heed to oneself before taking heed to the flock.

Plain, direct chapters on sin, sanctification and growth. Well suited to reading with another man, a chapter at a time.

Watson describes the godly man in twenty-four marks. Short sections, dense with Scripture, and easily read in small portions.

From outside our federation and with a different church polity, but a careful, verse-by-verse study of the passages on elders that is worth reading alongside Van Dam.

The articles on the offices, the assemblies and discipline. Office bearers promise to abide by it, and ought therefore to know it. The federation website is linked here; the text itself is printed in the Book of Praise.

The forms read at every ordination set out the duties of each office in a few pages. They repay rereading long after the day they were first heard.

The seminary's library offers subject guides and web resources, and its faculty regularly publish material of use to office bearers.