The Form of Presbyterial Church Government

The Westminster Assembly’s statement of church polity, approved by the General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland in 1645 alongside the Confession and Catechisms. It is the common root of the American Presbyterian books of church order: the PCA, OPC, and ARP chapters on the deacon elsewhere on this site all descend from it.

Its deacon section is brief but decisive. Deacons are “distinct officers in the church,” their office is perpetual, and it belongs to them “not to preach the word, or administer the sacraments, but to take special care in distributing to the necessities of the poor.” Compared with the Scottish Books of Discipline, this is a narrowing: where the First Book made deacons treasurers of the kirk’s whole rents and patrimony, Westminster defines the office by poor relief alone, distinguished from the ministry of the word and sacraments. That compact definition (perpetual, distinct, devoted to the poor) became the template the American churches expanded into their chapters on the diaconate.