Presbytery of Northeastern New Jersey Updates
- Prospect Webmaster
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
The Presbytery of Northeast New Jersey
I came across the following quote by Ward Farnsworth. He writes in his book The Socratic Method, "Questions and answers are the sound of thought happening."
When I read those words, my mind immediately translated it this way, Discernment is the sound of the church thinking.
Discernment is one of those words we often use in the church but don't know how to describe. What if we described it as the conversation before the conclusion. It's also the questions we ask before a vote.
What if we told people it's the patient listening before developing a strategic plan, and the willingness to admit, "We do not yet know what faithfulness requires, but together we trust God will lead us."
Too often congregations expect their leaders to function as answer dispensers. They are hired or elected, consciously or unconsciously, to tell everyone what God wants. Likewise, many leaders feel pressure to come to their position with certainty, believing leadership means having the answers before anyone else asks the questions. Yet this is rarely how discernment unfolds in Scripture.
At the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15, the apostles and elders gathered not because one leader already knew the answer, but because the church had encountered a question it had never faced before. They argued. They listened. They remembered God's activity among the Gentiles. They searched the Scriptures. They testified to their experiences and only after that long process could they write, "It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us..."
That little phrase matters because they did not claim that one gifted leader had solved the problem alone. They bore witness to a communal process of listening in which the Spirit had been at work. Healthy churches recover this practice. A session should not merely ratify the pastor's conclusions. A committee should not simply choose among predetermined options. Congregational meetings should not exist only to approve recommendations that have already been settled elsewhere. Instead, these become places where faithful questions are welcomed:
What is God already doing among us?
What assumptions are we bringing into this conversation?
Who has not yet been heard?
What fears are shaping our decisions?
What would love require of us?
Where do we see the fruit of the Spirit?
Questions are not obstacles to leadership, they are the work of leadership. Your calling as a leader, then, is not merely to provide answers but to cultivate discernment by creating environments where people learn how to think together, how to listen deeply, and how to recognize the movement of the Spirit in community.
That work is slower than simply announcing a decision. It is also a lot messier and requires humility from leaders and patience from congregations. But perhaps one of the greatest gifts we as leaders can give our congregations is not confidence in our conclusions but confidence that, together, we can faithfully discern God's leading.
Steve Huston
Organizing Co-Leader/ Resource Presbyter
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