A minor

Church Officers and the Administration of the Sacraments

I originally wrote most of the following as a comment to Matt Colvin's post, "Wilson on Minister-Administered Sacraments." I'd like more input, so please comment away!

Here in Moscow, I've always been puzzled by the following scenario: Pastor Wilson is out of town, and someone preaches who is not ordained (e.g. one of the Greyfriars seniors). After his sermon, the non-ordained does not administer the supper. Instead, someone who is ordained proceeds to lead the supper.

Every time I've seen this happen, the person administering the supper has not been one the regular Christ Church elders (nor even one of our two teaching elders, Doug Jones or Chris Schlect), but rather someone who previously served as a full-time pastor of a church (namely Peter Leithart or Mike Lawyer, Doug Wilson's assistant). Ecclesiologically, this seems to place an emphasis on presbyterial ordination over and above congregational ordination - despite the fact that Doug Wilson, Christ Church, and the CRE have tended to emphasize congregational ordination. This also seems to suggest that a man who is commissioned to preach might be unqualified to lead the supper (cf. PCA licentiates), which seems very odd to me. If he can't perform the very simple task of leading the supper without making a mockery of it, why is he preaching?

Related to this, I can't make sense out the tradition that says that a man may be ordained to congregational service and oversight (including deacons and elders) but not also to the administration of the sacraments. I'm not saying that all offices are alike, or that there aren't unique gifts and duties, but rather that leading the supper is one of the simplest duties performed by a church officer.