A History of the Mennonite Brethren Church, Ja Toews

ministry) were elected as administrators. 5 The man who earned special respect and recognition for this office, however, was Philipp Isaak, Elder Huebert's right-hand 304 HISTORY OF THE MENNONITE BRETHREN CHURCH man, whose work has been mentioned earlier. The introduction of this "office" in the M.B. Church is an illustration of the desire of the early Brethren to see "the gifts stirred up" (to use Elder Huebert's phrase) and to recover the New Testament concept of the ministry. Although ministerial candidates in Russia up to World War I generally did not have any theological or seminary training for the ministry, they were often chosen from the ranks of the teaching profession. This, together with the fact that the pulpit ministry was a shared ministry, provided the intellectual and spiritual resources for a balanced diet and for adequate nurture of church members. That the early M.B. Church was well provided with preachers can be seen from the conference statistics of 1885. The six main churches were served by four elders and thirty-five ministers. 6 The office of elder in the early M.B. Church is somewhat of an enigma. No rationale is given in the available records for introducing this office some eight years after the founding of the church. Since both Huebert (in the Molotschna) and Unger (in Chortitza) had experienced severe opposition and disastrous defeats in their ministry during the period of storm and stress, it may be that the brethren intended to strengthen the authority of their leadership by giving these brethren the status of elders. Of course, they also had the precedent and pattern for such procedure in the Mennonite Church. As mentioned earlier, Huebert was ordained as elder in late summer, 1868, and Unger in the fall of 1869. It will be recalled that Unger was ordained to this office by the Baptist minister J. G. Oncken — even though the Baptists had no such office in their church polity. During the following decade Elder Huebert ordained Abraham Schellenberg as his successor in the Molotschna, and Daniel Fast in the Kuban, thus establishing a certain "apostolic succession." The elders in the early M.B. Church functioned as "superintendents" of parishes or districts. The 1902 Confession of Faith, however, appears to limit the function of the elder somewhat. It states: In the household of the M.B. Church the order obtains, that one elder or a substitute for the elder acts as moderator and leader of local churches. The other ministers are his co-workers. With the various affairs of the entire denomination the suitable elders and other brethren are entrusted. ' In the first decade of this century the validity and usefulness of the office of an elder began to be seriously questioned in the M.B. Church. In the controversy over "open communion" the elders had emerged as the defenders of the status quo. David Schellenberg, the only elder in the Molotschna M.B. Churc