# Catechists, Readers, and Exhorters



## Pergamum (May 20, 2011)

I am trying to find out more about these church offices, their history, their qualifications, duties and Scripture support.


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## ADKing (May 21, 2011)

From the _Dictionary of Scottish Church History and Theology_: 

Readers (Reformation): persons authorized to read to Reformed congregations the common prayers, homilies and passages of Scripture, but not to compose sermons. Such a function, familiar in the privy kirks before 1560 was commended in the First Book of Discipline of 1560 as a temporary device for instructing congregations lacking preachers. Readers who applied themselves to further theological study, the FBD envisaged, might be admitted ministers after due examination, though readers not so permitted were forbidden to preach or minister the sacraments. A distinction was also recognized between those who were ‘to content themselves with reading’ and others who, though not qualifying as ministers, possessed the ‘gift of exhortation’ the ability, that is, to ‘exhort and explain the Scriptures’. This prepared the way for the appointment of exhorters, who occupied an intermediate position between readers and ministers, permitted to preach, conduct marriage ceremonies and even the sacrament of baptism, but denied the right of administering the Lord’s Supper. During the 1570s the exhorter’s office disappeared, with some appointed to the ministry and others demoted to reader. The FBD also recommended that readers able to serve as teachers in parishes should receive a starting salary of 40 merks. School-masters and notaries public often figured among recruits as readers at the Reformation, though remuneration was usually poor. The General Assembly in December 1560 approved the appointment of readers in various localities; and by 1574 over 700 were employed in parishes. At the Convention of Leith in 1572, readers, if found qualified, were permitted to baptize and officiate at marriages; but by 1576, the General Assembly decided to reserve such duties to those able to ‘exhort’ or preach, and in 1580 it decreed that as the reader’s office was ‘no ordinary office within the kirk of God’, existing readers, on examination, should either become ministers or be deposed. In 1581 the Assembly prohibited the appointment of further readers, but it took longer to eliminate the office, which survived, on a much diminished scale, into the seventeenth century.


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## Pergamum (May 21, 2011)

Any other sources or Scripture proofs?


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