Far from adding "ministries" to church outside of her purview (e.g. cultural transformation), I like how Dabney here, expanding on the inspection function of eldership (shepherding, ruling, etc. vs. only the preaching), works its way out such that Christian members, properly being "inspected," shepherded, grow and being salt & light, rightly affect the culture, according to place & station, as opposed to adding "official" functions to the ministry of the church beyond the King's warrant. (Discussions, vol. 2, p. 156).
See how the conscious, the felt wants of the Christian world, have impelled them to attempt in various ways to find a substitute for this neglected, but all-essential function [ruling elder]. The Wesleyan invents a class-leader, who oversees and instructs his class. Here is precisely the ruling elder’s work. The great temperance movement in the Christian world at length shapes itself into the order of the Sons of Temperance, because it was practically felt that without an agency for benevolent oversight, the reclaimed would be lost to the cause of temperance about as fast as they were won. Hence the extensive and complex organization of this order, to seek out the inebriate, to watch over the reclaimed and see that they keep their vow, to report backsliders, and to restore the lapsed. Well, all this is just the ruling elder’s work, and if Christ’s agency had been faithfully employed, good men would never have felt the need of Sons of Temperance in any place where there was a church, because this would have been of itself the very best temperance society. Again, a well-meaning Christian invents the “Young Men’s Christian Association,” intended to sustain in towns and other populous places a regular agency for seeking out young men, for bringing them into houses of worship and under wholesome influences, for giving saving advice against temptation at the very moment of danger, for watching over their morals and restoring their falls. And the institution has run like a prairie-fire throughout the Protestant countries. Well, all this is just the ruling elder’s work. Had Christians acted on Christ’s plan in his church, there would have been no need for such a society, because the church itself would have been found the best, and the sufficient “Christian Association” for young men and old men, and for young and old women too. Let us not be understood as opposing the well-intended exertions of the friends of these associations. The church may, perhaps, thank them under the circumstances, that they are piously striving to supply her lack of service. But it is a crying evidence of her misunderstanding and neglect of her divine plan, that outside agencies should have to be patched up by human invention to do her proper work.
