A few PCA quirks

July marks the one-year anniversary of my first visit to my present church home, and I still can't say that I understand everything about how the church functions. Here's a couple things that I still find odd:

• Teaching elders are officially NOT members of the local church. They're members of the presbytery instead. At first I figured this was a misprint when I noticed this in the church directory - from what I've heard from others I'm not the only one who thought that.
• A person holding a particular type of pastorship (associate or assistant - I can't remember which) is NOT a member of the church's session, the presbyterian equivalent to a consistory. Pilgrim explained to me that this is because that title indicates that the pastor in question was called by the church's session instead of by the congregation, and that only officers elected by the congregation are considered members of the session.

One misconception I had about the PCA was how the hierarchical structures worked, and the level of centralization in the denomination. Once again courtesy pilgrim, here's an article on non-hierarchical presbyterianism which describes the way the PCA is structured.