Presbytery By Deane Barker • November 20, 2021 • Definition: a group or board of clergy, “Presbyter” is an honorific title for a single Christian clergy. This comes from a Greek word for “old man.” It might be the root for the word “priest.” A pastoral staff considered as a group is a “presbytery.” The word is sometimes used for location: the home of a priest or a section of the church reserved for the Elders is sometimes called a “Presbytery.” Why I Looked It Up Douglas Wilson used the word in a blog post about church discipline: If you discipline her, does she have any recourse? And I don’t mean through an appeal to presbytery. I mean through an appeal to gullible journalists with a long tale of abuse and woe.