 District Superintendent (Methodism)

A district superintendent, often abbreviated D.S., also known as a presiding elder, in many Methodist denominations, is a minister (specifically an elder) who serves in a supervisory position over a geographic "district" of churches (varying in size) providing spiritual and administrative leadership to those churches and their pastors.District superintendents were once called "presiding elders", and this is the term still employed in some Methodist denominations such as the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, and the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, while in the 20th century, in the Methodist Episcopal Church, the forerunner of the United Methodist Church, as well as in the Free Methodist Church, the term "district superintendent" supplanted the former term.