A district superintendent (DS), 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.[1] In the 20th century, in the Methodist Episcopal Church (the forerunner of the United Methodist Church) and the Free Methodist Church, the term district superintendent supplanted the former term.[2]
The officice of presiding elder, now called district superintendent in the UMC, was developed in the MEC as an extension of the superintending function of bishops.