The aim of this arti­cle

In this arti­cle we will out­line our under­stand­ing of dif­fer­ent kinds of ser­vices in the Church. We pre­fer to use the expres­sion “kinds of ser­vice” (1 Cor 12:5) in the Church rather than posi­tions. Christ calls us to serve in the Church and not to strive for posi­tions. After touch­ing on some basic prin­ci­ples belong­ing to this top­ic we will briefly describe the church struc­ture as it was in the time of the New Tes­ta­ment and com­pare it with the sit­u­a­tion in today’s insti­tu­tion­al church­es. Final­ly we will present the rea­sons why we do not have one pas­tor and explain why we chose to return to the church struc­ture of the New Tes­ta­ment com­mu­ni­ties.

1 All Christians Are Brothers and Sisters

Jesus Christ is the head of the church. He has a direct and liv­ing rela­tion­ship with every Chris­t­ian with­out any oth­er medi­a­tor.

For there is one God, and there is one medi­a­tor between God and men, the man Christ Jesus… (1 Tim­o­thy 2:5)

All Chris­tians are broth­ers and sis­ters and togeth­er they take care of the church—each one accord­ing to the gifts he has received.

But God has so com­posed the body, giv­ing greater hon­our to the part that lacked it, that there may be no divi­sion in the body, but that the mem­bers may have the same care for one anoth­er. (1 Corinthi­ans 12:24–25)

But you are not to be called rab­bi, for you have one teacher, and you are all broth­ers. And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heav­en. Nei­ther be called instruc­tors, for you have one instruc­tor, the Christ. The great­est among you shall be your ser­vant. Who­ev­er exalts him­self will be hum­bled, and who­ev­er hum­bles him­self will be exalt­ed. (Matthew 23:8–12)

There are dif­fer­ences among Chris­tians in expe­ri­ence, knowl­edge of the Bible, and obe­di­ence to God. We should be aware of these dif­fer­ences but we should nev­er con­sid­er them fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ences. We can­not divide Chris­tians into two groups—those who have been enabled to reveal God’s will and those who fol­low (i.e. cler­gy and lay­men, those who have and have not been bap­tised with the Holy Spir­it, etc.).

2 The Structure of the Church in New Testament Times

2.1 Elders

In the Acts of the Apos­tles we read of var­i­ous exam­ples where the Apos­tles appoint­ed elders:

And when they had appoint­ed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fast­ing they com­mit­ted them to the Lord in whom they had believed. (Acts 14:23)

The elders (Greek: elder = pres­byteros) are Chris­tians who, because of their matu­ri­ty in faith and their obe­di­ence, were respect­ed by the com­mu­ni­ties and took care of them. In the New Tes­ta­ment they are also called over­seers (Greek: over­seer = episko­pos) and shep­herds (Greek: poimenes) of the church.

Now from Mile­tus he sent to Eph­esus and called the elders of the church to come to him. (Acts 20:17)

…and in the same con­text we read about the same peo­ple:

Take heed there­fore to your­selves, and to all the flock, where­in the Holy Spir­it has set you as over­seers, to shep­herd the assem­bly of God, which he has pur­chased with the blood of his own. (Acts 20:28) (Dar­by trans­la­tion)

The elders men­tioned in verse 17 are called over­seers here in verse 28. Their ser­vice is to shep­herd the assem­bly of God. The way these terms are used inter­change­ably reveals that they do not describe dif­fer­ent lev­els of hier­ar­chy. They sim­ply describe dif­fer­ent aspects of the same ser­vice. In some trans­la­tions the word “over­seer” (episko­pos) is ren­dered “bish­op”. In the Bible episko­pos just means an elder and can­not be com­pared to the so-called “bish­ops” of today. Actu­al­ly, it was only in the sec­ond cen­tu­ry that a sin­gle per­son became the leader of a com­mu­ni­ty in one town, unlike in the time of the Apos­tles when com­mu­ni­ties were not led by one per­son but by a col­lec­tive of elders.

Elders are addressed in plur­al in Philip­pi­ans 1:1 and 1 Peter 5:1–5.

Paul and Tim­o­thy, ser­vants of Christ Jesus,
To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philip­pi, with the over­seers and dea­cons.… (Philip­pi­ans 1:1)

So I exhort the elders among you, as a fel­low elder and a wit­ness of the suf­fer­ings of Christ.… (1 Peter 5:1)

In Acts 14:23 and Titus 1:5¹ sev­er­al elders were appoint­ed.

This struc­ture was a cer­tain kind of pro­tec­tion against false teach­ings. If one of the elders went astray then he would be reproved by the oth­ers.

Pay care­ful atten­tion to your­selves and to all the flock, of which the Holy Spir­it has made you overseers…and from among your own selves will arise men speak­ing twist­ed things, to draw away the dis­ci­ples after them. (Acts 20:28,30)

It was also a pro­tec­tion against the dan­ger of a sin­gle per­son gain­ing an exalt­ed posi­tion, which is crit­i­cised in 3 John 9:

I have writ­ten some­thing to the church, but Diotrephes, who likes to put him­self first, does not acknowl­edge our author­i­ty.

The col­lec­tive lead­ing of the Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty, as illus­trat­ed above, does not mean that the elders decide every­thing. In Matthew 18:15–18 Jesus shows that the most impor­tant deci­sions should be car­ried by the whole church.

If your broth­er sins, go and show him his fault in pri­vate; if he lis­tens [to you], you have won your broth­er. But if he does not lis­ten to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three wit­ness­es every fact may be con­firmed. If he refus­es to lis­ten to them, tell it to the church; and if he refus­es to lis­ten even to the church, let him be to you as a Gen­tile and a tax col­lec­tor. Tru­ly I say to you, what­ev­er you bind on earth shall have been bound in heav­en; and what­ev­er you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heav­en. (Matthew 18:15–18, NASB)

What then, broth­ers? When you come togeth­er, each one has a hymn, a les­son, a rev­e­la­tion, a tongue, or an inter­pre­ta­tion. Let all things be done for build­ing up.… Let two or three prophets speak, and let the oth­ers weigh what is said. If a rev­e­la­tion is made to anoth­er sit­ting there, let the first be silent. For you can all proph­esy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encour­aged. (1 Corinthi­ans 14:26,29–31)

Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our com­mon sal­va­tion, I found it nec­es­sary to write appeal­ing to you to con­tend for the faith that was once for all deliv­ered to the saints. (Jude 3)

Every Chris­t­ian bears respon­si­bil­i­ty for the teach­ing and the deci­sions of the church, which is Christ’s body. An elder should not replace the func­tion of the body but he should care for its well-being.

2.2 Deacons

Philip­pi­ans 1:1 men­tions dea­cons. The Greek word means a “ser­vant”, “helper” or “min­is­ter”. Relat­ed expres­sions are found in Acts 6:1–6.

…their wid­ows were being neglect­ed in the dai­ly dis­tri­b­u­tion (Greek: diako­nia — “dai­ly ser­vice”). (Acts 6:1)

It is not right that we should give up preach­ing the word of God to serve (Greek: diakonein) tables. (Acts 6:2)

3 The Post-Apostolic Structure of the Church

After the death of the Apos­tles Peter and Paul the sit­u­a­tion did not essen­tial­ly change. We can see this from a let­ter, which the Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty in Rome wrote to the Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty in Corinth around the year A.D. 70. This let­ter is known as the First Let­ter of Clement. It does not form part of the New Tes­ta­ment and we quote it here only as a his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ment. The main con­cern of this let­ter is the prop­er respect due to elders. We read there:

For our sin will not be small, if we eject from the epis­co­pate those who have blame­less­ly and holily ful­filled its duties. Blessed are those pres­byters who, hav­ing fin­ished their course before now, have obtained a fruit­ful and per­fect depar­ture [from this world]; for they have no fear lest any one deprive them of the place now appoint­ed them. But we see that you have removed some men of excel­lent behav­iour from the min­istry, which they ful­filled blame­less­ly and with hon­our. (1 Clement 44)

We read about pres­byters (elders) who ful­fil the task of epis­co­pate (the task of an over­seer). The terms episko­pos (over­seer) and pres­byteros (elder) are once again used syn­ony­mous­ly in this let­ter, while we read noth­ing about a sin­gle leader. We can see here that the New Tes­ta­ment church struc­ture as described above did not change even after the death of the Apos­tles. The Apos­tles did not appoint sin­gle lead­ers over the local church­es even when they left this world behind. So when the apos­tle Paul final­ly left the Eph­esian church, though he was aware that some Chris­tians were in dan­ger of falling away, he mere­ly said:

And now I com­mend you to God and to the word of his grace.… (Acts 20:32)

By the begin­ning of the sec­ond cen­tu­ry, though, we already find a sin­gle leader in a num­ber of local Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ties in Asia Minor and Syr­i­an Anti­och. They were called “episkopoi” (over­seers) which was orig­i­nal­ly a syn­onym for elders. We read about them in the let­ters of Ignatius of Anti­och (c. 35–c. 110) with­out any ref­er­ence to their spe­cial appoint­ment by the Apos­tles. Noth­ing sug­gests that mon­epis­co­pa­cy² came to exis­tence by the will of the Apos­tles. Apart from Matthias, who replaced Judas as the twelfth apos­tle (Acts 1:15–26), there is no men­tion in the Bible of the need to appoint suc­ces­sors for the Apos­tles.³

Ignatius imag­ined the role of a bish­op in the church as fol­lows:

See that you all fol­low the bish­op, even as Jesus Christ does the Father.… Let no man do any­thing con­nect­ed with the Church with­out the bish­op. …Wher­ev­er the bish­op shall appear, there let the mul­ti­tude of the peo­ple also be; even as, wher­ev­er Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic⁴ Church. It is not law­ful with­out the bish­op either to bap­tize or to cel­e­brate a love-feast; but what­so­ev­er he shall approve of, that is also pleas­ing to God, so that every­thing that is done may be secure and valid. …He who hon­ours the bish­op has been hon­oured by God; he who does any­thing with­out the knowl­edge of the bish­op, does in real­i­ty serve the dev­il.  (Smyr­na 8:1–9:1)

Empha­siz­ing the role of a sin­gle per­son in this way is com­plete­ly alien to the New Tes­ta­ment.

This devel­op­ment con­tin­ued so that by the end of the sec­ond cen­tu­ry Ireneus from Lyon con­sid­ered the episkopoi to be the suc­ces­sors of the Apos­tles.

4 The Roman Catholic Church Structure

In the doc­u­ments of the Roman Catholic Sec­ond Vat­i­can Coun­cil (1965) we read:

But the task of authen­ti­cal­ly inter­pret­ing the word of God, whether writ­ten or hand­ed on, has been entrust­ed exclu­sive­ly to the liv­ing teach­ing office of the Church, whose author­i­ty is exer­cised in the name of Jesus Christ. This teach­ing office is not above the word of God, but serves it, teach­ing only what has been hand­ed on, lis­ten­ing to it devout­ly, guard­ing it scrupu­lous­ly and explain­ing it faith­ful­ly in accord with a divine com­mis­sion and with the help of the Holy Spir­it, it draws from this one deposit of faith every­thing which it presents for belief as divine­ly revealed. (Dei ver­bum 10)

What this prac­ti­cal­ly means is that one needs a spe­cial “key” to “unlock” the Bible. Accord­ing to the Roman Catholic Church, priests as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the bish­op hold the key to unlock the true mean­ing of scrip­ture.

The apos­tle John, on the oth­er hand, wrote in his first let­ter to all Chris­tians:

I write these things to you about those who are try­ing to deceive you. But the anoint­ing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that any­one should teach you. But as his anoint­ing teach­es you about every­thing, and is true, and is no lie—just as it has taught you, abide in him. (1 John 2:26–27)

The key to under­stand­ing the Holy Scrip­tures is the Holy Spir­it who dwells in all Chris­tians. This is the anoint­ing John refers to.

In the Roman Catholic Church the author­i­ty of the bish­ops is often com­pared with that of the Apos­tles. We regard the author­i­ty of the Apos­tles as unique due to their per­son­al expe­ri­ence with Jesus and the role they played in lay­ing the foun­da­tions of the church.

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fel­low cit­i­zens with the saints and mem­bers of the house­hold of God, built on the foun­da­tion of the apos­tles and prophets, Christ Jesus him­self being the cor­ner­stone.… (Eph­esians 2:19–20)

The apos­tle Paul also con­nects his apos­tle­ship with hav­ing seen Jesus:

Am I not free? Am I not an apos­tle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are not you my work­man­ship in the Lord? (1 Corinthi­ans 9:1)

5 The Usual Church Structure in Protestant and Free Churches

Most Protes­tants and free church­es reject the Roman Catholic doc­trine about the teach­ing office of bish­ops. At the same time they usu­al­ly see the neces­si­ty of appoint­ing one pas­tor over the elders. The pas­tor takes the task of preach­ing in the church and has the last word in impor­tant deci­sions. One argu­ment often giv­en in sup­port of this is the exam­ple of Tim­o­thy and Titus, Paul’s co-work­ers, who had sig­nif­i­cant author­i­ty in Eph­esus and Crete (1Timothy 1:3, Titus 1:5). This rea­son­ing dis­re­gards the fact that these co-work­ers were left in these places to fin­ish the work of the apos­tle. They did not remain there indef­i­nite­ly and no posi­tion or office was estab­lished to con­tin­ue their role after their depar­ture.

Jerome, one of the church fathers from the fourth cen­tu­ry, did not con­sid­er this wide­spread form of church gov­ern­ment to have been giv­en by the Lord but to have been a lat­er devel­op­ment with­in the church. He wrote:

…Before splits appeared in [our] reli­gion through the stim­u­la­tion of the dev­il, and before it was spo­ken among the peo­ple: “I belong to Paul, I to Apol­los, and I to Cephas him­self”, the church­es had been gov­erned joint­ly by coun­cils of pres­byters. As soon as each of them start­ed con­sid­er­ing those he bap­tised his own, and not Christ’s, it was decid­ed all over the world that one man cho­sen from among pres­byters [in each com­mu­ni­ty — trans­la­tor’s remark] should be set over the rest to take care of the whole church. In this way the seeds of schism were done away with. …For that rea­son bish­ops should con­sid­er that they were placed over pres­byters due to a cus­tom rather than by a com­mand of the Lord; and that one ought to rule the church joint­ly, imi­tat­ing Moses who, though he might have stayed alone in the lead of Israel, chose sev­en­ty men with whom he judged the peo­ple togeth­er. (Jerome, Com­men­tar­ius in epis­tu­lam Pauli ad Titum 1:5)

But imple­ment­ing a man-made “cus­tom” is not a real spir­i­tu­al solu­tion for the prob­lem.

6 Our Conclusions

1. No man is infal­li­ble. Every one may need cor­rec­tion. Every Chris­t­ian should grow in bear­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty. We do not see it as God’s lead­ing to appoint one leader over the church or a local Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty.
2. Elders help a Chris­t­ian church to hold onto the right teach­ing and way of life. Their author­i­ty should not be based on a uni­ver­si­ty degree or on lead­er­ship skills but on their obe­di­ence to God, Chris­t­ian virtues, expe­ri­ence, and their abil­i­ty to teach. Elders in the church can be either appoint­ed or nat­u­ral­ly rec­og­nized by their good exam­ple and per­se­ver­ance. In the Bible we do not find any exam­ples of a church appoint­ing elders by vote. Unlike many com­mu­ni­ties in the New Tes­ta­ment, our com­mu­ni­ty was not found­ed by mis­sion­ar­ies who appoint­ed elders. We have grown grad­u­al­ly and we know each oth­er well. We also know our elders. This does not change their task, and every­thing we have said con­cern­ing elders can be applied to them. They take part in our lives and we take part in theirs. They earn their own mon­ey in nor­mal jobs, as do the oth­ers. They, too, need encour­age­ment and admo­ni­tion, as do the oth­ers. They, too, con­fess their sins to any of the oth­er Chris­tians. The elders are not the only ones who teach.
3. We should not come togeth­er to be fed a pro­gramme but to share. It is not dif­fi­cult to take part in meet­ings where some­body puts on a pro­gramme. This way, how­ev­er, does not teach a per­son to take on respon­si­bil­i­ty. If Chris­tians do not learn to bear respon­si­bil­i­ty for the church a devel­op­ment towards a wrong struc­ture is unavoid­able. Lov­ing oth­ers means tak­ing on respon­si­bil­i­ty for them. The Apos­tle Paul encour­ages us to do this:

I myself am sat­is­fied about you, my broth­ers, that you your­selves are full of good­ness, filled with all knowl­edge and able to instruct one anoth­er. (Romans 15:14)

Broth­ers, if any­one is caught in any trans­gres­sion, you who are spir­i­tu­al should restore him in a spir­it of gen­tle­ness. Keep watch on your­self, lest you too be tempt­ed. (Gala­tians 6:1)

In doing this we can build uni­ty which is not imposed from above but which comes from our hearts. Such uni­ty can also be a tes­ti­mo­ny for the world.

But if all proph­esy, and an unbe­liev­er or an ungift­ed man enters, he is con­vict­ed by all, he is called to account by all; the secrets of his heart are dis­closed; and so he will fall on his face and wor­ship God, declar­ing that God is cer­tain­ly among you. (1 Corinthi­ans 14:24–25)

We learn to bear this respon­si­bil­i­ty every day, pre­serv­ing the humil­i­ty that makes us able to lis­ten to the others—to our elders, but also to our younger spir­i­tu­al broth­ers and sis­ters. (1 Peter 5:5)

7 Passages that are used to justify the structure found today

There are two pas­sages where the word “over­seer” (Gk: episko­pos) is writ­ten in sin­gu­lar. Name­ly 1 Tim­o­thy 3:2 and Titus 1:7. Titus 1:5 refers to the same peo­ple, and there you can see that it assumes there are sev­er­al elders or over­seers in a com­mu­ni­ty. Here Paul describes the pre­req­ui­sites for being an over­seer in the com­mu­ni­ty. He does not want to say that there should only be one. The descrip­tion of the dea­cons in 1 Tim­o­thy 3:8 is writ­ten in plur­al, but this does not con­tra­dict the descrip­tion in sin­gu­lar in the ear­li­er vers­es. They are sim­ply dif­fer­ent ways of list­ing the most impor­tant require­ments for both tasks. It’s like say­ing: motor­bikes usu­al­ly have two wheels. A car, how­ev­er, always has four.

In Hebrews 13 lead­ers are men­tioned twice. In verse 7 the apos­tles and elders from the begin­ning of the church are meant. In verse 17 the elders at the time of writ­ing the let­ter are meant. This is just anoth­er term for the elders or over­seers — which is anoth­er indi­ca­tion that the ear­ly Chris­tians did not have offi­cial titles and posi­tions.

James the broth­er of the Lord is often referred to as the leader of the com­mu­ni­ty in Jerusalem because he is men­tioned sep­a­rate­ly in var­i­ous places in the New Tes­ta­ment (i.e. Acts 12:17 and 21:18). He also spoke the last word at the so called apos­tles coun­cil. There is no doubt that he had great author­i­ty among the Chris­tians. His obe­di­ence and deep under­stand­ing of Jesus’ teach­ing are appar­ent from the let­ter of James. Even non-Chris­tians referred to him as James the right­eous. There is a world of dif­fer­ence, how­ev­er, between a believ­er who enjoys great respect due to their great devo­tion and hav­ing a posi­tion as the sole leader of a church. Such a posi­tion did not exist at all in the ear­ly church. As pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned, John the apos­tle sharply crit­i­cised the wish to be the first (3 John).

Regard­ing the claim that Peter was the bish­op of Rome or even the first Pope, we are prepar­ing an arti­cle about the papa­cy.

1. There are two pas­sages in which we find the word “over­seer” (episko­pos) writ­ten in sin­gu­lar. These pas­sages are: 1 Tim­o­thy 3:2 and Titus 1:7. In Titus 1:5 we can see that a plu­ral­i­ty of elders in the church is pre­sup­posed. So the word “over­seer” is used in sin­gu­lar because these pas­sages describe the qual­i­ties required of an over­seer. It does not express that there should only be one over­seer. ↩
2. Church gov­ern­ment by monar­chi­cal bish­ops: monar­chi­cal epis­co­pa­cy. ↩
3. The num­ber twelve was sym­bol­ic of the nation of Israel and the Apos­tles want­ed to main­tain this num­ber as an expres­sion of a new begin­ning of God’s nation. This was impor­tant when the Apos­tles start­ed preach­ing. Lat­er, when James the apos­tle died, the num­ber was not com­plet­ed. ↩
4. In the orig­i­nal mean­ing of the word, i.e. “whole” or “general”—not “Roman” Catholic. ↩