Bible Backgrounds/Church History 2012

Today we've got History of Churches and Church Governance here, and the biblical pattern, and one of the things we'll do here is underscore what is the biblical pattern in more than one slide. The biblical pattern is elders, plural, and deacons, plural, at each church. So here's Antioch, the church, singular, and the elders, plural.

And that's Acts 11, 26-30. In Asia, They went to, and that's what we call modern Turkey now, they went to appoint elders in every church singular, right? So plural elders is the pattern. Jerusalem, there are several times in Acts, starting with Acts 15 and going on to chapter 21, elders in the church in Jerusalem, right?

Ephesus, the elders of the church, overseers, plural. Elders who rule well. So the plurality of elders is underscored there. Crete, appoint elders in every city. Philippi, overseers. Here's the one church in Philippi, correct? One church, and what you have there at the introduction to that letter is elders and deacons, overseers and deacons, and we'll talk about the different terms for elders. Everything okay? Okay, all right.

In James general epistle, the elders of the church, the elders among you. So what you see is a consistent pattern, and it doesn't seem to matter who the author is, consistent pattern from Acts into 1st Peter of plurality of elders in the church being the priority.

Regarding the deacons, What you see there is, here's Jerusalem, seven men, these, them, there's a plurality of deacons, of course with Philippi the same. Deacons were to be appointed, plural, in Ephesus, and Philippians 1, 1, and 2 there shows the Greek codex there with overseers and deacons, plural, underlined. One of the things that we have here in a chart, this one here, that's your third slide, is here is the pattern of the use of words for elder, overseer, shepherd in the New Testament. And what's interesting is the terms that we've come up with for those.

Presbyteros, we have a denomination that sounds like that. Presbyterian, right? And at Presbyteros, matter of fact, the reason I'm wearing glasses is because I have presbyopia, right? It's not because I'm a Presbyterian, you know, in my eyeballs, but it's because of old eyes. That word is used for elders in Acts 20, 17, and then these several places listed in 1 Timothy and Titus and 1 Peter. And so that idea, what does that tell you about the elder? How old is the elder? Elder, yeah.

It is not a position for young men. As a matter of fact, at first when the church was new, they would appoint someone who was a young believer, but later on The caution was given, don't appoint someone who's a new believer. They had no choice initially, obviously. But, yes. Well, if you look at it, what is the intent? I think that's what you have to look at.

Just having somebody because they're old is not going to be sufficient. As a matter of fact, there are qualifications for elders that are fairly extensive, given in 1 Timothy 3, 1-7, and in Titus 1, 5-9. and in 1 Peter 5, 1-4. So qualifications given in each of those. And so it's more than just being older, but that is one point.

And it's really pointing to someone that has some experience, and even experience as a believer. Not just life experience, but someone who has experience as a believer. OK, here is the next episkopos. What denomination does that sound like? Episcopal. And we'll talk about why that's the case here.

The episkopos is an overseer, is a noun, although we have it marked there, 1 Peter 5.2, it's used as a verb. That's the verb form, episkopal. So that's an exception. But otherwise, you see it there in Acts 20 and 1 Timothy and Titus. the mention of this overseer.

And what does that tell us about the function and role of an elder, an overseer? There's maturity to it. And what else? There's leadership. Here's someone who's looking over the flock. Yeah. Yeah. How are they doing and looking at things, not just kind of blindly going along, I'm doing this, you know, but seeing, you know, how are they doing? What do they need? You know. Then there is an interesting combination of both the noun and the verb for shepherd.

Now, this is the one that has been made as a title in the churches. So we'll say, well, that's pastor so-and-so. There is no instance where this word is used as a title for the elder overseer shepherd. Even once in the New Testament. The only time when this word poyman, this shepherd, is used as a title is for Christ. The great shepherd. It's only used of him as a title, and not otherwise.

And it's only used for an elder once, Ephesians 4.11 as a noun, but not as a title. Then here is the verb form of it. In other words, it's shepherding. It's in action, and Paul uses it in Acts 20 as he speaks to the elders from Ephesus.

And 1 Peter 5.2 has that. It's interesting.

What that tells me is that the apostles were far more interested in seeing action than giving people titles. Far more interested in seeing action than giving people titles. Now, the next one over there. The elders setting themselves above the flock. Elders setting themselves above the flock and other elders and other churches is not biblical, but that in church history is exactly what happened. That is exactly what happened.

Here is Acts 20, again a pivotal passage since Paul is talking to elders. All the flock among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd. Overseers. noun, shepherd, verb, right? So that again underscores Paul is a whole lot more interested in seeing action out of the elders than giving them titles. He doesn't ever give them that as a title.

Well, yeah, and that's what we'll see. Essentially what happened is before the Apostle John had died, the tendency for someone to start acting like a bishop, a supervisor over multiple churches began. And what should have happened, it started with a fellow by the name of Clement that the Roman Catholic Church calls the second pope after Peter. What should have happened is he should have been severely reprimanded.

There was no biblical basis, but because nobody did it, that ended up being the pattern. Nobody said, hey, wait a minute, Clement, you're in sin. You're being profoundly unbiblical. He wrote a letter. He was in Rome. He wrote a letter to the church at Corinth and began ordering them around. writing, by the way, on every subject that the Apostle Paul had written about in 1 Corinthians, except for tongues.

So here's 1 Peter 5.2, the flock of God among you.

So this among statement is underscored by both Paul and Peter, and then the warning against not lording it over, not stepping into heavy-handed authority. And then the chief shepherd, the one who has greater authority, is Christ. He's the one who has greater authority. And then finally, Diotrephes, and this is 3 John 9, who loves to be first among them, does not accept what we say. So here's the guy who does lord it over and tries to put himself first. In fact, insists that he put himself first.

Elders and deacons are to be selected on the basis of character qualifications. We give references here in Acts 6, 1-16. That's primarily for deacons. 1 Timothy 3, 1-13 is for elders and deacons. Titus 1, 5-9 for elders, and 1 Peter 5, 1-4 for elders.

Now, one of the things that happened is that this idea of apostolic succession came into place. But what we find biblically is we're not called to apostolic succession, we're called to doctrinal succession. It's not, I appoint this guy, and this guy appoints that guy, and we've got this bishop of this, and all that goes on all the way up to the Pope, and we'll talk about that structure. But doctrinal succession, and that's the key, and we'll talk about that some more in a little bit here. So there at the bottom part of page one, we have Clement, 40 to 100 AD, who was called the Bishop of the Church of Rome, wrote a letter to the church in Corinth, about 96 AD, about the year John died, in an unbiblical exercise of authority above another church.

Some speculate he may be the Clement of Philippians 4.3, but that's unlikely.

Wrong place, for one thing. And then Ignatius, who died a martyr, and the date on that varies anywhere from 98 to 117 AD, was called the Bishop of the Church at Antioch. Again, an unbiblical role for him to take. He wrote to the church at Smyrna, hundreds of miles away, writing to the church at Smyrna, he said, it is not permitted to baptize or hold a love feast apart from the bishop. I've got to be there, otherwise you can't. Both Clement and Ignatius should have been severely reprimanded instead because the church did not know what the New Testament said, and because they weren't saying, okay, this is our standard, the church then adopted this as the standard. And it should have been something that was immediately corrected. But instead, the error got established, lasting up to this present day.

So, all right, page two. What we have on page 2 is in some larger slides. We have a map there that shows Clement riding from Rome to the church at Corinth and we have Ignatius riding to the church at Smyrna. Both of them riding to churches way far away from where they had any authority. That should have been seen as, whoop, you're in trouble. Instead it became the standard.

Here is the concept of authority in the early church that God established. He went from God to Christ to the apostles and the apostles' successors. The only thing is the apostles didn't appoint successors. The first 200 years of Popes that the Catholic Church, I mean, they've got their lineage and here's the name and here's the date.

It's bogus. And we'll even see in a bit here, Peter as well. Peter was not the Bishop of Rome. But anyway, here's the rise of the Episcopi. The plurality of leadership in each church was the standard up until the time of Ignatius and Clement. And then things took a trip to the sideways, by 170 AD, pastors were getting called priests. The idea of having bishops was getting well established. Bishops over various districts. And the idea then was you have a federation of bishops. And that It continues now in the Catholic Church, it continues in the Orthodox Churches, it continues in Anglican and Episcopal Churches, this idea of succession. The Methodist Church also has that. We'll talk about that some more.

Did you have a question, Gary? In other words, what you see is pastors or elders, you know, in the Bible, overseers. But they started calling them priests at 170 AD, and then by 220, the Lord's table and baptism began to be seen as spiritually effective, not just a symbol.

Yeah, Tom? And that doesn't surprise me. Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. And that's quite wrong. Because there is one mediator between God and man. Right? So, no. So, a person can be an elder, overseer, shepherd, not a priest. If anything, we are all priests. Right? We all have a priesthood. directly with the Lord. Here you see on this map, these are the major bishoprics of the Roman Empire. So that's at Rome, Constantinople, which became for the Eastern Empire the new Rome. Then you had a bishop at Antioch, at Jerusalem, and at Alexandria.

Those were the major where the major bishops were stationed, and then they had kind of a district outlined for each one of those. Here is what you ended up having. There was an east-west division between the different parts of the empire, and these colored areas that you see lined out, those are the dioceses. Remember the diocese was the district that they had and those that's what they had. That's how it maps out and And so they they used the districts that were from the Roman Empire as the Empire crumbled the church took over and maintained the districts and the bishops then took on political authority and even some military authority and influence and Now, here you have on page 3, top of page 3, you have the development of the episcopy. In this case, rather than the chart, as we showed a little bit back here, it's sort of a table where we have the different periods, and then here was the source of the teaching, and then how things were done.

And of course, in the New Testament era, it was, you know, elders and the word bishops is given for overseers, right? And then deacons in each church were under the supervision of the apostles. That was the way it went. Then, by the early second century, elders and bishops were made different. When you see it in the New Testament, there is no difference, right? You who are elders, you need to be overseers, right? That's the way the New Testament has it, but they made elders at the local church level and then bishops above numerous churches. And that was not something the Apostles taught. And so that takes you through each of the developments.

By the mid-fifth century, Leo I was beginning to act in a Pope type fashion, the supremacy of Rome leo the first claimed authority over the whole church on the basis of succession from Peter. And as we'll see, Peter was not the first pope. He was not even the Bishop of Rome.

Now, so here's the rise of the next one here. Here you've got, and I had to kind of jump around to get everything on there, but here you've got, and it's on page five, this is the table that deals with Peter's record of absence from and possible later presence in Rome. What you see is record evidence that Peter is not in Rome, but in Jerusalem or Antioch, possibly. And so, you can imagine, here's the Apostle Paul. He is taken to Rome. Is Peter there? When the Apostle Paul, at the end of the book of Acts, goes to Rome, is Peter there? Does he meet Peter?

No mention. Not one mention. At the end of the book of Romans, which we're going through in our main service, at least a portion of it, The last chapter is all about you know greet this person and say hi to that one and is Peter in that list of greetings Wouldn't wouldn't that be a huge mistake on Paul's part to greet all this guy and that one and so-and-so says hi and not say hi to Peter if he was the bishop of Rome That would be a huge oversight on his part. So at any rate, as you go down through those items that we have coated in red, those are things out of Scripture.

In around 50 AD, you see a fairly long line that's in green on the top, and that relates to a tradition somewhat confirmed by the Book of Galatians that Peter spent the better part of a decade in Antioch. But Antioch, not Rome. And guess what? It's the Orthodox churches that have that tradition that he spent the time in Antioch. He still was not in Rome. There's no indication that he was in Rome. And we have some confirmation that he was in Antioch because when Paul wrote about Peter. He talked about meeting Peter in Jerusalem, but in the book of Acts, Peter had to come down from Antioch in order to have the Jerusalem Council in chapter 15.

Oh, those are the references. In other words, here is a footnote. What you'll have here, for example, the very top one, let me see if I can point it out, right up here, is from 30 to 35 AD, Peter played a major role in Jerusalem and its environs for all the events of Acts 1 through 8. You keep seeing Peter show up. in those events, and then from there, that one, we have a footnote one, and so that's footnote one. It says notes one through ten excerpted from Justification by Faith Alone and its Historical Challenges by Ron Merriman, pages 45 and 46.

So that's what that's about. But as you step through this, what you find is, while there are some spaces of time for which we don't have some particular record about where Peter is, those spaces are not very long, and it certainly indicates that he was not the Bishop of Rome for two and a half decades, as the Catholic Church has. And as a matter of fact, looking at all these places where he's here and not in Rome, and there is not one mention of him being in Rome in any of these, it is only number 12, the last one, where it's thought by some scholars that he might have been in Rome. So what the Catholic Church claims, and my copy of the Roman Catholic Catechism that was edited by the current Pope claims, you know, Peter is the first Pope. Bunk. Bogus. Yes. Yes, in other words, the misinterpretation of upon this rock I'll build my church ends up developing this big tradition. It's contrary to the facts. It's just contrary to the facts. I mean, here I think they're fairly well laid out.

I took the first ten points from Ron Merriman's write-up and then added more to it and then put it all on a timeline and it's just, it's not reasonable to claim that Peter was the Bishop of Rome or the first Pope or anything of the sort. There is no evidence for it and matter of fact the evidence stands against it. But what's claimed is he was the first one and then they go on with Clement for the next one and down the line. And the first two centuries are just bogus. It's all based on things like this. Unfounded. Peter did not hand off the keys to Clement. He wasn't there to hand off the keys to Clement. So, then the next thing we have here, this is back on your prior page, this is page 3 on the bottom. Sorry about the bouncing around, but in order to get the charts in there I had to do this.

Here is the rise of the Episcopi, starting with elders as bishops and deacons, then with Ignatius and Clement having bishops that were over large areas, and that pattern. And then the elders becoming priests, which actually began in 170. They show it in this chart a little bit later. By then it was very well established. And then finally with Leo I, you have him acting in a pope capacity. And at that time it went from the pope to the bishops to then the elders who were priests and the deacons.

There was no College of Cardinals until centuries later, and we'll get there. I think it's 927 when they instituted the College of Cardinals. So that was a later addition to the hierarchy. So what they did is they ended up, as the Roman Empire began falling apart, they simply took the structure and in many cases the names and put them in place to replace the Roman government districts and names.

Yes? It is funny, several years ago I met with an Orthodox rabbi here in the Denver area. located here locally. So I met with him for a couple hours and we had a very interesting conversation, but one of the things he chuckled about, he says, the Roman Catholic Church, they make me laugh because they take everything from Judaism apart and put it all back together again. They got the priests and now they're using the wafers that they hand out as a re-sacrificing of Christ. Yeah, so they take Judaism apart and say, you guys are terrible, horrible people, and then they go and put it all back together again and have the same thing. Yes? I'll transfer a bad phrase from where I used to work as a chemist. Rerun, no charge. Yeah. Yep. Yep.

And then what you have is Gregory I, sometimes called Gregory the Great. differ, but anyway, single leader over all the churches, but the problem came with trying to force that upon the other bishops of the Orthodox Church, and that was one of the things that drove them in opposite directions.

They said, wait a minute, you're not over us. So the Orthodox churches in the East would not accept the Bishop of Rome being over them. Now, you have Here, this kind of outline over time that starts with Gregory I and shows how the different teachings and traditions were added over time. Prayers directed to Mary, dead saints and angels about the year 600 with Pope Gregory I. So it isn't enough to pray to God and to Jesus, you've got to do these extra, you know, Mary and the dead saints and the angels. So you've got all these extra things, it just doesn't work to go to God directly. It's not optimal.

Kissing the Pope's feet began with Pope Constantine, 709. Veneration of the cross, images and relics authorized. And by the way, the Roman Catholic Church has a different Ten Commandments because the prohibition against images gets slapped onto the back of one of the others so that they can split coveting into two and end up with a different listing of the Ten Commandments and that's to allow them to sell the images in the stores and you know those kinds of things and to have images in the church. 927 was when the College of Cardinals was established, so that was another layer between the bishops and the Pope. And we'll talk a little bit more about that.

Canonization of dead people as saints initiated, 995. Attendance at Mass made mandatory, 1000. Cardinal Newman, back in the 1800s, went through and determined that all these things came from pagan practices and traditions. Here's a Roman Catholic Cardinal writing about that, pagan practices and traditions, but he said it's because the Roman Catholic Church does them that makes them holy. Yeah, Tom? Who is this? Oh, Newman, yes. So anyway, we go through down the list.

Confession of sins to priests wasn't until Pope Innocent III, 1215. Before that, you didn't have that tradition officially accepted. The doctrine of seven sacraments is confirmed. And I think the last one of those is marriage. So they had seven church sacraments. And by the way, there were others that proposed more complex lists of sacraments. And so this settling down on seven was simpler than what some people came up with. So anyway, it goes down the list. I'll leave the rest of it to you.

The Reformation period trends. Church groups which tended to maintain political and military ties, Lutherans, Reformed, also tended to maintain the episcopal form of church government with a hierarchy of bishops over a number of pastors or priests in the diocese. Of course, the Roman Catholic Church being the pattern. Yes?

No. Peter was not the first pope. Clement actually acted in the role of a bishop. The term pope was not applied until later. So even Clement, if you asked him, are you the pope? He'd go, huh? So it's all fabricated. He did claim a position of bishop. Yes.

Church groups which did not maintain political and military ties tended to move in the direction of elder-led or deacon-led churches or congregational voting or some combination. That's a generalization. You're going to find all sorts of small exceptions, but that was the typical thing. Pastors were often still seen as having singular day-to-day leadership in the churches, a distinct role from the elders rather than the biblical plurality of elders. When I sit with Mike and Roger, we're all three elders. I have no special place, position, plurality of elders. That's what scripture spells out quite clearly. Many of the elder-led or congregationally governed church groups came out of the Anabaptist church. That's this one that's shown over here.

Baptist churches, which is different from the Anabaptists, they use a different branch. Baptist churches have been traditionally deacon-led with a pastor in a separate role. Anybody had any experience with a Baptist church and seen that? Yeah. So the Baptist churches, what they will do is they'll have a pastor and then they'll have deacons who are acting in a role of elders.

But then I guess the question is, what do they do with the guys that are acting as deacons? So that varies. Typically, I have a bunch of committees. So there is now governance diversity, in other words, mixed ways of doing things among most groups. Okay.

Congregationally governed churches. Congregationally governed churches tended to be formed as a reaction to the autocratic and severe authority of those churches that were political and military aligned. So in alignment with the government of the nation from which the church developed would be the alternate. So the tendency was to align yourself with the government Or, if you're pulling away from that, like for example the Evangelical Free Church, pulling away from the government alliance, then the tendency was often to have some other form of government, often congregational voting, which I understand was voted out here several decades ago. Either way, still looking to the secular political system to design the governance of the church instead of scripture. So it's strange, since the end of the New Testament era, it has been very common for churches not to look at what scripture says, but instead to develop other traditions based on political alliances and political structures. Okay, here is the way the Roman Catholic Church is set up, and there's sort of an idealized drawing here. This is on page 7 of your handout.

They'll have the Pope at the top, who is typically selected from among the cardinals. That 927 is when the cardinals were instituted there. Then you have archbishops and bishops. And the archbishops are not over the bishops, they're just simply in more of a metropolitan area and have a higher population and usually a higher population density. So archbishops and bishops, and then you have the priests at each of the local churches. So that's their structure.

There's to be only one Pope, although at one point in time there were three. Each, you know, pointing fingers and accusing the other of usurping things. Voting cardinals are limited to 120 and must be under 80 years of age. So once they reach 80, then they're no longer permitted to vote. They can still participate in discussions and whatnot, but voting, once you're 80, that's it.

An archbishop is one who has a larger population to govern than a bishop and each one governs in a diocese, the term again taken from the Roman Empire. There are currently just short of 3,029 dioceses in the Roman Catholic Church. Each priest is over a parish and multiple priests report to a bishop or archbishop in a diocese. So that's the the Roman Catholic Church structure. There is nothing biblical about any of it. Titles, structure, none of it. It is all out of tradition. None of it is out of Scripture. Yes, Dan? It actually looks like a business model where you have the CEO on top and then you have the district managers. And that is a good summary. Yeah?

Yeah, the laity, yes. The three general forms of church governance, this is a chart on page 7. You have the Episcopal form and of course there are variations on how that is done. We just covered how it was done in the Roman Catholic Church. But generally this idea of having this hierarchy that Stan noted well was kind of like a global business structure. Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, Orthodox and Episcopal and Anglican have at least bishops over a number of congregations and then with the Roman Catholic Church even higher levels with the Cardinals and the Pope. But that's the Episcopal form of government. That's a structure that's about 19 centuries old.

Then you have the congregational form, voting on issues and questions, and that came about during the Reformation largely from those who were breaking away from political ties. They said, you know, we're not going to do this and so we're going to make everything democratic because we don't like all this heavy authority stuff so we're going to vote. It seems to fit with democratic ideas and all that sort of thing, it's just not biblical.

Congregational, Baptist, Mennonite, Evangelical Free, those are some. Nancy and I at one point in time were at an Evangelical Free Church several decades back. And this was one of the issues that came up because the guys, you know, some of them were in the church looking at, hey, the Bible keeps talking about elders and deacons and we got all this voting. What gives here? And it ended up causing a church split, which is ugly.

But anyway, and then the last one is the Presbyterian form, the idea of elders, presbyteros being the Greek word there for elders. And your Presbyterian Reformed Bible churches are commonly under this elder form of government. So those are the three main forms, obviously variations on that. One of the combinations that I've seen is where the people vote the elders.

So you'll have a combination of those kinds of structures. In the Methodist church, they'll have bishops over an area, and the bishop, from what I've seen, likes to go and switch around the pastors every few years. About every three years. You're going to move here, and you're going to go there, and they're going to swap you over here.

Yeah, kind of a combination of the circuit riding tradition and looking back to the Anglican Church as the source. Originally Methodism was an attempt to reform the Anglican Church, so it was a combination of the Anglican tradition and then their circuit rider pattern as well, you're right. Scripture does not teach apostolic succession or episcopal hierarchy. Scripture does teach apostolic doctrine succession.

Let me read it here. You have it on a slide on page 8. 2 Timothy 2, 1 and 2. You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, so others here have also heard the same thing, Heard from presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. Doctrinal succession. Not apostolic succession. Right? Doctrinal succession. It didn't say take what you've got and add on the traditions that you develop over the following centuries. Right? Yes? So was Paul, other than John, one of the last apostles? Paul and Peter both died about 6768 A.D. John lived another 30 years beyond that. The others we don't know the exact timing except for James who died as recorded in Acts chapter 12. So that would be the reason that Paul spent that time talking to Timothy because he knew the apostolic succession. was coming to an end. So he had to come up with the proper method of containment.

If you look at it, what is Timothy doing? What is Titus doing? They're apostolic delegates. In other words, they're under the direction of Paul. So Paul is saying, do this and do that. They're under the immediate direction of an apostle. But what did Paul tell Timothy to do and Titus to do? appoint elders, here's the qualifications they're to have.

They didn't say bishops were anything above them or different, but what happened is the tradition that bishops were above took over and people set aside what scripture said. And then all sorts of other traditions began getting added on top of that. Yes? and started running the church.

It's kind of like where Saul became king and God was upset with that because Samuel being the last prophet. Then they went to the king and God said, you know, this is a theocracy, not a kingdom. And so they had problems all the way through Israel's history with the kings. Yeah, Saul was a one-man dynasty, right? There was no succession.

And he was replaced. Pardon? Yes. Yes, you got that right. The sin nature took over for sure. The church is first a heavenly organism, not first an organization. It's first a heavenly organism. Paul talks in Ephesians 4, and Ephesians 4.11 is a great passage, but let's look at 15 and 16 here. But speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love. Truthing in love, building up of itself and love.

What you see him describing here is an organism, not an organization. So the tendency to follow some kind of a business-like model or political structure is looking at organization, not organism. Scripture describes Yes, certain aspects of organization, but ultimately it's an organism.

But again, Hebrews says that Christ was the last prophet. So since Christ is now in heaven at the right hand of God, the church organization has to be different than the worldly organization. Our prophet is now in heaven for our position. When you look at the messages to the seven churches, this is the last messages to the churches, Christ is speaking through the Apostle John, and he has to correct most of the churches that he writes to. There's something to correct. And you're right on target. What he has to correct in a great many cases is the world coming into the church. That's the problem. The world coming into the church.

Now, the fact that churches have to have trustees so they can do the legal aspects of it, how does that work? Well, you know, this is something we took a look at and Hal and I worked on it and got some things done on paper after I came. We have a church board, for the sake of the state, with presidents and all that, but the reality is that's not how things operate.

We have that, but they're essentially a name. The operation is done with elders and deacons. So we've satisfied the state by having, okay, I think Courtney is our president. But in terms of function, it's elders and deacons. We do what's necessary to address what the state wants. But in the end, our means of operation and everything we do is the biblical definition. We have biblically qualified elders and a plurality of elders, and we have deacons. We have three elders, five deacons. Here's Hebrews 13, 17.

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they keep watch. This is not The keep watch is not the overseer term, interestingly enough. The keep watch literally means not sleeping. They keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account. So there is an accountability to the Lord. When I will send an email to Roger and Mike, I will write it, fellow under shepherds. Fellow under shepherds, because the Lord is the one who is the chief shepherd and the one to whom we'll give an account.

So this is the biblical picture. I just think it's really interesting that the keep watch is, you know, not sleep. And then 1 Peter 5, 1-4, Therefore I exhort the elders among you as your fellow elder and witness of the sufferings of Christ, and a partaker also of the glory that is to be revealed.

Shepherd, here's the verb, is actually an imperative verb. Shepherd. Shepherd the flock of God among you, not over them, among you. Be alongside them. Among you, exercising oversight, there is the overseer, in a verb form, right? Exercising oversight, not under compulsion, as we're not forcing this guy to do this, but voluntarily, which fits with what Paul wrote in 1st Timothy 3.1. Two different words for desire. An elder must be, by God-given desire, motivated to take on the role, not forced into it. Come on, we need somebody! Twist this guy's arm. If the guy doesn't want to be an elder, then he's not qualified.

So, Peter and Paul quite agree here. Voluntarily, according to the will of God, not for sordid gain, but with eagerness. Their own internally driven desire to take on this role. Nor yet is loading it over those allotted to your charge, but proving to be examples to the flock. And you do that by being among them. Among them.

And when the chief shepherd appears, and there's the place where the word translated pastor is used as a title. That's the one place. When the chief shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. So there is an eternal reward for elders who carry out their role biblically. I'm pretty sure that is a chief pope. Yeah. And the Catholic Church would say the pope is the chief shepherd.

Wait a minute. Christ has that role. You can't go to God without going through the priesthood. Yeah, that's how you have access to God. It's one reason why here at Holly Hills we'll have various people involved in the Lord's table and doing different things. We're not priests. This is a priesthood of believers. We all have immediate access to the Lord Jesus Christ. Immediate access to God.

Yes? in order to get people not to do anything if he wasn't present. This was Ignatius. Yes, right. And not to have the Lord's Feast without it prohibiting the observance of the Lord's Table. Yes. They couldn't do it. Yeah. You guys can't have baptisms in the Lord's Table and love feasts without maybe even being present. Because it's miles away. Yeah. I mean, they didn't do it for him. Well, yeah, you just got to wait. You can't do it unless I'm there. He should have been reprimanded severely and told, you are in deep trouble. Other questions, thoughts, ponderings?

One of the things we have on our church website, Under other documents, the last item on the menu, something that Hal and I worked on is about a 14-page document that addresses the church board question, but also talks about all these other, what are the qualifications for elders, and talks about things like how many elders, obviously a plurality, but the Bible never says how many. We kind of logic our way through, obviously two is a plurality, but three is ideal. The reason being, let's say you have some sort of a dealing with a disciplinary action against an elder, and it has happened. You don't want a one-on-one situation. That's not ideal. You want to have two other elders dealing with the one who is in trouble there.

Yeah? It's kind of interesting. It's really not that different today that you have people in government trying to You know, set doctrine standards for the world today. And a lot of these people are saying that they are this, that and such as far as the denomination or whatever. But yet politically, they don't demonstrate the character of that and the attributes that we're always talking about. No. Yeah.

So you can see why they went through this period. I mean, it's really hard to tell who fits these characteristics. I mean, there's no mark. It's all from the fruit of the person. That's right. You can't follow somebody around 24 hours a day so you don't know that. I mean, it's a difficult situation. It's challenging. It's challenging.

Why don't we pray and we'll dismiss here. Lord, we do thank you. You have laid out some structure and some guidance for how leadership in the church is to be structured and carried out and what the qualities and characters are to be of those who lead. But at the same time we also recognize that the Church is an organism, not so much an organization. And it is in fact something that you created as a spiritual entity. And so we look to you and to your life and your Holy Spirit's work among us to cause that organism to, to live out both corporately and individually the very life of Christ. We just thank you for what you've revealed because you love us and care for us in Jesus name. Amen.