Episkope

The Theory and Practice of Translocal Oversight

Standing, Goodliff, Roger Standing, Paul Goodliff

• Publisher: SCM Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780334059387
• eBook ISBN: 9780334059400
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

In 'Episkope, ' Standing and Goodliff, together with experienced church leaders drawn from across the churches, establish the common foundations that inform our conversations about translocal ministry and map present models and experience of ecclesial oversight. Building on these shared insights a variety of themes are explored that might help the selection, training and deployment of translocal ministry be fit for purpose in the changing cultural context that faces twenty-first century Christian communities.

Part 1: Foundations

1. Beyond the Household: The Emergence of Translocal Ministry in the New Testament1

SEAN F. WINTER

Introduction

There are plenty of books available that provide historical and theological insights into the development of early Christian ministry insofar as that development is visible to us in the writings of the New Testament and related early Christian texts.2 This chapter will not go back over that ground, but instead pursue a specific question. It now seems likely that, around the turn of the third century ce, the Church developed explicit structures whereby ‘bishops’ (episkopoi) exercised their ministry across a wider geographical area and offered authoritative oversight of multiple local assemblies. Given that this state of affairs is not likely to have developed out of thin air, we can ask: where in the New Testament do we see trajectories of church order and ministry that contributed to the emergence of that arrangement?3 In short, we are looking for whatever happened in the first two or three generations of the early Christian movement that contributed to the rise of the classic episcopal structures that continue to shape, through adoption or antipathy, ecclesial organization today.

As we search for an answer to that question, we should bear in mind that it is impossible to recover a comprehensive picture of the earliest understanding, practice and organization of Christian leadership and ministry. The evidence we have is fragmentary and therefore partial. It is dominated by texts directly from, or reflecting upon, the experience of Paul and his churches.4 While a number of Gospel texts attribute sayings to Jesus that undoubtedly shaped the self-understanding of his followers (e.g. Mark 10.42–45; John 20.21–23), we cannot expect the Gospel tradition to provide insight into Jesus’ understanding of ‘ministry’ beyond the basic notion that he called followers and expected them to share in his mission of proclamation of the reign of God.5 While it is true that texts referring to the setting apart of the Twelve and the commissioning of Peter are read within many traditions as providing dominical instructions relating to priestly and apostolic office, we should be cautious in drawing the connecting line between first-century Jesus traditions and later ecclesial practices too confidently.6 There are other relevant texts (e.g. 1 Pet. 4.10–11; Heb. 13.7), but they are isolated textual fragments that suggest the existence of, but provide little access to, the specific social and historical realities of the earliest forms of Christian ministry.

The evidence we do have is also diverse. Titles, roles and implied relationships between individuals and communities seem to differ from one locality to the next, indicating the lack of a single framework for understanding ministry and church order. There is nothing to suggest that, for example, the presence of ‘overseers and deacons’ in Philippi (Phil. 1.1, nasb) extended to other Pauline congregations. Other letters refer to those who lead or teach without the mention of any specific title (1 Thess. 5.12–13; 1 Cor. 16.15–18; Gal. 6.6). Luke mentions apostles in the Jerusalem church in the early chapters of Acts (Acts 1.2; 2.37, 42–43; 4.33, 35; 5.2, 12, 18, 29, 40; 6.6; 8.1, 18; 9.27; 11.1), but also ‘elders’ (Acts 11.30; 15.2, 4, 6, 22–23; 16.4; 21.18). The relationship between these two groups is far from clear.7

This diversity is explained by several aspects of the earliest period that are now clear to the majority of scholars. First, early Christian ministry was not straightforwardly the product of clear instruction or teaching from Jesus, nor of any identifiable line of ‘succession’ whereby the office and roles given to the Twelve, for example, were handed down to subsequent generations in a linear chain of apostolic transmission. Instead, and second, both role and office were the result of various kinds of cultural, social and theological negotiation with the emerging tradition, contextual demands and the cultural milieu of the Jewish and Greco-Roman world. While it seems clear that there was a trajectory towards a greater degree of institutionalization in the post-apostolic period, the evidence does not allow us to assume that we have the complete picture. Third, an understanding of these various forms of negotiation serves to challenge easy assumptions about what we are actually seeing when we look at the New Testament texts, and in particular reminds us of the danger of anachronism. It is unwise to interpret the New Testament use of the term ‘elder’ (presbuteros) in the light of later taxonomies of a threefold order of ministry, because the term probably emerged within the household structures of early Christianity as an honorific term, denoting the character of those who exercised oversight in the early assemblies (Campbell, 1994, pp. 236–60). Likewise, our understanding of the meaning of the term ‘servant/minister/deacon’ (diakonos) should not be overly determined by the recent history of the renewal of the diaconate in some Christian traditions (Collins, 2014).

In relation to our topic, these introductory remarks serve to remind us that we simply will not find the third-century monepiskopos (a single figure exercising translocal oversight for multiple congregations in a particular city or region) in the pages of the New Testament.8 Instead, we must go looking for something more nuanced.

What are we searching for?

I suggest that the phenomenon of ‘translocal’ ministry is reflected in New Testament texts in ways that relate to three possible models of the relationship between the ministry ‘agent’ and early Christian communities. In each case we encounter a relationship beyond that established within a local Christian community. These more ‘local’ forms of ministry quite clearly drew on models of oversight and authority relating to the household and/or religious or civic associations (Giles, 1989, pp. 27–48; Clarke, 2000, pp. 59–141). In some sense the move towards more regional forms of oversight are little more than an extension of these local models over a wider area: ministry beyond the household. There are, however, additional trajectories present in the evidence of the New Testament that help us to see where the impulse for these wider forms of leadership came from. The models I propose here are heuristic categories that can help us understand the shifting patterns of ministry that emerged in the early period of the Church’s life. It is preferable to look for such patterns, rather than for evidence of specific ‘offices of ministry’, because of the ambiguity of our evidence. Overall, these patterns suggest that the earliest forms of ministry, including any translocal variations, reflect the emergence of certain kinds of ‘relationship between churches’, rather than the occupation of clearly identified and pre-existing offices or roles. I propose that we think of three such models, described initially in more abstract terms, and then explored in relation to the key terms for translocal ministry that we find in the early period.

First, we see evidence of an ‘itinerant’ model of translocal ministry. This term describes ministry that is offered to local communities or assemblies across a geographical region, but where the individual offering ministry is not explicitly identified with or located in any one of them. We might take the commissioning text in Matthew 10 as a template for this model. There Jesus instructs the Twelve to enter the towns and villages of Galilee and (presumably) Judea, but only to ‘stay there until you leave’ (Matt. 10.11). ‘Ministry’ is here offered across a wide territory, and its itinerant nature arguably preserves a model that was prevalent in the first century and continued well into the second. Evidence for such itinerant movements within the Jesus movement in Galilee, and for the possible conflicts that arose as a result of this activity, can be found in Matthew 7.15–23; 10.5–23, 40–42; Mark 13.5–6/Matthew 24.5/Luke 21.7–8; Luke 9.1–6; 10.1–12. In some cases itinerants are likely to have been somehow appointed by another community, although our texts make it difficult to determine who the authorizing community might have been.9 Less ambiguous is the evidence of the Johannine epistles, where we are offered a glimpse into the doctrinal battles fought between different groups of itinerants. We read there of a group who have ‘gone out’ from the community (1 John 2.19; 2 John 7) but who, it seems, now seek to be welcomed back. The church is warned not to welcome such people (2 John 10–11) for their intention is to deceive (1 John 2.26; 3.7). Instead, a welcome is to be offered to the ‘brothers’ who visit the church, but who are on a journey for the sake of Christ, and who thus seek no support from unbelievers. The church has a responsibility to such strangers (3 John 5–10).

The impression given by these texts is that some forms of translocal ministry in the New Testament disturbed local unity, obscured doctrinal clarity and hampered missionary progress: translocal itinerants could be as much a hindrance as they were a help. This impression is confirmed by the evidence of the Didache. This instruction manual for early Christian communities offers clear advice for handling such people. If they teach a different doctrine they are not to be listened to (11.1–2) and if an apostle or prophet outstays their welcome (i.e. stays more than two nights) or asks for money, then they are a false prophet and should be rejected (11.3–6 cf. 13.1–7). For this reason, congregations are advised to appoint local bishops and deacons who will ‘minister to you the ministry of the prophets and teachers’ (15.1–2).

Once the notion of an authorizing community comes to the fore, we move to what might be called the ‘envoy’ model. The key idea here is that translocal ministry is the product of one local community delegating or setting apart one of its own members, who exercises ministry in another locality or community. Thus, Barnabas and Saul are set apart by the church at Antioch and embark upon what is usually referred to as Paul’s first missionary journey (Acts 13.1–3), although of course the work assigned to them is initially that of proclamation of the gospel and the initial formation of churches, rather than that of continued oversight.10 The Pauline letters refer to these ‘envoys’, delegated by one assembly to travel and somehow offer ministry in another. The ‘brothers’ of 2 Corinthians 8.23 and Epaphroditus (Phil. 2.25) come into this category. At a number of places Paul seems to suggest that preachers from ‘outside’ of the community to which he is writing have infiltrated those congregations (see most clearly 2 Cor. 11.1–29; Gal. 2.12; 3.1; 6.12–13; Phil. 1.15–18), and many have understood Paul’s opponents here as itinerant teachers, perhaps sent under the auspices of the increasingly conservative Jerusalem Church under the leadership of James.

It is likely that the ‘envoy’ model accounts for the initial use of the term ‘apostle’ within the early Christian movement: a delegate from one church to another (see below). But ‘apostle’ in the New Testament is used more broadly than this, which suggests the presence of a third model. In this model, translocal ministry consists of the exercise of authority over a network or group of churches without the direct need for delegation from ...

Table of contents

• Copyright information
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Contributors
• Foreword
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part 1: Foundations
• 1. Beyond the Household: The Emergence of Translocal Ministry in the New Testament1
• 2. Theological Issues: Constants in Context
• 3. Contemporary Models of Translocal Ministry: Ecumenical Landscapes
• Part 2: Experience
• 4. Anglican Episcopacy
• The Ministry of Bishops in the Church of England
• Church of England Bishops as Pastor and Evangelist
• Church of England Bishops as Religious and Civic Leaders
• Translocal Ministries in the Church of England as Institutional Leadership
• 5. The Roman Catholic Church
• 6. The Methodist Church
• 7. The Baptist Union of Great Britain
• 8. The United Reformed Church
• 9. The Salvation Army
• 10. Pentecostalism
• 11. Apostolic Ministry in the New Church Streams
• Personal Reflections from Newfrontiers
• Personal Reflections from Pioneer
• 12. The Black Church and Episcopacy
• 13. Oversight and the New Monasticism
• Episkope and the New Monasticism in the Celtic Tradition: The Northumbria Community
• Part 3: Practice
• 14. Episkope, Identity and Personhood
• 15. The Shape of Translocal Oversight
• 16. Translocal Ministry and Scholarship
• 17. Episkope and Gender: An Anglican Case Study
• 18. Episkope and Supervision
• 19. Translocal Ministry in Post-Christendom1
• 20. Conclusion: The Future Trajectory of Translocal Ministry