Church Government

A Zondervan Digital Short

Wayne A. Grudem

• Publisher: Zondervan Academic
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9780310496199
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

Derived from Wayne Grudem's perennial bestseller, Systematic Theology, this digital short presents a detailed overview of the Bible's teaching on church government and the choosing of church officers, along with a summary of the options currently available.

While acknowledging that church government is not a core doctrine on par with the doctrines of salvation or the person and work of Jesus, Grudem maintains that the organization of the church, as Christ's body on earth, is important.

Informative and fair-minded, Church Government is a useful resource for pastors and church lay leaders as well as anyone wanting to better understand this foundational matter of Christian praxis.

Church Government

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Church Government

How should a church be governed? How should church officers be chosen? Should women serve as pastors of churches?

EXPLANATION AND SCRIPTURAL BASIS

Churches today have many different forms of government. The Roman Catholic Church has a worldwide government under the authority of the Pope. Episcopalian churches have bishops with regional authority, and archbishops over them. Presbyterian churches grant regional authority to presbyteries and national authority to general assemblies. On the other hand, Baptist churches and many other independent churches have no formal governing authority beyond the local congregation, and affiliation with denominations is on a voluntary basis.

Within local churches, Baptists often have a single pastor with a board of deacons, but some have a board of elders as well. Presbyterians have a board of elders and Episcopalians have a vestry. Other churches simply have a church board.

Is there a New Testament pattern for church government? Is any one form of church government to be preferred over another? These are the questions addressed in this chapter.

However, at the outset it must be said that the form of church government is not a major doctrine like the Trinity, the deity of Christ, substitutionary atonement, or the authority of Scripture. Although I believe, after examining the New Testament evidence, that one particular form of church government is preferable to the others, nevertheless, each form has some weaknesses as well as strengths. And church history attests that several different forms of government have worked fairly well for several centuries. Moreover, while some aspects of church government seem to be reasonably clear from the New Testament, other matters (such as the way in which church officers should be chosen) are less clear, mainly because the New Testament evidence on them is not extensive, and thus our inferences from this evidence are less certain. It seems to me, then, that there ought to be room for evangelical Christians to differ amicably over this question, in the hope that further understanding may be gained. And it also seems that individual Christians—while they may have a preference for one system or another, and while they may wish at appropriate times to argue forcefully for one system over another—should nevertheless be willing to live and minister within any of several different Protestant systems of church government in which they may find themselves from time to time.

But I do not mean to say that this is an entirely unimportant matter. In this area as well as others, a church may be more or less pure. If there are clear New Testament patterns regarding some aspects of church government, then there will be negative consequences in our churches if we disregard them, even if we cannot foresee all of those consequences at the present time. Therefore Christians are certainly free to speak and write on this subject in order to work for increased purity in the church.

In this chapter we shall first survey the New Testament data concerning church officers, especially apostle, elder, and deacon. Then we shall ask how church officers should be chosen. After that we shall look at two controversial questions: Which form of church government—if any—is closest to the New Testament pattern? And, may women serve as officers in the church?

A. Church Officers

For purposes of this chapter, we will use the following definition: A church officer is someone who has been publicly recognized as having the right and responsibility to perform certain functions for the benefit of the whole church.

According to this definition, elders and deacons would be considered officers in a church, as would the pastor (if that is a distinct office). The church treasurer and church moderator would also be officers (these titles may vary from church to church). All of these people have had public recognition, usually at a service in which they are “installed” or “ordained” in an office. In fact, they need public recognition in order to fulfill their responsibilities: for example, it would not be appropriate for people to wonder from week to week who was to receive the offering and deposit it in the bank, or for various people to argue that they had been gifted to take that responsibility in any particular week! The orderly functioning of the church requires that one person be recognized as having that responsibility. Similarly, the pastor who is responsible to do Bible teaching each Sunday morning must be recognized as having the right and responsibility to do that (at least, in most forms of church government). If this were not the case, then many people might prepare sermons and all claim the right to preach, or on some Sundays no one might prepare. Similarly, in order for people to follow the elders of the church and look to them for guidance, they must know who the elders are.

By contrast, many other people exercise gifts in the church, but we do not say they have an “office” because they do not need formal public recognition for their gifts to function. Those who have a gift of “helps” (see 1 Cor. 12:28), or who have a gift of especially strong faith, or a gift of “distinguishing between spirits” (1 Cor. 12:10), or a gift of exhorting or contributing (Rom. 12:8) do not need public recognition in order to function effectively in the church.

In the material that follows, we shall see that the New Testament discusses one church office which was limited to the time when the early church was founded (the office of apostle), and two other church offices which continue throughout the church age (the offices of elder and deacon).

1. Apostle. The New Testament apostles had a unique kind of authority in the early church: authority to speak and write words which were “words of God” in an absolute sense. To disbelieve or disobey them was to disbelieve or disobey God. The apostles, therefore, had the authority to write words which became words of Scripture.¹ This fact in itself should suggest to us that there was something unique about the office of apostle, and that we would not expect it to continue today, for no one today can add words to the Bible and have them be counted as God’s very words or as part of Scripture.²

In addition, the New Testament information on the qualifications of an apostle and the identity of the apostles also leads us to conclude that the office was unique and limited to the first century, and that we are to expect no more apostles today.³ We shall see this as we ask the following questions: What were the requirements for being an apostle? Who were the apostles? How many apostles were there? And are there apostles today?

At the outset it must be made clear that the answers to these questions depend on what one means by the word apostle. Today some people use the word apostle in a very broad sense, to refer to an effective church planter, or to a significant missionary pioneer (“William Carey was an apostle to India,” for example). If we use the word apostle in this broad sense, everyone would agree that there are still apostles today—for there are certainly effective missionaries and church planters today.

The New Testament itself has three verses in which the word apostle (Gk. apostolos) is used in a broad sense, not to refer to any specific church office, but simply to mean “messenger.” In Philippians 2:25, Paul calls Epaphroditus “your messenger (apostolos) and minister to my need”; in 2 Corinthians 8:23, Paul refers to those who accompanied the offering that he was taking to Jerusalem as “messengers [apostoloi] of the churches”; and in John 13:16, Jesus says, “Nor is he who is sent [apostolos]greater than he who sent him.”

But there is another sense for the word apostle. Much more frequently in the New Testament the word refers to a special office, “apostle of Jesus Christ.” In this narrow sense of the term, there are no more apostles today, and we are to expect no more. This is because of what the New Testament says about the qualifications for being an apostle and about who the apostles were.

a. Qualifications of an Apostle: The two qualifications for being an apostle were (1) having seen Jesus after his resurrection with one’s own eyes (thus, being an “eyewitness of the resurrection”), and (2) having been specifically commissioned by Christ as his apostle.⁴

The fact that an apostle had to have seen the risen Lord with his own eyes is indicated by Acts 1:22, where Peter said that person to replace Judas “must become with us a witness to his resurrection.” Moreover, it was “to the apostles whom he had chosen” that “he presented himself alive after his passion by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days” (Acts 1:2–3; cf. 4:33).

Paul makes much of the fact that he did meet this qualification even though it was in an unusual way (Christ appeared to him in a vision on the road to Damascus and appointed him as an apostle: Acts 9:5–6; 26:15–18). When he is defending his apostleship he says, “Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?” (1 Cor. 9:1). And when recounting the people to whom Christ appeared after his resurrection, Paul says, “Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle” (1 Cor. 15:7–9).

These verses combine to indicate that unless someone had seen Jesus after the resurrection with his own eyes, he could not be an apostle.

The second qualification, specific appointment by Christ as an apostle, is also evident from several verses. First, though the term apostle is not common in the gospels, the twelve disciples are called “apostles” specifically in a context where Jesus is commissioning them, “sending them out” to preach in his name:

And he called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every infirmity. The names of the twelve apostles are these. . . . These twelve Jesus sent out, charging them, “. . . preach as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ ” (Matt. 10:1–7)

Similarly, Jesus commissions his apostles in a special sense to be his “witnesses . . . to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). And in choosing another apostle to replace Judas, the eleven apostles did not take the responsibility on themselves, but prayed and asked the ascended Christ to make the appointment:

“Lord, who knows the hearts of all men, show which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside. . . .” And they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias; and he was enrolled with the eleven apostles. (Acts 1:24–26)

Paul himself insists that Christ personally appointed him as an apostle. He tells how, on the Damascus Road, Jesus told him that he was appointing him as an apostle to the Gentiles: “I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you to serve and to bear witness . . . delivering you from the people and from the Gentiles—to whom I send you” (Acts 26:16–17). He later affirms that he was specifically appointed by Christ as an apostle (see Rom. 1:1; Gal. 1:1; 1 Tim. 1:12; 2:7; 2 Tim. 1:11).

b. Who Were Apostles? The initial group of apostles numbered twelve—the eleven original disciples who remained after Judas died, plus Matthias, who replaced Judas: “And they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias; and he was enrolled with the eleven apostles” (Acts 1:26). So important was this original group of twelve apostles, the “charter members” of the office of apostle, that we read that their names are inscribed on the foundations of the heavenly city, the New Jerusalem: “And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb” (Rev. 21:14).

We might at first think that such a group could never be expanded, that no one could be added to it. But then Paul clearly claims that he, also, is an apostle. And Acts 14:14 calls both Barnabas and Paul apostles: “when the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of it. . . .” So with Paul and Barnabas there are fourteen “apostles of Jesus Christ.”⁵

Then James the brother of Jesus (who was not one of the twelve original disciples) seems to be called an apostle in Galatians 1:19: Paul tells how, when he went to Jerusalem, “I saw none of the other apostles except James the Lord’s brother.”⁶ Then in Galatians 2:9 James is classified with Peter and John as “pillars” of the Jerusalem church. And in Acts 15:13–21, James, along with Peter, exercises a significant leadership function in the Jerusalem Council, a function which would be appropriate to the office of apostle. Furthermore, when Paul is listing the resurrection appearances of Jesus he once again readily classifies James with the apostles:

Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. (1 Cor. 15:7–9)

Finally, the fact that James could write the New Testament epistle which bears his name would also be entirely consistent with his having the authority which belonged to the office of apostle, the authority to write words which were the words of God. All these considerations combine to indicate that James the Lord’s brother was also commissioned by Christ as an apostle. That would bring the number to fifteen “apostles of Jesus Christ” (the twelve plus Paul, Barnabas, and James).

Were there more than these fifteen? There may possibly have been a few more, though we know little if anything about them, and it is not certain that there were any more. Others, of course, had seen Jesus after his resurrection (“Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time,” 1 Cor. 15:6). From this large group it is possible that Christ appointed some others as apostles—but it is also very possible that he did not. The evidence is not sufficient to decide the issue.

Romans 16:7 says, “Greet Andronicus and Junias, my kinsmen and my fellow prisoners; they are men of note among the apostles, and they were in Christ before me.” Because there are several translation problems in the verse, no clear conclusions can be reached. “Men of note” may be also translated “men noted by” (the apostles). “Junias” (a man’s name) may also be translated “Junia” (a woman’s name).⁷ “Apostles” here may not mean the office “apostles of Jesus Christ,” but may simply mean “messengers” (the broader sense which the word takes in Phil. 2:25; 2 Cor. 8:23; John 13:16). The verse has too little clear information to allow us to draw a conclusion.

Others have been suggested as apostles. Silas (Silvanus) and sometimes Timothy are mentioned because of 1 Thessalonians 2:6: “though we might have made demands as apostles of Christ.” Does Paul include Silas and Timothy here, since the letter begins, “Paul, Silva...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Contents
• Church Government