What is the Proper Church Organization?

What is the Proper Church Organization?

"And when they had appointed for them elders in every church, and had prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord, on whom they had believed. But we will not glory beyond our measure, but according to the measure of the province which God apportioned to us as a measure, to reach even unto you. For this reason I left you in a region of churches, that you should set in order the things which remain, and appoint elders for every city as I had directed you" (Acts 14.23, 2 Cor. 10.13, Titus 1.5).

What is being said here? What we discover in God's Word is that when they [apostles] appointed for the Church a number of elders for a church city, they then commended them to the Lord. Reasonably one would also expect there to be many meeting places within a city, so that those who are elders of meeting places are to be appointed by the elders of the whole city.

The apostles operate regionally, according to the measure of a province. This province is not the size of Africa, but neither is it as small as as a city or town. So the region of church such as the churches of Galatia or the churches of Asia Minor may constitute a region of churches. Today's equivalent may be churches of Ohio or the churches of Virginia or the churches of Crete.

Within a region of churches are many church-cities. For example, in the churches of Asia Minor are the the 7 churches which are towns: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea.

Notice that God does not place a person above the region of churches. There are no men or women in charge of multiple regions of churches. The highest position in the Church is an apostle who takes care of ONE region of churches, or at least, that is what he finally settles on as like Paul did.

Elders, on the other hand, take care of the unit of the church which is the city or town, though does not allow marrying itself to the state government.

Why is this arrangement so important in the Bible? It is because God knows the flesh all to well, even when it tries to rear its ugly head in the Church or what many might deem to be the church in the kingdom of heaven. If God prevents men having more power than just the regional responsibility of apostles in regional centers, then any problems that may arise will not spread as they would if there was a pope in the RC or men over vast areas as in the EC. Similarly, in towns as the unit, if there is disagreement in the town, let it be contained there and not spread like wild fire across many cities.

Not only this, but there would be no denominations since a denomination are not found in the Bible. These man-made entities extend themselves past not only towns and cities, but also regions. On the other hand, congregationalism (i.e. assembly unto itself) is wrong also as independent entities, since they don't have in view the town or city as a unit of the church. Remember, under God's design to be able to extend one's operations beyond the measure of the province is not permitted, so you know immediately when someone violates this principle they are not in the truth, but they are usurping themselves selfishly. You see three ways then in violating the Scriptures: 1) apostles extending beyond a region (denom "I of Apollos" or "I of Cephas"), 2) elders extending beyond a city (denom), and 3) congregations (non-denom "I of Christ") unto themselves as too small a view, not keeping the unit of the church of the city in view. Man does not know how to stay in his position given to him. He always wants to do it another way apart from God. Even multi-denoms ("I of Apollos" and I of Cephas") are not viable, for this is ecumenicalism, teetering on universalism.

Why is this unit of the church of the city so important to God? It is because when those in Christ who kept His patient word, were watchful and prayerful receive the reward of returning with Christ to reign in the millennium (Jude 14,15), they will reign over the nations and over these cities, which are a miniatures of the new city and the new earth that will occur after the 1000 years is finished.

Just as we are in training now for the millennium, in the millennium there is the training for the new city in the new earth.

This is also a threat to Satan, when the Church gets organized this way; so, he reacts with the Tribulation.

How will this organization be achieved? All revolutions start with one person. Just as Jesus started a revolution, he brought disciples to himself, then there was the 70, then the 120, and the 3000 and 5000. So what is the missing component today? There can be no one man, since Jesus is that one man and who is God. Many cults and denoms begin with one man. That is the problem! But what we can do is find to start 12 people to agree on all-encompassing questions in the Scriptures, thereby to give the Church confidence in their authority as today's informal apostles. Though we are not in the apostolic age, nonetheless, there are those who do the same work as the apostles of the first century.

Once these 3 then 12 agree, what then would occur is we will take upon yourselves by the grace of God to go to the cities in our respective region of churches and appoint elders over these cities and towns. After we accomplish a certain level of agreement in the church assembly for that town and several meeting places there in that town, we can move to the next town and the next.

If no elders are ready yet, on the return to those towns, we can appoint elders to take care of the believers of that city. In turn those elders can approve of elders of the meeting places within. This is very time consuming. For example, Paul did not write the letter to Galatians until about 16 years after Christ died, yet this was the first region Paul visited on his journeys. With the advent of the Internet, we can speed up this process.

But what is key in all of this is first those 12 apostles in agreement on a certain number of points. Thereby the Church will be confident they were directly commissioned by God for Ministry of the Work for the Church (Eph. 4.11). Let us be patient enough for at least 12 to come together in agreement outside the control of the denoms, non-denoms and multi-denoms.