Biblical Eldership Church Leadership

The Acts ofthe Apostles

I emphasize these historical facts because Acts 15 is often misused to justify the authority of church councils and permanent church courts above the local church. For example, Presbyterian scholar James Bannerman (1807-1868) wrote, “Now, in this narrative [Acts 15] we have all the elements necessary to make up the idea of a supreme ecclesiastical court, with authority over not only the members and of fice-bearers within the local bounds of the congregations represented, but also the Presbyteries or inferior Church courts included in the same limits.”6 Bannerman’s conclusions, however, represent ecclesiastical dogma rather than historical, biblical fact. His conclusions certainly have no support in the teachings of the epistles. First Timothy is the primary New Testament epistle on church order. Yet it says nothing about an organizational structure or court that has authority over a local con gregation. When one considers the serious doctrinal disruptions in the church at Ephesus, the absence of any mention of church courts above the local church (if such existed) is unthinkable. It is historical fact that no formal interchurch federation, denomi national union, or fixed organizational framework linked churches to gether for the first two hundred years of the Christian era. In his clas sic work, The Organization ofthe Early Christian Churches, renowned church historian and classical scholar Edwin Hatch (1835-1889) dem onstrates that no superior individual or organizational body ruled over local Christian congregations. Each congregation was self-goveming and independent, with the jurisdiction of its elders restricted to the local congregation: In the course of the second century the custom of meeting in representative assemblies began to prevail among the Christian communities. . .. At first these assemblies were more or less informal. Some prominent and influential bishop invited a few neighbouring communities to confer with his own: the result of the deliberations of such a conference was expressed sometimes in a resolution, sometimes in a letter addressed to other Churches. It was the rule for such letters to be received with respect: for the sense of brotherhood was strong, and the causes of alienation were few. But so far from such letters having any binding force on other Churches, not even the resolutions of the conference were binding

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