Sunday School | Doctrine of the Church - Church Government

Alright. I have to tell you. I had to make a confession at the beginning of this class. I need your mercy here. Not because I'm not prepared. I'm perfectly prepared, thank you very much. But because I'm dreadfully concerned you're gonna think this is so boring and you don't really care. I hate being boring. I have a strong preference to talk about things that are interesting in an interesting way. And maybe you can be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, this is good. I wanna know this. But it's kinda boring. It's just objectively is what it is.

Today we are talking about church government because we're doing a series on doctrine, we're covering all Christian doctrine. Part of Christian doctrine is ecclesiology, and part of ecclesiology is how do we run this thing? And there's a fair bit of controversy about how you run a church, meaning what are the fundamental governmental structures. And I do think it is worth knowing, but it's not likely to change your life. So granted, I stipulate that this is fundamentally not highly applicable in your life unless you are like a church elder or something. But we're gonna cover it anyway because I just feel an obligation to be comprehensive and not to skip this stuff.

So did you know there are generally speaking three different arguments for how a church could or should be governed? There are three different forms of church government that we've seen throughout history. Each one of them claims biblical warrant for themselves, and we function in one of those at this church. I don't even know if you know which one. So does anybody know any form of church government? Can you name one of the three ways that we might do this?

Episcopalianism, Presbyterianism, and Congregationalism. Todd is correct about all three. They are Episcopalianism, Presbyterianism, and Congregationalism. And it is possible that you hear a hint in those three things—three denominations—and Todd is not naming denominations, or at least he's not trying to, right? It's just that one of the denominations names itself after one of the forms of government, another denomination names itself after one of their forms of government, and then maybe there's a Congregationalist church, there probably are, but the Baptists don't name themselves after Congregationalism, although they're generally organized as that. These are the three forms of church government: Congregationalism, Presbyterianism, and Episcopalianism. But again, we're not naming those specific denominations. We're just saying the government that exists above and behind it. Good enough?

So which one do you want to talk about first? We're gonna talk about all three. Chris wants to start with the Episcopalians. What does the word Episcopalian mean? It means ruled by bishops. The Greek word for bishop is Episcopas. And Episcopalians are ruled by Episcopases. Could you defend such a thing biblically? Could you make the case from the New Testament that we ought to be ruled by bishops?

Well, Jesus said to Peter, "You are Peter and you're the rock and I'm gonna found my church on..." Was Peter an Episcopus? He was in charge of it, so that makes it bishop-like. He was in charge of something.

You know what? As I think about how we're going to build this, even though I gave you the choice, I think it's gonna be absolutely clearer if we talk about Presbyterianism first and then Episcopalianism. I think as I'm realizing your comment about Peter, it's gonna be helpful to put Peter in place. So let's start with the Presbyterians.

Presbyterianism

What is the word presbyter translated as in English? Do you know what that word is coming forward as?

Elders. We'll start with elders. Priest is also true, but it's a strange thing. That's a weird little history here.

So Presbyterianism is the rule by elders. Elders—the normal meaning of elder is like an old person, right? But it has come to mean the mature ones who are set in charge of a church. I would suggest to you that if you wanted to make a biblical case for church government, you'd really want to be on the side of the Presbyterians because they have infinitely more biblical data to support their view.

So if you think about the pastoral epistles—First Timothy, Second Timothy, and Titus—all of that is really where we learn the most perhaps about how to run a church.

And it is there that we have very explicit language that the churches are supposed to have elders, churches are supposed to have presbyters who govern the affairs of the church. Let me show you this. We'll start in Titus. Titus and First Timothy really have the most about this.

If you go to Titus one verse five, Paul tells this to Titus, he says:

The reason I left you in Crete was that you might straighten out what was left unfinished and appoint elders, presbyters, in every town as I directed you. An elder must be blameless, the husband of but one wife, a man whose children believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient. Since an overseer is entrusted with God's work, he must be blameless, not overbearing, not quick tempered, not given to drunkenness, not violent, not pursuing dishonest gain. Rather he must be hospitable, one who loves what is good, one who is self controlled, upright, holy and disciplined. He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine or refute those who oppose it. — Titus 1:5-9

First Timothy is going to have a very similar list. In chapter three, it'll say:

Here's a trustworthy saying, if anyone sets his heart on being an overseer, he desires a noble task. Now the overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, self controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own family well, see that his children obey him with proper respect. And if anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God's church? He must not be a recent convert or he may be conceited and fall into the same judgment as the devil. He must also have a good reputation with outsiders so that he will not fall into disgrace and into the devil's trap. — 1 Timothy 3:1-7

First Timothy and Titus lay out the case for these men that are asked to lead the church. We see the elders referred to constantly in the book of Acts. It shows up repeatedly.

Paul and Barnabas appointed elders for them in each church, and with prayer and fasting committed them to the Lord in whom they had put their trust. — Acts 14:23

When Paul travels to Ephesus, one of his most important churches, in Acts 20, they gather the elders. From Meletus, Paul sent to Ephesus for the elders of the church. He gave them this instruction:

Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, be shepherds of the church of God which bought you with his own blood. — Acts 20:28

James, when he's talking about people that are struggling and hurting in the church, he says:

Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. — James 5:14

When Peter writes to the church leaders, he says this, in First Peter five:

To the elders among you, I appeal as a fellow elder, a witness of Christ's sufferings and one who will also share in the glory to be revealed. Be shepherds of God's flock that is under your care serving as overseers, not because you must, but because you are willing as God wants you to be, not greedy for money, but eager to serve, not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. When the chief shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away. — 1 Peter 5:1-4

Not only that, Paul suggests there might be different kinds of elders. There might be some elders who are primarily doing the leading, the decision making, and other elders who are primarily the teachers. He makes that distinction in First Timothy when he says:

The elders who direct the affairs of the church well are worthy of double honor, especially those whose work is preaching and teaching. — 1 Timothy 5:17

It seems within the office of elder, there's maybe some hierarchy. There's something about the leading of the church, but then there's a particular honor that is due to those who preach and teach. Really what Paul is probably saying there when he talks about double honor is that you should pay them. It is really the first hint of the suggestion of a professionally paid role in the leadership of a church. That's First Timothy five—thank you so much for the paycheck, appreciate that.

In the Jerusalem church, it seems that they would collect the elders from multiple churches into a council.

The apostles and the elders met to consider this question. — Acts 15:6

Far and away, loads of data about the elders of a church. They've been appointed, they meet these very strict qualifications, they are tasked with the decision making, and in particular, some of them, with the responsibility to preach and to teach. Okay? That's a big broad baseline. But in there were some things that I specifically skipped, that I specifically glossed over that we're going to have to unpack.

Which we will. But in case you feel like I'm tricking you, I am tricking you, but I'm going to untrick you in just a second.

Kelly Sue, I was going to say John the disciple was also called the Elder. Yes, John is called the Elder. In fact, in his later epistles, John the Elder. So Peter takes that name, John takes that name. There's generally a sense within Christian leadership that you never lose your prior office. So though I'm an ordained presbyter in the Anglican church, I am also an ordained deacon. And you don't stop being a deacon when you become a priest. Those who were the apostles, which is the top of the stack, they remained in that role. They were also elders. Absolutely true.

Robin, deacons—this is another level. And they're the ones that were ministering to the people of God so that it let the elders and the teachers time to teach. That's what I understood.

Yes, okay. So none of these passages that we looked at did mention the deacons. The office of deacon arose largely because those that be the Apostles who weren't functioning at all—Peter and John used the title of elder, but their real functional office was Apostle. They were the leader of the whole thing. And they were so busy. They had so much going on, and people were fighting—Greek and the Hellenistic Jews and the Hebrew Jews were fighting—who didn't get enough food and money and everything was a mess and like, "I can't stand this. Get some godly people to deal with the stuff." And so in the Book of Acts, they created this office that though they don't name it deacon when it emerges early on under, you know, with Stephen in the early chapters of Acts, it becomes known as the deacons, which means the servants.

So functionally, the role of deacon in the church is not a role of authority, it's a role of service. And so it doesn't really, properly speaking, the role of deacon is not really a question of how do we order and govern the church. All churches need people that are playing in that service role and that is what the deacons are. Although the Baptists kind of got a little out of hand because the Baptists pretended they didn't have elders because they're congregationalists and then they turned their deacons into elders, which was kind of a mess. Apologies to all the Baptists here. But they kind of made a mess of their own church government, but God bless them. They get a lot of things right that the rest of us get wrong. So we'll give them a little bit of space on that.

Elders and Overseers

Okay. So elders, elders, elders. God has ordained it that it would be elders. However, there's a word I used, Todd knows it for sure. What word did I gloss over when I read those descriptions of the elders? Do you know where I'm going with this? Overseer.

Okay. Now here's the thing, guys. The New Testament absolutely without question uses the terms elder and overseer as synonyms. Every time you heard me use the word overseer in those passages, it was very clear that whether it's Peter doing it or Paul doing it, the elders and the overseers, it's two words for the same thing. The problem is, do you know what the problem is? The word overseer is a translation of the word episkopos. So bishops and presbyters—I'm saying this in an Anglican church, God forgive me—are the same thing biblically. They are identical. Without question, biblically elders and overseers, presbyters and episcopuses are the same thing.

However, almost immediately in church history, those terms get separated out. Very, very quickly the church realized we need some kind of regional leadership. It's too flat. We need somebody in charge of the churches around Ephesus. And the language they used to describe that was the term bishop. The idea of a bishop who leads a region of a church is about as old a thing within church government as you can possibly have. It emerged immediately. But it is not the way the New Testament describes it.

Elders and overseers are synonyms. It's just that in church history—we're talking like first century—it's like click, and now we've got episcopuses at a regional level overseeing elders who at a local level are overseeing churches. And so it's a very, very strong historical case for what we'll see about the Episcopalians claim. But the fundamental New Testament framing is Presbyterian in nature. Okay. Does that give anybody a heart attack? Don't send this to my bishop, he may not appreciate that. But that is in fact the case.

So we have presbyters that are serving this whole thing locally, and they have all these tasks and got to do these things. There's one other hint, by the way, of Episcopalianism in all the Presbyterian passages. Did anybody note anything else of note? Did you note what the Episcopalians can claim in all of the passages about elders? How do the elders become elders? What is it? How are the elders selected? How are the elders elevated? Did you notice it?

Is it because of their walk with the Lord? Well, who recognizes that? Who sees all these qualifications? Take a look at Titus 1:5:

The reason I left you in Crete was that you might straighten out what was left unfinished and appoint elders in every town as I directed you. — Titus 1:5

Paul was functioning above the elder structure. Paul, as the Apostle, is saying, you are in charge and you are in charge, which is to say, you're not and you're not and you're not, right? So even within the very proof texts of Presbyterianism, there is a notion of someone outside and above poking in and saying, you're in charge and you're in charge.

Now, that person is not an overseer biblically. It is not an episkopos biblically—it's an apostle. And so the claim of Episcopalianism is: yeah, but even in this elder-based structure, there was already a pre-existing apostolic order and somebody's got to function in the authority of the apostles to reach in and say, yes, no, yes, no, yes, no. That claim is basically embedded within that.

We have elders from the local churches. Different churches do this differently. In some churches, the elders select the next elders. In some churches, the senior pastor selects the elders. In some churches, it's a congregationalist democratic vote to select the elders. But what you see here in the New Testament, generally speaking, is that the Apostles instructed: hey, Titus. Now Titus wasn't an Apostle, but he functioned under Paul's authority to go and select the elders.

So far so good? Am I proving that this is boring or is this at all interesting? I don't know how this is going. All right, that's the basic case for Presbyterians. Let's strengthen the case though for the Episcopalians.

The Episcopalian Model

The Episcopalians are ruled by bishops. If the Presbyterians are ruled by a board of directors—that's what it is, a plurality of elders, a number of people that meet these qualifications—Episcopalianism is ruled by bishops. And as I said, very early in the church, the office of bishop arose. And it's what you would expect would naturally happen.

If you start a company and then you franchise this company, eventually you're absolutely going to hire regional managers. Because you just can't have one national thing that oversees everything and you can't have them all run around willy nilly. So there's this internal structure developed very quickly where the elders would do this.

You'll see in Titus 1:5, there's an appointing of elders. Same thing in Acts 14—Paul and Barnabas appointed elders. Very quickly, I'm curious if you'll know this: who might have been the first bishop in Christendom? Do you have any idea? James. That's exactly right. James in the church at Jerusalem.

James is not one of the 12. I don't know if you guys have ever seen this, but Jesus appoints the 12 and they're supposed to be in charge and then some of them we hear from. Peter says stuff, Paul—not Paul, Peter and John—we have some individuals, we see their significance, but then James, who the heck is James? I mean, he's Jesus' brother, so there's that. But James has never been officially granted anything. He absolutely becomes the de facto leader in the church at Jerusalem. And he could be thought of as the first bishop, or as a proto-bishop.

Listen to how James clearly has flex, and like not local church autonomy, but like higher church autonomy. Look at Acts 15:12. This is the Jerusalem Council. In Jerusalem, that's kind of the headquarters, that's the center of this whole thing. Now all these Gentiles start coming into the church—the stuff we talked about last week—and people are like, time out, time out, time out. What in the world do we deal with these Gentiles? Do we need to make them become Jews? And so they had a meeting. They brought church leadership to the city and everybody talked about what they thought, and what are we going to do?

And in that assembling of churches and leaders from the community, James becomes very obviously preeminent.

The whole assembly became silent as they listened to Barnabas and Paul telling about the miraculous signs and wonders that God had done among the Gentiles through them. And when they finished, James spoke up. You can see him becoming like the leader of this thing. "Brothers, listen to me. Simon, that's Peter, described to us how God at first showed his concern by taking from the Gentiles a people for himself. The words of the prophets are in agreement with this as it is written, 'After this I will return and rebuild David's fallen tent and its ruins I will rebuild and I will restore it that the remnant of men may seek the Lord and all the Gentiles who bear my name, says the Lord who does these things that have been known for ages.'" — Acts 15:12-18

It's my judgment—okay, this is kind of a presumptuous statement if you're not in charge. It is my judgment, it's still James, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, sexual immorality, the meat of strangled animals and from blood.

For Moses had been preached in every city from the earliest times and read in the synagogues on every Sabbath.

He demonstrates this notion in his own self of somebody above the elders who's giving instruction and direction. Okay? So we could walk through the church history case, but I'm less interested in history than I am in a biblical case. Biblical case, overwhelmingly we have elders. Immediately, these guys arise, and even within the text, we see somebody that's functioning above the elders. Okay? Got them? That's your two. You got Presbyterianism, you got Episcopalianism—something that's like a board of directors, something that's like a regional manager. What's our third case? Congregationalism.

Now in The United States of America, we're a democracy, thank you very much. We tend to like this. It might not be surprising that a large number of churches, certainly Baptist churches, function in this. Is there a biblical case for congregationalism? Could you make it that the riffraff, the hoi polloi, you people should be in charge? No one knows. But it's not quite like that. Todd's a Presbyterian at heart. Let me make the case. Let's steel man the congregationalist case.

In Matthew 18, listen to this:

If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. But if he will not listen, take along two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, do you know who you tell? The church.

That's interesting. It doesn't say go tell the five or six elders of the church, it doesn't say go and tell the Episcopal who's been given regional authority. It says go tell the church, suggesting that there's some authority that the gathered body might have.

In First Corinthians 5, Paul does not tell the elders to remove the offender. What does he say? Listen to this:

When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus and I am with you in spirit and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, listen to this, hand this man over to Satan so that his sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord.

When was all that supposed to happen? You hear that first line? It says, "When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus, hand this man over to Satan," suggesting that it is the assembly—the ecclesia—that is doing the handing over. There is something there about the broader community being authorized.

Similar in Second Corinthians 2, you see discipline carried out by the entire church. Listen to this:

If anyone has caused grief, he has not so much grieved me as he has grieved all of you. And to some extent, not to put it too severely, the punishment inflicted on him by the majority is sufficient for him.

Interesting, right? The gathered community or at least most of the gathered community.

Similarly, the seven—these deacons that will get chosen when this whole thing starts—the proto-deacons at least become a community in Acts 6:

Brothers, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them and we'll give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.

This proposal pleased the whole group. And they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and also Philip and Procorus and a bunch of dudes whose names don't really matter. And they presented these men to the Apostles, higher level authority, who prayed and laid their hands on them.

And then just finally, and I'll be done: that church council in Acts 15, the Jerusalem Council, where we see James functioning in a role of some presiding officer, and yet where we have collected these elders, these presbyters to make a council decision—they're not the only ones who speak. In Acts 15:22:

Then the Apostles and elders with the whole church decided to choose some of their own men and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas.

[Audience member asks about Christians dragging Christians into court and Paul's response about handling disputes internally.]

It does, actually. Basically, Christians were suing other Christians in Roman courts. And Paul rebukes that and says, you guys are dumb. You should not be going to the godless to settle these matters between yourselves. Any three people in your church should be competent to do this. What he's saying is it shouldn't be hard to find competent people within your church that can make these decisions. And he's like, you're gonna judge the angels for crying out loud. You may as well start practicing, right? You may as well start learning how to adjudicate between difficult things. But when he does that, he's not citing which governmental form is right. He's just saying Christians should all be wise enough and smart enough and honest enough to settle these matters.

But yes, Christians suing other Christians is problematic. Christians should bring their problems to the church. The Bible is very clear on that, and that's largely unrealized. But again, that's outside of our purposes here.

So bishops were primarily the lead shepherd, right? Well, it's hard. As I said, it's very, very hard to make a biblical case for what a bishop should be because biblically and unambiguously, a bishop is an elder. They are the exact same purpose, the exact same office. So any separation between them is a later historical development that is not biblically grounded.

Is that true as well in the Old Testament? Were they interchangeable in the Old Testament?

So the title of shepherd definitely has Old Testament roots as well as New Testament roots, but is never treated as a formal office. Shepherd is distinct from elder, shepherd is distinct from episcopas. You don't see that language in the Old Testament because the Old Testament is written in Hebrew and episcopas is a Greek term. But you definitely have leaders and shepherds. The Old Testament view on leaders of God's people throughout Judaism is that they are bad shepherds who eat the sheep, right? So we're not able to draw too much from the Old Testament because there's just so few positive examples. Whereas we do have positive examples in the New Testament and fantastic positive examples through our church history among the Presbyterians and the Episcopalians and the Congregationalists.

The reality is, there is a biblical grounding for different elements of all three of these structures. I personally don't know how you could not see that the strongest case is the Presbyterian case. But there are elements of the others that I think deserve recognition.

The Etymology of Priest

One more thing I want to throw down there because it's confusing, very confusing. Do you know the etymology of the word priest? Because it's complicated and confusing and I think extraordinarily unhelpful. Priest is short for presbyter. Etymologically, the reason I am an ordained priest is that I am an ordained presbyter. But there is a debate from about five or six hundred years ago: should we use the word priest to describe the presbyter because when you hear the word priest, rather than thinking presbyter, you think Levitical priest? And you might have always believed that Brian and Sloop and myself and Quigg are somehow priests in the great tradition of the Levites who offer sacrifices for the people. And none of that is true.

In the very earliest generation of Anglicans, people were like, we should not call these people priests because they're gonna think that they're Levitical priests and they're gonna have a misunderstanding of the sacrificial nature of what these people are doing. But Anglican priests are not Levitical priests because Levitical priests are offering a sacrifice, and we don't offer sacrifices because one sacrifice has been made. So maybe we shouldn't give them a title that will lead 90% of their people to believe something that's not true. And they basically decided, nah, it's okay, do it anyway, they'll figure it out.

So I am a priest in as much as I am a presbyter, there is nothing Levitical about me. There is no lamb to be slaughtered for the Son of Man died on a cross. Okay? So it is confusing but that is the honest history of that. So we are not sacrificial sacrifice making priests, we are simply presbyters who govern the affairs of the church. I have no idea. Anglicans love making up words. I don't know where the heck a rector came from or sacristan or anything else. We just love making up words. I don't know.

So that's what I wanted to say. Now I want to hear what you guys are thinking. So Harry.

Yeah. And Peter, I can't remember the verse right off. It says, all are priests. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Maybe I don't think we're gonna do that right now. So it is true. There is a sense in which, right, the priesthood of all believers, right? If you understand the role of the office of priest to be something that we are all, that we represent God to one another, that is true. That's universally true. But it's not what we mean when we say there are some who have a specific calling to direct the affairs of the church. But there's an aspect of that, just a different piece. So yes. Scott, I think you had your hand up.

Just earlier, the part about Shepherd is actually more like...

Well, so when in First Peter five, Peter is gonna interchange the words shepherd and overseer. But the word shepherd is not overseer, but he says—let's see, where is it? He's gonna say in—okay, through it. You find it, and then we'll—I promise I will come back to you. Okay. We'll come back. Chris.

I was wondering about biblical consistency from the Old Testament to the New Testament. First in Eden, the kind of hierarchy of God makes man who rules over everything else. And also with family too, that same thing getting carried through the New Testament of husband, wife, controlling their house, and then children submit to them. But everything further develops more in the New Testament of everything under Christ as opposed to the Old Testament. But I'm wondering, does that potentially give us more of a grounding? Because you're saying that, at least in the New Testament, there is more biblical evidence for the Presbyterian model. But is there a potential to say that for the Episcopal arguments it has more of a whole Bible approach?

Okay. So let me start. Are you saying that from the Garden of Eden forward, God has placed human beings in hierarchical relationships?

Okay. Is the case that God is not in His orientation to us antinomian. He's not just like everybody's equal. Everybody just do whatever you want to do and work it out. He absolutely places us in authority structures. Even within a family, in the smallest human unit, there is authority and hierarchy, there is leadership and there is subordination. All of that happens there. And does it therefore not happen in other places? It absolutely does.

And so which is why I don't think there's any problem with having some kind of a regional manager of things. All government, not just churches, but all human governments. The thing I was trying to find addresses this, but I didn't think to pull this all up. Do you know James Madison's famous quote about if men were angels? Do you know how this goes? I don't have it memorized, but the essence of it is like, if men were angels—meaning if they were sinless is what he means by that—we wouldn't really need anyone to govern them. They would just all do what they're supposed to do. But they're not angels. And so the biggest problem that a government has to figure out is how do we put somebody who is also not an angel in charge of all the humans who are not angels, obliging him to govern himself. He's much more eloquent the way that he says it. But that's the essence. Everybody said, we got to find a system.

And the truth is you guys, if we were to ask—if I were to ask you, okay, in church history, which churches have done a better job? Is it those that have been governed under an Episcopalian function with a bishop, an overseer who make sure that things don't go off the rails? Here's a hint, the Roman Catholic Church is Episcopalian. Did that protect them from error? No. No. Okay, how about did it work for the Presbyterians? Did the Reformation been a place? Have all those churches that draw their life out of the Reformation maintained faithful orthodoxy, obeyed the Great Commission, lived out—has that worked very well? That doesn't work. How about the Baptist? Are the congregationalists getting it right? All we need is to let the majority rule because democracy is most likely to bring them out the desired end. Has that worked? They fight all the time. Nothing works. That's the punchline, you guys.

Like democracy, they'll say this about American government, "Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the other ones," right? The problem with Episcopalianism is that the emperor is far away. No bishop knows what's going on at his churches. How could he possibly? He's got 30 or 40 or 50. He cannot, right? No group of Presbyterian elders are so godly that they make all the right decisions. Like, if you knew some of the things that have happened even in our little valley, right?

The Presbytery is like the regional group of all these guys. You guys, they get stuff wrong all the time. Episcopalians get it wrong, Presbyterians get it wrong, the Congregationalists get it wrong because at the end of the day, we have no alternative but to be led by sinners. That's it. That's all we get. We have sinful bishops, we have sinful elders, we have sinful congregations, and we are trying on our good day to bend the knee before the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.

He is the head of his body, which is the church. Elders should be leading under the authority of Christ. Bishops should be leading under the authority of Christ. The congregationalists should be voting their shares under the authority of Christ. And sometimes they do. And until Jesus comes back, it's going to be some kind of a mishmash mix of our best attempt to understand what the Scriptures have said and we're gonna get it wrong a lot of the time. We clearly have gotten it wrong a lot of the time, right?

Bishop is Episcopas. There is a sense in which the Episcopas is our shepherds, but so are the elders because they're the same thing, okay?

I think the Old Testament also mirrors these same forms, just in a different context. For example, I think Judges is a great example of why congregationalism doesn't work. Judges certainly didn't work. And we limp along throughout history, truthfully. We go from failure to failure because where Jesus reigns, the details will work out. Where Jesus is not submitted to, your structure is not going to be that helpful. It just really isn't, right?

But that's the general—at least you understand the biblical case for each one of these and why even in an Episcopalian form, you should have elders, and even in a Congregationalist form, you should have elders. That is I think the most vivid and clear line that runs through the New Testament. God intends His churches to be led by small groups of people that meet these qualifications. They are men. I do think it's a very strong case that their elders are to be men, they are to be godly men, they are to be humble men. Some of them better be competent to teach or the church is going off the rails pretty quickly. But there's a place for the congregation to contribute. And there's certainly a place for regional authorities to help kind of give direction. I think you've got to embrace the fact that all of these things are being drawn from Scripture.

Church government—that's all you get.