Patterns for a New Testament Church

Introduction

What is a New Testament church? To this question, two common answers are given. The Roman Catholic Church claims it is the New Testament church because it can trace an unbroken line of descent all the way back to the first century. Although it now may look very little like that church, Roman Catholics claim to be the New Testament church because of historical continuity.

On the other hand, Protestants claim that what makes a church a New Testament church is conformity to the teachings and practices of the New Testament. If every church in the world went out of business today, a group of believers could start a New Testament church tomorrow by adopting the faith and practices of the first-century churches as the New Testament sets them forth.

If the Protestant answer is right, as I believe, it is imperative to know what first-century churches believed and how they behaved. What they believed is a topic for another time. The focus here falls on how New Testament churches behaved because their character and actions set patterns for building future New Testament churches.

Somewhere in the edge of the Brazilian rainforest near Porto Velho, Rondonia, two thousand miles up the Amazon right at the foothills of the Bolivian mountains, stands a Baptist chapel. In it are pews and a pulpit I built in 1995. I cut the boards. I screwed the pieces together. I varnished the furniture. Understand that I spent my life as a preacher and a professor, not a carpenter. I had never done anything like that job before. But our construction team leader gave me the job. He did not write out instructions. He handed me some patterns and a power saw. I just followed the patterns and produced the pews and pulpit.

The present work tries to find patterns for building a New Testament church in the descriptions of selected churches mentioned in the New Testament. It does not include the letters to the seven churches of the book of Revelation because scores of books have been written about those congregations.

Some may question why there is no mention of the issue of single or plural elders.¹ The answer is that the New Testament evidence is ambiguous. For sure, some churches (e.g., Jerusalem in Acts 15:2, 4, 22–23; and possibly Ephesus in Acts 20:17) had more than one elder. But the New Testament does not indicate that every congregation had multiple elders. The closest it comes are Luke’s report that Paul and Barnabas appointed elders in every church (according to a church, kata ekklesian; Acts 14:23) and Paul’s directive to Titus to appoint elders in every town (kata polin, Titus 1:5). Commentators commonly say Acts 14:23 means Paul and his colleague Barnabas appointed more than one elder in each and every church in that area of southern Asia Minor. But the language may rather indicate that, moving from church to church, they appointed at least one elder in each. Also, Paul’s instruction for Titus to appoint elders in every town (kata polin) in Crete (Titus 1:5) may also mean that Titus was to appoint at least one elder in each city on the island. To illustrate this point, a news story might report that John Kingman distributed political yard signs in his neighborhood from house to house. Clearly this sentence is ambiguous. It might mean John left multiple signs in the yard at each house, but it could just as well mean that he left one sign in the yard of each house. Either sense satisfies the syntax. The statements in Acts and Titus are ambiguous in exactly the same way. The language fits a plurality of churches each served by a single elder, as well as it fits a plurality of elders serving a single church. Because the issue remains indefinite, it is not considered part of any pattern.

The following list of patterns is exemplary, not exhaustive. Many more could be identified. Not everyone will agree with the author’s reading of the biblical evidence, but surely everyone can profit from engaging with the ideas presented here.

Now, on to the search for patterns!

1

. In the New Testament, the terms elder (presbuteros), overseer (episkopos) or bishop, and shepherd (poimen) are synonyms applied to a specific group of church officers. In Acts

20

:

17

–

35

, Luke referred to the leaders of the church at Ephesus as elders (Acts

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17

) and Paul labeled them as overseers (Acts

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:

28

). The verb (poimainein) that follows overseers, the English Standard Version (ESV) translates as to care for the church of God, that is, to do the work of a shepherd in tending his flock. Perhaps it is better rendered be shepherds or pastors. That shepherd is another way to say pastor, the ESV acknowledges in a note attached to Eph

4

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11

. The same usage occurs in

1

Pet

5

:

1

–

2

where that apostle applied elder and bishop to a fixed set of church leaders and urged them to shepherd the flock God entrusted to them. In this reference, shepherd (poimanate) is just a different form of the same Greek verb in Acts

20

:

28

.

Chapter 1

The Master’s Church

A Word from the Founder

In the shadow of Mount Hermon near Caesarea Philippi Jesus asked his disciples, Who do men say that I am? (Matt 16:13). That question was not hard to answer. People everywhere were talking about Jesus. In fact, they were saying genuinely great things about him. Some declared he was the late John the Baptist, lately beheaded by Herod Antipas but now risen from the dead. Others insisted he was Elijah, the greatest of Israel’s prophets. Most Jews expected him to return to herald the day of the Lord (Mal 4:5). Still others claimed he was Jeremiah. The rabbis said Jeremiah hid the ark of the covenant and the altar of incense in secret caves when Babylon destroyed Jerusalem in 586 BC (2 Macc 1:1–12). They looked for him to return in the last days to restore those treasures and bring God’s glory again to Israel. Or, if they hesitated to say Jesus was as great as John, Elijah, or Jeremiah, at the least the people thought him one of the prophets, a man on whom the spirit of prophecy rested, a servant to whom God revealed his secrets (Amos 3:7).

But Jesus pressed on to life’s most important question. Of the disciples he demanded, But who do you say that I am? Peter answered, You are the Christ, the Messiah of Israel, the Son of the living God! To