Acts of the Apostles (13)
Introduction
It is quite true that some consider the subject of church government boring. But I can assure you that if you get certain principles of church government wrong, this will set you up for some of the most exciting moments of your life. I refer of course to the Thunderdome approach to congregational meetings.
The Text
“And it came to pass on the morrow, that Moses sat to judge the people: and the people stood by Moses from the morning unto the evening. And when Moses’ father in law saw all that he did to the people, he said, What is this thing that thou doest to the people? why sittest thou thyself alone, and all the people stand by thee from morning unto even? . . .” (Ex. 18:13-27).
Summary of the Text
We find in this text the great wisdom of Jethro, father-in-law to Moses. Moses was fully occupied with the people, and perhaps a bit frazzled (v. 13). When Jethro saw it, he asked, “What is this?” (v. 14). Moses replied that he was the judge who applied the law to the people (vv. 15-16). Jethro replied that this was not good, and said that if Moses kept it up, he would not only wear himself out, but that he would also wear out the people (vv. 17-18). Jethro’s advice was that Moses should represent the people to God, and also to teach the people (vv. 19-20). In addition, he was to delegate the task of rule through judgment to men of integrity, assigned to various levels (v. 21). They would judge the routine matters and the really complex situations would be brought to Moses (v. 22). Jethro said that if God required this, then both Moses and the people would be spared (v. 23). Moses agreed (v. 24), and so he appointed rulers over tens, fifties, hundreds and thousands (v. 25). They judged the people, but the hard cases came to Moses (v. 26). And Jethro departed (v. 27).
Background
In addressing this entire subject, I want to begin by stating openly certain assumptions that we should have. If we begin the discussion without actually sharing these assumptions, we will succeed in having a vigorous albeit confused debate, but it is not likely we will get anywhere.
The first assumption is that the New Testament does not invent the office of elder. When elders are established in the newly planted Christian churches (Acts 14: 23), this was not a new thing. The people of God had been governed by elders (already) for millennia. This means we are to build our ecclesiology from Old Testament foundations, and not from New Testament scratch. For us as modern American Christians, this is a particularly important assumption for us to address.
Second, we must not look for a jure divino divine-law authentication for every detail of any form of church government. God established the synagogue (and therefore the church) through the process of historical development. God required weekly worship from the Jews (Lev. 23: 3) but gave them absolutely no liturgical direction in the law on how that weekly worship was to be conducted. The Temple service was strictly defined, and the sacrifices, but not synagogue worship. This does not set aside the regulative principle of worship, which is that worship must be according to Scripture, but it does exclude the stricert forms of the regulative approach. In order to be according to Scripture, a modest amount of leeway has to be built-in . . . because a Christian worship service is a synagogue service, with certain Temple elements folded in.
And last, we need to remember the distinction between principles and methods. There is a difference between these two questions, for example. “Is this form of church government representative and decentralized?” and “Where does the Bible require a two-year term for an elder?” In the Presbyterian form of church government, we are seeking to implement all the relevant principles, which is not the same thing as having a proof text requiring that minutes be taken at the elder meetings, or that they use Roberts’ Rules of Order.
Synagogues at the Time of Jesus
Even a cursory glance at the New Testament shows Jesus and the apostles participating fully in the worship of the synagogues as they preached the arrival of the kingdom. Further, the connection was so tight that Christian churches are even called synagogues (Jas. 2:2; 5:14). We have to stop short of absolute identification, but recognize that we are dealing with more than just an analogy. Now how were these first-century synagogues governed?
The lowest officer was the chazzan (Luke 4:20). The Greek word for this here is huperetes. He was frequently the schoolmaster for the covenant schools that were connected to the synagogue. Then we had the local sanhedrin, the local session of elders (zeqenim), or rulers (archontes). The chief among them was the ruler of the synagogue (archisynagogos), an officer referred to frequently in the New Testament.
At the synagogue in Rome, and probably in the western Diaspora, there were a few other interesting features. One was that some rulers seem to have been chosen for a specified period, and others for life. Also there was an apparently unordained eldership called the gerousia that was likely responsible for outward affairs, men who acted sort of like modern trustees.
An Etymological Question
One of the things we have to be careful to do in this is distinguish the basic meaning of a word from the office. There are a number of words denoting age, wisdom and experience which have then become names for a particular office (the holder of which may or may not have age, wisdom or experience). Words in this category would be elder, senator, senior, or alderman. A twenty-eight year old man can be elected an alderman, and if the apostle Paul was a member of the national Sanhedrin (Acts 26:10), he was almost certainly under the (likely) minimum age requirement of thirty (Gal. 1:14). Most elders will generally be (and should be) older but you don’t have to be old to be an elder. Timothy entered the ministry as a very young man. We know this because decades after Paul picked him up, he instructs Timothy not to let anyone despise his youth (1 Tim. 4:12), and that he needed to flee youthful lusts (2 Tim. 2:22).
The Rule of Israel
Presbyterian church government is simply a Christian application of this kind of decentralized and yet ascending order of representation. In the CREC, we have in the Council rule over thousands, in the presbytery rule of lesser thousands, in the local session rule of hundreds. Parish elders could be considered to have rule over fifties and tens, depending on the church and/or parish.
The Question to Ask
Although the circumstances are different, we need to learn how to say, “it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us” (Acts 15: 28). On the question of church government, Scripture assigns us a place to stand, as well as room to move. As we “move,” we must not do so in a way that is contrary to anything required by Scripture, and only move within the parameters assigned to us by Scripture. It must be according to Scripture.
Often we ask for the scriptural warrant for Jethro’s proposal (since it is not implemented yet), but require no warrant for what Moses was doing before Jethro got there. One of the things we want to do is examine all that we are doing in the light of Scripture.
And all of it is under Christ.
Preached at Pilgrim Hill, Nashville Tennessee 2025