A Short Summation of the History of Church Structure
The Greek term ekklesia was first used several hundred years before Christ. When Greek city-states were ruled by aristocracies, they would often have difficulties resolving socio-economic issues like any government does. So they experimented with a few different types of social systems to govern the land. They experimented putting the governmental power in the hands of one person which is where we get the term Tyrant. And they experimented putting the governmental power in the hands of the people, what we today would call a democracy. An aristocracy is a social system in which power and influence are primarily held by a small, privileged group of individuals or families who are typically regarded as the elite or upper class. A democracy is a social system in which the power to make political decisions is vested in the hands of the people regardless of their social class.
The first time these Greeks experimented with a social system putting governmental power in the hands of the people, they met together in an assembly to discuss and vote on social issues and pass laws. This first assembly of the democratic government was coined the term “ekklesia.”
So from the etymology of this term, we could define the word ekklesia’s original usage to mean the assembly of the democratic government.
Hundreds of years later, ekklesia is the term Jesus chose to use to describe the future organization of His followers. This term is first used in Matthew 16:18. Of course we are not sure if Jesus Himself chose to use this term or it is the Greek term the authors Matthew, Paul, John the Revelator, and the author of Hebrews chose to translate Jesus’s Aramaic into Greek. Nonetheless it is the agreed upon terminology used by these New Testament authors which would reflect the consensus of the terminology used by the first followers of Jesus.
There can be various forms of democracy, one form being the power to make decisions can be vested in elected representatives, which is what took place among Jesus’s first followers. These representatives were elected by Jesus Himself, the Holy Spirit, or the church. The first representatives were chosen by Jesus Himself and coined the term apostles which means “sent ones.” Other times the Holy Spirit would choose these representatives such as when the Holy Spirit separated Barnabas and Paul for apostolic work (Acts 13:2). And other times the church itself would elect representatives such as James being elected the head elder of the Jerusalem church or the apostles Paul and Barnabas appointing elders in the local assemblies they planted (Acts 14:23).
But these local assemblies of Jesus followers did not always have elected officials. So there were various forms of this democratic government among them. We can see that in different instances in the New Testament the church is supposed to function without elected representatives (such as an apostle planting a church without appointing elders), and other times it is supposed to function with elected representatives.
We have plenty of documentation remaining today included in the New Testament that tells us exactly how Jesus’s first followers organized their social system. There were only three offices for these elected officials.
Apostolos - English translation to apostle. Highest elected position. This office is not to be confused with the other uses of the term apostle that can be used to describe a function of the church body (Ephesians 4:11) or anyone sent on a mission to do anything such as Ephroditus sent to care for Paul while he was in jail (Philippians 2:25). This elected representative office is normally a person on the move. They plant communities of Jesus followers then move on and influence from a distance.
Episkopos & Presbuteros - two interchangeable words for the second office of elected official. These two words refer to the same office but are interchangeable such as boss and manager or child and kid. This office is usually stationary to serve a local assembly of Jesus followers.
Episkopos translated in English as overseer or bishop
Presbuteros translated as English as elder
Diakonos - English translation to deacon. Means servant.
Scholars argue whether or not the office of the apostle is still in existence today. This is a difficult discussion to resolve because there are a minimum of five categories of usage for this word in the New Testament. The author's belief is that four of those categories remain but one of them has been removed with the deaths of the first generation of apostles. This category being the category that was given authority by God to write canonized Holy Scripture (2 Peter 3:15-16).
I would also like to note here that the five-fold functions mentioned in Ephesians 4:11 are not in any reference to church leadership structure. This is the general consensus among scholars. The functions listed in Ephesians 4 are in reference to functions of the church body, not leadership structure. The letter of Ephesians along with the letter of Colossians was delivered to the churches in Asian Minor largely to deal with the issue of syncretism. Colossians deal with Christ being the head of the church, and Ephesians deal with Christ’s body of the church explaining its functionality. The letter of Ephesians does not include any references to leadership structure within the entire letter.
The letters to Timothy and Titus were written to help with church leadership issues as their tasks were to choose church leadership at the time the letters were written. Timothy’s task was to replace the corrupt leadership in Ephesus and Titus’s task was to appoint leadership for the first time in Crete. These are the letter we find leadership explained.
So how did we get so far from this original church structure that we see in the New Testament?
At the turn of the 2nd century Ignatius of Antioch brought about the idea to bring together the dispersed house churches and consolidate them into one organization. His idea was to bring a central authority to this collection of house churches in the form of a bishop. Ignatius proposed a structure for the church based on the structure of Roman city government in which the Christian congregation becomes the Roman city and the bishop becomes the Roman administrator. In this way every early church comes to resemble a Roman municipality in the Empire of Christianity. This began a trend towards re-organizing the church into a replica of the Roman Imperial system.
Ignatius worked for this centralized Christianity by setting forth this design in churches he visited and letters to them.
“You must all follow the lead of the bishop, as Jesus Christ followed that of the Father; follow the presbytery as you would the Apostles; reverence the deacons as you would God's commandment. Let no one do anything touching the Church, apart from the bishop.” Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans 110AD
By the turn of the 4th century Constantine became emperor of the Roman Empire and passed the Edict of Milan which put a stop to Christian persecution and validated Christianity as an accepted religion in the Roman Empire. Constantine highly favored Christianity and began to pour money and resources into the Christians desiring to make it a viable choice for a religion equal with the other prominent Roman pagan religions.
Constantine wanted the rest of the Roman empire to accept Christianity within Roman society so he needed to make it look more like a pagan Roman religion for it to be widely accepted.
There were three major problems with Christianity being accepted as a pagan religion. These three problems were that every world religion must have three things.
Temple
Priests
Sacrifices
The problem with Christianity was that it was the only religion in the history of the world that did not have these three things. Christ became our High Priest, Christ became our sacrifice, and Christ’s body as the church became the temple.
So Constantine’s problem was that he needed to place these three things back into Christianity or at least make it look like the Christian faith has them. So in a sense they had to work to undo what Christ had done.
By this time there was already a movement to reinstate Old Testament priesthood into Christianity. This movement began with Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and others who were working towards reinstating the Old Testament priesthood into the New Testament church as early as the 2nd Century.
So that the Christians could have priests like the pagan religions, the Old Testament priesthood was reinstated and Christianity was separated into two classes. The upper class called the clergy and the second class called the laity. The second class Christians called the laity were stripped of several rights and separated from having access to God without the clergy.
Constantine gave the Christian clergy extraordinary rights within the Roman Empire. They were given the status of being Roman government officials. They were given high government salaries and incredible exemptions such as being exempt from serving in the military, and exempt from paying taxes. They were even exempt from being tried in criminal courts. They created a special court system for them called the bishops' courts. This obviously created a massive influx for people desiring to be part of Christian clergy even if they weren’t a believer which created many false converts.
To solve the issue of Christianity not having temples for worship, Constantine began to build basilica’s for the Christians. Basilicas were the Roman architecture at the time used for city, or economic purposes, it was also the architecture used for pagan temples. These massive basilicas were built and given to Christians so they would have temples to worship in like the pagans. This is where we get the first Christian buildings. Up until that point Christians always met in homes and the centerpiece of worship was the communal meal at the dinner table.
Within a short period of time, the church system was a full blown replica of the Roman Imperial system. Constantine gave the Christian priests titles similar to Roman government officials and had them wear wardrobes like the Roman government officials. This was the first time Christians would begin “dressing up” for gatherings.
The church took such a drastic departure from its original structure that by the time Rome fell in the 5th century, the bishop of Rome, or what we would today call the pope, was given the title of Pontifex Maximus; the title of an emperor. This is still the title for the pope today.
Many of the Christians assumed that since the kingdom of Rome had fallen that the kingdom of God had come to the earth. They presumed that the church was the kingdom of God. And if there was a kingdom, that kingdom needed a king, thus the title Pontifex Maximus was given to the bishop of Rome. The head bishop of the church had now become the king of the world. Not only that but they gave him the title “Vicar of Christ” which means replacement of Christ. The pope of Rome was now King and Christ.
The office of the Supreme Pontiff / Pontifex Maximus / Pope became known as the papacy. By the turn of the 16th century some Christians became very unsettled about what had happened to the church structure over time. They began to revolt against the papacy in many different ways.
The most popular of these reformers were Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli, and John Calvin. These reformers vehemently argued for change. They brought some incredible changes to the Christian faith during this time. They brought forth great changes in theology and some changes in church structure but they were extremely limited in their abilities to change church structure.
In their attempt to move away from the clergy system and eliminate the priesthood within the church they began to replace the term priest with other words such as preacher, minister or pastor. It was Calvin that favored the word pastor above the other terms as he felt this was the highest esteemed word a church leader could be given.
Though these reformers were successful in eliminating some things from the priesthood such as eliminating the need to confess sins to a priest and establishing a believers ability to confess their sins to God with Christ being their priest and mediator, they were unsuccessful in eliminating the priesthood altogether.
There were some name changes and changes of duties but after The Protestant Reformation, the Christians faith was still left separated into two separate classes. The upper class clergy and second class laity, with the Old Testament priesthood still left intact.
There were some groups of reformers that were successfully able at that time to reform much more church practices and structure back to its original form such as the anabaptists. These groups were labeled radical because they were doing things such as re-baptizing people when they truly came to faith, which was an extraordinarily radical idea at that time, though it was normal practice within the original church.
These radical reformer groups were so heavily persecuted that they either fizzled out or escaped the reach of the Roman Catholic church by seeking refuge in other countries. Many of these groups sought religious asylum in America as it was being settled. Many of America's first settlers were from these radical reformist groups.
These radical reformer groups were not able to get their beliefs and practices into the mainstream so the reformation of Christianity remained incomplete.
Luther, Calvin, Zwinlgi, and others were able to accomplish some great feats but so much of the Christian faith still resembled the Old Testament priesthood and Roman Imperial system which still exists today.
In most churches especially within liturgical denominations there still remains a split in classes of Christians. The clergy class often presides over the entire service with little to no participation from the second class Christians labeled as the laity. Even in congregations that do not have a pronounced division between these classes, the two classes are observantly still present. One or a few church leaders will conduct an entire service without any communication, input, or participation from the seated laity. It is easy to spot this as in a service like this, the clergy will be standing while the laity will be seated for most of the service.
The original church would have sat in a circle without a division of Christian social classes. Their centerpiece of which they gathered to worship was the dinner table as the central aspect of Christian worship was the communal meal known as the Lord’s Supper.
Also still today, most churches still do not have the communal meal as the centerpiece of worship. The centerpiece of worship is usually a pulpit, which was an object implemented by the reformers Zwingli, Calvin, and Luther as they felt preaching should be the centerpiece of assembly gathering rather than the communal meal and the Lord’s Supper that the original New Testament church made the centerpiece.
Today with most churches the Roman basilica legacy is still present as most Christians do not meet in homes around the dinner table but rather in special buildings to conduct worship. These special buildings still have the similar setup as a basilica did. The special buildings will have pews or chairs that only face in one direction. This prevents fellowship from among the second class Christians so their focus must remain on the clergy throughout the meeting. This helps to keep the second class Christians from speaking and remaining submissive and passive throughout the service. The original church met around a dinner table so the seating was conducive to fellowship and group communication as they would all be facing one another.
Most decisions done by local church bodies are still done by an aristocratic-like government without much input from the people. Most churches operate more similar to a Tyrant social system or aristocratic system, rather than a democratic system. There is often one person, a board of directors, or small group of leaders that do most of the decision making without the knowledge, input or participation of the second class Christians.
But the good news is that even though the radical reformers were not able to complete the reformation, after The Protestant Reformation the church has been ever so slowly heading back towards the original church structure.
There are several house church movements, reformation movements, discipleship movements, and organic church movements on the cutting edge of restoring the Christian faith back to its original form. Overall the mainstream church is progressing more and more towards its original form and practices ever since The Protestant Reformation.
To sum up, I will go over the important aspects of this writing. The New Testament’s leadership structure consisted of three offices of elected representatives - the apostle, the elder, and the deacon.
The centerpiece of worship for the original church was the communal meal known as the Lord’s Supper or love feasts.
The main reasons a priestly system, special buildings, and separate classes of Christians were implemented into the Christian faith were to make the Christian faith look more like a pagan religion to become acceptable within the Roman Empire culture.
