A Council of Elders? By Revd. Jon Shuler

The Barnabas Road Initiative (BRi) is challenging clergy to bring one young man each year into a disciple-making relationship with themselves, at the center of their ministry. The whole point of such an action is to increase the number of leaders in the church who are devoted to being disciple-making leaders. Today let us discuss the idea of a council of disciple-making elders in each parish.

There can be no dispute that there was a council of leaders in the first churches formed after Pentecost. The Scripture bears witness to this in Jerusalem and in the churches planted by the apostles. There is no exception to this rule in the post-biblical historical record for centuries. What does happen, however, with the coming of the Constantinian Settlement in the 4th Century is a gradual change. With the church blessed by the state comes evidence of an administrative development that begins to separate the bishop and his jurisdiction from the local church. The norm will become a single presbyter, elder, in each congregation, with a bishop and deacons in the central (or cathedral) church. Now the council of elders will be a dispersed body of presbyters, and the ruling authority will be more and more the bishop alone.

This pattern has prevailed for at least sixteen hundred years, but it must be rethought. Today the administrative and financial burden required by this developed system is weighing down the ability of the church effectively to spread the kingdom of God. A simpler and more apostolic pattern needs to be reclaimed. It would be faithful to the Holy Scriptures, and the earliest evidence from the sub-apostolic church. The letters of Ignatius of Antioch, generally dated to about AD 115, certainly show this.

In every church that Ignatius writes to he mentions the bishop (singular), the presbyters (plural), and the deacons (plural). He gives principal voice to the bishop, clearly as primus inter pares, but he always speaks of the three orders functioning as one. Can the modern churches which jealously claim the historic succession of this pattern accept a reform that would restore its earliest form?

Functionally the thriving local parish has a version of this ancient pattern. The rector, assistant clergy, and lay staff are precisely mirroring this ancient order. The rector has principal oversight (episcopos), shared with the ordained staff (presbyteros), and senior lay staff (diaconos).

The one church Ignatius wrote to which does not show this pattern is the church in Rome. There he mentions no bishop, but he does acknowledge the presbyters and deacons.

Could the historic church reauthorize the three fold ministry in a local form? Of course.

Next Week: Local Reform & Historic Tradition