The organization of the church was relatively fluid throughout the New Testament period. Various offices are mentioned, but their duties and interrelationships are not always clearly defined. General patterns emerge, however, permitting some description of the leadership and discipline of the church as an institution.
Leadership
The apostles maintained a general supervisory function, although their chief task was the proclamation of the gospel in an itinerant ministry. (The word apostolos indicates one sent out on a mission.) Apostleship was not limited to the disciples of Jesus, but also included men such as Barnabas, Apollos, James, and Paul. The criteria for apostleship are never directly set forth, though Acts 1:21–22 indicates that an apostle should have been a witness to the events leading to Jesus’ resurrection. Paul claims a right to the title by virtue of having seen the risen Christ (1 Cor. 9:1; 15:8), and indicates that James had a similar experience (1 Cor. 15:7). Miracles are also among the “things that mark an apostle” (2 Cor. 12:12). The New Testament does not set out a standard procedure for becoming an apostle; to fill the vacancy left by Judas’s defection, the Jerusalem congregation prayed and then drew lots between two qualified candidates (Acts 1:24–26). Paul refers to having been appointed (1 Tim. 2:7). Besides apostles, there were prophets and evangelists (Eph. 4:11; 2 Tim. 4:5) who also apparently functioned in a wider ministry.
In the local congregations, a group of elders had general oversight, so the terms “elder” (presbuteros) and “overseer” (episkopos) seem to refer to the same office. There are no set procedures for the selection of elders, though in new congregations they were appointed by the apostles (Acts 14:23). Paul, nearing the end of his career, instructs Titus to appoint them in Crete (Titus 1:5) and lays out certain spiritual, personal, and administrative qualifications (1 Tim. 3:1–7; Titus 1:6–9). Similar qualifications (1 Tim. 3:8–12) apply to the deacon (diakonos), a word that simply means “server.” The seven men chosen to administer the food service by the Jerusalem congregation (Acts 6:2–5) are often regarded as the first “deacons,” but the examples of Stephen and Philip show that they were preachers and not simply managers. Although the word is rare in the New Testament, pastors also served in the local assemblies; the pastor was a “shepherd,” and therefore a teacher of the congregation (1 Tim. 4:11; 6:2), and it may be that the terms pastor and teacher are synonymous (Eph. 4:11). New Testament congregations do not seem to have had pastors in the modern sense of a full-time leader paid to manage the church’s operations and conduct its worship. In addition to the above offices, members of the local body performed a variety of leadership functions according to their endowment by the Holy Spirit, such as administration, teaching, or the exercise of various vocal gifts (Rom. 12:6–8; 1 Cor. 12:7–10). The Christians of a city seem to have formed one congregation, though because they met in homes the assemblies were dispersed throughout the city; the elders and overseers apparently coordinated the activities of the church throughout an entire urban area.
Central Organization
The churches of the New Testament were connected in a loose affiliation of individual congregations, with the apostles serving as the principal links between them; Paul and Barnabas were acting in this capacity in collecting offerings for the relief of the church in Jerusalem (Acts 11:29–30; 1 Cor. 16:1–3). There was no formal, centralized organization, although Acts 15 recounts that the apostles and some elders met in informal council to resolve the issue of the standing of Gentiles in the church. The larger or older congregations may have been influential in the church at large. Certainly the church at Antioch played a key role in the direction of the missionary effort (Acts 13:1–3; 14:26). As the original congregation, the Jerusalem church was prominent in the earliest days, but its influence waned as the Christian movement expanded into the Mediterranean world.
Decision Making
Little is said in the New Testament about the decision-making process in Christian leadership. The Acts of the Apostles attributes major decisions about the direction of benevolent or missionary activity to the Holy Spirit (Acts 11:28; 13:2; 16:7–10) and suggests that apostolic decisions were arrived at by consensus, under the principle “it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us” (Acts 15:28). In the council of Acts 15, it is James, brother of Jesus, who formulates the prevailing opinion (Acts 15:13, 19). James was evidently the leader of the Jerusalem congregation (Gal. 2:12), although nothing is said of his being a disciple of Jesus before the Resurrection. A certain leadership role seems to have fallen to members of Jesus’ family in the Judean church; another brother, Jude, is also one of the New Testament authors.
Discipline
According to Matthew (the only Gospel writer to use the word church), Jesus laid down procedures to be followed when a member of the community committed an offense, particularly against another disciple. If the matter could not be resolved between individuals, a small group was to be convened, and only as a last resort was the matter to come before the assembly. The penalty for continuing in the offense was exclusion from the life of the community (Matt. 18:15–18). In general, this relatively unstructured pattern is the picture of church discipline we find in Acts and the Epistles. Although the apostles possessed a formidable moral authority—evident, for example, in the results of Peter’s confrontation of the duplicitous Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1–11)—they do not seem to have habitually functioned as judges over the church. Paul said he would “hand … over to Satan” a man in Corinth who persisted in an incestuous relationship (1 Cor. 5:5), but as he was not personally present this was a measure taken in the spiritual realm. His preference was to handle disciplinary matters by exhortation and persuasion; in dealing with problems in the Corinthian church, he suggests he might “come to [them] with a whip” (1 Cor. 4:21), but exactly what he meant by this is not clear. In the case of disputes between Christians, Paul affirms that it is better to be wronged than to enter into litigation in the civil courts; a “wise man” in the assembly should be able to decide between two “brothers” (1 Cor. 6:1–7). He urges believers to break their associations with Christians whose behavioral witness is inconsistent with their profession (1 Cor. 5:11–13).