Structure and the Spirit

Jesus' Direct Guidance to the Disciples

When Jesus was with the disciples, he was right there with them to answer all their questions. What should we believe? How should we live? He could tell them. They had Jesus himself to interpret the Old Testament Scriptures, which were the only Scriptures that existed for them at that time. There weren’t any “new” Scriptures written yet, only the Scriptures of Israel.

Then in the decades that followed, the church had the disciples themselves – now apostles – to clarify God’s will for the church. The Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15 is a good example of the apostles coming together with the church to make a decision on a new issue, one that was pretty unexpected to them. Do non-Jews (called Gentiles) need to become Jews in order to be saved? Under the leadership of the Holy Spirit, Jesus’ half-brother James and the other apostles concluded that they didn’t.

Paul's Unique Apostleship and Early Challenges

But then there was this Paul guy. He was not one of the twelve apostles. He had never known Jesus when he was on earth. Yet the risen Jesus appeared to him and called him to be an apostle, too (Acts 9). It must have seemed somewhat arbitrary to the Twelve in Jerusalem, like God was calling some random person just out of the blue. Paul was completely outside the “system”!

The original core church in Jerusalem wasn’t quite sure what to do with Paul. Some clearly thought he was a false apostle (Acts 21:20-24; Rom. 15:31). But Paul wasn’t the only one that Jesus appeared to outside the Twelve. Jesus made others apostles too by appearing to them and commissioning them to be witnesses of his resurrection (1 Cor. 15:3-8).

In hindsight, we know that Paul was an authentic disciple, even if some in the early church might have had doubts. After all, God inspired Paul to write thirteen letters that are now in the Bible. In fact, Paul’s writings were probably the very first books of the New Testament to be written. His writings came to be universally recognized as Scripture!

The Role of the Holy Spirit in the Early Church

At the same time, Paul’s situation highlights one challenge in the early church. There were the apostles who had known Jesus personally. But after the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2, the Holy Spirit filled all believers. God could now speak through anyone in the church because everyone in the church had the Holy Spirit (cf. Rom. 8:9). The situation at Corinth highlights the confusion that could result, with chaotic worship, lots of prophecy, and speaking in tongues without any interpretations (1 Cor. 14). 

The Emergence of Institutional and Charismatic Authority

There were those who were part of a developing structure of leadership in the church. These were the twelve apostles, those who had followed Jesus on earth, and those who were appointed as leaders in continuity with them. Then there were those on whom the Spirit came “in the wild,” so to speak. The Spirit could blow wherever and whenever he wanted (cf. John 3:8). This is the charismatic dimension of the church.

The problem is that some who claimed to speak for God did not really speak for God. Welcome to the problem of false teaching and prophecy (cf. Matt. 7:22-23)! The later books of the New Testament clearly reflect that false teaching was on the rise. 2 Timothy warns about two men who said the resurrection had already taken place (2 Tim. 2:17-18). 2 Peter 2 and Jude take on the problem of false teaching head on. In Revelation 2-3, Jesus directly addresses false teachers in the churches of Asia Minor.

What we are seeing here are two ways that God has worked in the Church for two thousand years. The one is what we might call the institutional church. This is when God works within the organization and the structures of the church. Such individuals have a kind of formal authority, and they operate within certain official roles.

But God has never been confined to official roles. God also raises up individuals from the church at large to be prophetic voices who are “outside the system,” so to speak. We might call this other path the charismatic church, for lack of a better word. Such individuals have what we might call “informal power” from a human perspective, but it is directly from the Holy Spirit.

Both sources of authority and divine inspiration can be used of the Lord. And both venues can be abused by false teachers and false prophets. The history of the church is full of individuals who had institutional authority but who were used of the Devil. And the history of the church is also strewn with false prophets who claimed to speak for God but didn’t.

Church Structure

Over time, it is natural for groups of people to move from the “wild” to the structured. Even within the New Testament, we see the church move toward organization. 1 Corinthians 14 is Paul imposing structure on Corinthian worship. Much of 1 Timothy is Paul imposing order on the church at Ephesus. In 1 Timothy 3, he lays down the qualifications for two official roles in a growing church structure: overseers and deacons. The role of overseer was probably the same role as an elder in a local house church (cf. 1 Pet. 5:1-2). The role of deacon was perhaps more like ministers as we think of them today.

The church likely inherited this structure of leadership from the Jewish synagogue, which was led by a group of elders, with various individuals taking the role of synagogue leader each year. So as they planted churches and moved on, Paul and Barnabas appointed elders in each town to lead the house churches there (Acts 14:23).

By the beginning of the second century (the 100s), the leadership of the church in a town had coalesced around a single leader. The word that had merely meant “overseer” in the New Testament (episkopos) now meant “bishop.” And this role was increasingly becoming a very powerful one. About this time, a man by the name of Ignatius wrote several letters as he was on his way to Rome to be put to death. He was apparently appointed to leadership by John, the author of the Fourth Gospel.

In his Letter to the Magnesians, Ignatius writes:

This is a development in church organization. Ignatius wants the “overseer” or “bishop” to be in a very authoritative role indeed, compared to that of God over the “presbyters,” which is another word for elders. They are like a church board or “elder board” today. Then deacons are in a third tier of authority. They are like local church ministers.

Ignatius is often seen, therefore, as the originator of the concept of a monarchical bishop” a bishop that rules like a king. No doubt, he was concerned with the unity of the church, and he thought having a powerful leader over the churches of a city would ensure it. These bishops were analogous to district superintendents in some denominations today.

Another development at around this time was the notion of apostolic succession. Writing at the end of the first century in the 90s, a church leader in Rome named Clement wrote to the Corinthians that they could not get rid of their leaders just because they wanted to (1 Clement 42-44). Church leaders, he said, were in a line that started with the apostles. At the end of the 100s, another “church father” by the name of Irenaeus would give the lineage of bishops in key cities going back in a line to the apostles.

These movements toward more and more structure were meant to stop false teaching and to quell disorder in the church. The problem, of course, is that no one is immune to temptation and the potential for sin. A powerful leader can stop false teaching and disorder more effectively, but what if that leader him or herself is corrupted? In the meantime, the Spirit sometimes just doesn’t care about who should officially be doing things. When the system gets stuck, the Spirit inevitably will raise up prophets from outside the system.