I often hear about churches that try and get back to the early Church model. One can understand why sometimes. There must be disenchantment when another piece of corruption within the Church gets into the news. The massive infrastructure of the Church with all the trappings of power must confuse some. However, institutions do evolve.
I was once in a church that modeled itself on the early Church format with a system of elders and deacons. It was a very caring church and by and large the structure worked.
However, it experienced the same kind of manning problems that the early church did ( Acts 6 ) in that the leaders did not have time to do everything. Certain people became overstretched. The answer in these situations seems to be to delegate certain people to be specialists while others might have to stick to more menial tasks.
The church I am thinking about decided to have a pastor! Shock, horror!! He did not last long. The church dispensed with this office and went back to an eldership.
The last I head the church had adopted a more ‘rock praise’ worship format. More shock, horror!
The simple truth is that organisations do evolve and while it is easy to parody the fixtures, fittings and formats of the mainstream churches they have often come by having for example a priest or a minister through simple evolution.
An organism that does not grow is perhaps not alive.
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