Over at A Pilgrim’s Progress, Eric Carpenter is asking an important question and offering a doable answer.
Must We Follow the Biblical Model in All Things?
1. study the practice of the early church
2. take a look at everything we are doing as a church
3. be honest with ourselves about things we are doing that are nowhere to be found in scripture
4. there is some freedom in this
Eric has hit the nail on the head, asking the right question: Why wouldn’t we want to follow what is modeled in scripture as it relates to the church?
Recently I found a book written nearly 40 years ago by E. Stanley Jones: THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHURCH–ON WHAT PATTERN? Jones offers, I believe, some relevant answers to the questions raised by Eric Carpenter. We need to look again, he says, at how things were done in the church at Antioch.
Antioch would certainly be on the list, but it seems to me church structure in the first century may have enough variation to investigate all the NT churches we can. Still, given the available choices, Jerusalem and Antioch may have the most data.
BYW, thanks for the book reference. I’ll be looking at that one when I get back to campus. It looks to be worth a read.