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We have to be careful about thinking that there was some kind of perfect first church. It is obvious from reading the New Testament that there were many problems in every church right away.
We must not envision something that never existed except in our own minds and try to "recover" that.
They worked out their own salvation (Christian life, and church life) in the culture they found themselves in and as needs arose. The NT teaches reliance on the Holy Spirit and the Word of God to deal with things as they encountered them.
The fact that Timothy appointed elders at Ephesus means that he very much played the role of the head pastor at Ephesus and even much more authoritative than churches who choose by election. However I would not necessarily take a legalistic stand that we must do it exactly the way Timothy did it at that time, because we are not in that same setting and circumstances. We have to rely on the Holy Spirit and corporate prayer and use the scripture as our guide to deal with things as we encounter them in the body of Christ.
It may be that in a local church there are enough mature saints to elect elders. In another church plant in a community where all the church members are recent converts the pastor might appoint elders until such a time as the congregation grows into a more mature state. There is no legalistic model that one must adhere too. That is why it is not all spelled out exactly for us in the NT. God did not want people to replace the Holy Spirit with some model.
We must not envision something that never existed except in our own minds and try to "recover" that.
They worked out their own salvation (Christian life, and church life) in the culture they found themselves in and as needs arose. The NT teaches reliance on the Holy Spirit and the Word of God to deal with things as they encountered them.
The fact that Timothy appointed elders at Ephesus means that he very much played the role of the head pastor at Ephesus and even much more authoritative than churches who choose by election. However I would not necessarily take a legalistic stand that we must do it exactly the way Timothy did it at that time, because we are not in that same setting and circumstances. We have to rely on the Holy Spirit and corporate prayer and use the scripture as our guide to deal with things as we encounter them in the body of Christ.
It may be that in a local church there are enough mature saints to elect elders. In another church plant in a community where all the church members are recent converts the pastor might appoint elders until such a time as the congregation grows into a more mature state. There is no legalistic model that one must adhere too. That is why it is not all spelled out exactly for us in the NT. God did not want people to replace the Holy Spirit with some model.
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