ELEVEN ARGUMENTS FOR CONGREGATIONALISM (Jonathan Leeman)

1. The final court of appeal in a matter of discipline, which is the highest authority in a church, is the church (Matt 18:17).
2. Jesus says that the church has the authority to make this assessment and judgment because it possesses the keys (Matt 18:18).
3. Jesus promises that his authoritative presence abides with two or three witnesses to his reign and to one another gathered in his name (Matt 18:20). This locates authority in a gathering. But to say that this promise applies to a gathering smaller than a church would divide a local church against itself and make the basic unit of kingdom authority something smaller than a church, or create churches inside of churches.
4. There is no mention of bishops or elders in Matthew 16, 18, or 28, nor does the New Testament give a single example of elders or overseers unilaterally exercising the keys.
5. The apostles treat the gathered congregation as something of an equal partner when selecting and affirming the seven proto-deacons.
6. Paul invokes the language of gathering with the authority of Jesus to act in Jesus’ name from Matthew 18:20 when he charges not only the leaders of the Corinthian church but the whole congregation to “hand this man over to Satan” (1 Cor 5:4–5). The judgment, to be clear, does not occur behind closed session doors.
7. Paul explicitly tells the whole congregation that it is their responsibility to judge (1 Cor 5:12).
8. Paul tells the Galatian churches that they should act as a check even on his apostolic authority when he departs from the gospel (Gal 1:6–9). They don’t need to go outside the system to resolve the problem.
9. Paul affirms that the decision of the “majority” was sufficient for removing a man from membership (2 Cor 2:6).
10. Churches can exist without elders (e.g., Acts 14:23; Titus 1:5).
11. Much of the New Testament is written to whole churches.

Jurisdiction refers to where each party has authority—over what areas?
Disposition refers to both how each party should engage in that area as well as what their overall posture should be.

To think about jurisdiction, we are served by adapting the old church distinctions between elements, forms, and circumstances.

• The elements are the basic furniture in a church that make it a church → and a rightly ordered one: the Bible, preaching and teaching, gatherings, singing, elders and deacons, members, and so forth.
• The forms are the way those elements are expressed, like the style of the furniture: what translation of the Bible, what kind of preaching, what programmatic structures for the teaching (Sunday school? Small groups?), and so forth.
• The circumstances include things like time and place – does your church meet in a community centre, or under a tree, or in a 100 year old building, or back in the 1700’s, or in communist China; do you amplify sound through a microphone → and all the inevitable questions humans have to answer as embodied creatures.

Principle one: across the board, the congregation should generally trust the elders to recommend a course of action, whether that involves the elders making the decision themselves, asking the church as a whole to make a decision, or delegating the decision.

Principle two: the more a form or circumstance impinges on the teaching ministry of the church, the more the elders should feel responsible to make decisions; the less a form or circumstance impinges on the teaching ministry of the church, the more elders should desire to delegate decision making to others—whether to deacons, “staff”, or other volunteers—yet always maintaining enough oversight to facilitate unity.

Principle three: the more a form impacts the unity of the church as well as the elements in the left column, the more the elders should incline toward involving the entire congregation in the decision.