Revisiting the Acts 6 Model from South Woods Baptist Church on Vimeo.

It doesn’t take much to get a church off track in its mission and life together. We can blame human nature on much of that veering into a ditch. But we must also recognize that the adversary will use anything to keep the church from living out its visible picture of the gospel in its unity. For that reason, when John Stott got to Acts 6 after working through the persecution of the church in chapters 3–5 and the corruption within the church in chapter 5, wrote, “Having failed to overcome the church by either persecution or corruption, [the devil] now tried distraction.”[1] How the Spirit led the apostles to reel the church back in didn’t come through a pep talk or a thundering sermon. It came through establishing biblical church polity.

Church polity has to do with the way that the local church is structured, organized, and governed. Polity is not an end in itself, as though the church exists for the sake of its government. Instead, healthy polity serves as a means to keep the church focused on its gospel priorities. If it fails at that point, then no matter how sleek and clever it appears to be, it fails at its Spirit-directed purpose.

The 16th century Reformers, while not all in agreement on what constituted biblical polity—Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and Beza had different views—recognized that the church could not continue with its polity as the Roman Catholic Church had done for centuries, and maintain a healthy congregation centered on the gospel. Even some Catholics recognized this to be true. Johann Eck, who became a nemesis of Martin Luther after the Reformer posted the 95 Theses, felt strongly about local pastoral ministry. He complained about the lack of pastoral focus in the Catholic Church, surprisingly writing a strong barb against the church. A pastor, he wrote, “. . . should focus on the ministry of the Word of God and entrust the worldly things to the deacons [so following Acts 6].” But the entire range of the Roman hierarchy simply ‘passed the buck,’ rather than taking responsibility for Word and ministry. He said that the only thing at which they were proficient was “gold, money and interest.”[2] While Eck failed miserably at his response to Luther, he exposed the raw nerve of the church’s leadership hierarchy as it failed to serve the congregations.

John Calvin, the Genevan Reformer, wrote of the Roman Church, “Since conditions are such under popery, one can understand how much of the church remains there. Instead of the ministry of the Word, a perverse government compounded of lies rules there, which partly extinguishes the pure light, partly chokes it.”[3] The Reformers agreed that the top-heavy Roman hierarchy had no biblical basis. Yet they differed on how polity worked in the local church. Luther, focusing on justification as the hinge upon which the church rises and falls, rejected the papacy but still held to a type of bishop rule. Yet inching the right direction, he stated that the church had the power to ordain its own ministers, by-passing the bishops.[4] Calvin maintained flexibility in church polity based on the church’s needs and how best to exercise pastoral oversight. He followed his mentor Martin Bucer in a four-fold office structure: pastors, doctors, elders, and deacons. He just insisted, as Paul Avis explains, “that the glory of Christ . . . and the fraternity and equality of ministers . . . must not be obscured.”[5] Zwingli saw the church and state “related as soul and body, distinct yet necessarily conjoined and interdependent.” With that view, he saw “both minister and magistrate as coservants of the Word of God,” according to Timothy George.[6] Both had roles with each other in Zwingli’s estimation.

The Reformers, especially Calvin, moved the church toward a more biblical approach to polity. They fought a lot of theological battles, yet they couldn’t wage war on every front. That’s why, it seems, that Calvin who c[...]