Controlled Chaos... The Early Church

For several of my last posts I’ve focused on congregational studies and practical theology, the first of four major areas that served as the focus on my doctoral exams. This next set of posts will focus on the second area: ecclesiology. Ecclesiology focuses on the nature of the church and pastoral leadership from a theological perspective. These first posts will focus on some key historical texts for pastoral theology. They will be followed by posts that focus on contemporary approaches to ecclesiology and then some possible directions for a contemporary ecclesiology for my denomination, the Evangelical Covenant Church. We begin with one of the earliest documents written regarding the nature of the early church, the Didaché.
Written in the first century, the Didaché reflects a nascent community not yet formed into any one definitive structure. The community met in homes for worship and teaching and was united in its common faith in the gospel message as handed down by the apostles. The apostles, those who had been eye witnesses to the life and teachings of Jesus, provided leadership and guidance to the local churches. They generally did so at a distance, making visits and writing letters. They would form a council in Jerusalem to adjudicate issues arising in the interpretation of the gospel as the home churches lived out their faith.
The Didaché reflects the centrality of the gospel message for shaping the early Christian communities. Their mission focused on preserving and passing on the gospel through preaching, teaching, evangelism, and worship. The Didaché focuses on preparing Gentile converts for full participation in the life of the community through a program of mentorship and discipleship. Each convert was assigned a mentor to teach them and walk alongside them. It is assumed that men mentored men and women mentored women, though there is no mention of this in the Didaché. Mentors held no specific office in the church. Rather, mentoring others was seen as a function of the priesthood of all believers. These mentors, as bearers of the gospel, were to be highly respected, but they were also to be tested, along with prophets, to assure that their message remained true to the apostolic witness. Mentoring and other ministries were a function of the gifting of the Spirit as recognized by the local community. For these early house churches charismatic and institutional forms of leadership overlapped.
Ministry was seen as the work of the entire community. All were called to teach, to pray, to serve. They were called to share their goods with one another. They were called to judge the soundness of teaching. The sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist were seen as the work of the entire community. The Didaché calls the community itself to baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Leadership of baptism and the Eucharist was shared among many members of the community. Mentors often presided at the first baptism of those they were mentoring. There is debate about leadership of the Eucharist. Some suggest that mentors also presided at this rite, but others suggest that prophets and/or bishops served in this role. Bishops at this time were often tied to the administrative functions of the church, but would soon move into more liturgical forms of leadership.
The Didaché reminds us of the excitement of new church plants. But within it we see hints of things to come. Structures that would eventually be put into place. Offices that would eventually centralized authority. The desire, whether in these early days of controlled chaos or in the first years of centralized authority, was to preserve the gospel. How do you preserve the message when you no longer have the eye-witnesses among you? How do you sustain ministry for the long haul? The next few historical texts will show how the church eventually structured to sustain the faith. It will also illustrate the ways that very structure can at times get in the way of the message itself. In our efforts to preserve the gospel, we at times hide it behind layers of bureaucracy and find ourselves separated from the very God we seek to worship.