I’ve read further in Frank Viola’s book ‘Who is your covering?’. It is a quite remarkable book, going back to the Greek words and examining their meaning, also looking at the context of the period in which they were written.
He starts by looking at models of leadership (basically contrasting hierarchical models with Jesus’ words):
Continue reading “More on ‘Who is your covering?’”
More on ‘Who is your covering?’
Continuing to look at Frank Viola’s book ‘Who is your covering?’.
The primary authority over the local churches were the elders. Paul instructed Titus, for example, to “appoint elders in every town”. Two things are notable (my addition to the comments in the book): firstly, the church in a city or region is generally referred to singularly, not ‘the churches’, and Titus should appoint ‘elders’, apparently indicating that there should be several of them in each church. Secondly, in the list of attributes required to become an elder, the word used suddenly changes from ‘presbuteros’ (‘elderly man’) to ‘episkopos’, often translated as ‘bishop’. This appears to indicate that bishops were the same thing as elders, and that there were several of them in each church.
