 OK, everyone, hey, welcome back to the session. We'll resume from where we stopped off, where we stopped at page 21 in your PDFs. We're discussing about elders. One of the things that I missed mentioning, which I wanted to, was the word elder, it's a, right? I mean, we discussed that it's from the Greek word called presbyter, means elderly, older, a senior, or an elder of age, OK? That also explains now, this is the studies also say that these people were new in their faith, very young in their faith, but older in age and maturity. And hence, they were called as elders, OK? So they were new to their faith, obviously, right? Because they were from different regions. They were hearing the Gospels for the first time and the church was being planted and they're taking care of all these things. So they're still being very young in their faith, but older in age and maturity, wiser in maturity, right? So that's another thing to consider when we talk about elders. So once again, we see the birth of the early church, leaders, leaders taking over, and then we see deacons, a team of people working together. And then we saw the emergence of leaders to basically pass a group of people, given the responsibility of guiding their flock, shepherding their flock. And all of these teams, they work together as one, right? People from different teams, like we see Paul and Barnabas as an example, working together as one. And then we see that the team of Paul and Barnabas kind of grows, right? Simeon, Lucius, Mananen, at the bottom of page 21, you can see their names being mentioned from Acts chapter 11 and Acts chapter 13. That's two years later after Paul and Barnabas served together in ministry, going on Mission Strip trip and whatnot. We see more people being added to it, right? But that's the beauty of the local church. One thing that I'll probably teach in worship ministry as well for the final years. One thing we discuss in that subject is the difference between a band and the local church worship team, the difference between the band and the local church worship team. One of the things that we emphasize is a band is inclusive. And the local church worship team is exclusive. The band says us four and no more, right? But the local church worship team is open for people of different age and whatnot. A band can be, it could just be a boy band or a girl band, all girl band, all boy band and whatnot. But the local church worship team is not like that, right? It's a rich in diversity. It can be multicultural. And that's exactly what happens here in the early church is that this team was a multicultural team, right? It was rich in diversity, right? It says Barnabas was an ex-levitical priest. Saul was highly educated in Judaism. Mannain was brought up in the courts of King Herod. Lucius was from Cyrene north of Libya. It's a talk about multicultural team, the diversity in the team and the knowledge and the experience and the exposure each individual would have had. It's just wonderful, isn't it? And that's how the church even nowadays we function together is people from all different kinds of backgrounds, even just us here in this classroom. We have people from different backgrounds, different cultures, different country, right? And we can get a certain thing done if we work together as a team, isn't it guys? And so that's how they function, right? So a group of elders and whatnot. And now moving on from there, as again, remember we're talking about the growth of the early church, right? How they're growing in maturity, in spiritual maturity, how they're growing as Christians in their faith and whatnot. Now elders was, say, two or more group of people considered elders, right? They were in charge of taking care of a local church. But as the church matures, now, okay, to come to an understanding, it's better to have one person who oversees the entire local church and everybody else can come under that one leader, one primary leader, okay? The deacons, the elders, the apostles, or whoever, right? They were all report to the senior leader of the church. And we see that happening in the early church of Jerusalem, where James, in chapter 15, you can read about in Acts chapter 15. Although the church had spiritual leaders like elders and deacons and whatnot, the final decision at council was taken by James, right? So although the church of Jerusalem had all these board members and whatnot, the final decision was taken by James. And then later, we see that Timothy is being appointed as pastor of the local church at Ephesus, and you can read about it. We read about in 1 Timothy chapter one, verse three, where Paul says, hey, you stay there, you take care of that church. You protect them from all the false doctrines that can be preached over there. So you guide them, you take care of them and whatnot, right? So Timothy is being appointed as a pastor of a local church or one person to as an overseer of the entire church. And then later in the book of Revelation, we see seven letters being addressed to Jesus addressing. It talks about, and to the angel of this church, he said this, what is very important for us, this could just be like a simple word study for us to understand the text better, is that in the book of Revelation, when we read that he addressed to us the angel of a certain church, the Greek word simply means angelos, right? It simply means messenger, that's what it is, okay? So again, they are used interchangeably, right? So, hold on, sorry. Okay, so angels are also considered as God's messengers, isn't it? You know, and Gabriel has to come to deliver a message and whatnot. So he is a messenger, he's doing what he's known to do, so to speak. But then also vice versa, a person who delivers a message is also known as an angel, okay? What sets it apart, why it's important, where it's important for us to make this distinction is just to read the whole context, okay? Now, obviously Jesus is not addressing and to an angelic being for several reasons. One thing is nowhere in the New Testament we see that, okay, angel, Gabriel, you know, you go take care of this local church. We don't see that happening, right? An angelic being, this is what I'm talking about, right? An angelic being is not given a responsibility to take care of a local church on this earth, right? So that's, I think it sets the record straight that when Jesus is saying, you know, this is what he said to the angel of a certain church, he's talking to the leader appointed of a church, right? Of a church there. Guys, are you all with me? Yeah, so, and we see another advanced thing that happens there is to the local church at Ephesus progressed from having elders, right? From Acts chapter 20 verse 17, it progressed from having elders to having one senior leader, okay? So that's the emergence of a senior leader or pastor, pastors. Okay, so in a local church elders, deacons and other five-fold ministries which we will just go through coexist, right? So in one local church elders, deacons and other five-fold ministries people involved who are called for this five-fold ministry, they coexist and they function together under the leadership of the senior leader, okay? But there's one interesting thing, right? About, you know, we know about synagogues during the time of Jesus, you know, we read a lot about synagogues, you know, in the gospels. So the origin of these synagogues basically is a small group kind of a meeting, right? Like a life group meeting or self-group meeting or whatnot. The origin of that dates back all the way. Again, historians scholars say this is when the Israelites the Jews were taken into exile by the Babylonians, right? When King Nebuchadnezzar marches into Israel, destroys the temple built by Solomon and they take them for exile, right? For 70 odd years, right? For 70 years or so. Now, until then, the temple was, let's say it was their local church, right? It was very important. It was very, very special. It was a common meeting place. That's where everybody met. It was for everything spiritual related. And now that the temple was being destroyed, and they're all strangers in a strange land or foreigners in a foreign land, they do not have a common place of worship. They do not have a common meeting place, right? They did not have any. And so that's when in a foreign place, they decided, okay, let's meet in small groups in different people's houses. Now, just as how we see the church in the first century matured and progressed grew, those small group meetings that began in that exile and progressed, grew in maturity, took its full form, and then later we see it became, be known as a synagogue, okay? And then because the early church Christians, they were still Jews, okay? Yeah, they were Christians, but they were still Jews, right? Messianic Jews, as we would call it now because they believed in Jesus, but they were still Jews. So they practiced the same traditions of the Jews, like they would meet, they would go to the temple, right? They would meet in synagogues for prayer, chant hymns into one another and whatnot, but more about this next year, okay? But we see how the progression is so similar, okay? And that's why I wanted to share that is the progression is so similar when you draw a parallel. Okay, let's take a look at page 23. And the five-fold ministries and team ministry. One of the outstanding features we see in the book of Acts is team ministry. Okay, hey, how many of you like functioning in a team? And how many of you don't like functioning in a team? Be honest, like functioning in a team, JV says, okay? No lone rangers here. I don't like a partner. I like to work alone. I do the things my way. Hey, nobody's going to crucify you if you say that, okay? So it's okay. That's just a genuine question. Where there we have it. Ooh, Georgia, ooh, Georgia. Frostlin's getting very specific. I like the function. They don't like-minded team. It sounds like fun. Yeah, I still haven't come across a team that's like-minded. They all had to be beaten into shape to be like-minded. Eventually we get there. Cool, cool, yeah? I think, yeah, but working in a team is, it has its pros and cons, right? I mean, because people are different. For now we use these, we use the names Paul, Barnabas, but we forget that they were actual people, right? Paul, Barnabas, James, Peter, they were all just not names hanging around in a cloud or something. They are all individuals, right? They have their own individual traits just like how many of us are there? We have 13 of us. So if you leave me out there, 12. So we have 12 people in the class. How symbolic is that? Are you guys ready to go and change the world? So we have Prezi, JP, Jeffina, Zalatoli, George, Anita, Roslin, Abu, and all of you are not just names, it's just people, right? Real people with your own characteristics, you have your own likes and dislikes, your favorite colors, some of you are extroverts, some of you are introverts, and all of what not, isn't it? All of that kind of makes kind of a team. A team will have all these characters. We use those words, no? It's like, dude, this is one character in the team, dude. He or she is one character only, dude. It's what it is, right there, real characters there. Team is made up of so many different characters, but then something about coming together in unity, and I read about this somewhere, it stayed with me. Unity doesn't necessarily mean uniformity. Okay, unity doesn't necessarily mean uniformity. Hence, we get the word university there because there's unity in diversity, right? And one common thing from the early church, and also going back to the Old Testament, sometimes we see in the book of Chronicles is, first Chronicles 16, when you read, you see, okay, all the priests and everybody, they gather together in one heart, in one mind. They raise their voice as one. They played together as one, they sang as one. And in Acts chapter two, we see that they gather together in one accord, that means in one heart and one mind. That means they're united. There's always power, and I think functioning and working together, looking at the bigger picture, that saying, okay, hey, it's not about me, it's about the vision and the mission of what we as a team are called to accomplish. When we get that idea of a bigger picture, then God loves a good team, isn't it? And so it seems like these people got the idea of it. And one of that is a church in Antioch, right? We see that the church of Antioch is an interesting case study. So let's study their case. And here are some important lessons we can draw from the Antioch church, okay? Once again, Antioch is a modern day Turkey, the south of Turkey, just for your reference. So the local church is a place where ministries are to be birthed. Everybody say amen, type in amen, okay? The local church is the place where ministries are to be birthed, equipped and released, okay? It's beautiful, it's beautiful, okay? All ministries, five-fold ministries and others need to be rooted in a local church for spiritual refreshing and accountability. All ministers, pastors, elders, deacons, other five-fold ministries and other believers co-exist and function together in a local church. Sounds very scary, isn't it? All ministers, okay? All pastors, elders, deacons, it sounds like a recipe for disaster. But all ministers, pastors, elders, deacons, other five-fold ministries and other believers co-exist and function together in a local church, complimenting, supporting and enriching the local body without competing with each other. And I can say another amen there, okay? Without competing. What's behind the spirit of competing? Jealousy, a bitterness, you know, entitlement. It's like, oh, why does she get to sing all the time? Why can't I sing, yada, yada, yada, yada, all this kind of a thing, right? The calling and ministry of some people will require them to go out to the world or to the body of Christ at large, whereas others may be called to minister within their local church body, which is fine, right? So this is just a very simple pick case study and you can study in depth about the church at Antioch. If you want to, I think it'll help you in some ways. Right, guys? All good? Okay, okay, okay. Okay, so now here, this is where we get into a more information regarding the modern day structures of the church, right? From where we were and everything that we discussed and what we're about to discuss is worlds apart, okay? From being one church, being working together as one team and whatnot, and it's now suddenly we have different forms of church structure, right? So the idea of this section is to just emphasize or encourage that use a structure that works best for your church. It's not to say this is the best structure or this section is not to say, this structure is better than this, what they're doing is wrong and whatnot, right? But I think what is the goal of a church is, a mission is what? Great commission. If we continue to go into all the world, we continue to equip the saints, empower them, right? Until like what it says in Ephesians 4, 13, till everyone reaches maturity, right? That's the goal and the forms and structures, the methods and whatnot. Jesus only didn't give, you know, when he ascended, before he ascended. So who are we to say, you know what? So we just pick one and move on. But let's just look at the different forms. Okay, the first one is the clerical system and the church structure, the clerical system. So like the clergy, it's like, what does the clergy mean? The body of people ordained for religious duties, right? Especially in a Christian church, we see that clergy happening, right? It all marriages were supposed to be solvenized by the clergy. All funerals, you know, were supposed to be, you know, handed by the responsibility of a clergy and whatnot. So that's what it simply means. So mainline traditional denominations, just to name a few, Anglican Methodist, Baptist and so on. They kind of followed this system, right? Denomination. So I was having a conversation with a friend who's doing his theological studies elsewhere. He was studying about church history and he mentioned there are over 40,000 denominations in the world, you know, yeah. Yeah, you heard me, right? 40,000, what we know is Anglican Methodist, Baptist, Lutherans, you know, Pentecostals and whatnot, but then 40,000, I can't get my head around it. But then as shocked as I am, I am not surprised. There are a lot of factors that can be taken into consideration, isn't it? Like geographical setting, the cultural setting, the language, the traditions, et cetera. So that's just to name a few, right? So yeah, mainline traditional denominations, distinction between the clergy and laity. Laity consists of all members who are not part of the clergy, okay? So if, yeah, if a church has a clergy, like the leadership team who've been appointed to be part of the clergy and everyone who's part of the congregation are considered as laity. So that's just the distinction. Most of the work is done by the clergy, the local parish clergy are under the control of the hierarchical structure about them. Hey guys, so this is where I'm gonna request you to just follow along with me in your notes, okay? So as we go through these things. So there is a hierarchy of control, right? So like what we saw, okay? So there's a senior pastor, there are deacons, elders and whatnot. There are different teams who work together as one, but then here there's hierarchy, okay? So usually there are, there is a three-fold order, bishops, priests and deacons. That's the hierarchy. So that's the clerical system. Then we have the elders system led by a group of elders, okay? One of the denominations that I can think of, I'm not entirely sure, but then I know a bunch of friends from this denomination who do not have a pastor, like one senior leader, but they have a group of elders who lead. One of their denominations, I think brotherhoods is one of them. Brotherhoods, yeah. Led by a group of elders and has shown reasonable success in establishing good local churches. A cooperative leadership, in some cases may cause difficulty in casting a single vision, right? In which case progress could become sluggish or stifled. However, when there is unity and consensus, team leadership becomes powerful, okay? Team leadership, no, it all comes down to the vision of the team. It's not a vision of a single person. It has its own advantages and disadvantages, its own pros and cons and whatnot, but then in conclusion, when there is unity and consensus, okay? Everybody's agreeing to what they want to see accomplished through this church, then team leadership becomes powerful. So that's the elders system that a church is led by a group of elders, right? But we see in the first church, local church, how the church progressed and matured from being led by a group of elders to having one senior leader, who's the overseer of everything. Independent local churches, led by individual pastors with pastoral team, plenty of room for vision, creativity and growth. Plenty of room for vision, creativity and growth. However, danger of totalitarianism. Okay, that's a mouthful that word. Okay, dictatorial leadership, which can be very harmful. So what's the meaning of totalitarianism? I mean, it's like dictatorship, but it's like a system of government that is kind of, say, okay, you have to obey. It's something very similar to what China has going on now and North Korea has going on now and in a certain season, Russia and almost like communists. And then when you think of dictatorship, we can think of the Nazi time of Hitler and whatnot. Everybody's expected to be submissive and to just obey everything what the government tells them to do, right? So it's that kind of the dangers. I'm not saying it becomes a country like that, but then that's the danger of having led by an individual pastors with the pastoral team. While it has its own pros, it has its own cons as well. Failure improper succession in some cases. I think this is very important to even highlight. Failure improper succession. So what happens if that leader decides to move on? There could be various reasons, right? Why the leader would choose to move on, to relocate or mission strip and callings changed or something fatal were to happen and whatnot. And everybody's left perplexed, okay, now what do we do? Because there's no leader, isn't it? So everybody, we can seem kind of lost. So that's independent local churches, network of churches. That's another structure we see, right? Network of churches, assemblies of God, vineyard churches, new life churches, many others, there's so many more, right? Was it assemblies of God? There's, you take South India, for example, assemblies of God or just my area, the vicinity that I'm living in, the number of assemblies of God churches that's there. I mean, yeah, so there are a lot of churches. Vineyard has its own branches, it's network of churches in all these different countries. Or doing, I mean, wonderful work. I, by the way, I used to attend an AG church. I come from an AG church. That was the first assemblies of God church. It was the first AG church in Bangalore. I think India too, but yeah, that was like, yeah, anyways. There are different ways of how each network is organized. Overall, a useful model, right? You can have a network of churches if the structure, that's what your heart is, you can go for it. In some cases there is the danger of too much control, abuse, competition among churches within the network. Yeah, so these network of churches will have six, for example, assemblies of God. It has, in India, at least we have a South India, and what do we say? We have one person in charge of all assemblies of God church for South India, and they call it SIAG, right? South India assemblies of God church, and then they have the NIAG. They have Southeast and Northeast and Northwest and whatnot. So there will be a leader for all those regions and whatnot. And if everybody is happy about the leader, then it's all well and good. Then if everybody begins to have their own reasons as to why I should become the leader of this and then they'll start exchanging unpleasantries which is not nice, right? So apostolic networks, that's apostolic networks. Once again, the next one, sorry, is apostolic networks. Network of churches relating to an apostle has the benefit of multiplying a single vision and focusing geographically. A danger of becoming man-focused. Again, danger of authoritarianism. So yeah, that's house churches. We all are aware of what house churches and house churches and even cell-based churches are very similar. Disatisfaction with large churches or inability to meet in large settings has benefits to close relationship, care, and nurture. Lack of accountability and support, if not connected to a larger overseeing network, right? So, I mean, sometimes this might come down to a personal preference, like saying, hey, I don't like mega churches. I don't like big churches. I like small churches where less people. So my anxiety doesn't increase. I'm also happy, everybody's happy. I can go home early, I think, you know? But the con there as mentioned is lack of accountability can be dangerous due to limited resources, inability to accomplish in a larger context and impact society in a big way, right? If you want to, if your vision of the house church is to impact society in a big way due to limited resources, that can be a challenge. It's not impossible, it can be a challenge, right? So yeah, house churches, cell-based churches are very similar. One of the points in cell-based churches is that the third point, danger of splinter groups forming and tearing away from the main congregation has caused some pastors to stay away from adopting this structure, okay? This has happened. It's dangerous, it's very hurting. It can be very hurting. It can, yeah, it's never nice, isn't it? Something like that happens when church splits because of a smaller group and whatnot. So that's one of the challenges of a cell-based churches. Mega-church, successful churches soon evolve into mega-church with congregations of 2,000-plus people could be denominational or independent churches. The fourth point there, mega-churches are not inherently bad or dangerous. The same problems affect both small congregations and mega-churches, okay? So there will be, there are certain challenges that are common to all these structures that we see, okay? One is basic ones, moral failure of a leader. The leader can fail in a mega-church, he can fail in a small church, house group, cell group church as well, right? Misuse of funds and so on, right? Misuse of funds can happen in any scale. Small church, church, whatnot, okay? Character, integrity, everything. Moral failure of a leader, yeah, it's already mentioned there. So yeah, that's just some of the common challenges with mega-churches, I would say, right? So multi-site churches, another structure. One church with many locations in the city, some are across cities, provide geographical access to many people, give opportunity for many more people to serve and more leaders are raised, provides a way of, for congregation to engage in missions easily by planting more sites, provides the advantage of shared resources, shared learning, multi-site churches. So guys, here's the thing. Okay, we just went through a bunch of structures of churches. Now, this doesn't end there. I'm sure there are more structures, different kinds of structure-based churches, but there are pros and there are cons, strengths, weakness for each model, right? There is no perfect structure, right? There is no perfect structure, okay? Whatever form of church structure we have or use, we must be aware of and leverage the strengths. We must also be aware of the potential dangers and guard ourselves against them, okay? And whatever we do, I think we come back to that same point, right? As we did in the last chapter, you know, if you wanna be relevant, you can be relevant. If you wanna do a certain thing in your church, you can do it. If you wanna use all the technical equipments, to a modern day and age, whatnot, you can do it different methods, you can do it, but then the foundations remain the same. Let Jesus continue to be the God of your church, and you continue to be accountable to him. Let that not change, right? Because, and we see methods will change, principles remain the same as we see in page 26. You know, there was a reformation that took place in the church structure, okay? Reformation of theology by Martin Luther, reformation of spirituality in the 18th century. This changed how our experience of God, reformation of structure. We've seen all these different structures come into light in the last 30 plus years or so, right? Before that, there was just a certain kind of structure. Everybody followed that and whatnot. But at least I think from the 60s on, in the West, where from the Jesus movement began, there was a change in the structure of how a church service, you know, was happening. So in everything that we do, a vision, the mission doesn't change. A mission is the great commission. The message doesn't change. We are to still preach Christ crucified. We are still to make disciples. We are still to go out and baptize them, bringing them into our fellowship, our family of our body. And with all these denominations that's out there, it's very easy for us to get into this a spiral of bringing and talking ill about another denomination and whatnot. This denomination doesn't speak in tongues. They are bad. Or this denomination speaks only in tongues. They are bad. We can go on and on. Imagine if you, you know, so I would encourage you from a runaway from having conversations about that because it's not productive. It's a waste of time and whatnot. But just encourage, you know, each church or denomination to pursue God's blueprint for the local church because church is his idea. We have to come back to that point. If we don't, then nothing we do has any point, right? So you guys with me, yeah? I hope there was something for you to take away from today to do a quick recap, right? It's just a beautiful journey of how the early church matured and how God guided them through that season and how they were so reverent and how they handled things and everything and appointing people. They prayed about it. So they are something beautiful about it and how they function together as a team and how they were sensitive to the leading of God's Holy Spirit and His voice and how seriously they took a guiding of their flock of their church and how they held themselves highly accountable and responsible for the leading of the congregation. So there's quite a lot for us to learn from them and with all these different structures and forms that we have in today's day and age, we'll pick one and just continue to be faithful. If there's anything that for us to take away, pick one, continue to be faithful to His calling and that's that, okay? Let's pray and we'll bring the session to a close. So Father, we thank you for this opportunity that we continue to have to learn about your word, from your word, thank you Lord that you continue to pour out your wisdom, your knowledge and your understanding over us. So Father, we thank you once again for this day, your faithfulness, your mercy on our lives, some of this, the rest of the day into your hands, continue to pour out your strength over us. I pray Father, over every single person, you would strengthen them in every area of their work and everything that they touch, Lord, I pray that will flourish. As you've written in your word, Father, you blessed Porty for his house for Joseph's sake and so I pray that wherever we are placed, I pray that you will bless that place, that family, that household for our sake, because you are our God and we believe in you. So we bless you, in Jesus' name I pray, amen. All right guys, you guys take care and stop the recording now, see you next week.