Welcome back to Samus Popri. I'm Joe Heschmire. And you know, a great disagreement between Christian

denominations is on the question of how the church ought to be structured. Now, all sides are going to

appeal to the Bible to support their positions, but of course, they can't all be right. Catholics and

Orthodox have a clear answer. The bishop is in charge of his diocese. But Protestants don't seem to have

one straightforward answer to this, but instead have several disagreements and different answers that

they offer. So it's either Episcopal, Presbyterian, or congregational led by one person,

led by the team, or led by the crowd. As Stephen Callan points out in the book, Who Runs the Church?

It's on this question, rather than any question of theology, that we chiefly find the major

schisms within the history of Protestantism between Episcopalians, Presbyterians,

congregationalists, and even Baptists.

Now, that might sound surprising, but if you think about it, the question of church authority

is inherently a church-dividing topic.

We cannot be in the same church body if we can't agree on the basics of how that body is governed

or organized, just who's in charge.

Now, Protestants broadly have three major answers to this question.

Either local churches are to be governed by a single bishop, or by a plurality of elders,

or the congregation itself is ultimately in charge. But do any of these look anything like

the early Christian church, and do any of these accurately reflect what the Bible

teaches? Before we look at that evidence, I want to say thank you to another Christian community.

My supporters over on shameless joe.com. It's a beautiful community of both Catholics and

Protestants striving to follow after Jesus Christ. And it's not just that members get ad-free episodes or have access to

a weekly live stream Q&A's actually two hours a week for those of the $10 a month level.

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