[UntoHim]

Originally Posted by John

As I hope you can see, I’m confused by what you originally wrote (the parameters of your thesis), as well as your follow-on post. When I read from you, “There is solid evidence that the original apostles had originated a system (for lack of a better term) of choosing, training and mentoring young men for leadership in the churches,” I thought that you might know something from somewhere that would help me understand more about what you claimed in that sentence. (This is what I was mostly interested in.) It seems from your response that you do not.

Ok, I see that I did not make myself clear. With the little time I have I’ll try to make amends. The “something from somewhere” is the record of the early church as presented to us in Acts and in the writings of the apostles, mostly Paul and Peter. All through their writings we see clear indications that they themselves were taught and mentored by the Lord Jesus himself. It seems to me that part of this teaching and mentoring was to establish them as leaders in the early church, as well as to pass these leadership qualities (teaching, shepherding, administering, etc) on to a new generation of disciples. As I noted in my original post, I think the purity of this “dynamic” got corrupted by man, but it does not change the fact that there was clearly an establishment and training of leadership in the early church. If you feel that there is some sort of discontinuation of this establishment of leadership (maybe as some believe that there was a discontinuation of apostleship, the gifts, etc?) then maybe we can just agree to disagree on this.

In your reply, I detected an adversarial response and felt attacked. I did not intend for my post to make you feel attacked (if you did). I was simply trying to find out what you knew, that is, your claimed “solid evidence.” (Maybe I should have put a smiley face after my Matthias comment.) Regardless, now that I know the two lists of qualifications to Timothy are your evidence, and I don’t consider the lists to be evidence of what you seem to be claiming, notwithstanding your retreat behind “system,” I am content to end my part in this discussion.

No, I didn’t feel attacked at all. I hope you didn’t either. It’s just some bantering back and forth between two people on an Internet forum. The problem is that there has been so little of that around here I think we are both just a little out of practice! Well you have read my response above so you already know that the qualifications to Timothy are just a very small part of what I was talking about, so no need for me to defend something I wasn’t claiming in the first place.

I think what’s interesting, at least in an ironical sense, is that ToGodAlone has gotten some answers to his original question posed in his opening posts by our back and forth here, and that’s a good thing since it’s his thread, and if we’re going to highjack his thread we should at least answer his question in the process.