Quote:
Originally Posted by alwayslearning
... who decides who the one church administration is in each city?
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Jesus chose the first 12. Even though He knew one of them contained dark impulses, He chose them all. We can hardly critique His choices.
Then, in Acts, you get a "game of chance" being used to replace Judas(1:26); and you see James the brother of Jesus, and the apostle Paul, and others, pushing themselves into the front ranks of the disciples.
Already, with this picture, you may have problems. James had not even been been a believer (John 7:5), yet by Acts chapter 15 he is the authoritative, concluding voice in the assembly. In 3 John 1:9 the apostle John, himself the aggressive "Son of thunder", notes that Diotrephes loves to be first, and won't receive his letters. The nagging questions in the gospels, of "who is to be first" after Jesus, don't seem to be fully resolved.
This idea of ranking ourselves, on this side of the Judgment Seat of Christ, seems to me to be straining of both christian faith and human logic. And the supposed one-city-one-church solution, that you can give the keys of the kingdom to one special minister of the age ("the oracle"), who then can pick all the administrators in each city to bring all the faithful into one's idea of practical unity, seems to be an exceptional exercise in hubris and folly.