Teleioteti Technical Studies

What is a church? Are denominations churches? Who has the authority to ordain ministers of the Gospel? How do we determine what a church gathering should look like? These are the questions of "polity," or the principles and foundations for the organisation and conduct of a church. Nearly 400 years ago, Christians in New England produced a clear articulation of polity based on the Bible, called "The Cambridge Platform of Discipline". This document offers much insight into the way God would have churches act. In this book, the author engages with the Bible in the tradition of the Cambridge Platform to offer a new congregational polity, an account of the being and conduct of churches that retrieves the best insights of the Cambridge Platform while attempting to improve upon it in light of the later failings of American congregationalism and the 400 years of Christian reflection on the church that has followed that document. It is the author's prayer that this book would help churches engage with the Bible as they think about what it means to be a church and would give them the tools to do so with faithfulness and clarity.

By all indications, the Western Church is facing a crisis of pastoral ministry. Pastoral ministry is on a trajectory of decline despite the fact that God has opened a massive mission field on our doorstep, a mission field that requires workers. Moreover, we continue to export the same model of ministry to the global Church, inviting them to join us in the state of crisis. In Matthew 9:37-38, Jesus invites his disciples to consider the vast harvest of souls God has prepared, a harvest awaiting workers. If we want to see our churches healthy and our neighbours come to know Jesus, we must be interested in God's work to prepare workers for the harvest. This book is an attempt to repair what is broken, to contribute to the repair of pastoral ministry. I am convinced that no problem is more urgent to the church globally than this one, yet I am also convinced the solution to this problem is quite simple. This book argues that our crisis is the result of swapping the biblical vision of pastoral ministry for a poor substitute and our failure to raise disciples in our local church. Part 1 identifies significant reasons why we are in a crisis; Part 2 lays a biblical foundation for rebuilding a biblical model of pastoral ministry; and Part 3 shows how this foundation can be built upon in the life of a local church.