As Aristotle said, after all, human beings are social animals.
Followers of Jesus are no exception. In fact, they necessarily live out their beliefs in community. By definition, being a follower of Jesus is an activity done partly with others.
A spiritual life includes both solitude and camaraderie. One meditates alone. Prayer and study can be done alone or in groups. Fellowship, confession, and corporate worship are always done with others.
When working together, groups choose patterns by which they will organize themselves. Over various times and places, we see a broad spectrum of organizational styles: authoritarian, democratic, flexible, rigid, codified, spontaneous, bureaucratic, chaotic.
Naturally, the question will arise: which is the “right” way to structure a community of Jesus followers?
Although there is an urge to believe that God prescribes some organizational pattern, scholar Hermann Sasse notes that Jesus followers have an “understanding of the divine Word, of the distinction between Law and Gospel, that it finds no laws in the New Testament about” how a community should structure itself.
The followers of Jesus should consider questions of “polity as adiaphora, as ritus aut ceremonias ab hominibus institutas” (“rites or ceremonies instituted by” human beings). Jesus followers “may and must claim freedom, since” Jesus “is not the legislator for a human” spiritual “society, and the Gospel contains no law defining a correct” spiritual “polity.”
The work of Jesus followers requires that they organize themselves: to feed the hungry, care for the poor, educate children, make peace.
There is no doubt that they must organize; the question of how they will organize remains open.
God gives great freedom in this matter. He calls His people to deeds of mercy: Jesus followers give aid to everyone and anyone, and pointedly to those who believe quite differently. God requires Jesus followers to tend to the physical needs of the Hindus, the Buddhists, the atheists, and others.
The followers of Jesus are free to consider whichever organizational pattern they find most effective to carry out this work. God does not write bylaws or define who may be on a board of directors.
The spiritual mandate is quite clear: it is the distinctive mark of Jesus followers that they render aid to all types of people. But there is no mandate concerning governance models, as Hermann Sasse notes. The impact of the “basic theological principle of strict separation of Law and Gospel becomes clear when one observes how” Jesus “has given His” followers “no law” concerning governance.
Sasse goes on to say that “every form of” organizational “government is feasible which leaves room for a proper administration of the means of grace, which imposes no restrictions upon their administration.” As long as the work of Jesus is being done, many structures are possible and permissible.
This great freedom has been in place for 2,000 years. The earliest examples of the Jesus movement manifest this liberty: “It is worth noting how modern historical research into the beginnings of” the Jesus movement “has confirmed the profound exegetical insight,” which is “that the New Testament knows of no specific polity of the” Jesus followers “and therefore could not give canonical sanction to any such polity.” The history of the Jesus movement shows that in “polity the origins do not indicate singleness, but rather a manifold variety of form.”
This requires a humility on the part of those who advocate for one governance model or another. We may not present any such pattern as the only permissible one or as the one required by God.
Serious study of the text reveals an absence of specific direction for organization, despite occasional concrete examples of such. “No one who considers the statements of the Bible will in these days be so bold as to claim to have discovered in the New Testament a complete system of” organization for Jesus followers. “There existed in the” earliest phases of the Jesus movement “of the New Testament a number of possibilities as to the manner of organizing the spiritual ministry.”
If rendering service to others is the distinctive mark of Jesus followers, then the clear proclamation of the Good News about Jesus and the administration of sacraments are the distinctive marks of a community of Jesus followers.
A follower of Jesus helps others, and helps them with no regard to their spiritual beliefs. A community of Jesus followers declares His freely-given love, directed toward all human beings; this community administers the unearned unmerited forgiveness to people.
In sum, there are things which a community must do and must be in order truly to be a community of Jesus followers; but none of those requirements are organizational or constitutional in nature. This is God’s gift of free to His followers.
(The quotations from Hermann Sasse are taken from a three-volume edition of his letters, published by Concordia Publishing House, 2013/2014)
