May 22  Congregationalism Not Enough!

As they went on their way through the cities, they delivered to them for observance the decisions which had been reached by the apostles and elders who were at Jerusalem. Acts 16:4, RSV.

The early Christian church discovered that some issues transcended the local congregation and thus needed a ruling from a larger coordinating body. In the council of Acts 15 the elders and apostles met the decide in part how to bring the Jewish and Gentile congregations into a working relationship. The assembly made decisions for the body of congregations.

The early Adventists also found that they could not handle all issues at the level of the local congregation. If the first half of the 1850s saw the Sabbatarians establishing structures and offices in the local congregations, the second half focused on what it meant for congregations to be "united together."

At least four issues would force leaders such as James White to look at church organization more globally. The first had to do with the legal ownership of property-especially the publishing house and church buildings. The last thing he wanted was the responsibility of owning the printing house porperty in his own name.

A second issue driving his thinking was the problem of paying preachers. That was an especially difficult situation since Sabbatarian preachers in those days did not serve specific local congregations but traveled from church to church somewhat like itinerant evangelists. The support of preachers was complicated by the fact that Adventists had no tithing procedure or any other way of collecting money to pay them.

A third issue driving White to a broader form of church organization involved the assignment of preachers. In 1859 James wrote that whereas such communities as Battle Creek often had several preachers on hand, others remained "destitute, not having heard a discorese for three months." Whether anybody liked it or not, by 1859 James White was acting the pat of superintendent in the assignment and paying of preachers, but without any official structure to undergird his efforts. Such a system left him open to criticism regarding mismanagement and misappropriation of funds.

A fourth problem concerned the transfer of membership between congregaions, especially when a person had been disfellowshipped by one congreagation and desired fellowship in another.

THe churches needed system and order if they were to move forward unitedly. They still exist in a less than perfect world with less-than-perfect people.