Send us a textIn this episode, we continue to discuss the structure or pattern of the church. We noted in the last episode that Paul had told Timothy to hold fast the pattern of sound words. We noted that part of that pattern was to appoint elders in each local church and we also noted that there was always a minimum of two elders appointed. There are specific qualifications that a man must meet in order to be an elder in the church. We discuss those. We then look at what the elders were responsible for doing. Paul had given them a warning in Acts chapter 20 that we talked about. We also noted that members of the congregation are told to be subject to the guidance of their elders for they would give an account to the Lord of their work. The next group of men who serve the local church are referred to as deacons. We look at the first mention of these men in Acts chapter six. As Paul did with selecting elders, he also provided the qualifications that a man had to meet in order to serve as a deacon in a local church.  We look at those qualifications and note again that there were always at least two deacons in each local congregation. So up to this point, we have seen that the structure or pattern of the local church consists of Christ as Head, elders as spiritual leaders, and deacons as servants. Of course, we do have evangelists who preach and teach the word, but they don't have any other special role in the leadership or work of the church. The remainder of the local church is made up of disciples or saints. We look at a number of passages that refer to them. We close this episode out by noting the simplicity of the structure or pattern of the local church of Christ compared to that of man-made denominations. We will have more to say about this in the next episode. Take about 30-minutes to listen in on our discussion. Have your Bible handy so you can verify what we are saying. There is a transcript of this Buzzsprout episode provided for your convenience.

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