Template:Bishop
Bishops and Overseers
The word overseer is translated from the same word we see as bishop[2] in the New Testament.
These terms "bishop" are used regularly in today's modern Church but what did they mean at the time to the first century Christians?
Does the modern church do what the first-century church did?
Do Modern Christians depend on the Church for its Daily ministration like the first-century Church?
Are modern bishops fulfilling the same purpose as the original bishops or overseers of the early Church?
The Church is defined as one form of government. For any government to function, there must be participation by the people in the supply and demand of services within and to participants of society.
The titular leaders of a free government cannot be given power to exercise authority over how much or when the people entrust their ministers with their freewill offering. Christ commanded that His appointed ministers not “exercise authority”. When people lose their daily right to choose, they are made subjects of those who have a right to choose for them.
What is given to a minister or bishop of the Church is given freely and completely, like a burnt offering or bread cast upon the water, but the free will choice to give must remain with the people. The choice and manner of service provided by that gift must remain entirely with the minister, who is a servant of God.
In essence, this form of sacred purpose trust, with the minister as the steward (a kind of trustee), is at the foundation of His Church and the Daily ministration of Pure Religion.
It has been customary that another group oversees the ministers in a network of service. Of course, in truth, the actual overseer of the Church is the Holy Spirit or what is sometimes called the Comforter.[3]
The Apostles met the requirements laid down by Christ. They were prepared to represent the Holy Spirit, and when they had received the power to do so from that Spirit, they were able to go out and preach the Kingdom as the physical representatives of that Comforter. They exercised no authority by their own hand over the people but relied entirely upon the power of that Holy Spirit.
The definition of overseership today might be called "the office or status of an overseer." Since a deacon was a minister to groups of Tens in a network of Christians a Bishop was a minister of ten ministers. He might be called an Archdeacon or Archbishop, not because he ruled over the minister but over the responsibility of an office of service "pre-eminently a priest with pastoral gifts and spiritual maturity, able to relate to, encourage and support both clergy and laity in the archdeaconry in their fulfillment of the church's mission".
Preaching the gospel of the kingdom does not isolate congregations under an exclusive pastoral leader or divide the "body of Christ" by denominations but is desiring to connect all families in a network of charity and love.
- ↑ Matthew 13:47 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind:
- ↑ 1985 ~ἐπίσκοπος~ episkopos \@ep-is’-kop-os\@ from 1909 and 4649 (in the sense of 1983); n m AV-bishop 6, overseer 1; 7
- 1) an overseer
- 1a) a man charged with the duty of seeing that things to be done by others are done rightly, any curator, guardian or superintendent
- 1b) the superintendent, elder, pastor, or overseer of a Christian church; the NT uses the term bishop, overseers, 1985 pastors, 4166 elders, and presbyters 4245 interchangeably { Acts 20:17,28; Ephesian 4:11; Titus 1:5,7; 1 Peter 5:1-4 etc.}
- 1) an overseer
- ↑ Parakletos translated comforter 4, advocate 1. 1) summoned, called to one’s side, esp. called to one’s aid. 1a) one who pleads another’s cause before a judge, a pleader, counsel for defense, legal assistant, an advocate.