Church Government

The Church which I am now attending (Living Water Reformed Church) is currently an independent church. However, we are having a vote on March 20th on whether to federate with the URC (United Reformed Church) or with the OPC (Orthodox Presbyterian Church). This reason for this vote is that the elders feel that it is not good to be independent and that therefore we should federate. This of course raises the question, why should a church federate? What (if anything) is wrong with being independent? What does the Bible have to say?

Well, First of all I think we need understand what the church is. The church is an assembly of believers. Its a gathering together of Christians to worship God. Go through the New Testament and every time you come across the word 'Church' replace it with 'Assembly of Christians' and you will invariably find that it fits in perfectly. It doesn't refer to a building or place but rather to the people of God. The church is more than that though; it is also a Kingdom, the kingdom of Christ. This of course means that it has to have some form of government and therefore that is has three things: 1) rulers 2) ruled 3) laws. (see Heb. 13:17) These three things would have applied in the time of the Apostles and writers of Scriptures as well as they do to us, which means that a determination of the Apostolic form of Church government should give us a good idea as to the principles that we can use in our church government.

So what are these principles? I would like to propose 6 principles (and I got these from and excellent little book called 'The Apostolic Church - Which is it?' by Thomas Witherow)
1)The office bearers are chosen by the people.
in Acts 6:3 the 12 apostles tell all the disciples '...Pick our from among you seven men of good repute.' These men were not appointed to their office by one man or a couple of men but by all the brothers i.e. popular election
2) The words Bishop and Elder refer to the same office
Titus 1:5-7 Paul speaks of and elder in one breath and in the next calls him a bishop
3) In each Church there is to be more than one elder
Acts 20:7, Phil 1:1
4) ordination is an act of a plurality of elders
1 Tim 4:14, Acts 6:6
5) There was the privilege of an appeal external to the local congregation
Read Act 15 (its kinda long but read it anyways :-))Note several important points: There was a dispute in Antioch which was apparently a pretty big one '...no small dissension and debate...' this dispute was not getting settled so they took it to the external ecclesiastical assembly in Jerusalem which publicly debated the issue and pronounced a decision on it. This decision was submitted to by the church at Antioch and presumably those of Syria and Cilicia as well.
6) Christ is the head of the church
Col 1:18

Several of these points don't apply to the independent situation so much as to prelacy (Roman Catholics, United Church, etc.) but they are still useful points to remember. The main one would be point 5 which seems to me to clearly say that it is not good or right for the local congregation to be the ultimate and final appeal on a subject. We should be part of a larger assembly of the gathering together of elders of the church of Christ. So I for one am glad our elders have decided to go ahead with federation and I hope and pray that our church will be stronger and better for it.