The conservative Anabaptist office of bishop

[Josh]

"He who desires the office of bishop desires a good thing."

Let's discuss the office of bishop, and particularly how CAs do it (which may or may not be the same thing as what the Bible teaches).

Ah. The missing piece of the puzzle. Out here in the West we have generally a strong culture of every congregation having their own resident bishop. Not so with Eastern. Now I understand why. If something is incentivized, you shouldn’t expect it not to increase. Seems in Eastern bishops collect congregations like they are collectibles.

Easterns (and Lancaster, or at least Lancaster did in 1950 rather consistently) have a "conference model" with 1 bishop over multiple churches - typically over a district. Eastern tends to operate as if Lancaster in 1950 was the kingdom of heaven, and tries to do things exactly like Lancaster did back then.

Lancaster until fairly recently had one bishop per district, but now has multiple bishops over some districts; for example, the NYC district has a proliferation of bishops, and Southeast Mennonite Conference has multiple bishops as well. (At this point, Lancaster can have significantly different governance from district to district.)

The Amish model has a bishop in each congregation who is effectively part of that congregation. Amish-Mennonites tend to follow this pattern, such as Beachys.

Holdemans dispensed with bishops some time ago. They simply stopped ordaining them, and then everyone had to wait until the last bishop finally died.

[Soloist]

Not having Bishops isn’t the right answer.

Having 1 bishop for several churches also doesn’t seem right.
I don’t object to them helping a new church, but local leadership should eventually take over.

[mike]

In our conference, which has about ten churches, there are a few bishops with multiple churches. When there's a church plant, it doesn't appear it gets its own bishop for a while. Our congregation went about 13 or 14 years without a resident bishop. He was from a 2-hour distance, and was over three churches for most/all of that time (his own, and another one 20 minutes away). A couple of years ago, we had a bishop ordination and got our own, but the original bishop is still our senior bishop for awhile, I forget how long.

[Josh]

Not having Bishops isn’t the right answer.

Having 1 bishop for several churches also doesn’t seem right.
I don’t object to them helping a new church, but local leadership should eventually take over.

In our case, we simply consider all ministers to hold the office of "bishop" as described in a King James Bible, or "elder" in one of those newer translations.

Of note is there is definitely no biblical office of "minister". "Priest" or "presbyter", perhaps, but "minister" is not something described as it does presbyter/elder, bishop, or deacon. And presbyter/elder and bishop seem to be nearly identical, at least in the few places the Bible refers to them.

Overall, a question is if the Bible teaches an episcopal, heirarchical church order, one consisting of the laity at the bottom, deacons above that, ministers/priests above them, and then bishops above them. (I noticed a "senior bishop" referred to above, so we could add a layer of "archbishop".) And then, why not go all the way to the top and have a supreme bishop all over all the other bishops, and call it a pope?

I don't see this hierarchical model endorsed in scripture at all, and interestingly, neither did the Dutch Anabaptists, at least at first, who had a flatter church model. For whatever reason, by the time Swiss Mennonites got to America, they pretty much had a full-blown episcopal model in force.

[mike]

Not having Bishops isn’t the right answer.

Having 1 bishop for several churches also doesn’t seem right.
I don’t object to them helping a new church, but local leadership should eventually take over.

In our case, we simply consider all ministers to hold the office of "bishop" as described in a King James Bible, or "elder" in one of those newer translations.

Of note is there is definitely no biblical office of "minister". "Priest" or "presbyter", perhaps, but "minister" is not something described as it does presbyter/elder, bishop, or deacon. And presbyter/elder and bishop seem to be nearly identical, at least in the few places the Bible refers to them.

Overall, a question is if the Bible teaches an episcopal, heirarchical church order, one consisting of the laity at the bottom, deacons above that, ministers/priests above them, and then bishops above them. (I noticed a "senior bishop" referred to above, so we could add a layer of "archbishop".) And then, why not go all the way to the top and have a supreme bishop all over all the other bishops, and call it a pope?

I don't see this hierarchical model endorsed in scripture at all, and interestingly, neither did the Dutch Anabaptists, at least at first, who had a flatter church model. For whatever reason, by the time Swiss Mennonites got to America, they pretty much had a full-blown episcopal model in force.

I don't see that model in scripture either. I think of the terms elder, overseer, pastor, and bishop as interchangeable. However, somebody does have to be in charge, and in churches where only the term elder is used, and there is more than one elder, there is inevitably a head elder or senior elder. The exact terms (minister, bishop, elder, or whatever) concern me far less than how it works out in practice. I have seen people reject the Mennonite hierarchical system in favor of an ostensibly more flat model with only elders and deacons, only for leaders to exhibit tendencies to rule like the honest-to-goodness pope himself. And I have seen bishops and ministers in the contemporary conservative Mennonite model function as good servant leaders. That said, hierarchical terms and structures do lend themselves to the lording of people over others.

[Josh]

We have had a flat ministry for a long time. There is typically a chairman with various duties like collecting the announcements, but it is a rotating position. If the ministers are deadlocked and can't come to agreement, eventually they get help from ministers from other congregations, and possibly the congregation itself.

All of the committee assignments are rotating. Nobody really ever is in "charge". There were times in the past when there were obvious, charismatic leaders who called the shots - those days are long over.

It is indeed possible to minister like Christ did, who did not lord it over anyone. I think an arrangement like this does place higher spiritual expectations on the laity and the leadership, but isn't that also a good thing?

[Biblical Anabaptist]

Not having Bishops isn’t the right answer.

Having 1 bishop for several churches also doesn’t seem right.
I don’t object to them helping a new church, but local leadership should eventually take over.

In our case, we simply consider all ministers to hold the office of "bishop" as described in a King James Bible, or "elder" in one of those newer translations.

Of note is there is definitely no biblical office of "minister". "Priest" or "presbyter", perhaps, but "minister" is not something described as it does presbyter/elder, bishop, or deacon. And presbyter/elder and bishop seem to be nearly identical, at least in the few places the Bible refers to them.

Overall, a question is if the Bible teaches an episcopal, heirarchical church order, one consisting of the laity at the bottom, deacons above that, ministers/priests above them, and then bishops above them. (I noticed a "senior bishop" referred to above, so we could add a layer of "archbishop".) And then, why not go all the way to the top and have a supreme bishop all over all the other bishops, and call it a pope?

I don't see this hierarchical model endorsed in scripture at all, and interestingly, neither did the Dutch Anabaptists, at least at first, who had a flatter church model. For whatever reason, by the time Swiss Mennonites got to America, they pretty much had a full-blown episcopal model in force.

In the conference settings with multiple bishops, I believe there is a chairman or moderator of the bishop board. I believe that office usually rotates on some basis.

[Soloist]

My take is that Bishop and Minister are effectively interchangeable.

[Josh]

My take is that Bishop and Minister are effectively interchangeable.

I would agree (in terms of scripture)... in actual practice in CA circles, they are completely different offices.

[mike]

My take is that Bishop and Minister are effectively interchangeable.

I would agree (in terms of scripture)... in actual practice in CA circles, they are completely different offices.

Yep. As we all know, bishops are the only ones authorized to baptize, marry, officiate communion, etc. It's "always" been that way.