Author : Keith Sharp
Central to the nondenominational nature of the church of Christ is the principle of local control. What does this mean?
It certainly does not apply to legislative (i.e., law making) power. Christ is the only Head of the church (Ephesians 1:22-23) and its only Law Giver (James 4:12). No man or group of men may make laws and bind them on Christians as a test of fellowship, whether they act within or without the confines of the local church. Christians must neither draw up nor recognize human creeds or uninspired statements of faith as binding. To do so is to usurp the authority of Christ.
Rather, by “local control” I mean that decisions about the execution of the will of Christ must be made completely within the local church and must not be surrendered, partially or completely, to any outside control. Elders are to be appointed within each local church (Acts 14:23; Philippians 1:1; Titus 1:5). These elders (also called bishops, i.e., overseers, or pastors, i.e., shepherds – Acts 20:17,28; Titus 1:5-9; 1 Peter 5:1-2) have the oversight of the congregation of which they are members (1 Peter 5:1-2). There they rule under the authority of Christ, the Chief Shepherd (1 Timothy 5:17; 1 Peter 5:1-4). No passage of Scripture broadens their authority. The elders of the local church have no right to oversee anything other than the work of the local church where they are members. There is no authority for a congregation to allow any man, group of men, or organization outside the local church to oversee all or any part of its function.
This principle applies to every facet of the work of the congregation. Each local church selects its own leaders (Acts 6:1-6), governs itself within the limits of those things Christ has authorized (1 Peter 5:1-4; Colossians 3:17), determines its own program of work and selects the arrangements to carry it out (cf. Acts 11:22; Romans 16:1; 1 Corinthians 16:3; 2 Corinthians 8:23; Philippians 2:25), controls the use of its own resources (Philippians 4:15-16; 2 Corinthians 11:8), and disciplines its own sinful members (1 Corinthians chapter 5).
This does not mean congregations cannot cooperate with each other. The church in Jerusalem sent Barnabas to the young church in Antioch to encourage them (Acts 11:22-23; cf. 13:1-3; 14:21-23, 26-28; 15:22-31,40; 18:22; Colossians 4:16). A local church may send scriptural teaching to any person or group of people anywhere (1 Thessalonians 1:8). When a local church sends a teaching paper to other churches, or when a congregation pays the way of an evangelist to preach a gospel meeting for a small congregation or to preach overseas, this is scriptural congregational cooperation.
A congregation may act alone in supporting a preacher in another place (Philippians 1:3-5; 2:25,30; 4:14-18). Or, several churches may independently and directly support a preacher working in another place (2 Corinthians 11:8-9). Thus, when several churches send directly to a preacher to work with a small church or to send that preacher to another nation, they are scripturally cooperating in evangelism.
The Lord authorizes many churches to send to one for benevolent needs within the receiving church (Galatians 2:10; Romans 15:25-28; 1 Corinthians 16:1-4; 2 Corinthians chapters 8-9; Acts 24:17) and for one church to send funds to several for benevolence inside the receiving congregations (Acts 11:27-30). But there is no authority for a church or churches to send to another church or other churches to do the work of evangelism.
This also involves the principle of local control. Each congregation has the responsibility to assist its own needy members (Acts 2:44-45; 4:32-35; 6:1-3). Local churches may assist a church unable to relieve its own needy members until the congregation is able to do so (2 Corinthians 8:13-15). The work of the sending church is to help the needy church, and the work of the receiving church is to assist its own indigent members. Thus, equality of congregations relative to oversight and local control within each local church are maintained, in that oversight of the work of each congregation is completely within that local church, and each local church is able to do its own work.
But each congregation has equal responsibility in the work of evangelism in keeping with its own ability (Matthew 28:19-20). Thus, when churches send funds to another church to do the work of evangelism, the oversight of the work of all the churches involved is within the receiving church. Sending churches sacrifice oversight of part of their work and give up local control.
The sponsoring church system, the “overseeing eldership” plan, and church supported human organizations corrupt the organization of the church, alter the divine pattern for congregational cooperation, destroy local control, and lay the groundwork for denominationalism. Furthermore, these human schemes just don’t work. By sacrificing local control the Christian Church went from being several times larger than the church of Christ to half the size of the church of Christ in 150 years (Handbook of Denominations in the United States. 107,111). The last generation has seen a dramatic increase of sponsoring churches, overseeing elderships, and church supported human organizations for evangelism among churches of Christ, just as the Christian Church has practiced for over 150 years. As the result of following a similar path of centralization of rule, growth of churches of Christ virtually ceased in the last generation.
This dramatically demonstrates the superiority of divine wisdom to human (Isaiah 55:8-9; Romans 11:33-36; Ephesians 3:8-11). By the amazingly simple plan revealed in the New Testament, in stark contrast to the elaborate organizational schemes of men, the first century church took the gospel to the whole world in one generation (Mark 16:15; Colossians 1:5-6,23). How could mere men possibly improve on this divine plan? God’s way is both right and best.
