Congregational polity

A congregation under Christ

Churches with congregational polity hold that Christ alone is head of the church (Colossians 1:18) and that he has entrusted the church to the believers gathered in each place. Jesus described the last step with a brother who sins and will not turn back:

If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, regard him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.

Matthew 18:17

The final word, they note, is given not to one officer but to the church. In Jerusalem the apostles told the believers to "select from among you seven men", and the proposal "pleased the whole group", who chose them (Acts 6:3-5); the men sent to Antioch were chosen by "the apostles and elders, with the whole church" (Acts 15:22). Paul told the Corinthians to deal with a sinning member "When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus" (1 Corinthians 5:4), and later spoke of the punishment "imposed on him by the majority" (2 Corinthians 2:6). In these texts they see a whole congregation answerable to Christ. The teaching that all believers are priests before God, the priesthood of all believers, undergirds the conviction.

How the church came to practise it

Congregational polity took clear shape in England in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries among Separatists and Independents (Congregationalists), who held, against the episcopal and presbyterian orders of a national church, that each congregation should govern itself under Christ. Some of them crossed to New England and founded Congregational churches, and the Baptist churches that arose in the same years followed the same polity. The Second London Confession (1677, adopted 1689) confesses that those whom Christ calls are to gather in particular churches, and that to each church so gathered he has given all the power needed to carry on its worship and discipline Second London Confession, ch. 26.

Such churches do not live in isolation. Baptist churches form associations and conventions to work together in mission and training, but they understand these as voluntary partnerships, not as higher courts that govern the local church.

Where the traditions differ

Congregational churches take several shapes. In many a single pastor serves with deacons and the congregation decides the weightiest matters; in others a group of elders leads, while the congregation decides on receiving members, church discipline and the choice of officers.

Churches with episcopal polity, such as the Orthodox, Catholic and Anglican, hold that bishops in succession from the apostles guard the church's unity and continuity. Reformed and Presbyterian churches are governed by elders together and set presbyteries and assemblies above the local church, so that churches decide matters jointly, as when "the apostles and elders met to look into this matter" in Jerusalem (Acts 15:6). Congregationalists answer that "the whole church" took part in that decision too (Acts 15:22), and that each local church is directly answerable to Christ.

For all their differences, all three polities agree that Christ is the head of the church, and that its leaders must not be "lording it over those entrusted to you" but examples to the flock (1 Peter 5:3). The forms of church government are compared in the lesson What the church is; presbyterian government is taught in Presbyterian church government.