Genesis 2:19

In applying scriptural principles to build the visible church, we believe we must obey God’s Word, but where the Bible does not prohibit a practice or name, we are free to use our God-given creativity.

1 Corinthians 10:23

We are free to practice or name something as long as it does not contradict the Scriptures.

Numbers 27:12-23, Exodus 18:12-26, Judges 21:25, 1 Corinthians 4:15-17, Titus 1:5

Throughout God’s Word, when His people were unified, there was a strong central leadership and a godly central leader. (Examples: Moses, Joshua, David and of course Jesus and the Apostles.) Local congregations had an overseeing evangelist who unified the disciples “everywhere in every church.” In the first century, congregations were a collective movement — not autonomous, not self-governing. Acts 15:19-24, Acts 21:24

In the New Testament, Jesus is the leader of “the Movement!” Uniquely, when He ascends to Heaven, Peter takes on this responsibility as “the apostle to the Jews,” since for the first seven years of Christianity only Jews became Christians. Interestingly, after Paul became “the apostle to the Gentiles,” the leadership of the movement by Acts 15 had passed to Jesus’ oldest half-brother James. At the Jerusalem Council, James, after listening to both sides of the circumcision issue, gives his singular authoritative “judgment,” which is then bound on all the churches.