Questions and Concepts of Administration in the first Christian Communities

Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject Theology - Biblical Theology, grade: 63 of 75, Hekima College Jesuit School of Theology Nairobi, course: Course on "e;The Pauline Writings"e;, language: English, abstract: Administration and Leadership of Christian Communities were big challenges for the first Christian Communities. Throughout the years the questions of headship developed and led to the hierarchical structure of the Roman Catholic Church nowadays. This paper will look on the roots of organizing "e;parish"e;-life as it is mentioned in the Pauline Writings. It will show, that the Pauline communities offer a lot of different kinds of ministry to imitate even today. In a first step a brief overview on Paul s self-understanding as an apostle and his ideas about the church will be presented. The first main part will examine, starting from the present hierarchy of ministries, the different gifts and models of administration shown in the Pauline Letters. A second main focus will be on the status of women which is found in direct and indirect ways in Paul s Letters. The conclusion will critically evaluate the results of the research. The basic elements for this research are the seven undisputed letters of Paul. These are the so called Proto-Pauline Writings (1 Thess, 1+2 Cor, Gal, Rom, Phil und Phlm). After the death of Paul arose several so called Deutero-Pauline Writings (Col, Eph, 2 Thess, Past [1.2 Tim, Tit]). The limitation to the undisputed letters in this research excludes other important Writings of the New Testament. But referring to the framework of the course and facing the wealth of the documents giving information about administration in the early church, it can be justified to examine only the letters which are undisputed written by Paul. Just in cases where an important deviation or contradiction to other writings of the New Testament occurs, the appropriate text will be mentioned. The research uses at any time the Greek original text to do justice to the wealth of meanings of important passages.