Synod and Synodality: Understandings from Acts of the Apostles

Abstract

Abstract Across this paper, the endeavour has been to read the meaning of the Lukan author in his depiction of church life and governance. This depiction highlights behavioural governance more than structural governance. This may be expressed in the crucial perspective that suffuses the Lukan narrative – namely, in praxis terms that the apostolic ministry is not situated over, above, and apart from the church. Rather, apostolic mission and ministry is situated and contested within the ecclesial body where the whole church is proactively and collaboratively engaged in the apostolic inheritance of the ministry of those who follow Jesus the Christ in The Way, with the apostles as the centre of action that remains ecclesial and pneumatic action. Such leadership is personal, but not singular, is ecclesially inclusive, and ecclesially accountable.