Query on Church Constitution

Query.
     Is it indispensably necessary, in the constitution of a Baptist Church of Christ, to have two or more ordained ministers present to form a presbytery, in order to make such a constitution legal or Scriptural?

     We find no law in our code touching the forms necessary to constitute a church; nor do we find in the New Testament any example or intimation that a presbytery of ordained ministers ever acted in constituting a church. Christ says the most about it, and it is but little: "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there will I be in the midst of them." When a company of baptized disciples, if only two or three, associate themselves as a church, covenanting with each other to be governed by the authority of Christ as indicated in the New Testament, they are, to all intents and purposes, a gospel church under the constitution. A foreign missionary and his wife would thus constitute the essentials of a church; but, as we always should send forth by twos, two missionaries and their wives could constitute themselves into a church without a presbytery. But as churches now are associated, it is a matter of proper caution, and [prevents confusion? - JCS] for a presbytery to be called to see that the organization, at the very outstart, is sound and orderly. An ounce of preventative is worth a pound of cure.

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[From J. R. Graves, editor, The Baptist, 1877, page 661. Document from Jim Settlemoir. — Jim Duvall]

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