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All of the evidence from the first few centuries of Christian writers either explicitly points to a threefold structure (one bishop, assisted by elders and deacons) in the early Church or is too vague to draw any reliable conclusions (usually because the author wasn’t directly writing about church governance). Sometimes, the evidence is murkier than we would like. But other times, we get a good look at a local church, and we invariably find that it’s governed by a single bishop, assisted by elde …