Leadership in the first and early second century church consisted simply of elders or presbyters and deacons. Originally the designations of elder, bishop, overseer, and presbyter were used interchangeably. This was gradually displaced in the second century by a threefold masculine leadership of bishops (the Latin biscopus translation of the Greek NT episcopos), presbyters and deacons. By 200 AD the unchallenged leader in the church was the autonomous local bishop.
The Gnostics within the church sought to bolster their beliefs by claiming a succession of teachers back to the apostles. Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Hegesippus responded by drawing up succession lists of bishops going back to the apostles who taught, “what the law and the prophets and the Lord preached.” Eventually, there would be an accepted practice of one bishop per city making the bishops of major cities, particularly Rome and Constantinople, very powerful. While it may have been benign at the time this unbiblical practice was inadvertently providing fertile ground for an eventual papal form of church government.
Finally, it should be mentioned that for the first few centuries great emphasis was placed on the moral integrity and holiness of a leader regardless of his title.
