Titus 1:5 Meaning I Left You in Crete for This

A congregation can hold the message about Christ, that he died and rose for sinners, and still be half built. The term behind setting things in order was a doctor's word for straightening a limb that healed crooked, so the work corrects something already alive.

What these congregations lacked was people: elders, in the plural, in every town, trusted to teach and watch over a church. The appointing follows directions already given, so leadership does not bend to one person's preference. Christ cares for his churches through those set over them to teach.

Authority in the Church arrives from outside a community rather than rising up out of it. Men were appointed town by town by someone who had himself been sent, and that handing of responsibility from person to person is what apostolic succession means.

So a parish is not a club that elects its own head, and the priest at the altar is not there because he volunteered. A faith that could have stayed a loose movement of friends was given a visible order early, and it has kept it ever since.