You’re thinking of governance, not a state. States are entities have a monopoly on the initiation of violent force. They may or may not attempt to or even claim to maintain governance as part of their existence; their main concern is power over human beings.

Punishments in the early church didn’t include violent force, their laws were complied with voluntarily, and their positions of authority were also achieved without coercion. All of this is the opposite of what anarchists mean when we talk about states.

Most anarchists (the ones I know, anyway) believe deeply in the importance of governance, and equally deeply that it can be achieved without initiating force or threatening to.