Jesus, The Church, and The Coming Kingdom

[EDITORS’S NOTE: THIS IS PART TWO OF A THREE PART ARTICLE.  PART ONE OF THIS ARTICLE CAN BE FOUND HERE.] The Apostle and The Five-Fold Ministry 

             The question that becomes obvious, then, is if apostles are spiritual fathers to churches even though churches have pastors, elders, and teachers, how do apostles and elders (pastors) interact?  How do apostles relate to the other five fold ministries (prophets, evangelists, and teachers)?  An important step in answering that question is to see the purpose of these five different ministries listed in Ephesians 4:11. When we see their purposes in the heart of God we can see how they interact together throughout the New Testament.  

            Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, lays out a number of incredible truths about the Church and how it is supposed to function in the spiritual and natural realms.  Chapters 1-3 are all about the Church being dead in sin but made alive in God through Christ.  Paul sums up the first part of Ephesians in Ephesians 3:14-19 describing a church that is built up in her inner man to such a degree that she becomes the habitation for the fullness of God’s presence.  Then he moves in chapters 4 through 6, describing how the church should respond to this amazing privilege and awesome responsibility.  In the midst of this profound teaching Paul mentions that when Christ ascended to Heaven He gave gifts to the universal church. These gifts were part of God’s master plan to build His church into a full habitation for His glory, but they weren’t just ministry positions—they were people.   God had so fully moved through these people in one particular area that they went from just being Christians that showed one gift or another, like in 1 Corinthians 12 or Romans 12, to becoming people that God gave to His church as a specially prepared present.           

            Ephesians 4:11 tells us these specially prepared people come with five different ministry functions (apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, or teacher) but they have one purpose: to equip believers for service so that the body could be built up.  What does the body full built up look like?  Paul gives us the answer in 4:13: (1) A unity within the church, (2) a knowledge of God that leads to maturity, and (3) an apprehension by the body of the fullness of God’s presence.  By including five different types of people in the list of gifts, Paul is saying that one man with one particular gifting cannot bring the church to the full expression of maturity in Christ.  Evangelists are great at getting people saved but sometimes very lousy at getting those newly saved people growing.  Pastors care for people well but they often lack the ability to declare the word of the Lord like prophets and they cannot win the lost like evangelists. This is why the Lord calls all of these ministries to work as a team—so that the body of Christ as a whole can receive from each gifting the different elements required to reach maturity. 

            The book of Acts and the epistles of Peter and Paul are probably some of the only places in the history of the church where we see these principles working.  Because we are looking primarily at the role of apostles and elders (this is what pastors were called in the book of Acts and many places in the New Testament), I’ll limit my discussion to those two ministries.  Obviously the apostles took a primary position in the book of Acts because its full title is “The Acts of the Apostles.”  These were the men Jesus had entrusted with the expansion of the kingdom.  In the book of Acts, the apostles would frequently lead in the expansion of the kingdom through preaching and the demonstration the Spirit’s power.  And whenever the Kingdom of God took root in a city, the apostles very carefully created Kingdom Communities where the new citizens of God’s kingship can live and function together.  Today we call them churches.  Wherever these kingdom communities were established the apostles were careful to, after a period of time, appoint elders for each congregation (Acts 14:23, Acts 20:17).  Apostles were often, but not always, part of trans-local (or traveling) ministry teams.  They continued to move and extend the kingdom by preaching and conversion or by bringing God’s reign in a new dimension to already existing churches. 

            Elders, by way of contrast, were local teams that cared for the churches established by these apostles. These elders were men of character who would serve as spiritual parents for the church in the absence of the apostles.  There are several requirements that Paul gives to Timothy and Titus in their assignment to appoint elders in their respective cities.  They can be found in 1 Timothy 3:1-7 and Titus 1:6-11.  Make no mistake however, these men were vested with the charge of leading the church in their city.  They did not answer to Paul or Timothy or Titus, but they were in a relationship with them which contained accountability and respect so that at any given point Paul, Timothy, or Titus could come and bring correction or instructions for advance as needed.  The elders were held accountable by God for the health and well being of the churches, as well as for discerning who was and was not a true apostle (Hebrews 13:17, Revelation 2:2). 

            We see very little interaction between apostles and elders in the New Testament, but in those places where it does happen, we gain insight into their relationships.  Acts 15 describes a controversy that arose in the early church over the issue of circumcision.  Because the argument originated with Paul and Barnabas, the brothers of the church in Antioch sent Paul and Barnabas to Jerusalem to discuss the matter with “the apostles and elders,” (15:2, 4, 22).  Though we don’t have any recorded speech by an elder at the church in Jerusalem, it seems apparent that the apostles wanted to move forward with the approval of the elders of Jerusalem.  The apostles were concerned with the impact such a decision would have on the theology of the church and the expansion of the churches. The elders had to have a sound understanding of the issue in order to tend to the day to day issues that resulted from such a decision.  Unity was required to be assured the decision was from the Lord. 

            By creating a distinction between apostles and elders, we dare not try to say that there is no room for overlap.  The apostle John wrote the books of 1^st through 3^rd John.  Several times throughout those books John refers to himself simply as “the elder,” (cf. 2 John 1:1, 3 John 1:1).  Peter referred to himself as a fellow-elder to the elders he wrote to in 1 Peter 5:1.  An apostle often times would fulfill the role of an elder to the broader church and even as an elder to a specific assembly.  A great example in our current landscape is Jack Hayford, more commonly known as “Pastor Jack.”  Jack has gained international recognition for his ministry and operates in an apostolic role, but has remained faithful to fathering one congregation of people most of his life. 

            The danger here, however, is to believe that every pastor is an apostle.  Some are even as foolish to teach that any pastor with a church of X amount of people is automatically an apostle.  That is not the case.  Likewise, not every pastor sent by God to pastor is an apostle just because he is “sent.”  The danger lies in confusing the gifts God sends us.  Jesus taught us to receive a prophet in the name of a prophet so that we might receive “a prophet’s reward” (Matthew 10:41).  The same could be said of apostles, evangelists, or any other gift.  Should we not receive God’s specially sent agents in the capacity God sends them, we miss the impact of what God sent them to accomplish.  If I treat a pastor as if he is an apostle, not only will I expect him to do an apostle’s job (something he was never meant to do) but I will also miss the benefit of his pastoral gift in my life.  The result will lead us to be frustrated, discontented, and spiritually malnourished.

            This brings us to the current situation the church finds herself in.  One reason, but certainly not the only one, that the church in America is ineffective is because we’ve developed a system that is largely inconsistent with what the New Testament describes as church government.  The New Testament mentions the term “pastor” once, in Ephesians 4:11.  But we’ve taken this one mention in the New Testament and exaggerated its importance so much that we have a system that has only pastors, almost entirely excluding every other ministry gift God gave us.  Pastors are not bad, but the body of Christ will never mature if it only receive from pastors to the exclusion of apostles, prophets, evangelists, and teachers.  Only a model that emphasizes all of the gifts of Ephesians 4, with the apostles operating as the connecting point of those different ministries, will be able to lead us into the fullness of Christ. 

[NEXT WEEK- WE'LL FINISH THE ARTICLE WITH A LOOK AT THE PURPOSE OF APOSTOLIC TRIBES AND HOW THEY FUNCTION.]

[EDITOR'S NOTE-THIS ARTICLE IS PART ONE OF A THREE PART SERIES. ]

Earlier I posted my notes on a teaching by Tim Johns called “Apostolic Strategies for Regional Revival.”  In my zeal to post new content to the blog and my myopia that causes me to think everyone is exactly like me, I posted material that some people wouldn’t understand because they haven’t traveled in the same circles I have.  This became clear when a friend of my sister-in-law read the article and then wrote me with a ton of really good questions.  I’m going to paste some of the e-mail here, because I think the answers to these questions will provide a useful foundation for more of what will appear here and around the Earth.

“I have some questions about the ‘Apostolic Strategies for Regional Revival’ workshop notes that you posted on your website. What makes a person an apostle?  Can pastors also be apostles, because they were sent by God to fulfill the role that they are in?  Later in the notes it says that you need to insist on government, so why is a pastor based system wrong for government.  I guess I don’t really understand what a “pastor based system” is in the way it is being refered to here. And what is an apostolic tribe, and why is it so important?” 

I want to be clear about a couple of things.  First, what typically happens whenever these issues are discussed is that we tend to find ourselves discussing forms of government, roles of men, and strategies for growth.  And while these things are important they tend to distract us a little bit from the true thrust of the apostolic—an unyielding fascination with Christ that provokes the body not only to grow in numbers but to “grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ.” Second, even though I’ve studied this topic thoroughly and spent time with many who thought they were apostles, most of my experience with men who truly are apostles has been from a distance.  In some ways I think that qualifies me to say something, since most people have hardly met anyone they would consider a true apostle.  Having said all that, let’s look at who an apostle is, how he functions with the rest of the body, and how the body draws from the apostolic gift to become an apostolic people. 

The Apostle 

            Defining the word “apostle” has become difficult in our day and age because we have nothing in the modern world called “apostle.”  When Jesus extended His miracle-working ministry to others, he gathered twelve of his closest disciples and called them “apostles,” (Matthew 10:1-2, cf. Mark 3:14-15).  Jesus, however, didn’t make up the word.  He borrowed from contemporary Roman culture a word that was used to described warships that were dispatched with a specific mission to accomplish.  It was also used to describe a designated representative of a king who was sent out to expand the territory of that king’s rule.  So just by looking at the term, it becomes obvious that a true apostle is sent by God to expand the Kingdom (Kingship) of God in the earth.  This plays out in a number of ways, but it is the most basic description of an apostle.

The best place to get a definition of any gift that God gives the body is in the Godhead.  Every gift and office in scripture has its origin in the counsels of God.  Hebrews 3:1 tells us that Jesus was the very first apostle.  He, more than any other man, was sent from the Father to extend the Kingship of God.  He was empowered by God to work signs and wonders and take back humanity for His Father.  He also fathered a generation of young men and raised them up to be apostles and prophets who would build His Church.  These realities were repeated in the lives of every man in the Bible whom we typically think of as an apostle.

The Bible gives us some definite ways to determine whether an individual is an apostle or not.  Jesus, speaking to the church in Ephesus, commends the saints because they “put to the test those who call[ed] themselves apostles,” (Revelation 2:2).  This should alert us to two things: 1) There are people who claim to be apostles and are not, and 2) There is a set of genuine qualifications that are necessary to be an apostle.  These biblical qualifications are not only applicable to the first century church, but to our own day and time as well. 

            By looking at the life and teaching of the early church some obvious signs become clear.  First, apostles are people who are witnesses of the Resurrection of Christ or have seen the risen Christ (cf. Acts 1:21-22, 1 Corinthians 15:3-8).  In the future I hope to detail this reality more clearly, but apostles must be uniquely equipped testify to the reality that Jesus Christ is alive.  Secondly, apostles are known for extraordinary demonstrations of power in their ministry (cf. 2 Corinthians 12:12, Matthew 10:8).  Finally, in the same way evangelists are known for their ability to convert any one who doesn’t know Jesus, apostles have a unique ability to spiritually father believers.  The Corinthian church that Paul planted had many elders (pastors and teachers), but Paul was uniquely the spiritual father of the church in
Corinth (1 Corinthians 4:15).  

[EDITOR'S NOTE- LOOK FOR PART TWO NEXT WEEK- APOSTLES AND THE FIVE-FOLD MINISTRY]