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.]