We have some very strangely shaped drying racks in our basement. Maybe some of you have the same kinds of things. We have one that has a seat and pedals. There’s another one that has some kind of a sliding platform and handles. Another has a long pole with weights at each end. Another one is so strange I can’t even begin to describe it.
Of course we didn’t buy them as
drying racks. We bought them at garage sales for a few bucks each so we (so I)
could exercise and get fit. That usually lasted about 3 weeks at the most. Then
they were each added to the exercise equipment graveyard in our basement and
ended up as strange shaped drying racks. I don’t know how many households these
things went through before they ended up in our house, but at least the people
we bought them from were smart enough to sell them in a garage sale. I, on the
other hand, don’t want to get rid of them because one day, when I have time, I
might get in some exercise. (Although research shows that 92% of people who own exercise equipment and 80% of people with health club memberships don’t
actually exercise.)
For most people having a healthy body doesn’t just happen. You have to eat right, you have to get exercise, you have to get out in the fresh air and generally keep active. Or you can join a gym and work out on all those body building machines.
This morning’s message is about body
building, or more accurately, about building the body. Verses 11 and 12 of
Ephesians 4 say that “It was [Christ] who
gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some
to be pastors and teachers,” and that these leadership
gifts are given “to prepare God’s
people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up…”
Now, before we go any
further, let’s clear up a couple of misunderstandings. The first is that it is
all of God’s people that are involved in ministry, not just a few professionals
called pastors. The second is that there are four leadership gifts here, not
one, so we don’t have to try and squeeze everything into the role of “pastor.”
Ministry is more diverse than that.
It’s really important
that we keep in mind that apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastor-teachers
are not professional religious workers who do the work of Christian ministry. They
are much more like personal trainers who work to build up the Body of Christ,
that’s you, so you can do Christian ministry.
Or, to change the
picture a little, they are like coaches for a sports team. Sometimes coaches
are people who have had a career in some sport and, in their later years, they
turn to coaching to help others play well. But other coaches have never really
excelled at their sport, but they do know how to draw the best out of
other athletes and help them perform to their best ability.
In the same way, the
function of Christian leadership is not to do the work of the ministry. It’s to
“prepare God’s people for works of service,
(works of ministry) so that the body of Christ may be built up…” I can’t emphasize too strongly that it is all
of God’s people who are called to works of service (or Christian ministry –
it’s the same word) and that some of God’s people have a particular role in
equipping the rest to do that, in “prepar[ing] God’s
people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up…”)
Once we have that
clear we can go on to look at these gifts themselves. At the end of the passage
we looked at last week, in 1 Cor 12, there is a list of gifts. And God has placed in the church first apostles, second
prophets, third teachers, then miracles, gifts of healing, helps, gifts of
leadership, different kinds of tongues. (1 Cor 12:28)
The first three items on that list are actually
people (apostles, prophets, teachers) and the rest are activities, things that
the Holy Spirit does through people (miracles, healings, helps, etc.). Those
same three kinds of people turn up here in Ephesians 4.11, plus an extra one,
evangelists. “It was he who gave
some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to
be pastors and teachers…”
Now, we know from last week that that the order has nothing to do with honour or prestige or who gets to be called “reverend” or “pastor” or anything like that. Paul made it clear in the passage we studied last week, in 1 Cor 12, that the church doesn’t work that way. There is an order here, but it’s a pragmatic order, a functional order. These are the people God uses to plant and build churches. If you’re going to have healthy, growing communities of people who love and serve God you’re going to need some of these people.
So what are these leadership gifts that equip the church to grow and minister as Christ intended?
The word “apostle” means someone who is sent, especially someone who is sent out on some kind of mission. It’s used to refer to various people in the New Testament. When Paul is defending his own position as an apostle in 1 Cor 15 he says that Jesus “…appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve…7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles… So Jesus appeared to Peter, then to the rest of the Twelve, then to James (who wasn’t one of the original twelve) then to “all the apostles,” however many there were.
There are seventeen people explicitly named in the New Testament as apostles; The Twelve (Matt 10:2-4), Paul and Barnabas (Acts 14:14), Silas (1 Thess 2.6 cf Acts 17:1-4), and Andronicus and Junia (Rom 16:7). (And, by the way, Junia was a woman, so they had woman apostles too.) He might have also included Apollos as an apostle in 1 Cor 4.
We know nothing more about Andronicus and
Junia apart from their appearance in that list, but we have records of all the
rest of the apostles being sent out in some way. In Matt 10, Jesus sent the
twelve out in ministry. In Acts 13 Paul and Barnabas are described as being
sent out by the church in
There is definitely a special place in the New Testament for the first apostles who walked and talked with Jesus, and for Paul, all of whom had seen the risen Jesus. And many people would like to restrict the word “apostle” to the Twelve and Paul, and say they had a unique role in the beginning of the church and that the church no longer needs apostles.
But there are few problems with that idea.
(1) The first is simply the fact that there are more than 11 people called apostles
in the New Testament. (2) Another problem is that Ephesians is a circular
letter, written to a whole bunch of churches in what is now
First of all they are sent out from a local
church. Paul and Barnabas aren’t described as apostles until after they are
sent out by the
Second, they plant churches. Perhaps when
there are no longer any people who haven’t heard the gospel, and no longer any
communities without a healthy, thriving church we’ll no longer need apostles. But
as long as there are still churches to be planted in places where there are
none, there will be a need for apostles, because apostles plant churches. More
than anything else, that’s what they do. In 1 Cor 3:10 Paul describes himself
as an expert builder who laid the foundation for the church in
Because apostles are the ones who plant churches, they almost automatically have a degree of authority in them. I know that doesn’t sit well with Baptist churches, but an apostle’s authority isn’t based on some kind of office or position. It’s simply the result of their relationship with the people in the churches they plant. They become like spiritual fathers and mothers to the churches, and people listen to them and ask them for advice. But, like the parents of adult children, apostles can’t order anybody to do anything; they can only exhort them and encourage them.
Apostles draw people together into teams.
Paul always travelled with at least one other person, more often with a larger
team. When we were in
But apostles also tend to move around a
lot. One apostolic leader we served under was Floyd McClung. He has started
ministries all over the world. People would catch the vision and come to join
him in
This is what apostles do. They draw together teams of people and travel around starting new ministries, usually churches. And if the church is going to continue to grow around the world we still need them. If you’re uncomfortable with the word you can call them something different if you like. “Missionary” is simply the Latin translation of the Greek word “apostle.” Some people call them church-planters. Personally I prefer to use the words the Bible uses, but it doesn’t really matter what we call them, as long as we recognise that God blesses the church with people the New Testament calls apostles who go out from the local church and extend God’s kingdom.
Apostles are sent out from the churches to
plant new ministries. Prophets, on the other hand, are people who speak a
direct word from God to the churches. They may be preachers as well, but
they’re different from the pastor-teacher. Pastors have the care of one
congregation. Prophets tend to speak to the wider church. Teachers study and
think and toil over what they deliver. When prophets speak people recognise it
as a direct work of the Holy Spirit, and they usually strengthen and encourage
believers, often by calling people back to the core of the faith. “Judas
and Silas, who themselves were prophets, said much to encourage and strengthen
the brothers.” (Acts 15:32)
It sometimes seems like everybody and his
kid brother is claiming to be a prophet these days, especially those with TV
shows. I don’t watch enough TV to make a judgement, but someone from an earlier
generation whom I would definitely call a prophet was A.W. Tozer. Like a true
prophet he always called people back to the core of the faith and called the
frills and fluff exactly that, frills and fluff. His preaching grew more out of
his prayer life than his study. Unfortunately, because the church is
uncomfortable with any gift here except “pastor,” he was squeezed a “pastoral”
role he wasn’t gifted for. He was always a more successful communicator to the
wider church than he was a pastor of his own church. (That’s not an unfounded
opinion. One of my own mentors served as Tozer’s associate at Avenue Road in
Prophets in the early church seemed to move around and speak to the church. Evangelists moved around and spoke to those outside the church. Philip was an evangelist (Acts 21:8) and every time he appears in Acts he is off somewhere to preach the gospel, although the word “evangelist” simply means someone who speaks good news, so it doesn’t necessarily have to mean people like Billy Graham.
Steve Forsyth was a guy we worked with in
Then finally we get to pastor-teachers, the gift that the church has historically tried to squeeze all ministry into. Some people translate it as “pastor-teachers,” others as “teaching shepherds” Either way, they’re linked.
If you take the two parts separately;
“pastor” means “shepherd” and in the New Testament, except for this one verse, it’s
only ever used to describe Jesus. That’s probably because in the Old Testament it
was the kings of
According to the New Testament, churches are supposed to be led by a
group of elders, who are the ones responsible to shepherd the church. (Acts
20:28, 1 Peter 5:2) Within that group you would expect to find at least one
with the gift of teaching (a teaching-shepherd) especially since being able to
teach is one of the qualifications for being an elder in the first place. (2
Tim 2:24)
These people are gifts from God to his church to equip her to do God’s work in the world. Having a particular kind of education doesn’t make you an apostle, prophet, evangelist or pastor-teacher. (A.W. Tozer, Stuart Briscoe, Brian McLaren) If we’re going to be a healthy, growing church we should expect to see people like this rising up in the church.
1. All of God’s people are called to ministry, not just a few specialists.
2. There are some people in the church whose ministry it is to equip others, just like a coach equips an athlete.
3. Those are; apostles who plant churches, prophets who keep them focussed on God, evangelists who grow churches numerically by sharing the gospel, and teaching shepherds who grow the church in depth through systematic teaching.
4. We need them all if the church is going to function effectively.