The Four-Fold Ministry, Sorta

I had a much different thought in my head as to what I was going to write today, but I really feel led to put that off and instead switch gears.

I've heard how we teach the five-fold ministry as long as I can remember. The teaching originates from Ephesians 4:11, which lists out 5 separate ministerial roles: Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors and Teachers. A few translations translate pastors as shepherds which is supported by other uses of the word shepherd in the New Testament. Some translations combine pastors and teachers into one combined roll by hyphenating the role, pastor-teachers. Regardless of how these are translated, I want to look into how these gifts are manifested in our group today with particular emphasis on shepherds and teachers?

I want to start with apostles. I'd like to start by comparing an apostle with a missionary, though I know that this is not a one-to-one comparison. Still, there is something of a missionary in an apostle, and the modern missionary is somewhat of a gestalt between an apostle and an evangelist. I believe that it is a good thought process to consider modern missionaries when we are trying to get an understanding of apostles

A missionary does not necessarily need to go far off into a foreign field in order to be a missionary, nor does an apostle have to travel far off in order to start a church. We think of missionaries as those who travel to a far country, spend time learning the language and preach the Gospel to people who have never heard it before. This is a wonderful ministry, and yet there is something to be said of the local missionary as well, who goes and takes what he has and preaches to the lost not far from where he lives and establishes a mission, bringing people what they need. There is some of the gift of an apostle in this too, and a person who establishes a mission to the lost, no matter where they may be, is a missionary.

An apostle is simply put, one who has the burden to go out and start churches. The Apostle Paul traveled around Turkey and Greece establishing churches and paid visits to those churches that he could later. In fact, Paul's journeys are called missionary journeys, so you can see how the term missionary could also apply to Paul.

The role of an apostle in a well defined and established church however is not as large as it is in a newly developing church. When a church becomes established, the apostle might change rolls and becomes that church's pastor, or alternatively he might move on to start another church. An apostle doesn't settle down in a church in the role of a pastor though without a commensurate change in his ministry. Some men have been called to be an apostle and later in their ministry they become the pastor of a church they started, and recognizing that is fine, but at some time that man's ministry changed from a building role to a shepherding role.

This is as good a place as any to point out that a man who "inherits" a church does not need to have been an apostle to do so, and he is not diminished in the least if he was never called to be an apostle as long as he was called to be a pastor. I don't really like the concept of inheriting a church anyway, but it's a phrase we use, so I use it here.

In our group, operating apostles are few and far between. If this were not so, our group would be growing much more than it is. Other than in foreign lands, churches are just not being newly established in our group all the time, and we must judge a tree by what fruit it does or does not bear (Matt 7:17). Our group is growing more from the inclusion of already established churches who've interacted with another of our churches and want to be a part of what we represent.

Some seem to think that overseer is also a good word to describe apostles and there is a measure of truth to this, but when we use that word, we sometimes invent a hierarchy in the ministry that isn't Biblical. To think that an apostle is a shepherd to shepherds is somewhat strange. While an apostle can see a problem in a church and move to help address it, a shepherdherd or uber-pastor is not the same thing as an apostle. There's not a ranking system inherent in the gifts of the ministry.

Prophets in my opinion are few and far between today just as they have always been. They have to have a message to give, and in the absence of a message, prophets don't come around all that often. A prophet is someone used by God to deliver a message to a group, either locally or more wide spread, and you just don't need a profusion of these men to handle this task. If you know someone who is a prophet, and yet they haven't been used in a very long time by the Lord in that fashion, it might be more accurate to say that God used them as a prophet at one time. A gift of the ministry does not necessarily infer a lifelong calling or access to that gift. It's also good to keep in mind that one of the hallmarks of a prophet is often that people to whom the message is addressed won't listen to him (Luke 4:24).

Evangelists are a unique ministry. Their ministry isn't to the saved, it's to the lost. You might think that this is true of all of the gifts, but that is not necessarily so. A pastor isn't much without a church to pastor, I've seen that. An evangelist's role is complementary to an apostle and there is something of the missionary in this gift as well, however instead of establishing churches, he establishes people in churches. When evangelists and apostles are working within their ministries, they produce the building blocks for a growing church. However, I see more to an evangelist than just a missionary, and another word that I use that is good to describe an evangelist is a witness. A witness can operate equally as well in an established church as they can a newly developing church.

I've seen the operation of a witness and what kind of an effect that they can have on the lives of people, and yet we as a group seem confused and don't necessarily understand what it is that an active evangelist actually does. This ministry is an area that we are sorely lacking in, and in which we have some wrong ideas. We are all called to profess our faith to the very ends of the Earth (Acts 13:47), and we have been remiss in doing exactly this (Mark 4:21). Still, there are some people who have a greater calling as a witness and a greater access to this gift. We desperately need more of this ministry active in our churches and this gift is the gift that I fear we is the least operating of the five.

By the way, an evangelist bears witness to the greatness of God, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Speaking to Christians of the greatness of the Body and trying to bring them into our fold is not evangelism, it is something else entirely, proselytizing. An evangelist is not called to bring people out of Babylon into a correct teaching of doctrine, they are called to bring people out of the world into a saving grace. It's good to note that proselytizers were not mentioned in Eph 4:11 and proselytizing is not a gift of the ministry.

At last I've made it to pastors, but I'm going to handle this differently than the other three gifts I've already addressed. We as a group know what the role of a pastor is supposed to be, but in some cases the operation of the gifts of a pastor and a teacher have been merged or at least confused. We have used a simple term, preacher, as a replacement word for pastor, and use it to mean a pastor who relies on teaching. I'm not condemning the act of preaching, or ignoring the necessity of pastors to teach, however there is a portion of the ministry of a pastor that is missing in some of our churches. The role of a pastor is so misunderstood in some of our assemblies that some people are hesitant to even refer to their pastor as such, as if doing so were some sin dealing with a matter of pride instead of simply recognizing the pastor of a church as what they are. Other churches jump to the other extreme, nearly beatifying their pastors. Both of these extremes are wrong and frankly something that I just do not understand.

I prefer the term shepherd because it paints a different picture than the word pastor does. We tend to think of a pastor as someone up at the pulpit preaching, hence the term preacher, however we see a shepherd as a person who takes care of sheep. This care-taking is sometimes underemphasized in the role of a pastor and in some churches it has resulted in the people being neglected. Jesus told Peter to "feed my sheep" so He recognized the need for tending that people have(John 21:16-17). Yet instead of caring for the flock, a greater emphasis is put on teaching and a pastor will often see instruction as their greatest calling. They will be tempted to use instruction as a sort of fix-all for any problem they are presented with. They treat their flock with callous disregard and are not even aware that they are doing it. I don't deny that sometimes a pastor needs to teach, but the truth is that sometimes a pastor needs to not teach as well. Constant instruction is not the same as being fed or well tended.

There is a separate gift of teaching and although there is some overlap between the responsibilities and calling of different ministers, I still see that there is value in separating the roles of pastors and teachers. The role of a teacher is to insure that their student understands the material that they are teaching and can grow as a result of the teaching.

A teacher will spend considerable time studying and preparing his material for dissemination. They are responsible to presenting it information to people in a way that they can understand. If a teacher knows his topic but cannot help someone else understand, then that person is a scholar and not a teacher, and not every scholar has the makings of a good teacher.

The five-fold ministry is often symbolized by a hand with each finger representing one gift of the ministry. It's easy to see how a hand with missing or mangled fingers wouldn't be able to operate as well as a complete hand. We don't have a complete fullness of these five gifts working among us yet; if we did we'd be on our way to having a restored church. Right now I make out between two and four gifts functioning as they are meant to in our group right now. Apostles were more prevalent at the beginning of our movement though these men are still around. Prophets and evangelists are a rare sight indeed, at least on a larger scale than just the local church. Pastors and teachers we have, though in some cases these overlap.

We have assembled a ministry composed primarily of pastors or at least where pastors hold sway over the other gifts. To not be the pastor of one of our churches relegates a minister to a lesser role in the overall ministry of our group, even though the scripture does not say this is how this should be. Additionally, many of the pastors that we recognize are actually teachers who have taken a pastoral role, and may be having a detrimental effect on their assemblies. This should not be so in our group, and if we are ever to find a better order than what we have, we need to recognize and promote these other gifts. I long to see a greater working in our group of the different gifts of the ministry instead of what we have today. Better is available regarding the working of the ministry in our group, I hope we strive for it.