By Mike Kim
Editor’s note – This is the final of three parts of an article by a former “traditional pastor” who has embarking on a new journey.
What about the apostolic people gifts? Here are some gaping holes we see in today’s church through the systemic neglect and/or rejection of God’s apostolic people gifts.
- Without apostolic drive, we stop at evangelistic addition — not multiplication. Salvation stops at the individual as we fail to see how God often doesn’t just reach one but many in the social network through that one Luke 10 “person of peace.”
- Without apostolic action, we fail to experience the promised presence of Christ and spiritual authority that comes when we go as “sent ones” who disciple all nations. Often times, we are mired in confusion and disillusionment as we only go as far as our human resources of staffing and money and curriculum take us. To hide the disappointment, we continue to rationalize that the powerful and miraculous stories in Scripture are for a different time and that the current stories coming in from overseas will never happen where we are.
- Without apostolic clarity, the REASON FOR OUR EXISTENCE becomes murky. We don’t strategically think about culture and DNA — the underlying value systems and core ideologies that define a community. Corporate identity is thus “accidentally” stumbled upon instead of strategically realized, reinforced and spread to new groups of people. Organizations that don’t know what they are about often remain stuck in maintenance mode and full of uninspired people.
- Without apostolic modeling, we miss out on a culture/spirit of “releasing” and “empowering” and have to contend instead with a spirit of management and control. In an effort to be helpful, we over-manage and control processes and people meant to be openly and temporarily guided — not permanently gripped. And in so doing, we inadvertently short-circuit all momentum and movement as we corral the simple and small things that, if left to themselves in God’s economy, would naturally spread and multiply.
- Without apostolic parenting, the multi-generational mentoring and leadership development that the N.T. models and teaches rarely happens and is replaced by a ”learned dependence” on first generation, clergy-led ministry. Like scaffolding that sticks around beyond its usefulness, leaders often default on staying longer in their role for the sake of ”ministry quality” that ends up severely limiting the net quality and quantity of workers in the harvest.
- Without apostolic accountability, we don’t ask the obvious questions of sustainability behind our “best practices:” do we REALLY need to have million dollar budgets, seminary educated leaders and 50-100 Christian people to start a church? Do we need to have land and a building to be the church? How sustainable are buildings and staff salaries — especially in this economic downturn and especially if the downturn continues?
- Without apostolic imagination, we fail to ask questions of scalability. We opt to “go big” or “launch large,” assuming that many different things need to be in place before new disciples, leaders or churches can be launched. And in doing so, we miss out on the power of small things like germs, dandelion seeds and rabbits that can reproduce and thrive even in hostile environments.
- Without apostolic vision, we fail to ruthlessly ask the questions of reproducibility and transferability. We so complicate the message and training process that few know it and few are able to pass it on to others. In stark contrast is the elegant simplicity and agility of Alcoholics Anonymous where anyone with little to no resources can go anywhere and everywhere across the globe and start a chapter.
- Without apostolic passion, we fail to embrace our role in the big picture of Kingdom mission. We busy ourselves with our isolated and small ministry goals for our personal organizations alone instead of embracing our embeddedness in a global movement of the Kingdom that focuses on the transformation of the planet and the mandate to disciple all unengaged and unreached people groups that remain.
What remains is an edifice that never had proper apostolic and prophetic foundations — a house built on wood, hay and straw that cannot stand what is to come.
But God is bringing it all back to the imagination of the church as of late. We are rediscovering the legacy of groups like the Moravians who had apostolic AND prophetic foundations in place and, hence, launched movements of apostolic mission and movements of prophetic intercession and 24-7 prayer. Just 100 or so normal people in the town of Herrnhut who had apostolic and prophetic foundations in place and, hence, saw God move mightily in, among and through them — across many nations, cultures, denomination lines, and even time. In addition to looking at the past examples of groups like the Moravians, God is also showing many the future: providing spiritual insight into new wineskins that can more fully access the strength of God’s new wine. And so across the world, many are hearing similar messages: the time is short, and something new is needed to complete the task ahead. The growing global discussion is moving towards the establishment of Apostolic-Prophetic communities or “base camps” that have the proper foundations laid.
If Paul meant every word of Ephesians 4:11-16, then shouldn’t we be repenting and begging God to show us further insight for how the church can get back to first things?
11 Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. 12 Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. 13 This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.
14 Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. 15 Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. 16 He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.
The time is short! And much is at stake!
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