Fivefold Ministry

The spiritual journey that I am on has caused me to completely rethink the Church as understood by the denominational world and therefore, rethink the five fold ministry.

Regarding the fivefold ministry, religion starts with a wrong concept...it holds to the idea that there are multiple churches. Jesus came and He established one and only one CHURCH and that church was not an organization that is overseen by catholic or protestant popes under shepherd by different titles of positions ascribed to people to keep the religious structure in motion.

Please do not conclude that I do not believe in the fivefold ministry, nothing could be further from the truth, but I do see it in a different light than the religious mindset that has prompted the accepted view of this vital ministry that God has given HIS CHURCH.

How did the doctrine of the fivefold ministry come about?

In 1824, Edward Irving, a Presbyterian pastor in Scotland, began teaching that the five-fold ministry of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers had disappeared from the church and was in need of restoration. According to Irving, the restoration of these ministries would usher in the Millennial Kingdom of Christ on the earth.

Irving and his followers began the Catholic Apostolic Church in 1832. Its chief purpose was to restore the five-fold ministry and usher in the Millennial Kingdom. The Church ordained twelve apostles who were to be the last days equivalent of the original Twelve whom Jesus appointed. Henry Drummond, a wealthy banker from England, became the leader of the Church. Drummond himself took the highest position apostle to Scotland.”

It was prophesied that these twelve apostles would be the last apostles to appear on earth before Christ's return.

Eventually the twelve apostles of the Catholic Apostolic Church died (the last one dying in 1901). Upon their death, the Church expired in England. In Germany, however, the Catholic Apostolic Church ordained twelve more apostles and took the name the 哲ew Apostolic Church.”

Following the famed Azusa Street revival in 1906 in Los Angeles, California, the emphasis on the restoration of the five-fold ministry and a mighty outpouring of the Holy Spirit just before the return of Christ reappeared. And a new generation of apostles emerged. Luigi Francescon (apostle to Italy, Ivan Voronaev (apostle to the Slavs, and T.B. Barratt (apostle to Europe were just some of them. Pentecostal denominations in Wales, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and the United States elected and ordained colleges of apostles to govern their denominations.

As the years rolled on, the restoration of the five-fold ministry doctrine somewhat faded. But it reemerged again with a revival spawned at Sharon Orphanage in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, Canada in 1948. The New Order of the Latter Rain movement, as it was called, was prophesied to restore the five-fold ministry to prepare for the manifestation of the sons of God on the earth.

But when the waters of revival receded, the restoration of the five-fold ministry doctrine faded again until it was resuscitated in the Charismatic Movement of the late 1960s. In the late 70s, the doctrine's flame began to dim again until a group of men resurrected it with new fervor in the mid-1990s.

In 1996, Peter Wagner led a conference at Fuller Theological Seminary entitled the National Symposium on the Lost-Denominational Church.This conference produced a new movement called the New Apostolic Movement, which Wagner claims is sweeping the globe with a new way of doing church. The churches that are part of this movement are being labeled New Apostolic Churches.”

In 1999, Wagner sought to organize the movement under the name International Coalition of Apostles with Wagner as the residing Apostle.The movement claims to be restoring the five-fold ministry today.

Parenthetically, the churches in the new apostolic movement are vanilla Charismatic institutional churches replete with the office of modern pastor (often renamed Apostle, Sunday sermons, pulpit, pews, church buildings, the five hundred year-old order of worship, music led by a worship team.

Point: The doctrine of the restoration of the five-fold ministry is over 180 years old. And it has been repackaged from movement to movement.

So is God going to restore the five-fold ministry To my mind, that is the wrong question. It is putting the cart before the horse. The ascension gifts mentioned in Ephesians 4 are gifted people who God gives to the body of Christ as gifts. They are the natural outgrowth and by-product of organic church life.

All in all, there are twenty gifts mentioned in the New Testament. If a group of believers gathers around Jesus Christ alone (rather than a doctrine, a theological system, or a ritual) and they are void of a clergy system, then that group will eventually produce all the gifts and gifted ones that exist within the body of Christ.

It is no mistake that Paul uses the human physical body as an apt image to describe the way the body of Christ functions. When a baby girl is born, most of her physical capabilities are not present. She can't ride a bicycle, add and subtract numbers, or eat with a fork and knife.

However, within her body, she possesses the genetic codes that will produce the physical development by which to carry out these capabilities. If she is fed and nurtured properly, in time, these abilities will naturally develop within her. She will organically grow into them. Why? Because they are organic to her species as a human being. They are the product of human life.

In the same way, when the Church was born, it possessed within its spiritual DNA all the giftings that are in Jesus Christ. But it takes time for them to develop and emerge. (Unfortunately, we live in a day when many church leaders don't seem to understand this spiritual principle. Hence, they try to force the exercise of gifts and ministries in the body prematurely.)

What is needed, then, is not a restoration of the so-called five-fold ministry. What is needed is the restoration of genuine true church life through an organic relationship with its founder. And that is what God is seeking to restore today as He has in every generation.

Therefore, if we can discover how the church was born from God's perspective and how it is to be nurtured and maintained, then we will see a restoration of all the gifts that are in Christ the way that they were meant to be expressed.

The gifts of the Holy Spirit function very differently in an organic expression of the church than they do in the typical institutional church. The gift of prophecy, for example, that comes up out of the soil of authentic body life looks profoundly different from the way it is packaged in the typical Pentecostal/Charismatic church. (The latter is often based on imitating others.)

The Pentecostal/Charismatic packaging of spiritual giftings needs to be stripped away. So what is left is a pure expression of the Holy Spirit that glorifies, unveils, and lifts up the Lord Jesus Christ so as to experience the Holy Spirit power at work.

Consequently, the pressing question is: Are we going to get serious about discovering how to gather around Jesus Christ in an organic way? Or are we going to blithely ignore New Testament principle and continue to hope (and prophesy) that the five-fold ministry will one day be restored?

Again, God's way of raising up the ascension gifts is by restoring organic body life. The ascension gifts don't magically appear because someone writes a book prophesying that they are just around the corner. Nor should we assume that they have been restored when someone claims to be the first, the last,or the New Apostle, or they are now restored to fivefold ministry churches

Authentic apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherd/teachers are gifted people who grow up in body of Christ not as leaders, but as brethren equal in status to everyone else in the church. Because they have grown up out of the soil of authentic church life, they have been tested and proven to be safe to the Kingdom of God and to the Lord's children. Their outstanding landmark is that they glorify, reveal, present, magnify, and bring into clear view the Lord Jesus Christ in unusual depths and practical experience.

This is the heritage of the Ephesians 4 ascension gifts. It was true for all the apostles, prophets, evangelists, and shepherds/teachers in the first century. And Jesus Christ has not changed (Heb. 13:8).

So what happens when gifted Christians are reared in a human organization built on unbiblical systems rather than growing up naturally in an organic expression of the body of Christ? To put it another way, what happens when a gifted Christian's only experience is in the modern institutional church?

I believe the answer is a malfunctioning and a disjointing of man-made churches that operates claiming to be the true CHURCH that Jesus came to establish.

What happens when you remove polar bears out of their natural habitat? If they survive (and some do not), they cannot function as God designed. They lose their ability to reproduce.

I am sure there are scores of people who are self-proclaimed prophets and apostles. Some are genuinely gifted. Some have the gift of teaching. Others have authentic gifts of healing. Others have a genuine operation of the word of knowledge.

But most lack any real depth in Christ and very little experience in embracing His cross. And few of them grasping God? eternal purpose or witnessing real, thriving, healthy church life.

Why is this? Because of the institution that raised them up. Or, in some cases, because they raised themselves up in isolation from other Christians. (The latter is an equally abnormal environment for a Christian to be nurtured in.)

To put it in a sentence, such men didn't grow up in their proper habitat. Few if any of them grew up in organic body life where they were simply brothers among other brothers. Few if any spent any time in a New Testament expression of church life where their weaknesses and blind spots were exposed to others. Instead, most were part of several institutional churches and launched out into independent ministry on their own.

The New Testament never envisions such a situation.

To place my concern into a question, where are the churches that the new apostles have planted that are gathering under the headship of Jesus Christ without professional clergy, where the members know one another deeply and are experiencing a depth in Christ, and where every member functions in the meetings without any man controlling, directing, facilitating, or dominating?

Still more disappointing, titled apostle in the new apostolic movement defends those church practices that are rooted in pagan tradition and have been hindering the headship of Jesus Christ and the full functioning of His body for the last eighteen hundred years. For these reasons, I am monumentally unimpressed with the denominational attempt to restore the fivefold ministry.”

When the ascension gifts emerge in the /true church, their chief function is to nurture and encourage the believing community toward spiritual maturity in Christ, unity, and every-member functioning.

Let's try to demystify the so-called 吐ive-fold ministry's understood by religion and discuss how each of the ascension gifts probably functioned in the first century:

Apostles. Apostles were extra-local, traveling, itinerant church planters. They were highly gifted individuals who were sent by the Lord and by a particular church to plant and equip new churches. Apostles enabled the church by giving it birth, raising it up from the ground. They also helped it walk on its own two feet. Apostles grew up in an organic expression of church life as non-leaders before they were sent out to plant churches of the same kind. In other words, they first experienced what they would later establish elsewhere. And they always left the churches they planted on their own without installing a clergy or religious ritual.

Prophets. Prophets were people who had a clear vision of Jesus Christ and who were able to articulate it lucidly. Prophets enabled the church by speaking the present word of the Lord to it. Sometimes their words would simply reveal Christ to encourage, inspire, and comfort. Other times their words would cast spiritual vision. Prophets sought to restore God's will whenever it had been lost. They sometimes confirmed the gifts and callings of other members and prepared the church for future trials.

Evangelists. Evangelists enabled the church by the preaching of the good news to the lost. They were fearless souls who possessed an extraordinary boldness to share Christ with nonbelievers. And they had a genuine passion for the unsaved.

Shepherd/teachers. Shepherd/teachers are two sides of the same gift. In Ephesians 4:11, the apostles, prophets, and evangelists are mentioned separately, while shepherds and teachers are joined together. Further, the first three ministries (apostles, prophets, and evangelists) are preceded by the word some.But the word some is attached to shepherds and teachers together. This may indicate that shepherds/teachers are one gift.

The chief task of the shepherds/teachers was to help the church in times of personal crisis (shepherding) and to enlighten and cultivate the church's spiritual life by revealing Christ through the exposition of Scripture (teaching). Shepherding was the private side of their ministry; teaching was the public side.

None of the ascension gifts dominated the meetings of the church. They were simply brothers and sisters in the body carrying out certain functions. Every other member functioned in the gatherings and in the community-life of the church. In that connection, you would never see a first-century Christian sporting titles like Apostle Jim Jones, Prophetess Pamela Jones,or Evangelist Jimmy Swaggart. As was established earlier, the use of honorific titles and offices were unknown to the early Christians.

The burden of my heart is to see God's people far less concerned with a five-fold ministry that is supposed to be recovered someday and instead, focus their attention on discovering what the church is supposed to be according to the mind of God. Upon making this discovery, the Lord's dear people will be faced with a decision. To answer the call of meeting around Jesus Christ alone in the way that He has prescribed. Or to remain chained to the unmovable traditions of men.

If the former path is taken, it will involve considerable cost. But all the giftings in Christ will eventually come forth in the way that He has designed organically. And those gifts will never usurp or dilute the ministry of the entire body.

Would to God that all men and women who feel called to be apostles, prophets, evangelists, and shepherds/teachers would soberly reexamine what these ministries were in the first century and in the thought of God. I believe that when this happens, many of them will be led into brand new directions. And those directions will undoubtedly lead them to break with cherished traditions and popular concepts. Yet only by these elements will the house of God begin to be restored on a broad scale.