Five-Fold Ministry - A New Vision

Church leadership debates invariably point to a well-worn passage written by Paul to the church at Ephesus:
 
"And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ..."
 
Three primary responses to this passage have become anchoring points for various facets of the church.  The fundamentalist or dispensational view holds that the roles of apostles and prophets were extinguished at the creation of the biblical canon, so any discussion about the need for an apostolic or prophetic gifting is quickly dismissed.  The pentecostal view holds these to be active, necessary roles for the church today and seeks to identify specific people and set them apart to operate full-time in these roles.  A third, middle-ground view sees the roles as available and necessary for the church today, but typically only names pastors, teachers or evangelists into full-time positions and not prophets or apostles.
 
The debate between the first two views is extraordinarily tired and I do not even want to broach the subject.  I have typically been a part of churches who have held to the third view, although I'm now beginning to see some definite problems with it in practice.  First of all, it is contradictory to make an argument why the prophetic or apostolic role should not be professionalized, yet place so much emphasis on the necessity for a professional pastorate / teacher.  There has been much discussion of late regarding the need to recapture the role of apostle in the church, although people who act as apostles are constantly tripping over themselves to not use the word "apostle" or "apostolic".  Prophets have a bit of an easier time, at least in charismatic circles.  But when was the last time you heard the word "prophet" in a conservative evangelical setting used as something other than a euphemism?
 
I would like to suggest a fourth way, playing off the third, that may be helpful for those of us trying to make sense of leadership that is biblical, non-professional, serves rather than governs, and fits within a variety of new paradigms of church.  This fourth way begins by renaming the roles in a way that better suits their operation within these paradigms.  Along with new names, I will provide some commentary on what these roles might look like in practice, who might fill them, and what might be some steps to seeing these roles mature if you are starting with a third view perspective.

Before I begin though, it might be helpful to pre-empt the conversation by making a comment about the nature of Christian leadership.  It is clear through even a casual reading of the New Testament that Christian leadership is unique as forms of human leadership go.  In fact, you could make the argument that using the word “leadership” might be overstated given the picture the New Testament paints of the five fold roles.  “Equipping the saints” is not as glamorous a job as it first appears.  Following Jesus’ wisdom, “The greatest among you shall be your servant,” the five fold ministries seem to fit better under the heading of “Maintenance Personnel” rather than “Managerial Staff”.  What if these roles comprise the public works of the church?  These are the men and women cleaning the sewers, stocking shelves at the library, teaching history to immigrants, policing the streets in the middle of the night.  Each task is critical and valuable, but mostly unseen and quiet.  The real work is done by average people doing the stuff “out there” in the real world.  Quite a different context for Christian leadership, don’t you think?

So, if you are still reading, let’s dive into the roles themselves.  I’ll present one today and more in successive days as I have time.
      
Apostle - Wide Area Networker

Paul lists apostle first, which should automatically tell us something important about apostles.  We typically think of the early apostles as having this happy-go-lucky lifestyle, traveling all over the Mediterranean, preaching, planting churches, healing people, and writing scripture on the side.  Something tells me they wouldn’t have seen it in exactly the same light.  I love Paul’s reality check in 1 Corinthians 4:

“For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men.  We are fools for Christ's sake, but you are wise in Christ.  We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute.  To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless, and we labor, working with our own hands.  When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we entreat.  We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things.”

Wow, that sounds attractive!  Sign me up!  But yet we still have this glamorous, idealized image of apostleship that distorts an indispensable role necessary for the church’s bleeding edge.  Instead of abandoning the role, what if it was recast as someone who gives themselves to connect the church in life-giving ways?  We might call such a person a “Wide-Area Networker”.

All of us live in an immense web of interconnected networks that relate on countless levels and through a variety of means.  It is still shocking sometimes to think that only four years ago I was unsure if anyone outside of my immediate context or direct relationships had similar questions about church and the Christian life as I did.  Within weeks of starting our first blog, I was getting emails from all over the U.S. and as far away as New Zealand giving us encouragement and sharing similar stories.  Now, some of those connections have turned into deep relationships between people and faith communities that will last for life.  The speed and accessibility to people and ideas the internet provides has literally made some of the more formal and traditional means for connection obsolete.  If we take seriously what Paul says is one of the aims of the five fold ministry, to “attain to the unity of the faith,” then the internet is potentially one of the most powerful tools available for encouraging that end.  Petty theological arguments aside, those with a mind towards connecting the church for the sake of the kingdom have at their fingertips an incredible advantage over their counterparts just a short ten or fifteen years ago.

Wide-Area Networkers (WANs) function very much like the servers they utilize to transfer emails and data from the web all around the world.  They are the servers of the church, creating pathways for people to be in communion with their brothers and sisters who gather in homes or ornate cathedrals and everything in between.  In this way, their function is extremely utilitarian relative to the real work of the church – announcing the kingdom in word and deed.  They may garner recognition and admiration for their abilities, but in the end they are really not much more than a conduit for relationship, blessing, encouragement, compassion, grace, and love to pass between outposts of God’s church.  A spectacle indeed.

So who can fill this role?  Well, it certainly doesn’t require a degree or a full time salary.  However, it does require a willingness to drop some of the traditional ministry aspirations that plague the church’s ability to facilitate unity.  WANs are not primarily concerned with building their “brand” (i.e. denomination or particular church flavor).  Instead, they seek to enable productive interactions between dissimilar segments of the church in order for the focus to be shifted back towards God’s purposes and his heart.  It’s about the kingdom, silly!  Typically, WANs have a very simple and singular message.  They tell stories – the same stories – over and over and over.  But it is these stories that get underneath the skin of sectarian tendencies and draw the church together.  Pretty soon, you find Catholics and Baptists sharing notes and trading ideas, Vineyard people and Presbyterians confessing their love for a particular author, or a house church leader and a megachurch youth pastor sharing coffee at their favorite cafe.  

One excellent example of a fairly well-known WAN is Andrew Jones.  The tallskinnykiwi is a blog-father to many of us, but I believe his greater gift has been to model what it might look like to be a connecting node in the wide area network of church and to culture in general.  His contribution to the emerging church conversation (not simply to the organization called Emergent, but to the conversation regarding how the church transitions in light of a rapidly changing society) is incalculable.  As I’ve read his blog over the last few years, I’ve noticed him continually building up those he comes in contact with and spending time encouraging pilgrims and kingdom workers from all over the world.  His family has moved too many times to count, but it seems that everywhere they land they immediately begin ministering locally while continuing to connect globally.  There is an inherent playfulness in Andrew’s reporting of their life and ministry that seems to come from a deep awareness that he is not building God’s kingdom, but is simply living in its ebb and flow.  That awareness is the key to fruitfulness as a Wide Area Networker.

More to come…