Sitting recently with church leaders, I was asked to address their immediate concern: Discipleship, with emphasis on the "how to" aspect of fulfilling the Great Commission.
Apostolic Language Describes Apostolic Architecture
Midway through our conversation I realized that we were missing one another, failing to connect at a heart level, which meant we also had not connected on an intellectual level. We were speaking different languages altogether: These church leaders were speaking from the context and understanding of established goals and institutional, classroom strategies employed to reach those goals - the assumption seemed to be, Proper Input equals a predictable and quantifiable Result. It's the "recipe" formula of discipleship: "If we teach the right material in the right format to the right people with the right attitude we'll produce “right” and "right-eous" disciples.
Suddenly aware that my friends and I were using contradictory languages, I halted our dialog mid-stream and reset the ground rules - specifically regarding the language we would use and what kind of instrument we should employ to determine success in producing authentic disciples.
A tragedy of this kind of miscommunication is that it often masks divergent paradigms and permits false understandings to continue without challenge, without the kind of “come, let us reason together” discussion that is essential to uncover and to address misconceptions and misapplications of truth.[1]
Disciples are people, human beings, members of families; they are not machines or mathematical formulae. People are not “subjects” nor are they instruments to be experimented with. I had entered the conversation from the perspective of my own, personal and innate assumptions. Those assumptions determined the language I used. And so I had been speaking the language of Kingdom and family and heart and fathers and sons while my friends had spoken in the tongues of church and members and numbers and results as the pathway to success.
Compounding the irony of our initial conversation was the fact that these leaders consider everything they do as “organic” and use terms such as “simple church” to describe their ministry. Everything in me wanted to just encourage my brothers and sisters to simply fall in love with Jesus, imitate Him, walk as He walked and do what He did, and all the questions about "which night of the week" is optimum for teaching "how do we get people excited about discipleship" and "what curricula provides the best result" would resolve themselves.
Purpose, not Pursuit
Our purpose, first individually and then corporately must begin with God. Unless and until there is establishment and agreement concerning what it is He intends to accomplish, we are at best lost in establishing what our own goals and expectations regarding the church should be, (and I am speaking to myself and my cohorts here, and not some nebulous “them”).
Without God as a starting place, like so many generations that have preceded us, we will end up looking a lot more like ants running around on a picnic table than apostles and prophets functioning with sure and authentic kingdom direction and purpose. The ants may appear to be enjoying success by their sheer frantic movement, pursuing here and there the fruit of the picnic table, but when the day ends and the ants have returned to their colony, the picnic table remains much the same as it was before the invasion of the busy insects.
As stewards of the kingdom, and as servants of God, we must not leave the table as we found it; there must be corporate understandings of the overarching purposes of God and functional strategies to assist in the fulfillment of those purposes. We must individually and corporately bear our own testimony of “For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth.”[2]
If you are called of God to function apostolically or prophetically, or for that matter, in any of the Ephesians 4:11 roles, the crux of your life purpose is not merely to be known as an apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor or teacher or to fill the role of any of the ministry gifts. Your purpose is to have purpose, to fulfill purpose, to do something with your being that will have eternal value and consequence in and for the kingdom of God. Specifically, the purpose of each ministry gift is abundantly clear: Teachers relate with students, pastors, with sheep, evangelists count converts, prophets see people and conditions and uniquely, apostles have sons. The vital truth we must capture is in implementing and accomplishing whatever role we are called to live.
And He Himself gave some for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry,
for the edifying of the body of Christ.[3]
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Ministry Perspective Kingdom Life |
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Gift of Body Purpose Function |
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Teacher Students Inform Mentor |
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Pastor Sheep Safeguard Defender |
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Evangelist Converts Convince Announcer |
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Prophet Conditions Anticipate Confirmer |
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Apostle Sons[4] Establish Father |
If we were to establish a likely and practical order of these ministries, it might look like this, evangelist, (since he first brings Good News), prophet (because the prophet largely affirms and confirms by way of a witness of the Spirit and through the gifts of words of knowledge, wisdom and generally verbalizing what the Spirit is saying in a given situation). Then would follow the teacher who brings understanding, and the pastor who protects during the discipleship process. Finally, the apostle is employed as he labors to establish a good foundation for the future and further work of discipling and of building the church.
When Paul sent encouragement to Timothy, he urged his son in the faith to “be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry”[5] (emphasis, mine). It’s not in the possessing of a title, but in fulfilling our ministry that we find purpose and are judged as faithful or unfaithful, fruitful or fruitless.
Apostolic Architecture Enables Enduring Structure
Whether she recognizes it or not, the church is crying for the unveiling of a kingdom-generated, divinely revealed, and flesh-and-blood communicated apostolic architecture. A body without a skeleton, or a building without a solid, level, balanced and appropriate weight-bearing foundation will both collapse upon themselves.
A number of years ago, I opined, “You can’t plant a church any more than you can plant a human – Humans are born of a father and a mother by way of the God-given and mandated act of procreation. The church will be born of the will of the Father, and built by the Son, not planted by a zealous and conscientious ‘soul- farmer.’" When Paul described the ungodly divisions within the Corinthian church, he told them “I planted,”[6] and what he had planted was the Seed of Christ, not a “church” or an institution or an organization, but the living Seed of the crucified and resurrected Christ.
Every kingdom-established structure must contain the seed of heaven and experience the formation and growth of a pre-determined skeletal structure that we see paralleled in the natural development of a pre-born child.
Of the thousands of “church starts” or “plants” that begin every year with great anticipation and high hopes, most fail long before the first personality conflict erupts or the first disagreement about the smorgasbord of potential problems happens, whether they are financial, doctrinal, methodological, practical – the list can go on and on. The failure is in the application of improper DNA. The markers that determine the true, authentic church are not learned and parroted, they are inborn as the Spirit of Christ faithfully implants them. What works in one community may be disastrous in another and so, the critical material for building kingdom structures – i.e., the church – is not systems or programs or “sure-fire ways-of-doing-it,” but it is in the supernatural flow of eternal DNA that can effuse only from Jesus. As Don Atkin has noted, “I see no biblical basis for forming churches. Jesus does that wherever He has disciples. He says, "YOU, disciple! I'll build My church!"[7]
The Right Tool for Right Job
When a pastor, and not an apostle, attempts to lay the foundation for a church, regardless of its intended form, either frustration or spiritual sickness or the death of his dream will almost always ensue, not because the pastor has failed to be a pastor, or even to be an exceptionally good pastor, but because the wrong person is attempting to do something he is neither called nor qualified to do. It’s as simple as the frustration of attempting to pound square pegs into round holes. It is akin to a dentist attempting to conduct open-heart surgery. The dentist may be outstanding at performing a root canal, but he is ill prepared to address the treatment of a diseased heart.
When the denominational church-planting committee attempts to conduct the work of the apostle, their efforts often look much like the proverbial joke about the horse that OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) built: So many safety features are required to prevent the horse from injuring itself or its rider, the horse can’t even walk when it’s built to “standards.”
We plant what we are: If we are denominational, we will plant denomination - if we are programmatic we will plant program – if we are systematic, we will plant system, if we are a stronghold, we will plant strongholds.[8]
There exists no denomination or denominational office that can replace the ministry of the apostle. There is no church-planting manual that can supplant the requirement that Jesus Himself will build “His church,” and He chooses from His toolshed the implement of the apostle to lay and establish the foundation upon which everything else will be built.
And it's not a geographically unique and insinuated product that is needed. I have heard (and I repent that I also have taken part in) various discussions that focused on “how-to-do-it-with-this-people-group as opposed to how-to-do-it in that locale.” None of this matters! Whether we're focused on Europe or Asia, North, Central or South America or any geographical location, church leadership (whether institutional or organic, or any other mutation or variation) must first see and agree upon what it is heaven intends in order to communicate what we intend.
We must settle the issue of what and who we were designed to be before we are ready to accomplish any good thing, let alone begin to release any wisdom and knowledge and direction to the church at large.
Family, Not Tribe
This tendency to gravitate to those who think exactly like we do, speak like we do, and function like we do, will only eventuate into the unintended creation of even more denominations to add to the more than 38,000 denominational flavors already available to the religious world.
We're still far too tribal, too clannish and not nearly ecumenical (I hate that word, too, but it's descriptive) enough in our thinking to let down our collective guard and to invite those from another tent or teepee or Hogan to sit at the dinner table of our longhouse or to gather around their fire so that we all together might see, and see the same thing – the distinction and the eminence of the Lordship of Christ.
In the late 1990’s I saw the appearance of several non-institutional church groups that began to embrace the term “Tribe” and “Tribal” to define themselves. The old Bible word “church” had become too religious sounding, too worn and dated. “Tribe” seemed to fit the direction these pilgrims were moving. The more I thought about the tribal concept of “church,” the more I grew concerned that “tribe” was missing the mark as much and perhaps even more than the religious structures these believers had left behind.
Tribes tend to gather around commonly held social customs, traditions, beliefs and practices. Families, on the other hand share a common genetic code and familial likenesses, but often display great variations in lifestyle, philosophy, geographic location and even language. I have family members, people with whom I share a distinct DNA, in Germany and in Scotland. At a very deep level, my heart is linked with family in other lands, yet I speak only a smattering of German. I have never worn a kilt and I follow American football and not the “real” football of Europe.
If the New Testament church and New Creation life is about anything, it is about the bringing together of “one new man”[10] that God formed from Jew and Gentile in the cross of His Son. In the cross, the miracle of engrafting is made possible, so that we who were “without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world,”[11] we “who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”[12] If we are truly “one” in Christ, why, I plead, do we continue to separate ourselves, to affiliate with only those who look like, act like and think like we do?
“Like Hearts” are more important than “Like Minds”
We've got to get to "like heart" and stop worrying about agreement on every jot and tittle of dogma and doctrine. I perceive that we must learn to apply trust in the Christ within others, to risk in order to gain the greater revelation He, I believe, is preparing us to receive.
The miracle that took place when "He sat at the table with them," after walking away from the resurrection scene outside the City, is the miracle we need now. "(And) He took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them" - Sat with, Took, Blessed, Broke, Gave . . . "Then their eyes were opened and they knew Him." [13]
[1] In this article I am indebted to and grateful for Jay Ferris, whose gracious comments I have incorporated into my own writing. The referenced paragraph here is an example of Jay’s help.
[2] John 18:37 NKJV
[3] Ephesians 4:11,12
[4] My personal view of male/female in the New Creation is gender neutral
[5] 2 Timothy 4:5 NKJV
[6] 1 Corinthians 3:6
[7] Don Atkin, Private email communication
[8] Jay Ferris, comments
[9] A corollary: Without appearing either comical or cynical, may I suggest that until we come to terms with yesterday’s truth, we have no business attempting to explain a present truth.
[10] Ephesians 2:15
[11] 2:12
[12] 2:13
[13] Luke 24:30
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