Flippin’ Ministry

I said that we have confused ministry and authority. Authority clearly rested with elders. So what about ministry? In Pauls letter to the church in the city of Ephesus he writes:

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds (pastors) and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, Eph 4:11-13

To the church in Corinth Paul writes:

Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues.

1 Cor 12:27f

Paul isn’t writing these things to correct understanding of authority but of ministry. He is describing the whole body of Christ, gifts of ministry for every member regardless of sex, nationality, colour, age or experience.

Earlier Paul told the church in Ephesus:

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. Eph 2:19-21

The church in the 21st century is very unsure about what all of this means. We have many churches led by a pastor, and we talk about ordination of ministers who seem to have special roles, but are rarely defined in scripture. Bishops seem to have great authority, but it is worked out mainly in ministry and definitely not in plurality of eldership in a city church. Some church denominations have apostles who seem to have great authority, but largely stay in one city much like the early bishops. Titles seem to mean a great deal and if we speak on servanthood at all we qualify it with servant leadership, ie not servanthood at all. Many churches have something called a deaconate or deacons meeting. It is absurd that we don’t translate deacon into the English meaning which is merely slave or servant. I went to a conference some years ago where the all the speakers came from a church in Singapore. The leader of the team announced himself as an apostle called pastor Lawrence Kong, he then went on to introduce the rest of his staff as pastor Chow the evangelist, pastor Ming the prophet and pastor Loo a pastor!!! (I can’t remember their real names so please forgive the substitutions) 

Although only five ministry gifts are listed in Ephesians 4 we do get a massive clue as to what they are for: 

To equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ Eph 4:12

Ministry gifts are given to men and women, they are unrelated to church authority which is given by God to the elders. The ministry gifts aren't just given to people for them to do the particular work, but to be people who release that particular anointing into the church so that the whole body can do the work and be built up to do it better and better.

The restoration movement has said a great deal about bringing back a recognition of the ministry gifts listed in Eph 4. Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists and Pastors and Teachers are talked about and many churches today boast these ministries in the fellowships. Many books have been written on how the church today sees these gifts. However, next time I want to take a little time to re examine these gifts in the light of what we have seen about ekklesia and and servanthood.