From the book Primal Fire, By Neil Cole with Dezi Baker, Ed Waken, Phil Helfer and Paul Kaak
As we look back over church history, we might be tempted to ask where all the APEs have gone? The church has long been dominated by pastors and teachers (who are often seen as one and the same), but the apostles, prophets, and evangelists have largely been missing from the local church context. Ephesians 4 is clear that all the gifts come from Jesus and that all the gifts are necessary for the equipping of the saints for the work of service. Did He stop giving certain gifts because they were cast aside or not appreciated? No, all the gifts are given until the body is fully mature, so all the gifts are present in every generation, though they may not be evident.
A church that is purely a teaching center is likely a hostile place for apostles, prophets, and evangelists—and even for some shepherds. Churches that only allow for a certain type of leader and neglect, abandon, deny, or brush aside all other gifts become graveyards for the calling of God. Without a proper fathering of the gifts, they remain latent and untapped in the vast majority of believers. This is a severe crisis. We hope this book can contribute to a dialogue that will lead to constructive change in the church.
So where did the APEs go if they are not found in churches? The APEs have likely migrated to other places in the kingdom outside of the traditional local church or denominational structure. Many of those who have grown and matured in their gifts despite the lack of support in most churches have eventually jumped ship. It is not as though Jesus stopped giving these gifts, it is more likely that we have not accepted them in our church culture.
Apostles tend to use their gifts to start new businesses and pioneer things in other fields. The only role left for an apostle in the traditional setting is what we have called a missionary or church planter. However, even that field is inundated with so many shepherd and teacher types that many apostles have found that environment hostile as well. Many have started mission agencies that mobilize people around the world.
Prophets are often content to be off by themselves, authoring books with a prophetic edge, or becoming futurists. Other prophets have developed prayer and intercession ministries or given themselves to launch spiritual warfare training centers and deliverance ministries.
Evangelists have left the frustrations and bureaucratic mess of the traditional local church to start parachurch organizations focused exclusively on reaching the lost. Some have gone overseas to the mission field, where they continue to win people to Christ. Some evangelists have gone on the circuit as itinerant evangelists and led crusades or revivals. A select few have found a home on television broadcasts. Others have founded small churches exclusively through conversions. Their churches always lead people to Christ but never seem to grow large. This pattern is found frequently, where new believers later migrate from the evangelist’s church to other teacher-based churches in the area for growth and development, while new converts are introduced in the small church to take their place. With the emergence of the church growth emphasis in recent years, and especially the thrust of church planting, it is also true that many evangelists have found a voice in the greater church body by planting growing churches that become mega churches. They can only do this built upon a staff full of shepherds and a sprinkling of teachers. It is natural to see that evangelists have found the church context more comfortable and have flourished there better than the apostles and prophets, as they are designed to be part of the ESTblishment team. Even though it has taken a long time to do so we are now finally seeing the evangelist gift leading front and center in church contexts. If only those churches had an apostolic and prophetic foundation beneath them, we would then see rapid movements across the country.
The problem that occurs when the APE gifts are ostracized from the body is that the church ends up only developing under the influence of one gift or at the most two and therefore reflects only a portion of Christ. As a result they are completely out of balance and therefore stunted from maturing properly. When, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, or teachers short-circuit their biblical calling and, in a sense, usurp “the ministry” by performing it alone while others look on. The full purpose of every gift is to train God’s people to do the ministry. In short, an evangelist’s true fruit is not a convert, but more evangelists. Those who are mature in their gifts will become evangelistic, prophetic, teaching, pastoral, or apostolic trainers, not merely demonstrators. The five ministries are given by God to be used in equipping others to do the work of the ministry. In a real sense, the gifts are not given to us but through us.
In our experience it has been rare to find mature APEST gifts all present in a single ministry context. It is glorious when it is found, because Jesus is more fully embraced, celebrated and exhibited in that context. We are hopeful that we will see more of it in the coming days and that is what we were thinking about as we wrote our book Primal Fire.
It is not necessary, however, to find all five in every church, as these gifts are made to operate more translocally than in a single organization. It is not impossible to find all five in a larger organization, but we need not contain these gifts under the roof of one brand of church. The problem is not so much that Jesus isn’t giving these gifts to His church, but that the church is not equipped to function in unity in a given region where those gifts are given out. The problem is not with the Giver, but with the recipients. As a result the gifts end up rarely touching one another. Part of that problem is that the leaders themselves tend to not appreciate the other gifts because of the differences mentioned below.
How are you seeing or not seeing great development of APEST in your ministry context?
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