You can’t make footprints in the sands of time with your butt, and who wants to make butt prints in the sands of time?” – Unknown [A slogan for Apostles]
As we start to see a restoration of the five equippers in Ephesians 4 come to reality in the missional church, including the APE’s, and as we re-imagine how to approach leadership, certain questions arise. What does an Apostle do? What is their role? How are we to understand the nature of an Apostle?
To understand the role of an apostle it is first helpful to understand the nature of the missional church. Jurgen Moltmann gives us some help here, in that he enables us to recognize that the starting point for mission is not the church, but God himself. Mission is grounded in the very being of God. He says,
“It is not the church that has a mission of salvation to fulfill in the world; it is the mission of the Son and the Spirit through the Father that includes the church.”
In other words, there is mission because God is a missionary God.