Five Gifts to the Church.

In Ephesians 4, Paul has a lot to say about the unity of the church

11 Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. 12 Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. 13 This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.

14 Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. 15 Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. 16 He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.

When we sat down with J.R. Woodward, we spent a good amount of time discussing the gifts Christ gave to the church in verse 11.

Apostle

If we were to do a word association, and I called out “apostle”, likely we would hear lots of things from people: “Paul”, “Peter”, “Mark”. I doubt we would hear “Me!”. I was taught that the apostles were people Jesus handpicked in person. That puts any of us out of the question – unless Jesus makes a surprise bodily experience in Portland, or Santa Cruz, or wherever.

But here Paul says this is a gift to the church, the church then and the church now. In your congregation there is an apostle. An apostle is someone who is thinking five years out. They have a good sense about where the church will be heading, and they invite people along the way to help it get there. They are inventive and entrepreneurial.

Prophet

Again, this is probably much different than what we were taught. Not everyone will have a person in his or her church who predicts the future. But, every church will have a prophet that calls us back to the heart of God. When the apostle in the church takes off with a big plan to plant twenty churches in the next five years, the prophet will remind them, “What about the poor? What about depth?”

The prophet can often point to times where what they said was clearly not their own wisdom – and likely whoever they spoke to didn’t like hearing what they had to say. Remember the Old Testament prophets, they were often ignored in their time, and they were often considered to be very annoying.

Evangelist

The evangelist in your church is drawn to those outside the church. They care deeply for people who wouldn’t call themselves followers of Christ, and desire to see them in life giving relationship with Him.

One of our elders is gifted this way, and he often says that the more he leans in to this role the more sacred his “secular life” becomes and the more secular his “sacred life” becomes. He is most in-tune with God when he is out in the world. If you have ever heard my dad talk about working in the military, you have heard him use similar language.

Unfortunately, there is rarely space on a ministry staff for the evangelist. They are the “community” or “singles” pastor, and if they are lucky they spend five hours a week with non-Christ followers.

Pastor

The pastor, surprisingly, is not often on the staff of a church either – especially when we start thinking larger churches of 1000 or more. It is often a different set of skills that is respected and looked for.

A pastor is deeply concerned with the people of his or her church. They spend their time meeting with people one on one, and they love to go deep with people. Mentoring and discipling are a given. Inviting the church to growth is a given.

Teacher

Finally! The one we all know and value in our pastors – or maybe better said: our spiritual leaders. The teacher is concerned with truth. They spend their time filtering messages and promoting the truth of who God is and the truth of who the church is. As we know, it is rare that what we experience is aligned very well with truth. I’ll leave it at this since we as a culture already place such a high value on our teachers.

Paul is clear, God gave these gifts to the church for the church: to make the church into a body of believers, equipped for His purpose in the world. Something important to point to at this point: everyone has at least one of these gifts. Do you know which you are? The ones I see in myself – and in this order – are prophet, apostle, and pastor. It’s interesting to see how these work together within me to inform the ministry I am doing at Evergreen.

One last interesting note, this is how the most recent addition to the team of elders was chosen. Each gift was represented on the team – Bob was an apostle, Chris was a pastor, Dustin was a teacher, Sarah was a prophet, Tina was a pastor, Chip was a teacher – the only piece missing was an evangelist. It would be wrong to say that Brian was chosen only because this is his main gifting (he has quite a bit to offer), but it was important to Evergreen to have a balanced leadership if it were to properly equip its people to be something to and for the city of Portland.

Raising Support.

Here comes the classic blog apology: I'm sorry I haven't been keeping up with this as often as I'd like to... It's true though! Once a few things happen, it becomes oppressive to consider the time it would take to input our experience into blog form. I think I need to be a snippeteer: short but sweet blogs a few times a week. How much more satisfying for the reader as well!

Here are three snippets you need to know:

Raising Support:

This has been a very personal experience for me, and I am glad for it. Part of being me has included a misconception of who I am and what people think of me. This may sound funny, but I get why people like me. I make funny jokes, I'm easy to talk to, I'll invite you to fun things, who knows, you may even find yourself introduced to your new favorite musician through me. But, if you take away what I do, you take away my felt sense of value. I feel like I've earned your friendship by being witty and fun to be around, and in that very thing I've distanced my value from my humanity, who I am. I'm a man who gets sad, needs a break, and longs for God in private. This man doesn't offer anything worthwhile, and so he must not be worthwhile. That's the feeling I find myself up against.

So, raising support has caused me to recognize this again and in new ways. Asking people to value my passions and desires for God and this community is asking them to find value in who I am rather than what I do. So it is scary, because I am asking people to value that thing in me that I find hard to value.

The truth I recognize about God is that He intimately values that piece of us more than anything else. It is in our desires, the ones we are proud of and the ones we wish to ignore, that God is truly present with us, calling us forward, calling us beloved. If it takes brushing up against my inability to get this in order to finally get it: I'm in. I'm glad in that sense for what raising support has been.

We've raised in the neighborhood of 350 dollars of committed, monthly support - with probably an additional 50 dollars a month in one time gifts. Thank you. If you've considered supporting, or would like to know more, give me a call: (831) 239-5145. This support is relational. It is about me telling you how my heart beats, and asking you if yours beats similarly. There is a piece of the truth I'm experiencing, God uses people to show us what is truly valuable: not what we do (although that is important), but who we are.


The Banyan Tree Family Tour:

This weekend, a group of musicians from Vintage Faith Church in Santa Cruz, CA rolled in to Portland and did a concert at our church. The music was great, but what truly spoke to those who came was the love they have for each other, and for what I am doing here in Portland. It was a real blessing to have a group of guys show how they care about the mission we as Christians are on all around the world. It was also great to stay up late catching up and enjoying the city, although my sleep schedule is now way off course.

J. R. Woodward and Ecclesia:

Today the staff sat down and spoke with J. R. for early four hours, sharing some of the joys and struggles of doing ministry in our contexts. He pastors a church called Kairos in West Hollywood that has flourished over the last few years: I think he mentioned that the average attendance is around 1000! For being an example of successful church planting, he was very down to earth and excited about the ministry we are about in the city of Portland.

It was great to talk about some forward thinking for our church. How can we become a church of people who engage God, community, and the world through spiritual practices? How can we become a church of people who speak into each other's lives? How can we be a church of people that can safely and positively confess to each other and hear their value? These thoughts are big, but the heart in all of it is seeing the people around us that we love experiencing live in the way of Jesus more fully. I love it, and find it hard to imagine doing anything else.