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.
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