I wonder if you know how many times I sometimes have to rewrite what I write to you here! For many reasons. One of the most important reasons for this is that I have often found I did not write down enough of what the Lord wants me to say. This passage you are reading now is another such case.
I realized that what we read in Ephesians 4:11 to 16 is radically different and looks different from what you and I experience in the congregations around us.
Let me just quote these verses again:
“And these are the “gifts” that He “gave”: apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastors and teachers. His purpose in doing so was to equip the believers for their service and for the building up of the body of Christ. So we will all eventually come to the true unity in our faith and in our knowledge of the Son of God. Then we, his church, will be like a full-grown man, as perfect and mature as Christ. Then we will no longer be children; we will no longer be like waves tossed to and fro and carried about by every wind of false teaching as false teachers want to lead us astray by their cunning and cunning. No, we will remain in the truth in love and so grow up in every way into Christ. After all, he is the head, and from him the whole body grows. And the different parts of the body fit together and form a unity. Each one of them fulfills its function, and so the body builds itself up in love.”
Some of the relevant things you should notice are:
First, the “fivefold ministries” spoken of here never occur in just one person.
Practically, this means that in the congregation or family of believers in which you worship and serve the Lord locally, the “leader”, or “pastor”, or “reverend”, if they are one of these fivefold ministries, will function primarily as an apostle, or as a prophet, or as a teacher, or as a shepherd, or as an evangelist, and thus serve God’s people with the gifts that the Lord has given him or her. So please do not expect that one person to be this excellent preacher and teacher, and on top of that, to be this excellent shepherd with a shepherd’s heart!
That is why I feel so sorry for the “pastor” within the typical Reformed congregations, because from my 15 years of experience as an ordinary “pastor”, I know that the expectations according to the provisions of the church order, cause 60% of these pastors and their spouses to burn out or almost burn out somewhere in their ministry!
Secondly, it is important to note in these verses in Ephesians 4 that Jesus gave the fivefold ministries to function and minister within the ONE BODY, the ONE true Biblical Ekklesia.
Need I remind you that the church of the Lord Jesus that we see around us in our town or city or area, for example, here in South Africa, is a congregation of one of at least 30,000 different churches or denominations! And that each of them truly believes that they are the “only true church of Jesus,” where the full truth is taught!
Do you realize what spiritual dilemmas this belief causes?
Remember, each of these 30,000 different churches and denominations has its “own doctrine” and what they believe is right and according to the Bible. According to this, they train leaders to be able to serve in that specific group or part of the church of Jesus.
So, if you are not part of this faith group or theological conviction, you cannot simply serve within that part of the church.
This brings me back to what is written here in Eph. 4:11 to 16.
If my statement is correct, namely that the fivefold ministries are intended to function like the normal circulatory system of the body within the ONE BODY of Jesus, the above realities are going to have extremely serious consequences!
This is going to mean that because certain of the fivefold ministries are simply not going to be “allowed” to minister there – due to certain theological beliefs of that group in the Body of Jesus – the “blood”, life and spiritual nourishment just can’t always reach all the parts of the Body as Jesus wants it to!
Next time we’ll talk more.