By Bill Kierce
I have long held the opinion that organizations are like human beings with respect to genetic composition. As humans, we possess a unique combination of self-replicating material, known as DNA, that distinguishes us from others. In much the same way, organizations possess a unique genetic code that can be traced to the origins of their conception and birth. Why else would four churches occupy adjacent property along a one-mile stretch of road? One is Presbyterian and another Baptist, situated next to a Methodist congregation that is next door to a Lutheran church. I’m often tempted to shout at them as I drive by, “Why don’t you listen to Jesus’ prayer in John 17 and just combine your efforts?” Then I realize it would be somewhat like giraffes, elephants, zebras, and gorillas living in the same cage at the zoo. Hold on to this thought. We will come back to it.
Several years ago, my children gave me a health and ancestry testing kit called 23 and Me for Father’s Day. All I need to do is spit in the tube, send it to a lab in California, and in a matter of weeks, I will know my specific genetic composition and maybe even a few relatives I haven’t known about. As a human species, we are products of our physical ancestry. We cannot change our genetic code. It is our nature. From a human perspective, we are also formed by the environment in which we are nurtured. It is the same way with Christian disciples. In Romans 6:6, Paul says that at the cross our old nature was (past tense) put to death with Christ, while Peter reminds us that we are (present tense) “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4 ESV). As followers of Jesus who now possess his DNA through new birth (John 3:3–6), we are nurtured by mentors, in small groups—what John Wesley called “bands”—and as participants in a healthy local church (see Rom. 12:5; 1 Tim. 2:2).
According to Ephesians 4:11–16, among the instruments God uses to grow us up as mature disciples are five gifts that Paul identifies as critical to a fully functional church: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors (shepherds), and teachers. These are often referred to as “five-fold ministries.” The spiritual gifting and nature of their function is unique. While there may be some overlap of gifting, a pastor and a prophet are simply not wired the same way. There has been much debate in church history about the roles these persons play and the relationships between them. Some theologians claim that Ephesians 2:20 suggests that apostles and prophets are cessation gifts, given only to establish the early church and removed once the foundation of post-resurrection Christianity was laid. However, there is no Scripture that states this directly, and an honest reading of church history tells us otherwise. Others suggest that the term apostle, meaning “sent one,” only applies to those who witnessed to the resurrection of Jesus through personal experience. This could apply to the Apostle Paul, who met Christ on the road to Damascus in Acts 9, but how does it apply to Barnabas, who is called an apostle in Acts 14:14 but never personally encountered the risen Christ? No, the apostle is not a temporary dispensation of office or role, given only to the infant Church.
The operational giftings of apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, and teacher is essential for the body of Christ in nurturing fully mature believers in any age. Apostolic gifts operate through persons empowered by the Holy Spirit in entrepreneurial settings. Apostles establish faith communities in places where the church doesn’t yet exist. It is understandable that the Protestant movement quickly sought to distance itself from the so-called “apostolic” Roman church after the Reformation in 1517, leading to an ongoing denial of these gifts in the life of the church. However, has anyone since the apostles Paul and Barnabas demonstrated the charismata (gifts) of spiritual entrepreneurship more than John Wesley? In fact, Wesley believed that the reason these gifts were thought to be extinct was because the church, Catholic and Protestant, had become so institutionalized as to not desire them any longer. God help us! The manifest truth is that apostles abound, whether recognized or not, faithfully planting churches around the world or by multiplying believers in local communities through networks of house churches or multi-site strategies.
Consider prophets. They are not foretellers, or predictors of the future, as some might describe Isaiah or Ezekial. They are forth-tellers, delivering the Word of God with a depth of passion that is seldom politically correct or mindful of personal safety. Simply to preach is not prophetic. But to preach prophetically is more than preaching. And it isn’t particularly pastoral. My early mentor and friend, British preacher Leonard Ravenhill, was a prophet if there ever was one. So was Keith Green, who challenged an entire generation of Christian youth to radical obedience through his music and preaching. The prophet calls a dying church to experience the awakening power of the Spirit and to align itself again with God’s redemptive purpose. Churches and nations need prophets.
That brings us to the evangelist. Few would dispute that the Holy Spirit has gifted the church with evangelists over the last two millennia. Primary evidence is found in the ministries of people such as Saint Patrick in the fifth century, Saint Boniface in the eighth century, George Whitefield in the eighteenth century, D. L. Moody in the nineteenth century, and Billy Sunday, H. C. Morrison, Billy Graham, and Harry Denman in the twentieth century, among countless others with names not known to us. When Dennis F. Kinlaw started the Francis Asbury Society in 1983, his primary desire was that we would be a society of evangelists spreading the message of justifying and sanctifying grace around the world. With all else FAS has endeavored to do in the last forty years in publishing and academics, we are fundamentally evangelistic. It’s in our DNA. I hear often from detractors who claim that itinerant evangelism is not necessary or effective in the contemporary church. Is it possible that they may really be suggesting, like Wesley, that they consider the church too sophisticated and self-sufficient to need the evangelist? If what they are decrying is a traveling preacher’s solo goal of keeping a calendar booked with four-day “revivals,” I would say “amen.” But when the Holy Spirit works through a person uniquely gifted as an evangelist, souls are born. Church systems and programs don’t produce new birth. The Reformation supposedly taught us that. The best of a church’s well-intended process devoid of the Holy Spirit’s agency only delivers spiritual still births. Certainly, the evangelist may be a Sunday School teacher or youth minister that serves as a mid-wife in the birth process. Often the best evangelists are laypersons. But the church is not capable of conferring salvation upon individuals. The gift of evangelist is given to the church but operates through individuals in the church. This is a distinction that is often neglected.
Therefore, for FAS to be an effective expression of our organizational DNA and our spiritual gifting, we are called to nurture evangelists. We cannot afford to do this in isolation or in competition with other gifts God has given the church. As a result, we seek to partner with like-minded ministries, academic institutions, churches, and denominations to support the growth and development of apostles and prophets, as well as pastors and teachers, celebrating that the church needs all of us to be fully equipped for its ministry in the world. Just as the foot cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of thee” (1 Cor. 12:15 ESV), and as the gorilla cannot say to the zebra, “I have no need of thee,” neither may the teacher nor the prophet nor the pastor nor the evangelist say, “I have no need of thee.” Only as we encourage one another, with each part working properly (see Eph. 4:16; 1 Thess. 5:11), will the church “attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature adulthood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13 ESV).