A Rising Tide Lifts All Ships: Part 2
In part one, we explored the ongoing revolution of leadership in the world that flows from the ascended Lord Jesus. He continues to call and send as one of his key ascension activities the equipping leaders of Ephesians 4:11: apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds and teachers---to equip God’s people for ministry in the church and in the world until we all reach unity, maturity and fullness in Christ.
We need a lot more of what Jesus actively brings to the leadership of his church today. The first disciples and leaders never forgot Jesus was actually leading them and the Bride he so loved. It was a Person-centered movement for John and Peter and Matthew and Paul…Jesus leading and shaping them based on his actual life and example, and them receiving constant revelation through the Holy Spirit whom the Father and Son had sent to them personally at Pentecost. It was not about good principles or programs or policies. It was a Person they loved and followed daily, and introduced more and more people to that same living relationship.
Jesus has the capacity and ability in his resurrection and ascension to lead the global Christian movement up to this hour. He knows how to lead you and your church. His leadership example is the most loving, innovative, and empowering the world could ever see. Jesus is the founder of his own Kingdom of God gospel movement in all the earth. If from the beginning he led out brilliantly to be our model for ministry as the greatest New Testament apostle, greatest prophet, greatest evangelist, greatest shepherd and greatest teacher…how can the churches today be part of the expanding gospel movement globally if we shrink our actual leadership model?
Leading and developing the church today with 2/5ths or 3/5ths of the horsepower is like driving our cars around in only first gear, and sometimes even in reverse. You can get a little ways driving in a low gear (the engine and transmission do work that way by design), but it is not a fast or safe way to get to Chicago.
The dominant leadership model of the western church for decades (with roots in the Reformation 500 years ago) is the pastor-teacher centric model. That fact is revealed even in the installation liturgy for Ministers of Word and Sacrament in the Reformed Church in America. Leaders are installed as “pastors and teachers” of that congregation (even though the text is Eph. 4:11 and includes all five leadership roles from the New Testament.) My purpose here is not to examine that “problem” more, but to get to the solution side of the equation. Other resources have done incredible depth and breadth of research and teaching on the problem and solution side, most notably The Permanent Revolution by Alan Hirsch and Tim Catchim, 2012. The subtitle says it well: “apostolic imagination and practice for the 21st century church.” While Hirsch and Catchim certainly include a five-fold leadership model and wonderful pictures and graphs in the 305 page book, the focus delves most deeply into restoring the apostolic function to the church today for the sake of gospel movements and Kingdom growth.
Is that your motivation and experience…gospel multiplication movements and Kingdom growth? I find that those immersed in the practice of starting and growing the church in North America are far more embracing of the five-fold leadership paradigm…the need for apostolic function, the prophetic and the evangelist role is self-evident. But those who have mainly known the church shrinking in their day, or have embraced (even unconsciously) more of the survival/maintenance or addition mentalities about the church in North America, they can struggle sometimes to see the need for “leadership reformation”. Being reformed and ever reforming by the Word of God can land people on opposite sides of that necessary tension instead of both sides: Reformed established identity…or…ever reforming (without much concern for recent tradition and context). Better is to be both reformed and ever reforming, with the roots of the Reformation revival going back to Christ, Scripture and the New Testament church for consistent, pure fuel for the flames.
One professor of the New Testament pressed me with a good question about Scripture. He said, “But there is no evidence of a second generation apostle in the New Testament anywhere, right?” I said, “No, the apostle Paul is that evidence, and there are second, third and fourth generation apostles in the New Testament, many more than the original Twelve.” That discussion continued for awhile. Here’s the tricky part for even highly trained scholars in New Testament studies: paradigm blindness. You don’t see what you can’t see, until your mental map gets updated. Some folks are needing a GPS download yet to see the lay of the land clearly.
Let me try a step in that direction. Question: When did the “apostle Paul” become an apostle in the New Testament? Acts 9 at his conversion in Damascus, around 34 A.D? No. It can be precisely known if you are really looking. In Acts 13:1, Luke names five key equipping leaders in the growing, multicultural, urban church in Antioch: Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen, and Saul (Paul). They all are explicitly called prophets and teachers in Antioch. Here’s the text from verse 1-2: “In the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers….While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.’”
So Barnabas and Saul are sent off in the power of the Holy Spirit on their first missionary journey, in a pioneering church planting approach to plant the gospel concerning Jesus in unreached territories. This is around 46-48 A.D., twelve or more years since Saul’s conversion. It in on this first missionary journey, in Acts 14:4 and verse 14, that the Word of God says this: “The people of the city (Iconium) were divided; some sided with the Jews, and others with the apostles.” Verse four is clearly referencing the only two missionaries in that city, Barnabas and Saul. Verse 14 is explicit, in Lystra and Derbe: “But when the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of this, they tore their clothes and rushed out into the crowd….”
So Paul becomes an apostle by the Holy Spirit’s precise inspiration of Scripture about 12 years following his conversion. He was already in another equipping role as a prophet or teacher in Antioch when this expansion of his calling occurred. How did it happen? The Holy Spirit spoke to the leadership group of a potential parent church as they worshipped.
Is that a repeatable process with others then too? Sure. It certainly was true also for the apostle Barnabas. So how many apostles start showing up in Scripture if we are now at 15 already? The original Twelve trained by Jesus, then Matthias replaces Judas in Acts 1, and now two more here? That is an interesting question of how much ongoing ascension work Jesus is seen doing as the Holy Spirit confirms this on earth. We also see prophets like Silas and Agabus emerging after the ascension of Jesus, and Philip the evangelist, who had four daughters who were prophetesses.
But sticking with the emergence of second and third generation apostles, consider this listing below:
So, in summary:
First generation, circa 25-28 A.D.: The Twelve, plus Matthias (chosen from among the 72 sent by Jesus in Luke 10 in the same way as the first group of Matthew 10 apostles.)
Second generation, circa 29-45 A.D: James, Andronicus, Junias, and the other apostles mentioned in I Corinthians 15:7.
Third generation, circa 46-50 A.D.: Paul, Barnabas, Apollos, Silas.
Fourth generation, circa 51 A.D. and beyond: Timothy, Titus, other referenced by the 1st and 2nd Corinthians passages above.
The point of this exercise is to urge the idea that the momentum of the gospel in the New Testament “turning the world upside down” cannot be separated from the leadership design built into that movement by Jesus. When all the five-fold equipping leaders are mature and actively equipping the saints for ministry, the river of life gets a lot deeper as it goes.
Thankfully, there are dozens of books now and online assessment tools to help discover and develop the church’s five-fold leadership capacity today. We have opportunity for the tide to come in our churches and lift all the ships. https://5qcentral.com/
Finally, let me illustrate the idea of momentum in gospel movements with the physics equation P=MV. (Momentum equals mass times velocity.) Mass and Velocity have a multiplying, exponential relationship to one another. And both of them are made of two parts, so the following four components of a people movement have to be increased to see world-changing momentum generated.
M1: Volume—is the quantity of disciples of Jesus growing in your church or ministry?
M2: Density—is the quality of the disciples growing deep and wide in your group?
V1: Alignment—is the direction of your group clear and continually re-focused?
V2: Acceleration—is the speed of obedience and fearless application on the rise?