Description
In this series we will take a deep dive into the Fivefold Gifts from Ephesians 4. Should all of these gifts be functioning in the Church or have some been discontinued? Are these Five Equipping Gifts primarily positions or offices in the Church or are they more like functions? What would it look like if all five were functioning in a local church? Is this even possible in the 21st Century? To answer these and other questions we will lay a foundation of what authority should look like in the body of Christ and what role leadership is to play in the body of Christ. Practical tools will be provided to help the listener identify their own gift mix, as well as that of their team. The Organizational Flow Chart and Life Cycle will also help in implementing all five gifts in your ministry.
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Video Script
Episode Series Intro: Welcome and Intro
Hi there once again. Well if this is your first series, welcome, it’s great to have you aboard. If you are a regular viewer and listener, it’s great to have you back. In this series we are going to do a bit of a deep dive into the five-fold equipping gifts from Ephesians 4. Now before you think this may not be for you, let me encourage you that this will be very practical and you may be surprised to find out that you too have been gifted to serve by equipping others.
Overview
Now I am fully aware that some listeners, and you may be one of them, may think this topic is for someone else. If you are doing this study as part of our Christian Leadership Institute you have a sense of a call to ministry and so already have identified one or more of these equipping gifts from Ephesians 4 in your life. Or you may already be in what we sometimes call full time ministry and are leading a team. But for most of us, the application may not seem as obvious. I hope in this introductory episode you’ll begin to see that we all have a ministry in the Body and you may be surprised to discover that God has also gifted you in some way, large or small, to invest in others and equip them.
As I have taught pastors and church leaders around the world over the last few decades, I have noticed that our understanding and approach to using these five gifts has a huge impact in the church. But while these gifts are usually associated with leadership, I hope to expand our view of leadership and see how God may want to use each of us. Since we are all called to be ministers where God has placed us, I believe the approach I will take will be a healthy way to discuss what we call “ministry.” My hope is that it will motivate you and enlarge your understanding of these equipping gifts and then apply how this will affect whatever ministry God has entrusted to you.
In our Discipling thru Intentional Relationships and Mentoring thru Intentional Relationships Guides we discuss the “gifts” in some detail and provide tools to help the mentoree discover the gifts that God has given them and how to use them based on godly character. But we never had the space there to take a deep dive into the foundational equipping gifts as listed in Ephesians 4. So I’ve put together a workbook and seminar several years ago to focus specifically on these gifts, and this is what this series will be based upon.
The episodes of this series are based upon the three chapters in my workbook, “The Fivefold Ministry.” The first five episodes cover Chapter 1 “A Biblical Model”. In these beginning episodes we will discuss how Jesus’ model of servant leadership should govern the application of these gifts as well as what authority in the Body should actually look like. Some of this may seem a bit academic or theoretical, but it will be a very important foundation for the rest of the series. Then in episodes 6-10 we will discuss specific individual applications of these gifts and see how these gifts should functions within leadership in the church. Spoiler alert, it is not about “boss-hood” but “servanthood.” Finally, in Episodes 11-16 I will provide some tools to help you apply these principles within a local church.
Over the decades of my own ministry — which began as a youth pastor in the 1980s, and then being involved in several church plants—eventually moving to other countries as a cross-cultural missionary teacher — my thinking on this topic has gone through a bit of transition. Over the last couple decades, specifically, I have been able to teach these principles in seminars as well as in consultations with church teams within various cultural context.
It is true that we all build upon the work of others and this has also been true for me. I was influenced way back in the day by Snyder’s book from the 1980s, The Problem with Wineskins, which was foundational to my thinking on the need for structural change in the church to realign with good theology. While I was working on my doctorate, Schein’s book on organizational culture and Senge’s book on systems thinking also influenced my understanding of how important structure, or to use a biblical concept, “wineskins” can be applied within our ministries.
Other scholar’s research on headship has influenced me, as well as Patrick’s Johnstone’s outline of ministry structures. Of course, there were many others along the way. So I have been thinking of this topic for many years before I was introduced to some of Alan Hirsch’s work on the subject, particularly his book, 5Q. So while my spin may be unique, as I put these various streams together, I am definitely standing on the shoulders of others before me.
How we got here
In 2019 our MCNet team, or Ministry Coaching Network, met in Wittenberg for our international consultation. Having lived in Berlin, which is only about an hour and a half away, I had been to this city many times. As we know, Luther’s focus was on the return to a theology of salvation through faith rather than through the church. His other emphasis was a return to the first century theology of the “priesthood of all believers.” However, there was little, if any, real reformation of the ecclesiastical wineskins, of the church structures, the “how” of ministry. But as Jesus taught, if we do not renew the wineskins, then the new wine will be spilt on the ground. I believe this lack of focus on the wineskins means that some of Luther’s “new wine” over the long haul ended up not being implemented as effective as it could have been. Just one man’s opinion.
As I see it, the Protestant Church carried on with many of the same church forms from the previous one thousand years. This was reflected in a focus on church positions and offices that were mostly patterned after the institutionalized church that developed after Constantine in the early part of the fourth century. Instead of creating wineskins that reinforced the new truth or new wine, the “priesthood of all believers,” it seems the Church doubled down on clergy/laity divisions and I believe this has directly impacted our understanding of the fivefold ministry gifts of Ephesians 4. So in this series this is what we want to focus on.
Do you agree or disagree with this assessment of the Reformation? Why or why not?
Definitions and Explanations
As I outlined before the break, we want to discuss in this series the fundamental way we understand the relationships in the body of Christ and how this affects how we use our gifts. As Snyder and others have pointed out, this outward structure, or wineskin, is important and in my opinion one of the misplaced opportunities of the Protestant Reformation. Yet while new forms are needed, without inward transformation all that happens is that we create new forms rather than increasing the capacity of the Church to fulfill it’s true mission. This transformation will need to begin with a change in our thinking, and this happens as our mind is renewed through the Word.
This renewal process is where we will begin in the first few episodes. I hope you’ll hang in there with me as I lay out a biblical foundation for Christian leadership. If you have been with us in series, you’ll recall that leadership is not about position, but serving others with our gifts. It’s not about “boss-hood,” but “servanthood.” We will then discuss how leadership in this community of believers is to be quite different from those in other institution in our society. We need to begin there, since we usually think of the fivefold gifts as related to leadership. So we will look at them through the lens of what Paul was really meaning in this passage. So to begin with then, I need to provide some explanation as to a basic definition or understanding of each of the fivefold equipping gifts. For our purposes here I will keep the more traditional view of five equipping gifts rather than combining the pastoral and teaching.
I am going to describe these gifts slightly different than you may have studied in the past, but if you hang in with me, you’ll see that this is what I believe to be true to the biblical text, as well as provide an approach that will foster healthier relationship within the community of believers.
In Ephesians 4:11-12 Paul writes, “So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up.” So lets briefly look at each of these with new glasses. The first is the apostolic gifting. Literally, this means “sent one” and relates to the central mission of the Church. It is a pioneering function of the church and has the overall purpose of aligning the wineskin of the church to fulfill its purpose. The prophetic gifting is a function that focuses on maintaining the covenantal relationship with God and each member of the church, as well as an organizational perspective for the whole Church to keep its covenantal focus. Those with this gifting tend to emphasis justice, righteousness, and holiness in the Church.
The evangelistic function emphasizes the proclamation of the Good News which is the core message of the Church. The primary focus of this gift is to communicate this message across all cultural, ethnic and socio-economic segments of society. The gift we likely have heard the most discussed is the pastoral function, as it is typically referred to with regards to the position of a church pastor. This function in the Church seeks to maintain healthy relationships and provides and protects individual members, as well as the organization as a whole. Its commitment is to spiritual growth, discipleship, and health, within the context of a caring community. The final gift that Paul mentions here is that of teaching. This gift is primarily concerned with wisdom and understanding and ensuring that truth is being taught at all levels of the community. This is more than just academic knowledge, but a deep desire that wisdom will be transformative in the daily lives of each member.
I understand that this may be a bit broader of a definition than you are used to, but in the next episodes I will unpack and explain each of these descriptions.
Explain your view of these equipping gifts and your experiences.
Some Resources
As I wrap up this introductory episode, I should mention that in referring to the five gifts — apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers — I will use the terms, “equipping gifts,” “fivefold ministry gifts” or “functions” rather interchangeable, so don’t get too hung up on the term. We have also created some resources that you will find helpful. This includes a “Comprehension Assessment,” as well as a “Personal Assessment” to help you evaluate your own fivefold gifting mix. As we get deeper into the study you may also want to access the Assessment tools that will help you evaluate your gift mix as a team, as well as view the equipping gifts within the “Ministry Flow Chart” and “Organizational Life Cycle.” But we’ll get to all that in due time.
In our next episode we will dig a bit deeper into the actual text in Ephesians, as well as provide a bit of context as to how we got to our current understanding of the Fivefold Ministry and how this may differ from the meaning in the actual biblical text. So it’s going to be a great time, it’s going to be a great series and so I hope you’ll be able to join me.