In The Eye of the Storm

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                                  Part II                      Printer Friendly
The Second Phase of the Church
Corporate Relationship Concept

Chapter 7A

God Gives Leadership Gifts
to Equip the Saints

Apostle

First of all, apostles are here today. As described in the last chapter, God is restoring apostleship to today's church, and it is not a first-century phenomena as the church often has been taught during the past 2,000 years. Although it was only a few short decades after the early church began that the curious phenomena occurred of apostles dropping away and bishops taking over, I believe it was always God's intention for the apostles to design and engineer the church and continue to lay the foundations.

     Without a master designer, the church falters. I understand this dynamic well, because as an inventor and designer by trade, I know that if a customer has problems with a machine I designed, it is probably one of two reasons. Either there is a defect in design of that particular machine or the owner of the machine needs more training in order to use the machine properly. The apostles job is to expertly engineer the designing of the machine (church) so that it can be used to the optimum capacity.

     It is an apostle's gifting to look at a group of people and know how to adapt that culture and people to the gospel. It is his business to look carefully at the hunger and needs of the people and then design a working body.

      He will go to the believers meeting in a particular region and help them organize according to the fruits evident in leaders' lives. He will lay hands on a person to ordain him to oversee the group and fit other people, like pieces to a puzzle, expertly into church operations, according to their anointings. The tremendous vision God gives to an apostle allows him to know God's plan for His people so that he can discern how to utilize all the functions of the church for the honor and glory of the Lord Jesus Christ.

     One of an apostle's jobs is knowing how to plan a strategy for mission work which is adaptable to a particular culture. His experience in planting churches and anointing of God within him enables him to plan a strategy for a new region or culture and know when leaders are ready to be incorporated into the life of the church. In this way, others can be trained and equipped to do the work of ministry, and the work is reproduced.

The Training of an Apostle

     How does an apostle become an apostle? He is raised up within the family group setting. The apostles in the New Testament were first disciples of Jesus. This family of disciples later became apostles after three years of training. Jesus went to heaven satisfied that He had trained twelve replicas of Himself to carry on His work.

Paul, too, was first a disciple who witnessed to the churches. He then was a helper to Barnabas. During this time, he became a master builder and designer of the church and was sent out as an apostle. All this required training. Spiritual growth took place, and then after much experience, an apostle was raised up to design and plant more churches.

Today we need the apostles' work now more than ever so that the church can be properly designed to accommodate the tremendous harvest to be reaped in the last days. The early rains, or seed-planting time in the church, took place during the book of Acts in the New Testament. Today we are in the latter rains or harvest time, so there is a tremendous need for the church to be designed properly—with apostles—in order to help bring in the coming huge harvest.

A Group of Twelve Apostles Work Together

     Apostolic ministry is not an individual work, but a collective work. I believe a group of 12 apostles should work together to cover churches within a region of the world and be accountable to each other. There is a reason for that. Jesus started with twelve disciples who became apostles. No one man received the credit for the work that was accomplished. When one leader failed the whole ministry did not collapse. He was simply replaced.

     In the book of Judges there were 12 tribes of Israel. In Revelation 21:10-14, John describes his vision of the heavenly Jerusalem, a city with a great wall consisting of 12 gates on which were inscribed with names of the 12 tribes. The foundations were inscribed with names of the 12 apostles. The foundation of this heavenly city is an example of God's design for the foundation of the church on earth.

     Throughout God's Word measurements and multiples of 12 are often represented, perhaps, according to Halley's Bible Handbook, "intended as a sort of dim photograph, given in the distant past, of what God was working toward." ⁸

     Today a group of 12 makes up a corporate body in the business world. Groups of 12 working together create think tanks, allowing minds to flow together in order to make corporate decisions. The same is true in the church. I believe God ordains a group of 12 apostles to work together to oversee a country or work so that they may be submitted to each other, and one person (apostle) need not make all the decisions.

     As we mentioned before, the apostles will look at a country and develop a strategy for its culture and peoples. They find the will of God and translate that will of God to a functioning operation. They make sure everyone is moving with the anointing of God to accomplish God's plan. In other words, they make sure the teacher, pastors, evangelists and others find their special place in the Body.

     Questions an apostle may ask are: "How can we win this group over to Christ? How do we release evangelists? How do we get the whole body of Christ functioning and healthy and working together as a unit?"

Apostle’s Job is Itinerant

     Apostles are itinerant and do not stay permanently in one location. They may have a base or headquarters, but their job is to go from place to place to see that the church is being properly built. They may help existing church structures return to apostolic foundations or help establish new Christian communities.

     When apostles follow the work of an evangelist by helping to establish new churches for the new believers, they will observe the new church group starting out, and temporarily help to administrate the church or churches until it is time to lay hands on leaders to ordain and release them into ministry. They will release an overseer to look after the entire group of cells in the area when they believe he is exhibiting and bearing fruits under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, thus knowing he is ready to have the greater responsibility of more cell groups.

     The apostles will also go house to house giving communion to the cell groups, and by this contact with the people, understand the condition of the church's overall climate. This will help them to design that particular church to the specifications needed for that group of people.

     After an apostle has designed a work and built a proper founda­tion, he will cover the people spiritually by bringing objective appraisal to the now established church's ongoing spiritual condition. Paul operated in this capacity through his letter writing to various churches and his occasional visits.

     It should be noted, that in order for an apostle to be effective, he must be received by the body of believers he is working with. If he is not received as an apostle, he cannot function, because the people will not embrace him as the "called out one," and he would not have the authority to make corrective changes. Paul spent much time in writing, particularly to the Galatians, claiming his apostleship in order to be received.

Strengths and Weaknesses

     An apostle's personality needs to be strong and decisive. He must know what God's plan is and move affirmatively while giving clarity and a sense of direction and anointing.

    Along with an apostle's strengths may also come weaknesses. Some pitfalls of an apostle may be;

·   to design the church or movement on past experiences. When Peter witnessed Jesus' transfiguration, he wanted to build three temples. But they would have been built according to Peter's past experiences. God wanted Peter to see that all the Old Testament prophecies found their fulfillment in the fact that Jesus is the Son of God—a new concept for Peter. An apostle must build a church toward the future. A church designed from past experiences is a monument to the past and becomes a form of idolatry.

·   to move ahead of the Spirit of God. Apostles have great vision for the future. A weakness may be that they get carried away by their own fantasies and fail to see that the people are not with them. If their people do not yet have the future picture, an apostle must be prepared to wait and remain in the anointing of the Spirit until the people are ready to move together.

·   to override the overseer/bishop's responsibility. An overseer's responsibility is similar to that of a captain of a ship. Local churches or cell groups are his area of responsibility, and he cannot function properly if the apostle remains in the new Christian community he helped design and tries to make local decisions for the church. If an apostle stays beyond the time appointed by the Holy Spirit, he loses his apostolic anointing and begins to function as an overseer in the church.

     The apostle must stick to what he does best—designing the over-all work and then moving on, while still giving spiritual covering to the work so there can be unity and peace flowing throughout. It's the apostle's job to point out problem areas and give solutions to those problems, but the overseer has the liberty to respond to or ignore the advice.

     God has a much greater vision for apostolic ministry than what the church has experienced to date. It is very unlikely that any local expression of Christ's body will grow into the full measure of the stature of Jesus Christ by ignoring the gift of the apostle. Apostles are important in aiding all the other ministry gifts so that the saints can be built up while the apostles lay a solid foundation for the church, giving it directional authority.

     The job of an apostle could be summed up by saying that his desire is to see everyone in the church released in their talents and giftings so God can be glorified! Ephesians 4:11-13 says the apostles are needed for the building up of the Body until we all come to the unity of faith. Apostles are careful foundation layers, and believers will build on these foundations for years to come.

     Apostles are people of vision sent by God to build and rebuild the church today. Their ministry is vital to the effective functioning of the body of Christ. Paul told the Corinthians, "God has appointed in the church, first apostles ... "

What God has appointed, let us also set apart and not set aside.

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