five fold leadership
DESCRIPTION
A presentation that explains our approach to church leadership.TRANSCRIPT
The Place for Love, Hope & New LifeThe Place for Love, Hope & New Life
The Five FoldLeadership Model
Mission orientated churches require all five aspects of ministry Leadership on the
team. Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Shepherds, and Teachers, often referred to as APEST. However, when we look at
most churches the leaders who dominate are shepherds and teachers. What
happened to the other leadership types?
Introduction
During the time when Christianity dominated culture the church acquired a fundamentally non-missional posture. Mission outside of the institution was downplayed because everyone was seen to be a nominal Christian already. What was needed were pastoral and teaching ministries to care for and instruct the congregation, and to draw underdeveloped Christians back into the church on Sunday. These two functions eventually became the leadership offices in the church, and the other three roles listed in Ephesians 4 (apostles, prophets, and evangelists) faded away as largely unnecessary.
Introduction (cont’d)
The system of church leadership we inherited from the 4th to 8th century Church heavily favours maintenance and pastoral care, thus neglecting the church's larger mission and ministry.
Many churches seem to sideline people with more APE type gifts. This does not mean that apostolic, prophetic and evangelistic ministries have totally disappeared. There are many within the church who have managed to fill these roles but, by and large, these lacked formal recognition and they have tended to be exercised outside the context of the local church.
Introduction (cont’d)
For example, the work of St. Patrick and the Celtic movement, John Wesley, William Booth and many others are clearly of a different type than that of a shepherd-teacher. It is not hard to see how the exclusion of apostles, prophets, and evangelists gave rise to the development of parachurch and missionary organisations.
It is imperative that in the post enlightenment, post Christian, secular neo pagan world the church finds itself, we overhaul the status quo and return to a biblical basis for leadership that is as close to first century Christianity as we can make it.
Why Is This Important?
A mission orientated church requires pioneering, innovative, organisationally adaptive and externally focused leadership. Therefore we need more than a pastor and/or teacher leading a church. This means a five-fold understanding of ministry leadership.
We outline in the next slides each of the APEST roles, the core task of each and the impact when one dominates or works in isolation from the others.
Why Is This Important? (cont’d)
APOSTLES - extend the gospel
They ensure that the faith is transmitted from one context to another and from one generation to the next. They are always thinking about the future, bridging barriers, establishing the church in new contexts, developing leaders, and networking trans-locally. However, if you focus solely on initiating new ideas and rapid expansion, people and organisations can be left wounded. The shepherding and teaching functions are needed to ensure people are cared for rather than simply used.
Why Is This Important? (cont’d)
PROPHETS - know God's will.
They are particularly attuned to God and his truth for today. They bring correction and challenge the dominant assumptions we can inherit from the culture prevalent today. They insist that the community obey what God has commanded. They question the status quo. However, without the other types of leaders in place, prophets can become belligerent activists or, paradoxically, disengage from the imperfection of reality and become otherworldly.
Why Is This Important? (cont’d)
EVANGELISTS - recruit.
These infectious communicators of the gospel message recruit others to the cause. They call for a personal response to God's redemption in Christ, and also draw believers to engage the wider mission, of growing the church. However, evangelists in focusing on reaching those outside the church can neglect the maturing and strengthening of those inside.
Why Is This Important? (cont’d)
SHEPHERDS - nurture and protect.
They are the caregivers of the community, they focus on the protection and spiritual maturity of God's flock, cultivating a loving and spiritually mature network of relationships, making and developing disciples. However, shepherds can value stability to the detriment of the mission. They may also foster an unhealthy dependence between the church and themselves.
Why Is This Important? (cont’d)
TEACHERS - understand and explain.
Communicators of God's truth and wisdom, they help others remain biblically grounded to better discern God's will, guiding others toward wisdom, helping the community remain faithful to Christ's word, and constructing a transferable doctrine. Without the input of the other functions, teachers can fall into dogmatism or dry intellectualism. They may fail to see the personal or missional aspects of the church's ministry.
When all five of the above giftings are present, the church operates at peak performance. To
use Paul's terms, it "grows," "matures," "builds itself up," and "reaches unity in the faith."
Our Response
Because of our desire to have a distinctly mission orientated first century church leadership model at Mosaic, we have decided to implement APEST.
Therefore we are structuring the leadership to ensure that all five ministries are present on the team. Each member of the team represents one aspect of the fivefold model and is responsible for heading up the area of ministry.
Our Response (cont’d)
The Apostolic leader oversees the focus on the trans-local, missional, strategic and experimental issues facing the church. The Prophetic leader oversees the focus on listening to God, discerning His will for us, being aware of the social justice issues we could address and questioning the status quo of a multicultural church. The Evangelist oversees all areas of outreach. The Shepherd works to strengthen community, cell-groups, worship, counselling, recovery ministries and generally enhances the relational capacity of the church. The Teacher creates contexts for learning and develops the love of wisdom and understanding through Bible studies and theological discussion groups.
Our Response (cont’d)
An example of how this works in practice is as follows. The Apostle presses for the need to galvanise the community around mission and the extension of God's kingdom. The Prophet challenges just about everything and asks probing questions about how God fits into our grand schemes. The Evangelist always emphasises the need to bring people to faith s well as expanding the reach of the gospel. The Shepherd inevitably expresses concerns about how the community can remain healthy amid change. The Teacher tries to discern the validity of any new idea from Scripture and history.
Our Response (cont’d)
For a five fold leadership model to operate effectively it is important that each member is encouraged to have an awareness of all the areas of gifting so that they can value each others perspective.
When apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers are working together, a wonderful missional environment is created. Not only is this a more biblically faithful model, it also provides a theologically rich, organically
consistent, and organisationally comprehensive framework to help the church
become more missionally effective and culturally agile. We feel the time has come for the church in the West to rediscover the lost potential of biblical leadership that has been
dormant for too long.
