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To hear my recent sermon on this topic, click here:  How Jesus Operates in the Body

I give a lecture to our church planters on apostolic ministry.  I’m asked lots of questions about it by young church planters.  There is a huge amount of interest in this.  It makes sense, I see the emerging generation of church planters talking more about church multiplication out of their local church than any group so far.  My generation talked about church planters, the previous generation talked about denominations and church planting, the current about church planting networks – but the emerging generation talks about their church being a church planting center.  This is a huge shift in thinking and holds the seeds for a potential explosive movement of church planting in the West. 

1. You cannot talk about being apostolic and ignore the other four gifts.
All 5 gifts, apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers are critical for movement to happen.  I don’t care for approaches that try to straight jacket people into a particular gift – there is no doubt we have leanings.  I’ve been told by countless people I’m “apostolic” for the past 20 years!  But some days I’m more evangelistic, some days more pastoral, some days more teacher, some days more prophetic . . . . It’s not primarily a leadership model as much as it is the natural operational model of the body of Christ.  All 5 need to be present and operating to make disciples and spark movements.  I’ll write more on this later – what is critical is that as Ephesians 2:20 says the church is “built on the foundation of Apostles & Prophets”.  In the West we’ve built it on teaching and pastoring – this is why we’ve not talked much about or needed the 5-fold.  But for a church to truly be missional and move forward it is impossible without apostolic leadership.  This is why we have huge churches with phenomenal preaching and small groups to assimilate people but no real forward motion of the church beyond the Sunday event. 

2. You cannot talk about apostolic leaders apart from apostolic churches. 
I am suspect of people who want the title for themselves.  The point is for the church to be apostolic.  God’s will is for his church.  The challenge for pastors in studying this is not to use it as a “leadership” tool or platform but to be the servant of the church or the body of Christ.  The only personality the church should be built around is that of Jesus. 

3. You cannot talk about apostolic leaders apart from the body of Christ.
As St. Bernard has said, Jesus has 2 bodies.  His physical body that he gave for us, and his spiritual body, which is the church – the body of Christ.  God’s will is to raise up apostolic churches.  Christ is the head and we are the members of his body operating at his command.  This is why we make disciples that “hear and obey” versus “Learn, grow, and go.” 

4. You cannot talk about apostolic ministry in a Western context.
I used to not understand this because the only function of the western church was for the teacher and pastor – and we had the evangelist come in and do his thing to everyone who needed Jesus.  But when I looked at the New Testament church, the early church, and became so connected to the global church it changed everything in how I saw it.  I was not alone, our church was not alone – quite the contrary, we have been playing catch up with the global church ever since I connected – and it is very apostolic. 

5. Apostolic is more than church planting. 
Most apostolic leaders and churches multiply churches – but not all church planting is apostolic.  It’s about influence, initiation, courage.  If you look at historic “apostolic” leaders there was far more than just multiplying churches.  There were doors that they would go through that prepared the way for others to follow through.  To tie apostolic to church planting alone does a great disserve to the understanding of the functionality of the body of Christ. 

I’ll be writing some the next couple of weeks on this and you can hear all the sermons at Northwoodchurch.org at the media section beginning with “How the Body Operates.” 

There are not many good resources on this currently – but the best I’ve found so far is Alan Hirsch’s writings on this in Forgotten Ways, Sam Soleyn at Soleyn.com, and the best book is by David Devinish called Fathering Movements Motivating Missions – it’s brilliant but not out yet – I just did the endorsement and it will be out in a few months.  There are other books but they tend to be more populist in approach.  There is also a new web-site ApostleFarm.com that my friend Billy Mitchell is doing.  Oh yes, and you can’t beat the book of Ephesians!  I also have my sermons on this blog at northwoodchurch.org under media.