Shaping of Things to Come Part 3

From page 12 of The Shaping of Things to Come:

“By apostolic we mean a mode of leadership that recognizes the fivefold model detailed by Paul in Ephesians 6 [sic].” I venture to guess from the context that they meant Ephesians 4. Also, ‘apostle’ means messenger, and would fit well with the ‘missional’ definition of church the authors, Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, advocate.

“It abandons the triangular hierarchies of the traditional church…” (which would be, I suppose, a ‘senior pastor’ overseeing elders or associate pastors who oversee the congregation – or some more complicated model based on this) “…and embraces a biblical, flat-leadership community…” Flat-leadership community is an awesome way of describing the associate elders depicted in the Bible. Several qualified men with different gifts weave their gifts together in a mutually discipling, teaching, learning, and accountability community to form an umbrella of unified leadership, oversight, and protection of the church. In this there is no ‘buck stops here,’ no ‘lonely at the top,’ no competition, and no one man shouldering the world of expectations a church has for its leader.

“…that unleashes the gifts of evangelism, apostleship, and prophecy as well as the currently popular pastoral and teaching gifts.” I want to say that the word ‘unleashes’ is exactly what I discovered while leading the spiritual gifts study last year. Proper implementation of church unleashes all of the gifts, many of which are suppressed in the bottom-heavy leadership and institutional structure of the traditional church.

I would argue on the Greek, however, that pastoral is coupled with teaching, as indicated in some translations “pastor-teacher” leaving Paul’s description as the four-fold model of leadership.

To God be all glory.