Apostles

Back in 2004, I was in Vegas for my brother's wedding. There was a lull in the activities, so while John napped, I did some research.

I had taken some grief from someone in my church about saying that Jesus is the only way to salvation. So I sat down to read the Gospels and see what it said, with an eye towards understanding Jesus's self-understanding as the only way to salvation.

Short version: it's everywhere, and if you take it away, Jesus doesn't have much to say. Jesus just is-- whether we like it or not, seems nice to us or not-- the only way to salvation.

Well, in our Future Traveler's meeting last week in Tacoma, Alan Hirsch was talking about the apostolic gift in the church. He said something like you can find out what an apostle is by what they say about themselves, or is said about them. You have to go there because there is not really a definition of apostle given in one place.




So, today I took a cursory look at what Acts and the epistles say about apostles. Too cursory to say much, except that it is a terrible job description. You'd never take it if you knew what it meant going in. The key verse sticking out at the moment is 2 Corinthians 2:16: “who is equal to such a task?”

I will be working on this off and on for a while I bet, and I will try to keep you updated.

Some of where this is going is that Ephesians 4:11 lays out 5 gifts for the church, Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist, Pastor, Teacher. But churches ordain pastors. And pastors do some teaching. We don't really know what to do with the evangelistic function, so we wish they'd shut up. We have reduced prophets to people who speak out about political/cultural issues, and we only like them if they are in our party. And apostles, well...these guys have the task of guarding the doctrine and “sentness” of the Church, and they just won't let us do whatever we want to do.

There is a lot of inertia to overcome... 1700 years of the church looking for pastors and teachers. In some sick way, we have done ok functioning on 40% of the gifting the Spirit has for us!