by John White

Dear Church,

The following is my contribution to the New Testament Church Planters discussion group that I am a part of. (Anyone can join - see the address below). The current thread concerns the definition and ministry of apostles. I am making the argument that in the early church there was great diversity in the ministry of apostles and that we should expect the same today.

This is important because if we are going to see a million house churches planted there will need to be thousand of these apostles (church planters). I think we will be surprised at some of the people God will call to function in this way. (Might even be some of you!)

John

Many thanks to you, Link, for raising this important subject. I appreciate your good questions and thorough approach to the subject. Also, greetings to Dick Scoggins. I've appreciated your ministry from a distance for a number of years. Seems to me that you moved into this realm of house churches long before it had even occurred to many of us. And you did it in a way that was not excessively angry at the IC (now that you know what that means).

I would like to bring up the issue of hermeneutics (the principles for interpreting or understanding Scripture) as we continue to discuss the concept of apostles. By this, of course, I mean seeking to understand Scripture in it's historical and grammatical context.

It seems to me that because Paul's epistles play such a huge role in our written New Testament, we almost unconsciously tend to make him the dominant and solitary focus of the first 40 years of the church. Paul becomes the central figure from which we develop most of our theology and practice. (Oh, and, by the way, there were other leaders like Peter and James but we treat them as rather secondary.)

Of course, when we stop to put ourselves into the historical context of those first 40 years we realize that Paul wasn't the solitary central figure. He was certainly important but he operated mostly out on the periphery with the Gentiles. The center point of the early church was Jerusalem and James and Peter were at least as important as Paul. Consider how this hermeneutical insight might bear on our discussion of apostles.

1. "Apostles, by definition, plant churches only in 'new territory'." Certainly this would be true of Paul as an apostle to the Gentiles but what about Peter (and perhaps the majority of other apostles on the earth at that time) who was an apostle to the Jews (Gal. 2:8). Who were the Jews and what did it mean to be "an apostle" to them?

The Jews were God's people. They had a covenant relationship with Yahweh. They believed in the Scriptures. They attended "worship service" every week. Being an apostolic church planter with these people was quite different from being an apostolic church planter with pagan Gentiles.

Consider possible implications of Peter's apostolic ministry for us today. Perhaps there are parallels between the Jews of the First Century and church goers of today. (I am not saying that today's church has replaced the Jews.) Church goers have some sort of belief in God. They have some sort of understanding of the Scriptures. They attend "worship services" on some sort of regular basis. Etc.

Are many of the church goers not in need of renewal? Do they not need to hear about genuine New Testament church life (and maybe even hear about Jesus again)? Is there not a need for perhaps thousands of apostles to modern church goers? As in the First Century, this may be some of the most fertile ground for planting house churches. Should we overlook this ground because of a perhaps mistaken belief that apostles always must go to "new" territory? (This doesn't even address Barna's estimate of 10 million Christians who are no longer church goers. They consider themselves Christians but have given up on church.)

2. "Apostles, by definition, never stay in one place. They are always traveling." Now an apostle is, by the definition of the word, a "sent one". But Jesus never gave further definition to the specifics of being "sent". We don't know how far they were sent or how long they stayed. We have derived most of our principles from perhaps the most extreme apostle of the early church - Paul. Probably no other apostle traveled as much and as far as he did. Praise God that Paul did what he did but let's not make him the sole model for apostolic ministry.

On the other hand, consider James. While the evidence is not conclusive, an argument can be made that he was an apostle (1 Cor. 9:5). As far as we know, he never left Jerusalem. It is hard to imagine that he didn't plant and "father" churches in that city. He was likely a "sent one". He just wasn't sent very far.

All of this is to say that most likely the church in general and the ministry of the apostle in particular was probably quite fluid during the first 40 years. Apostles were understood to be servants who were sent to plant and father churches. Beyond that, there was great diversity as to how it was done, where it was done and to whom it was done. Reexamining this historical context will lead us to look to Paul as "a" model and not "the" model.

As we think about planting a million house churches in the U.S. in the next decade, there will need to be thousands of people functioning as apostles. I believe we will need to enjoy and affirm the diversity of those apostles. Some will be apostles to completely unreached groups (the Mong? people). Others may be apostles to the Presbyterians (as a former Presbyterian, I'm not sure if they are an unreached people group or not). Some may travel widely (Robert Fitts comes to mind). Others may focus on a city or region (I think of Kevin Rains in Cincinnati or Joe Boyd in Las Vegas). And, we haven't even started talking about women apostles! (My understanding is that 70-80% of the church planters in China are women.)

Let's pray for (Luke 10:2) and encourage the same diversity of apostlic church planters as the early church did.

John White
House Church Coach
Denver, CO

www.dawnministries.org/globalministries/northamerica/johnwhite/index.htm

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 17th, 2005 at 6:45 pm and is filed under Biblical Leadership, Church Structure, Evangelism / Discipleship, House to house community, Reformation/ Revival. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.