Foundations of Christian Leadership, Student Workbook, SW07

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F O U N D A T I O N S O F C H R I S T I A N L E A D E R S H I P

A Theological Overview of the Equipping Gifts Described in Ephesians 4.11 (continued)

5. “Most evangelicals feel very uncomfortable using the term apostle to describe any office or leader in the church today. Is it possible, however, for us to conceive of a separation of gift and office after the first century? Rather than assigning this gift to the history of the early church, can we not recognize the broad sense of the verb form apostello ? Could it not be that in the time between the 1st and 20th centuries the Holy Spirit has given this gift to God’s people in what we have come to call missionary service ? . . . Many have chosen the option of locking several of the spiritual gifts into the first century, lest some explanation be required for their presence in the church today. I would prefer to allow the Holy Spirit the broadest latitude to produce in Christ’s body any gift in any age as He sees fit. It seems quite safe to say that the office of the apostles was restricted to the establishing of the New Testament church. But . . .we may be justified in seeing evidence of “apostleship” not only as a gift, but as a gift which has operated in the church throughout all the years of its history” (Kenneth O. Gangel, Unwrap Your Spiritual Gifts , Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1983, pp. 26-27). 6. “A distinction may be made between the foundational ministry of apostle, that is, the apostleship, and the ongoing ministry of others who are called apostles. In this broader sense an apostle is one sent, commissioned , and therefore is not affixed to a particular location or church. He does not have the authority of a foundational apostle nor are his words equally inspired. Such an apostle operates in translocal manner, but he does not operate independently. He is church-based, representing a particular church, but ministering largely in a field beyond. Such apostles are always essential to the life of a church that realizes its call to reach out beyond itself in the mission of the gospel ” (J. Rodman Williams, Renewal Theology: Systematic Theology from a Charismatic Perspective, Vol. 3: The Church, the Kingdom and Last Things , Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996, pp. 169-70). 7. “The word is occasionally applied in a less restrictive sense in the N.T. to men of apostolic gifts, graces, labors, and successes. It is so notably of Barnabas, who was sent forth with Paul (Acts 13.3; 14.4, 14). Similarly one still meets with such expressions, as Judson, the apostle of Burma” (“Apostle,” The Westminster Dictionary of the Bible , John D. Davis, ed. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1944, p. 36).