BLOG: 12/13/12. THE NECESSITY OF THE EQUIPPING GIFTS OF THE SPIRIT

In my most recent blog, I was quoting the prophetic Jacques Ellul on the displacement of the spiritual gifts whenever the church intrudes with the notion of “clergy” (church professionals, etc.). Such a distortion, or subversion, of the Biblical pattern for the communal life of God’s New Creation (Kingdom of God) people is so entrenched in so much of our Christendom patterns of church institutions (with which we have lived for a millennium and a half) that most cannot imagine any “church” without such. We speak of “going into the ministry” as if that were the calling of a special few, alas!

The New Testament, however, is built upon the assumption that every follower of Christ is to be a dynamic and functioning member of a missional community, and that every believer is to be equipped to function maturely in all of the vicissitudes of his or her 24/7 missionary context, whatever that might include. It certainly includes our domestic settings, our neighborhoods, our workplace or school, all of the social and cultural and political and economic pieces of that realistic context (all the ‘crap’ that may be present) of our daily lives.

In the New Testament documents there appear a clear pattern, which is that the ascended Lord gives particular necessary gifts to the community for its fulfilling of its calling to be the missionary arm of the Holy Trinity (See Ephesians 4:11-16 especially). My observation is that these gifts emerge almost invariably in any smaller and healthy Christian community—any authentic household of Christ’s followers. I’ve watched it happen. Frequently they express themselves in the most unexpected and unlikely persons, persons whose lives demonstrate what they are talking about.

I want to put my Bob Henderson interpretation on these four equipping gifts and challenge my readers to check them out (most commentaries, I find, deal rather unconvincingly with these four gifts). They are:

• APOSTLE. There are apostles everywhere in the New Testament, and not only the twelve original ones. It appears that every believer is to be equipped to be a missionary and a church planter, and that with the potential of every home becoming the base for a new church community. They are to be equipped for their marketplace mission.
• PROPHET. My understanding of this is that part of our necessary equipping is to understand the real (existential) culture in which we live, and operate, and engage in mission. So this gift would be like a cultural analyst, who would equip God people to be knowledgeable about all of the pieces of the cultural scene of their daily incarnation.
• EVANGELIST. Who equips God’s ordinary people to know how to live and converse in the marketplace of life winsomely, thoughtfully, lovingly, knowledgeably, and effectively as we communicate the awesomeness of our gospel to those with whom we are in regular contact? How do we become contagious incarnations of what God has done in Christ? Who shows us how? Who are our models?
• PASTOR-TEACHER (or teaching shepherd). Somehow all of Christ’s followers are to be so equipped in the word of Christ that they can teach and admonish one another. They are to be renewed in knowledge after the image of him who calls. This is a unique gift.

These are necessary gifts given to the church, to the community. They are never given to a special class of “clergy”!! This necessary equipping is done by those to whomsoever God gives gifts—whoever they may be. Process that until next time we meet. Peace!