5-Fold Ministry Is for the Church Today (Ephesians 4:11)
- Summary: Has church tradition tricked us into calling almost all ministers “pastor”? Or should the Church today be benefiting from the five-fold ministries of contemporary apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers?
Is your pastor truly a biblical “pastor”? Very possibly so. But perhaps not. Sad to say, the modern Church has largely abandoned the broad-based fivefold ministry gifts of Ephesians 4:11 — that is, apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers — and has too often settled for identifying most Christian ministers simply as “pastor”. But often those “pastors” are more precisely evangelists or Bible teachers, or even prophets or apostles.
My desire is to show from the Scriptures that all five of these ministry gifts are biblically valid and needed today. Let's look now at the Bible's main fivefold ministry Scripture verses:
- •• These three verses name the 5-fold ministries and are not difficult to understand. They quite clearly explain how, at the outset, Jesus Christ established five specific, named ministries to bring His church to full maturity. There is no biblical warrant for changing Christ’s pattern then to a different one now.
•• Let’s briefly examine these verses, and we will see how they plainly describe the Lord’s provision for His Church for the entire Church Age. But first a glance at verses 7-8 to establish the beginnings of a time frame.
These two verses establish a context for the 5-fold ministry gifts named in verse 11.
- •• Those five ministries represent a giving of grace by Jesus Christ (vs. 7).
•• And when did Jesus do this giving? — “When he ascended on high” (vs. 8). For that reason, some have called these the "ascension-gift ministries". While on earth, as recorded in the four Gospels, Jesus gave apostles (12 of them). But Ephesians 4 tells us that, after His resurrection and ascension to heaven, Jesus broadened that apportionment of His grace by giving the Church not only additional apostles, but also prophets, evangelists, pastors, and Bible teachers. We see many instances of these fivefold ministries represented by named men in the Book of Acts, subsequent to Jesus’ ascension to heaven.- •
apostles (Acts 14:14; see also 1 Thess. 1:1 with 2:6)
•prophets (Acts 11:27-28; 13:1; 15:32)
•evangelists (Acts 21:8; see also 2 Tim. 4:5)
•pastors (not named, but clearly given in Eph. 4:11)
•teachers (Acts 13:1; see also 1 Timothy 2:7)
- •
- •• The relevant point in vss. 7-8 is that Jesus was not content just to give the original twelve apostles. Upon His return to heaven, He continued to give His Church many and varied ministries — here specifically, additional apostles, as well as prophets, evangelists, pastors, and Bible teachers. There is no biblical support, nor is there logical reason, to change or discontinue the pattern that Jesus established for ministry in His Church. We will prove that point further from the Scriptures below.
- •• Are the saints (God’s people) perfected yet? No? Then we today need all five of the Ephesians 4:11 ministries, which are given for this purpose.
•• Are the saints “fully equipped” to do the work of the ministry? Is the “work of the ministry” completed? Not yet? Then we today still need all of the 5-fold ministries to fully equip us for this noble work.
•• Is Christ’s body, the Church, fully “built up”? Certainly not. Until it is, we need the full five-fold ministry to help us fulfill this heaven-ordained purpose.
- •• All five ministries are to have their expression to and impact upon the body of Christ “UNTIL”:
- • we all reach unity in the faith
• we all reach unity in the knowledge of the Son of God
• we become mature (King James: “a perfect man”)
• we attain the whole measure of the fullness of Christ
- •• I have never met a Christian who believes that the body of Christ has yet achieved the four goals listed above. Until that day comes, we need all five of the Ephesians 4:11 ministries. They are Christ’s provisions to lead His Church towards these noble goals.
Among those who deny the present-day validity of the 5-fold ministry, the objections are not to pastors, and generally not to evangelists and teachers. Usually the stumbling block is contemporary apostles and prophets. Yet there is no biblical support for dividing these ministries, as is often done, into two groups — evangelists, pastors, and teachers for today, but apostles and prophets only for the early Church.
- •• All five are needed to equip the Lord’s people in every century of the Church Age.
•• All five are needed to bring the Church to unity and maturity.
•• All five are needed to bring us — you and me — to the “whole measure of the fullness of Christ”.
•• May the Church today move past erroneous traditions and teachings and once again embrace the gracious provision of Jesus Christ to His Church for the entire Church Age — that is, God-called, Spirit-anointed apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers.
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Pentecostal Sermons and Bible Studies
by Pastor Jim Feeney, Ph.D.