Fathering Leaders Motivating Mission: Restoring the Role of the Apostle in Todays Church

By David Devenish

Who cares pastorally for the pastor? This unique book addresses the mentoring needs of today's pastors by exploring the New Testament office of 'apostle'. The result is a biblical blueprint for giving church leaders the support they need to develop their gifts and practical ministry skills.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Authentic Media
• Release date: Aug 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781850789901

David Devenish

David Devenish leads Woodside Church in Bedford, England. He is developing relationships with many churches in Russia and Ukraine as well as encouraging church planting in some of the largely unreached parts of the world. He has written 'Demolishing Strongholds' and the recently published 'Setting People Free' and has developed several courses.

Book preview

Fathering Leaders,

Motivating Mission

‘Of the 5-fold ministries listed in Ephesians 4 that Christ donates to his church today, apostles are the least understood and most controversial. This scintillating book is far and away the most practical, persuasive, and thorough work on NT apostleship I’ve ever read. David Devenish has rediscovered this all but forgotten ministry, once encrusted with obsolescence, debris, confusion and contempt, then re-cut and polished it so that every facet can be seen in its pristine beauty. The result is a rich array of biblical insight, extraordinary wisdom, accessible scholarship, and first-hand testimony from a veteran and bold missionary church-planter in many of the world’s toughest locations. He demolishes the myths, abuses and exaggerated claims often associated with this role, then presents irrefutable reasons why it must be restored and deployed again. Those who long for effective leaders, Gospel mission, and healthy churches everywhere, should grab this brilliant book.’

Greg Haslam, Senior Pastor, Westminster Chapel, London

‘I couldn’t put down Fathering Leaders, Motivating Mission. It is an incredible and solid book – it isn’t lightweight theologically, biblically, or practically. There is nothing I have read that comes close to it in explanation and application. So much of what is written on this today is anecdotal, fluff or not biblically based. David’s book will become a standard read for those exploring or curious about apostolic ministry. This book is a real gift to the church today.’

Bob Roberts Jr, Senior Pastor, Northwood Church,

Dallas and founder of Glocalnet

‘When Paul says there are not many fathers, I don’t believe he was making a complaint, but was describing a reality. There have never been many true fathers in the faith. But those rare gifts that God gives to the church to raise up, send out and care for other leaders are vital. It is crucial that we learn how to recognize them and receive their input. This book will therefore be of great benefit to church leaders who know they need some kind of help from outside their local church, to apostolic teams, and to anyone who wants to understand a different way for churches to relate together.

‘David Devenish skilfully portrays an alternative to both rigid denominational structures and rugged individualism. Learn from the wisdom of a key leader within Newfrontiers who has dared to believe that the New Testament model of how to plant and lead churches can and should be followed today. Full of practical wisdom this book could leave you hungry for true apostolic Christianity and dissatisfied with modern pale imitations.’

Adrian Warnock, author of Raised with Christ

‘There is so much confusion in the evangelical world about apostolic ministry, ranging from those who think it is over, to those who revel in appointing all and sundry as apostles. This book establishes a proper biblical understanding of this ministry that is vital in the Body of Christ today. I especially like the emphasis on laying the right apostolic foundations for new churches, which is so little understood by many who are engaged in church-planting. This is an excellent book, and a must read for those who are thinking seriously about planting new churches in today’s world!’

Steve Thomas, Leader, International Apostolic Team,

Salt & Light Ministries

‘This book is dynamite. It lifts us out of our daily routine and challenges us to think at the highest levels about the role of the church and its leaders in our world today. Full of a rich understanding of scripture, David’s challenge packs a powerful punch, demanding that we think carefully and deeply about what we believe and how we work it out.’

David Stroud, Lead Elder, ChristChurch London and

UK Team Leader Newfrontiers

Fathering Leaders,

Motivating Mission

RESTORING THE ROLE OF THE

APOSTLE IN TODAY’S CHURCH

David Devenish

Copyright © 2011 David Devenish

17 16 15 14 13 12 11     7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First published 2011 by Authentic Media Limited

Presley Way, Crownhill, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ES

www.authenticmedia.co.uk

The right of David Devenish to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying. In the UK such licences are issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London, EC1N 8TS

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-85078-990-1

Unless otherwise stated Scripture quotations are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright © 1979, 1984 by Biblica. Used by permission of Hodder & Stoughton Publishers, a member of the Hachette Livre UK Group. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked ‘ESV’ are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, ENGLISH STANDARD VERSION, published by HarperCollins Publishers © 2001 Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked ’TNIV’ are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, TODAY’S NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright 2001, 2005 by Biblica. Used by permission of Biblica. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked ‘NASB’ are taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE. Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Cover design by David McNeill

Acknowledgements

I want to thank my secretary, Sue Dicks, for laboriously typing up the many drafts of this manuscript. I’m also extremely grateful to Jane Sanders for her invaluable comments on the manuscript and to Andrew Wilson and Adrian Birks for their helpful insights into many of the exegetical points made in my earlier drafts. However, responsibility for the final outcome rests only with me. Thanks, too, to Dan Copperwheat who helped me with the endnotes.

CONTENTS

Foreword – Terry Virgo

1 Introduction – Why is This Book Needed?

2 Apostles Today?

3 The Apostle’s Job Description

4 The Need for Fathers in Ministry and Mission

5 Foundations – Essential But Often Neglected

6 Apostolic and Prophetic Foundations (1)

– The Big Themes of Scripture

7 Apostolic and Prophetic Foundations (2)

– Christ and Who We Are in Christ

8 Apostolic and Prophetic Foundations (3)

– Other Essential New Testament Principles for Founding Local Churches

9 Apostolic Ministry and World Mission

10 How Apostles Relate to Local Churches

11 The Field God Has Given Us – Apostolic Spheres

12 Apostolic Teams – What Are They and How Do They Function?

13 Contextualized Wisdom

14 The Struggle for Maturity

15 Finance for Apostolic Mission/’Remember the Poor’

16 Apostles and Prophets Need Each Other

17 Signs, Wonders and Suffering – the Hallmarks of an Apostle

18 Common Questions

FOREWORD

David’s excellent book makes a unique contribution to our understanding of the role of the apostle in the New Testament church. Thoroughly biblical in its approach, it challenges the frequently held view that apostles functioned only in the first century and that their primary task was the writing of the New Testament Scriptures. Of the original Twelve, only three made any contribution to the New Testament, while Luke, who was never regarded as an apostle, wrote more of the New Testament than any other.

While the stance that apostles were essentially Scripture-writers has been maintained, the vital work of an apostle as described in the New Testament has been almost entirely overlooked. Paul writing to the Corinthian church said that as a wise master builder he had laid a foundation in that particular church. As an apostle he had a task which was related to the formation of local churches.

David has not only dug deep into the Scriptures and drawn from other respected scholars, he has supplied colour and authenticity to his volume by using many personal and practical illustrations from his own experience of pioneering church planting work in several nations.

My hope is that David’s book will be widely read and serve to challenge the view that apostles are not relevant to today’s church. The early apostles, commissioned by Jesus to go and make disciples of all the nations, instinctively went and founded churches which became centres for the making of disciples and launch pads for ongoing apostolic work to regions beyond.

Local churches, aware of their apostolic foundation and the fathering role that had been fulfilled among them, gladly continued to express partnership with the ongoing global mission of the apostles who originally founded them.

Clearly the planting of churches was foundational to the task of world mission, and apostles played a very significant part in that process. They presented a clear body of doctrine centred in the coming of Christ, his life, death, resurrection and ascension, and the promised outpouring of the Holy Spirit, which led to the formation of an international people of God.

The apostles also interpreted Old Testament promises and showed their fulfilment to be in this new end-time people who were inheriting those promises.

We are, of course, deeply grateful to God for the revelation recorded in the New Testament Scriptures and epistles written by first-century apostles. Their revelation holds supreme authority, but the essential work of an apostle in making Jesus known in and through the formation of local churches has never ceased.

The Lord Jesus ascended on high and gave gifts to men. He appointed apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. If the church is to arrive at full maturity, become a functioning body and fulfil its glorious destiny, it must derive the benefit that comes from embracing all of these promised ministries. Without them we inevitably fail to benefit from all that was in God’s heart in making provision of them.

I pray that David’s book will arrest our thought and bring us back to the Scriptures while we continue to call upon God that he, the Lord of the Harvest, will thrust forth labourers into his harvest field which is ripe for harvest. Let us call upon him for more apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints, for the bringing in of the harvest, for the glory of Jesus.

Terry Virgo

1

INTRODUCTION

WHY IS THIS BOOK NEEDED?

A few years ago I was the guest speaker at a conference in a Scandinavian city on the subject of how to reach out to the many and diverse immigrant ethnic groups in that city and then incorporate them into church life. I was to speak on topics such as mission, contextualization and adapting to other cultures and worldviews. On the afternoon before the conference started, I was asked to address a meeting of the local pastors who were responsible for the conference, in order for them to get to know me and raise any questions that they might have concerning what I was going to teach.

During my introductory comments I must have referred in passing to ‘apostolic ministry’ or ‘apostolic oversight of churches’, because after I had spoken, the first question was from a pastor who asked what I meant by the word ‘apostolic’. In my reply I outlined the responsibilities of apostolic ministry in the planting of new churches and providing ongoing fathering care for those churches and their leaders. My questioner was happy with this reply, but advised me not to use the word ‘apostolic’ in the conference – or indeed in any ministry in that nation – because it would be misunderstood and taken to refer to excessive authority and the takeover of local churches. I have no idea whether his assessment of the situation was correct, and at the time of writing this book I have not been back there to find out. It reminded me, however, that it is important to teach about the role of the apostle today, to explain the nature of apostolic ministry among the churches and to ensure that it is not misunderstood, either by those exercising such authority, those receiving such ministry, or others looking on.

On my first visit to southern Russia, a region to which I have returned many times since, I was again speaking at a conference on Christian leadership, with particular reference to the ministries referred to in Ephesians 4:11. A church leader present, who was also overseeing a number of churches represented at the conference, responded very positively. He commented that I had clarified what they were seeking to do, given it a biblical framework and shown them by example how to do what was already on their hearts. My relationship with that group of churches has grown very strong since then, and I am sure that God is raising up many in other nations of the world who sense his call to plant and oversee churches and who see the need to be fathers to leaders but need a framework of understanding as to how it is to be done in a relational rather than an organizational way. Helping others like that particular Russian church leader is another reason for seeking to put my thoughts on this subject into the form of this book.

As well as serving many other churches in various nations, my wife Scilla and I are fully part of our local church in Bedford, England. The members of our church are very supportive of the work we do in planting new churches and providing fatherly and motherly care for other leaders across the world. Often leaders with whom we are working visit our church to share in our services and receive hospitality, and they always tell me that they feel part of the church family and know they are supported, prayed for and loved. We send short-term teams from our church from time to time to support them, and others go on a longer-term basis to work with them. Our local church cares for Scilla and me and feels thoroughly involved with our ministry.

There is something very dynamic about being involved in an international family of churches with apostolic leaders who act like fathers to many in the family. Under such leadership, the whole family finds itself caught up in world mission as every local church, and indeed every individual believer, is enabled to see the big picture of God’s purposes in the world and equipped to play their part. This book is intended to do exactly that: to give local churches and individual believers an understanding of the big picture and of how they can play their part in it.

What Motivates Me?

Obviously my first passion as a believer in Jesus is to love God with all my heart and seek to live to please him in this world. However, I am sometimes asked, as somebody who is privileged to have leadership responsibilities among God’s people, what are my passions in Christian ministry. I often summarize them as follows:

• A passion for truth: I love to learn from and teach the Bible in terms of both doctrine and practice.

• A passion for the church, the people of God.

• A passion for world mission and that the gospel will be preached and churches planted in the unreached people groups of this world.

• A passion for the next generation of Christian leaders to fulfil their destiny in God’s great plan.

It is as a result of these particular enthusiasms that I approach the writing of this book.

A passion for truth leads me to the conviction that if the Bible indeed teaches us that apostles are a continuing gift to the church, along with the other ministry gifts of Ephesians 4, then it is important for the church and for world mission that this ministry is restored. Whether this is in fact what the Bible teaches will be explored in the next chapter; if it is, we need to discover how to work it out in the twenty-first century to the glory of God.

A passion for God’s church is also a strong foundation for what I want to say. I do love the church. I remember making that statement at the beginning of a church weekend in a Muslim country. One missionary brother who was at the conference spoke to me after that session and said that he loved the Lord, he loved his wife and family, he loved world mission, he even loved the ministry that he felt called to; but he had never heard anybody say before that they loved the church in such a practical, down-to-earth way. He saw the church as being full of the sort of problems that hinder the development of the ministry and mission that he loves. I understood what he was saying, but because I love the church, I want to see it restored to a New Testament pattern of spiritual life. I believe that this restoration includes not only the new wine of Holy Spirit-filled lives, but also the need for new wineskins to contain it – wineskins of leadership office, leadership ministry and leadership style, according to the New Testament. I believe apostolic ministry to be an important part of this dynamic.

A passion for mission is something I find right at the heart of New Testament apostolic ministry. Paul states in his introduction to his letter to the Romans, ‘Through him and for his name’s sake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith.’¹ If the gift of apostolic ministry is one of the keys that God has given us to fulfil his great commission, then let us pray for many apostles to be released by the Lord of the harvest.

A passion for seeing the next generation succeed lies at the heart of my concern for spiritual fathers to influence and provoke that generation to achieve great things for God. Although a lot of Christians today may still be unaware of it, there are many new networks of churches all over the world which are held together relationally rather than through formalized denominational structures, and many of these would see the restoration of apostolic ministry as important to their development. Peter Wagner has analysed these developments in his book Churchquake. Early in that book he defines the phenomenon that he describes as a ‘new apostolic reformation’. He says:

Particularly in the 1990’s, but with roots going back for almost a century, new forms and operational procedures began to emerge in areas such as local church government, inter-church relationships, financing, evangelism, missions, prayer, leadership selection and training, the role of supernatural power, worship and other important aspects of church life. Some of these changes are being seen within denominations themselves, but for the most part they are taking the form of loosely structured apostolic networks. In virtually every region of the world, these new apostolic churches constitute the fastest growing segment of Christianity.²

This also needs to be set against the background of the changing face of Christendom from its earlier dominance in Western Europe and North America to becoming a predominantly ‘South’ phenomenon among the developing countries of Africa, Latin America and South-East Asia. This phenomenon is documented in Philip Jenkins’s book The Next Christendom.³

Some Cautions

These developments are to be welcomed in my view, but I want to sound a few cautionary notes about the use of the term ‘apostle’.

Firstly, ‘apostle’ was rarely used in the past to describe Christian leaders unless they were already dead and had been missionaries opening up a new region of gospel expansion! Now, however, it is being used freely as a title for a senior church leader. Some newer Pentecostal and charismatic denominations in some parts of the world seem to love titles and position, often with all the associated regalia. And because the term ‘apostle’ has re-entered everyday church language and perhaps sounds more ‘contemporary’ or ‘biblical’ than ‘archbishop’, it is being employed as a title in front of a senior leader’s name, as in ‘Apostle so-and-so’. More worryingly, some ungodly power structures in the church attempt to make pretentious claims about themselves and legitimize these by the use of ‘biblical’ terminology and the misuse of genuine apostolic anointing which God is restoring to the church.

In this context it is important that we consider the role of an apostle in Scripture and try to determine which apostolic functions are intended to continue today. There is certainly no sense in which the New Testament views an apostle as standing at the top of a hierarchy. Rather, Paul comments. ‘It seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like men condemned to die in the arena.’⁴

Secondly, as the present-day ministry of the apostle has become more acceptable, particularly in the charismatic sector of the church, the use of the term ‘apostle’ has been broadened. Thus Peter Wagner writes about ‘vertical’ and ‘horizontal’ apostles,⁵ ‘apostles in the workplace’,⁶ and ‘apostles for social transformation’⁷ in social structures in the world. A problem with this approach is that it potentially broadens the term ‘apostle’ to describe any effective and successful entrepreneurial gift among Christian leaders. This runs the danger of robbing the word of its true meaning, undermining what the gift was intended for, and therefore limiting its effectiveness in planting churches for world mission. So it is important that we wrestle with the issues of what the calling of an apostle is, and how someone with that ministry is to be recognized.

Thirdly, some recent books have referred to the restoration of apostles to the church as an indication of the way God is working towards his end-time purpose. It is argued that there has been a gradual progression of restoration: in the 1950s, the evangelist was restored to the church through the many healing evangelistic ministries and the raising up of gifted communicators of the gospel such as Billy Graham; in the 1980s, the prophets were restored, with a greater emphasis on prophetic schools, recognized prophetic ministries etc., and in the 1990s and the first decades of the new millennium, apostles are being restored as part of God’s end-time plan.⁸

While it can be rightly asserted that there has been a progressive recovery of truth within church history – such as the doctrines of justification by faith and the priesthood of all believers during the Reformation period and the restoration of spiritual gifts in the Pentecostal outpouring of 1905 – I prefer not to make such claims regarding the eschatological significance of the gift of an apostle. Rather, I simply see the need for the restoration of New Testament patterns of church life, in which the work of the apostle should arguably be a part. I think it is better to let history be the judge of such eschatological theories, and simply focus on God’s plan to head up all things under Christ in a future day. We are committed to working towards the fulfilment of that plan as we seek to live out the kingdom of God in our personal lives, our churches and our mission into this world.

My fourth cautionary note relates to the use of the term ‘apostle’ not among Pentecostals and charismatics but among evangelicals involved in world mission. The term has been much discussed in this context, and it is pointed out correctly that the terms ‘missionary’ and ‘apostle’ have similar origins – ‘missionary’ being derived from the Latin and ‘apostle’ from the Greek verbs meaning ‘to send out’. Thus it is argued that church-planting missionaries are, in terms of their spiritual gifting, ‘apostles with a small a’, as my friends who advance this argument would say. (Quite who is proposing Apostles with a capital A, I don’t know!) The small ‘a’ indicates their concern to make it clear that the canon of Scripture is complete, and that any use of the term ‘apostle’ today does not imply authority to add private revelation to the established canon of Scripture – a concern with which I would wholeheartedly agree, as would the vast majority of those who believe in the restoration of the role of the apostle today.

It is difficult, however, to equate the word ‘apostle’ with ‘missionary’. The term ‘missionary’ can, in fact, be unhelpfully imprecise, because it is used to embrace a whole range of spiritual gifts given to those who have worked cross-culturally. Some have been pioneer evangelists, some have established churches; others may be involved in helping a church in another nation in its social action work. These are equally valid ministries, but very different ones, and do not match the particular calling encompassed by the New Testament term ‘apostle’. Even in New Testament times, not all those involved in church planting were called apostles. As we will see in a later chapter, those who had been persecuted as a result of the death of Stephen travelled all over the eastern Mediterranean sharing the gospel and starting churches. However, when a particular church was established in Antioch, the apostles sent their delegates down to ensure that good foundations of truth were laid in that church. Although some of those involved in the church-planting mission may have had the ministry of apostle, there is a clear distinction between the apostles who laid the foundation of truth and the church planters who evangelized and gathered their converts together into churches.

So another reason for writing this book is to look at the whole operation of the ministry or ‘office’ of the ‘apostle’ in the New Testament, in order to determine what is useful for us today as we seek to see that gift to the church established again.

My fifth and final cautionary note is that it is important to acknowledge that the recognition of the ministry of an apostle in recent times has not always been handled wisely. One of the first groups to start using the term ‘apostle’ again was the early nineteenth-century movement influenced by Edward Irving called ‘The New Apostolic Church’. According to one account, ‘Ultimately, twelve men were declared to be apostles and were solemnly ordained to that ministry on July 14th, 1835, in London. The aim of these prophets and apostles was to unite the divided church according to the pattern established by Paul in the New Testament.’⁹ This attempt to restore the New Testament apostolate in the form of twelve men proved unfruitful and ultimately divisive.

More recently, in the 1970s, ‘apostolic ministry’ became associated with the so-called ‘shepherding movement’ which, despite much excellent teaching, unfortunately led to the development of an unhelpful hierarchical oversight structure which could – and often did – result in a misuse of spiritual authority, and which was not always missional.

When I first encountered the notion of restoring apostolic ministry today, one of the terms often used was ‘apostolic covering’. This was an unhelpful term and, even at the time, some of those teaching on the subject of apostles recognized that it was inappropriate. At best it referred to relational accountability to an external ministry trusted by a particular church eldership team; but at worst it could lead to hierarchicalism or even abuse of authority. I recall an occasion when I was teaching in Russia and used the term ‘apostolic covering’ without really thinking. After my interpreter had translated it, there was wry laughter all over the meeting. I wondered what I had said, and found out that the interpreter, somewhat mischievously, had translated the term ‘covering’ by the Russian word for ‘roof’, which was the term used to describe the protection given by a mafia leader over other businesses in his patch. I made sure I never used the term again!

In contrast with the above examples, godly apostolic authority and oversight should not be hierarchical, power-hungry or Mafia-like! In this book, I am setting out to consider the subject of apostles from my perspective as someone who has many years of experience within an apostolic network, where authority flows out of friendship and relationship and is non-threatening in terms of hierarchy or control.

Not Many Fathers

Praise God for all those that he raises up to serve in leadership in his church. One of the sad factors of church

Reviews for Fathering Leaders Motivating Mission

[Royce Nicholas · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A rare look at the biblical apostle gifting and how it is often misunderstood or neglected today! The relationship rather than positional authority is very helpful. A must read for church planter and networks.