Tag Archives: apostles

by Scott

Apostles today? No way, jose! They died out a long time ago, with the passing of John.

I’ve written plenty in the past on the ministry of the apostle, but it’s been quite some time. So I thought I might revisit a few things. I adamantly believe this ministry is necessary today. Of course, God doesn’t need our appointing of apostles (or prophets) to get the work done. Many of folk have never been appointed direct pastoral or teaching ministries, yet they’ve still practically functioned in these roles, for the building up of Christ’s body. And I’d say the same is true with apostles (and prophets).

You see, when most people think of apostles, I believe they only envision the 12 and Paul. Some might remember that the word apostle sits next to both Barnabas’s and James’s names in the New Testament. But they were exceptional cases.

Why exceptional?

I think this is because we can easily identify an apostle as a writer of New Testament Scripture. Of course, we know that not all of the New Testament was penned by apostles. But we are at least ok with it because we, then, identify them as associates of those first apostles. Their source was one of the 12 that walked with Jesus himself. Continue reading →

by Scott

It’s time to finish up this series on ‘apostles today’ at To Be Continued. You can review the previous articles by clicking on this link. I will also look to post a PDF document that will contain the whole series in one place. That might be easier for people to access if they would like to engage with me on this topic.

Still, as a summary, my major premise has been mainly four-fold:

1. Christ was the greatest apostle to ever exist. We might not have thought of him as an apostle, but he was.
2. The Holy Spirit was sent in Christ’s stead to continue the exact same work he began. Thus, the Spirit of God is an apostolic Spirit.
3. Christ, by his Spirit, has empowered the church to be all of Christ in all of the earth.
4. Thus, Jesus desires to have both an apostolic body as a whole and continue to gift specific people in apostolic ministry.

As I progressed through the series, there were 3 specific sub-issues that I hit on:

1. Apostles in New Testament Scripture
2. Objections to the existence of apostles today
3. What an apostle actually is

I addressed the first 2 above in quite a thorough manner. But now it’s time to move on to the third. Hence, this final article on what an apostle actually is.

As a forerunner, you might be interested in this very practical post on what should be true in the lives of all leaders within the church (over at my personal blog, The Prodigal Thought). Apostles, or shepherds for that matter, do not have some ‘position’ or ‘title’. Rather, they have a ministry to serve the body by equipping it to be all that Christ would have it be.

Now I move on to highlight seven summary points about apostles. Continue reading →