The Five Fold Ministry: Individuals, part of a whole.

“The seasons of our ministries is over. It’s the hour of Christ and the corporate manifestation of Him in us.” –Allen Hood

When I had been a Christian for just a few months, I was sitting on a greyhound bus, and the Lord spoke to me as clear as day: “Denominations are not going to matter. People are going to unite under the banner of Christ.” I understood that to mean that denominations would still exist, but that people would not define themselves by them as they had in the past. And I can tell you–I wonder if you agree–that since I became a Christ-follower 15 years ago, that is most definitely true. I think that happens when people meet the Man first, and not just his messengers. He’s irresistible–a huge cornerstone–to fall upon or be crushed by. And I think that when we meet Him, we see less and less of ourselves, while at the same time he makes us more and more who we are.

The Five Fold Ministry

God has been bringing the “five-fold ministry” to my mind, and I’m going to post a couple of entries about it. Ephesians 4 says that when Christ ascended, he gave some gifts to people: the gifts to be apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. Some people may have more than one of these–and it’s possible that some may have none of these. I don’t think this list is exhaustive, but it has an important purpose, which I’ll discuss in part 2. In any case, I believe that the Lord is awakening and honing people; awakening them to their callings and mandates, because a time is coming, yea, is already here, when we are going to need to know exactly which direction to move in; which area to put our energies in. Already we do not have the luxury of waiting around until conditions are “ready” for us to move out for the Lord. I personally have such a sense of urgency about evangelism–though I’ve always had a passion for it, it’s now becoming a major priority–and yet my flesh and mind are having some trouble keeping up. Others are hearing the call to be pastors, teachers, church planters–and aren’t waiting around to start walking in it, but are doing it now, because God is putting the flock right in front of them, and their eyes are open. “Open your eyes; the fields are white with harvest.” The fish are already in the nets, and we are wasting time wondering if we’re in the right waters or not. It’s time to pray and think seriously about our giftings, and move out in faith.

God has been driving home to me the importance of walking faithfully in my calling. I’ve been thinking of the image of a 3-D puzzle–a sphere puzzle–in which each one of our lives is a puzzle piece, that together makes up the whole church, and the whole Missio Dei (Mission of God). We only get our one little piece. Nobody gets a monopoly. We’ve got to stay in the position God has placed us in (Acts 17:26). If we neglect God’s calling on our lives, or try to fill someone else’s calling, we leave a hole where our piece should be, and the integrity of the whole structure is compromised.

Ministry as a Competitive Sport

A preacher I heard recently said that we as the Church need to begin to affirm and support each other’s ministries–to forsake competition and ambition and stop perceiving each other as threats. I believe there is a lot of that in the Body, and it is a sickness. The other night after worship team, Jeff De Marco, Rich and Jenny Shannon and I went to Rita’s to get some ices. We piled into the VW Thing with CSN blasting, and pulled into the lot where a dozen college kids were hanging out. I was more intimidated than you can imagine. (I get very nervous around groups of young kids. I won’t go into it here.) But Jeff immediately went into their midst and started talking music with them. We wound up staying with a kid named Michael for an hour. By the end of it, Jeff knew exactly what his next step would be with Michael and managed to draw all sorts of stuff out of him effortlessly. That’s why the De Marcos fill their living room with college students every week. Jeff is a natural evangelist. He knows it, and hones it. I found myself getting jealous of that–I thought I was an evangelist. Why couldn’t I find a connection with this guy? Competition and envy reared their ugly heads.

But as I’ve been pondering it, I have to say: I still know I’m an evangelist–but it looks different for me. So I’m going to release Jeff to pursue his “ministry” and go ahead and pursue mine, and if the two intersect, then praise God! There are plenty of opportunities for groups to minister together–plenty of times when we need a prophet along with a teacher, etc., or when we need many teachers at once (leading a VBS would be a good example of that). The fact is, that just that day I had two significant “friendship evangelism” times, one with my little 9-year-old neighbor, doing art together. How each one of us goes about our “ministry” is between us and the Lord.

Hearing God’s Voice

Remember the story about Cory, the girl on the airplane, a couple of entries ago? God gave me a word of knowledge for her, and I was able to respond to Him, and fruit was borne. I’m learning how to hear God’s voice with more clarity and acuteness, little by little. It’s so important to listen to Him alone, and not others, for ultimate direction. No one has the corner on the “hearing God” market. He indwells each of us, by the Holy Spirit. (How well we heed His voice is another matter.) If you are a pastor, then find opportunities to pastor. I’m not talking about usurping authority–humbly go through the proper channels; submit yourself to the existing structures and get your sea legs, never, ever cutting down the existing pastors. If you’re a teacher, tell someone that you would like the opportunity to teach. Or better yet, start by teaching your kids or someone else’s. (Kids really help you to know if your message is getting through with clarity.) Volunteer for Sunday School or nursery. If you’re called to plant a church as an apostle, make sure you absolutely have the blessing of your current local church. Otherwise, you are being divisive, and I believe God won’t stand for it. There are more examples.

The bottom line is this: we need to not dial each other down out of fear, but seek to build each other up. There’s too much work to be done–we’re building a Kingdom here, not individual citadels on far-apart hills. There’s only one King, so there can be only one Kingdom. Ours don’t matter one bit. But if He’s telling you to build a fortress and you’re playing around with Lincoln Logs wondering why no one wants to play with you, then by all means, get up and about your Master’s business.

It’s ALL about His Name and His fame.

In the next entry on the Five Fold Ministry, I’ll be talking about the purpose of it, which is to equip the saints.

Global Prayer Room.

I apologize for not posting an entry last night; I was out with the Forerunner Street Evangelism team in the Plaza section of Kansas City. This was the first time I’d done anything like this. It was pretty audacious, even for me. :) There were about ten of us who went out to simply bring the good news to folks that might never darken the door of a church. We split into teams of two, and I was paired with a young man named Nathan. He had done a lot more of this than I had (which was none), so I told him that I was just going to follow his lead.

The Plaza is a shopping disctrict of about six or so square blocks of upscale shops (Brooks Brothers, Anthropologie, etc.) and restaurants. Being Friday night, lots of people were out on the town, dressed up pretty fancy, and no one in a big hurry. Nathan and I had some tracts and some flyers for an upcoming presentation here at IHOP by a man named Bob Weis, who actually had an experience of being in Hell for 23 minutes. (I’ve heard the recording; it’s quite compelling.) We had a couple of brush-offs, but nothing like you’d experience in NYC. One woman was kind of hostile and had made up her mind that she “did not want to hear anything about Jesus.” (Ask my mom; she said the same thing to me once, only not that civilly.)

Maybe two months ago now, I had been listening to a teaching on prophetic evangelism by Hal Lindhart, who is the head of the evangelism department here. He said something that stuck with me: that we must not despise a particular method of evangelism just because we think, or have heard, that it doesn’t “work” or that it’s distasteful or cheesy. That hit me so hard and really humbled me. I think we can have a really superior attitude toward certain forms of evangelism. Come on, haven’t YOU made fun of Chick Tracts? I have. But last night I was givin’ ‘em out–and you know what, people asked us for them.

Here’s a little synopsis of some of the folks we spoke to:

• James and his wife at a bus stop. We asked if we could pray for him, and he shared that his son had just gotten jumped and was in the hospital. I had a prophetic word for him, that God knew his fatherly heart and had the same heart for his son, and was going to show it to both of them. I also felt God was wanting to pour out encouragement to James, and I told him that, and for the first time, he looked up and looked me in the eyes.
• Because all four of the folks at the bus stop were very receptive (Nathan and I became really fond of “bus stop ministry”), we actually went back and spoke to Milton, who was the toughest looking one there, but who was obviously pretty shy and insecure, and seemed to want to know more but didn’t know what questions to ask. He asked for a tract. We looked him in the eyes and told him how much Jesus loved him and was pursuing him and really wanted him. I think if we really understood how God burns with desire for us and for all people, we would really go for it. God, give us a revelation of your burning heart!
• Ben and Peter were two young guys who God pointed out really clearly to me. It became apparent that they were believers but pretty skeptical of what we were doing, but pretty quickly saw that we were not threatening and we got into maybe the best conversation of the evening. I saw that Ben had a real heart for truth and discernment, which had maybe crossed a line into cynicism or a critical spirit, but that in its good state, it was the heat God gave him. We had a lot in common musically (he was really excited about the new mewithoutyou album for which my brother-in-law Josh did the string arrangements and our producer Dan Smith produced, and I told him about Ben + Vesper). Nathan spoke to him about King David and his restoration–that even though he was a really fallen leader, he was still one “after God’s own heart” and that God used him mightily. We saw that Ben actually had a good knowledge of Scripture and the Heart behind it. Nathan asked him if he had ever received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and he said he didn’t really know what that was. So Nathan explained, and Ben said he could pray for that. Well, while Nathan prayed for that, I had a very clear vision of a white dove with its wings straight up, coming and landing on Ben. And there were bright white flames licking the dove’s wings–just going like a whirlwind around the wings. Well, as soon as Nathan stopped praying, Ben very surprisingly grabbed all four of us in a huddle and with a very new authority, prayed for us! And he told the Lord that He was his King and that he was glad that we had stopped them. It was really powerful.
• Jamie of the Green Shirt. Before we got off the shuttle, we asked God to show us if we should look for anyone, and I saw a girl in a green shirt and jeans. I passed several that fit that description, but I stopped a very fancy lady named Jamie and told her that God had told me to look for someone of that description. I asked i f I could pray for anything for her, and she asked me to pray for her 4 year old daughter, Alyssa. She seemed a little surprised but let me pray for her.
• Angela and Matt. A super artsy couple. She is the person from last night that I feel most compassion for, and I can’t shake her from my mind. I told her I was from a school of ministry and that we were asking people to tell us what the first thing was that came to mind when we said the name “Jesus”. Well, Matt refused to answer, and Angela said “the man you learn about in Sunday School”. I asked if either of them thought of Jesus much, and they said no. I asked if they ever thought about God much, and they said no. So I asked Angela what made her tick, what her greatest inspiration was, and she replied “the Arts and humanity; the was humanity is all connected.” (Later on, as I thought about this, I thought, a) Why didn’t I tell her I was an artist and ask her more about her art? and b) Why didn’t I tell her how much Jesus care about that, too?!) I asked if I could tell them about Jesus, and they said no, so I blessed them and told them to enjoy the beautiful night. I’m gonna pray for that girl. She really touched my heart.
• Rashad and Cory. Two young men that looked a bit intimidating at first, but Nathan got to talking to them while I was with Angela and Matt. When I rejoined them, I saw God’s burning love for Cory and told him so. He replied, “What do you think when you see me?” And I told him I saw that God loved him. He asked again, and Nathan said, “I see that there’s a calling on your life for music and worship.” Cory interjected, and said to me, “I know what I see when I see you.” “What’s that?” “You’re a very helpful person. You’re very nice.” So Cory and I sat down and talked for a while. He was trying to be a bit manipulative, but he could see I wasn’t having it, and decided to be a little more truthful with me. He was the kind of person you could be very forward with. All of a sudden I saw a rope connected to his heart, and God was on the other end of it reeling it in. I told Rashad that it didn’t matter if he was half a mile away; God was still reeling in that rope. I spoke to him a lot about repentance (see yesterday’s post) and a new way to look at our sins. He was receptive, thoughtful, but “not ready”–so I asked him one last question: “Do you know that you’ll wake up tomorrow?” and asked him to remember the rope.

That was the last conversation of the night. There is no high in the world like seeing Jesus reach out his rescuing hand deep into the pit. I can’t get His smile out of my mind. And those burning eyes of flame! His burning desire for us! His commitment to fallen humanity! His white-hot desire and pursuit of each one of us!

IHOP Prayer Room

This morning I went to the Forerunner Evangelism Institute’s weekly “open house”. It was really sweet; about 30 or so people in the room with very simple, unpolished worship, prophetic prayer (the woman praying for me had a picture of me with a spear that I was going to throw a long way, with a message on the end of it), and a message by David Vagnoni (sp) on preaching repentance. Wow. Fantastic.

What I realized through this is that I’ve been preaching half a gospel. I’ve gotten pretty decent at the “God loves you” part when I’m speaking to the lost. The problem is that it leaves them with, at best, a warm fuzzy feeling about God, and perpetuates the belief, which is actually NOT true, but most people believe, that God forgives everyone (especially if they, whoa, say “sorry!”)–in fact, it simply cements the belief that what people call “grace” is more like an umbrella under which people have license to do whatever they want. What we need to be calling to is the flip-side of the “faith” coin: Repentance.

We have given ourselves over to the belief that if we can just get someone to make that step (which is, granted, a huge leap), that we have done our job and that person has eternal security. NOT TRUE. Every prophet, John the Baptist, Jesus and all the Apostles preached repentance. We can do no less. What does Jesus Himself say? “Repent and believe the good news”. It’s not as if John the Baptist had the pre-gospel message when he gave people the baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. In actuality, it’s one side of a two-sided coin. Without either side, what we call “Christianity” is one-dimensional, and, actually, false. However, if we only preach the repentance side, we’re guilty of a similar error. Other “religions” have repentance, but in the sense that it makes the person a more law-abiding citizen, a la Mormonism, Islam, etc. Repentance and Faith must go hand in hand.

Here’s a practical road map for what I’m relating here:

1. See Sin. The person being asked to believe must acknowledge that they are actually talking about sin. Not preference, not expedient behavior, not something he “couldn’t help”, but actual sin.
2. Hate Sin. People have a lot of excuses for their sin. Nobody hates their sin at first. They may hate the consequences (e.g. drunkenness causes people to crash their cars or be mean to their family), but they actually enjoy the sin. So they may even see it as sin, but they must look squarely at its consequences and learn to hate it.
3. Forsake Sin. The problem once people get to hate their sin is that they don’t know that there is power not to do it anymore. But here’s a question for that person: If God was willing to help you, and to give you the power to turn away from it, would you? (Hint: If the answer’s no, maybe they haven’t fully understood #2.)

Here’s what the teacher said toward the end: That we need to be “as gentle as possible but as stern as necessary.” People who do not respond to subtlety must be spoken to in plainness. But broken people need gentleness. A good surgeon doesn’t cut healthy flesh: he knows how to discern where the disease ends and the healthy flesh begins. But Jeremiah 1:17 warns us: When we are delivering God’s message, He says, “Don’t break down before them or I will break you.” In other words, let’s not water down God’s message for him. Jeremiah 6:13-15 warns about messengers of false peace. I don’t want to be one of them!

But hey, you know what? Repentance isn’t BAD news! It’s GOOD news! I have a theory, that if the Church really woke up to what salvation is and what God wants to do and has done in the life of the believer, we would change our prayers from “help us not to be afraid” to “God, i’m so full of joy about your love and your power and willingness to forgive! Who can I tell next?”

Sorry, it's going to be all camera phone, folks.

Welcome to those of you who haven’t visited my blog before. Esther’s is a place for discussion about women and faith. Anyone’s welcome to read and comment (comments are moderated). Just as a refresher, Esther’s is based on the story in the Book of Esther (in the Bible), about a common girl from a barely tolerated people group who wound up becoming a queen. In the process of her preparation to meet the king of Persia, who wanted to choose a new queen, she was part of a harem of women all undergoing a year of intense beauty treatments and training in courtly life. We imagine it must have had its perks, but that daily life must have been as mundane as ours in a certain sense. We also imagine that lots of talk went on about, well, being women, about spiritual matters, and what they observed in the world around them. That’s the essence of the blog as well. By way of reminder, also, you are welcome to submit articles for consideration. I’m not the only blogger on the column. The most valuable thing, though is the discussion that happens in the comments area. So go ahead–join us! (If you’re shy, you can write in “anonymous”.)

Well, I’m beginning a 4 or 5 part daily series blogging my trip here in Kansas City at IHOP–Prayer, not Pancakes. :) I won’t go too deep in explaining it, but you can read more about IHOP here. In short, it’s a 24 hour, 7 day a week prayer “furnace” that has been running for almost 10 years without a stop. Prayer takes place in the context of musical worship, which is incredibly enjoyable and sustainable. My husband and I came here a year ago for some training in a certain model of leading musical worship, and we (and our kids) fell in love with it. Ben and I did several overnight “night watches”, praying through the night fairly effortlessly for 10, 11, 12 hours at a stretch and hating to go back to the hotel, other than the need for, you  know, sleep. You might think of IHOP as a modern monastic movement–it’s not a church, and you can visit here as freely as you want to, but there is a community of folks that dedicate themselves to a life of prayer and service (the service coming out of a life of intimate communion with God).

I’m here on this trip partly because I simply was aching to come back (I’ve always had a touch of the monastic urge in me…and yes, some orders allow marriage…I never planned to be celibate, thank goodness!), but also because I had read about an even called a Prophetic Evangelism Summit. This appealed to me, because when I met the Man Christ Jesus almost 16 years ago, I knew that if others could only meet Him, they would find the freedom that I did. Hence the Evangelism component–sharing the “evangel”, or “good news”. I’ve even had the immense privilege of putting others’ hands in His hand a few times, and I am so grateful. But I want to get better at it. The Prophetic component has to do with listening to what the Lord might be saying for the person one is sharing that good news with–in other words, bringing it to a personal level, not a formulaic one, where the person really understands that this is about a relationship with a God who is pursuing them, not “signing people up” for a “religion”. And to be someone who operates prophetically, involves training oneself to listen keenly for the Lord’s voice, which is why this whole thing takes place in the context of saturating prayer.

Well, the Summit was cancelled, so I called the Evangelism department and asked whether they might allow me to tag along with them anyway, which they graciously allowed. So that is what I am going to do, starting tomorrow at 10 am. Stay tuned! I’ll also try to Twitter a bit, too. So right now it’s a bite to eat in their terrific cafe, and then a nice time in the Prayer Room until the painkiller wears off from my lower back injury. Ahhh…we shall see! Good night for now!

(PS, if you are ever considering visiting IHOP, I recommend the guest apartments. They are very reasonable, very clean and have more amenities than one of those DIY hotels. They also have a pool and playground.)