In my last post (Does the Bible Limit Christian Youth to Church work only?) I challenged pastors to pray young people into secular careers and not just church ministry careers. I took issue with the church ministry paradigm that limits Christian service work to the fivefold ministry list in Ephesians 4 (apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers). One person responded with the suggestion that young people could operate in the fivefold in their secular work. That is, why not pray for young people to aspire to be workplace apostles or marketplace ministers?
There is a problem in this perspective because while the fivefold ministry gifts are important for a healthy and thriving church, I do not consider them the criteria by which legitimate workplace ministry is measured. Simply expanding the definition of the words “apostolic” “evangelistic” etc. to include what Christians do in the workplace makes building church the end of workplace ministry rather than a means to a greater end which is the renewal of God’s created order through sanctified work in the world.
Well intentioned pastors and ministry leaders who see the fivefold as the blueprint for
“The work of ministry” that Paul is referring to in this passage is not more church work, it is work done in service to God’s world. That is, the saints exist not for their own sake, nor for the sake of the church, but for the sake of the world, so that Christ “might fill all things.” (Ephesians 4:10)
So fitting secular work into the fivefold paradigm forces workplace ministry to serve the interest of the church and church structures, in which Church apostles, prophets, evangelists, teachers and pastors are pre eminent. Those who advocate this approach see the Christian church led by apostles & prophets as the vanguard of God's army to bring salvation to the world.
For example, Peter Wagner (Global Harvest Ministries) does this in his teaching on the “biblical government” of the church ( The Great Transfer of Wealth: Are You Ready?).[1][1] He believes a second apostolic age has begun with the rise of prophetic ministries in the 1980’s and apostolic ministries in the 1990’s. The challenge for these ministries is that a “great transfer of wealth” that has been prophesied for the past 12 years has not yet happened. Dr. Wagner believes this delay is necessary so that God can raise up “workplace apostles” to be the managers who would steward this wealth wisely to fund the “Distributors” and “Field Marshalls” These are church leaders and workers with an apostolic call to plant churches.
Wagner states “once the managers (who will be mostly workplace apostles rather than nuclear church apostles) have taken their God-assigned place, ministries will be able to move from "donor-based" financing to "revenue-based" financing. This, I think, is the wave of the future, a new wineskin for financing the Great Commission.”
So from this perspective workplace ministry can become simply a means to raise up these workplace apostles so they can serve the greater purpose of building the church. While I have no argument with workplace Christians partnering with evangelistic ministries to further the Great Commission, I do have a problem when this becomes the ideal for workplace ministry. I think this is what we are doing if we use fivefold adjectives such as “apostolic” or “prophetic” to describe the ministry that Christians are called to in the workplace. This is a form of Churchianity.
In summary, I think that approach is contrary to Paul’s intent which is that the fivefold serves the greater ministry of the saints in the world rather than the other way around.
[1] Global Prayer News, Vol. 5, No. 2, pp, 1, 10, June 2004.
