How To Build The Church

How To Build The Church

Ephesians 4:11 Amplified Bible

And His gifts were [varied; He Himself appointed and gave men to us] some to be apostles (special messengers), some prophets (inspired preachers and expounders), some evangelists (preachers of the Gospel, traveling missionaries), some pastors (shepherds of His flock) and teachers.

   We learn from Paul’s writings that the Holy Spirit gave a task to the Apostles; they were to preach the gospel and lay the foundation of the Church.  But as I study the lives of three Apostles, Peter, Paul and John, I see that each had a specific function in laying this foundation.  Peter’s ministry was not like Paul’s ministry, and neither was like John’s.  In a book by Watchman Nee, he suggested that we can learn how these three Apostles’ ministries differed by the tasks that each of these men was performing when God called them.

   Peter was a fisherman and was in the act of fishing when he was called.  Jesus saw him putting a net into the sea and told Peter to follow Him and be a fisher of men.  Peter’s ministry was very much like being a fisherman.  He was the one who initiated a lot of things.  He was first to jump into things and introduced things to the Church.  Paul was a tentmaker by trade.  He made tents and structures from canvas and wood.  He built things and we see his ministry being one of building.  He built new churches.  He went where there were no churches and built one there.  A tentmaker used native materials – things that were handy to where he was working - to build things and Paul used native populations  - people who were living there - to build churches. John was different from both.  He was also a fisherman by trade, but when Jesus called him he was mending his nets.  John was known as the Apostle of love and one characteristic of his ministry was mending people.  His writings show this.  He wrote later than the other New Testament writers, after the Church had been around for a few decades.  When he wrote, it was during a time when apostasy was beginning to creep into the Church.  There was a need for mending the people in the Church and bringing them back to Jesus and back to His love and back to the true Gospel.   When a church begins to drift away from Jesus and from the Gospel there is a need for a mender to come and repair the damage in the church and untangle things and make them right again.

   So Peter’s task was to lay foundations and introduce new ideas to the Church.  He was the one chosen by the Holy Spirit to preach the Gospel the first time in Jerusalem and he was chosen to first introduce Gentiles into what had been an all-Jew Church.  Paul took Peter’s foundations and built new churches.  He built churches on the foundation and called people to Christ and trained new ministers.  John showed God’s love to all he met.  He brought love to broken churches and truth to Christians who were tangled in the web of deceit and led them back to Jesus.

   What is your heart like?  How do you see yourself in a ministry?  There is a need for all three of these types in our churches today.  We need those who start things going and push people to get out of the pew and get involved.  We need the builder; the one who rolls up their sleeves and gets into the nuts-and-bolts of ministry.  And we need the mender; the one who calms the storm and untangles the errors that come into the church from time to time.  In many years in church I’ve often heard, “I don’t have any talents.  I can’t do anything.”  Not true.  We all have talents and we all have a part to play in the ministry of the church.  Rather than make excuses, pitch in and help!  There’s a lost world out there that needs to hear the Gospel. 

Stephen Cram                                                            April 6, 2014                           

Colossians 2:8 Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, following the tradition of men according to the rudiments of the world, and not in accordance with Christ. 

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Unless otherwise noted all Scripture is from the New King James Version of the Bible.