Ephesians 4:11 (part 2) - Prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers

Apologies for a slight scheduling issue!

4:11

Prophets is a little less problematic, but not much! We know that there were prophets in the New Testament times, and that prophecy is one of the gifts. The term prophet here is not just someone who maybe has the gift of prophecy, but fulfills an ongoing function of a prophet. The problem is that we have very little information on what the prophets did. We know that women prophesied (Acts 21:9; 1 Cor 11:4,5). The only explicit examples of prophecy given are the predictive type (Acts 11:28). Perhaps part of the problem we have is that we think primarily (only?) of prophets foretelling the future. This is actually a limited aspect of their task, it is more to forth tell, to proclaim the word of God. Even in the Old Testament a large part of the ministry of the prophets was to remind the people of the Law and how they were failing to obey the Law. If we take this wider aspect of prophecy all of us preachers should be prophetic at times, cutting to the heart of the matter with the word of God.

We have no problems with the term evangelists, though it is actually a term that is used in only two other places in the New Testament! However, there were churches set up by people other than Paul, so there must have been evangelists, proclaimers of the good news.

There is debate about whether pastors and teachers are two separate ministries or are linked. In a practical sense this debate is silly. All of us can be prophetic, evangelistic, pastoral and teachers at different times. Any one individual will probably focus on one or may be two of these areas, but that should not be taken as limiting. At the same time, no one is a one-man band, now should we be, we need each other, and are meant to function together. Indeed, that is an essential element of the church.