Ephesians 4:12-13 What's Your Job?

We all have a job to do in the body of Christ. What's yours?

Comments

[Brian Koster]

I think you are misinterpreting Eph. 4:12. The second prepositional clause is subordinate to the superior clause that talks about the five-fold ministry. The King James has it right.
It would make no sense for five gifted ministries to always be hanging around the church to "equip" (really, "perfect") the saints, when Jesus said, "come and I will make you fishers of men Matt. 4;19). The word "apostle," is from the Latin "apostolus," which means, "one sent on a mission." If an apostle is one who is sent on a mission, how can his primary duty be equipping the church?
Further, a prophet is one who utters divine revelations, or prophecies, and can tell future events. This may help to perfect the church, but it is mostly to warn the lost, like Jonah did the people of Ninevah.
An evangelist's job is not to equip the church, either, but to preach the gospel to the lost.
A pastor's job is to oversee the flock and to look for lost sheep. It is possible that he might "equip" the church, but he must still labor in the harvest field looking for lost sheep in accordance with Ezekiel 34 and Matt. 9:36.
The teacher may be one who can "equip" the church, but since he is grouped with the other superior ministers, he has in common with them the "work of the ministry," which does not refer to the first prepositional clause, but to the gifted ones mentioned in the independent superior clause.
The result of this error is that we never see any paid Christians out laboring in the harvest field, even though the early church leaders clearly did (every day).
Paul makes very clear in Ephesians that his gifting as an apostle was to preach the gospel to the gentiles Eph. 3:8). Any "equipping" would have been subsidiary to this.
It may interest you to know that the six million dollars we spent on clergy last year in this town is enough to hire 300 full-time evangelists that could cover the entire state of California in one year. They could reach 35,000,000 people in the same amount of time a year's worth of Sunday sermons will reach few, if any.
The apostolic ministry is supposed to paid by the church to preach to the lost. If we could just get the money away from the clergyman! We could evangelize the entire world with the billions we waste every year on clergy.