-
What if my missional community is lopsided towards certain gifts?
While teaching a cohort about the five equipping gifts — a lesson series I call “The Ephesians Ecology” — a good question was asked. This missional community is an urban church located in the Bronx and they’re leadership has been working on gifting using Alan Hirsch’s APEST Test. This test helps people discover where they fit in the five equipping gifts of Ephesians 4: apostle, prophet, evangelist, shepherd, and teacher (thus APEST). They’ve identified enough of their gifts to realize their pretty heavy in a couple of the gifts.
So a sister asked during the session about this lopsidedness. What did it mean that they were strong in a few of the gifts? Did this mean they should seek those gifts out to round out their community?
In my mind there are three possibilities for lopsided communities:
- God specifically designed you that way. Certain communities have a particular calling or destiny the requires a lot of a few gifts. For example, there are churches, orgs, and teams of people who are focused on a particular justice issue and so the church is heavy in prophets, pastors, and teachers.
- It’s the stage your in. In the first letter to the Corinthians Paul says: “And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues” [1 Cor 12:28]. While this is a different listing of the gifts, Paul speaks a definite order. In my opinion, that order is about sequence rather than rank. In a movement (and we should always think of church and missional community as a movement), apostles and prophets emerge and move first. Behind them come evangelists and teachers. Following those come the shepherds. The first two break the trail. The next three bring along the mass of people (the flock) who will enter into what God is doing. A new movement will be apostle-prophet heavy. The eventual size of the movement will be determined by how many of these focused on how many territories. Once a movement matures, there are relatively few apostles and prophets and many, many more teachers, evangelists, and shepherds.
- You need to repent. Churches and communities haven’t always embraced all the gifts. Our human rebellion against the authority and activity of God and our tendency to reject what is different or “other” has led to many gifts being shut down or chased away. If there’s one over-all theme from Ephesians that serves as the foundation to embrace and nurture all the gifts, it’s this: unity-in-diversity through Jesus-shaped love. If your community has lacked this, you may need to repent and do the hard work of changing, healing, and welcoming more gifts.
If you find your community lopsided, it could be due to one, two, or all three of these factors. It’s not something that should be diagnosed without cultivating a safe and prayerful space for a community to discern together, but it’s definitely worth the answer.
What do you think is going on in your community? Have you seen these dynamics at work anywhere? Do you need some help discerning what’s going on in your group?
-
0 Replies
Sorry, there were no replies found.
Log in to reply.