Five
Apostle. Prophet. Evangelist. Shepherd. Teacher.
- Many video games employ five-person teams with specific roles.
- These roles help a team function at it’s best to win games.
- Jesus Christ talks about a five-person team to lead the church.
- The western church is in decline because we only emphasize a couple of roles.
- To truly engage our culture, we need to activate all the gifts, not just a handful.
The Long (Got time? Read this.)
I play video games. It’s a fun hobby.
Many of the games I play have different roles to choose from. Selecting a cool-looking character is not the primary goal, the main concept is to pick a role that will serve your team during the game.
Hang with me here…
We play Rainbow Six Siege…a game about swat teams. Each team has five players. The role you choose is critical. Do you want to smash walls to help your team breach the enemy base? Do you want to carry a shield to alter the enemy’s tactics? Pick wisely. Roles are important.
One of the world’s most famous video games, World of Warcraft, is also centered around roles. No wonder they call it a “role-playing game.” It’s not just about selecting an elf or human. More importantly, what role are you going to serve your team with? Your team needs a variety of abilities to face various challenges.
Are you going to be a tank (take damage for your team)? Are you going to be a healer (heal your teammates)? The choice is yours. There are many five-person dungeons to encounter, and it would be unwise to enter a difficult dungeon without the proper roles represented.
Many games employ five-person teams. League of Legends, Battlefield, and others use the concept that five-person teams are the best way to present a team-based game. Success is largely dependent on the role you choose.
It’s fascinating to me that the Bible talks about a five-person role to lead the church. Ephesians 4:11 says,
Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers.
A five-person team! We’ll talk about these roles in detail in a future post. However, it’s awesome to see that our church leadership was never intended to be a cookie-cutter or a carelessly thought-out experience. A dynamic “role-playing” exists that would see the church thrive. Maybe you fit the role of an apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, and teacher!
I’m just thinking out loud here. I wonder if the western church has fully-embraced the five-person roles? On the contrary, I believe the western church emphasizes one role…the pastor. Don’t get me wrong, the pastoral gift is very important. But we are not optimized in church leadership with one role. It hinders us from being truly effective.
To only emphasize one role is like having a football team full of quarterbacks. It’s like having a soccer team with only goalies. The team will function, but not as it was intended.
It seems like the western church leadership is limited to the pastor, assistant pastor, youth pastor, worship pastor roles. These are great roles! But the Bible lays out a strategy that is based on a diversity of gifts.
You may see things differently. And I would love to hear from you if you see these gifts fully functioning in your context. But from my viewpoint, we need a revitalization of these roles that Jesus Christ has given us.
Why did Christ himself give us these roles?
* To equip God’s people to do his work.
* To build up the church
What’s the end game for the five-person roles?
* Unity
* Maturity
12 Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. 13 This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.
There are other benefits to these gifts.
* The church will no longer be immature
* The church will not be affected by crazy teaching
* The body will grow healthy
14 Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth.15 Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. 16 He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.
It may take some time, but for the Western church to thrive, we need to activate, support, and empower all of the gifts that Christ has given us.
