It seems we have created a professional class of Christian whom we call “pastor” or some other title, pay them as professionals, and expect them to do the ministry. After all, they are trained and educated just for this. Yes and no!

Yes, they are usually well educated and have a degree or two or three. However, no, because most of what they learned in Bible School and/or seminary is of little value when ministering in a local church. Most times the education leaders receive is more academic and less practical. Seldom are they taught to run board meetings, resolve conflict, work with various types of personalities … things they just might need and use on a daily or weekly basis once in the ministry. Nothing against the academics but really this does not qualify a person to be a pastor or leader. God’s call and God’s grace equips a person to be a leader in God’s Church.

The foundational problem other than this is that we are asking leaders and ministers to do something God never intended them to do. That is, minister to the people. The true work of the apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor and teacher is not to do the ministry but to “equip the saints to do this ministry” (Ephesians 4:11-12). The work of the fivefold ministry team is to equip the Body of Christ, the Church, to minister to itself and to bring itself up to maturity.

Listen to God’s Word:
Ephesians 4:11-15 “And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.”

If we get this wrong and try to put the work and ministry of the Body onto the equippers, we will never see the Body of Christ grow to the “measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”

The Phillips translation of Ephesians 4:16 says, “The whole body, as a harmonious structure knit together by the joints with which it is provided, grows by the proper functioning of individual parts, and so builds itself up in love.”

The Living Bible states, “The whole body is fitted together perfectly, and each part in its own special way helps the other parts, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.”

For centuries, Church leaders have been trying to do the work that only the body can do, and the body has not been functioning to bring itself up to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. The effectual working of every part of the body is the only way that it can be done, but the body must be equipped by the leaders that God has placed in the Church for that purpose. Otherwise it cannot minister in health and from wholeness to itself.

The apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, and teacher are valid leadership, sent by the Lord as gifts for His Church for a very specific purpose – to equip the church to build itself up. It is just as bad for the Body not to allow the leaders to function as it is for the leaders not to allow the Body to function. The Body of Christ will only come into strength if every part is properly functioning, and that includes pastors, teachers and all leaders.

So, I believe that it is time that we do it biblically.

The fifth problem we have begun to look at is that the Church is Scripturally untaught. The cure to the fifth problem is the ministry of the fivefold teacher (Ephesians 4:11-12). The ministry of the teacher is often connected directly to the ministry of the pastor. In fact, in some versions of the Bible these two callings are actually joined by referring to the calling as “pastor-teacher.” This is understandable but nonetheless wrong.

Pastors do need to teach. But then, so do apostles, prophets, and evangelists. They need to teach on the local church level as they train and equip the saints for the work of the ministry. And they need to teach the next generation of their respective callings. So, really the joining of pastor and teacher together making them one means we then have a fourfold ministry. This is not accurate as the five ministry gifts given by Jesus to the Church are the five separate ministries that Jesus fulfilled while ministering publicly for three years.

We need to see the ministry of the fivefold teacher as a separate ministry from the other four and not connected directly as part of the pastoral model and role. Although a separate calling and ministry role it is connected to the other four ascension gift ministries as the fivefold ministry works as team of five and never as solo ministers. To not recognize the validity of the ministry and calling of the fivefold teacher will mean losing a whole generation to Bible illiteracy.

Although our “latest series” of teachings may sound relevant, if it does not use the Bible as its outline, something vital is missing. The Church should be a hub of biblical knowledge where constant training and application of the Scriptures are paramount. How else will believers be transformed into Christ’s image and be able to declare to the lost the validity and power of the Gospel of the Kingdom?

The problem: Too many Christians are enamoured with the latest big prophetic revelation, but they can’t balance their chequebooks, discipline their children, hold on to a healthy marriage, or work with healthy dating relationships guided by biblical standards. It is time to reintroduce the ministry of the fivefold teacher … so that we ingrain the example stories of the Old Testament, the simple mandates of the Gospels, and the local church standards of the Epistles in our local churches. There is no substitute.

If we don’t do this them we will continue to be no different than the nonbelievers in our thoughts, speech, finances, relationships and marriages. The unsaved have not had any teachings and are “destroyed for lack of knowledge.” (Hosea 4:6). The same is often true of those who say they are believers.

Believers should examine themselves and check to see if they are spending daily time in the Word, teaching it to their children, and giving it supremacy in their lives. All of Christian life should begin and end with a keeping of the biblical foundation.

The Bible states, “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God” (Romans 10:17 NKJV). Christians deprived of real knowledge of the Bible are doomed to fear, unbelief, and hopelessness. Ignorance of the Scriptures will leave them anemic, dysfunctional, and defeated. We must take active steps, therefore, to see the ministry of the fivefold teacher reintroduced to the local church. Then we will see a renewed or even new hunger for the Word. Of course, we need to then pass this renewed love for the Scriptures on to a new generation of Bible-loving believers, diligently teachings them and training them in biblical knowledge.

Last time we saw that Jesus offers His Church healing through the ministry of the fivefold pastor. In this regard everything we need for healing the unhealed Church is found by looking to the Cross of Good Friday. Everything we need for a church to be whole and healthy can be found there. The revelation and impartation of this will come through the ministry of the trans-local, fivefold pastor. We saw that the Church can experience peace, healing, forgiveness…

Today, let’s look at the cure: healing through the ministry of the fivefold pastor. The healing and deliverance of believers is truly the work of the pastor, the fourth listing of the fivefold ministry callings. A fivefold pastor sees the members of the local church as gifted, talented leaders and ministers, whose potential must be released. David said, “Heal my soul” (Psalm 41:4) and this is the main ministry of the fivefold pastor – to equip the saints to truly be the priesthood of all believers – as they learn to minister to each other and bring healing to individual souls. He obviously understood the pastoral process because he took 400 men who were in debt, in distress, and in discontent (1 Samuel 22;2) and from them formed the mightiest warriors in history.

In the same way, the people in our churches must have individual attention and healing. This cannot all be accomplished by a ‘paid leader’ that we call a local pastor. This is the task of all the members of the body ministering to one another (1 Corinthians 12). And, the ministry of the true, biblical role of “pastor” is to train, equip, and mobilize the members to do the pastoral work needed in the local churches (Ephesians 4:11-12). This is the only “pastor” role in the early Church and mentioned in the Bible. The paid professional doing the pastoral ministry and bringing healing to the members is simply a convenient invention of man.

Several comments:

The members need to be healed and whole themselves before they can begin to minister member-to-member. They may have come out of “Egypt” and are saved and truly born again but now they need a time to get Egypt out of them. They need to enter into their promised land of stable marriages, healthy homes, and healed emotions. This should happen for them during their initial discipling process immediately after being born again.

The members need to be taught how to be care givers and thus fulfill all of the “one another” verses that are in the New Testament. So, the local church will need to bring in the trans-local, fivefold pastor to teach people how to care, how to listen, how to pray for others, and how to release healing and other benefits of the Cross of Christ.

We need the people to look beyond their own social class consisting of the people they are most comfortable with – those similar to themselves. The people of God need to be taught not to distance themselves from those who are too different, too odd, too disturbing to our genteel sensibilities. Jesus looked at the underworld and refused to minister to just the overworld of acceptability. He ministered to and healed the tax collectors, the outcasts, the poor, the demonized – turning them into empowered believers, leaders, ambassadors of the Kingdom and fivefold ministers of the Gospel of the Kingdom.

Then every member will truly be a minister winning others to the Kingdom. Making disciples is the one and only task of the Church and the ministry of the fivefold pastor equipping the saints for the pastoral ministry allows these new converts to be individually discipled into wholeness and health. Mature believers literally become “pastors to the one.”

This is the way the Church was designed to function as it leads to serious multiplication and not just an occasional addition.

We are looking at the dysfunctional Church and the need to reestablish the fivefold ministry of the pastor so that God’s people can be healed and the true pastoral ministry established. This would be seen in the members of the Body of Christ ministering to one another and no longer paying a professional to do the ministry for them.

The cross was the secret to healing and life transformation in the early church. It was even the secret to healing, on occasion, in the Old testament among God’s people Israel. In the wilderness, Israel’s murmuring and complaining allowed a plague of demonic snakes into the camp. Only a revelation of the cross in the wilderness neutralized that poison (Numbers 21:8). In the same way, the poison from our past and even our present lives can be supernaturally removed by a glimpse of the events of the cross. Only through the cross of Christ can we actually become “new creatures in Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

What does it do to the hearts of believes when they get a revelation of the cross? It is no less life-saving than it was for Israel in the wilderness. By studying the wounds of Christ, believers can receive faith for deliverance in every area of their life. Let’s look at some of the things that believers need to know are theirs because of what Christ suffered in His body. This is the foundational teaching of the fivefold ministry role of pastor in the Church.

1> Peace (His brow)… Christ began to take the cup of anxiety, tribulation, and pressure in Gethsemane. He chose the will of God and paid the highest price. The blood came to the surface of His skin and ruptured capillaries, a phenomenon resulting from extreme mental pressure. Jesus took our cares, worries, and anxieties upon Himself and give us peace.

2> Healing (His back)… Isaiah prophesied that there would be healing in the cross for those who believed (Isaiah 53:5). And Peter prophesied, “By His wounds you were healed” (1 Peter 2:24). Healing was and is accomplished through the cross. One of the duties of the Roman lictor was to scourge criminals. Using a whip with razor-sharp tentacles embedded with lead and bone. The lictor systematically shredded the victim’s back as he inflicted the brutal scourging. As the beating occurred, the tortuous tentacles of the whip flew wildly across the victim’s back and wrapped around to his front, often horribly disfiguring him. No wonder Isaiah the prophet said, “His appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any man and his form marred beyond human likeness” (Isaiah 52:14 NIV). Jesus bore our pain and our agony on the cross so we could be healed in every dimension of our lives.

3> Forgiveness (His hands)… Colossians 2:14 states that He, “having cancelled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees again us, which was hostile to us… has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.” A certificate of debt (IOU), in Jesus’ day, was a hand-written promissory note. The ancient method of debt cancellation involved driving a nail through the note and posting it on the purchased property when the debt was paid.

Every sin in our past is a legal IOU in our own handwriting. When Christ was crucified, our list of spiritual IOU’s was nailed between His hands on the cross. The debt, the promissory note, the arrest warrant, are all marked “cancelled” when you receive Jesus’ forgiveness earned for us by the shedding of His blood on the cross. Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness (Hebrews 9:22).

Three more pastoral benefits of the cross next time…