This is Joseph Mattera with God Today. Today I want to speak about the Fivefold ministry gifts. Now, what are the Fivefold ministry gifts? Well, Ephesians 4:11 Paul the apostle says, “Jesus gave some to the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers.” For what reason? “To equip the saints for the work of the ministry of the building up of the body of Christ.” So, when we think about this, we see that there are special giftings and this gifting actually is part of the DNA, the ministry DNA of Jesus. Because it says in Ephesians 4:7, “For grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of the gift of Christ.”
So all the functions that we see Jesus operating in could be collapsed down to apostle, prophet, pastor, teacher, and evangelist. When we express how He ministered in the four gospels. The good news is that every one of us that has been born again has been given a measure of this grace according to Christ. Because we belong to Him we now walk in His DNA. His DNA is expressed in these five ministry gifts. When we think about the apostle we are thinking about somebody who is an entrepreneur, somebody who is a pioneer, someone who expands the Gospel. He doesn’t choose 12 pastors to start the church, He chooses 12 apostles. It says in 1 Corinthians 12:28, “First in the church are the apostles.” Why? They are the pioneers. They are the people who are missionaries. The people who expand the church and multiply disciples in the church.
In the workplace, if you have an apostolic gift then you would be an entrepreneur. You would be someone who would take a Mom & Pop grocery store and make it a chain of grocery stores or take a hamburger place and make it a McDonald’s. A prophet is somebody who knows the heart of God, who brings the heart and mind of God out. And understand where God is going, understand the mega-trends. If you were a prophet in the workplace, you are somebody who is paid to be an advisor, a consultant, or somebody who understands the trends in the future. And even prognosticates related to the economy and what we should invest our money in.
Then you have evangelists. These are the people who are gifted with exhortation and influence. In the world, they would be the PR people, people involved in marketing, or cars and insurance salesmen. Pastors are the shepherds. They are the ones who take the church, care for the church, comfort the church, and maintain that which the apostle has been able to ascertain through their influence. We need pastors. If we just had apostles whose minds are just on expansion, just on multiplying the Kingdom but not on caring for the flock, we would have a church all about works. That would eventually implode for lack of love. When we have pastors, we have people caring for the flock and consolidating that which was already gained. In the workplace, pastors or shepherds could be people involved in counseling, psychologists, psychiatrists, it could be a nurse. Anybody involved in maintaining the quality of life for humanity.
Last, but not least, we also have the teachers. The teachers are people who are able to take complex truths and collapse it down to that which anybody could understand. They are the ones who make the manuals for, let’s say, a car. When you buy a car you have a manual that explains what to do if something goes wrong or if some kind of image comes on the dashboard. They make everything very understandable in the body of Christ. Teachers are not mostly proclaimers, but they are explainers. We have a lot of preachers who build faith, who exhort. That is important. They are the ones who motivate us to believe God, to do what God has called us to be.
But if we don’t have the application of that which is proclaimed, we will not have the practical steps which we need in order to walk out our calling. So, teachers have been brought into the body of Christ not to proclaim, but to explain that which the Word of God has laid out for us. So we need teachers. Jesus was called a teacher, He was called a preacher, He was called an apostle in Hebrews 3. He was constantly called a prophet. They knew He was the prophet who was to come, that Moses predicted in Deuteronomy 18. And, of course, He called Himself the Good Shepherd. As an evangelist, He said, “I have come to proclaim the good news to the poor.” As it is recorded in Luke 4:18.
We see the whole Fivefold ministry in an exemplar in Jesus Christ. The good news in grace has been given to each one of us who walk in that gift. When will that gift expire? The good news is also these Fivefold ministry gifts will be given, verse 13, “until we all come to the unity of the faith until the knowledge of the Son of God to a complete mature man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. That has happened yet, which means we still need you to walk in the Fivefold ministry. This is Joseph Mattera signing off for God Today.