‘So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, 12 to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.’ (Eph 4:11-13)
These ‘ministry gifts’ are not there to do all the work while the rest of the church acts as spectators. Attending church is not a spectator sport; being church means being part of the body of Christ and each part having its own gift, function and talent. Paul gives us insight, however, in the role of leaders whose job is to help all Christians to be equipped for works of service.
Apostle
An apostle is one who is sent away to achieve an objective: a delegate, an envoy, a messenger. In the early church, apostles were individuals sent with Jesus’s personal authority to establish His church. The original apostles were eyewitnesses of Jesus’s ministry. (Acts 1:21-22) However, other apostles are clearly named in the New Testament, including Matthias, Paul, James, Barnabas, Adronicus and Junias, so we are not just talking about the original twelve apostles.
An apostle is someone who often is a pioneer, a visionary who perhaps travels around churches and has leadership over more than one church. They are people who, like Paul, want to preach about Christ where He is not yet known and whose ministry often involves signs and wonders. They may well travel abroad and be involved in missionary work. An apostle is a gift to the whole church, bringing a sense of positive vision and an initial thrust motion which results in people being saved and churches being established.
Prophets
We’re familiar with the Old Testament prophets – Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Elijah and Elisha, for example – and understand that a prophet is someone who ‘speaks forth’ what God says. In the New Testament, John the Baptist is called a prophet (Matt 11:19) and Jesus Himself is called a prophet (Matt 16:14). Other prophets are said to have gathered at Antioch (Acts 11:27, Acts 13:1) and Judas and Silas are named as prophets. (Acts 15:32) One prophet named Agabus predicted a famine (Acts 11:28) and prophesied about Paul’s imprisonment in Rome (Acts 21:10), and there is often that sense of ‘foretelling’ as well as ‘forthtelling’ in prophecy. One definition of the gift of prophecy is, “the special ability … to receive and communicate an immediate message of God to His people through a divinely-anointed utterance.”
Paul makes it clear that the gift of prophecy is available to God’s people and that we should earnestly desire this gift. (1 Cor 14:1) That doesn’t necessarily make us a prophet, however. A prophet seems to be someone who habitually speaks forth messages from God, someone who does this on a regular basis, whereas the gift of prophecy may be used more widely but less frequently by others in the church. Nonetheless, we need both the gift of prophecy and prophets in our churches today, for we need people who can communicate God’s mind to us directly and we need to hear the word of the Lord spoken with boldness and sincerity. Incidentally, it’s clear that both men and women can prophesy, because Acts 21:8 tells us about Philip the evangelist and his four unmarried daughters who all prophesied!