By Steven Lambert
Pastors, when you go on Facebook and spend a few minutes looking over and maybe liking a couple of posts by a few minister FB friends and then close it out and go on with your day totally forgetting the nuggets of truth or words of wisdom written with great forethought and prayer and then posted by those older ministers, in particular, who have been living down in the trenches of ministry for many years or decades, who more than likely sometime in their past, invested years of their life and efforts in planting and developing local churches or teaching centers, or some expression of the Church Jesus is building or Jesus’ ongoing ministry, you are (hopefully unawares and inadvertently) overlooking one of the greatest assets God could ever provide you in your church planting and development efforts. (Pardon, please, the writing faux pas of a long, run-on sentence.The greatest church-growth program ever devised in the history of mankind and the church Jesus is building is the Fivefold Ministry Model outlined in Ephesians 4:4-16. Every senior church leader in America and some other nations around the world has at their ready disposal some of the most battle-tested, God-anointed, God-appointed, life-experienced Fivefold Ministers on the planet living right in their “backyard,” so to speak, in the form of highly-experienced preachers/teachers/ministers who reside in their geographical sphere of operation — in their immediate locality, their region, or state. God has distributed these mighty warriors of God all around you like salt on a plate of food. These are Kingdom-assets God has blessed you with who are eager to do what they can within their range of ministerial expertise to HELP you in the task of building your local church.
Moreover, the fact of the matter is: the Ephesian Four text indicates you cannot possibly accomplish what God wants for you to accomplish in the establishment and edifying of a local church WITHOUT utilizing these Fivefold Ministry officers and functionates in your local church. It’s impossible to properly build the local church according to the Biblical model without them! No matter who you are, how anointed you think you are, how brilliant you think you are, and how successful you see yourself as being, you CANNOT do it all yourself, by yourself, and for yourself! To think otherwise is total deception and foolishness!
The theme song of some local church leaders, according to their attitudes and actions, should be a variation of an old chorus we used to sing years ago in Charismatic circles: “He’s All You Need, He’s all you need, Jesus is all you need!” But their version should be: “I’M all you need; I’M all you need, I AM all you need!” Such a mindset is the zenith of hubris and arrogance. JESUS is all believers and churches need; YOU are NOT! In fact, YOU are dispensable! God could replace you with someone else tomorrow if He so desires; someone who could complete the assignment or task BETTER than you!
Though I don’t see other prophetic spokespersons talking about this type of issue, I am nonetheless totally convinced I am hearing the Spirit of Lord speak to me on virtually a daily basis how unhappy (to put it mildly) the Lord Jesus, the functional (not figurative) Head of the Church, is regarding this vital matter. After all, it is HE HIMSELF who devised and designed the Fivefold Ministry Model and placed it conspicuously in the approximate middle of the New Testament books to tell us how He, THE HEAD and Chief Architect, wants the church to be built and what success in building it looks like (see, Eph. 4:4-16)! It was as He was departing this world and planet on the Day of Ascension from the Mount of Ascension (Mount of Olives) that He relegated the Fivefold Ministry Offices unto some of His choosing, election, and appointing to function in in His stead for the duration of the Church Age! He stated categorically, “I WILL BUILD MY CHURCH, AND THE GATES OF HELL SHALL NOT PREVAIL AGAINST IT (i.e, the ekklesia He is building) (Mat. 16:18)! HE ALONE is the Architect and Builder of the genuine Church (Heb. 11:10)! We MUST follow the blueprint HE drew up and consigned to the surrogate human builders of HIs House, the Church. Anything that is not built according to the blueprint HE designed, whatever it may be, it is NOT the Church Jesus is building! The human surrogate builders cannot simply make up their own design, acting as the architect themselves; to do so is being an antichrist architect and will NOT succeed!
Numerous, well-written, spiritually informative teaching articles are published here on this blog that can be found in the Archives. I highly encourage you to read, ponder, and assimilate the information and spiritual edification contained in these articles, and then seek the counsel of the Head of the True Church, Jesus Christ, asking Him to help you to understand how He wants you to implement the divine wisdom and understanding He is showing you in the structure and functions of the church or churches God has called you to provide Christ-like surrogate leadership to on His behalf, remembering it is HIS Church that He purchased with His own shed blood, and not yours; you are merely the under-shepherd appointed by the Great Shepherd to shepherd the flock of God (Acts 20:28; 1 Pet. 5:2).
So the moral of the message is this: Wise up! Search out, then reach out to some of these veteran Fivefold Ministers God has surrounded you with, and ask them to HELP you to build the local church you have been attempting to build all by yourself. That’s why God has invested so much in the training, development, and maturation of these MIGHTY WARRIORS: TO HELP YOU TO ACCOMPLISH WHAT GOD HAS CALLED YOU TO ACCOMPLISH ON HIS BEHALF! REMEMBER: UNLESS THE LORD BUILDS THE HOUSE, THEY LABOR IN VAIN WHO BUILD IT (Psa. 127:1)!
And, by the way, don’t you even think, “Well, I can’t afford to spend money on honorariums to support these ministers of God to minister in my church!” NO, YOU CAN’T AFFORD NOT TO INVITE THEM TO HELP YOU AND THEN GENEROUSLY GIVE TO THEM IN RETURN, the WAGES of which Jesus stated the laborers are WORTHY! They are God’s anointed and appointed surrogate BUILDERS of HIS HOUSE, the Church of believers in Christ! Remember, what Jesus said, “If you receive a prophet (one who speaks on behalf of God) in the name of a prophet (i.e., allow him to minister as a SPOKESMAN of God to you) YOU SHALL RECEIVE THE PROPHET’S REWARD!” God will reward you many times over for seeking out the assistance of genuine God-appointed, tried and proven, Fivefold Ministers, and then blessing them financially in return for what they deposit in your life and in the lives of God’s sheep assigned to you for shepherding!
REMEMBER: THEY’RE ALL AROUND YOU! SEARCH FOR THEM! FIND THEM! REACH OUT TO THEM! SEE WHAT GOD DOES! If you’ve heard from God, YOU WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED!
