reChurch Podcast
Welcome to the reChurch Podcast, hosted by Justin and Brooke Knoop.
As we speak, there is a massive number of people leaving the institutional Church...but interestingly, they aren’t walking away from Jesus. Many of us have noticed a significant gap between what we see in the Bible and what we experience on Sunday mornings. Let’s talk about it.
reChurch Podcast
The REAL Reason Church Leadership is Broken (we've been lied to) ft. Neil Cole | #reChurch Ep. 14
Was Church leadership mean to be a hierarchy? Why is the Church system failing us? Where do we find a Senior Pastor in the bible? What are the 5-fold gifts and are they still for today? Should Church leaders carry title?
These are all valid questions, and questions many might deem dangerous. Today on the reChurch Podcast we break down what the Bible actually says about leadership in the Church and how the 5-fold gifts were designed to function.
This is a deep episode, so relax, grab a seat, turn on your ears and prepare for action. Today we talk Church leadership.
📚 Recommended Resources from Neil to dive deeper into Organic/Simple Church:
👉 Organic Church by Neil Cole: https://amzn.to/40MylbU
👉 Organic Leadership by Neil Cole: https://amzn.to/3UMxF2o
👉 Primal Fire (Book to be re-released - link coming soon)
Connect with Neil: https://starlinginitiatives.com/
✅ Follow Justin:
https://www.instagram.com/justinknoop
https://www.youtube.com/@justinknoop
And I had just been in a conference where both of us were speaking. He doesn't know me at the time. I knew of him because he was a pastor in a huge church. He was asking questions from the pulpit that are dangerous. What is the church really? Why do we do church the way we do? The Bible doesn't describe it. I emailed his office to see if he would write the foreword in, and I got an immediate and very courteous response from his secretary who said no, francis doesn't do that kind of thing. Then the next day I got an email from the same secretary saying send the manuscript, but he probably won't read it. He definitely won't write a photo. And then the next day I got another email and the email was from Francis.
Speaker 2:And he says what does it look like moving forward with seeing those gifts arise without there being just a bunch of self-appointed people?
Speaker 1:How do the APES gifts emerge in a healthy way. It's the hierarchical expression of church that's the problem. Whether you put an evangelist at the top of the pyramid or a teacher at the top of the pyramid, or an apostle at the top of the pyramid, whoever's at the top of the pyramid is making a mistake, because it's the pyramid that's the problem what gifts have we sidelined and how do we get back to seeing them all utilized?
Speaker 1:The word pastor as a noun applied to someone other than Jesus in the New Testament is only one time, and that's Ephesians. That's enough to know there are shepherds. So I'm not discounting, but to make that the only role.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the ReChurch podcast. If you're tired of a business as usual Christianity and you're ready to live like Jesus, you find yourself in the right place. And today we're missing one person, missing who I like to call my princess of a wife, my beautiful wife. But I am here again, once again with Neil Cole, and so grateful to have him back. Last episode we got into the depths of Organic Church 101, I'd probably call it and it was just a beautiful conversation. So if you missed that, definitely go back and check out that first episode. But, neil, glad to have you back today.
Speaker 1:It's great to be with you, man.
Speaker 2:Awesome, so super excited about today's conversation. Moving from that whole, what Organic Church looks like, maybe some of the nuances of getting started, the DNA multiplication kind of the heartbeat behind it I'd love to get into a question that comes up a lot with our audience, or question, should I say, and that is what does it look like for leadership to emerge from that organic place, very different from what we probably you and I, a lot of people experience in the church at large? You did write a. Well, you've got two books. You've got a book specifically on called Organic Leadership that you wrote after Organic Church, but then maybe we can, we can touch on that a little bit. And then you've also got a book called Primal Fire, which went out of print but is going to be re-released soon, that you wrote on the five-fold ministry.
Speaker 2:Um, so I'd love to chat a bit about that today. Can you tell me first off we'll hit this first what was your main purpose in in in writing organic leadership after organic church? What do you remember? What kind of brought you to that point of thinking that would be yeah, so my, my mission statement for life is to reproduce healthy disciples yeah leaders, churches and movements, and it must go in that order.
Speaker 1:So all of our training was developed around that. So the first round of our training was starting a new church, organic church, by making disciples from lost people. But then we had a second round of training that we called the second story and that was about developing leaders and movements and networks. And so when organic church came out, that was just basically the first round of training yeah, organic leadership and church 3.0, yep, uh, were the second round and primal fire is a part of that.
Speaker 2:But primal fire developed much more after our training, uh, much beyond our training yeah so it's, it's much more yeah, I'm actually, as we're like, discussing, my brain is moving real time to see like I don't want to skip over the natural progression of the leadership aspect. So, if you could just touch on briefly, what does it look like for leadership to emerge out of an organic community?
Speaker 1:Well, first of all and it's hard for people to get this in their imagination we have to not be hierarchical.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:So Jesus is quite clear over and over again that the first are last, the last are first. There's no hierarchy, there is no stages of leadership where you get higher and higher in the pyramid. That is in the world. In fact he says in the world you have those who exercise great authority over others, and it is not to be so among you yeah and anytime the disciples start scrambling to get to the top, he he cuts them down because that's not what his kingdom is meant to be.
Speaker 1:Right, but it is the way. Everything else is in the world School is like that, military is like that, government is like that, business is like that. Everything you look at is hierarchical. So it's natural for people to try to make the church that way. It violates what Jesus said. And so what we do is we say, ha, there are elders, therefore there are leaders, therefore there's a hierarchy. And so what we do is we say, ha, there are elders, therefore there are leaders, therefore there's a hierarchy. And that's a leap of logic. That isn't necessary. You can have elders and not have a hierarchy. So, in fact, there's verses that get us in trouble because they say you know, respect those who are given the task of being over you. Well, the word over doesn't exist there in the text. It's to be before, and that doesn't mean in the pulpit and standing in front of people. It means to go first down the path towards Jesus. That's what a leader is, that's what an elder is, that's what somebody who is leading others is they're pioneering a trail towards.
Speaker 1:Jesus that you can follow. And Paul says as I follow me, only as I follow Christ. The moment I veer off, you leave me and you follow Christ. Yeah. That is. That is what organic leadership is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, why do you think it is that? Um, it makes people and I seen this very early on in the scriptures that, uh, leadership wasn't something that they started with, it wasn't something that you know. They recognize the works that were going on in. Antioch and and and they were like, oh, let's, hey, who's who's the elder and stuff, like it was something that emerged over time. Why do you think we have this obsession with starting with leadership as opposed to letting it develop organically?
Speaker 1:Well, I think there's a lot of answers to that question. One is we think somebody's got to get the job done, and so we call them a leader, and it's practical in that regard. We all have aspirations and egos and we want to have, we want to aspire to have people like us, respect us, pay us, give us security, give us a sense of identity. Yeah, so that drives us as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, do you think that, with the way that leadership, the way that we've turned kind of leadership into careers, I know you wrote and this is going to another book that you wrote called Church Transfusion have you and this might be a side topic, but have you seen people because have you seen anybody that has has taken leadership on as a career in the church actually make that shift over, and would you say that that's one of the main factors that a lot of people in those positions I say in quotation marks have a difficulty in receiving the message of what true organic leadership looks like in the Bible?
Speaker 1:You mean make a shift from institutional hierarchical leadership to organic. Yes, oh yeah, I've seen many make that switch yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:One in particular that everyone knows. I've watched as Francis Chan made that shift, that's true, yeah, that everyone knows. I've watched as Francis Chan made that shift. That's true, yeah, so when I wrote Church 3.0, my publisher asked me who you wanted to write the foreword and I had just been at a conference where both of us were speaking and he doesn't know me at the time. I knew of him because he was pastoring a huge church. He's in California. Yeah, he's still in California.
Speaker 1:But he was in Simi Valley and he was asking questions from the pulpit that are dangerous. Sure, what is a church really, and why do we do church the way we do when the Bible doesn't describe it? So I knew he was already thinking, so I said why don't we let him read this book and write a forward?
Speaker 1:yeah and the publisher said, oh, he doesn't do that kind of thing. So he said but if you want to try, go ahead. So I got, I emailed his office to see if he would write the forward and I don't think I've ever told this story I hope I don't get in trouble or somebody else in trouble but I I sent an email and I got an immediate and and very courteous response from his secretary who said, no, francis doesn't do that kind of thing. So I thought, oh, they were right. Then the next day I got an email from the same secretary saying, uh, send the manuscript, but he probably won't read it and he definitely won't write a foreword. So I said, okay, sent the manuscript half half. My goal was just to have him read the book and yeah because, because it answers a lot of the questions he was asking
Speaker 1:then I got another immediate email and said well, he got the book, but he's probably not going to read, he's probably not going to write the four, he won't write the forward, so that's fine. And then the next day I got another email and the email was from Francis and he says I want to apologize. I fully intended to brush this off, like I do all these requests, but I'm praying and fasting for my church and the only thing God's telling me is I need to read your book. And I just read it, wow. And I want to know can my elders meet with you tomorrow? Yeah.
Speaker 1:We're both in Southern California. So we met halfway somewhere near UCLA, in Westwood, at a coffee shop and we had a good time chatting. And I start walking off to the car and Francis says listen, neil, I understand what you're saying. I have a gift. I mean, I think God's given me a gift. I got to use it. I said, francis, you do have a gift and it's evident to everyone. Yeah, you need to use it and God will find a way to use it, but what he doesn't want is everyone else to sit on their gifts while you use yours yeah.
Speaker 1:I think it struck a chord. Before I knew it he was was leaving Cornerstone and starting organic churches. Yeah, and he did. He then told me by the way, my elders have informed me I shouldn't write the foreword because then I'd be associated with this kind of church. But I appreciate you asking. I said, francis, listen, if God could tell you to read the book, he could tell you to write the foreword, and if he doesn't tell you to write the foreword, I don't want you to write it. Yeah, and two weeks later he sent me a foreword. So there's an example of someone who has paid a price, incredible price, a cost in front of the whole world, to move from this hierarchical expression of leadership to be more organic, to see churches interactive, to multiply disciples, instead of trying to start another event.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you for sharing that.
Speaker 1:And he uses his gift too.
Speaker 2:Yes, he does, he does, and thank you for sharing that, because part of what we want to do, on this podcast at least, is help people to not feel like they're the only one that are having to pay this price. They're the only one going through this, and sharing examples like that is a great reminder that other people are also paving the way in radical obedience to God, no matter what that looks like. And I think this is only the beginning, because I know for us it reminds me of the whole four-minute mile thing. It's just such a difficult thing to break until somebody broke it, and then all of a sudden you see person after person coming behind, and it falls right in line with what you said how you define leadership. Is leadership going before, not from above? Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and maybe even leadership is a word that we should use less frequently because I think it implies to most people in their minds this top-down, vertical accountability. In fact, that's the complaint we always get in church, that it's organic, there's no accountability. Well, that's not true at all. We have more accountability than you could ever imagine in a normal church, but it's accountability one to another. It's not vertical, it's horizontal, which is what one another's are. So I think when we use the word leadership and I put it on the cover of my book- but I think that it does get in the way.
Speaker 2:Two things. Um, people immediately wanted to ask us the question like who? Who are your, who's your? Who are your elders? Who are you submitted to? You know you referenced like there's more submission in the group, between believers. But then they asked this question and this is what got us in trouble. On the mission field, I told you the story before about how we went on the mission seal and we decided not to go with an organization.
Speaker 1:Let me guess what's your covering?
Speaker 2:What's your covering? You got it, and it's one of the things that we catch the most flack for Um, I don't have.
Speaker 1:you have and mentored and helped along, received that flack more often than I do. I have all the credentials.
Speaker 2:That's true.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've got the ordination, I've got the MDiv, I've got the doctoral degree that was given to me, I've got the stuff that written books and pastor at a church. So they they didn't usually throw that at me, but at the people that I trained it's a. It's weird. I mean you don't find a single verse in the Bible that questions someone's covering. Sure.
Speaker 1:That's not in the scriptures at all. My response is always the same. You know, if all authority of heaven and earth is not enough covering, then there's nothing I can do for you. Wow yeah. All authority of heaven and earth commands you to make a disciple. Yep. All authority of heaven and earth commands you to baptize disciples. Right. And that's a command for all Christians, all followers of Christ. Yeah, so I think that's enough covering. Yeah, so I think that's enough covering. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think, when you start putting human coverings over everything, you are implementing a middleman between God and his people, you're creating a mediator between God and his people, and that's the place reserved only for Jesus. Yeah, and it creates more problems than you can imagine. Yeah. Going back to what?
Speaker 2:you than you can imagine. Yeah, Going back to what you said earlier about the word leadership that's. I think what I was going to say was we've also seen that and we're hesitant how strongly or how much we use that word, and we even chosen our own community to use the word facilitator. It was just more helpful for us. It seemed like more closely related to what they were actually doing, and just stop anybody from from the temptation of getting getting a big head or anything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, it's hard to find the word leader and you, and when you do find the word leader in the new Testament, it's usually in a negative light. Um, so we, we tend to look at Christ's words where he says you know, pick up your cross, follow me, and we think or you know words about not being exercising authority over others. We tend to form new language around that called servant leaders. Right.
Speaker 1:But actually he never told us to be servant leaders. He told us to be servants. We need many more servants, not many more leaders. Right, I think if you're a good servant, people will be influenced. Yeah. They'll be closer to Jesus. Yeah, but you can be a servant leader and still be a mediator between God and men, and that's a problem for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've heard it said before too. Like you, look at the qualifications in those two scriptures, I believe in Timothy and Titus, where it talks about the qualifications of an elder, and people look through those and it's funny because you wouldn't expect somebody not to do those things Like, oh, if I'm not a leader, can I abuse my wife?
Speaker 1:You know, it's like all these things.
Speaker 1:It's like yeah I know I write that that's crazy, that that we we call that qualifications of an elder. Yeah, that's also not in the scriptures. What he says is if you aspire to be an elder, that's a good thing. Now it does. They've. The translation is incorrect. I'll just say that boldly. Yeah, sure, you can argue with me, you can disagree with me, you have my permission. But the word office is not there. It's supplied by the translators because they cannot even imagine leadership or eldership without hierarchy. So they threw it in there. But it's not supposed to be there and also I don't think it's. If you aspire to be in a position of leadership, I think the translation should be if you aspire to have a mentor, that's a good thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And if you're looking for a mentor, here are the qualities that you look for. And if you're looking for a mentor, here are the qualities that you look for, because these are the qualities you want in your life. Yeah. So this is not permission for you to have more than one wife because you're not an elder.
Speaker 2:Right right.
Speaker 1:This is saying when you want to follow someone on that path, here's the qualities you look for. Yeah. To get behind. Yeah behind, because that's what you want, rubbing off on your life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love when you break it down that way because it starts to remove all of these again. Going back to what we talked about previously the CEO, learning from the CEO as opposed to the farmer or just the just just what Jesus teaches. Honestly, and it's funny because I'll look on certain church websites and stuff like that and even as the positions are listed out, it's the, the senior pastor, at the top, the associate pastor and on down and it's and it's. It's wild to me how closely a church website is now looks like a business website.
Speaker 1:Well, and the word senior pastor? It does exist in the Bible. Yeah, Jesus himself is the chief shepherd. Right.
Speaker 1:So I would not put that on your business card, right? I'm sorry. In fact, let me just be honest. I did have it on my business card. I took it off when I were one, so I wouldn't use that language if I were you.
Speaker 1:But you know, we talk so much, we make so much of the elder role, right, yeah, and so little of the deacon. Sure, the akhenos, which the deacon role? You have to be tested before this. So we've used that word servant there, deacon, to be a descriptor for those who are less than elders, and the only reason we've done that is one of the qualifications for the elders they're able to teach. Therefore, in our church, world teaching is the highest objective, therefore they're higher.
Speaker 1:That's craziness. There's nothing in the scripture indicating that elders are above deacons and deacons are not junior varsity elders that clean up after the potluck and count the money after the offering. Yeah, that is when we start defining spiritual gifts based on what we do at this event instead of how we react to one another in the missions in the world, then we are really minimizing God and his purposes and his people. So I think and this is a break from normal traditional doctrines that the deacon and the deaconess are the expressions of the equippers of the Ephesians 4.11 passage, of the equipers of the Ephesians 4.11 passage, that they are the servants are the equipers that have a more broad regional influence.
Speaker 1:And that elders are more spiritual parents in a house, church or organic church.
Speaker 2:When it comes to elder bishop or overseer shepherd, do you think a lot of that language is interchangeable or would you see all those as different?
Speaker 1:So I wouldn't interchange elder and shepherd. Okay. I would see overlap, but I don't see them as synonymous. Okay, Elder and overseer there's a little bit more of a synonymous. An elder is someone who sees over yeah they have enough experience to look above the heads of people to see when there's incoming yeah, and to protect them um. So that's really what it is. There's crossover in a lot of this language, sure. Sure. And nobody is one thing for life. Yeah.
Speaker 1:We all need to grow and emerge and let new gifts arise, and grow more in Christlikeness, which means you have a long way to go and I have a long way to go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's good. I think that's a good bridgeway to kind of enter into the conversation about the APAS gifts. And so for the people that aren't super familiar with that number one, could you tell us what APES is? You know what are those gifts and how does that? What is the connection between leadership, eldership, all that and the APES gifts in the church.
Speaker 1:So first I'll answer the second question first. Yeah, that's fine, get it out of the way. The eldership I think is eldership is literally someone who's older, more experienced.
Speaker 2:That's what it is.
Speaker 1:Now, the word elder didn't just appear for the first time in 1 Timothy 3. Right, it's throughout the Old Testament. Every city had elders. They were spiritual fathers of that or not spiritual fathers. They were the fathers of the city. Yeah. They were the people responsible to care for the ongoing needs of the community. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So that's what an elder is. So for me, in my expression of the kingdom of God, an elder would be anybody who is taking care of a house, a spiritual family a house church, an organic church. They could be only two steps further down the path than the other people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they could be only two steps further down the path than the other people. So when Paul wrote to Timothy, don't appoint a new convert to be an elder. You have to look at context. Timothy was in Ephesus, where Paul had spent three solid years training all these people and they had been going and fruitful for a long time. So when you appoint a new convert to be an elder, there's a problem, not that he's going to lead poorly, which is what we immediately go to, but that it's going to mess with his heart or her heart. Suddenly they're going to think highly of themselves more highly, and so that's what Paul says.
Speaker 1:He says, unless they suffer from the same temptation as the devil and they have pride. Yep.
Speaker 1:But when he writes about elders to Titus, who happens to be pioneering new church planting works in Crete, he doesn't add the qualification don't appoint a new convert, because that's all there is. Yeah, there's new converts, right? So all you need to be an elder really is to be two steps further in your experience of walking with christ than someone else. Wow, yeah, and and help them find that path. Yeah, that's, that's all that is. And so I think every organic church has some elder in it that is respected.
Speaker 1:My church said, hey, we don't have elders because we didn't have positions and titles. I says, yes, we do. It says, no, nobody's been appointed an elder, we haven't had a vote. Okay, I said, well, okay, let me show you how we have elders. Everybody close their eyes, they all close their eyes. Okay, let me show you how we have elders. Everybody close their eyes, they all close their eyes. So when I say, open your eyes, don't speak, just look around the room and look at the face of everybody in the room and ask yourself one question when this person speaks up, do I want to hear what they have to say?
Speaker 1:yeah ready, set go and everybody said, yeah, we have. We have elders Right, it's a functional thing, not a positional thing, correct? So that's how I feel about the elders, about the deacons and deaconesses, it's interesting that there's female deacons and male deacons.
Speaker 1:So you have female apostles in the New Testament, in Romans 16. You have female prophets in the New Testament, both in Acts, and you have females. You have women teaching in the New Testament, being commanded to teach. So I think that you can have the apest roles and they're much more regional in their influence. They're not just focused on one band of people in a home or a family. They're exercising an equipping function for multiple of these house churches. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And that's how I see those roles functioning. So the best way for me to describe them is using the hand. So you have five fingers, you have five gifts. A-p-e-s stands for Apostle, prophet, evangelist, shepherd, teacher. Some use the word fivefold. We used to call them the 4-1-1 team because, based on Ephesians 4-11. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So the apostles? Like the thumb, I'm out of here, I'm hitching a ride, I'm going to the next town. Like the thumb, I'm out of here, I'm hitching a ride, I'm going to the next town, I'm not staying. That is literally what it means to be a sent one.
Speaker 2:Now we've redefined the gift, so that you don't have to go and you can be a sent one, which is a problem for me, see.
Speaker 1:And then we talk about Pauline and Petrine apostles, and Pauline are ones who go, and Petrine ones are ones that stay, but that's not what I see with Peter or Paul. And that wasn't the intent of what he was saying in Galatians 2. So I think that's finding an excuse for someone who stays. Sure.
Speaker 1:So apostles? Someone who's going, they're sent. Sure, so apostles are someone who's going, they're sent. The prophet is the straight and narrow forefinger that's pointing the way. They're the navigators, they're the ones who say there's the real threat. They're the ones that when you are in sin, like Nathan did to David, you're the one you need to repent Right. And they're often the ones who ruin all our strategy planning meetings by saying let's ask god what he thinks now. The apostle and prophet are two gifts that are meant to work together. There are verses in the gospels, in the epistles and even in revelation where the two gifts are mentioned together apostles and prophets. But they are opposite gifts, so they're complementary, and because of that they oftentimes clash and don't get along and they split up and we lose our foundations. That's a big, huge problem in the church yeah.
Speaker 1:I can find apostles, I can find prophets. What I can't find is them working together for the long haul. Interesting.
Speaker 1:In fact, barnabas was probably prophetic, paul apostle. They only lasted one journey. Silas was a prophet, paul was an apostle. They only lasted one journey.
Speaker 1:It's really common for these gifts not to work together. So when they do work together, they become a weapon in the hands of God. In fact, where Paul writes, our weapons are not of this world but are divinely powerful for the destruction of strongholds risen up against the knowledge of God. He's not talking about all Christians, that passage in context. He's talking about the apostolic gifts, because chapters 10 to the end of 2 Corinthians is him defending apostolic gifts and authority and he says there's two parts to the apostolic authority the tearing down of strongholds and the building up of the church. And when these two gifts work together, that's what happens. That's how a foundation is laid. We tear down the strongholds of darkness, the enemy who blinds the minds of the unbelievers, so they can be receptive. And we build up that church, so they can be receptive and we build up that church.
Speaker 1:So I think we need to recapture this prophetic weaponry in our spiritual warfare. The prophets see it, they see the enemy, they see the warfare, but they don't have that weapon of divine power to shut it down so they do a prophetic act and they pray. Now, don't minimize prayer. It does things, yeah, it's effective and it's powerful, but it doesn't destroy the works of the devil, which is what jesus came to do the apostate. We can't. We can't kill the demons, we can't lock them in prison.
Speaker 1:That's not our authority yeah that's not even michael even says the lord rebuke you. I can't do, it sure, so what? What we can do is shut down their works yeah so that's what these two gifts are meant for, but unfortunately they don't get along. Because the prophet is all about um, god must do the work, and only God, not men. And then the apostle's all about creating wineskins to help people do the work. They see that as a clash and they don't get along. And when that happens, everyone loses. Yeah, wow.
Speaker 1:So we need to find a way. And so the way that I get along with my prophetic partner in life, and that's Desi Baker Sure Desi and I, a long time I learned the language that I get along with my prophetic partner in life, and that's Desi Baker Sure Desi and I, a long time I learned the language that helps. I said listen, desi. I learned three little words that help and this will help you get along with prophets, who will also help you have better marriages. You say you are right. That's music to the ears of a prophet. They live their whole life being told they're wrong. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so when someone wants to hear what they have to say and affirm that it's true, it means so much. So I say you are right, it is all about God, and God must do the work. All I want to do. So, in essence, what I'm saying is you're right, it's all about the wine. Jesus is the wine, but I don't want to spill a drop of that precious wine, so I'm going to build a wineskin to carry it. Yep.
Speaker 1:But as soon as this plastic bottle is empty, it's of no value Recycle it. The wineskin is not what's important, it's the wine. Yeah, when, when I use that language, desi can trust me yeah and I can trust him.
Speaker 1:And so he becomes the navigation for the weapon and I have the power to shut it. So good, that's the apostle and prophet, the evangelist, like the middle finger that reaches further than the others and is most likely to offend people. So in Los Angeles, on the freeways, there's a lot of people with a gift of evangelists and they let me know and I always give them my apostolic thumb right back. The evangelist is the most winsome of the gifts. You learn a lot about these gifts just in their name. So an evangelist is good news. Who doesn't like good news? Everybody wants to hear good news. Man, if that's your gift, everybody likes you. Everybody wants to be around you. Everybody likes you. Everybody wants to be around you. Everybody thinks you're charming and loving and good and you speak so well and, man, I like who you are and they want to receive what you have to say.
Speaker 1:And so those are the people in the kingdom of God that you know, like my friend Rick Warren and others, they just, they're just, everybody likes them, and they end up being representatives to the world of the church the DL Moody's, the George Whitefield's, the Billy Graham's. Who speaks to presidents and kings. That's the evangelist's gift and they draw in, whereas the apostle sends out. So there's a lot of crossover with those two gifts, apostle and evangelist. But the apostle is constantly sending out and empowering others, whereas the evangelist is drawing in, and the difference in that is like. So, in a sense, the apostle is repellent and the evangelist is attractional, attractive, so, long haul, the apostle ends up being forgotten. They started a work, but then they move on and the work continues and the people doing the work are not, are not having to give credit to the apostle, they're just doing it themselves, and so the apostle can be forgotten. And you look at Paul's life and the churches of Asia Minor rejected him. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's so sad, but that's true. When he died, he died alone, except for Luke. Yeah, it was common. He had to defend himself as an apostle all the time, because the energy behind the apostle is given out to others, it's distributed. The evangelist is a collective energy. So that's the difference between the two and they're both needed. And then the shepherd is like the ring finger and wants to communicate to the world. I'm committed to one bride until death. Do us part. And when Jesus talked about the shepherd gift, that's how he defined it. The shepherd is not the hireling who is paid to do a job, to manage a flock, because a hireling you'll do fine until the paycheck stops and then you leave. Or the wolf comes and you're not willing to die for a paycheck, you leave. The shepherd will stay when the paycheck stops.
Speaker 1:The shepherd will stay when the wolf comes. So they are committed. And so when you find a mature shepherd in a movement, it's too late. They already have a flock and they're not going to leave it. They're going to stay with that flock till the end. Yeah, so we need to produce more shepherds regularly yeah and I think elders do cross over with that.
Speaker 1:Eldership in house churches is an opportunity for a young shepherd to to refine those gifts so that later they can maybe shepherd more people. But they can only get up to 150 people. Yeah, it's been determined by robin dunbar they call it the dunbar number that 150 is your max number of intimate friends that you can have. Yeah, so a shepherd wants to know everyone. They, they have a limited capacity so so we need more of them. And if you make a fist and you try to raise just your shepherd finger, it becomes very hard to do. Some people can do it easier than others, but the truth is it's attached to the other gifts, it wants to be with others. So the reason we have an APES team in our history for 30 years now is because I started with a shepherd. I can't even do it. The two of us working together, the shepherd makes the teamwork. The shepherd wants to hear everyone's voice. Everyone matters for the shepherd.
Speaker 1:I would have just formed a team around apostles and evangelists and that would have been enough, but because the shepherd was there, it let every voice count. It formed a team. The teacher is the smallest of all the gifts, the weakest actually, and that's the only gift where the Bible says let not many become teachers, because if they're doing their job Because you don't really if they're doing their job right, you don't need a lot of them, because their job is not to do the ministry but to equip the saints to do the ministry. So the evangelist doesn't do the evangelism, the evangelist trains others to do evangelism. The teacher doesn't teach the saints, but equips the saints to teach. Yep.
Speaker 1:And there are many verses where it says everyone should teach.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Hebrews 5.
Speaker 1:Hebrews 5, Colossians 3, 1 Corinthians 14. Yeah. And if that's not enough, the Great Commission which we believe everyone should do.
Speaker 1:Hebrews 5 is really good because it says by now all of you ought to be teachers. All you can handle is milk, and milk is what it's a pre-digested meal. The mother eats, the meal absorbs the nutrients and it comes out for the baby through the gland as milk. That's what a sermon is. A sermon is a pre-digested meal for babies, infants, and our churches are full of babies, infants. They can't feast themselves on the Word, they have to only receive it through a sermon. Our church is full of milkaholics, lactose dependents, that come every week hoping to be fed milk. True meat is when you digest the word yourself and practice it in obedience, and that's what we need more of. So if a teacher is equipping others to teach, then they work themselves out of a job quickly. Yeah, we don't need as many of them, because their job is to equip others to do the work of teaching, and that actually gets the movement moving outward instead of staying inward, with one specialized, equipped teacher to do all the teaching. Sure.
Speaker 1:Do all the thinking for everybody. Yep, you know, the teacher's goal is that we have sound doctrine, and so they want to make sure there are no heretics and people are orthodox. That's their passion, right, yeah, but they do it in such a way that they do all the thinking for everybody, so they create people who can't think for themselves, don't know the scriptures themselves, and they're more easily led astray because of it.
Speaker 1:All you need to do is get someone at the top with a degree and suddenly they could lead them all kinds of false ways. So the best way is to teach them to teach, and you and I know we've taught. When you teach, you learn more than anybody else in that room 100%. So if you want your people to learn, have them teach. Yeah. And if that's the case, then I suggest you also allow them to make mistakes. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I don't know of any sound teacher that ever could say I never taught something that was wrong. I never made a mistake, I never misinterpreted the Bible. That's how you learn. That's the education. So let them make mistakes. The Bible is withstood 2000 years of bad preaching. It can hold its own. So those are the five gifts.
Speaker 2:That's really good.
Speaker 2:I think, too, that brings up something that you mentioned of um, maybe a fear of a lot of people, like they see that the the model of having a sound teacher at the top as a mechanism of uh you know we talked about covering as a mechanism of protection. Um, because I'm under this teacher with this degree and he's under a denomination that you know quote unquote holds him accountable, uh, or whatever seminary that he went to, then I'm more protected against heresy. But, as I've heard you discuss before, that's not necessarily a protection mechanism. It could quite actually work the opposite. Um, how would you say, what would you say to people that are concerned that what you're explaining is more apt to fall into heresy, or even what we hear a lot is turned into a cult.
Speaker 1:One man's heresy is another man's orthodoxy, so we got to get that out there. Yeah, I think that if you think seminary is what prevents heresy, then you're not paying attention to history, because all those schools that we're afraid are so woke and teaching all kinds of weird things, they all started as seminaries. Right, that's true.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so a lot of false teaching comes from seminary. That's not going to be our salvation. Yeah, we don't need better-trained pulpits. Yeah, we need better-trained pews. We need people who know the Word of God so they're not easily led astray. And the system we've created, where experts do the thinking for you, that creates dumber people, not smarter people.
Speaker 1:I can remember when I was in a denomination I was asked to be on a task force to examine how we examine pastors for licensure, and in this particular denomination, the only one who can license or ordain a pastor is a church. So I looked at that and I says, well then, why do we exist as a board to do this? Why don't we just let the churches do it? And one of the pastors says, no, we can't do that. They've not been trained, they've not been to seminary, they don't know how to determine this. And so I said to him okay, let's just say his name is Robert. Robert, that's not his name, is a nice guy. I got you, robert.
Speaker 1:How long have you been at your church? 20 years. So let me understand this. For 20 years, 50 Sundays a year, you've been teaching these people and they're still not smart enough to know what's right and wrong. Yikes, yeah, I don't think you're doing well as a teacher. If that's the case, he had nothing to reply. Sure, it's a mentality issue that there are experts that have more anointing from God Right, that have closer access to understand God, and they then bring the word of God to the people so they can know God. But that creates a middleman, that creates, that creates a mediator, so that you can't know God without this person's help. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's a huge problem, Kind of a Moses mentality. You'll hear people reference the old Testament a lot when they they can only because it's not in the new Testament. Yeah, you say also in in primal fire that, uh, you feel like the church has has sidelined a lot of gifts. Obviously, we know that the shepherding gift is exalted in many ways. Talk about that further. What gifts have we sidelined and and how do we get get back to seeing them all utilized?
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, first of all, it's important to know that the the word pastor as a noun applied to someone other than Jesus in the New Testament is only one time Sure, and that's Ephesians 4.11.
Speaker 2:Yep, and it's in the plural.
Speaker 1:That's enough to know there are shepherds. Sure, I'm not discounting it. Yep.
Speaker 1:But to make that the only role that's available. And the truth is, you say shepherd is the most prominent, that's the most prominent word to describe them, but the truth is they're not shepherds. There's been a coup in the body of Christ where one gift has taken over all the others, but it's not the shepherd, that wouldn't even be the ambition of a shepherd, it it's the teacher Interesting, who took the term shepherd. In fact, in the coup, what they taught us is that, first of all, apostles and prophets are no longer for today and the word shepherd actually is shepherd. Teachers one role and they teach. And look what they did to us. Yeah.
Speaker 1:They left the evangelist outstanding in the field. Literally, they made him so uncomfortable that the shepherd left the institutional church to form parachurch organizations, to fulfill the Great Commission. And we are left with a church led only by teachers, and everything about church is designed by teachers. You sit in rows with a pulpit up front. Who would design that? A shepherd would have couches. It'd be much more intimate. An evangelist would have a stadium.
Speaker 1:A prophet would be in a cave up in the mountain, in the wilderness, somewhere. An apostle wouldn't have a building. I'm just going to meet in your home. That is so true. So, shepherds, in fact, you are given a choice you become a missionary or you become a pastor. Now, when I was younger, I had only those two options Pastor, which means teacher, or missionary. You know how I became those things. It didn't matter If I chose to be a missionary. I still had to go four years to an academic institution and get a degree. Who would design a system like that? Imagine an evangelist being sent to a Christian college in the middle of nowhere, podunk Midwest, in a school full of Christians. No evangelist would ever agree to that. No, torture. No apostle would want to do that. No, no prophet would want to do that. We've created a system that only allows teachers to lead and we talk about churches. What Sunday school or Christian education? Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's all been dominated by one gift and I don't want to get rid of that gift. I have that gift, yeah, but I want all the gifts to work. Yeah, it's all been dominated by one gift and I don't want to get rid of that gift. I have that gift, yeah, but I want all the gifts to work. Yeah, if you're baking a cake, it requires five ingredients, and if you only have two, you're not making cake You're not even half baked.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, so you need all five ingredients. In a sense, we need all five and we cannot be dominated by one.
Speaker 2:Yep, no, that is really good, and I'm still. I'm going to have to chew on that for a while, because when you said that, it became so clear that we've titled, we've labeled something, we've labeled it pastor, but really the majority of the people in the pulpit are not actually shepherds, and I've even seen that in my experience of like kind of the megachurches that we've been part of, that there's sometimes our evangelists in the pulpit and so they're bringing, they're attracting so many people.
Speaker 1:Well, that's led to not a disagreement but a different emphasis that I have with my good friend, alan Hirsch. He's oftentimes will say that apes have been exiled from the church, and apes he means apostles, prophets and evangelists. I agree that apostles and prophets have been exiled, and it used to be that evangelists were exiled, but it is no longer the case With the church growth movement. They were not only welcomed in the church, they sit at the head of the table now, and that is why we've gone from very few megachurches to having more megachurches in every city and every town, because the evangelist now is leading in the church. Yep.
Speaker 1:Their voice is stronger than the others, and so they're bringing in a lot of people growing a church, but they're not actually increasing the percentage of born-again followers of Christ in our culture. Yeah. They're just drawing people in to build a church. That's the evangelist. So they were once exiled and started parachurch ministries, but not recently. Recently they have turned churches into parachurch organizations Right right. In a sense, they've turned them into a corporation. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I'm not saying, all evangelists did that. No, or did that, no, or doing that, but I am saying that now, the evangelist isn't. So oftentimes churches are built on a teacher foundation or an evangelist foundation. Yes, and that's not the right foundation. Yeah, no I needed gifts, but they're not the right start.
Speaker 2:What does it look like? Moving forward, um, with seeing those gifts arise without there being just a bunch of self-appointed people around.
Speaker 1:I think this is a bigger question than just leadership or gifts, and we've touched on this already it's the hierarchical expression of church. That's the problem. Yeah, yeah. So whether you put a evangelist at the top of the pyramid or a teacher at the top of the pyramid, or an apostle at the top of the pyramid, whoever's at the top of the pyramid is making a mistake because it's the pyramid that's the problem. Yep, so that is uh antagonistic to the teachings of christ yes it will not be so among you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, says jesus. So if we eliminate the pyramid and it all becomes relational and it's all horizontal instead of vertical, and our only vertical accountability is to christ and to one another, it's all horizontal. Then you don't have the need to print business cards with Apostle so-and-so on it, correct? Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so in our movement, I've never met a prophet in this world and I have traveled to 60-plus nations and met a lot of people. I've never met a prophet as seasoned and sound as the one I walk beside daily, and that's Desi Baker, but he refuses to call himself a prophet. Sure.
Speaker 1:He says I function in a prophetic gift. Yeah, and the reason is it's kind of a reactive reason but it's a reaction to self-appointed apostles and prophets and teachers and all that. I think we need to care less about our title and you know, each one of you has a new name in heaven and you don't even know what it is. Jesus will give that to you, carved on a white stone, someday, and it won't be on a business card. Yeah, and it won't be on a business card. Your identity needs to be more than pastor or teacher or rabbi or apostle, this or prophet. That it needs to be. I am a follower of Christ and nothing more. Follow me only so much as I follow Christ. Now, the truth is and I'm kind of a biblicist by nature that Paul does identify himself I apostle of Christ, sent by God, not by men. I see that, I know that. But I also see the context he's in and what that means to be apostolic versus what it means 2,000 years later of hierarchical church structures. Yes.
Speaker 1:And so I wouldn't assume, I wouldn't accept the title Pope and I'm not going to accept the title. I wouldn't accept the word Bishop, which is New Testament, that's biblical. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because we've polluted it so much. Yeah, in fact, I don't use the word pastor. Yeah, you'll notice, I use the word shepherd, because pastor implies a position. Shepherd implies, in my culture, a function. Sure, that's all it really is is functions. Yeah, jesus made himself of no reputation and asked us to do the same. Have this attitude in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus. Yeah. So I think we need to be a people who make less of ourselves because we're making more of Christ in others. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's the kind of influencer that will change the world. Self-appointed leaders I don't have much trust in the way you discover your gift. There's five things that I see happening with Paul in the New Testament that helps me understand. This is where my calling is. So five things First God told him listen to. God.
Speaker 1:God said you are an apostle to the nations. That is conversion. I'm sure that he held on to that his whole life and you may not have that kind of revelation, but God might have given you glimpses and hints of your destiny along the way. Go back and look at the formation of your life and see what are the fingerprints of God on your formation. So listen to God. Secondly, listen to the church. Church Paul went to Jerusalem. Peter, james and John said to him you are an apostle to the Gentiles. In the same way, peter is an apostle to the Jews. So listen to the church.
Speaker 1:Thirdly, listen to yourself. Inside of you is a passion to do something, so much so that when all doors close and people say we don't do that in this building, you'll find a way to do it, because you cannot deny it. It's a compulsion. As Paul says, I have a stewardship that gets a reward, but even if I don't, I have a compulsion. I have to do this. Listen to God, listen to the church, listen to yourself, listen to the people whose lives you've touched. Yeah.
Speaker 1:The people who know you the best. Yep. What are they saying about your strengths? So Paul writes the Corinthians are doubting his apostolic gift because of false apostles. He says listen, I don't need a letter of recommendation to you, you are my letter of recommendation, that's right the fact that the Corinthian church exists proves I'm an apostle. You've had many teachers. You've only had one father and that's me.
Speaker 1:So that's you're my letter of recommendation. So ask the people whose lives you are closest to that. See you act the most. Ask them They'll tell you. Listen to them, to them. And finally and I'm going to change the language don't listen to this person, but pay attention to what he's saying that's satan.
Speaker 1:What does the enemy say about you? What does he attack the most in your life? Where does he drop the most bombs? What is he most threatened by in your life? Well, pay attention to that and start using it, because if he doesn't want you to do this, then there's some reason he's threatened by it. Go do it. So Paul says to no one else I'm an apostle, I bear on my back the scars of an apostle.
Speaker 2:You just take off my shirt and you will know I'm an apostle, because I've got the whip marks yeah, not the white jacket and the fancy shoes yeah, no, yeah that's really good and that's really helpful, and I'm glad you mentioned that because I know there's a lot of people that are wondering like, how do I even know? Yeah, um, but I love that you. I love that you framed it in a way of understanding that our identity is in Christ and so, regardless of how he uses you and what you're gifted to function in, you cannot allow that function or that gifting to become your identity.
Speaker 1:No, in fact, all of these gifts. I often ask this question who's the best example, human example, of an apostle in the New Testament? And most of the people I talk to will immediately say Paul. If it's Catholic audience they'd say Peter. But the truth is Peter and Paul would both say Jesus, he's also the prophet who is to come, he's the best evangelist, he is the great shepherd and he is rabbi and teacher. So he is all five. So the truth is, if you have Christ in you, you have access to all five of these gifts. You no longer have the permission to say I'm not gifted, in that. In fact, if this is your weakest gift, you should grow in it, because that's what it means to grow in Christlikeness. You shouldn't be satisfied by saying I never shepherd yeah well then, you never do what jesus did.
Speaker 1:wow, that's not right. You need to grow in all of them. That doesn't mean that you are an apostle, prophet, evangelist, shepherd and a teacher, because in order to become any of these, you mature to a place where you not only are doing apostolic type work, but you're now equipping others to be apostles, you're equipping others to be teachers, you're training people to teach others. That's when you actually become an equipper of others and that's when you mature to be. That's why the Bible says you could have the gift of prophecy and not be a prophet.
Speaker 1:You could have the gift of prophecy and not be a prophet. You could have the gift of teaching and not be a teacher. The difference is not the gift given to you. The difference is the experience and the wisdom and the maturity that turns you from just being teaching to becoming a teacher of others, an equipper. So we can all mature and grow in these things, but none of us live long enough to become a mature equipper in all can all mature and grow in these things, but we, none of us, live long enough to become a mature equipper in all five yeah, except jesus that's right, but you will float and you'll have strengths and you can become.
Speaker 1:There's seasons in my life where I'm mostly a teacher yeah and there's other. Most of my life I've been apostolic, but not all of it, and there's a time when I was highly prophetic and now that's dropped down and I'm more of a shepherd. These are fluid, yeah, but overall, as you look back over your life, one gift will be more predominant your primary gift. That'll indicate your calling, but if you're thrust into another situation where that's not needed, you'll find other strengths come up. Yeah.
Speaker 2:It makes me think of the scripture, about the greatest gift you know, um you know, desire the, the, the greatest gift.
Speaker 2:And I don't know. Paul in some of that context speaks about prophecy, but to me, um, the greatest gift is what is needed. Where are you? What season are you in? Who's the person in front of you? Cause a person that needs healing in front of you may need the gift of healing more than they need a prophetic word.
Speaker 2:And so when I heard that initially from you about the fluidity of the APES gifts, for some people that might be like it might catch them off guard, for me it was. It gave me such peace because I'm like that. It was. It gave me such peace because I'm like that. Not not only did it align with my experience to where I felt like I don't have to like land in this one place and be stuck there forever and then also deny the other things in my life and say I can't do that because I'm not good at that, but it allowed, like it allowed me to think through that and go, yeah, if Christ is in me, if the Holy Spirit is in me, what's not in him? And then, in that line of thought, what's not in me? So there may be things that would be dormant in me, but as the Holy Spirit desires, he can bring those things out of me.
Speaker 2:So now I go into any situation and say I am in prison by myself. I'm not going to sit there and say, well, unfortunately I can't teach this person because my friend who has the gift of teaching is not in prison with me. No, christ is in you and you can become those things. And so last night we were speaking a little bit and you had mentioned that over time you've realized that the order that those gifts flow in your life has has changed a little bit, and that was so cool. And that was so cool and it's something that I think I'll I'll keep in the back of my mind for the rest of my life to make sure that I'm I'm not just trying to function in something the Lord is trying to shift in my life. If that makes sense, yeah.
Speaker 1:I think, ultimately, it's better that you people may need a teacher, they may need an apostle, but I'll tell you what they need. More than that, they need Jesus, yeah, and sometimes you are Jesus to them.
Speaker 1:You are the incarnate Christ in you as the hope of glory and nothing else is. It's not your gift. In fact, we make so much of gifts that we lose sight of the fact that gifts are less important than fruit. The gifts of the Spirit are given freely and they are not revoked. They are not taken away. So you go off the deep end and you start living a sinful carnal life. You still have that gift. Right.
Speaker 1:I led someone to the Lord who was an evangelist and he led so many to Christ and he walked with Christ for seven years and then he went back on crack cocaine and when he's buying crack cocaine from a gang member, he led him to Christ and then bought the cocaine Walking in complete sin, still had the cocaine Walking in complete sin still have the gift. So, when we measure people's spirituality by their gifts, we're making a huge mistake. Sure, but that's what we do. Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, this guy's a good speaker and people come to Christ. Therefore he's anointed. Yeah. Everyone who has the Holy Spirit's anointed. Amen Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, anointing means the presence of God on your life, and a 13-year-old girl living in the hood, a girl of color who's constantly bound to a wheelchair, accepted Christ this morning has as much access to God as the pastor who's been preaching, who has multiple degrees, who's been preaching for 50 years. He doesn't have more access to God than she does. The first will be last, the last will be first, and access to God is our power, is our anointing, is our authority, and that's where the fruit comes from. And so it may take the form or shape of a gift, but the truth is, jesus didn't say you'll know them by their gifts. He said that you'll know them by their fruit.
Speaker 1:And then he went on to say many will say to me Lord, did I not prophesy in your name, cast out demons in your name, perform miracles in your name, gift, gift, gift. And he'll say I never knew you. So it's not the gifts of the Spirit that are most important, it's the fruit of the Spirit. And the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control. Against these there's no law, and that 13-year-old girl in the hood can be as loving as the guy who's been reading God's Word for 50 years. Sure.
Speaker 1:Now there's one thing he has that she doesn't have Time experience, wisdom. That comes from that. I'm not guaranteeing you could live 50 years reading the word and preaching and still be immature. Sure, I met several, yeah, but even if best case scenario that guy's been preaching god's word for 50 years and he has grown the whole time, the only advantage he has is maturity and experience. She has an advantage he doesn't have and that's childlike faith.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:So I think we need to get to the place where we understand the anointing of God is what the gospel brings to all of us that equal access to God. Because of that, my role in life isn't to be your voice for God or to teach you everything about God. My role is to help you learn from God. So we don't emphasize teaching as much as learning. When you shift the language from teaching to learning, suddenly it changes all the way you evaluate what you're doing. I'm more interested in what you're learning and, frankly, you're going to learn more when you start teaching.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:Then, rather than listen to me, teach, and it just turns everything upside down.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's so good. Well, Neil, this has been a a really rich episode. Uh, honestly, much deeper than I thought we'd go, when I'm so excited to honestly go through it again myself. Um, I hope you guys have have enjoyed this and, uh, let us know down in the comments, uh, if you can just maybe some of the, some of the takeaways and some of the ways that this helps helps you and you're able to apply, uh, some of the takeaways and some of the ways that this helps you and you're able to apply some of this stuff to your life.
Speaker 2:I'm just so grateful for Neil's time. I do want to let you know that a lot of if you enjoyed this particular podcast and what we talked about in the APES GIFs, Neil did write a book called Primal Fire, which has gone out of print, but we have good news. It'll soon be back into print here shortly, and so once that is, I'll get you guys a link down below and also be on the lookout for his book on Audible, so he'll have an Audible version of this as well. That might be out in the next few months, depending on when you watch this podcast, but we'll make sure to link all that below so you can dig deeper on this topic. Neil, thanks again so much. You're welcome For coming out here and so much for your time.
Speaker 2:We really appreciate it and excited to see how many people are influenced and impacted by this.
Speaker 1:It's my pleasure to be here.