Crisis in church leadership: How celebrity pastors can avoid failing the fame test (Part 4)

 By Leah MarieAnn Klett, Assistant Editor 

When a months long independent investigation found credible evidence that Ravi Zacharias leveraged his reputation as a world-famous apologist to carry out years of sexual abuse, the response from the Evangelical community was predictably one of shock, horror and grief.

Many questioned how this pastor could effectively masquerade as a humble servant of Christ and fool millions of adoring supporters? How could this respected intellectual who preached the Gospel of Jesus with clarity and passion brazenly manipulate vulnerable women into providing him with sexual stimulation?

As the empire Zacharias built — all in the name of reaching the lost with the Gospel of Jesus Christ — came crashing down, perhaps the most devastating realization for many was just how damaging the blow his posthumous downfall was to the witness of the Body of Christ. 

From the fraudulent ministry of Jim Bakker in the late 1970s and early 1980s to the recent slew of scandals surrounding Hillsong Church and one of its most popular pastors, Carl Lentz, the phenomenon of well-known Christian leaders engaging in misconduct is nothing new to the Western Church. 

What then drives the dysfunction and lack of health seen in many church leaders today? Why do so many pastors in Western Evangelicalism fail the fame test despite the biblical example set by Jesus Himself? 

The problem isn’t with being a "celebrity Christian" itself; in fact, Jesus was regarded as a celebrity in the first century, as He was known far and wide for His miraculous acts.  

Rich Villodas, the Brooklyn-born lead pastor of New Life Fellowship, explained: “Generally speaking, celebrity and Christianity are not necessarily contradictions in terms because notions of celebrity are often projected onto people,” he said.

Redefining success in a secularized culture 

In 21st century American Evangelicalism, it can be very tempting to shift toward a different model of success — one focused on money, fame and numbers — than the one outlined in Scripture. 

That’s according to Scott Sauls, the senior pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee, and bestselling author. He told The Christian Post that biblically, success is defined as demonstrating faithfulness, character and integrity. 

“Integrity means being whole in our lives and in our ministries, and that means that we are whole disciples of Christ following the whole Scripture and the whole way that we do life and ministry, including the administrative part of it,” he explained. 

“While administration and faithful and excellent organization are important to steward God's resources well, the measure of whether or not we're doing administration well is the character with which the churches are run and led.”

The onus is on the Church to "redefine success" — and before hiring, churches must “look deeper into a person’s life, soul and background,” according to Ed Young, the founding and senior pastor of Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas.

“We cannot allow someone's great gift to overshadow a lack of integrity in some other area,” he told CP. Many of the pastors who have publicly fallen in recent years exhibited “patterns” that were ignored by those closest to them because of their gifts, he continued.

Egyptian-American pastor and televangelist Michael Youssef of the Church of the Apostles in Atlanta, Georgia, lamented that in the Western Church, many pastors are not shepherds but “celebrities and CEOs of an operation called the church."

"That’s fine if that’s what they want to do, but don't call it the Church of Jesus Christ. Call it something else,” Youssef said. 

“We have become a marketing operation and celebrity preachers. We're not servants of the living God. We're not there to serve God's people, minister to them, admonish them, rebuke, uphold, encourage, comfort and all of these things that the Scripture is very clear about. We have departed from that.”

The secularization of culture, Youssef added, is a driving force behind this phenomenon — and it’s not to be ignored.

“The secularization of the culture at large is impacting the Church, especially those who might not have their feet on the solid ground of the infallible Word of God who are ministering and pastoring out of an emotional, experiential kind of Christianity, rather than the solid Gospel foundational New Testament preaching," he relayed. 

Pastor and author Tim Keller acknowledges that he’s viewed as a “celebrity pastor in some circles.” The founding pastor of Redeemer Church in New York City, Keller’s sermons are heard around the world and his books are read by millions. 

And Keller understands that if he misuses his platform, “a lot of Christians can be put to shame” because of him. 

“And therefore, if God gives me a bigger ‘platform,’ then I actually have a responsibility to not disappoint people,” he told CP. “Not to just look like a great person; I actually have to be holy; I have to actually mortify my sin. I have to have a prayer life. I have to do the stuff that every Christian needs to do. I don't have to be better than other Christians. I just need to be what God wants a Christian to be.”

When pastors get to be “well known,” he said, the praise can turn their heads, the criticism can prompt self-pity and the overwork can cause them to neglect their prayer life. 

“For all those reasons, very often, so-called ‘celebrity ministers and figures’ live lives less consistent with the Christian faith than Christians who are not so famous,” Keller said. 

'Dumbed down what it means to be a pastor'

Young argued that pastors are bred for insecurity: “We want to be cool. We want to be accepted. We want to be liked. And when we do that, we’ll start down that road of compromise.”

Social media also gives a dangerous “wrong impression” of what it means to be a pastor, saying that pastors who get the most views, clicks and likes are the ones seen wearing trendy clothes while standing next to celebrities.

“We’ve sort of dumbed down what it means to be a pastor,” he explained. “When it comes to celebrities or people who are far away from God, you can't play on their playground. You have to meet them in areas that will not cause you to compromise. Evangelism is sometimes used as an excuse for compromise.”

The Church Body must prop up leaders whose aim, desire and vision are organized around the love of God and neighbor — not the person with the most appealing social media accounts, Sauls contended.

“The Apostle Paul didn’t say, ‘Watch your brand or your reputation closely and persevere.’ Sauls added, ‘Watch your life and your doctrine and persevere in that.'"

Christian leaders must wrestle with the tension between Jesus' call to be humble and be careful not to draw attention to themselves, Sauls added.

“That's sort of the essence of humility. It's not that we think less of ourselves; it’s that we think of ourselves less. We don’t brag, we don't boast, and yet at the same time we are called to draw attention to ourselves,” Sauls said, citing the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus said, “Let your light shine before men that people may see your good works and glorify your Father in Heaven.”

“We have to figure out what that tension is, where on the one hand, we are very shy about ourselves and very boastful about making our faith public in such a way that the world sees a demonstration of the beauty of what Christ does in people and communities.”

Friendship and accountability

Research from the Barna Group has found that pastors can often experience difficulty when making friends. Pastors are more likely than the general population to suffer from loneliness and isolate themselves from others.

The inability of many pastors to keep close friends, Sauls said, is a severe problem in church leadership.

 He challenges pastors and church leaders to ask themselves: “Are there people in my orbit who know me well enough to discern clearly and accurately whether or not I'm walking with Christ? If they sense something’s off, do they also have the freedom to challenge me without fear of punishment or retaliation or being pushed out?”

“The common thread seems to be that the person who falls into those traps has either created or had created for them a situation where they were no longer accountable to anyone or answering to anyone but themselves," he said. "And then slowly they drifted away from having friends and close companions to a different model where functionally they have servants and admirers."

Every individual in a ministry organization, the Gentle Answer author said, needs accountability congruent with their authority.

“I think that’s why God put us in community; I think that’s why Paul had traveling companions,” Sauls stressed.

The “one-anothering” passages in Scripture — Love one another (John 13:34); be devoted to one another (Romans 12:10); Build up one another (Romans 14:19; 1 Thessalonians 5:11) — are “very instructive in terms of how we can create a community life together,” Sauls said.

Young added that while accountability is essential, pastors can “only be held as accountable as they want to be."

"You can’t legislate morality and purity," Young said. "It has to come from that relationship with Jesus and walking with Him and being as wise as a serpent is innocent as a dove."

“When you're down and emotionally drained, you're susceptible to temptation. You can over eat, over sex, overspend — it’s deadly,” Young warned, adding that the overarching issue is a “personal one with the pastor and his relationship with God, his spouse and others around him.”

“You can have all of the elders and boards and meet with people for prayer, and all of those things are great, but at the end of the day, it's a person's standing and lifestyle before God. … It's a sin issue and it's a holiness issue.”

In addition to demonstrating transparency with his accountability partners, Youssef said that three people are aware of his whereabouts at all times. He releases his finances and tax returns to five members of his leadership and his technological devices are fully accessible to his spouse and staff.  

Such measures are “necessary,” Youssef said, adding that everyone — regardless of their title — is “very capable of self-deception.” 

“We can never get to the point where we say, ‘I trust my own judgment,’ because you cannot,” he said. “Scripture tells us the heart is deceitful above all. So what do you do? You build a wall around those areas that are going to cause your downfall.” 

Discipling the next generation 

For the Church to be an effective witness in an increasingly secularized culture, Youssef believes the next generation of church leaders must have a firm grasp on the Word of God and focus on discipleship. He said it is vital to uphold the authority of the Scripture and pass it on to the next generation "unmolested.”

“I tell younger pastors, 'Don't even go into the ministry if you are not going with the absolute commitment to the authoritative Word of God; not the clever quips and the nice stories and the jokes and trying to be a comedian,'” he said.

“'If the Rock of Ages is not under your feet, it’s going to get on top of your head and smash you. If the Rock is not under your feet, holding you, it will crush you.'”

Young emphasized the importance of young pastors finding mentors outside the church who constantly point them to Jesus. He also stressed that being a pastor is "extremely lonely and isolating."

“They need to know they are specifically called by God into the ministry," Young said. "There has to be a moment, a time period, where they understand that. Walk with God each and every day. They need to know they are doing this for an audience of one and are called to please their Heavenly Father." 

“Lean into the Lord for your spouse, for your kids," he continued. "Be faithful as a leader before God, and just let the chips fall where they may. It's about glorifying God and everything that we do, say, touch and feel."

Sauls agreed that for the Church to flourish, young pastors and ministry leaders must make sure that their personal lives align with their “professional faith.” 

“Make sure that you are the same man at the dinner table or same woman at the dinner table as you are when you're leading a Bible study or preaching a sermon,” Sauls advised. “Watch your life closely and watch your doctrine closely. Stay aligned with Scripture and stand under it, don't stand over it. Let it revise you — don’t revise it.”

“If we can follow those two instructions consistently, we'll be fine, and the Lord will be glorified,” he added. 

Pointing people to the cross 

Instead of using their platforms for their own fame and glory, pastors and ministry leaders must continually point people to the cross, Youssef said. He challenged pastors: “Please return to your first love, and allow Jesus to bless you, instead of trying to bless yourself and manufacture a blessing.”

“His blessing is permanent, His blessing is lasting, and His blessing is eternal,” Youssef said. “Go back to the Word of God, uphold the infallibility of the Word of God. Go to the trouble of expounding the Scripture, explaining why these difficult passages are there, go to the trouble of expository preaching because that's the only thing that's going to convert listeners.”

Pastors need to get "back to that to believing that the power to convert is in the Gospel, not in our own slick presentation," according to Youssef. 

Sauls urged pastors — particularly those of successful, growing churches — to routinely examine their hearts and ask themselves: Are we stewarding these resources for good? Or are we distorting them? Are we in this for our own glory, fame, reputation and honor? Or are we in this for Jesus’ glory and fame and reputation? 

“Are we stewarding the things that have been entrusted to us for the glory of God and for the benefit of our neighbor and the flourishing of the priorities that God has put forth in His Word? Or are we using those things to serve ourselves, whether it's to boost our own egos and platforms or line our own pockets?” Sauls asked. 

Sauls assured that there’s nothing wrong with running a well-led organization that prioritizes excellence and wants to flourish financially. “But it all depends on why you want to flourish.”

“Do you want to flourish financially in order to have long pockets and in order to be powerful and have control? Or is it because you want to have a greater capacity to serve your community and bless your neighbors and meet the needs of the neediest among you and the hurting?”

'Pandemic of narcissism': Seminaries respond to the Evangelical church leadership crisis (Part 3)

 By Michael Gryboski, Mainline Church Editor 

The last few years have seen multiple instances of well-known Evangelical leaders entrenched in scandals and misconduct. Some have questioned if seminaries are doing enough to train future pastors to lead churches and disciple their congregations virtuously.

Darvin Wallis, a pastor and founder of Mission U Online, an online biblical education resource group, penned a provocative op-ed published by The Christian Post earlier this year about the problems facing American Evangelical pastoral leadership.

"For about three decades now, the Evangelical church has embraced corporate leadership paradigms. This has worked wonders for the bottom lines of attendance, giving and the number of reported conversions. Yet, it has also created a crisis in leadership," asserted Wallis, the pastor of Mission Lakewood Church in Colorado.

"Church scandals like Bill Hybels, Mark Driscoll and James [MacDonald] are not random anomalies. Scandals are a natural part of the risky corporate leadership structure. We have accepted the corporate, bottom-line goals for the church. We have accepted the corporate personality traits for our church leaders."

As part of his critique, Wallis suggested that seminaries — which aim to prepare students to become pastors, missionaries and religious leaders — are not providing adequate leadership training.

"While seminary prepares pastors for scholarship, we graduate with nearly no knowledge on how to practically lead a church," continued Wallis, who received a master of divinity from Denver Seminary. 

In its place, he argues, things like books and conferences are "helping to create" a "church leadership industry" that is "forming the ethos of the American church."

As part of this series on the church leadership crisis, The Christian Post interviewed seminary leaders about how their institutions prepare pastors to lead churches and their take on Wallis' criticism. 

'Evangelicalism is in a very problematic place'

Mark Labberton, president of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, was ordained in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and had about 30 years of pastoral experience before becoming head of the academic institution founded in 1947 by radio evangelist Charles E. Fuller. 

Fuller is based in Pasadena and has satellite campuses in Arizona and Colorado. 

Labberton, who has led the seminary since 2013, believes that the "cultures of many churches and denominations or networks" will often deprioritize a "transformative life" and focus more on "cleverness and shiny objects."

"The caverns that exist between the mind, the heart and the hands of many Christians reflect the Church's failure to disciple people deeply and holistically," he said.

Labberton said he finds the arguments of Wallis' piece merited.

"Evangelicalism is in a very problematic place, and the issues Pastor Wallis names are among the reasons," he said. 

Labberton said Fuller seeks to provide "formational education for diverse Christian leaders." That means "measuring and retuning ourselves to be aware of the personal formation of our students" and to provide "the knowledge and formation needed on the ground to best minister to those God is calling our alums to serve."

"The whole of the scriptures need to inform a pastor's life and vision," the former senior pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley, continued. "In this particular season of the Church's internal and external crises, I feel like we should never be more than five minutes away from reading the Gospels."

"Our central identity comes from the life and ministry of Jesus, not the forms, structures, strategies, budgets and technology of our ecclesiastical industrial complex to which we have yielded," he added.

'Pandemic of narcissism' and 'cardinal vices'

Missiology professor Scott W. Sunquist, who serves as president of multi-site Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary based in Massachusetts, had extensive pastoral experience overseas, serving in the Republic of Singapore.

Sunquist said that in Singapore, "we had to negotiate government regulations and restrictions, languages and cultures" and wanted to make sure that the Church there "did not simply parrot American Evangelical words, music and even liturgy."

"The big lessons I learned about church leadership had to do with being attentive to diverse cultures and leadership training," he said.

"In some ways, the Singaporean experience encourages me to challenge U.S. seminary students to take their devotions more seriously, to be more committed to cross-cultural mission work and to freely witness to their friends and neighbors."

Sunquist, who became the seminary's president in 2019, brings expertise on Christianity in the non-Western world. He believes that being a missionary can be "excellent preparation for seminary leadership." He observed that through such work, people learn "some resilience and courage, both of which are important characteristics of a pastor or even a seminary president."

When it comes to the problems in the American Evangelical church, Sunquist believes that the lead issue is not "learning from non-Christians," but rather "our unwillingness to confront what the Church Fathers called the cardinal vices."

The "three core vices" that the early Church was concerned about, according to Sunquist, were greed, passions such as "food and sex," and pride. He said leadership failures are the result of "succumbing to these three vices."

"We have a pandemic of narcissism today. Social media feeds our small self-esteem appetite until it becomes a narcissistic monster. Most leaders fall into this trap," he said.

"We see leaders fail because they did not name the demons, and they did not have strong people around them to guide them toward holiness."

Sunquist also told CP that he believes it is "troubling when we reduce seminary presidential leadership to a secular model of business leadership."

"A pastor can learn a lot from secular leaders — I know I have — but they also need to have actually been a pastor to lead pastors," said Sunquist.

The president of Gordon-Conwell noted that his seminary focuses more attention on "discipleship and virtue formation in theological education," including "communal formation." He said the seminary is "trying to be attentive to the culture while providing the best in classical theological education."

"This is intentional, personal and communal formation that is not detached from academic formation," he said. "Thus, we are working hard at biblical contexts — as we always have — but we are now working harder than we previously had to understand contemporary contexts: social, political, economic, etc."   

"Thus, we are adding virtue formation, in the form of discipleship, to the lives of all of our students while they are students at Gordon-Conwell," Sunquist added.

'Unnecessary dichotomy'

Angie Ward is the assistant director of the doctor of ministry program at Denver Seminary in Colorado, where Wallis attended. She has about three decades of experience in church and education ministries. She is also the author of I Am a Leader: When Women Discover the Joy of their Calling.

"Whether at the master's or the doctoral level, our pastoral leadership courses are taught by instructors with a wealth of field experience," she told CP.

"We believe that leadership flows out of the person of the leader; it's not just a skill. Therefore, we strive for holistic formation: not just education in the classroom, but experience in the field and formation through an integrated training and mentoring component."

Ward said she is concerned that there is a "growing but unnecessary dichotomy between 'pastoring' and 'leadership.'"

"But to view the pastor as a shepherd — a theme that is repeated in Scripture in the words of Jesus and the writings of the Apostles Paul and Peter — means that pastoral leadership involves both caring for individuals, and tending to and moving the overall 'flock' toward maturity and mission," she explained.

"The Church is — or should be — more than merely an educational institution or even a mission center. It should be a center for formation — again, moving people toward individual maturity as disciples of Christ, and the gathered community toward public witness of God's love."

Ward said she "would agree wholeheartedly that the American church, broadly speaking, has over-focused on leadership, and on drawing from corporate models."

"I believe the issue is that we — again, the Church, broadly speaking — do not have a clear or robust ecclesiology. We don't understand the nature and purpose of the Church and how it is unlike any other organization in the world," she said.

"Therefore, we default to what we know, which is a 'corporate' model. We need to look not only for different answers; we need to start by asking different questions about Church."

The crisis of leadership in American Evangelicalism (Part 1)

 By Christian Post Editors

Regular readers of The Christian Post are well aware of the moral failures at the highest levels of Evangelical leadership in the recent past. Formerly revered figures such as Ravi Zacharias, Bill Hybels and Mark Driscoll and earlier harbingers like Jim Bakker are the reminders that all is not well within the multifaceted movement that is American Evangelicalism.

When an Evangelical icon such as Zacharias can fall so drastically from the Evangelical firmament, clearly there are cultural and spiritual dynamics at work that require investigation.

CP has tasked three of our reporters, Michael Gryboski, Leah Marie Klett and Brandon Showalter to investigate the problem and possible causes and solutions with a broad cross-section of the Evangelical community. There are obvious factors that must be taken into consideration.  

The rise of the “megachurch” and the consequent vitiation of formal denominational influence and the structures and oversight it provided is certainly one factor.  

Another factor is the hypersexualization of American society, a cultural phenomenon that is one of the first things foreign visitors to the United States notice. Pastors and other Evangelical leaders are impacted by this virulent phenomenon. It should also be noted that American pastors of this generation have a dramatically increased and unprecedented number of women in their churches who are not married and not living with their parents or other relatives. The rising tide of pornography that has increasingly saturated society is another powerful potential snare that Evangelical leaders contend with on a daily basis. In reality, pornography is the Madison Avenue ad campaign for sexual immorality.  

The so-called “cult” of celebrity and the rising corporate model of leadership are other troubling factors surfaced in this series.

Another factor that is also surfaced and that commands attention is that an increasing number of Evangelicals and their leaders are adult converts to Evangelical Christianity, and thus do not have a family background and “grounding in the faith.” As our series suggests, there needs to be more attention given to personal spiritual formation and grounding in the faith in seminary for those Evangelical leaders who did not have the advantage of being reared in such spiritual circumstances.

All of these factors and doubtless more will surface in the days ahead. As people from various Evangelical traditions identify causes and propose answers to the leadership crisis roiling Evangelicalism in America.

CP presents this series as a contribution to that discussion in the hope and prayer they will ignite an ever more inclusive discussion of this critical problem and how it can be addressed successfully for the betterment and flourishing of His church.

Crisis in pastoral leadership: Are the apostolic and prophetic offices being restored? (Part 2)

 By Brandon Showalter, Christian Post Reporter

Amid seemingly unending church and ministry leadership scandals and the exposure of unhealthy structures and institutions that enabled them, are long-lost offices of the Church being recovered? 

The Apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 2:20 that the Church, the household of God, is “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone.”

In Ephesians 4:11-12, Paul continues that the Lord gave fivefold offices for the edification of the Church, specifically “apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 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.”

Yet many Christians today have no theological or experiential grid for the first two offices listed, perhaps because the canon of Scripture is closed and the apostles who were alive during Jesus' time are no longer walking the Earth. This view, which is called cessationism, holds that after the death of the last apostle, spiritual gifts like prophecy and the office of a prophet are no longer operating. In practice, however, some churches and denominations adhere to degrees of this view, allowing for certain expressions of the gifts to operate in the church. Others have admitted to believing in the continuation of the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirt but being, for all intents and purposes, "functional" cessationists.

With such a theological paradigm, the absence of the offices of prophet and apostle in the contemporary church has yielded an often top-heavy congregational structure that is led by a pastor. Teachers teach the Bible in Sunday school. When many think of the office of evangelist, guest preachers and the-late Billy Graham and his stadium crusades come to mind.

To dive more deeply into these ecclesiological issues, The Christian Post spoke with Ron Myer and Larry Kreider, two leaders with DOVE International — an interdenominational global family of churches and ministries on six continents. CP also spoke with Pastor Derwin Gray of Transformation Church, a nondenominational Evangelical congregation in Indian Land, South Carolina.

The interviews explore what has gone right and what has gone wrong in recent years, and where they see God taking the Church at-large in the coming decade.

Substantial paradigm shifts are occurring for many Christians, they say, and sincere believers would be wise to heed what the Holy Spirit is doing, even if it seems unfamiliar. 

How have the fivefold offices gotten lost and how are they being reclaimed?

According to Kreider, a major issue afflicting the Church is what he calls “clergy-laity mentality.” He describes it as a pervasive mindset where the paid clergy leads the church and they are called “pastors.” They do most of the ministry work and laypeople serve the ministry of that pastor.

But whatever terms are used, DOVE International contends that leaders in the local church are more like elders or overseers.

"We do believe that all five of these gifts are needed. And on a broad-based level, you need the apostles and prophets working together, hearing from God together. To use military terminology: apostles [are] the generals. The prophets being the seers, they’re the ones getting the intel [from God],” Kreider asserted.

For a local church, there needs to be impartation from all those gifts, equipping from all those offices. 

Yet, this is strange doctrinal territory for many people, as it was for Myer.

“In my upbringing, there was nothing ever spoken about apostles and prophets. There was no grid for it,” Myer explained. But that all changed as he became “filled with the [Holy] Spirit and into an understanding that Ephesians 4 is here to equip the saints for ministry and that the equipping of the saints is a primary role of the Church."

"To equip people to minister to those who are not part of the Church, not just to minister to each other," he detailed. 

The apostles are the builders, the church-planters, those who are trainers and equippers.

And the prophetic is to come alongside them to help guide and speak to that — what is the Lord saying right now in the present, Myer said. He added that all five offices are needed to work together so that the Church can hear the full counsel of God. 

“I think somewhere along the line we slipped into [the church mode] where it’s easy to just have a pastor to lead the church. So we’ll just call him a pastor," Myer said. "And in some cases, you have evangelists — that’s their primary gift — but they only knew pastors, so they put the term pastor on them. But they’re frustrated because they're not functioning as a pastor because that is not their primary gifting. People put that label on them, and then they’re trying to be somebody that they’re not versus truly functioning in who they truly are."

Myer believes that God has given a "greater definition" that brings "greater freedom."

"With greater freedom then comes greater function," he contends. "With greater function comes the ability to be who God really created them to be. We’re working to usher in and continue to expand the Kingdom of God, His way of doing things, as we pray, 'Father, let Your Kingdom come, may your will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.'” 

If the fivefold gifts can work together to see each and every believer functioning and bringing the Kingdom into their workplace, in the marketplace, into their school, a greater expression of Jesus is manifested in society, he maintained. 

What are small-a apostles?

Kreider believes that an apostolically inclined small-a apostle is motivated by and is thinking on a macro, big-picture level, and wants to see the Kingdom of God extend across their city, state, region, nation and world. As with any other spiritual gift and vocations, this gifting is to be called out and affirmed by others in the Body of Christ.

To function in these gifts, one needs to see the giftings in others, Myer added. It’s not just someone who prophesies or carries a prophetic gift, but someone who trains up and pours into others so they can mature spiritually. 

For those who are hesitant to embrace this thinking because they have concerns about what has been referred to as the New Apostolic Reformation or the abuse or misuse of spiritual gifts, the DOVE leaders urge Christians to revisit the Word. The New Apostolic Reformation is a phrase coined by C. Peter Wagner to describe a movement within Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity reclaiming the apostolic and prophetic offices.

“I think what has happened is that when the church is run by pastors and administrators, it has played right into the clergy-laity mentality that has ruined the Church," Kreider said. "When you read the book of Acts and the Epistles, you see God using common, ordinary people. You see them being resourced through apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers."

The title “pastor” is used for ministry and church leaders today, even those in pastoral roles, but are not particularly pastoral-gifted people, he added. 

“If they lead a megachurch, they are probably apostolic. But since we don’t have room for this language, I think it holds us back from expressing the heart of Christ to people and to be trained to full maturity and fulfill the call of God that is on their lives,” Kreider said.

In fact, the first time he went to a Pentecostal gathering, he sat in the back row so he could leave early “in case it got too crazy.”

Myer added: “For those who have had negative experiences, and there are certainly plenty of them out there, my response is: I’m sorry you had a negative experience. There’s no excuse for it." 

For those who get hung up on titles, DOVE International shies away from them and leans more toward adjectives. 

“I’m not ‘apostle Ron,’ but I do apostolic ministry,” Myer said, defining it as “being a spiritual father to a number of people who I pour my life into ... with one goal, to see them succeed and be all that God made them to be.”

These gifts need to be in operation until the return of Jesus, he maintains, to bring the Church to full maturity and bring as many people into God’s Kingdom as possible.

The clergy-laity mindset trap

Although careful not to blame any particular person or group for the creep of the clergy-laity mentality, Kreider and Myer said that those in clerical roles think they are the paid professionals who need to do all the ministry and that the laity is not equipped to do it.

From the laity side, they argue that the thought process is one that always defers to clergy who are paid to do it, and therefore, they do not have to minister. 

“If COVID has done anything, it has helped much of the Body of Christ realize that when two or three gather in His name, He is in the midst of us. And we believe there is a place for larger gatherings, but the focus is on the two or three,” Kreider said.

“We have great hope for the Body of Christ. It has been a mess, we agree with that. We’ve all been a mess. But He is leading us by His Spirit, and we’re excited about the future of the Body and the future of the Kingdom.”

While not all churches are top-heavy or afflicted by this clergy-laity mentality, Myer believes that amid all of the changes that the pandemic brought, the circumstances have come to model what the fivefold ministry should look like and what true apostles really are.

“There are some places in the world that you can’t even use that term [apostle] because of the abuse and control in the past versus a spiritual father that wants to see those around him succeed. That has a heart and a passion to plant, but then to empower and release those around him,” Myer said.

“I think we have a wonderful opportunity to demonstrate what are the gifts of the Spirit and they are to bring about change, to help people, to see them transformed, to help them with problems and to demonstrate the love of Christ.”

In May 2020, Myer said he sensed the Lord tell him that “in times of uncertainty, you’d better be sure what you’re certain about.”

“Anytime we’re in chaos, that which we really believe will be challenged. And it shouldn’t be changed, because if it’s built on God’s Word, my circumstances don’t change what I believe. I continue to believe until my circumstances change,” he said. 

“I think the opportunity of the fivefold ministry is ... that even when there’s chaos around us, even when there’s a storm around us, there can still be peace in the midst of that. We can still walk in confidence; we can still walk in security.”

Kreider emphasized that American Christians tend to think about the United States, but the truth is that the Church is part of a global Kingdom.

“There’s nothing new under the sun," he said. "We’re believing God for good things in our nation, obviously, but we know there’s a Kingdom that cannot be shaken, and that’s what we stand in." 

An apostolic, prophetic church

For Derwin Gray, lead pastor of the multicultural Transformation Church in Indian Land, South Carolina, how the church understands and defines itself matters.  

“When we talk about the ecclesia, when we talk about the Church, [its] blood-bought people who have been redeemed by King Jesus through His epic accomplishments, His sinless life, His atoning sacrificial death, His resurrection and through the sealing of the Spirit. We are this family,” Gray told CP. 

The way Gray interprets his own church as apostolic is that they, as a group of followers of Jesus, are built on the apostles' message: Christ crucified and risen from the dead. He describes his congregation as rooted in the New Testament and the early church councils and the foundation of the apostles is what drives them. 

A genuinely apostolic church is about the establishment of God’s rule and reign on Earth, and that those who trust in Jesus are part of His new creation, he said.

Gray added that a truly apostolic leader is a messenger planting such churches rooted in the historic realities of the Church. 

To be prophetic, then, means: “Thus saith the Lord.” 

“With the canon of Scripture, thus saith the Lord, is the text, the Scripture, primarily the redeeming work of Jesus through the Spirit to the glory of the Father,” the pastor said.

The gift of prophecy, as explained in 1 Corinthians, is for the purpose of edification, encouragement and speaking a timely word to people. It's to be twofold, he said, both to be “here’s what God says” and those gifted with the gift of prophecy who are used by God to edify and exhort the Church. 

Both leaders who inhabit an office and laypersons who have the giftings can flow in the prophetic in this way, Gray said. 

“We don’t view prophecy as ‘Hey, in three days this is going to happen.’ We view it as God spoke it, here’s the Word, and then the gift of prophecy in encouragement and edification.”

Where the Church is going in the coming years

Gray said there needs to be "local bodies of churches of all shapes and sizes."

“My main thing is that there is qualified leadership with integrity and that people are being equipped for the work of ministry," Gray explained. "That may be a house church or a big church, a small church. I’m not concerned about the form. I’m more concerned about the function. And every believer is a royal priest. Every believer has been enlisted in Jesus’ ministry and mission, and so that’s what we need to do.”

“This is not a job for me, this is a calling,” he said of his own role, “and our staff is called to serve our Body.”

According to the former NFL player-turned-pastor, being an apostolic church doesn't mean that "everyone on our staff is more spiritually mature than someone who works at Bank of America."

"Every believer is supposed to be equipped to be a minister and missionary in how you go about that in various forms, just go about it," he assured. "If it’s a house church, go about it. If it’s a megachurch, go about it.”

This will, however, require a paradigm shift for many American Christians, as many have accepted, perhaps unwittingly, varying degrees of what some call “consumerist Christianity.” 

Gray attributes this to unwise pastors who teach an imbalanced theology where “Jesus basically functions as the dream-giver,” and believers are asked to participate in His Kingdom so that they can reach their potential.

The Gospel, by contrast, holds that Jesus is the King who invites people into His Kingdom by grace through faith, and the Holy Spirit equips in order to join in the call to reconcile everything in Christ, he said, referencing Ephesians 1:10.

“We’ve got to move from consumerism to participation," Gray stressed. "But pastors and leaders have to teach that, and a lot of times they are afraid to because America is a consumptive society and the great majority of the Church is also a consumptive society."

While churches of all shapes and sizes are everywhere, the Church-at-large in America is sick, he lamented.

“And I love [Jesus] too much to water down a message to draw consumers. God is calling people to participate in His Kingdom and it is by grace through faith. Jesus is Savior and Lord who wants to do His life in us and through us. And here’s what’s beautiful: When we get that, it’s so much better than consumerism,” the 50 year old added. 

“And consumerism is like going into the candy store and getting sugar high and being sick for the rest of the week.” 

What has contributed to this, he added, is the seeker-sensitive model that starts with the homogenous unit principle. The principle says if you cater to people who look and think alike and share a socio-economic status and ethnicity, you can grow a church faster. Thus, sermons are crafted for them.

“The problem is that the Bible never says that.  The church is for Jesus,” he said. 

“When Jesus is exalted,” he continued, quoting John 12:32, “it says He will draw all men unto Himself."

Gray believes that many pastors have been baptized into the homogenous unit principle. Many have learned that people really like the rousing, inspiring content, so they forsake the teaching of doctrine and theology and avoid controversial topics.

What that ultimately yields is a “baptized Ted Talk and sprinkle of pixie dust of Jesus sprinkled on top of it,” he quipped. Yet because that has broad appeal, the model makes money, creating the incentive for it to keep going. 

There has to be a reformation among pastors where it is asked: “What is the King Jesus Gospel,” he continued.

“I firmly believe that it is expressed in Galatians 2:20 very beautifully. That I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me. Though I live in this body by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. So Christ, God’s chosen One, God’s Elect, wants to live in us and through us to reproduce His life, and it’s by grace through faith."

Gray and his wife were under the conviction that the early Church was a multiethnic group of believers in Jesus that had unity through the blood of Jesus, of Jews and Gentiles. This is rooted in God’s promise to Abraham that he would be given a multiethnic family. Jesus, being the seed of Abraham, through his redemptive work not only forgives sins but creates a family of brothers and sisters of many colors.

The good news of the Gospel, which centers on the work of Christ on the cross, is that God is getting His family back. And as the family learns to love each other, they image forth the glory of God, and as an invitation into this family as well. 

Yet, as children of the European Enlightenment, American Christians like to break everything down to pieces and parts, Gray said. 

“And the reality is, the Hebraic understanding of our faith is the Hebrew Shema,” Gray said, which is, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

'Underneath those sandcastles were idols'

Gray warned that there is "no domain in which the love of God in Christ does not influence and flex its muscle."

“And what has happened is that there are a lot of people who were involved in movements where they’ve seen incredible hypocrisy, where they’ve seen core leadership get up and speak an incredible sermon, thousands of people come to faith, but yet the pastors aren’t living the message," he continued.

"And I think for a lot of them, they were baptized into a thin shallow Gospel, and so they’re tired.”

This often sets in motion a process of deconstruction where they become progressive Left, he explained. 

“When you deconstruct Jesus Christ, you’re no longer a Christian,” Gray emphasized.

“As a pastor-theologian, I think the Church needs to be more theological one, not less. I think the Church needs to be more Christological, not less. I think the Church needs to be more Gospel-centered, not less. I think we need to view the Church as an equipping institution.”

Speaking specifically to the American Church, Gray believes that many were like children on a beach building sandcastles. 

“But we didn’t know that the tide was rising and it’s going to wash all that away. COVID-19 has been a rising tide that has washed those sandcastles away. And underneath those sandcastles were idols,” he offered.

He believes the Holy Spirit is challenging the Church, asking the Church if she is ready to do away with those idols, and allow Him to knock them down.

“Are you ready to allow me to tip over political nationalism idol, tip over the greed idol, the pride idol, are you ready to allow me to tip over the pornography idol, and so many more?” he asked.

“And so if we’re in a posture where God is saying, ‘Listen, it’s time for you to rediscover who I am and never forget that individual salvation only exists so God can have a Church, a family. And this family, when Jesus went to the Cross, sin died in His body, but in the resurrection, all of us went to live in His body."

“Thus, treat each other as such.”