The Ephesians 4 “Offices” are Jesus’ Gifts to the Church, not Fixed “Offices” of Authority

Ephesians 4:11 identifies five groups of people given to the Church by Christ to equip its members to do the work of the ministry--apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. These five groups are best viewed based on their functions, and not as fixed "offices" of authority. The common Protestant emphasis on the pastor as the "boss" of the local church is unjustified.

The primary leadership role of the “pastor” in the church is often said in Protestant circles to be proved by the list of “offices” in the church given by the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 4:11. The point generally made is that “pastors,” or “pastors and teachers” are identified on this list as an office of authority in the church, and that all of the other “offices” named either no longer exist or function mainly at a level above or outside of the ordinary local church. This leaves only the “pastor,” or the “pastor and teacher” (which are often compressed into a single “office”), to be “in charge” of the local church. The exact details of this argument vary from denomination to denomination.

Most of the mainline, evangelical and fundamentalist Protestant denominations tend to insist that the “offices” of apostle and prophet ceased to function entirely after the end of the First Century, leaving only evangelists and pastor-teachers as leaders given to the Church.  (See “Has God Caused Some Gifts to Cease,” on another site). On the other hand, Pentecostal and Charismatic groups tend to recognize the continued operation of apostles and prophets, but place their sphere of operation above and largely outside of the local church, where it will never interfere with pastoral authority.

Furthermore, nearly everyone tends to relegate the evangelist to the roles of itinerant preacher, usually of the kind invited to churches by those in charge to preach occasional short series of meetings, and missionary church planter (who only stays until the church can support a real pastor). Finally, most Protestant churches, Charismatic churches included, tend to insist that “pastors and teachers” refers to a single office, the “pastor-teacher,” so that a teacher who is not also a pastor is simply not recognized.

Thus, the consensus practice of most Protestant churches is to artificially remove the other four “offices” from the picture, in one way or another, so that the pastor can be “in charge” without interference from the others.

            However, this is not what the passage that is primarily relied upon for the argument actually says. Ephesians 4:11-13 states:

So Christ himself gave the 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.…

Ephesians 4:11-13 (NIV).

Although the five roles identified in this passage—apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor and teacher—are traditionally referred to as “offices” in the Church, it is clear from the plain language of this passage that these terms do not refer to abstract “offices” that are conferred upon their holders, but to people who are given to the Church by Christ himself to perform specific functions. That is, this passage does not create “offices,” but instead declares that the persons identified are Christ’s gift to the Church. This passage also quite plainly declares that these individuals are given to the Church to accomplish two purposes: 1) to equip God’s people to do the work and 2) to build up the Body of Christ. Thus, apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers are not given to the Church to do all of the work of the ministry themselves; instead, they are given to equip the rest of us to do the work. (See, “Victory is Promised to the Church Together“).

            However, to a large extent the equipping function of these people given to the Church has been lost. It has been lost, first of all, in the historic division between “clergy” and “laity.” We ordain evangelists, pastors and teachers as “ministers,” when we should be the ministers. We leave to them the work of the ministry. The equipping function has also been lost in centuries of arguments over the relative authority of the abstract “offices” of apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor and teacher and how that authority relates to the authority of denominational hierarchies. Finally, the equipping function has been lost to centuries of argument over whether some of the abstract offices, namely the apostle and the prophet, still exist at all or have now been abolished.            

The obvious answer to the centuries of argument over the authority of the offices is to instead look at the functions of the groups of people identified. This is the way Ephesians 4 invites us to think of the matter. We should be looking at how God uses each named group of the people he gives to the Church rather than trying to determine which of them has more authority. As shown below, this functional approach also resolves the ancient question whether there are still apostles and prophets in the church. To the extent that their functions still need to be performed, Christ still gives the church people to perform them. A rough attempt to define the functions of the five groups of persons given by Christ to his Church follows in the next several posts.

Brief Note on Anglican and Non-Protestant Communions

The Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox and Coptic communions, and the Church of the East, all believe that their bishops, individually and collectively, are the successors of the apostles and carry apostolic authority today, though the details of this vary from group to group. None of these groups rely on Ephesians 4:11 as a part of their basis for this position, and all of these groups tend to treat all of the Ephesians 4:11 roles as still active in the church, strictly under the authority of the local bishop and the hierarchy of bishops above him.  This post speaks to the situation within most Protestant churches, other than churches in or having a polity derived from the Anglican Communion. The remaining posts in this series will seek to define the functions of these people given to the Church without reference to the use of these terms by specific denominations or groupings of denominations.

NEXT: Apostles.