E.21 — Apostolic Structures Vs. Pastoral Structures
Season 2: Episode 18
5 Steps to City Transformation
Get the Podcast Playbook, to accompany the podcast here. Filled with devotionals, checklists, questionnaires and more:
In this episode you will learn:
Why staying in a pastoral model will keep you hidden and fruitless.
What must be implemented before the body of Christ can become mature.
How church culture must change in order to begin effectively impacting the community and globe.
Episode length: 33:49
Transcript
For nearly all of Christendom, the church is operated on a pastoral model to conduct church.
Back to the Blueprint
But as we move into the new epoch, God is highlighting the model he set up in Scripture as a revolutionary turnaround in order to make the church body an effective agent in the earth again.
In this episode of God's strategy room, I'm going to take you into the biblical model as theory and then show you how the apostolic model works in practice. You're going to come out of this episode with a real hunger to see God's strategy for church being implemented in the earth.
Welcome to God's strategy room.
As we move into the new epoch in Christianity, God is releasing Kingdom strategies and blueprints. Join us as we dive deep into God's strategy room to discover the wisdom of heaven for the transformation of cities. I'm your host, Angela Meer. I am the apostolic lead for Firehouse, a center for city wide transformation in Southern Oregon. Let's jump into this week's episode.
Hi, and welcome to another episode of God's strategy room. It's been real fun to be able to bring you guys these podcasts. And if you want to listen to more, or you want to get the transcripts for the podcast, you can go to my website, which is AngelaMeer.com. It's A-N-G-E-L-A, M as in Mary, E-E-R.com.
So I hope to see you there because they also have a workbook that you can utilize for each one of these episodes to kind of help you work through each of the other bits of material that I'm giving you here.
There are Huge Differences
So anyways, let's get into it today. And I'm really excited to, because
Apostolic structures versus pastoral structures is a real important thing that God's bringing to the Earth right now.
And I would just want to talk to you about the differences between the two, and what happens in the body of Christ, when you are under one structure or the other structure.
Differences in Theory
Okay, so let's get into the theoretical stuff, and then we'll eventually move into the more practical application of the theoretical stuff that I'm about to share with you. So let's first talk about the pastoral model.
The Pastoral Model
This is a model, of course that most people are familiar with, in fact, I'd be shocked if you aren't familiar with the pastoral model. And the pastor model has been around for pretty much the entire stretch of Christendom. And the pastoral model is something that we see begin to emerge out of around 300 with Constantine and there began to be more of a push towards Christianity as an institution.
And there began to be pastoral models that began to emerge on the earth. These models were different from what was set up until that time, and these, the apostolic model was the model that we see referenced in the New Testament, and then pushed outwards towards about 300 ad.
And so often times when we think of going back to the Acts church, we think, oh, well, we need to get back into orthodoxy, or I know people that do that, they went back into orthodoxy as an attempt to get closer to the origins of the church.
But the reality is that the origins of the church is an apostolic model.
Church As We Know It
And so what we can see that is scripturally seen throughout the Bible, throughout the New Testament, is that first of all, the pastoral model is something that has a pastor as a head.
And usually that pastor as a head is in charge of a wide variety of things.
He's in charge of making sure that there's a Sunday school going for the children, he's in charge of making sure that there is a good message on a Sunday. And he or she is in charge of making sure that the church is operating within budget, and you know, they have the nonprofit status if you're in the United States of America.
And they basically are in charge of the kind of thing that we're typically used to, and they may look at, they may have people under them who are doing things like youth ministries, or prayer ministries, or different things like that.
And on very rare, rare occasions, you'll even see some churches have kind of parachurches, parachurch ministries that are coming out of their church, so that may look like missionary work that's going on, maybe they're sending short term missionaries out from their church, or it could look like, it could look like, maybe there's a school, or an elementary school or a preschool attached to to the church.
So all of this is what we're used to now in today's age about what the pastoral model looks like.
But the pastoral model is this idea of “Church as we know it.”
So let me talk to you, however, about a biblical concept called the apostolic model.
The Apostolic Model
The apostolic model is based on this idea that there’s a, let's see, there is an ekklesia at the root of it. And what do we mean by the word ekklesia? This is a Greek word that Jesus used. And when he was talking to Peter, he said,
“On this rock, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” And this is a verse that we all know when Jesus is talking to Peter, but with a word there in the Greek is “ekklesia,” when he says “church.” So, we have translated the ekklesia into what we know is the modern notion of church.
But when Jesus used the word ekklesia, he was actually using a word that was used at the Greek city states.
And ekklesia really meant ‘governing body.’
It meant that this was the body that was in charge of what was going on in the community. And so the ekklesia is a very different concept than what we think of as church.
The Gates of the City
So the apostolic model is really based on this idea of the ekklesia. And if you've heard me in other podcasts, I often refer to the fact that the church needs to be sitting at the gates of the city.
Throughout Scripture, Old Testament, New Testament, you see that the the gates of a city is this important place where the important decisions of the time is going on. So basically, what we really need to see is that the apostolic model embraces the ekklesia, or the church rising up as the ekklesia, rising up as a governing body.
And so this means that they're not necessarily governing within the church, but that they're influential people throughout the community, because they're sitting at the gates and they're causing the important decisions of the city to go through them. Okay.
So the ekklesia model, or the ekklesia, is really the root of the apostolic model.
If you have somebody who's an apostle, and they're not raising people up to be an ekklesia, to be able to go out and be influential at the city gates, then they're not really operating as an apostle. They're just really moving more as a pastoral kind of person.
Difference in Practice
And so let's look at the various different things that you can kind of see in practice around an apostolic model.
So, first thing is that you will see with a pastoral model that it's heart centric, and an apostolic model is mission centric.
Okay, so let's break this down. In the pastoral model, the pastoral person is typically very interested in the individual, they're very interested in making sure that people are rising up into health, they're very interested in making sure that the heart of individuals is there, they're getting rid of sin, and they're embracing the Spirit of God.
What is a Mission Centric Model?
Okay. And this is awesome and this is powerful, but it should only actually be an aspect of the entire focus, okay. So with an apostolic model, an apostle usually comes with a mission, they usually have something from God, that God is saying, “I want you to build something on the earth.”
And it can look like a wide variety of things.
And some apostles that I know, a good example is Heidi Baker, she is building a new kind of model of missions, they're in Mozambique. And as an apostle, she's moving in signs and wonders, and she is causing the body of Christ to rise up the ekklesia, to rise up in Mozambique, and to see that there is a wide impact into the community of Mozambique, okay?
And so all of Mozambique, the entire country is being affected by the fact that she is moving into the city she is operating, she goes in, gets kids out of dumps and and, you know, different places like that. And then she brings them back to the orphanage and then she raises them up there.
And so her ministry is going outward into the city and it's affecting the city.
It could also look like somebody who is an apostolic model is somebody who is really interested in making sure that the body of Christ is bringing the wonder of God into every stretch of where they go. So they may be really pushing signs and wonders out there in the marketplace, so that the wonder of God can expand in people's hearts and unbelief and the unbelievers as well as the believers.
And so it depends on the various apostle and what they're carrying. As an apostle, for myself, what I carry is a desire to see innovation be taught, prophetic innovation.
So, how do we hear from God and innovate on the earth, and then see how that innovation begins to move out into our city and affect us, affect a whole region, right? And so we may be seeing, in fact, we already are seeing, we're meeting with the mayor, and we're making sure that we are implementing things in the city right now that are really beneficial for city wide transformation. And so that is really at the heart of it, you'll see an apostolic model is mission centric, they have a mission that they're going at.
What is a Heart Centric Model?
Now, some people will say, “Well, what about the heart centric model? What's wrong with that?”
There's absolutely nothing wrong with it. It's just not the best way to go about it.
And I'll tell you why. The reason why is because when we are mission centric, we start moving towards a mission and ‘people stuff’ begins to come up. We see this with Jesus, when he sends out the 70. Right? When Jesus sent out the 70, two by two, they went out and they had all these amazing things that happened. And you eventually see that they're saying things like “We should call down the fire of God on our enemies” and all these different things.
But Jesus says “You do not know what spirit you are operating out of.”
And what what happens is this thing rose up in the disciples, this ugly thing kind of rose up in the disciples, and it rose up because they were already involved in the work of the ekklesia.
A Pastoral Model Lets You Hide
But with the church model, because it's heart centric, it tends to say, you can't get involved with things until your heart is just totally cool, totally good before God and before whoever the pastor is, and and then we'll let you, we'll see if you can get involved in things.
What happens with that is oftentimes, if people are really good at it, they can hide what's going on within them, because they're sitting in the pews of a church, they're not being activated. Whereas a mission centric structure or an apostolic structure is mission focused.
Because it's mission focused, you have all these people that are moving towards the mission, and their stuff tends to come up quicker. And because it comes up quicker, it can look a little bit messier.
But it's actually great, because the body of Christ is actually dealing with the stuff that's going on inside of them, instead of just sitting in a church and looking good, and making sure that they they look good on the outside.
An Apostolic Model Looks Messy
They're not ever having to be activated. So that we never know when things get hot in the spirit, whether or not what's going on in the measure of the heart, right. And so a lot of times with apostolic models, it may be a little messier, because you're seeing people stuff coming up quicker.
But the body of Christ is supposed to see stuff come up quick. It's supposed to be an iron sharpens iron.
And that's what happens with apostolic structures is because it's mission focused, you have people who are having to work together towards the common mission, and their stuff is coming up in that process, and it sharpens them for the work of the ministry.
What Does Ephesians Say?
Okay. So that is the apostolic move towards mission. And now, let me point something out too, scripturally.
In Ephesians, chapter 4, it says “Now he gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists and some pastors and teachers. This is for the equipping of the saints, and for the working of the sons of God,” okay, “until they come to a full maturation in Christ.”
So in other words, what Paul is saying there in Ephesians chapter 4 is that this is a model by which God operates.
Okay? Another place in Hebrews, it says that it's built, the church is built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, okay?
So what happens is, the apostle comes with a mission, the prophet comes with insight onto how to deliver the mission and how to cause the mission to come to pass. And so they begin to build a foundation on the mission, right?
And then you have pastors, evangelists and teachers out of Ephesians 4, and they begin to build the structure on top of the foundation. And when they begin to build a structure on top of the foundation, what happens there is that they are engaging a certain type of building in the Spirit of God, okay, because they're built on the five fold model from Ephesians chapter 4, and they're engaged in this building that's happening, and the pastoral is an aspect of that building. Okay.
The Pastor is Included
And so because the pastoral is an aspect, it doesn't mean that we don't think about people's hearts we don't think about what, you know, the individual needs and the different things that we're dealing with, perhaps trauma or things that come up in people's hearts or whatever.
It's just that you change it to a mission focus. And this stuff comes up and the pastors begin to work with the apostles to make sure that the individuals in the church body or the ekklesia body are being taken care of. Okay?
So we're not forgetting about the heart, we're just saying that the heart is not the center of everything that's happening, the mission becomes the center of everything that happens.
The Pastoral Model is Church Centric
Okay, so let's move on to the next one. The difference between a pastoral model and an apostolic model is that the pastoral model is church centric and the apostolic model is community centric.
And I've kind of touched on this a little bit already. But church centric means that the pastor is engaged with the affairs of the church, the things that go on in that church body, and within the walls of that church. That's what he or she is concerned about, they're concerned about the the affairs of what's going on.
However, an apostolic model is more concerned about the community.
The Apostolic Model is Community Centric
They're more concerned about raising people up to be influential in the community, and to see the community begin to thrive and develop.
It's something that we saw a lot of prophets begin to talk about. It started in the early 2000s, and it's been something, and this is why I say I like to talk about the difference between theory and practice, okay. Prophets oftentimes will bring something that the Holy Spirit's trying to point out, but it's important that the apostles are the ones that begin to implement that.
Okay, so we've heard this talked about, but we haven't really seen apostles rise up and begin to implement this a lot. We're seeing it happen. There are apostolic models throughout the earth, and we're seeing it happen. But I'd like to see it happen more.
Why are We Still Inside the Four Walls?
And that is that what they began to talk about, the prophets began to talk about in the early 2000s, was at the church needed to move outside of the four walls.
And the reason why it was difficult for the church to move outside of the four walls is because it's apostles who really begin to lay the mission of moving outside the four walls.
If you're told to move outside of the four walls, but you're still in a pastoral model, that pastor is going to be interested more in what's going on within the church body and in the model of that church body, then they're concerned about what's going on in the community outside of the church, okay?
So the apostle then begins to bring a mission and say, “Hey, this is what we need to be doing outside of the four walls of the church.” And so the reason why the prophets in the early 2000s said, “Hey, we need to get outside of the four walls of the church,” but then nobody ever did anything about it, is because there needs to be a shift in how we comprehend these things in the Scripture, okay?
We Need Revelation and Implementation
If we're building on the foundation of the of the apostles and prophets, then we need to build upon the revelation. See,
Prophets bring revelation, apostles implement revelation.
And so what happens is the pastor may hear the revelation. “Yeah, I want to get my people outside the four walls of the church,” but there's still, the pastor is still emphasizing the importance of the church, because he is a pastor, he's operating in the pastoral mold.
And so because of that, and because there's no apostle or prophet lending itself to implementing mission and vision, then what happens is, even though they may be trying to move things outside of the four walls of the church, eventually they're going to end back up again within the church. Okay.
And so this is the reason why we didn't ever see that shift happen. And we're beginning to see the shift happen, but we’ll, as we begin to embrace more an apostolic structure, or an apostolic model, we'll see this happen more and more.
Revival Centric vs. Reformation Centric
Now, the third one that I want to talk about is a difference between revival centric versus reformation centric.
A church model tends to be revival centric and an apostolic model tends to be reformation centric.
So let's talk about these two words and what they mean.
A Little History
So from about, gosh, I'm going to say the early 1800’s we began to see, the Lord began to visit the church with what people would call revivals.
So we saw the Great Awakening. We saw the Second Great Awakening through the 1800s. We saw the Welsh Revival, the Azusa Street Revival in the early 1900s. We saw the healing movement of John G Lake and others in the 40s, the Jesus movement of the 1970s and we haven't really seen a real revival since then, since the 70s.
What is Renewal?
Now, those of you who have a lot of history in this kind of thing, you will know that there was the Toronto outpouring in about the 90s and reaching a little bit into the 2000s. But the Toronto outpouring, it was actually more of a renewal than it was a revival. Renewal meant that it was renewing the hearts of the people in the church, it was encouraging people in the church, the Spirit of God was being poured out within the people in the church so that they would not lose the they would not lose their. Their passion, right,
The Lord was renewing them for things, and the reason why I can say the Toronto outpouring was not a revival is because we didn't see a mass amount of converts, okay.
I used to do this in my, you know, in my movement that I operate in, Firehouse, and I would say to people, “Raise your hand if you were saved in the Jesus movement in the 70s.” And about half of the people that were of that age raised their hands, okay. And then I would say, “Raise your hand if you were saved in the Toronto outpouring,” and nobody would raise their hands.
A Forty Year Season
And the reason for that is because actually, the Toronto outpouring was not a real true-blue definitive revival. Okay. It was more of getting the church, their heart in a place of a posturing before the Lord, it was encouraging them, because I feel like they were in the middle of a 40 year season, where there was, the Lord wasn't visiting us with revivals.
Okay, so 1970s, we have the Jesus movement. And then early in the 1990s, into the early 2000s, which is about 20 years later, the Lord visited the church. And now we're about 20 years out from that. And I believe it was because the Lord was, there's a 40 year window that we were in, that the Lord was getting the church ready to completely move into this new epoch that we're moving into now.
And so now we're on the other side of it, we've hit around 40 years since the Jesus movement, which in biblical models, is a generation. So now we're at the end of the 40 year period.
And we're about to see a whole new epoch of of strategy hit the Earth.
And the reason I say strategy is because this is the apostolic model starting to hit the Earth, okay?
Apostolic models are interested in missions, and they're interested in strategy.
Mission & Project Focused
And a lot of times God will send on, for instance, in our apostolic model, the Lord will send us projects that we we fulfill, and then complete, and move on. And these are projects that are getting our city ready for transformation, right. So we've had a lot of prayer projects up until this time, and once those prayer projects are done, then we move on to the next project God gives us and now we're starting to move into actual tangible structural integration into the city.
Okay. And so, apostolic models tend to be mission focused and project focused, okay? Whereas church models tend to be more, they tend to be, you know exactly what to expect, and you know exactly what you're going to get. Okay.
And so oftentimes, unless the pastor has prophetic people that he's listening to, they're just, they're just doing what the Holy Spirit is perhaps telling them to talk to the people about, okay?
So it's really important that we begin to understand that God is beginning to call people to an apostolic model, He's beginning to call people to start looking at apostolic models as ways of beginning to have impact on the earth.
Okay, so back to this revival centric versus reformation centric.
What is Revival?
So revival is, a lot of times you'll see the churches just longing for revival, which is, you know, like, Billy Graham going and having these massive evangelistic crusades, and then the local church then worked with the new believers that are coming in, okay, or revival culture looks like the Spirit of God being poured out with new wine.
And perhaps there's these different signs and wonders and healings that follow that. And so the church tends to be very revival centric. The apostolic model, however, is very reformation centric. And what I mean by that is it's different from revival because reformation means that the ekklesia is going into the gates of the city.
What is Reformation?
It's impacting the various spheres of the society that they live in.
So it could be, there's seven sectors of society that we talk about, there's religion, which is the church, there is media, business, arts and entertainment, family, education, and I think I got them all but I may not have. But anyways, there's all these different sectors of society.
So if you're a local school teacher, and you are in an apostolic model, God is showing you how to go into the gates of your city and the gates of your school, of the elementary, and to begin to impact it for the glory of God and to bring the kingdom of God in there.
Maybe he's telling you that it's time for you to start moving towards your doctorate, so that you can become a principal, so that you can really impact the culture that these children are in, okay?
You are an Ambassador
Or, an apostolic model will work with, even like an electrician, and they will work with that electrician, and as an electrician goes into the gates of the city and begins to work on electricity in these various homes or warehouses or different regions of his city, he impacts that city with the community, impacts that place with the kingdom of God, because he's in an apostolic model, he realizes that the goal isn't to rise in the ranks of the church, but the goal is to be an ambassador out there into the city, and make sure that the kingdom of God is coming into the city, and not just into the places of the church.
Okay. And so what you see with this kind of model an apostolic model, they will surround themselves with the five fold ministry out of Ephesians 4 that we just talked about, the apostles, the prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. And then that verse goes on to say,
“For the equipping of the saints, and for the working of the ministry.”
So in other words, these five, the fivefold, they undergird the ekklesia that's in the Apostolic model, and they say, “How can we support you so that when you go out into the community, you are bringing the kingdom of God as an ambassador out there into the community?” and they're interested in supporting them in whatever way possible to make sure that the kingdom of God is expanding, expanding, expanding all the way out, okay.
No Matter Where You Are
And so as these people go out, and they're being, they're being impacted by this apostolic model, because they're being undergirded with this apostolic model, as they go out, as they go out into the city in their various careers, or various professions, or even in working in the home, for the moms, they’re really impacting their kids with the kingdom of God, all of these things begin to bring reformation to the various areas of culture, okay?
So instead of the revival culture that just says, signs and wonders, people will come to the church through healing and different things. Reformation out of the apostolic model says,
“I'm going to bring the kingdom of God to you guys. I'm going to go outward into the city. I'm going to begin to transform my city.”
Global Transformation
Now you see, if we start to see this model, rising up, rising up rising up, what we're going to see is city wide transformation begin to happen throughout the world.
And the city wide transformation will eventually begin to impact a whole state or a whole region, and then that region gets bigger, and it begins to impact a whole nation. And then that whole nation begins to impact a whole continent, and then that whole continent begins to impact all the other regions of the globe, okay.
And this, you guys, is the exciting thing that we see prophesied out of Daniel, “Of the kingdom of God there would be no end,” that it would continue to grow, and there would be no end to it.
And so the kingdom of God then begins to expand outward, instead of saying inward in the church; it's expanding outward, and it's going out and out and out, and it's impacting all these different sectors of society. And it's this powerful, powerful transformation beginning to happen through apostolic structures.
And so this is where we're at as we move into this new epoch and Christianity, as we're moving out of an old model, the Lord is saying that this is a new model that He's wanting to see come to the earth so that apostolic structures begin to build outward into the city.
What About the Local Church?
Okay. Now, let's talk about the local church real quickly, because I think it's so important that we engage the local church in this possibility, see, what we see in Scripture, because a lot of people will say, at this point, “Well, what about the local home church that we see in the New Testament?” Absolutely, excellent question.
So we see two types of structures in the New Testament, and it is the local home church, and then it is the apostolic center of whole cities coming to the Lord. So we see that with the city of Ephesus, and we see it with the city of Thessaloniki. Okay.
And so you guys know about the books of Thessalonians and the book of Ephesians. Okay, these were two cities, and both of them were Greek cities, that the Lord, the whole city got transformed. And so because the whole city got transformed, they couldn't, they couldn't just meet from house to house. They also had a center an apostolic center, by which everything, important things were coming out of it.
Okay, same thing with with Antioch. Okay. And we see throughout the book of Acts, that Antioch was the center by which important decisions were being made for all of Christianity. So when there became the debate between Paul and Peter about whether or not gentiles needed to be circumcised, that debate happened at Antioch because it was a big debate that was going to affect all of Christianity.
And so Antioch was this apostolic center where missions were being released outward to the home churches that we see throughout the New Testament. And so you see these two types of structures in the New Testament, you see the local home church that's engaging with an apostolic center, or an apostle. And then you see, the apostolic center, engaging with the home churches by sending out apostles or sending out various people.
So you see, you know, Timothy went out, and then Paul went out, and there's all these various people that went out from these regions, and were able to impact the home churches in the areas, okay, and so there is a need for both.
There Must Be a Change in Focus
But where we're at right now is that we need to recognize the importance in Christianity that we begin to move towards a more mission centric, apostolic centric, and fivefold centric model so that we can impact the region that we're in, okay.
And this is the reason why the church has become become less influential, at least in the in the United States, has become less influential and the Lord's preparing us now with Coronavirus.
We've had this quarantine, and really in the spirit, a reset. And that reset isn't just “Oh, no, we're going to look at more technology to bring our messages.” Okay, the reset really is saying “I am getting a people ready to go out into the earth and to fill the void of where the demonic has been pulled down and where there has been structures of the enemy that needed to be pulled down.”
And He's asking the church to now prepare and to go out into those regions, and to sit at the city gates, and to be influential in your various sectors of society, so the kingdom of God can advance through the gateways of cities, okay, so you can start right now in your local region.
The Kingdoms of this World
And look around and see if there's a mission or an apostolic center by which you can engage yourself with so that you know how you can bring perhaps your own local church, or your own local home church, or however you fellowship, how you can bring them into an apostolic understanding and saying, “This is someone who's saying this is the mission that needs to go out into our region, so that we can begin to engage in the region in a way that's going to impact it for not only generations to come, but really for all of eternity.”
See, in Revelation chapter 11, It says, “The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our God.”
That verse does not say God has made a whole new kingdom. It says that the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our God. In other words, the ekklesia needs to go into the kingdoms of the world so that they become the kingdoms have our God.
So I hope you're encouraged and I hope you're strengthened. I'm very excited to see what you think about this. If you want to comment on this, if you have any questions or whatever, I really encourage you to go to my website at AngelaMeer.com, A-N-G-E-L-A, M as in Mary, E-E-R.com. You can go there and you can post any questions, thoughts or comments that you have there. And I'd love to hear from you. And this is the end of this podcast in Gods strategy room.
Hope you have a great day.