Tag: missionary

What is a Missionary? Part 2

On By missionmusingsIn Missions as Vocation, UncategorizedLeave a comment

II.  A Missionary is one involved in cross-cultural work.

I mentioned three traditional understandings of missionary… One is that of being called, a second is that of being cross-cultural, and a third is that of being professional or full-time.

Dave Mays has a good article that addresses the issue of being cross-cultural. He compares his (or the traditional) view of missionary with that of the missional church movement. Even though I am involved with cross-cultural missions, I fail to see why cross-cultural should have anything to do with the term missionary. The original idea appeared to be that an apostle was one who was sent out (sent out by Christ and sent out by and from the local church) to reach those who are not believers. Even Paul and Barnabbas would just barely qualify as missionaries if bound by the cross-cultural standard.

That being said, the article by Dave Mays is very good and seems to be a fair and reasoned attempt to look at a difficult issue.

I have to admit that I prefer the missional church understanding of missionary.

http://judichow.wordpress.com/2011/04/13/what-is-a-missionary/

What is a missionary? Part #1

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I.  Missionary as “One Who Is Called”?

I started out planning to talk about how to define a missionary. Some characteristics of a missionary often used include:

a.  “Called” to mission work.

b.   Cross-cultural work

c.  “Professional” or “Full-time”

So my goal was to look at these three points and then offer some sort of alternative.

However, when I started to look into the first one— being called— I found a better article… so I would like to reference this one below by Kevin L. Howard.

http://www.neednotfret.com/content/view/46/30/

Missions Starts at Home. Part II

On By missionmusingsIn Mission Theology1 Comment

Curiously, a previous post, “Missions Starts at Home” has gotten an awful lot of hits. The problem is, perhaps, that my title was confusing. Missions to me is a wholistic educative process of transformation. The Matthew version of the Great Commission says that we are to Make Disciples… or create learners. Part of this process is, teaching others to obey everything Christ has commanded. I decided to utilize the “Shema” from Deuteronomy 6 is part of a wholistic educative process of transformation. However, there are other ways in which Missions Starts At Home.

Here are some more:

How can children be prepared for Christian Missions?

1.  Food. Don’t just feed children on spaghetti and hamburgers. The world is full of good food. When a child is 2-4 years old (and younger), they are developing a palate. Don’t just give them what they like, help develop what they like. Go to foreign cuisine restaurants. Try a wide variety of cooking at home. Don’t become dependent on restaurants (especially fast food), or on the microwave.

This is an area we, thankfully, did well. Our children do great in this. They eat balanced meals. They appreciate nearly all cuisines.

2.  Money.  Practice financial self-control. Don’t seek to compensate lack of quality time with expensive gifts. Don’t live in debt. Practice frugal living and joyous giving to church, missions, and charities. Bad attitudes about money are definitely inherited.

3.  Education. If you as a family are really planning to be missionaries, it is good to homeschool at least a year to make sure you can do it as a family (both as parents and children). We found that we could homeschool, but one of our children was found to be very much of a social learner. Happily, when we got to the Philippines, we found a school for our children to attend… but in many parts of the world this is not possible.

Remember, EVERY CHILD IS HOMESCHOOLED in the sense that the education of a child is ALWAYS the responsibility of the parents. Parents may outsource some aspects of the education to a public school, a private school, a private tutor, a church program, and more. But parents must always recognize that they can pass on authority, but not responsiblity. Always add to education with various family activities and trips.

4.  Broaden your child’s perspective. It is tough for those in the US. Media in the US is very nationalistic. Few have anything that remotely constitutes an international perspective. But parents should try their best to broaden their children’s world. American culture has aspects of beauty and horror. So do every other culture. Having a distorted view of any culture (either excessively positive or negative) is destructive. Children need to learn to appreciate different cultures while still recognizing that each has its problems. America loves dualism. There is a tendency of seeing the world in Dickensian terms. People or cultures are either the good guys or the bad guys. Helping children to see all peoples with God’s eyes is a great blessing. Cultivate relationships with people of different cultures. Americans tend to confuse culture and color. They tend to focus on “Red and Yellow, Black and White,” but a lot of these designations aren’t that useful elsewhere. Culture is more useful to focus on.

5.  Spiritual. Pray for and with your children. Get them comfortable with home Bible study. I would, surprisingly, suggest not to overdo it.  I have seen children react negatively to overdoing “spiritualistic” behavior in the home. Seek a balance. Also seek integration. That is, integrate a spiritual perspective into one’s life rather than turning it completely off or completely on. Attend church, but just warming pews and singing songs has little to no impact. Be involved in ministry locally as individuals and as a family.

6.  Missions. Practice missions. Help those who can’t help themselves. Work with religious and secular groups that are seeking to do good. Pray for missionaries in an informed way. Email them and build relationships. Learn about other cultures. Buy an atlas and learn it. Find out how one can be involved in missions at home. Be involved in short-term missions… as a family if possible.

7.  Last Thoughts. Help your children develop a value system and ethical system in line with Christ, not the dominant culture. Find joy in simplicity. Spend considerable quality time with your children. Simplify your life so you can afford to spend more quality time. Teach your children skills in line with their interests (but this does not mean a constant handing them off to different clubs, tutors, teams, and external activities). Make your children recognize that they are a loved, and valuable, part of the family team.

That seems like enough for now.

In Search of a Real Missionary

On By missionmusingsIn Missions as Vocation, Quotes1 Comment
Preaching from a Waggon (David Livingstone) by...
David Livingstone, 19th century missionary in Africa.  Image via Wikipedia

The following is an excerpt from Successful Mission Teams: A Guide for Volunteers by Martha Van Cise  (New Hope Publishers, 1999) Excerpt from pages 145-147.  A good book, definitely worth owning.

“When my husband and I were serving as full-time missionaries in Haiti, we took a group of volunteers to a remote area in Northern Haiti. Another missionary, who had spent nearly 30 years in the country, accompanied us because he knew the area and the congregation.

During the team’s stay, volunteers put up walls for a new church, gave their testimonies in church, and gathered each evening for a devotional and songfest with the local people. On one occasion, the team visited an American missionary couple who manned a transmitter for a Christian radio station. By the end of the tour, team members were excited about sharing missions in their home church.

On the way back to Port-au-Prince, …, one middle-aged woman said, ‘This has been a wonderful experience. I guess that I just have one regret. I brought several packages of gelatin to give to a missionary family, but I never did get to meet a real missionary. I really had my heart set on meeting a real missionary.’   …

Another visitor returned home to report the truth about what was happening in a mission organization. ‘Those people weren’t spiritual,’ he said. ‘Some nights the missionary families got together and watched videos that had no religious content in them at all.’   …

Some team members feel responsible to evaluate the performance of mission organizations and missionaries and report their findings to anyone who will listen.

Assessment of mission work made by team members are often inaccurate because regular field activities must be curtailed in order to care for the team. Furthermore, team members who who are trying to photograph the work of the missionaries forget that everything which is accomplished on the field cannot be photographed.  …

Few missionaries will ever measure up to the ‘real missionary’ image some volunteers bring to the mission field. In the past, missionaries could live up to the ideal image because their contact with supporters was limited to one or two hours during speaking engagements while on furlough. When supporters move in with the missionary for ten days, however, the true missionary is revealed. The realities of modern-day missions and missionaries often disillusion volunteers.

If mission teams are to be an effective link between the home church and the mission field, team members must go to the field with a realistic understanding of the modern missionary movement.”

Money and Missions, Reprise

On By missionmusingsIn Money and MissionsLeave a comment

Corrie Ten Boom, in her book “Tramp for the Lord”, speaks of how she used to ask for financial support for her work. However, at a certain point in her ministry, she believed God told her to stop asking for money. She goes on to say that she got two letters close to the same time from others who told her that “God told them” that Corrie should not ask for financial support. So she stopped doing this, and God continued to provide for her work. It is not my interest to say whether her method was correct or whether God literally gave her this message (she tended to like to appeal to the mystical side of faith). It doesn’t matter because God used her the way she was and how she was working (be it based on divine message or from personal conviction).

Cover of "Tramp for the Lord"
Cover of Tramp for the Lord

One possible reason for not believing that the message came from God is on page 87 (1974 edition) of the same book she says,

“God takes his prohibition of asking for money very seriously, just as He means it seriously when He says He will care for and protect us. However, if we seek to raise our own money then God will let us do it—by ourselves. …. But we will miss the far greater blessing of letting Him supply all our needs according to His own riches.”

This passage suggests that Corrie Ten Boom believed that her decision is conforming to a universal law of God, rather than a personal message.

But what is the truth? Can a missionary ask for financial support?

Against…

  1. Stories like Corrie Ten Boom and George Mueller could be used as evidence against asking for financial support. (Of course, both did freely express their needs and vision to others and left the actual request unspoken. One might argue that there is not a lot of practical difference between expressing need and asking for help versus expressing need and leaving the request for help unspoken but clearly on the table.)
  2. Clear abuses in fund-raising by so-called “tele-evangelists” and mission organizations demonstrate that at least some fund-raising is deeply flawed, if not simply evil. Certainly greed can be poison to a missionary and his/her work. Such groups often develop a parasitic relationship with Christians resulting in harm to local churches and other organizations, as well as a bad reputation to the broader pluralistic society. <I had a relative who gave regularly from her meager pension and social security to several religious and political groups. After she died, my father and I literally had to go into her back room with shovels to dig through the piles of ridiculous requests for money, from a woman who was partly senile and could barely afford to pay her own bills.>

For…

  1. The Bible clearly has some places where support was asked for. The Old Testament practice of tithing was essentially a tax (a financial demand) for both civil government and religious leadership. Paul asked for financial support from churches to support Christians in Judea. The requests were quite direct. There are other examples in the Bible that appear, at least, to disallow the generalization of the mandate (of Ten Boom or Mueller) not to ask for financial support.
  2. Most missionaries (including those who might not ask for financial support) feel free to ask for prayer, time, and work from supporters. Should one separate money from these other needs? If we should not ask for money because God will supply all our needs, it seems like it would also be inappropriate to ask for prayer, time, or work from others because that would likewise be circumventing God’s provision.

Personally, I haven’t, up to this point at least, asked directly for money from others (except our supporting church… and only after they have asked us first). But I think it is ill-advised to generalize or moralize a rule regarding asking for money. I would like to suggest a middle ground of sorts.

  1. One should not set a universal rule regarding this issue. If one missionary has a conviction not to ask (directly) for financial support, that is fine. If another feels it is perfectly appropriate to ask , that is fine as well. I believe God can bless both and approve of both.
  2. One should always be careful about the sins of hubris and greed. Far too many have fallen because they began to choose money as their Master rather than God.
  3. Missionaries should ALWAYS be ready to express both needs and vision… regardless of their own opinion about asking directly for money.
  4. Missionaries should not be too quick to see money as distinctly different from other forms of resource support.
  5. Support should be linked more to partnership (building a relationship of joint work) with supporters rather than looking for cash cows. Missions may need money, but it needs people far more.
  6. All giving by Christians for God’s work should be given wisely. If that is so then missionaries should help others give wisely, not seek people to make rash, unwise decisions.

A good book that focuses on raising support (but not just in terms of money) is “People Raising:  A Practical Guide to Raising Support” by William Dutton. It was written in 1993 (not sure if there are updates), so it is a bit out of date due to technological changes… but many of its principles are still extremely valid.

Missional Churches and Missionary Churches

On By missionmusingsIn Missional Churches, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Missional churches are churches that are driven to support world-wide missions through resources and manpower. Missionary churches are churches started by missionaries. Are they the same thing?

Protestant churches have only been in the Philippines (where I live) for a little over 100 years. A large number of Protestant churches are 1st generation missionary churches. That is, foreign missionaries started these churches. Once you have added 2nd generation and 3rd generation churches, you have a huge percentage of the churches here.

One might expect that churches started by missionaries should be missional. One would think that a church would in some way fit the mold of the founder. One is reminded of the church in Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick”. The church was founded and built by a former whaling ship captain. The building and the sermons was linked to the sea and whaling. This just makes sense.

But, Protestant churches in the Philippines ALMOST without exception, are not missional. They do not support missionaries, except as tentmakers (and do little to nothing to train, empower, and encourage such tentmaker missionaries). Those who want to go into cross-cultural missions are not supported and are, in fact, generally encouraged to stay in the church working on local ministry. (There are exceptions… but so few.)

Why is this? I would like to make a suggestion. This suggestion is consistent with some comments I have heard from other missionaries. Okay… here it is.

Missionaries did not come to the Philippines to create missionaries. They did not want to create missionaries. Missionaries are supposed to come from Western countries (or perhaps South Korea). Missionaries are not supposed to come from the Philippines. The Philippines is supposed to receive missionaries not send them.

So what were the missionaries doing in the Philippines?  They were seeking to create local churches that would create other local churches. They were seeking to create local pastors who would train up other local pastors.

So, in effect, the churches created did develop in the image of their founders. The churches in the Philippines created are focused on local church growth, local church multiplication, and local church leader development.

But sometimes it is best to leave the founders behind and for churches to make their own way. The Philippines is poised to change the world.

There is a “prophecy” given by a self-styled prophet that the Philippines will do great things in sharing the gospel to the world.

The Philippines IS poised to change the world, but they must stop grasping at self-serving quotations, and start making some real changes…. and these changes need to occur regardless of whether foreign missionaries will jump on board.

 

Six Areas of Missions Expectations Dissonance

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Some of the following I have personal experience with as pertaining to missionaries and missions. Others I have heard from others. One major challenge in missions is the various expectations that come from others as to what your role and activities should be.  Here are a few (in no particular order):contradiction

1.  Money.  People on the mission field expect or at least strongly desire that the missionary give money without strings attached. On the other hand, those who empower missionaries financially, expect the missionary to be a good steward and overseer of the finances. Missiologists seem to disagree as to whether missionaries should control money, help others without controlling them, or avoid money as much as possible.

2.  Organization.  Many missionaries, locals, and supporters presume that missionaries should create their own organizational edifice. This may be an NGO, evangelistic organization, Bible school, church or other.  On the other hand, there is a growing thought among many locals and missiologists that missionaries should empower without taking over leadership. Is another organization always the answer?  Some local Christians see missionaries getting in the way… as unnecessary and even competition. (Often this is all too true.)

3.  Denomination. Supporters and mission boards expect the missionary to plant churches and/or disciple believers into the same denomination. On the local front, working with Christians of a number of different denominations is often a practical (and desirable) necessity. Missiologists tend to recommend that missionaries develop local Christians and churches in such a way as to allow them to develop their own distinctive characteristics (self-theologizing). This can create a great deal of conflict. Added to this, mass media and competitive religious groups tends to mean that if you do not guide young believers in your own denominational distinctives, the result will NOT be a distinctively local Christian faith. Rather it will be that of a competitive denomination (or cult).

4.  Primary Ministry. There is little agreement as to what a missionary really should do at the core of his/her ministry. Some options are:

  • -Evangelization (often mass evangelization)
  • -Church-planting (often church planting movements)
  • -Mission mobilization (training local leaders)
  • -Church growth
  • -Training
  • -Felt needs (social or wholistic ministry)

This is a short list. There are many more options. Options are not bad, but the problem occurs when supporters and partners do not value or even recognize the area of missional focus that the missionary is involved in.

5.  Information.  Mission boards and supporters love statistics. They want to know how many, how often, and how much. These numbers are often deceptive. The best missions often look bad on paper. Supporters like statistics but often are more moved by tear-jerker stories of tragedy and changed lives. At one time, there may have been little problem with all of this. But today, information flows so well.  A tragic story given to supporters in the US, may become a podcast or youtube broadcast spread around the world. The story becomes embarrassing gossip when it is picked up by people in the mission field. Stats sent by email can be forwarded and rerouted back to partners who could take offense at the self-serving nature of the reports, deceptive numbers, and lack of recognition of the partners.

6.  Spirituality.  Mission supporters expect missionaries to be pious… spiritually guided… and disciplined. Locals on the mission field may do more than expect it… they assume it… at least until they know the missionaries better. Missionaries, on the other hand, rarely are particularly spiritual (as it is commonly defined). Willingness and flexibility define a missionary better than spirituality. They have little personal discipleship.  They often have few that they are able to share fears, concerns, and doubt. This is partly because of distance from potential accountability partners. But it is also because sharing concerns can have negative repercussions vocationally. Missionaries are often expected to work in churches that they are uncomfortable in (because the church meets local needs, not that of the missionary). Missionaries are often expected to attend events or activities that do not meet their own spiritual needs. The disconnect between their outer life and inner life, can lead to crises of faith.

————–

This is probably a good place to stop. One could go on. Every job has its share of paradox, controversy, multiple leaders, and disagreements about goals, expectations, and procedures.  The importance of recognizing expecation disonnance is that the more that local partners, foreign supporters, mission boards, missiologists, and missionaries themselves understand the conflicts, the better we can grow, function, and prosper as willing servants of God.

 

Missions and Ambitions

On By missionmusingsIn Missions as VocationLeave a comment

Missionary Sam was a machine. He could go into a new community, set up an event, form up the respondents, place a pastor in charge, and be onto the next community in a matter of weeks. After a few years of such stunning success, he wrote up his dissertation on his methodology, and “retired” to a life of being a church growth expert and professor.

Sadly, nearly all of his church plants failed within months of their creation. But it doesn’t matter.

Sam was a church planter, it wasn’t his job to maintain a church. His job now is to teach missionaries how to plant churches, not develop viable, self-sustaining, and self-propagating churches.

Missions is not just a ministry… it is also a career. A lot of great missionaries go through life with little that can be used to demonstrate success. Sadly, many mediocre missionaries are extremely competent at the career side of missions. This is true with most jobs. With some effort it is possible to separate the self-promoter from the faithful servant, but the ones most capable of making the judgment are the missionary and those that work the closest with the missionary. If it is about God… if it is about His kingdom… if it is about the people that God misses most… if it is about Jesus and his call for faithful servants— then it is NOT about awesome statistics… it is not about career tracks… it is not about accumulation of positions and awards.

The best missionaries often will live lives of obscurity and (apparent) mediocrity. But God knows the truth, as do many of those closest to them.

 

Missionaries and Apostles? (Part 2)

On By missionmusingsIn History in Missions1 Comment

(See Part 1 first)  …    A church-based model for missionaries and missions appears to avoid a lot of confusion in other ways as well. If missionaries are those who leave the local church to work outside the local church, then they are simply “apostles”… and “apostle” is simply another term for missionary. This of course is not universally accepted. C. Peter Wagner (a church-growth and missions

Painting by Rembrandt of Paul, one of the most...
Painting by Rembrandt of Paul, one of the most notable of early Christian missionaries, who called himself the “Apostle to the Gentiles.” Paul, a Hellenistic Jew, was very influential on the shift of Christianity to Gentile dominated movement. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

specialist) believes that there are two different calls, an apostolic call and a missionary call. He suggests that all apostles have an apostolic call (no surprises there), but only some of them have a missionary call. Likewise, all missionaries have a missionary call, but only some have an apostolic call. There are two parts of this stance that appear to be highly questionable.

1.  An apostolic call that is not missional appears to be based more based on traditions within the modern apostolic movement than on Biblical scholarship. Wagner believes that accomplishing miracles and acting in ecclesiastical authority over the church are defining and necessary qualities of an apostle. This fits better with the theology of the modern “Apostolic Movement” than with the term as it was used in the 1st Century. This does not appear to be sound basis for saying that miraculous powers or special authority are the defining characteristics of apostles. While some did clearly utilize miraculous powers at times, there is no mention of others utilizing them, and some people who were not apostles displayed miraculous powers. Likewise, although the original apostles were told that they had authority, that authority appeared to be more spiritual than ecclesiastical in nature. They certainly did not appear to exercise authority over the church except to exhort others with God’s message. Paul exhorted but did not order. The other apostles did not exercise a high level of control over the church of Jerusalem. If anything, it is interesting to the extent that the Apostles in the New Testament did NOT exercise authority in the local churches. While the Twelve were part of the church of Jerusalem, James the half-brother Jesus served as the senior elder. Paul and John both used persuasion to get change within the local churches rather than exercising some form of “apostolic authority.”

2. The other aspect of Wagner’s view is interesting. Not only does he take the apostolic call as something different from the missionary call, but suggested that some apostles (such as Peter) did not have the missionary call. In light of the Great Commission, this, at first, appears to be ludicrous. However, it is at least understandable within the context of how some people define the term “missionary” today. It is consistent with a cross-cultural definition of missionary (described in Part 1 of this article). Since some apostles did not appear to work outside of their own culture, people who utilize a cross-cultural definition for missions are forced to separate “missionary” and “apostle” into separate categories. Unfortunately, by doing this, bad things result. Missionaries lack a good Biblical model for their role if apostles were not missionaries. (I have read blogs arguing against the role of missionary because it has no basis in the Bible… an idea that makes no sense unless one tries uses a revisionist understanding of the NT apostle.) And if apostles were not missionaries/churchplanters… what were they? This confusion has led to setting up hierarchies within the church to allow for a church leadership role for apostles.

I believe that the New Testament and the Didache show that apostles are missionaries. They plant churches but hand over power to others who will serve as pastors/presbyters and deacons within it. And if apostles and missionaries are two terms for the same position, then apostles provide a good model for the role of missionary.

(It should be noted that I am not suggesting that missionaries take on every role that every apostles does in the Bible. The original 12 had unique qualities being eyewitnesses of Christ. Their uniqueness does not result in having the designation “apostle” (others also had the same designation). Rather, one of the roles of the original 12 was apostle (going into all the world to preach the gospel). Additionally, I am not suggesting that missionaries today start using the title “apostle.” Unfortunately, the term has changed considerably over the centuries, starting in the 2nd century with it being used strictly for the original Twelve, and up into recent decades the so-called Apostolic movement. With language, it is hard to go back.)

Closing the loop, our understanding of the role of the missionary can be enhanced by understanding the role of apostles in the early church. And the role of apostles, having a role in the “universal” church and a connection with local church, while having a formal role outside of any one local church, hopefully can provide a balance for missionaries today.

Missionaries and Apostles? (Part I)

On By missionmusingsIn History in Missions1 Comment

Good scholarship of the term “apostolos” shows that the term appears to best fit what we now call missionaries. It should not be thought of as strictly a position of the distant past. However, it also should not be viewed as a church office in any period of time, as the term is now used in the “Apostolic Movement” . (Instead of going through that, readers are encouraged to read the article on “apostle” in the ISBE (International Standard Bible Encyclopedia). )

The Didache – living-faith.org

 

It is popular to define missionaries based on culture these days. Perspectives in the World Christian Movement describes missions and missionaries in terms of being cross-cultural. If one uses Ralph Winter’s “E” model for cultures, then missionaries are limited to working in (perhaps) E-2 and (certainly) E-3 situations. (E-0 is ministry within the local church, E-1 is ministry in the local community but outside the local church, E-2 is a similar or neighboring culture… maybe similar culture but different language, E-3 has considerable differences).

Should people be considered missionaries only if serving cross-culturally?  Consider Paul and Barnabbas, who we almost without exception consider to be early and successful missionaries. After their call to missions, Paul and Barnabbas started on what we describe as their 1st Missionary journey. Up to the time of the journey, they were serving in the church of Antioch. There they ministered within the church (E-0 evangelism) and presumably the local community (E-1). Upon leaving on their voyage, they first went to Cyprus, and began ministering to Hellenized Jews there. Since Barnabbas was a Hellenized Jew and was originally from Cyprus, this part of the journey would involve E-1 ministry. This then would not be considered missionary work by some. Then they reached out to Gentiles. These would probably be viewed as E-2, but only barely, since they shared the same language and broader culture with Barnabbas. Effectively, they were ministering from one sub-culture to another within the same culture. After this, the two apostles traveled to southern Asia Minor. This is the region that Paul was from. The same situation existed as in Cyprus, but with Paul reaching out to his own sub-culture and then to a different sub-culture within the same local culture. One could certainly argue that the first missionary journey of Paul and Barnabbas was less missional than evangelistic outreaches to Cornelius, the Ethiopian eunuch, and the Samaritans described earlier in the book of Acts.

The trouble seems to be in a faulty understanding of what is a missionary.

It seems to me that the problem lies in a culture-centered definition of missions. If one moved to a church-centered understanding of missions, the problem goes away. If missions (and apostleship) describes ministry that is focused outside the church (rather than church member care or church growth ministries), it is understandable why Paul and Barnabbas were missionaries. Paul and Barnabbas ministered within the church of Antioch. Then they were called and sent out (apostolos and missio) from the church to minister to those outside of the church. This also appears to agree with the Didache (perhaps the oldest non-canonical Christian book) that describes apostles as one of four groups of ministers (bishops, deacons, prophets, and apostles). Of the four groups, two were part of the local church (bishops and deacons) while the other two were outside the local church. Of those outside, prophets appear to primarily visit different churches and encourage and strengthen them, while apostles would do their ministry outside the church.

The Didache should not be seen as providing some aberrant understanding of the term apostle that contradicts its use in the Bible. Consider the many people in the New Testament who were called apostles (apostolos).

  • -Jesus Hebrews 3:1

  • The 12 disciples Luke 6:13

  • Matthias Acts 1:24-26

  • Paul I Corinthians 9:1

  • Barnabbas (and Paul) Acts 14:3-4

  • Andronicus Romans 16:7

  • Junias Romans 16:7

  • Epaphroditus Philippians 2 :25

  • Unnamed brethren II Corinthians 8 :23-24

  • Silas and Timothy (and Paul) II Thesalonians 2:6

Clearly, others beyond the narrow understanding of apostle were called apostles. Jesus, for example, clearly did not have the formal office of apostle, but did take on the role of missionary, from the Father. This and the fact that the apostles listed in the Bible appeared to have little authority within the church once the church is established suggests more of the role of a missionary/churchplanter than an authoritative officeholder within church. (Note that Timothy was called an apostle in Thessalonians when he was still a traveling missionary. However, Paul does not use that term for him when he is acting as the spiritual leader of a church in I and II Timothy.)

Continue to Part 2