Missio Dei: WK4 - THU
EQUIPPED TO GO
Ephesians 4:11-13 (NLT) “Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. This will continue until we all come to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, fully developed in the Lord.”
The church has often read this passage upside down.
The typical reading goes like this: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers are the elite corps of ministry professionals who do the work while the rest of the congregation supports them. The gifted few carry the mission. Everyone else serves as a kind of base camp.
But that’s not what Paul says. He says the role of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers is to equip the people of God to do the work. The ministry professionals are not the point. They are the preparation for the point. The point is every member of the body, deployed and equipped for mission in the specific sphere of life they inhabit.
Anne Sullivan did not build an institution. She invested in one student: Helen Keller. Through relentless patience and unconventional methods, she helped Keller, who was blind and deaf learn to communicate, then to think, then to write, then to become a voice heard around the world. Sullivan’s legacy is not measured in what she produced directly. It is measured in who she equipped, so the greatest thing she ever built was someone else.
This inverts the typical power structure of religious institutions. The congregation is not the audience for the pastor’s performance. The congregation is the mission force, and the pastor is the trainer. The gathered time on morning is not the main event. It is the preparation for Monday, when the equipped people of God scatter into workplaces and neighborhoods and families and schools and are the primary carriers of the kingdom’s presence in the world.
The church is most fully itself not when everyone is gathered but when everyone is sent. The gathering is for the purpose of the sending. Your work is not secular. Your neighborhood is not outside the mission. The equipped person who goes out Monday morning is the thing the gathered time was building.
Ephesians 4:11-13 (NLT) “Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. This will continue until we all come to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, fully developed in the Lord.”
The church has often read this passage upside down.
The typical reading goes like this: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers are the elite corps of ministry professionals who do the work while the rest of the congregation supports them. The gifted few carry the mission. Everyone else serves as a kind of base camp.
But that’s not what Paul says. He says the role of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers is to equip the people of God to do the work. The ministry professionals are not the point. They are the preparation for the point. The point is every member of the body, deployed and equipped for mission in the specific sphere of life they inhabit.
Anne Sullivan did not build an institution. She invested in one student: Helen Keller. Through relentless patience and unconventional methods, she helped Keller, who was blind and deaf learn to communicate, then to think, then to write, then to become a voice heard around the world. Sullivan’s legacy is not measured in what she produced directly. It is measured in who she equipped, so the greatest thing she ever built was someone else.
This inverts the typical power structure of religious institutions. The congregation is not the audience for the pastor’s performance. The congregation is the mission force, and the pastor is the trainer. The gathered time on morning is not the main event. It is the preparation for Monday, when the equipped people of God scatter into workplaces and neighborhoods and families and schools and are the primary carriers of the kingdom’s presence in the world.
The church is most fully itself not when everyone is gathered but when everyone is sent. The gathering is for the purpose of the sending. Your work is not secular. Your neighborhood is not outside the mission. The equipped person who goes out Monday morning is the thing the gathered time was building.
- Who has helped equip you spiritually or personally?
- How does your everyday work become part of God’s mission?
- In what ways can you help equip others instead of simply doing everything yourself?
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