Responsibilities

Responsibilities

The Apostle seven most important responsibilities to the local church are planting churches, overseeing, developing, ordaining, supervising, crisis management, and networking.

The building block of the Kingdom is church planting. As the Gospel is being preached, and people are being converted, the church must be setup in the right order. When the proper ministerial foundation is laid, the building of the church will be according to the Divine plan for spiritual growth. The aspect of this ministry is seen as perennial in nature, or as a pioneering ministry. Men such as William Carey to India, Hudson Taylor to China, they were men who had a strong apostolic gift and who impacted their respective area where they were sent to, because these churches were structured with a solid spiritual base and proper government, practice and doctrine.

The ministry of planting churches into new territories involves going where no Redeemed was going before. The Apostle Paul made this his prime directive to boldly go. As they plant new churches, they must also serve as the local Evangelist, Pastor, Prophet and Teacher until a divine government can be trained and put in place. Today Apostles need to place churches in strategic spiritual locations as Paul, not in our isolated locations.

The second is overseeing. Once a church has been planted it must be nurtured as a plant, and protected to ensure its survivability. The Apostle stands as a guiding angel, safe guarding the harvest, making frequent course corrections in an effort to see them established in the faith. It is a joy for the Apostle to hear the good news that the church is abounding in good deeds, spiritual gifts, in good order and the anointing.

This growth requires the presence of certain spirit: The Spirit of YAHVEH, the Spirit of Wisdom and Understanding, the Spirit of Counsel and Might, The Spirit of Knowledge and of the Fear of YAHVEH. The following spiritual fruit will develop as a result. Love for our fellow man, Hope for salvation, joy in seeing one saved, long suffering in the fault of others, gentleness in the spirit, meekness in the spirit, faithfulness in all things and grace to handle the pressure of ministry. A dynamic Evangelic team, requires a strong Pastoral staff to minister to the new converts, and an effective teacher to develop them in all spiritual truth.

The third is in the development of new leaders. Yahushua chose out of His group twelve for extensive training for leadership. This will guarantee a continual increase in the harvest. He must be a father and a teacher, a mother, producing after our own kind. These spiritual offspring will be the future leaders of tomorrow; these are those who the parable of the talent illustrated when it speaks of the five talents, the gifts of all five ministries. A truly faithful Apostle will take great care not to create a dependant ministry. They do not just give the people a fish when they are hungry; they show them how to fish, or how to hear the Voice of YAHVEH for themselves. Their chief aim is to establish a successful process of discipleship whereby strong people can be empowered by the Holy Spirit to serve in the local body as the apostolic team moves on.

The fourth is the ordination of ministries.  As the head ministry, it is the sole responsibility for the Apostle to place mature, reliable men or women in position in the church. This can only be done when the Apostles have poured themselves into faithful servants, developing their spiritual gifts, and calling. Those servants will be assigned to position of prophet, evangelist, pastor or teacher, deacons, elders as the Holy Spirit leads. This group of people will be the local divine government for the church; it is not a position that is based on popularity, but by appointment. This is where the Spirit of Wisdom plays an ever so important part.

The fifth is to supervise or coordinate the ministry under Him. This part of the apostolic ministry calls for supernatural working of the Holy Spirit. The grace and nature required to delegate, oversee, and manage the ministry cannot be man defined, but Holy Spirit enabled. The Apostle will always have need for mature redeemed persons who are faithful and strong in the Word, who are able to see beyond the natural and into the spiritual in every situation. In I Corinthians 14: ⁴⁰ let every thing be done decently and in order. Like King David who had to manage men even more gifted or talented than himself, the Apostle needs to manage those who carry great influence in the local community without sacrificing the integrity of the ministry. An apostle needs to be a leader of leaders, one who is able to gain the trust of those under Him or Her, while serving in the Spirit of Fear of YAHVEH.

The sixth is crisis management.  The role of the Apostle in this area is not an emotional one, but more one of logic, but logic in the spiritual sense. Crisis is usually a clash with the Devil and his imps. The Apostle needs to be able to see in the spiritual realm, and see the root cause of the problem. Paul in the Epistle to the Galatians says 1:⁶ 

KJV - I marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you in the grace of The Messiyah, to a different gospel, ⁷ which is not another; but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of The Messiyah.

Look at Paul’s reply to them in chapter 5: ¹ Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which The Messiyah has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage. ⁶ For in The Messiyah Yahushua neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but faith working through love. Sometimes when leadership has fallen into sin and requires church discipline, the Apostle is required to step-in. Not all crises are of a spiritual nature, some are of the physical nature, such as the time of famine, when relief is needed for the believers in another province, and the Apostle should take the initiative. This is where the Spirit of Power, power over the forces of darkness is needed.

          The seventh is networking. As the individual forms an integral part of the local body, so is the local church part of the universal church. A single cell is part of a larger organ and that organ along with other organs form the body. The church is no exception of the body of The Messiyah; no one ministry has it all. In I Corinthians 12:21 the church is a living network, in which each member makes a critical contribution to the effectiveness of the whole. This emphasizes the necessity of close, loving relationships as a necessary condition for spiritual function, and the church to be all it can be. The skeleton forms the network for our entire body. It is the relation between the various churches that will determine the size of the hole in the net or the strength of the net. In I Corinthians 14:40 let everything be done decently and in order. If the relationship between the churches is weak then the network for winning souls will also be weakened.

Blessed are you Hashem our YAHVEH King of the Universe, who has chosen good Apostles and has delighted in their words, which were spoken in truth. Blessed are you Hashem our YAHVEH who has chosen the scripture and the Five-Fold ministry as His servant and Yisrael the church and the Apostle of truth and righteousness.