http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheForgottenWays/~3/323703240/
Missional church requires a missional ministry and leadership system. For the most part, the Christendom church obscured the need for a fully fledged missional leadership system because the self understanding of the church became fundamentally non-missional. Because all citizens were deemed to be Christians all what was really needed were the pastoral and teaching ministries to care for and teach the congregation. These were eventually instituted as offices in the church and became the principal metaphors for church leadership. The net effect is that the whole system weighted itself in favor of maintenance and pastoral care and that these became hegemonic in practice and therefore and both fragmented and distorted the total mission and ministry of the church in favor of only part of its calling.
A direct consequence of this was that the apostolic, the prophetic, and the evangelistic, ministries and leadership styles were marginalized and effectively ‘exiled’ from the church’s official ministry and leadership. This is not to say that these ministries have totally disappeared. Far from it: many within current and historical church life have exercised these ministries without specifically being tagged ‘apostles’ or ‘prophets’, but by and large these lacked formal legitimacy and recognition and they have tended to be exercised outside of the context of the local church, denominational systems, and seminaries. This ‘exiling’ in part gave rise to the development of parachurch agencies and missional orders, each with a somewhat atomized ministry focus. E.g. the Navigators arose out of a calling to evangelize and disciple people outside of the church structures because the church was not effective (or interested?) in this. Sojourners emerged to represent the social justice concerns that the church by and large ignores. World Vision as an Aid and Development agency, etc. But in these were generally initiated and maintained the APE type leadership styles. This divorce of APE from PT has been disastrous for the local church and has damaged the cause of Christ and his mission.
In order to understand the different nature of each of these ministries we need to briefly explore the core task/functions of each, the effect when it monopolizes and dominates in isolation from the others, and the effect when it is integrated with the other ministries. The easiest way to do this is within a comparative table. It is as follows…
