The Provision of Christ

Why is it that the ministry of the apostle and the prophet, and also often the evangelist, is so patently absent and even opposed in church life on the mainland of Europe?

Surely these ministries are gifts from the ascended Christ (Eph 4: 11) - gifts from God, not the products of church career ladders or the ambitions of men. So where are they?

I could bore you for hours with a historical rant about how Constantine and his victory at the Milvian Bridge in 312AD, the subsequent Edict of Milan the year after, and the consequent rise of Christendom (the fusion of Church and State) across the European continent, gave rise to the obliteration of the effective ministries of the apostle, the prophet and the evangelist in Europe for about a millennium and a half. But I won’t. Suffice to say, this unhealthy alliance between political and genuinely Christian spiritual authority has disfigured the presentation of the gospel for many generations and stifled the ministry of Christ-given ministries to the church.

It was a genuine light-bulb moment for me as I have grappled with these issues. How do we raise apostles and prophets in the nations of Europe? Well, it is really quite simple - we don’t ‘make’ apostles and prophets, Christ gives them. Jesus is, and always has been, giving such gifts to his church in every nation and language - men and women of ministry to bring benefit and add value to the ministry and mission of the local church. Our job is to create the right environment for these crucial ministries to emerge, be recognised, released, and encouraged to flourish.

Our vision in Europe is to build model churches that demonstrate our shared values in a particular language and culture, then to multiply these models by planting further churches to create a network in that nation. This then creates the environment in which local language men and women can be raised up in their Eph 4 five-fold ministry, so taking responsibility for their self-sustaining, self-multiplying family of churches in their own context.

Please pray with us for this, and let’s work together to restore these ministries of Christ in the nations of Europe for a mature, activated and unified church, as Paul describes to us in his beautiful vision of the church in Ephesians 4, ‘attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.’

Every Blessing

Maurice

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