Apostles Today

190 Pages·2016·1.48 MB·English

by  C. Peter Wagner

© 2006 C. Peter Wagner
Published by Chosen Books
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
chosenbooks.com
Chosen Books is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
www.bakerpublishinggroup.com
Chosen edition published 2014
ISBN 978-1-4412-6890-7
Previously published by Regal Books
Ebook edition originally created 2011
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior
written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright
© 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Other versions used are:
KJV—King James Version. Authorized King James Version.
THE MESSAGE—Scripture taken from THE MESSAGE. Copyright © by Eugene H. Peterson, 1993, 1994,
1995. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.
NIV—Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by
International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.
NLT—Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright
© 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights
reserved.
Portions of this book have been adapted from Apostles in the City by C. Peter Wagner and Spheres of
Authority by C. Peter Wagner.
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
The Apostles Have Surfaced!
CHAPTER TWO
What Apostles Do
CHAPTER THREE
Character Counts!
CHAPTER FOUR
Spiritual Gifts and Apostolic Assignments
CHAPTER FIVE
The Power of a Title
CHAPTER SIX
Apostolic Spheres
CHAPTER SEVEN
Where Do We All Fit?
CHAPTER EIGHT
Apostles in the Workplace
CHAPTER NINE
Apostles for Social Transformation
CHAPTER TEN
Conclusion: New Wine in New Wineskins
APPENDIX
What Is an Apostle?
SCRIPTURE INDEX
SUBJECT INDEX

A
re there apostles in our churches today?
Most Christians would affirm that they believe in apostles because Jesus led a
group of 12 of them. However, apostles are generally seen as figures of a bygone
age, like Vikings, Roman legions, Spanish conquistadors, or pioneers in covered
wagons. They made their contributions to history, but the world has moved on.
One reason why this kind of thinking is so prevalent is that this is what most
of our church leaders were taught in seminary and Bible school. I know—I was
one of them. The notion that there could be contemporary apostles never came
up in the seminaries I attended, not even as a suggestion. We were taught that
the original 12 apostles had a singular, one-of-a-kind mission that was completed
by the time of their deaths, and that was that—the end of the brief life of apostles
on Earth. Consequently, I graduated assuming that apostles did not continue long
after the first hundred years or so of the Church.
Not so! We are now living in the midst of one of the most epochal changes in
the structure of the Church that has ever been recorded. I like to call it the
“Second Apostolic Age.”
The Second Apostolic Age
The Second Apostolic Age is a phenomenon of the twenty-first century. My
studies indicate that it began around the year 2001. The First Apostolic Age
lasted for another 200 years after the first of the New Testament apostles
concluded their ministry.
This is not to say that the church of Jesus Christ or the kingdom of God went
into some kind of hibernation for 1,800 years—it most certainly did not. The
true Church has been with us down through the ages, sometimes larger,
sometimes smaller, sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker. In Matthew 16:18,
Jesus said, “I will build my church,” and He has been doing so for over 2,000
years through God’s people on Earth as they preach the gospel, make disciples,
and set captives free!
Apostles Throughout History
I have no doubt that apostles have been present in the Church throughout its
history. Unfortunately, enemy forces have been busily at work, both in the
invisible world and in the visible, trying to keep God’s people as subdued as
possible. Still, looking back, who could deny that great men such as Gregory
Thaumaturgus, Martin of Tours, Patrick of Ireland, Benedict of Nursia,
Boniface, Anselm of Canterbury, Savanarola, John Wyclif, Martin Luther,
Francis Xavier, John Knox, John Wesley, William Booth, William Carey,
Hudson Taylor, and others throughout the centuries were true apostles? A
biography of Dwight L. Moody by Wilbur Chapman, published in 1900, even
carries the subtitle “A Tribute to the Memory of the Greatest Apostle of the
Age.”1
Calling Moody “an apostle” in 1900 clearly was an exception to the rule.
Generally speaking, even those who unquestionably had the gift and ministry of
apostle were not publicly recognized by the Church as such. There were a few
other notable exceptions, such as the Irvingites of the 1800s and the Apostolic
Church of the early 1900s, but they were regarded as mere splinter groups.
Historically, apostles were kept beneath the surface after the first couple of
centuries or so. But times are changing. A growing number of Christian leaders
now recognize, acknowledge and affirm both the gift and the office of apostle in
today’s churches. The apostles have surfaced!
It took about 100 years to get to where we are now. Four notable movements
of the Spirit of God have been building the foundation of the Second Apostolic
Age for several decades:
The African Independent Churches. The first churches planted by Western
missionaries throughout Africa closely resembled the churches back home
in Europe that had sent the missionaries. They looked and functioned much
like the churches of the German Lutherans, the British Anglicans, the Swiss
Reformed, the New England Congregationals, and others. As the second
generation of Christian believers in these churches matured, they became
aware of a lack of contextualization in the teachings coming from the
pulpit. Consequently, many of them separated from these mission churches
of their parents and birthed independent churches that not only put an
emphasis on theological context but were also more compatible with
African culture. Governmentally, these African Independent Churches were