New Apostles and New Ways of Doing Church

Dick Scoggins, a veteran house church planter, has written an excellent article in the recent Frontiers Missions magazine: "Nurturing a New Generation of ‘Pauline’ and ‘Petrine’ Apostles."

Whew… hefty title… but some very good meat.

First off… Scoggins clarifies what he means by "apostle." He does NOT mean "someone who gives oversight to large churches or groups of churches." Rather, he sees apostles as "mobile, dynamic groups of emissaries of the Kingdom. They are called to minister as bands or groups – at the very least in twos, as Jesus taught (cf. Acts 13:3,4;14:4,14; 15:39-41), and sometimes with helpers (cf. Acts 13:5)… The key mark of apostleship is not a big personality, but rather big suffering (cf. 1 Cor. 4:9-13).

Okay, that said, Scoggins goes on to talk more specifically about "Petrine" apostleship… the apostle called to reach his own people (as opposed to Paul who was called to go cross-culturally to the Gentiles).

Peter helped to bring new expressions of the Kingdom of God for the Jews who would follow Jesus.

I believe we are seeing a similar pattern today. Western Christendom is in a key transition, perhaps undergoing as large a cultural shift as occurred during the Reformation (when I think that last great era of Petrine apostles brought the Church out of medieval forms and into modern forms). The world is changing, and the Western forms of church, birthed very much according to modernity, are not keeping up. I believe that the world has changed so much that simply adapting existing church structures will not enable appropriate expressions of the Kingdom to come forth for new generations. What is needed is a whole new way of doing “church” (and I think we actually need to drop the word, but that is for a different article). New types of communities of the Kingdom need to be envisioned and created to be Good News in a new era. I believe that apostles are the creative agents sent by God to bring about radical, creative forms of the Kingdom.

Many of you reading this are the very apostles that Scoggins is writing about… You are seeking new and relevant Kingdom expressions for our generation. and many of you have paid the price for exploring new forms of communities. You will find this article affirming.

Scoggins goes on to say:

If the Western church is not going to die out, then we will require new expressions of Kingdom communities. I think this will require a recovery of Petrine apostles – creative pioneers who will explore Kingdom communities appropriate to our postmodern world…

These pioneers are not called to make further adaptations to faltering models, but rather, like Jesus, Peter, James and John, call God’s people to move on from old formulations in a journey to the new. Such a journey will be every bit as radical and terrifying as it must have been for those early Jewish believers who watched the destruction of their nation and traditions. Today’s Petrine apostles will bear the same primary mark of apostleship – persecution, for their ministry is bound to be misunderstood (at best) by existing churches.

You can read the whole article by going to this link and then clicking on the article that reads "Nurturing a New Generation of ‘Pauline’ and ‘Petrine’ Apostles."