Foundations: Apostolic or Pastoral?

I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another.

But on some points I have written to you very boldly by way of reminder, because of the grace given me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles.

Romans 15:14-16

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As I travel around the UK, often invited to speak on mission, it strikes me that many (not all, of course) churches view God’s purpose to fill the whole earth with his glory, through church planting, as a nice-to-have, an optional extra, something for a few specialists or extraordinary individuals, rather than as a foundational raison d’etre. Sending to the unreached is viewed as cosmetic, not core.

Pastors so often see their calling as building the local church… not as a means to an end, but as an end in itself.

The rise of pastoral leadership over the last twenty years in the UK is pronounced. The books leaders read, the content they consume, the types of voices that are platformed at conferences, the advice of overseers, have done much to strengthen and grow local congregations. These narratives, in the way that all narratives do, have become foundational; foundational to how the Bible is taught, foundational to Christian discipleship, foundational to staffing and budgetary considerations. All the energy is inwards.

It shouldn’t do, but this worldview becomes so reinforced at times that any missional call finds itself competing against it.  If the entire theology on which a church is built is directed centripetally inwards to the church, then the foundation of that church is pastoral, not apostolic.

Apostolic foundations, in individuals and in churches, re-shape worldview to the big picture of the purposes of God, through Christ, as revealed in Scripture, whose desire is to bring all nations to a knowledge of his Son. God’s purpose in sending Christ, and including us in Christ through salvation, was always “to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you.” (Romans 1:5).

David Devenish, explaining Paul’s claim that in Ephesus he taught “the whole will (plan/counsel) of God” (Acts 20:27), argues that genuinely apostolic foundations are taught through a missional theology with a global eschatological goal.

“This grand narrative creates the apostolic foundation of a biblical worldview which undermines every other worldview. Only this grand narrative will do so.” Devenish, Fathering Leaders, Motivating Mission, 113.

Let’s not forget that “apostle” means “sent one”, and the New Testament contention is that foundations must be laid in churches by apostles (the Twelve as foundational to the Church (Matt 16:18, Rev 21:14), apostles as foundation-layers (Eph 2:20, I Cor 3:10). In other words, the people of God are to be defined by, shaped by, sent ones. Their big missional view of the purposes of God and the role of the church within this was to be essential, both theologically and for want of a better word, institutionally.

I believe that often, foundations in churches are pastoral rather than apostolic for several reasons.

• The primary foundations are laid by the local pastor’s preaching and leadership, rather than genuinely apostolic voices.
• The primary theological influences are those of a pastoral theology, rather than a missional theology.
• Key staff and budget lines are maintenance-focused rather than mission-focused.
• The deployment of energy, prayer, service, resources and key gifts are centripetal rather than centrifugal.

Pastoral Foundations	Apostolic Foundations
Primary teaching by people with pastor-teacher gifting	Key foundations laid by people with apostolic gifting
Theological inputs primarily pastoral theology	Missional theology
Centred on building the local church	Centred on extending the Kingdom among all nations
Risk averse, conservative	Pioneering, entrepreneurial, creative
Centripetal	Centrifugal

The apostolic foundations laid into the Antioch church (Acts 11-14) and the Ephesian church (Acts 19-20), and resulted in energised missional sending as a core part of those churches’ DNA. In Antioch, Barnabas and Saul (identified in Acts as being apostolic), taught the church for a year (Acts 11:26). As a result, Antioch immediately engaged in missional sending (Acts 13-14). In Ephesus, Paul taught the church “the whole plan of God” (Acts 20:27) and “the Kingdom of God” (Acts 19:8, 20:25) for two years (Acts 19:10). As a result, the whole of Asia heard the word (Acts 19:10), which likely included the establishment of new churches in Colossae, Laodicea and Hierapolis.

A church may have really strong foundations, may be large and well-taught, but lack a genuinely apostolic dynamic. This is easily measurable – are they committed as a primary Christian value to the pursuit of God’s glory among all nations? Are they sending their best people to the hardest places? Do they define their calling not just locally but globally? Are they missionary?

It’s not always true, but in my experience many larger churches send the fewest people to the unreached. In this sense, pastoral foundations can be so entrenched that they militate against apostolic imperative. Wei Han Kuan writes;

Local churches can become victims of their own success.  The larger a church gets, the more programme-oriented, staff-team-driven and administratively-complex it tends to become.  A church bursting at its seams becomes known for the quality of its Sunday offerings, and, as I am fond of saying, ‘The problem with every great Sunday service is that it’s only six days until the next.’  

In the verses above (Romans 15: 14-16), Paul compliments the church in Rome on being strong pastorally (full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another), yet urges them beyond this to involvement in his apostolic mission to Spain. Before being able to do this in chapter 15, he has spent 14 chapters of Romans seeking to re-shape the foundations of the Roman church, confronting some things, stressing others, because he is aware that, for a missionary appeal to fall on ready ears, those ears must first be tuned to the great plan of God, his love for all nations, his desire, starting with the call to Abraham, to establish a new family of faith across all peoples of the earth. Only once this apostolic foundation has been re-laid can Paul call the church to partner with him in mission to the ends of the earth.

I was recently invited to do a weekend for a church on mission. They hoped I would simply make an Isaiah 6 appeal and see people respond. They were surprised when I spent the whole first session in Genesis 2. But without going back to the beginning and redirecting their view of the flow of the river of God’s purposes as being to the whole world (the river flowing out of Eden became four rivers, flowing to the four corners of the earth), then many churches merely assume the river of life is there primarily to water the garden of the church, that the Holy Spirit exists primarily for the blessing of believers, and narrative trajectory of Scripture ends in a glorious church, rather than in a renewed heavens and earth, the home of righteousness for all nations.

As always, I fear that many on the last day might rue having missed the missional wood for the pastoral trees.