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Church Is Like a Mismatched Sandwich May 4, 2009 By Martin
Schmaltz Suppose it is
lunchtime and you are starving. You enter your favorite sandwich
shop and place your order for that super deluxe Dagwood special.
As your sandwich arrives, you immediately realize something is wrong.
The first clue - you are looking down at a pile of lettuce, no apparent
bread. Upon closer examination, you notice the whole sandwich
is structured wrong--relish on the bottom, butter, a slice of bread,
cheese, another slice of bread, the meat, more butter and then the
lettuce. Your attempts
at returning the sandwich meet with a dumbfounded look; the server
cannot understand. All the ingredients of the sandwich are there,
so why would you want to return it? The answer is obvious; the structure
is not right. How can you even pick the sandwich up to eat
it? Much of North American Christianity is like this messed-up
sandwich--we may have the right ingredients, but the structure is
incorrect. Looking at the churches of today, we find any number
of ministry offices in multiple configurations--bishops, elders,
deacons, apostles, prophets, teachers, ministers, evangelists, overseers,
missionaries, etc--all arranged based on historical or organizational
traditions. Unfortunately, we find that the result is a church body
revealing limited dominion or authority of Jesus. Paul gives us
a skeletal structure for the church: “And God hath set some in the
church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers,
after that miracles, then gifts ….” (1 Corinthians 12:28). I believe
by understanding the basics of this text, we can come to a more
biblical model that will empower the church. The following
is a very basic breakdown of this verse and its significant components: 1. Notice
that “God set” this up. The structure is His idea. It is His prerogative
to place members (ministry gifts) within the body. 2. The
words “first,” “secondarily,” and “thirdly” mean a place of rank,
influence or order. So God has chosen to set an order in the church:
apostles, then prophets, then teachers. 3. The
words “after that” mean thereafter or then, indicating something
was to come or happen after the preceding structure. Miracles
were expected to follow the order. The word here is dunamis,
which in most other places is translated power. It means inherent
power, strength, or ability. So the expected consequence of correct
structure is to have the inherent power of Jesus in the body (church).
4. Finally,
“then gifts of” is translated from the same word as “after that,”
meaning there is a natural consequence to having the inherent power;
the demonstration/manifestation of the ministry gifts. When the church
structure is in order: first apostle, second prophets, thirdly teachers,
we can expect the inherent power of Jesus to be present. Since He
is now within His correctly structured body, empowering it, we can
expect the natural consequence to be the demonstration of ministry
gifts. This manifestation then results in the church being the authentic
representational image of Jesus. The question
we have to ask: Is the lack of miraculous demonstration in our churches
because we do not have a correct biblical model? Martin
Schmaltz has been in ministry
for over 13 years, empowering believers, challenging status quo
and re-imaging church. He travels frequently overseas and has ministered
in Okinawa Japan, Swaziland, Cape Town, Philippines and the Kingdom
of Tonga. *Obviously space prohibits the full presentation of study here. Much of this material is summarized from in my series on re-imaging church (apostolic structure).
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