Apostolic Prayer & Preaching vs. Apostolic Administration & Coaching
Every so often, there’s a question that crops up when I’m reading/thinking about church planting. This is especially true when church planting gets slotted under the heading of “apostolic ministry.” Here’s a quote from N.T. Wright that assesses, accurately, I believe, the priority of first century apostles:
The heart of the apostles’ reasoning in all this was the priority of the word of God and prayer. Only when a crisis emerges do we see what is really important. We noted earlier that ‘the apostles’ teaching’ was top of the list of the defining marks of the church (2:42), and that the apostles, faced with persecution, were instructed by the angel to ‘go and speak the words of this Life’ (5:20)… The early apostolic testimony stands solidly: the task of an apostle is the word of God and prayer.
Based on what we find in the New Testament–that apostolic ministers, the men God uses to begin new gospel movements, are first and foremost preachers and prayers–how do we reconcile the massive amounts of time that church planters today typically pour into fund raising, advertising campaigns, and infrastructure?
I’m not saying that any of those latter things are extraneous. Just wondering how to keep first things first and how to go about explaining this apparent dichotomy… If anyone else wants to take a shot at this, I’m all ears.
