Is the Five-Fold Ministry False Teaching?

I’m often asked to assess what others teach. I do not do this lightly, but it is necessary. Before reading this page, or any of the pages about specific people, I recommend that you read What is a False Teacher?, which explains what the Bible says about false teachers, and why I would bother to research who they are and what they say. You may also want to check out a list of Bible Teachers I Can Recommend.

I regularly get questions about those who call themselves ‘apostles’ or ‘prophets.’ My opinion is irrelevant, of course. The important question is whether anyone today should use those terms for themselves. In this article, I focus on the ‘apostle’ part of the five-fold ministry, to clear up the questions about modern-day apostles.

The idea comes from Scripture

The idea of the five-fold ministry comes directly from Ephesians 4:11 where Paul lists 5 (or four) kinds of roles that equip Christians for service. Here’s the verse, with some of its context:

So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

That’s good stuff. Here are the 5:

• Apostles
• Prophets
• Evangelists
• Pastors
• Teachers

I say there might be four because many scholars suggest that pastor and teacher should be combined as pastor/teacher. The number isn’t really important for our discussion. The question is whether the five-fold ministry, as expressed today, matches what we see in the New Testament. Keep in mind that there’s some variety of belief within those who teach about this, and that not everyone sees things in exactly the same way.

Is it for today?

Is the ‘five-fold ministry’ only found in the first-century church, or is it something that should be emulated and repeated today? It’s my belief that the five-fold ministry, as expressed by Paul in Ephesians 4, is a thing of the past. When I say that, I don’t mean that it’s no longer needed. I mean that it’s a historical thing, like Jesus’ birth and death and resurrection. Those are obviously still relevant today, but they don’t need to be repeated. To be clear: the New Testament doesn’t talk about apostles and prophets in the way that five-fold folks do, and that raises a red flag.

The idea is that today’s church has these 5 ‘offices’ or roles, and that all 5 are needed to today. If this were true, then each church could have their own apostles and prophets. That isn’t what we find in the New Testament. Instead, ‘apostles and prophets’ refer to specific people who laid the foundation of the church… and that foundation is the same for every church, rather than being localized.

This passage is in Ephesians 4. Let’s go back a bit to Ephesians 2 and see another place where Paul mentions apostles and prophets:

Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.

Note this phrase: “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets.” The NIV (a fine translation) doesn’t quite capture what the Greek says. The NASB, a stricter word-for-word translation, expresses it more fully. They both express the meaning, but “having been built” is more precise than “built.” In context, Paul was saying that the Christians in Ephesus had been made one with the Jews because of Jesus, who made the two groups one. BOTH were built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets and “in Him the whole building is joined together.”

The key is that the apostles and prophets were the foundation for both. The prophets for the Jews weren’t modern-day prophets, but Jewish prophets who warned Israel to return to God. The apostles weren’t modern-day prophets, but the apostles of Jesus… those who personally encountered Him while He ministered in Israel, who saw Him do what He did. THAT is the foundation on which the church has been built. Just as Jesus died and rose again and doesn’t need to repeat the process, so the work done by the apostles and prophets has been completed. The foundation of the church has been laid.

The biblical definition of an apostle

How do we know this? Let’s look at what happened after Judas betrayed Jesus and killed himself. The twelve had become eleven. They needed to choose a replacement for Judas, and here are the requirements, from Acts 1:17-22:

Therefore it is necessary to choose one of the men who have been with us the whole time the Lord Jesus was living among us, beginning from John’s baptism to the time when Jesus was taken up from us. For one of these must become a witness with us of his resurrection.

THAT is an apostle. They couldn’t replace Judas with just any old believer. They had to choose someone who could personally testify that they had witnessed Jesus in action. Paul wrote specifically in 1 Corinthians 15 about the ones to whom Jesus appeared:

• Cephas (Peter)
• then to the Twelve (the other 10 of Jesus’ closest disciples, minus Judas)
• then to more than 500 of the ‘brothers and sisters,’ who were also disciples
• then to James
• then to all of the apostles
• and last of all to Paul.

Last of all to Paul. Now, Paul mentions several times that he’s not a typical apostle. Why? Because he didn’t follow Jesus when He was alive and ministering in Israel. The other apostles did. So, if Paul persecuted the church at that time, how could he be considered an apostle? It’s because He personally encountered Jesus after His resurrection, and was SENT (the meaning of the word ‘apostle’) to minister to the Gentiles by Jesus Himself.

For verification: Luke, the writer of Acts, called Paul an apostle. Paul called himself an apostle in his writings, which Peter said were Scripture. The one common denominator in both the regular apostles and Paul, the atypical apostle, was that they saw Jesus alive after He had been killed and had been sent to teach others what He taught.

The foundation has already been laid

The church – everyone who has been born again, throughout all of history, all over the world – has been built on the foundation of the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament apostles. We have all we need for life and godliness in the Scriptures, in the one true gospel that was handed down once for all. Modern-day apostles and prophets can’t add to the gospel, or improve on it. We need no continuing revelation, which is the basis for the five-fold ministry.

While there are lots of people who believe in the five-fold ministry that otherwise have orthodox theology, they can’t substantiate their position from Scripture. Instead – in my experience, and in the experiences of many others – those who consider themselves to be modern-day apostles and prophets both teach contrary to Scripture and go far beyond Scripture when they teach. For those reasons, I can never recommend an ‘apostle’ or ‘prophet’ as someone who can be trusted to handle Scripture responsibly.

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