The Gifts of the Holy Spirit: - Vital Christianity

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reaching out to others with the good news of God’s love in Christ and the apostles
were to spearhead this missionary outreach. Indeed only when the gospel has been
preached throughout the whole world will the church’s task be finished, for then the
end will come (Mt. 24:14). Now on each occasion when the Great Commission was
given it was given to the eleven apostles and to no others. If they only exercised
the gift of apostleship then they only were commissioned to spread the gospel.
Indeed, such a conclusion has been held from time to time in the church’s history.
Yet the continuing spiritual darkness of many areas of the world and the realization
that many people have still to hear the gospel for the first time has caused Christians
to recognize the continuing need for apostles, those who will go where Christ is not
named, there to plant Christian churches. Obviously, the Twelve and Paul were
apostles in a special, unrepeatable sense, but cannot the gift of apostleship be
discerned in the activities of those who have been used of God in the extension of
the church into new areas for the past two thousand years? 3
Significantly many Christians down the ages have recognized the continuing nature
of the gift of apostleship both as regards the function of apostles in pursuing
purity of doctrine and as regards their function in planting new churches. Thus
even Calvin, who states quite clearly that apostles were temporary, in the same
breath admits that God ‘still occasionally raises them up when the necessity of the
time requires’ and then asserts that apostles had been necessary in his own day ‘to
bring back the Church from the revolt of Antichrist.’ (John Calvin, Institutes, 4, iii,4.).
Similarly outstanding Christian missionaries greatly used of God in carrying the
gospel into hitherto unreached areas of the world have earned the title of ‘apostle’
from their contemporaries and from historians. Thus, for example, Carey has been
called ‘the Apostle of India’, Judson ‘the Apostle of Burma,’ Aidan is referred to as
‘the Apostle of Northumbria.’” 4
Sometimes the office of apostle has been especially recognized. Thus the English Baptists of
the seventeenth century appointed ‘messengers’ or ‘apostles’ with the specific task of pioneering
the gospel and establishing new churches, caring for them until they were adequately pastored.
The term is not currently in vogue, but are not modern missionaries specifically engaged in
planting new churches exercising the gift of apostleship?
While Bridge and Phypers correctly equate missionaries who pioneer, plant and care for
churches with the office of apostleship, they do not go far enough. For it seems to me, the bishops
or district superintendents also engage in planting new churches and in overseeing them either
directly or indirectly through other pastors. In addition, some men who pastor churches are also