Rise to Fly with Eagles

Eph 4: 11So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, 12to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 13until 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.

This verse has been very precious to me thru all my years with Jesus.  It simply points out the purpose of God in the Church and for the Church pulpit and more importantly the final goal of it all, maturity.

Casually reading over this verse seems like God gives to the Church the 5 fold ministry, the pulpit, so they would have a job.  Unfortunately we have mis-read.  It said He gave the 5 fold ministry to equip the people to do the work, their work.  (the pulpit is not to do the work but the people are! )   There is where we missed it.  We thought the purpose of the pulpit was to have a job to minister to the people.  But actually the purpose of the pulpit is to work themselves out of a job. How?  By equipping the saints to do the work of their ministry.  

Rather than teaching the people to do the work of the ministry we have built huge congregations, crystal cathedrals, men's kingdoms and padded pew full of people who know nothing about maturity and doing the work of their own ministry.   "Sit here, pay and pray" and we will do the rest, the pulpit cries!   We hired professional "pulpiteers" to pipe pretty words to us, filling us with the pride of life and pride of belonging to Big Church! 

We have learned to reach the lost by inviting them to comer hear "our preacher" and that is the extent of the work of our ministry.   "Join my church!"  

The pulpit has made us dependent on the 20 minute bullet sermon and caused us to think we walk in full maturity because we "belong".   Pay  and pray is the work of our ministry and the pulpit loves it so.  The pulpit keeps us dependent upon them rather than teaching us to walk in maturity where we don't need tutors.

Feeding the hungry, visiting the sick, orphans and widows in their afflictions has been reduced to dropping a couple of dollars in the plate.  We have hired hireling to pipe to us fables of prosperity, meaningless feel good sermons, and money as a means to godliness and keep on paying and praying  you are doing fine.  They lie. 

This is an accusation toward the pulpit, whose works is not to keep us saved but to equip us with the maturity we need to do the work of our very own ministry.  The pulpit Instead of teaching us to fly with eagles they keep us in the hen yard scratching for worms!   The Body of God in the earth is powerless to lift themselves off the padded pews to go to work.

Preacher if you are the ones saying "they can't be saved without me", then you are the problem not the solution.

Be blessed. BW and Jan