as we prepare for our residency and our course on episodic leadership i want to talk in this session about apostolic government and what does that mean again i'm going to try to describe it but in order to do that let me review real quickly about what apostolic leadership is what episodic leadership accomplishes because if we don't understand what it is by its nature and what it accomplishes we won't know how the whole governmental structure and apostolic government works uh what is it working on so uh stick with me for a minute we'll get to government but let me just review real quickly when we say apostolic leadership what is it um a quick run through the book of acts gives us four descriptions times when apostolic leadership teams came together apostolic people came together and this is our description in acts 6 i'm not going to go deep in this but what we see is the the apostles gathered together there was a crisis in the church and they said it would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word and prayer in order to wait on tables so they empowered a new wave of leaders sometimes they're called deacons so that the apostolic leaders could give themselves to prayer in the ministry of the word i call that spiritual leadership as apostolic leaders apostolic leadership is is at the very beginning about the word and prayer about spiritual leadership secondly acts 13 when apostles and prophets are gathered together in the church at antioch they're praying and fasting and worshiping and the holy spirit said set apart from me barnabas and saul for the for the work i have for them and so you see this mission flowing out of the church at antioch and so we say apostolic leadership is spiritual leadership secondly it's missional leadership it leads people toward mission it leads people on mission it leads churches when apostolic leadership is a church in a church it's going on mission thirdly in acts 15 after the mission they had to tie together a lot of theological questions and issues and so we see acts chapter 15 these apostolic leaders are gathered together they've got differing soteriology views different views on sanctification justification does a gentile have to become a jew in order to get saved what part of their culture is acceptable what part is not and all that and they come to this theological discussion and conclusion and they disseminate that so we say that apostolic leadership based on acts 15 is theological leadership the apostolic people and apostolic leaders get together and wrestle through complicated theological issues and they really came out with a simple answer how to communicate and how to live it so finally we get to acts 20 and this is paul this famous moment when paul is meeting with the ephesian elders one of his favorite churches that he invested so much of his of his life in and and he's on his way to rome he thinks he's going to die he's certain he's never going to see them again you see this weeping and this hugging and it's this this really emotional scene and when i look at that i say apostolic leadership is relational it's relational leadership and so when we say apostolic leadership we mean spiritual leadership missional leadership theological leadership and relational leadership all four of those is like the four legs of a table all are important that's what apostolic leadership is that's how we describe it now let's talk for a minute about what apostolic leadership accomplishes what that apostolic leadership that is spiritual missional theological and relational what does it accomplish as we look through the book of acts the first one it pioneers new churches there are new churches birthed i was at a recent recent a few years ago a apostolic conference here in north america and there were mostly apostolic leaders from north america about maybe 35 of them and gathered convened by a senior apostolic prophetic leader that a leader i deeply respect and there were people around that table and it seemed like as these apostolic leaders mostly from north america some from different parts of the world as they were talking about what they do i was shocked at how few of them talked about church planting versus church gathering and finding independent churches and connecting them together in apostolic networks and i thought you know i when i read the new testament when i read the book of acts and i read the epistles i see that apostolic leadership birthed new churches and again i think when we talk about apostolic leadership what does it accomplish it's accomplishing new churches when we look at the the whole missional leadership in acts 13 the next few chapters 13 up until 15 we see that churches were new churches that didn't exist before paul and paul and barnabas went there in cyprus brand new church it wasn't there before and antioch uh pasidia uh another church wasn't there until they got there they left behind a church iconium lystra derby and then they go back to antioch and then it's hinted that possibly in pamphilia and perga it's on this one missionary trip we see everywhere paul went sometimes he stayed a few months sometimes he would stay longer the the time seemed to always vary but what was left behind were churches apostolic leadership accomplished new churches being birthed new churches being planted new churches being established secondly we see in acts besides new churches we see churches are strengthened um when paul went we see that in acts 15 verse 41 acts 16 verse 5 there are quite a few others when paul would go visit these churches after they had been established it would talk about this either they were strengthened some translations say they were built up there are times when it says the people the individual leaders were strengthened or built up and then other times the whole church was strengthened and built up and paul did that primarily not exclusively but primarily through teaching and preaching and so there is a teaching preaching component to apostolic leadership that strengthens churches so what does apostolic leadership accomplish the birthing of new churches pioneering new churches where they didn't exist and then strengthening those churches whether they're small and new whether they're huge whether they're old churches new churches whatever the result of apostolic teaching and preaching is a stronger church a strengthening a process a journey of getting stronger and stronger and then thirdly apostolic leadership when we see in the book of acts we see a multiplication or an expansion so trying to describe what aposotic leadership we said what it is the types of leadership spiritual missional theological relational that's how how we experience apostolic leadership what it accomplishes are new churches stronger churches and multiplying churches so birthing something new strengthening what exists and multiplying uh into new areas new cities new nations new peoples new cultures uh to the ends of the earth now all that to come to this point what is apostolic government uh when we talk about apostolic government i think about uh if the apostolic has birthed and strengthened and multiplied to new churches then once we have all these churches they have to be governed their decision-making and their crisis decisions and leadership that has to happen and i think if you didn't birth them and strengthen them and multiply them good luck governing in them and i think about just gathering a bunch of random churches and governing it doesn't really fit very well with that so what do we mean by it and there are really three ways that i describe apostolic government in a local church or in a a community of churches in a region or in a you know and sometimes they're multi-site within a city or or a location and uh but if there's apostolic government what do we mean by that number one i think about the apostolic leaders that i work with and the number one thing that i see is apostolic wisdom so when we say applesauce government i think the first and most common is apostolic wisdom and um what that does it upgrades thinking practices upgrades the way that a church uh leader does in the local does does ministry does mission does um worship services whatever it's absolute wisdom um and uh when we speak wisdom into something um when we speak out of our experience and out of our knowledge of god's word i want i want to be clear that it's usually suggestive not directive what i think is a wise move um might not really be and and i'm shooting this video and getting on a plane in a few days and flying to three different nations on two different continents and i'm sure there will be times when um leaders are asking my wisdom on a certain situation sometimes i am very clear i i see something and i speak to it other times especially in a new nation new nation a new culture i'm not that familiar with i'm a little hesitant to do it because i'm not sure i have the wisdom so i think it's important that applesight leaders understand when we're giving what we think is episodic wisdom if it's not received don't get upset about it because it might not be as wise as we thought it was but that's part of what apostolic government is is the wisdom aspect secondly is what i call apostolic development and that is uh developing a local pastor or a local evangelist or a local campus missionary and we use sometimes corporate words like coaching uh or like uh consulting that's part of apostolic input in developing a leader or or mentoring not necessarily a corporate word but uh not totally a biblical word but a biblical i think the concepts there so when we think about apostolic development there's a need often for developmental relationships among pastors all over the world um an example of developmental apostolic developmental input i have four men on three different continents that i am a preaching coach seminary students you're in this class it's a great joy for me to listen to the sermons and help give input into how to make them better whether it's study or delivery or whatever but there's a part of those of you who have experienced preaching coaching there's a part of preaching coaching where we're making suggestions and i'm i always try to be clear that listen what i'm about to say is not a mandate it's not a command it's not something you have to do it's a suggestion that i'd like you to consider that i think would make this sermon better and so when we give constructive suggestions that's that coaching aspect of development and so again it's not like a command another one i have a monthly mentoring uh zoom call with one of our apostolic leaders in a nation where everything that we do is illegal and there's been harassment from the police and there have been threats and and the ministry is booming the the church is growing explosively despite the persecution and the i guess technically underground nature but it really got too large to be underground for long but when we talk on that once a month time to talk and pray i'm always impressed this pastor asking me questions that really are very apostolic in scope it's it's typically how to multiply how do we expand how do we get to every city in our nation and in our region not how do we just think this uh local context but he's thinking uh globally and it's a when we think about apostolic development and input in the developmental area uh those are ways that i'm involved in coaching certain people and preaching mentoring and leadership and we know with that mentoring call i mentioned every time we talk it's a mentoring it's how do we do what we do in a more effective way in a in a way that will cause great expansion so when we say what is apostolic government i think the starting point is episodic wisdom which again it's not a command it's it's just it's wisdom it's what it is secondly apostolic development there are many ways that we can work with leaders apostolically to develop them to the next level and then finally there's apostolic authority and when there's an apostolic input that is a is a situation of authority that's different than offering wisdom and it's different than helping to develop someone and then they have to figure out how to apply it and i think when we're working on developing leaders we have to be careful to not go deep in the means but to talk about the ends and if they understand the mission vision value and ends they can apply the means but when we get to apostolic authority i look at scripture and i see several things that come under apostolic authority one you see the appointment of local church leaders not every single local church leader and i'm not even sure it's in every single church if that church has been there for a long time but at least in the initial stages once it grew from an outreach or an evangelistic moment of paul to a church and the bible's not crystal clear on where that fuzzy line is of this is an outreach and that's our language and this is a church but at some point there was the appointing of elders i don't think that still applies church has been there 20 years that every elder has to be appointed by an outside apostolic leader but there was paul sending timothy in to appoint elders there was we see that that that that local leaderships and and it's not an issue of whether you call them elders or not in some context elder doesn't even make sense maybe pastor makes sense and and a team of pastors or whatever you call it but the point is under the apostolic authority first we see the appointing of elders or leaders in a new testament context secondly we see the rebuking of sin the classic of course is in corinthians when paul is rebuking uh the drunkenness and the immorality and a whole list of other things in the church and those weren't suggestions they were not let me give you some wisdom about this and it wasn't just let me mentor you to be a better leader this was apostolic authority to rebuke sin and also in galatians we see paul rebuking peter because of his um his acting like a jew around jews and acting like a gentile around gentiles and paul called it hypocrisy and and the way that peter went back and forth and and and lived kind of a double life in in in terms of um jewish rules and paul rebuked it strongly so there's appointing of elders local church leaders there's rebuking sin we don't make suggestions about sin and then there's correcting doctrine in just about every one of paul's epistles there was some doctrinal adjustment in there somewhere sometimes it was a clear correction other times it was tweaking it and emphasizing something but there's doctrinal issues and then finally there's mission alignment so when we talk about apostolic authority we can we can drill down when we're face to face and talk about actually in the every nation world we've got very clear lines of our apostolic council and our global team our regional leaders uh what responsibility they have in a local church and when it's apostolic authority versus developing a pastor helping leadership development or speaking some wisdom that is really it is more suggested but there are times when it is authority but when we look at scripture what i see is appointing leaders rebuking sin correcting doctrine and mission alignment and when in in acts 15 that was part of a mission alignment there when when they were sending uh paul and and the team out with the instructions the theological decision they made about about what it means to come to christ they said oh yeah wait a minute remember the poor it was a mission alignment thing you know okay get this theology straightened out but don't get off we've when we're going part of the mission is the way that we serve the poor based on what jesus said taking it personally when you see the hungry and you feed them and you see those with no clothes you've given to them it's like you did it unto me and so part of that mission that was core to them well they weren't exclusively about the poor but they that was a mission alignment thing of just make sure you keep this going right here as you go and preach good theology and and solid theology so uh i hope that brings some vocabulary to the table and i hope that helps us think because they're like i said there are a lot of ideas out there books and conferences some of this stuff is really good really helpful others not so much some of it's a mixed bag but when we talk about and i'm not saying we're right but when we talk about it this is what we mean uh and this is the mentality we have when we think about apostolic leadership apostolic ministry apostolic government in a church this is the framework we're working from [Music]