Can you believe that it's been 26 years since south central Los Angeles erupted in riots that lasted six days in response to the not guilty verdict in the trial of four LA police officers charged with using excessive force while arresting Rodney King, an act that had been videotaped and replayed numerous times on TV broadcasts?
So, several days into the riots, Mr. King stood before camera to address the people of the city and he asked, stammeringly, in words that have become among the most memorable of the 20th century, "Can we get along?"
Sadly, in real life, most of the time, we can't.
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And, more to the point of issues addressed on this blog, in the, uh, church, the answer, I believe, by God's design, is, "No. Certainly not."
Get along? No. Not get along.
I believe that Paul of Tarsus was correct when he wrote in his letter to the Christians in Ephesus that, (Jesus) gave some to be apostles, others to be prophets, others to be evangelists and others to be shepherds and teachers.
Paul added that Jesus would continue to give these human gifts to His people, "until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature..."
His description of these five giftings is often referred to these days as APEST.
The whole story of the early Christian movement convinces me, beyond doubt, that Jesus' ministry laid the groundwork for APEST, that the Book of Acts details the unfolding of APEST and that the Epistles describe the operation of APEST in Christianity's earliest days.
And, I personally live as if APEST continues to happen today and that I participate in its operation.
Here's one truth about APEST as I have always experienced it:
The Spirit empowers disciples of Jesus to be different from each other and passionate, as they walk in the Spirit, about who He makes them to be.
Those passionate differences create tension, very real tension.
Speaking for myself:
I consider myself to be a prophet. People with the other APEST gifting are, at best, a mystery to me. And, I can't get along with them naturally.
Apostles fascinate me but they make my head spin, their innovation regularly confuses me.
The intense passion for the most basic elements of the Kingdom message, the gospel, which drives evangelists, often embarrasses me.
Shepherds, when they merely function within their gift, bore me. When they presume to take control of the church and institutionalize it and create hierarchies within it...and lead it, I, honestly, hate what they do to the point that I struggle constantly to forgive them.
Teachers, on the one hand, intrigue me but, because they can uphold human tradition as easily as genuine truth, they cause me to fear that the Lord's genuine truth will never prevail.
[And, though this is off point:. Other prophets? There are moments when the passion for truth we share excites me. But, when another prophet calls ME to repent? Yikes!]
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Having lived APEST full-throttle for over a decade now, I am absolutely certain that it is the Lord's design that, in His body, we can't just get along.
My experience is that He actually created His body so that there would be, at best, tension among His people--that, on their own, APESTs would be at odds with each other.
And, they are.
There are people in the Kingdom today who have made careers for themselves, writing books and speaking at seminars explaining APEST...
...not to doubters but,...
...to the very people who embrace it!
So, why this designed tension? What purpose does it serve?
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Here's what I've become convinced of:
This tension among APESTs is designed to remind us that the body has a Head on it upon which all of us must depend.
We are nothing unless He is everything.
At another place in Paul's letter to the Ephesians he writes about, "submitting to each other out of reverence for Christ."
And, I'm convinced that His purpose in giving five different APESTs is so that He alone can be acknowledged as the Head of the Body.
All four of the other APESTs drive me to distraction.
But, in Him...
...and in mutual submission to other disciples,...
...there is power and the potential for victory.
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Perhaps the most dangerous error of the institutionalists whose self-described "leadership" is driving the decline and decay of the Western church, is their belief and insistence that we can all get along. And that tension among the called is bad and that it is sin.
We can't all just get along...on our own...walking in the Spirit.
We can submit to each other out of reverence for Him.
We can, we must, obey the New Commandment to love each other as He loved when He washed the disciples' feet.
But, get along?
No.
Never!
That's not His way.
We must repent.
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