A Trend in Brandon's APEST Posts

The latest of Brandon Kelly's APEST posts appeared in Friday's eNews.

It will be the first of two on evangelists.

If you're paying attention, you've observed that the first of the two posts on the individual gifts always focuses on how the people with that gift can be immature, or deficient or flawed or weak or ineffective or foibled in living the gift. And, on why your church should be patient, tolerant even, in dealing with these people.

Here's the comment I'm going to put on the eNews blog. It's a tad generalized but, essentially, true:

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Brandon,

Thanks again for highlighting APEST and for drawing the attention of the readers of this blog to this essential Kingdom reality.

I have noticed a pattern, however, in your, now, three articles which draw our attention to the immaturities, and foibles and failings of people who strive to live within these gifts.

In each of these articles, you describe, in one or more ways, weaknesses in people who live in these gifts that, when they are immature:

1. Make them different from shepherds, and,
2. Make it uncomfortable for them to function as the pastor, or parish priest, of a church.

In doing so, you seem, accidentally I'm certain, to imply that shepherd is the central, core APEST gift. And, that the role of the pastor/parish priest is important in the Bible's teachings on Kingdom leadership.

I don't see those teachings in the Word.

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The truth is that it's not a weakness of an APE to lack the characteristics of a shepherd.

It's not true that the shepherd gift and pastor's role are the end all be all in Kingdom living.

As 1 Corinthians 12 makes clear, all gifts are incomplete. The incompleteness is not necessarily an indication that the person with the gift is flawed.

The incompleteness itself is essential in God's plan for the gifted and called servants of the Kingdom.

The incompleteness is not remedied when APEs mature and become more like shepherds.

It is remedied when all APESTs, as Paul says it in Ephesians 5, "submit to one another out of reverence for Christ."

And, remember, there's not a single pastor/parish priest in the New Testament.