Alan Hirsch has a great article in Leadership Journal on what he considers to be the fivefold ministry in leadership, Three Over-looked Leadership Roles.
Hirsch’s main argument is that if we look at church leadership from Ephesians 4:11 we see five different leadership roles (apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds and teachers, but that the Church for too long has only focused on teachers and shepherds at the exclusion of the others. Hirsch says:
While at South, I was invited to lead a revitalization movement within my denomination—the fourth largest Protestant denomination in Australia. Seeing things from this higher altitude, I recognized that South was not the only church facing a crisis. My entire denomination needed to shift toward a missional culture if it was to grow and survive. But how?
We needed a new type of leadership, one with the courage to question the status quo, to dream of new possibilities, and to innovate new ways of being the people of God in a post-Christian culture. We needed missionaries to the West, but our seminaries were not producing them. If we take the five categories of church leadership from Ephesians 4:11, they were training leaders to be teachers and pastors for established congregations, but where were the evangelists, the prophets, and the apostles to lead the mission of the gospel into the world?
Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Shepherds, and Teachers—I refer to these together as APEST. But when I looked at my church and most others, I saw congregations dominated by leaders who were shepherds and teachers. What happened to the other leadership types?
Hirsch points towards much more of a collaborative team effort than what is seen in many churches where there is one pastor (head pastor, preaching pastor, exec. pastor, etc.) who makes all the decisions, or there is a very limited group in the decision making process. With a more diverse and collaborative team effort there is an increase in tension which brings fruition the best of all the leadership roles, rather than excluding some to the detriment of others.
