In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes that every Christian is called to ministry work in their daily lives. They explain that Jesus is portrayed as a victorious leader who has conquered death and evil, and he shares his victory with believers by giving them the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The speaker also highlights the importance of understanding the different areas of ministry work mentioned in Ephesians 4:11-12, which include apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers. They emphasize that these roles are meant to equip the saints for the work of ministry and to build up the body of Christ. The sermon encourages believers to embrace their personal ministry calling and not to be deceived by the idea that church is merely a consumer experience.

This is Church of the Resurrection in Wheaton, Illinois. This week's sermon is by Bishop Stuart Ruck and is from the 15th Sunday after Pentecost. So do you guys have any friends about whom when their birthday or Christmas rolls around you find yourself saying, what do I give to this person who seems to have everything? Or perhaps you're that person. In other words, people say about you, I don't know what to give to them, they seem to have everything. I feel that way communicating this teaching this morning to you all. I feel both as the gift giver that way and a bit, I'm going to be giving you something that you may not feel like you need right now. You may feel like I've got everything, I've got so much, I'm actually so overwhelmed with life and work and family and obligations, I don't have space for anything else and you want to give me something else? So I want to just articulate that from the beginning. That's a challenge that I feel right now in communicating this and as your pastor, I just feel that. I too feel the challenge. I've been studying this passage for most of the summer and as I read this passage, which has to do with the gift Jesus wants to give. I think the title is Receiving Our Purpose. It would be better titled now, Receiving His Gift. Walk in mission, receiving his gift. I too felt the challenge of realizing and feeling overwhelmed that Jesus has something he wants to give me and I have had to ask the honest question, do I have space to receive this gift? Is he trying to give me a gift to me, one who thinks he has everything or feels like he has everything? What's this gift? What's the gift that Jesus wants to give us? Well, yes, union with him, conversion to life in Jesus, yes, that gift, but intertwined with the gift of Jesus in conversion. Profoundly connected and flowing out of the gift of conversion is another gift, a very important gift. It's described as a gift here in Ephesians chapter 4 that he wants to give to every single follower of him, everyone. One of our key words here at Church of the Resurrection in this season of ministry. It's the gift of a personal mission. It's the gift of a ministry work. It's a gift that's actually so life changing, so revolutionary, such profound impact on your life that if you will actually drop everything else that you have, receive the gift of his conversion and his gift to you of salvation and with that the gift of a ministry calling, of a ministry work. If you will drop everything else and receive that, it will reorient how you do everything in this life. It will reorient your schedule. It will reorient how you do your family life if you're in a family life. It will reorient how you think about your job. It will reorient how you think about res. If you're a member here, it has that much power. It has that much importance. This is always true as we're preaching and teaching. It's especially true today. It's really important that you're not just seeing me as a sage on the stage that's giving you what you need to hear. We've got to be in this together. You have to have a sense that we're partnering together in this work. The idea of partnership, the idea of being in it together, the idea of everyone being given a calling and a work of ministry is central to Paul's teaching here and it's central to the multiplication of the kingdom of God in our day. It's central to equipping everyone for transformation. So we all have to overcome, including me as your pastor and the communicator today and including you, we have to all overcome incredible sort of gravitational force against this teaching where we live in a culture, in a society that's a culture of experts, is it not? It's all about experts in America. All about who has the higher degree, who has the more experience, who's the expert. This is not about experts. This is about the people of God, the saints, who are each given a work of ministry. Two questions out of this text in Ephesians chapter 4, focusing on verses 7 to 12. You have a Bible, you've got the bulletin. We're going to focus on verses 7 to 12 and I'm going to ask two questions about this text. The first question is, and it's a question I want you to ask, I've been asking, do I have a personal relationship with my ministry work? I'm intentionally tying that to phraseology that some of us are familiar with, do I have a personal relationship with Jesus? That's intentional. I want to speak to your personal relationship with Jesus and I want to make the case that Paul is making that your personal relationship with Jesus leads to a personal ministry work, a personal calling, a personal mission. Do I have a personal relationship with my ministry work? And two, do I understand the five areas of ministry work that Paul teaches on? Do I understand all five areas? Do I understand what they are? Do I understand my calling into all of them? Do I understand my specific kind of fruitfulness in some of them? Do I understand the five ministry areas, work ministry areas there in verse 11? Do I understand them? Like last week, I'm going to give you the application up front. That way we can all just not worry about that part. The application is this. Obviously I'm calling you from the scriptures into clarity about your personal mission and into engagement with your work of ministry. Not the only way at Res. One of the key ways that we are now providing at Res is what we're calling Res Groups, which are all about relationship. They're all about faith in the Bible and faith in the power of the Holy Spirit and they're all about personal mission. So one of the applications of this message is that if you're not already in our Transformation Intensive Ministry, which is another small group ministry here at Res, I want to strongly encourage you to become part of a Res Group. Some of you are in some very good Bible studies and are Res-men and Res-men and teams and that may be where God's calling you now, but my emphasis is to teach on personal mission and to have you move into a Res Group, which is one of the very best places I know for you to answer those two questions that I put in front of you. Let's work on our first question. Do I have a personal relationship with my work of ministry? I'm using over and over again the phrase that's in verse 12. So you'll see that's why this phrase is so important. There are five leaders that are put forward. It's not first and foremost about those leaders, although it does seem like that. And with an American cultural grid, we look to the experts first. I'm going to get to that part, but I want you already to begin to unhook about the experts, apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers. See that where that's driving is to equip the saints, the saints who are the people of God, for the work of ministry, for ministry work. Your conversion to Jesus, in other words, the application, the personal application of the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ, your personal receiving that in faith, your personal opening up your mind and your heart and your body to Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection is deeply connected with now your personal call to extend the power of His resurrection to others. They're absolutely and profoundly interconnected. Ten years ago, there was a major ministry fad that swept the country. And for whatever reason, the way that I'm wired, when a ministry fad sweeps the country, I excuse myself. Contrarian, prideful, helpful, like all those things at one time. Okay. But there was a ministry fad that swept ten years ago that was worse sweeping the country, and it was a phenomenal, amazing book by Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in California called The Purpose Driven Life. That is a really good book. It's a profound book. And Rick says this, Pastor Rick says this, and this connects with this connection with conversion and personal mission. He says, God's purpose for your life predates your conception. He planned it before you existed without your input. You feel a little chafing at that? We like input as Americans. You choose your career, your spouse, your hobbies, but you don't get to choose your purpose because it's a gift. And you don't choose your gift unless you've been married more than 25 years like Catherine and me, and you just start saying to each other, look, the budget's tight. Just give me this for my birthday. That doesn't count, all right? That's just not right. We do it, but that's not what I'm talking about. A real gift is just given to you, and you receive it. You don't get to engineer your own gift. Instead, you open a gift. It's a discovery moment, and then you have the lifetime experience, in this case, of understanding the gift that Jesus has given you, which is a form-fitted, to your life, to your generation, to our era, to your body type, to what you look like, to your personality. It's a form-fitted, absolutely tailor-made gift to reach your generation. And Jesus has this massive cosmic view with billions upon billions of followers of Jesus over the last millennia, and He's purposing to reach the lost and the least to establish a new heaven and a new earth where the power of God always reigns, where darkness has no voice, and it's always light. He's moving everything in that direction, and He's moving it in that direction by choosing personal mission for you. It's staggering, it's stunning, and it's true. So, of course, we can't choose because we don't have the cosmic view. We get put in places. He is the great, profound, sort of cosmic coach that calls His players into position, and then calls the plays that they run, unless they don't choose to suit up for the team, unless they buy into a cultural deception. The church is just one more experience of consuming a product and missing the apostolic work you're called to, the prophetic work you're called to, the evangelistic work you're called to, the shepherding work you're called to, and the teaching work you're called to. And I don't want us to miss this at rest. Each one of us, verse 7 says, grace, which also means gift, was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. A ministry calling gift was given to you according to the measure of Christ's salvation gift on the cross, an abundant gift, a victory gift. What is ministry work? Ministry work, simply put, is the work of overcoming evil and darkness with Jesus's goodness and light. Every Christian is called to a ministry work integrated in your daily job, alongside your daily job, integrated in your work as a mom or a dad, as a brother or a sister, as a roommate, to overcoming darkness and evil with Jesus's light and goodness. The language is here of victory. Jesus is imaged as one who's ascended on high, verse 8. He leads a host of captives and gives gifts to men. This is very likely Paul grabbing an image from his culture of Roman leaders who had marched through areas that had been conquered, had been taken over. And he's saying, Jesus has come. He has conquered death. He's conquered evil. He's leading captive in his train, in his processional of victory. And he's including all of us by giving the gifts of what he has won, which is the gift of the Holy Spirit. It's the gift of equipping gifts, these five gifts, so that we participate with him in his work, his victory. Ten years ago, I've seen this a few times at Rez in people's conversions. This was very explicit, this particular conversion. Ten years ago, we had a woman convert to Jesus here. She came to Christ, gave her life to Jesus. In her case, there was an immediate integration of her conversion and her call to ministry work. She converted, and she immediately had this sense of being called into a prophetic work, what I would call a prophetic, a prophetic work. She felt called to catalyze ministry. She called into a justice work. In her case, it was specifically this call to the unborn and to moms and dads of the unborn. It was a call to speak into and speak the truth and love into this reality in our country of legalized abortion up to the very last day. She was called to speak into that and minister into that, and it came out of her personal relationship with Jesus was this personal ministry work. For us that may not remember our conversions, it was long, long ago, or it happened gradually over time, or however it works, I give that picture to you to call you to refresh around your conversion, your call to ministry, that for her it all happened at the same time, but for us it can be reignited and refreshed because out of the source of your personal relationship with Jesus will come your personal ministry calling. That's the images of verses 7 and 8. Do we understand the five areas of ministry work, verses 11 to 12? And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and the teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ. Okay, let's work on this. So lean in with me because this takes some work and some understanding. First, let me just say, if you're familiar with the Bible, you're familiar with the fact that there are many other ministry gifts talked about. They're called gifts of the Holy Spirit. They're called gifts in ministry. There's lists of them. There's in Romans 12 written by the same author, in 1 Corinthians 12 written by the same author, lists of different gifts that are mentioned. Some of the gifts are mentioned here. Some of them aren't. Don't get caught up in that, but understand that this is a kind of smaller subset and focus set that has to do with equipping gifts. It has to do with ministry work. The work of the ministry is the context for these five areas. They're kind of five-fold ministry work arenas that we're called into. Now to understand these five that are given, it's really important to focus first on the sport, then on the player, then on the coach. Let me explain what I mean by that. That's really important because all of us here, the apostles, the prophets, we think the experts. I don't know who wears what in this church, but I'm guessing like maybe prophets wear something and others wear something and they're always up front, like the experts. You're thinking the coach first. Actually, it's most important, a coach who coaches football is one coach of thousands of coaches that coach football. The big deal is football. That's the sport. And then it's the team players who play, and then it's the coach after that. So like I said, the big deal is not necessarily the apostle, the prophet, the evangelist. It's apostolic ministry. It's prophetic ministry. It's evangelism ministry, which is led by those who are called into evangelism and led by leaders who might be called evangelists. That's right and that's true. There are definite articles for people, but get the sport first, then get the player, then get the coach. Or get the musical area first, classical music, bluegrass, Irish Celtic, whatever. Okay. Go there first, big area. What are these equipping areas? Well, let's start first with the apostle because it's really complicated to understand. And let me try to explain to you how I understand apostolic ministry. Okay. The first kind of apostolic ministry is unrepeatable apostolic ministry. That refers to the unrepeatable reality of the earliest church and the apostles who followed Jesus on this earth or saw Jesus resurrected physically in some capacity, including Paul, who is clearly an apostle, and then the group of them that wrote the New Testament scriptures for us. The unrepeatable apostles are those who gave us the New Testament scripture books. The prophets, also mentioned here, are also there as an unrepeatable group of prophets who basically gave us the Old Testament scriptures. So when Paul says in chapter two of this book, he says, the church is on the foundation of the prophets and the apostles, what I think he's saying there is that the unrepeatable prophets, Old Testament scriptures, unrepeatable apostles, New Testament scriptures, they gave us the foundation of the church, the word of God, and there will not be a 67th book to the scriptures. If anybody gives you a 67th book to the scriptures, you just know they're wrong. It's just simple. That's wrong. That's been established. We have God's word written here. So they're unrepeatable apostles. Okay. Then there are embodied apostles. There are those who carry on the office of the apostles, and the whole thing of offices, of sort of ministry offices, ministry positions, and this is especially how the Roman Catholic Church thinks about it, the Eastern Church thinks about it, and the Anglican Church, is there's three clear offices. He's not teaching on those offices here. He teaches on them in 1 Timothy chapter 3 and Titus chapter 1, and those offices are overseer or bishop, elder, presbyter, or priest, and deacon. Bishop, priest, and deacon. The overlap comes and the understanding of the ancient churches, including Anglicanism, is that the ministry of the bishop is to embody the ministry of the original unrepeatable apostles. We're not apostles in the same sense. We don't write the Bible, but we live under the Bible. We testify to the Bible. We testify to the resurrection power of Jesus, and in that way we embody that ministry. It carries on, and it carries on specifically in the office of the bishop and his partnership with priests, who are apostolic partners. Okay, that's an office. So we've got unrepeatable apostles. We have embodied apostles in the work of bishops and priests that work alongside them. Now we get to what I think is the thrust of this passage and what's most important for this particular teaching, which is the apostolic ministry, which everyone is invited into, and I think it's invited into giving gifts for. What's the apostolic ministry? Let me define apostolic ministry. I'm going to define each of these five areas. Apostolic ministry is a catalytic ministry. As a matter of fact, you've got three here, apostles, prophets, and evangelists. Those three are very catalytic. They're spark ministries. They start things. They're catalytic. The last two are building ministries, shepherds and teachers. So apostles catalyze a community or a culture where all the other gifts can thrive. The work of the apostle, and why this is probably mentioned first by Paul, is an apostolic ministry, and that includes bishops and priests, catalyzed, but not solely bishops and priests and sort of apostolic ministry, just apostolic office, catalyze kingdom cultures where prophets and evangelists and shepherds and teachers can do their work for the sake of the lost and the least. It's a catalytic starting gift, and it has different applications and different scale. I'm an apostolic leader as a bishop called to oversee a diocese and a cathedral church here at resurrection. I catalyze communities where everyone can do their, that's what I'm doing right now this morning. That's what I'm trying to do right now this morning. But we have this ministry here at res called replanted. It's an apostolic ministry. What it's done is catalyze community. It's catalyzed a culture where all the other gifts can thrive and flourish. The heart of replanted is to serve, strengthen, equip families and those that walk alongside them to adopt and foster children. It is deeply apostolic. It's actually doubly apostolic. Here's how it creates a culture where moms and dads that are called to foster and adopt can do that work, which in itself, moms and dads are apostolic work because they're creating a family culture wherein these gifts and children can be trained in the five areas of ministry, the work of ministry. Moms and dads do apostolic work in this understanding of catalyzing a culture. I'm not saying that every mom and dad is a bishop. I'm not saying that. Are you tracking with this? It's different, but it's extremely important because you may be called to catalyze a community where people's gifts can thrive in your quad, in your dorm, in your office area, even in your friendship with a person on the metro that you're going in with. It's scalable. It's absolutely scalable. Every tradition tries to deal with this reality. The church planning movement right now calls it the apostolic genius. My mentor and spiritual father, Father William, talks about it constantly, the apostolic gift. He's been teaching me about it for 20 years. I've been in a tutorial on apostolic ministry from Father William. The Roman Catholic Church calls it apostolates, which are the people of God involved in ministry, catalyzing cultures and communities in context for the work of all the other gifts to thrive. That's the apostolic. The prophetic. Let's do sport first, then players, then we can speak a little bit about coaches. What does the prophetic do? It's also a catalytic gift. It catalyzes the application of God's word now. The prophetic gift takes a divine impression that a man or woman receives and gives a human expression into a moment now, applying the word of God now. It's based on the word of God. It is never contrary to the word of God, but it brings an immediacy to the word of God. It applies the word of God to justice situations. That's at the heart of the prophetic. It applies the word of God to places of despair. It brings encouragement. It too is scalable. Maybe one person emailing somebody else and say, you came to my heart in prayer this morning. I had a fellow pastor who in the community, I was struggling with this sermon. He wrote me Friday afternoon and said, he's never done this before. Let's pray for each other's sermons. Keep you on the phone and pray for each other's sermons. So one of the evangelical pastors and he got on the phone, we prayed for each other's sermon, 10 minutes. I said, man, God knew that I needed somebody to pray for this sermon. It's been so hard to put together. It was prophetic. We know the prophetic experience here at Res. One of our leaders, they are a quieter leader. They prefer to be more in the sort of the backstage and be involved in ministry everywhere, but quieter. They have an intercessory gift. They have a shepherding gift. They have a teaching gift. They also have a prophetic gift. So when we were trying to figure out where to land, when we were a mobile church for 20 years, we looked at a building called Wheaton Bible Church. It's just a little bit that way. And we were just in the beginning conversations with the leaders of Wheaton Bible. Do we buy that church? Very interesting conversations. And we didn't know. And we didn't, we couldn't even fill Wheaton Bible anywhere near at that point. It seemed a little silly. And this leader, this woman went and we didn't say, go do this please, because it's catalytic. Just do it. So they went and prayed around Wheaton Bible Church. They just prayer walked. And came to me and some leaders and said, this is my sentence from the Lord. And let me just assure you, this person is not somebody you would associate with the mega church movement. And they said, church is too small. Wheaton Bible is too small. Would have been helpful if they said, wait four more years. A 90,000 square foot building right here that's only three minutes away from Wheaton Bible is perfect for you. God didn't give us that much. But God gave us something. God catalyzed hope. God catalyzed, I've got something else for you, Church of the Res. That prophetic word catalyzed faith, hope, gave direction. Let's pull out of this situation. Let's wait. Prophetic gifts catalyze. The third catalyzing gift area, third catalyzing work of ministry is evangelism. Evangelism is the catalyzing of conversion or creating cultures where conversion can happen. Evangelists work in many different ways, some of them one-on-one, some of them through small groups, some of them through very, very large arena ministries. But in every case, an evangelist will catalyze conversion. They'll catalyze context where conversion can happen. Okay, now the building gifts. Shepherding and teaching. Shepherds build. A pastor or a shepherd builds a work of God. They often take over after an apostle, not always, but they'll come after an apostle and they will build a work. They build a place for worship. They build a place for discipleship. They build a place for evangelists. They're similar to the apostolic work, but their energies are more toward building and developing and maturing than they are catalyzing, although they can go together. I minister in both, if you've been around me for a while. I do both. Okay, so shepherds love to build. They love nuts and bolts. They love ministry drills and ministry hammers. They just love it. They love meetings that are productive. The other building gift is teaching. A teacher builds a kingdom idea inside someone's head and heart. This gift is so important. And they may be a biologist, they may be an elementary school teacher, they may be an engineer, they may be an artist, but they build something inside your head and heart through impartation, through visual, through image, through music, through teaching, through lecturing, through group dynamics. They build something inside of you that's alive. It's a building gift. Always from the Word of God, often applying directly to the Word of God, but sometimes in the greater disciplines. And can you see how God's designed this? We have catalytic gifts, we have building gifts, and actually God calls us to be open to all five. I don't believe you're allowed to say, I don't want one of those five. You're allowed to say, I have more fruitfulness in some of these. But if we want to be like Jesus and live into Jesus, and our personal conversion is tied with our personal mission, Jesus was all five of these things. He was apostolic. He was the chief apostle. He was prophetic. He was the prophet we've been waiting for. He was an evangelist who came to seek and save the lost, Luke 19. He's the great shepherd of our souls. And He is the teacher of all time. So we don't ignore any of these five. We actually humbly ask, grow me in all of these. I think it's very important. They're foundational. Now as we open ourselves, and we're in our Res groups, we're in our TIs, we're in our Bible studies, we're in our different elements and communities here at Res. We open ourselves to all five, but then we begin to realize in time there are certain of the five that bear even more fruits. So foundationally there's the five, but then there's fruit bearing of the five, where you go, when I teach, I feel like I have an influence beyond my natural gifting. That's called anointing. When I'm involved in evangelism, I feel like I have an influence beyond my natural gifting. I actually can't help but start things, and I want to be drawn to people who start things. So what happens very organically and relationally is not that there's a panel of experts up here, and we wear name tags, and we say, this is the prophet, this is the apostle, this is the... I don't think that was happening here. They might have had offices attached to this, but it was alive and dynamic. It's that those who have these particular fruit bearing areas get spiritually mothered and fathered, get spiritually mentored by others who are bearing that fruit that are ahead of them. So just very naturally in your Res group, you begin to learn how you're gifted in these areas. You're open to all of them, and you find people in your Res group or in other Res groups or other communities and other places who have similar gifts, and you learn from them in a relational... Again, father, mother, that's one of the main things used in the Bible, aunties, uncles, mentors who have these same gifts. What would it look like? It just fully happened here. That's where I'm living right now, is I believe that when we're called to equip everyone for transformation, it means that the five-fold works of ministry are called out to the people of God, and that every one of you has callings in these areas, and you're to ignite your place of work, you're to ignite your families, you're to ignite this church in a way that would never happen otherwise if we'll come into this and understand it's personal and there's five major gifts. I got a picture of what it's like, and I'll close with this. I saw what it's like. It was a different cultural context. I'm not saying it's exactly the same here, but when I was in Brazil, I was at Church of the Holy Spirit led by a friend, Bishop Miguel Uchoa, and he says to me, Stuart, would you help me confirm in a service? I said, sure, of course. Bishops in our tradition do the confirming. I said, absolutely. I said, how many will be confirmed? He said, I don't know. That's when I knew there was going to be something unusual happening. I said, I have no idea, actually. I said, okay. So I went to become part of the confirmation service, and like we do here, our confirmants came up to be prayed for by the bishop for the filling of the Holy Spirit and for their ministry work to be anointed. And the middle aisle began to fill up, and all of a sudden it began to swell, and it began to overflow like a river in springtime, and I realized there were over a hundred, there were 150, and they were packing the center aisle, and he and I were going to be praying for 75 different men and women apiece. It was unbelievable. Afterwards, I said, Miguel, what just happened? We just confirmed 150 people. He said, yeah, most of them are new converts, and this happens twice a year. I said, how? That was so electric. What just happened? He said, well, here's what happens. Our small group leaders are our pastors and our evangelists, and our small group leaders are actually the main ones through whom these folks came to Christ, and then they're trained, the small group leaders are trained how to walk them through confirmation and teach them confirmation. We oversee all of that, but it happens in all the small groups. So not only did you have 150 people who were electric and excited, Stuart, you had 50 to 60 small group leaders, 50 to 60 apprentices of those small group leaders, and hundreds of small group members that all came together with their one, two, or three confirmands, and so when they came up, they were there, and it just spread throughout the entire church. I said, I've never seen anything like this. He said, it took us seven years, and by the way, I think we're in revival. I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He says to me two weeks later, hey, you want to help me confirm some more people? I was like, yes. He said, it's a church plan. We planted it a year ago. It's running over 200 people right now. And I said, I won't ask you how many are there. He said, good, because I don't know. So we show up for this confirmation. It's packed into a location that they're renting. It's absolutely filled with people. It's extremely exciting. It's Brazilian, high-energy worship, and 50 confirmands fill the Middle Isle this time. What was electric is now atomic. I mean, it's just exploding. I mean, it was rocking more than the main church, this church plant. We lay hands on these folks, and as we're getting ready to do so, Miguel says, do you see those two women over there against the wall? They were kind of 50-something, nicely dressed, kind of, I don't know, like older mom kind of folks. I said, yeah. He said, they planted this church. Now, there's a priest that oversees it. Miguel's there. They planted this church. I said, how? He said, it started as a small group. It was a small group in a different community, and it became a church with 200 people, the vast majority who weren't Christians a year ago. How? How does that happen? The people of God receiving the gift Jesus wants to give you, apostolic, prophetic, evangelistic, shepherding, teaching. I'm not saying it will happen exactly that way here. I don't have that expectation, but the heart of what happened there can absolutely happen here. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. Thanks for listening. Our vision at Church of the Resurrection is to equip everyone for transformation. As part of that vision, we'd love to hear from you.