The Apostolate of the Church

The Apostolate of the Church

by R. Pierce Beaver

258The apostolate is the ministry of reconciliation.’ It is the Church’s office or function of bearing witness to the Good News that God has in Christ reconciled the world unto himself and that as a consequence of the unity of men with God in Christ, men may be reconciled with one another. This testifying was the prime function of the Twelve. This is the chief function of the whole body of Christ, his Church, which was commissioned by the risen Lord to be his witnesses “in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). It was for this task and privilege that the power of the Holy Spirit was promised and given. It was for this that our Lord also promised his abiding presence. The Church is to be simultaneously the herald of the kingdom and the demonstrable first fruit of that kingdom. This is why God has put the Church in the world, and in His providence “this gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, as a testimony to all nations; and then the end will come” (Mt. 24:14).

The term apostolate is a proper and useful designation of this central function of the Church of Christ. The Church in most of 259its branches and divisions has usually acknowledged its apostolic character, but often only a minority of the members have been zealously devoted to the witnessing. Frequently, too, sectarian and partial definitions of the apostolate have deprived the proclamation of sufficient scope and power. Now and again the Holy Spirit has called the Church to new obedience and there have been great periods of expansion and of transformation of social life. The Roman Catholics have long used the word apostolate both for the total mission of the Church and for special forms of witnessing. Various Protestant writers have been employing the term for more than a decade, but Professor J. C. Hoekendijk of Utrecht probably introduced it most powerfully.² The thinking and writing of the Dutch, German, and Swiss mission theologians, during and since World War I, about the relationship of the mission of the Church to the End and the writings of Max Warren have summoned the Church and the member disciples to accept the apostolate as their required task and to cease regarding it as the “elective” which it has been since the Reformation, although most of these writers have not used the term.

The apostolate or mission of the Church has its roots in the creative, the revelatory-illuminating, and the redemptive-revelatory work of God. It is one form of God’s love reaching out to all men. The creation will not be complete until the advent of the new heavens and new earth in the kingdom which the Church proclaims. Moreover, through all the painful consequences of man’s rebellion against God, the Holy Spirit ever brings new light about the purposes of God, the nature of man, and the ultimate liberation that will come with the kingdom. Despite all its miserable failure and imperfections, there can be seen in the household of faith the fruits of the divine reconciliation and a foretaste of the redeemed humanity. As God sent His Son, so the Son has sent his body, the Church, empowered by the Holy Spirit, to preach the Gospel of reconciliation to the whole world. The Church exists primarily to witness to this good news, and every other function of the Church is subsidiary and contributory to this purpose. Although secondary to the apostolate and contributory to it, the other functions, such as worship and nurture, in no way lose stature and importance 260in this relationship. The missionary ministry of Jesus Christ is the prototype of the Church’s ministry of witness, as Bishop Newbigin has forcefully pointed out in the booklet, One Body, One Gospel, One Yet it must be noted that the Gospel comprises not only the teaching of Jesus Christ, but also the teaching of the early Church about him—about what God has done in the Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension, and giving of the Holy Spirit, namely, the reconciling of the world to Himself.

The Disciple and Baptism

Since the Church, Christ’s mystical body, is sent out into the world to undertake the apostolate, this life of witnessing is also the vocation of every member in that body. St. Paul instructs Christians in the unity of the body and the singleness of its manifold ministry. He reminded the young church in Rome of the diversity of ministries that make up the witnessing to God’s saving work. A special measure of faithfulness might be required of the commissioned apostolic ministers, such as himself, as he instructed the Corinthians—but all members share in the apostolate of the body. “Because there is one loaf, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the same loaf’—the Eucharistic bread of our Lord’s own body broken for the remission of sins and the healing of the broken society of men estranged from God. One frequently hears in missionary circles today the assertion that every church member is meant to be a missionary. This is an exaggeration. Only some are sent, but all are called to make their witness. This is the most fundamental function of the layman in his ministry, but in our clergy-dominated churches the disciple is usually even more neglectful of this office than of his other duties implied by the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. The apostolic vocation of laymen so evident in the churches of Korea is seldom found elsewhere. The establishment of seventy-three new churches by the staff of the Presbyterian Hospital in Taegu ought not to be so extraordinary, as it most certainly is in fact. Every Christian in a congregation of believers is first and foremost a disciple, that is, a pupil-companion and an apprentice co-worker, learning from and serving his Lord in a joint ministry with him. Witnessing is the first of his many functions of ministry, in which the ordained

261pastor is intended to inspire and guide him and set him an example.

The sacrament of baptism, to which the rite of confirmation must be joined if infant baptism is practiced, clearly reveals the place of witnessing in the Christian profession. The emphasis of this sacrament is by no means as much upon individual salvation as upon the incorporation of the disciple into mystical union with our Lord and his body the Church for sharing in Christ’s mission and in the corporate life of the body. Note the difference between the pronouns of the baptismal and Eucharistic creeds of the Western Church, the Apostles’ and the Nicene Creeds respectively. The singular “I” of the former and the plural “we” of the latter are significant. It is on the basis of his individual act of witnessing to his faith that the disciple may be by God’s grace joined mystically with his Lord in the master-disciple relationship and be incorporated into the common life and ministry of the body. Thereafter the disciple says “we” in the Eucharistic feast when the congregation is renewed in its union with Christ for his saving work among men, and the common life and commitment strengthen the individual in his personal witnessing.

It is on the basis of the example of Jesus’ own baptism and the injunction in the Great Commission about baptizing the nations that the Church has made baptism a sacrament. Neither has to do primarily with personal forgiveness of sins nor personal security in boarding the ark of salvation, which generally receive the primary emphasis. Emulation of the prototype and obedience to the Commission lay stress upon life commitment to Christ in faith, upon following him, taking up the cross of discipleship, participation in his ministry, and upon identification with the sinners to whom the Gospel is proclaimed. The disciple facing his sinless Lord does confess his sin and throws himself upon the love and mercy of God for forgiveness, but he also emulates Jesus’ identification of himself with sinners in need of reconciliation; for when our Lord was baptized by John in the Jordan he was making such an identification, not confessing his sins. Baptism and confirmation are an offering up of the self upon the altar of the Gospel to be used of Christ in his mission. God’s gift of the Holy Spirit in the sacrament and rite is a repetition of the original bestowal on Pentecost. It is for power in witnessing (Acts 1:8). This complete reorientation of life in emulation of Christ and in joint service 262with him is the “dying unto the world” that is mentioned in the baptismal orders. The believer publicly testifies to his faith in what God is doing for him and will do for all men. It is the disciple’s first act of witness in what is henceforth to be a life of witness in the witnessing community of all believers. Professor Marcus Barth has written:

But when those baptized throw themselves at the feet of, and implore the mercy of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, then they do not separate themselves from the accursed world. But they confess in the midst of, and for sinful, maybe grinning, maybe blaspheming, maybe stone-throwing men that God wants all, not the few only, to be saved and to come to the knowledge of truth. A Christian’s life will day by day be a witness to God’s fatherhood over all, Christ’s death for all, the Spirit’s promise to all. Baptism is the unique, necessary, public beginning, pledge, investiture into the ministry of witnesses.+

Moreover, since it is primarily due to the command about baptism in the Great Commission that the Church has made this rite to be the required sacramental act of entrance into the household of faith, its meaning ought to be seen in that context. “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Mt. 28:19-20). The baptizing is thus inseparably connected with the discipling of the nations. “All that I have commanded” surely must include the discipling of the nations. Our Lord’s abiding presence is promised in this task, and, according to Luke in Acts 1:8, the Holy Spirit is bestowed above all for power in the witnessing.

Evangelism and Sending -

The apostolate or ministry of proclamation of the reconciliation

God has made with the world in Christ is the Church’s main purpose until God brings His kingdom in all its fullness. The “End” awaits this faithful performance. Dedication to the apostolate would take emphasis off the Church as an institution and stress its nature as a community of reconciliation. It would make every form of order and polity expendable and allow again that freedom of organizational form (but within a genuine unity) that marked 263the apostolic and postapastolic ages. It would cut the root of ecclesiolatry and remove men’s fears for the safety and prestige of the Church. It would make the Church and the disciple-members ready to lose their lives in bearing the cross of Gospel witness. It would put stress on the relevance of preaching to the contemporary needs of men and society. Each local congregation devoted to the apostolate would spend itself in proclamation, sustained by the memory of the cross and Resurrection, empowered by the Holy Spirit, recognizing the presence of the risen Lord who makes the Church his body, and made joyous by the hope of the glorious coming of the kingdom. It would lose no opportunity and neglect no medium for preaching the Gospel. It would preach by word and deed and by the quality of the personal and corporate life of the believers. The timeless message would be made timely and relevant to every man in his family, his vocation, his culture, his nation, his world order. Then the worship, the nurture and fellowship, and the service of the congregation would authenticate and validate the message that is preached.

There are two supplementary and complementary parts to the apostolate which can be separated or the one of them neglected only to the hurt of the Church’s health and to disobedience to the Great Commission. One is the local apostolate, evangelism. This is witness to Christ’s reconciling saviourhood and lordship and the exercise of the ministry of reconciliation where the congregation worships and the disciple-members earn their daily bread in their several vocations. It includes personal testimony about God’s act in Christ and the fellowship of the kingdom in the Church that is given to friends, neighbors, and those engaged in daily contact: by the disciples. Such witness is made in the discharge of a tian vocation in craft, profession, or business. It is effected also in: the quality of the Christian family, which may be the Church in, microcosm, and in the responsible stand which the congregation: of disciples takes on community and social issues and in the demon-, stration of the relevance of the Gospel to these issues. And it made in the preaching in the house of God where its truth is tested by the company of believers assembled in the unity of reconciliation with God and with men.

The other aspect of the apostolate is the sending—mission in the more traditional sense. It is the evangelistic outreach beyond the congregation and home locality, involving the commissioning 264and sending of some representative agent who makes witness on behalf of the sending church and its disciples. The distance in miles or kilometers which the missionary agent travels to his place of witnessing is not significant. But be it near or far, that missionary must go to some place that is a distant “end of the earth” to the sending group and himself. Geographical ends of the earth have disappeared in a time of jet travel and a world-wide Church, but there are social, cultural, ideological, and spiritual “far ends” of human society in profusion. There is a frontier of strangeness to be crossed to the place where the missionary can proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord to unreconciled people who have not known and accepted him. Bishop Newbigin, in discussing what activity can be called “missionary” in the context of a world-wide Church, states:

The differentium lies in the crossing of the frontier between faith in Christ as Lord and unbelief. To make clear and to keep clear this, the distinctive meaning of the word “missionary” is one of the most important requirements of the present discussion. He who is sent to make Christ known and obeyed as Lord among those who do not know and obey Him is a missionary, whether his journey be long or short. The missionary frontier runs through every land where there are communities living without the knowledge of Christ as Lord.⁵

The lending of personnel within the Christian community is not in itself sending, but rather fraternal aid, which is mutual burden-bearing by members of Christ’s body, a requirement of the common life. However, a church in one land can send its representative to aid another church in another land in the work of the apostolate, and, if the proclamation of the Gospel is the chief end in view, that agent becomes the missionary of both branches of the Church. When he crosses over the frontier of faith in Christ to give witness to those who do not know and believe, then he crosses the most important of all the frontiers of strangeness.

“Sending” is intimately bound up with “evangelism.” When the sending to the “ends of the earth” is neglected, the wellsprings of evangelism dry up. This has been demonstrated too often in the history of the Church. Neither half of the apostolate is an elective. “You shall be witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, 265and to the end of the earth.” Evangelism and mission are the two poles of the apostolate. Every congregation is a front-line post in a world mission; and every disciple is meant to be a witness and to share in the sending of witnesses. The Lord’s Supper and the Apostolate

The functions of the Church in addition to the apostolate are many. They include the priestly office of worship, the shepherding of souls, teaching, prophesying, the ordering of the common spiritual life, nurture, fellowship, mutual aid of the brethren in their needs, healing, works of mercy and compassion, peacemaking, and a dozen others. They all, however, derive from one or another of three main functions: witnessing, worship, and fellowship; both of which latter are closely related to the first. Christian worship is offered to God through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit by a corporate body of priests, the congregation representing the whole Church, not by a mediating priesthood of a order, because the mystical body of Christ by God’s grace shares in our Lord’s high priesthood and with him enters into the holy of holies. The office of a priest is to offer “gifts and sacrifices” (1 Pet. 2:9)—namely, praise and thanksgiving, the sacrifices for sin, and the intercession for the household of faith and for all men. This priestly office which the mystical body of Christ performs while it is in the world busy with the apostolate keeps it in right relation to God, dedicated to the doing of His will, joyous in His service, and empowered by His Holy Spirit. Moreover, were there space enough, it could be shown how each involves witness to God’s deeds in Christ and his coming kingdom. Above all, the center and “inmost sanctuary” of worship is the Eucharist or Lord’s Supper, which is the means by which the Church’s mystical union with Christ is renewed and affirmed and by which she is offered up in identification with him to be broken with him in the healing of the unreconciled world. It is, moreover, the dramatic enactment of the Word that is preached, the Gospel of reconciliation.

The Lord’s Supper is too profound and mysterious for any man or the whole Church to define and describe in all its significance, and here the writer lifts up only what he believes to be its primary—and most neglected—meaning. In stressing its corporate nature and action he does not deny the personal, individualistic aspects 266of forgiveness, communion, and bestowal of peace to the disciple, but he would affirm that these are subordinate and are by-products of the chief action of the sacrament.

This memorial which our Lord commanded (Lk. 22:19) does “proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Cor. 11:26), and proclaims, even when the Church forgets verbally to make witness, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life’ (Jn. 3:16). God’s reconciling act in history is declared to be ever present and ever relevant, and it holds the promise of the eschatological fulfillment. The whole world of mankind and the redemption of the entire race are within the scope of the sacrament: in the confession of sins and promise of forgiveness, in the prayers for the days and season that set forth the Gospel to be preached to all the world, in the creed which affirms a faith to be offered to all; for the reconciling Saviour is one “who for us men and our salvation came down from heaven.” The alms, oblations, and intercessions which are offered and consecrated together represent a sacrifice of concern and compassion for the brethren and the world. The Lord’s Prayer, with its petition for the coming of the kingdom, gathers together and climaxes all the intercessions. But the Supper is much more than an act of commemoration and proclamation of an historic event. It is a present gathering of the disciples of Christ with him around his banquet table where he is truly present with them. Gathered there in the one fold with the one Shepherd, they are reminded that this family feast is incomplete until all for whom Christ died be brought to that festive board. This is the place of ingathering. This meal is also the “messianic banquet” where he who was crucified, dead, buried, and rose again keeps his promise to drink with his disciples the new wine in the new age of the kingdom. Here the first fruit of the redeemed and reconciled new community is visible to the world—a company that is only a token of the great assembly yet to be brought together “from east and west, from north and south, and sit at the table in the kingdom of God” (Lk. 13:29). Surely no disciple can at that table eat and drink, rest and repose for himself and be unconcerned about the ingathering. And here the nourishment is provided which gives the disciple strength to go forth in order to make the ingathering. Above all, as baptism makes the new disciple an evangelist, so the Lord’s Supper is the means

267by which participation in the mission of Christ is repeatedly renewed.

St. Paul instructed the Corinthian Christians (1 Cor. 10) that even as the Hebrews who ate of the sacrifices of the altar in the Temple were partakers of the altar of God, so those who eat of food sacrified to idols on pagan altars have fellowship with, and participate in the life of, devils. Similarly, he declared, partaking of the table of the Lord means sharing in our Lord’s person and his mission. “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?” And it is the blood that was shed and the body that was broken. Eating this bread and drinking this cup for participation in Christ and his mission effects identification and that effects unity. “Because there is one loaf, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the same loaf.” Unity comes not from any creedal statement or common practice, but is effected through this unstinted devotion to our Lord in his mission of reconciliation. The congregation, making the Eucharistic offering for the whole Church, is accepted by God and made one mystically with the Eucharistic bread. Then the Church is truly the body of Christ and-in him and with him may be broken for the reconciliation of estranged men and women with God. The ever-abiding Presence in the apostolate and the peace for power in witness are then imparted to the congregation and the disciples as they make their communion. “Go therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them… and lo, I am with you always, even to the close of the age.”

Unity, Fellowship, Service, and Witness

The unity in Christ effected in the breaking of the Eucharistic bread is then to be demonstrated in the fellowship of the Church so that men may see that God does actually effect the reconciliation of men with Him and with one another in the bonds of Christ’s love. Unifying, mutual burden-bearing love visible to all beholders is the only pragmatic proof of the claims of Christ that a skeptical world will accept. Our Lord prayed, “that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me” (Jn. 17:21). The purpose of Christian fellowship is, then, not so much mutual enjoyment as evangelistic proclamation. Segregation, 268caste, schism, unbrotherliness in the Church negate the claims made for Christ by the evangelist. Unity is shown in love that bears the fellow members’ burdens in the Church through diakonia, which is originally and still should be the practical extension of the alms and intercessions offered in the Eucharist, and in the bridging of personal, racial, cultural, and other differences in one comprehensive community. But diakonia never knows when and where to stop. The ministry of compassion is never confined to the members of the household of faith but spills over into ministry to all others in need and becomes overtly an act of witness. The Gospel is preached, and the Eucharistic loaf is broken and cup spilled out, when even a cup of cold water is lovingly given in the name of Christ. The disciple’s love must embrace the whole world, for it is God’s love in his heart.

The Holy Spirit

It is the Holy Spirit who is the Great Apostle and who leads and empowers the Church in its witnessing. It is the presence of the Holy Spirit, the Illuminator, the Lord and Giver of life, that makes the body of Christ a living organism. He is the bond of union with our Lord and in him worship is directed to God. He crowns faithful witness with fruitfulness, for he goes before every evangelist and missionary preparing hearts and minds to hear. It is only by him that a man can call Jesus “Lord” (1 Cor. 12:13). It is by his power that the Gospel of reconciliation is preached effectively and relevantly and then authentically shown forth in the unity, fellowship, and service of the Church.

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