Now we have a change of terms, and the word ministry is changed to office. What is the difference between a ministry and an office? Here is the definition.

An office is something that God has chosen as a permanent appointment to a position. You can progress through various different levels of ministry until you come to a place where you know you have reached your calling.

But when God places someone in a ministry office, it means that the Father Himself has set a specific leadership authority in place in the Church. He then works through that authority to create the ultimate leadership in the Body of Christ.

Bear in mind that the Fivefold Ministry was given by Jesus. These are not ministry offices, but leadership positions in ministry.

We could argue that they have been appointed, and they certainly will be appointed as they rise up. However they will not be appointed in quite the same way as the ultimate ministry offices.

There are only two of these ministry offices, and they are represented by the two eyes of the dove. These two give the Church, the ministry and the entire Body of Christ, the direction that God wants it to go in.

Two Special Fivefold Members

Only two members of the Fivefold Ministry are ultimately seen in Scripture to be treated as a higher level office. The first one is the Prophetic Office, and the second is the Apostolic Office.

So we have the Fivefold Ministry, but we have the Prophetic Office and we have the Apostolic Office. What is the difference between the Prophetic Ministry and the Prophetic Office?

Some people have tried to teach that you get different kinds of prophets. They use different terms to show these distinctions.

But the Prophetic Office is a uniquely appointed position where God places someone in a permanent situation. That person stands in the office of one who speaks for God into the Body of Christ Universal.

The role of the prophet is to set the Church in order. The prophet puts everyone in their place and makes sure that everything is functioning correctly.

The prophet also prepares the way ahead by using prophetic decree. He speaks God's Word into the earth and creates things that did not exist before.

If you use the allegory of the building of a new road, the prophet would be the one who takes the bulldozers, cuts down all the growth in the way, and takes out all the stones to lay the groundwork.

They are the ones who go ahead to prepare the way for the Body of Christ. That is a higher level office and requires a special training as we will see when we consider training.

The Apostolic Office is the highest office of all. It is the leadership office in the Body of Christ. You will see the two offices mentioned frequently in the New Testament. It talks about the Prophets and Apostles.

We read that in these last days God is speaking through His Prophets and Apostles. The Church is said to be built upon the foundation of the Prophets and the Apostles, because they are the leadership offices.

Higher Level Leadership

We will see later on that the Apostolic Office also branches into many different divisions and is the ultimate leadership in the church.

We will not be considering that in this series on Ministry Made Easy though. That is a higher level training that is outside of the realm of what we are aiming for here.

We will however be looking at each of the Fivefold Ministry, which includes the Prophet and the Apostle but not at an office level. We will look at them at a ministry level.

Once you have completed this introductory teaching on Ministry Made Easy, you can move on to consider Evangelistic Ministry Made Easy, Pastoral Ministry Made Easy, Prophetic Ministry Made Easy, Teaching Ministry Made Easy and even Apostolic Ministry Made Easy.

You will be able to find the place that God is leading you to and identify your calling.

Functions of Apostles in Office

The apostles in office will lay out the pattern for the churches and appoint leadership in the Body of Christ. They will also train the Fivefold Ministry.

So when you move up into office level you are not only doing the work. You are leading the way by laying out the pattern and training others to come up to that level. Not everyone will get up to office level, because they are unique positions that God has predetermined.

Here then are all the possibilities that are available to you in ministry. You can start from simple basic ministry, operating in the Gifts of the Spirit, and learning to use the internal anointing of the Fruit of the Spirit.

Then you can move up into the Fivefold Ministry. These are the ultimate leadership positions, except for the very highest level which God has reserved for Himself. There is where the Father Himself gets involved.

A Relationship with the Father

Nobody can move into those offices without coming into a personal relationship with God the Father Himself. You can move up as high as the Fivefold Leadership Ministries, working mainly with Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

Many people have been in the Fivefold Ministry all their lives. But they have never yet come into the Throne Room and had a personal face-to-face confrontation with the Father Himself. That is something that God has uniquely reserved for those that He has called to that higher office.

So where has God called you to be? At what level has He called you to function in your ministry? You probably won't know until you get there. But how do you start? You start by being trained for the work of the ministry.

It does not come naturally or full blown. You cannot say that the day you were born again and accepted Jesus as your Savior, the Holy Spirit came in and you got all the gifts and the fruit. You did not get all the knowledge and power you need to go off and do the work of the ministry.

A lot of people seem to think that it is that way. They think that all they need to do is pray for hours a day and read the Bible. They think that they can then go off and God will raise them up to become one of the leaders in the Body of Christ.

No, you may be able to develop your own spiritual life that way. But when it comes to working with other people, you will have to learn a lot more than your own personal experience. If you don't do this you cannot be effective in doing the work of the Lord.

Teachers and Trainers

That is why one of the ministries God has raised up to teach people is the Teaching Ministry. That is why at the highest office level, God raises up trainers who can train the lower level ministries. They are absolutely necessary.

After Jesus had called His disciples, He spent three years teaching and training them. Only after that time did He breathe into them and say,

"Receive the Holy Spirit."

Then it was only on the Day of Pentecost that they received the External Anointing and the Gifts of the Spirit before going out. But they had a three year ministry training before they went off.

Today we love to have everything instant. We would love to just go and be trained and come out with a PhD degree. We think that because we have the highest level of education, we can now go and take our place as the big leader.

The Fallacies of Education

That is the way we love to do it, and in the professional realm people still do that. They go to university and get their professional degrees. Then they come back highly qualified, only to find out that while they were studying, other people were doing the work.

That qualified person now steps into his or her superior position in the workplace, to lead others who really know how to do the job.

Sometimes such a person has to go through a practical training and learn from the lower level employees how the work is actually done.

Once all of that practical knowledge is added to head knowledge, only then can this person be qualified to stand in the authority of a leader.

Which is the easiest way to do this? Is it to go to university and get a degree, then return and humble yourself to learn the job starting from the lower levels and working up?

Who do you suppose becomes a more effective leader? Is it the one who followed this route, or the person who started out at the lowest level, perhaps just sweeping the floors?

This person works their way up through the ranks and learns how to do the job before adding knowledge to practical experience. They build up to a position of leadership, and from there they can look down and identify with each employee in the company at all levels.

Is this not the best way to be trained? But we have made the same mistake in the Church because we have followed the patterns of this world.

Even while we are still at school, we think that we must rise up and get qualified. We must go to College and study, until we get a piece of paper that says we are now qualified to rise up into a higher position of authority.

We have a world full of highly educated people who don't know what to do with their knowledge.

The Opposite Extreme

We also get those on the other side of the road. They think that they simply need to get saved, filled with the Spirit and get out there and do the work.

They say that the Lord will lead them and teach them. As they go out, He will show them how to do the work of the ministry. If anyone gets hurt along the way it cannot be avoided. It is part of the learning process.

The church is a mess because of people like that who have not taken the time to get properly grounded in what they need. So there are both of these extremes.

I would like to suggest that the best way of training is to cover all areas that are needed according to God's pattern. I would like to introduce what I believe should be the pattern of training for the End Times Church.

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