There Is A Little Bit Of The Five Fold In All Of Them
When you think of the five fold not as offices, but as passions, points of views, and voices, you begin to recognize it in every day life. It is not necessarily a religious thing; its just a fact of life. It is not a foreign concept, but a common one.
You see women know about the birthing process. It comes natural to them. They know the process and challenges they face during pregnancy. They know that the birthing process is a painful one, yet a rewarding one that makes one to forget the pain after the fruition of birth, and after a birth they are willing to move on and have more children. That’s the evangelistic spirit.
You never seem to prepare to become a mother, but when a woman becomes a mother the nurturing process occurs naturally. She focuses her efforts on the nurture, care and development of her children. She spends a great amount of time with them in their infancy nurturing, spends hours as a confidant through puberty with care and development, and spends even more hours on their knees praying once they have “released” them into adulthood. This is the pastor/shepherd spirit.
Even though she never earned a “degree” in parenting or motherhood, she teaches her children throughout their life, not necessarily about academics, although school work is important, but through walking out life with them, teaching by example, by using life’s experiences. That’s the true spirit of a five fold teacher.
Mother’s have a spiritual side that is precious. A rebellious child can never stop a godly woman from praying for them. The turn around of many lives have come through mother’s prayers. Mothers have a spiritual sensitivity, and spiritual intuition, a hunger for spiritual intimacy men do not possess. Not only do they dig deep in their spiritual wells of faith, but try to teach their children how to listen to God for themselves for the time when they are released as adults and hopefully will teach their children. The prophetic spirit is imbedded in motherhood.
Networking is a craft mothers specialize. Not only have they experienced the birth, the nurture, care, and development, the teaching, and the spiritual training of their children, but are able to “release” their children when it is their time to fly. They “know” each child, and encourage them to do the birthing, nurturing, teaching, and spiritual developing for others. In her gentleness, in her sensitivity, in her love, she encourages those younger than she to be released into their callings, their destinies, their hopes and dreams, releasing them to become independent and eventually reaching out and reproducing others. This is the five fold apostolic spirit.
All this is embedded in each woman created by God. I do not think it “coincidental” that the church is “the Bride of Christ”, an image of a female, for imbedded in her, the Church, are all five entities of the five fold ministry to equip those younger, to develop them into maturity of being like the Groom, and to bring the entire family of God into unity. The five fold is part of the Bride’s DNA, her make up.
If the five fold is so natural, then why do we, the Church, spend so much time and effort suppressing it instead of releasing it? Why do we fragment it bringing division instead of embracing it to bring unity? Why do we know so little about it when it is the moral fabric of our being as a Church? Why don’t we listen to the “mothering” of the Bride of Christ and just release it?