The final category of gifted persons listed in Ephesians 4:11 is the shepherds and teachers. The shepherds and teachers take care of the believers and teach the saints. According to the grammatical construction, “shepherds and teachers” refers to the same class of gifted persons. A shepherd should know how to teach, and a teacher should be able to shepherd. As we have pointed out, these gifted persons also perfect the saints to do the work that they themselves do.
First Timothy 3:2 says that the elders should be apt to teach. This means that teaching has become habitual with them. Not only should the elders be able to teach, but also they must love to teach. First Timothy 5:17 says that the elders who take the lead well should be counted worthy of double honor, “especially those who labor in word and teaching.” “Honor” here refers to material supply. Because the elders are so busy, they may not have time to make a living, so they have to be job-dropping full-timers. These elders need the material supply and are worthy of it. All the elders should be apt to teach, but some are especially strong in teaching the Word.
Peter charged the elders not to lord it over the saints because they are God’s possession, allotted to the elders for their care. He charged them to shepherd the saints and to become patterns of the flock (1 Pet. 5:2-3). Therefore, according to 1 Timothy and 1 Peter, the elders should both teach and shepherd the saints. Some may think that Paul never said that the Lord gave His Body elders. Instead, He gave His Body some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some shepherds and teachers. The elders, however, need to be the shepherds and teachers. An elder may think that Ephesians 4:11-12 does not apply to him, but an elder should be both a shepherd and a teacher.
Acts 13:1 tells us that in the church in Antioch there were prophets and teachers. It is difficult to say whether these prophets and teachers were also elders. Those who teach in the church are teachers in different degrees. There are teachers in universities, in high school, in junior high, in elementary school, and in kindergarten, but they are all teachers in different degrees. In the Body of Christ, the Head, Christ, raised up some teachers who are not elders. Also in the churches God established elders, and the elders should be apt to teach. This teaching of the elders is probably not as high or as deep as the teaching of the teachers. To teach in 1 Timothy 3:2 is similar to parents teaching their children. An elder must be apt to render this kind of home teaching to the members of a local church.
Parents may teach their children and even help them with their homework, but they are not able to teach at a university. A teacher teaches the children in the school, and the parents can help the children with their homework. The children not only need the teachers in the school but also need the parents as their teachers at home. The elders are the home teachers. There are also teachers who travel through the churches to hold conferences and give the churches messages full of revelation. Not all the elders can do this kind of teaching, but all the elders should do the home teaching. The apostles, prophets, evangelists, and shepherds and teachers, including the elders, are able persons. These able persons do not merely do the work in their respective lines. The gifted persons only doing the work in their respective lines without perfecting the saints is the practice of today’s Christianity. These gifted persons, including the elders, should also teach others to do what they do.
All the gifted persons are for the perfecting of the saints (Eph. 4:12). The gifted persons not only do the work in their respective lines but also perfect the common believers to do what they (the gifted persons) do. To perfect the saints is to teach, equip, and furnish them. Just as the Army perfects soldiers by teaching them, equipping them, and furnishing them, the gifted persons need to perfect the saints. Furthermore, to perfect the saints is to make all the common believers like the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the shepherds and teachers so that they all can do the work of the ministry as the gifted persons do. Today among us there is an urgent need for the perfecting of the saints. We would like to see small numbers of saints migrating to cities and knowing how to set up the churches in these cities.
The work of the ministry is the work of God’s New Testament economy for the building up of the organic Body of Christ. (In order to see the difference between the ministry, the work, and the churches, I recommend that we read Brother Nee’s word at the conclusion of his famous book The Normal Christian Church Life—pp. 213-218.) After being perfected, the saints can do the work of the New Testament ministry to build up the Body of Christ.
The work of the ministry is organic to help the organic members of the Body of Christ to grow in Christ with the divine life and elements of the processed Triune God by enjoying Him as their nourishment. When we have all these points, the building up is organic. Otherwise, what we have is altogether organizational. We need to labor organically until all the members of Christ are mature in the full growth of the divine life and reach the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ (Eph. 4:13) for the organic building up of the organic Body of Christ, the very embodiment of the processed Triune God. The organic Body of Christ is the organism of the processed Triune God because Christ is the very embodiment of the processed Triune God.