A few years ago, I heard a preacher tell a roomful of ministers that they couldn’t work miracles or exercise apostolic authority unless they used the word “apostle” as a title. So some of them ran out and printed new business cards—as if putting the word in front of their names were the magic ticket to reclaiming New Testament power.

That was a bad idea. For the past two decades or more, thousands of people have been wounded and countless churches have nosedived because immature leaders thought they could gain apostolic status the easy way. We are so eager to qualify ourselves that we forget God alone calls, prepares and sends true apostles.

The late Arthur Katz, who was a prophetic voice to our movement for many years, wrote in his 1999 book,Apostolic Foundations, that nobody should be eager to step into an apostolic assignment or to treat such a task flippantly.

“God is jealous over the word apostolic,” Katz wrote. “It is a word that has fallen into disuse and needs to be restored, and that restoration is not going to be cheap.”

We charismatics tend to be so power hungry and so enamored with status and position that we don’t have a clue what apostolic ministry really is. Most charismatics think it is about authority, and many people who claim to be apostles build top-down pyramid structures that abuse people. Others think apostolic leaders are marked primarily by sensational miracles. read more