I’ve written long posts on this topic. Can I reduce them to under five hundred words?
You will find no passage that shows Paul appointing apostles and prophets to lead a local church. Instead, he appointed elders or overseers or pastors (functionally equivalent). He told Titus to appoint elders in every town on Crete (Titus 1:5) and Timothy to shore up the elders / overseers and deacons in Ephesus (1 Tim. 3:1-13). Elders who work hard at preaching and teaching (word and doctrine) are to receive double honor in leading the local churches (1 Tim. 5:17). He never once said to appoint apostles or prophets.
So what are apostles? Clearly they are itinerant missionaries. In the Great Commission, Jesus commissions the eleven to go into all the world (Matt. 28:18-20). In the last chapter of Luke’s Gospel, he commissions the eleven to go into the world and proclaim repentance and forgiveness (Luke 24:47-48). If you accept the longer ending in Mark, Jesus appeared to the eleven and commissioned them to go into all the world (Mark 16:14-15). He issues the same commission to the eleven in Acts 1:8. Acts 13-14 is about Paul’s and Barnabas’s first missionary journey, and they are called apostles (Acts 14:4).
What those verses have in common is that apostles are sent out to unevangelized territories. They are not sedentary pastors / overseers / elders. They are not network leaders to every church that joins the cause. In contrast, modern apostles are settled down in big, luxurious houses, leading their networks from their jacuzzi, chillin’.
Therefore, since apostles are itinerant, it would make no sense for Paul to tell Titus and Timothy to appoint apostles to lead the local churches. Apostles are on the move, always traveling. Paul told the Romans that he was going on to Spain after his visit to them (Rom. 15:24, 28). He does not like to preach where Christ is already known and build on another man’s foundation (Rom. 15:20). Early church historian Eusebius (c. AD 260/265 – 30 May AD 339) reports that the twelve (and others) did go out into the world as missionaries.
What about the kind of apostles who function as messengers or representatives or emissaries of the churches? They too are on the move, leaving and arriving and communicating messages to local churches. They don’t seem to have any extra authority. They follow orders. We now have zoom calls and emails. Maybe these formats can replace the traveling apostle-messengers. Do the countless number of apostles popping up everywhere, who are really just glorified, inflated pastors, want to be called :”Apostles of Church Zoom Calls and Emails”? I doubt it.
Apostles are also called scum of the earth, garbage of the world (1 Cor. 4:13). Do today’s chillin’ apostles want to be called scum and garbage and earth bound? I doubt it.
Paul would not recognize modern apostles today.
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