Many elderships, reading this document carefully, will conclude that the Five-Fold ministry in their body has been suppressed, distorted, or entirely missing for a long time. This Part sets out an Awakening Pathway — a series of steps an eldership can walk if they sense the Lord drawing the body towards a fuller recovery of the equipping ministry.
This Pathway parallels the Awakening Pathway of Document 6 (Elder & Deacon Identification) Part Nine and should be read alongside it. Where Document 6 walks an eldership into the recovery of biblical elder and deacon identification, this Part walks the same eldership into the recovery of Five-Fold recognition.
9.1 The Honest Diagnosis
The Pathway begins with an honest diagnosis of the body’s current state. The eldership withdraws for prayer and asks plainly:
- Where is each of the five gifts being exercised in our body today?
- Where is each gift entirely absent?
- Where have we been substituting other things for the Five-Fold — corporate-template roles for the equipping gifts, motivational talks for prophetic words, conference speakers for genuine apostolic relationship?
- Where are gifts present but suppressed — Saints whose calling has not been recognised because the body has no framework for recognising it?
The diagnosis is honest. It is not a condemnation of past faithfulness. Many elderships have shepherded well within the framework they inherited; the Awakening Pathway is about adding what was missing, not undoing what was good.
9.2 Step One — Prayer and Holy Spirit Direction
Acts 13:2 is the entry point. The eldership begins with sustained prayer and fasting, asking the Lord plainly what He is doing in the body in respect of the Five-Fold. The eldership listens before deciding. The first step is not a strategy; it is a posture.
Practical activities at this step:
- Eldership prayer-and-fasting retreat — substantial time set aside for waiting on the Lord.
- Each elder fasts and prays personally in the period leading up to the retreat.
- Where prophetic ministers are present in the body, their input is invited.
- Where trusted itinerant apostolic or prophetic relationships exist, those ministers are invited into the discernment.
- The eldership does not move to Step Two until they have unity of mind that the Lord is leading them onto the Pathway.
9.3 Step Two — Honest Conversation Within Current Leadership
Once the eldership has unity of mind, the conversation is opened among the broader current leadership of the body — staff, deacons, mature Saints, those carrying significant responsibility already. The conversation surfaces:
- What we have seen in the body that we have not yet named (gifts in operation that have not been recognised).
- What we have been calling things that we should call by their biblical names.
- What we have been missing entirely that we should be praying for.
- Where we, the current leadership, may have been part of suppressing what Christ was giving.
Repentance is appropriate where it surfaces. Honest acknowledgment of past patterns is appropriate. The point is to align the leadership of the body with what the Lord is doing before opening the conversation to the wider body.
9.4 Step Three — Watching for the Gifts Already in the Body
Many bodies discover, when they begin to look, that several of the Five-Fold gifts are already present in Saints who have been quietly faithful for years. The next step is to look carefully, prayerfully, and slowly.
Practical activities:
- The eldership opens an Observation Log (Template A) for each Five-Fold gift, listing Saints in whom indicators of that gift have appeared.
- The eldership consults the Document 4 (the Spiritual Gifts Assessment) workbook outputs — Saints whose Top 3 included Apostleship, Evangelism, Prophecy, Pastoring, or Teaching with strong indicators.
- The eldership consults small-group leaders, deacons, and mature Saints about who they see fruit through.
- The eldership watches — quietly, over months — for confirmations of what the data and the conversations have suggested.
The Pathway is patient. The Lord raised up Barnabas and Saul over years before sending them out from Antioch. The body does not need to rush.
9.5 Step Four — Drawing on Trusted Itinerant Ministry
Almost no local body has all five gifts in mature operation among its own Saints from the beginning. Most will be missing one or two, perhaps three. The body draws on trusted itinerant ministry for what is not yet present locally.
Practical activities:
- The eldership identifies the gaps — the gifts present and growing in the body, the gifts not yet present or only emerging.
- The eldership identifies trusted itinerant ministers carrying those gifts — by relationship with other elderships, by long-term observation of the minister’s sending body and accountability structure, by the fruit of their previous ministry.
- The eldership invites these ministers into the body for sustained engagement — not one-off conferences but multi-visit relationships, ideally over years, in which the itinerant minister equips the Saints and the eldership receives counsel.
- Where appropriate, the eldership pursues formal apostolic relationship — not under the itinerant minister, but in association with them, with mutual accountability and shared Kingdom work.
9.6 Step Five — Releasing the First Five-Fold Minister from the Body
At some point the watching, the prayer, the testing, and the trial release have all confirmed that a particular Saint in the body is carrying a Five-Fold gift in operational fruitfulness. The eldership moves to formal commissioning.
Practical activities:
- Eldership prayer-and-fasting confirmation (Part Four Stage D).
- Public announcement to the body with biblical grounding.
- Commissioning service with laying on of hands (Template D guidance).
- Establishment of ongoing accountability structures (Template E annual review).
- Where the gift is itinerant, establishment of the sending relationship between the local body and the Saint.
The first commissioning is precious and weighty. It changes the body’s self-understanding. Saints see that the Five-Fold is real, that Christ is giving gifts among them, that the eldership recognises and releases what Christ gives. The culture begins to shift.
9.7 Step Six — Building the Annual Plan Around the Five-Fold
Document 5 (the Annual Plan) becomes the rhythmic vehicle through which the Five-Fold is sustained year over year. Each annual cycle:
- Reviews the Five-Fold ministry stewardship of the body — who is exercising which gift, what fruit is being borne, what next is the Lord doing.
- Discerns the resourcing for the year ahead — full-time, part-time, voluntary; itinerant engagements; commissioning of newly recognised ministers.
- Integrates Five-Fold investments into the annual prospectus and funding.
- Builds the year’s programs around the body’s actual gifts rather than copying inherited templates.
9.8 Closing Words on the Pathway
The Awakening Pathway for the Five-Fold takes years. There is no shortcut. The eldership that walks it patiently, prayerfully, and in unity will see, over five and ten years, the body steadily mature into the Ephesians 4 pattern — the Saints equipped, the Body built up, every joint supplying what is needed, growing up in every way into Christ.
Where the Pathway is rushed, the body inflates with title and form before the substance is present, and the result is the Manufactured Five-Fold of Error 2 above. Where the Pathway is faithfully walked, the body grows into what Christ has been giving all along.