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Pastor Neil Silverberg continued our In Christ series with a message that asks a simple but disruptive question: what if church felt less like a spectator event and more like a training camp? Walking through Ephesians 4:7–12, Neil showed how the ascended Christ gives people as gifts—apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers—not to create a hierarchy but to equip every believer for real ministry. Unity, he reminded us, isn’t uniformity. It thrives on difference. When grace meets diversity, the church matures, stabilizes, and moves with purpose.

Neil began with Paul’s anchor: “But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift.” That word grace (charis) tells us two things at once—gifting is universal and gifting is diverse. Everyone has received grace, and not everyone has received the same grace. This is why, in a church saturated with the gospel, we should expect a beautiful variety of gifts and expressions, not carbon copies. Christian unity is not threatened by real differences; it is enriched by them.

From there, Neil lingered on a power we often overlook: the ascension. Quoting Psalm 68:18, Paul writes, “When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.” Neil traced that line into the New Testament: Jesus not only died and rose; he ascended to the Father’s right hand, fulfilling Psalm 110:1—“Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.” Peter preached the same point on the day of Pentecost: “Being therefore at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing” (Acts 2:33). Neil noted how fitting it is that Israel associated Pentecost with the giving of the law at Sinai, when words were carved on stone and 3,000 perished because of idolatry, while at the Pentecost of Acts 2 the Spirit wrote the law on hearts and 3,000 were added to Christ. The ascension explains why the church is never merely a human institution; its life and leadership flow from the enthroned Christ who still ministers by the Spirit.

Paul’s parenthetical note—“In saying, ‘He ascended,’ what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth?”—has raised questions for centuries, and Neil addressed them with clarity. The point is not that Jesus went to suffer the torments of hell after the cross; he declared “It is finished.” Rather, “descent” names his incarnation and death—his full identification with our condition—even as his human soul entered the realm of the dead (what Scripture calls Sheol or Hades), paradise rather than punishment. The one who truly descended is the same one who truly ascended “far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.” The arc is humiliation to exaltation, and from his throne he now gives gifts.

And those gifts are people. Paul names them plainly: apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds and teachers. Neil emphasized that this list is not about celebrity roles but stewardship roles; these aren’t trinkets given to individuals but people given to the church. Apostles extend and architect healthy foundations. Neil distinguished the unique, unrepeatable “apostles of the Lamb” (the Twelve, whose names are inscribed on the foundations of the New Jerusalem) from those the New Testament also calls apostles—messengers sent out by churches to plant and strengthen work across regions. Their job today isn’t to add to Scripture but to extend mission and build wisely, seeing the blueprint Christ has provided.

Prophets, Neil said, “stand in the council of the Lord,” bringing a present word that edifies the church. In the New Testament, prophetic ministry is both real and accountable. Paul envisioned gatherings where “two or three prophets speak, and the others weigh what is said.” This weighing keeps the church responsive without becoming gullible, and it reminds us that prophets and teachers are meant to work together. One loves to soar, the other loves to ground—and the church needs both the wind and the keel.

Evangelists make the gospel plain and stir the church’s heart for the lost. The New Testament mentions Philip the evangelist and commands Timothy—who wasn’t an evangelist by office—to “do the work of an evangelist.” Neil pressed that point home: while some carry a distinctive evangelistic grace, every believer is invited to open their mouth and speak of Christ. When evangelists function, the whole body grows more fluent in the good news.

“Shepherds and teachers,” Paul writes, pairing them in a way that suggests real overlap. Neil underscored that in the New Testament, shepherding is always plural and deeply tied to teaching. Elders pastor together; they feed by opening Scripture, guard by refuting error, and guide by example. Not every teacher is a pastor, but every pastor must teach, because sheep are nourished on truth. This is why a healthy church embraces team leadership and a shared pulpit: shepherding is a family project.

All of these gifts exist “to equip the saints for the work of ministry.” Neil was candid about how easily we invert the text. Too often we imagine ministry is what trained professionals do while the rest of us watch and applaud. But Elton Trueblood captured the biblical corrective well: the ministry belongs to all who share Christ’s life, while the pastorate is a peculiar gift for helping others practice their ministry well. Neil illustrated the cost of getting this wrong with the image of a stadium: a hundred thousand people in the stands desperately needing exercise, and eleven on the field desperately needing rest. Tired pastors and passive congregations are the predictable result when leaders become short-order cooks filling endless requests rather than equippers building people.

That short-order model sounds compassionate, but it collapses under its own weight. Neil told a story Jerry Cook once shared about a woman who spent seventeen days in the hospital. Seventeen church members visited her; the pastor didn’t. She was upset until he gently asked whether she could recognize Jesus’ care in the faces of those seventeen saints. If we will only receive help in one form, we will miss the Head’s generosity to the whole body. A pastor’s job, Neil said, is not to meet everyone’s needs but to ensure everyone’s needs are met—by activating the body.

So what does equipping look like in practice? Paul’s word for “equip” (katartismos) holds a rich range of meaning that Neil unpacked in three movements. First, it means mending. The term is used for repairing nets, and by extension for setting what is broken. Healthy churches become therapeutic communities where the wounded are restored by grace. Over time, through the steady ministry of word, Spirit, and loving presence, fractured souls are made whole. Leaders help stitch lives back together so that people can reenter the waters of calling without snagging on yesterday’s tears.

Second, it means establishing. In the world of construction, the word evokes foundation work. Wise master builders don’t start by decorating rooms; they lay Christ as the only foundation and then align doctrine and practice to the cornerstone. Neil borrowed Paul’s self-description in 1 Corinthians 3—architecton, architect—to describe wise leadership. Foolish builders can raise impressive scaffolding that won’t bear weight; wise builders read the blueprint and build what the Head designed. Here Neil echoed R. Paul Stevens: the human equipper’s central task is not to make people dependent on leaders but dependent on the Head. That takes strong leadership of a particular kind—the kind that steadily points people away from personalities and back to the all-sufficient Christ through the written word. Scripture, Neil reminded us, not only informs; it performs. It actually builds people onto Christ.

Third, it means training. The term was used for conditioning athletes. And athletes don’t train to train; they train to enter the race. Churches veer into two ditches here. Some try to run without ever training; others train forever and never compete. Equipping is the Spirit-energized middle—intentional formation that leads to real participation. Disciples are taught, mentored, and coached, and then they are sent to serve their neighbors, to plant and strengthen ministries, to speak truth, to care for souls, to evangelize, to prophesy, to teach—in short, to do the works of service that build up the whole body.

All of this reframes church life from a prison camp to a training camp. Spectators become participants. Needs become opportunities for shared ministry. Leadership becomes catalytic rather than controlling. And the outcome is exactly what Paul promises in Ephesians 4: as the fivefold gifts operate together, congregations “attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God,” growing into maturity and stability. Instead of being tossed about by trends or outrun by fads, the church is anchored in Christ and animated by grace. When apostles function, people become apostolic in mission. When prophets serve, people grow prophetic in discernment. When evangelists labor, people become evangelistic in witness. When shepherds and teachers feed, people become pastoral in care and rooted in truth. The grace of the ascended Christ multiplies ministry across the whole body.

Neil kept circling back to the most important reality under all these structures: Jesus is still the Head. He is not the retired founder of the church but the present Lord of it. He ascended not to abdicate but to fill all things. He gives grace according to his measure, appoints people according to his wisdom, and builds his body according to his blueprint. That is why In Christ is more than a series title; it is the atmosphere of Christian life. What is true of the Head becomes true of the body. In him we are forgiven, raised, seated—and equipped. And because we are in him, the goal isn’t a polished platform with a tired few serving a passive crowd. The goal is a people made ready, a church that heals, forms, and sends, a community that looks like Jesus because it has been equipped by those he has given and empowered by the grace he supplies.