When Paul describes the ministries Christ gave to the Church in Ephesians 4, he mentions apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. It would be easy to focus on the titles themselves, but Paul quickly directs our attention to something more important: why these people were given.
Their purpose was to equip the saints for the work of ministry and to build up the body of Christ until it reached maturity. Leadership therefore has an important place in the Church, but it also has a clear direction. Its purpose is not simply to gather people around a leader; it is to help people grow in Christ.
This distinction matters because Christian maturity is not measured by how long someone has attended church, by the position they hold or by how familiar they are with Christian language. Paul describes maturity in terms of growing towards the fullness of Christ, which means that the real question is not simply how much we know, but what that knowledge is producing in us.
Ephesians 4 speaks positively and deliberately about spiritual leadership. Christ gives people to teach, guide, equip and care for His Church, and there is no need to diminish that role in order to speak about maturity.
In fact, maturity rarely develops in isolation. We learn from people who have walked before us, we receive correction, encouragement and instruction, and there are moments when another person can help us see something that we would probably not recognise on our own.
The important question is what this leadership is producing.
If the purpose described by Paul is the equipping of the saints, then healthy leadership should gradually produce people who are able to understand Scripture, exercise discernment, serve others, assume responsibility and participate meaningfully in the life of the body.
A leader therefore does more than provide answers. Part of the work is helping people learn how to grow.
There is something significant in Paul’s language. The ministries of Ephesians 4 are given to equip the saints for the work of ministry. The leader is not presented as the person who performs all the ministry while everyone else remains a spectator.
The people themselves are being prepared to participate.
This changes the way we understand spiritual leadership. If everything depends permanently on one person’s direction, interpretation and approval, something important in the process of maturity may have been lost. A growing Christian should increasingly learn how to read Scripture carefully, make responsible decisions, recognise truth, serve others and take their own place within the body.
This does not make pastors, teachers or mentors unnecessary. It actually shows the value of their work, because good leadership does not merely solve today’s problem; it helps develop people who will be better prepared to face tomorrow’s questions.
We see something similar in ordinary life. Parents make many decisions for a young child because the child is not yet able to make them, but a healthy parent does not want that dependence to remain unchanged forever. As the child grows, guidance continues, but responsibility also grows with it.
Spiritual maturity has a similar movement. We continue learning from others, but we should also be becoming capable of carrying responsibility ourselves.
Paul continues in Ephesians 4 by explaining one of the consequences of maturity: we are no longer to remain children, carried around by every wind of teaching.
Discernment is therefore part of Christian growth.
This does not mean becoming suspicious of everyone or developing a habit of criticising every sermon, leader or church. There is a difference between being critical and being discerning. A discerning Christian is willing to listen and learn while also developing the ability to examine what is being heard in the light of Scripture.
The believers in Berea provide a useful example in Acts 17. They received Paul’s teaching willingly, but they also examined the Scriptures to see whether what they were hearing was true.
What is interesting is that the text does not present this as rebellion. It describes them positively.
They could receive teaching without surrendering responsibility for discernment.
That balance remains important today. We need teachers, pastors and people who can help us understand the Word, but maturity means that we are gradually learning to engage with Scripture ourselves rather than outsourcing our entire spiritual understanding to someone else.
There is another boundary that helps us understand the place of leadership. The New Testament gives an important role to leaders while also being clear that there is one mediator between God and humanity: Jesus Christ.
A pastor can teach, guide, encourage, correct and walk alongside someone, but no Christian leader needs to become that person’s access to God.
Healthy spiritual leadership should help people know Christ more deeply rather than making them feel that they can only reach Christ through the leader.
This does not weaken leadership. It places leadership where it belongs.
A mature pastor does not need to become the centre of another person’s spiritual life. The privilege of leadership is to point beyond ourselves, helping people develop their own relationship with Christ, grow in their understanding of Scripture and become increasingly able to recognise His voice and His ways.
The goal is not independence from the body of Christ. Christianity is not an individual journey in which we eventually reach a point where we no longer need anyone else. Ephesians 4 itself speaks about a body whose different parts grow together.
Maturity is therefore different from isolation. We remain connected, teachable and accountable, while becoming less dependent on constant external direction.
Paul told Timothy to give himself seriously to what he had been taught so that his progress would be evident. That is another important aspect of maturity: growth should eventually become visible.
Time alone does not produce maturity. Someone can spend many years around Christian environments while repeating the same patterns, responding to conflict in the same way and depending on the same level of supervision.
Growth becomes visible in the way we speak, respond to correction, handle disagreement, make decisions, treat people and carry responsibility. It appears in our character as much as in our knowledge.
Hebrews 5 makes a similar observation when it speaks to people who, by that stage, should have developed further but still needed to return to the most basic teaching. The concern was not simply that they lacked information; they had not developed the discernment that should have come through practice and growth.
Maturity takes time, but time should be taking us somewhere.
Personal responsibility for growth does not mean that we are expected to develop entirely by ourselves. One of the reasons Christ gives people to His Church is precisely because there are seasons when we need someone to walk alongside us.
There are moments when another person can ask a question we have avoided, challenge an assumption we have never examined or help us organise something that has become confused. At other times, we simply need the perspective of someone who is not standing inside the same situation.
That kind of relationship can be valuable when its purpose is maturity rather than dependence.
The aim is not for another person to think permanently on our behalf, make every decision for us or become indispensable to our spiritual life. Good guidance should gradually help us develop greater clarity, responsibility and discernment, so that we are better equipped to walk faithfully and eventually help others do the same.
This is one of the reasons I find the picture in Ephesians 4 so compelling. God does not simply call individuals to mature; He also places people around us who can contribute to that process.
Perhaps one of the questions Christian leaders should occasionally ask is not simply how many people are listening to us, attending what we lead or asking for our guidance, but what those people are becoming.
Are they growing in their understanding of Scripture? Are they developing discernment? Are they learning to take responsibility, serve others and recognise their own place within the body? Most importantly, are they becoming more like Christ?
Ephesians 4 gives leadership an important place in the Church, but it also gives leadership a destination. That destination is maturity.
Leaders remain valuable along the journey, because none of us sees everything clearly on our own and none of us grows entirely in isolation. Yet Christ remains the centre and the head of the body.
The privilege of Christian leadership is therefore not to make people permanently dependent on us, but to walk with them, equip them and help them grow until they are increasingly able to walk faithfully with Christ and strengthen others along the way.