The Modern Church
The New Apostolic Reformation and the "five-fold ministry"
C. Peter Wagner's "Second Apostolic Age" - modern apostles and prophets governing networks of churches, spiritual mapping and territorial spirits, and the "five-fold" reading of Ephesians 4:11.
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The New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) is the name the church-growth scholar C. Peter Wagner (1930-2016) gave in the 1990s to what he believed was the most significant change in Christianity since the Reformation: the rise of networks of churches governed not by denominations or bishops but by living apostles and prophets.
Wagner taught that God was restoring the "five-fold ministry" of Ephesians 4:11 - apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers - and that the Church had entered a "Second Apostolic Age", which he dated from 2001. He founded the International Coalition of Apostles (1999) and served as its presiding apostle. Apostles in this movement exercise authority over networks of churches and ministries; prophets deliver words for nations, cities and individuals; and both issue "decrees" that they believe shape events.
Wagner also popularised "strategic-level spiritual warfare": identifying the demonic "territorial spirits" said to rule cities and nations, mapping them, and binding them in prayer. In Confronting the Queen of Heaven (1998) he identified Marian devotion with a demonic principality.
The movement has no membership roll and no headquarters. It is a network of networks, many of its leaders living, and it has become very influential in charismatic Christianity worldwide - in Africa, Latin America and Asia as well as America. Its prophets' public predictions have included failures; many of them, for example, publicly prophesied a result in the 2020 American presidential election that did not occur.
Its pedigree runs through this section: the Catholic Apostolic Church's restored apostles in the 1830s, Dowie's "First Apostle" in 1904, the Latter Rain's apostles and prophets in 1948, and the Kansas City Prophets.
The four traditions hold that the apostles were the Church's foundation, laid once, and that their pastoral office continues in the bishops who succeed them - not in new apostles who appoint themselves. The Didache, written while itinerant "apostles" still travelled among the churches, says that an apostle who stays more than two days or asks for money "is a false prophet".
Verdict: the NAR is the end point of the second thread in this section: authority moving from creeds, councils and an ordained ministry to self-appointed apostles and prophets.
What is believed
An NAR leader would put it like this:
- Ephesians 4:11-13 says Christ gave apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers "till we all come in the unity of the faith". Since the Church has not yet reached that unity, all five ministries must still be operating.
- The Church lost the offices of apostle and prophet early, and has been governed instead by denominations and bureaucracies. God is now restoring them.
- Apostles are recognised by their fruit and anointing, not ordained by an institution. They oversee networks of churches and ministries that freely "align" with them.
- Prophets receive revelation for individuals, churches, cities and nations. Apostles and prophets together form the Church's foundation (Ephesians 2:20) in every generation.
- The Church is called to advance God's kingdom on earth - in nations and in every sphere of society - through prayer, spiritual warfare and godly influence (see the Seven Mountains Mandate).
Where it came from
C. Peter Wagner
Charles Peter Wagner (1930-2016) was a missionary in Bolivia from 1956 to 1971 and then, for thirty years, professor of church growth at Fuller Theological Seminary's School of World Mission. A disciple of Donald McGavran, he studied why churches grow, and found that the fastest-growing churches in the world - Pentecostal and independent churches in Latin America, Africa and Asia - were led by strong individual leaders and not by denominational structures.
With John Wimber he taught "Signs, Wonders and Church Growth" at Fuller from 1982, and he coined the term "Third Wave" (see the Third Wave). In the 1990s he led the prayer track of the AD2000 and Beyond Movement and developed the teaching on territorial spirits and spiritual mapping.
He introduced the term "New Apostolic Reformation" in the mid-1990s and described the movement in The New Apostolic Churches (1998), Churchquake! (1999) and Apostles Today (2006). He founded the Wagner Leadership Institute (1998) and in 1999 the International Coalition of Apostles, over which he presided as "presiding apostle" until 2009. He wrote that the Second Apostolic Age began in 2001.
Strategic-level spiritual warfare
Wagner and his colleagues taught that demonic principalities rule over particular cities, regions and nations, that their names and strongholds can be discovered through research and revelation ("spiritual mapping"), and that intercessors can bind them through "strategic-level spiritual warfare". Teams travelled to pray against such spirits on mountaintops, at shrines and in public squares.
In Confronting the Queen of Heaven (1998), Wagner identified "the Queen of Heaven" (Jeremiah 7:18; 44:17-25) as a demonic principality, and treated devotion to the Virgin Mary in Catholic and Orthodox lands, along with goddess worship in other religions, as manifestations of it.†
The five-fold ministry before Wagner
The idea that Ephesians 4:11 describes five permanent offices, all to be restored before the end, was not Wagner's invention. The Catholic Apostolic Church organised itself on it in the 1830s (see Edward Irving). John Alexander Dowie declared himself "First Apostle" in 1904. The Apostolic Church, which grew out of the Welsh Revival in 1916, appointed apostles and prophets. The Latter Rain made restored apostles and prophets central in 1948 (see the Latter Rain), and the British "Restoration" house-church movement of the 1970s had apostolic teams. Wagner's contribution was to name the scattered movement, give it a theory, and make it respectable among evangelicals.
Network Christianity
Sociologists studying the movement describe it as "network Christianity": independent churches and ministries linked by voluntary alignment with apostles, conferences, media and shared practices, rather than by denominations, creeds or ordination. Apostles may oversee hundreds of churches across countries; churches may align with more than one apostle; and authority rests on recognition of a leader's anointing and success.† In Africa and Latin America in particular, the title "apostle" has become common among independent church leaders.
Prophecy and politics
Prophets in these networks have regularly issued prophecies about elections and national events. In 2020 a large number of prominent prophets publicly declared that the incumbent American president would be re-elected. When he was not, a few publicly apologised; others insisted the prophecy had been fulfilled in a hidden sense or that the election had been stolen. Some were present at, or promoted, the events in Washington on 6 January 2021.† The episode illustrates what happens when prophetic claims are made about public events and fail.
Pause and thinkPause: the Didache, written around AD 100, describes travelling "apostles" in the churches. What two tests does it give for them?
"Let every apostle that cometh to you be received as the Lord. But he shall not remain except for one day; and if there be need, also the next; but if he remain three days, he is a false prophet. And when the apostle goeth away, let him take nothing but bread until he lodgeth; but if he ask money, he is a false prophet" (Didache 11.4-6).
So the early Church did know travelling missionaries called apostles - but they had no ruling authority over local churches, which were led by "bishops and deacons" (15.1). They were tested by whether they moved on, and by whether they asked for money. An "apostle" who settled down to govern churches, or who sought payment, was by the Didache's standard false.
What the historic Church taught
On the apostles. The Twelve, with Paul, were witnesses of the risen Christ, chosen by Him (Acts 1:21-22; 1 Corinthians 9:1; 15:8). The Church is "built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets" (Ephesians 2:20), and the New Jerusalem has "twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb" (Revelation 21:14). Foundations are not relaid in each generation.
On their successors. The apostles appointed others to continue the ministry. Clement of Rome (c. 96): the apostles appointed bishops and deacons, "and afterwards gave instructions, that when these should fall asleep, other approved men should succeed them in their ministry" (1 Clement 44). Ignatius (c. 107): "Do ye all follow your bishop, as Jesus Christ followed the Father, and the presbytery as ye would the apostles" (Smyrnaeans 8). Irenaeus (c. 180) appeals to the succession of bishops in every church as the public guarantee of apostolic teaching (Against Heresies 3.3). The Church has called this apostolic succession.
On Ephesians 4:11. The Church has read the list as describing the gifts Christ gave to found and build His Church, not as a constitution of five permanent offices. Chrysostom and others understood the apostles and prophets as belonging to the foundation, and the evangelists, pastors and teachers as continuing.
On territorial spirits. Scripture speaks of principalities and powers (Ephesians 6:12) and of the "prince of Persia" (Daniel 10:13). The Church has always prayed against the devil and his works, and exorcises in baptism. But the Church's weapons are prayer, the sacraments, the word and holy lives, not the identification and naming of regional demons through "spiritual mapping".
The verdict
The NAR is the fullest development of a claim that has recurred throughout this section: that the Church's offices were lost and that a modern movement has restored them. Each previous version - the Catholic Apostolic Church, Dowie, the Latter Rain - collapsed. The NAR differs in its scale and its decentralisation: there is no single church to fail, only networks that form and reform around leaders.
Measured against the creeds and the Church's practice, its central claim is false. The Church confesses itself "apostolic" because it continues in the apostles' teaching and ministry through those who succeeded them, not because it has new apostles. Self-appointed apostles accountable to networks they themselves lead are the opposite of what the early Church meant by apostolic order.
Its attacks on Marian devotion as demonic, and the public failure of its political prophecies, also need to be known by readers in the four traditions, who are increasingly likely to meet the movement.
How the four traditionsthe Catholic Churchthe Orthodox Churchthe Lutheran Churchthe Anglican Communion responded
Lutheran
For Lutherans, "apostolic" describes the Church's teaching: the Church is apostolic because it holds the apostles' doctrine, preached and administered in Word and sacrament (Augsburg Confession VII). The Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope (1537) argues that no one has authority over the Church by divine right except the Word, and that the ministry belongs to the whole Church, which calls and ordains its ministers. Augsburg Confession XIV requires that ministers be "regularly called".
A self-styled apostle who claims authority over churches by his own anointing would be, for Lutherans, a new and more dangerous papacy: one without even the restraint of tradition and canon law. Lutherans should also notice that the NAR's scheme of history describes the Reformation as merely one stage in a restoration that ends with modern apostles - an account Luther would have rejected entirely.
Catholic
The Catechism teaches that the apostles' role as "chosen witnesses of the Lord's Resurrection and so the foundation stones of the Church" cannot be transmitted, but that their pastoral office continues in the bishops: "the bishops have by divine institution taken the place of the apostles as pastors of the Church" (CCC 860-862). The Church is apostolic because it is built on the apostles, keeps their teaching, and "continues to be taught, sanctified, and guided by the apostles until Christ's return through their successors in pastoral office" (CCC 857).
Catholics should know that the NAR's leading theorist identified devotion to the Virgin Mary with a demonic "Queen of Heaven". The Catholic Church honours Mary as Mother of God (Council of Ephesus, 431) and as Queen of Heaven in the sense given by Pius XII's encyclical Ad Caeli Reginam (1954): queen because she is the mother of the King, and always as a creature wholly dependent on God's grace.
Orthodox
The Orthodox Church is built on apostolic succession: every bishop is consecrated by bishops in an unbroken line, and the Church's apostolicity is guarded by the episcopate together with the whole believing people. The Orthodox honour certain saints as "Equal-to-the-Apostles" for bringing the gospel to nations - but this is a title given after death, by the Church, to those who were missionaries, not an office claimed by the living.
NAR-style churches and "apostles" are active in traditionally Orthodox countries, often presenting Orthodoxy as a dead tradition in need of revival. The Orthodox answer is the Divine Liturgy itself, served by bishops and priests in succession from the apostles, in which the faithful are joined to the apostolic Church of every age. The Orthodox also honour the Mother of God above all saints, and would regard Wagner's identification of Marian devotion with a demon as blasphemous.
Anglican
The Anglican Communion includes the historic episcopate among the four essentials of Christian unity in the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral (1886-88): the Scriptures, the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds, the two sacraments of Christ, and "the Historic Episcopate, locally adapted". The Preface to the Ordinal traces bishops, priests and deacons to "the Apostles' time", and Article XXIII requires that ministers be "lawfully called, and sent... by men who have publick authority given unto them in the Congregation".
Many NAR-style networks have grown in Anglican provinces in Africa and Latin America, often drawing members from Anglican churches. The Anglican answer is the same as in every century since the Reformation: the Church's ministry is received, not self-generated.
Key personalities
C. Peter Wagner1930–2016Full profile · 6 min Church-growth scholar who named the "Third Wave" and the "New Apostolic Reformation" and promoted modern apostles, territorial spirits and dominion
- Affiliation
- Missionary in Bolivia (1956-71); professor of church growth, Fuller Theological Seminary (1971-2001); presiding apostle of the International Coalition of Apostles (1999-2009)
- Appears in
- The New Apostolic Reformation and the "five-fold ministry", The Third Wave, the Vineyard and the Kansas City Prophets, The Seven Mountains Mandate and dominionism, Church growth, seeker churches and the megachurch
- Profile
- Link to this profile
Life
New York and conversion
Charles Peter Wagner was born on 15 August 1930 in New York City and grew up in the city and in upstate New York, in a family with no active faith. He studied agriculture at Rutgers University, intending to become a dairy farmer. In 1950 he was converted, largely through the influence of the young woman he married that year, who made his commitment to Christ a condition of marriage; together they resolved to become missionaries.
Bolivia
After studying at Fuller Theological Seminary and Princeton Theological Seminary, he and his wife went to Bolivia in 1956 with the South America Mission and the Andes Evangelical Mission, where he taught at a Bible institute and seminary in Cochabamba and worked in mission administration. He was, by his own account, a convinced cessationist and a critic of Pentecostalism in these years. He observed, however, that the Pentecostal churches of Latin America were growing much faster than those of his own missions, and in Look Out! The Pentecostals Are Coming (1973) he sought to explain why.
Fuller and church growth
In 1971 he joined the faculty of the School of World Mission at Fuller, under Donald McGavran, and for thirty years was its best-known professor of church growth. He wrote prolifically on the subject: Your Church Can Grow (1976), Our Kind of People (1979, a defence of the homogeneous unit principle, based on his doctoral work at the University of Southern California), and Leading Your Church to Growth (1984). He founded the Fuller Evangelistic Association's church growth department in 1975 and recruited John Wimber to lead it.
Signs and wonders
Through Wimber he came to accept healing and the gifts of the Spirit. He co-taught the course MC510, "Signs, Wonders and Church Growth", with Wimber at Fuller from 1982, and in 1983 coined the term "Third Wave" for evangelicals who embraced the gifts without becoming Pentecostals. He said that he had himself been healed of high blood pressure through prayer.
Spiritual warfare
From the late 1980s he became the leading promoter of "strategic-level spiritual warfare". He coordinated the United Prayer Track of the AD2000 and Beyond Movement and founded Global Harvest Ministries in Colorado Springs in 1991. He taught that demonic "territorial spirits" rule cities and nations, that they can be identified through "spiritual mapping" and research, and that they must be bound through targeted prayer before evangelism can succeed. He organised prayer journeys to sites believed to be strongholds of such spirits.
The New Apostolic Reformation
In the mid-1990s he began to describe the growth of independent charismatic networks under "apostolic" leaders as the "New Apostolic Reformation", the most significant change in the way of doing church since the Reformation. He founded the Wagner Leadership Institute in 1998 to train leaders in the new paradigm and in 1999-2000 became the "presiding apostle" of the International Coalition of Apostles. He declared that the "Second Apostolic Age" had begun in 2001. He retired from Fuller in 2001.
Dominion
In his later writings, especially Dominion! (2008), he taught that the Church is called to take dominion over the "seven mountains" of society - religion, family, education, government, media, arts and entertainment, and business. He identified himself with what he called "dominion theology", while distinguishing it from Christian Reconstructionism.
Key dates
- 15 August 1930 - Born in New York City
- 1950 - Converted; marries
- 1956-71 - Missionary in Bolivia
- 1971 - Joins the School of World Mission at Fuller
- 1975 - Recruits John Wimber
- 1982-85 - Co-teaches MC510 with Wimber
- 1983 - Coins the "Third Wave"
- 1991 - Founds Global Harvest Ministries
- 1994-96 - Begins to speak of the "New Apostolic Reformation"
- 1998 - Founds the Wagner Leadership Institute; Confronting the Queen of Heaven
- 1999-2000 - Presiding apostle of the International Coalition of Apostles
- 2001 - Retires from Fuller; declares the "Second Apostolic Age"
- 2008 - Dominion!
- 21 October 2016 - Dies, aged 86
Teachings and claims
Church growth
Wagner held that the growth of the Church is a measurable fruit of faithfulness and that churches should study the factors that produce growth. He taught McGavran's homogeneous unit principle and its pastoral application to North American churches.
Modern apostles and prophets
He taught that God is restoring to the Church the offices of apostle and prophet (Ephesians 4:11), which he held had been neglected since the early centuries. Apostles are leaders with extraordinary authority over networks of churches or spheres of society; prophets bring direct revelation for the Church's strategy.
Territorial spirits
He taught that Daniel 10 and other texts show that demonic princes rule territories, and that strategic intercession must identify and bind them by name. He developed the practices of spiritual mapping and "identificational repentance" - repenting on behalf of a city or nation for historic sins.
Dominion
He taught that the Great Commission includes the transformation of society by believers taking leadership in its spheres, and that the kingdom advances as the Church gains influence.
Documented controversies
The Queen of Heaven
In Confronting the Queen of Heaven (1998) he identified a demonic principality, the "Queen of Heaven", behind Marian devotion, the cult of Diana of Ephesus and other religions, and described prayer journeys to bind it. Catholic and many Protestant readers regarded the book as offensive and without biblical basis.
Spiritual mapping
Evangelical missiologists and theologians, including participants in a Lausanne consultation on spiritual warfare in 2000, criticised the theology of territorial spirits as speculative, and spiritual mapping as resembling animistic rather than biblical thought.†
Apostolic authority
Critics across evangelical and charismatic circles argued that the NAR's apostles claim authority without accountability or confession, and that Wagner's description of the movement placed new revelation above the historic faith. Wagner himself denied that apostles add to Scripture.
Failed declarations
Some of the prayer campaigns he promoted were accompanied by announcements of the defeat of particular spirits or of coming breakthroughs that critics noted did not occur.†
Death
He died on 21 October 2016, aged 86, after a period of illness.
Legacy
Wagner was the intellectual architect of three movements: church growth in its North American form, the "Third Wave", and the New Apostolic Reformation. His books, more than seventy in number, gave each a vocabulary and a rationale. The apostolic networks he described are now among the largest and fastest-growing forms of Christianity in the world, and the dominion teaching he promoted has entered political as well as religious life.
Measured against the creeds
The creeds confess "one holy catholic and apostolic Church". In the historic understanding, the Church is apostolic because it continues in the apostles' teaching and is built on their foundation, which is laid once (Ephesians 2:20; Acts 2:42); the apostles' authority is handed on through the Scriptures they wrote and the ordered ministry of the Church, not through new apostles with fresh revelation. Wagner's "Second Apostolic Age" is a claim the creeds do not allow for.
The doctrine of territorial spirits rests on a few texts (Daniel 10; Ephesians 6:12) that do not prescribe the methods he taught; the historic churches confess that Christ has "disarmed the principalities and powers" (Colossians 2:15) and that the Church resists the devil by faith, the word and prayer, not by research into the names of spirits. His treatment of Marian devotion as demonic was a grave misrepresentation of the faith of the Catholic and Orthodox churches.
Finally, the identification of the kingdom's advance with the Church's gaining dominion over society is foreign to the theology of the cross. The Lord taught that His kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36) and that it comes as a mustard seed and leaven, hidden and small (Matthew 13:31-33).
Major writings
- Look Out! The Pentecostals Are Coming (1973)
- Your Church Can Grow (1976)
- Our Kind of People (1979)
- The Third Wave of the Holy Spirit (1988)
- Warfare Prayer (1992)
- Confronting the Queen of Heaven (1998)
- The New Apostolic Churches (1998)
- Apostles Today (2006)
- Dominion! (2008)
- Wrestling with Alligators, Prophets, and Theologians (2010) - memoir
Answering a modern Christian
"Our church is under an apostle." Ask who made him an apostle, and to whom he is accountable. In the New Testament the apostles were chosen by Christ and witnessed His resurrection; they appointed elders and bishops to succeed them. The earliest Christian manual after the New Testament says that a travelling apostle who stays more than two days or asks for money is a false prophet. A self-appointed apostle who governs a network of churches and is accountable only to other apostles he recognises is not what the early Church meant by the word.
"Ephesians 4 says the five-fold ministry continues until we reach unity." Ephesians 2:20 in the same letter says the Church is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. The foundation remains until the building is finished - in the sense that we still stand on the apostles' teaching, preserved in Scripture. Every attempt to restore living apostles since the 1830s has ended in failure or schism.
"We need to pull down the territorial spirits over our city." Christians do wrestle against principalities and powers (Ephesians 6:12), and the Church has always prayed against evil. But the armour Paul lists is truth, righteousness, the gospel, faith, salvation, the word of God and prayer - not the identification of named regional demons. The Church's most powerful act of spiritual warfare is the one it performs every Sunday: proclaiming Christ crucified and risen, and celebrating the sacraments He gave.
Work with it
Check yourself
Who named the New Apostolic Reformation?
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Correct. He also founded the International Coalition of Apostles in 1999.
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No.
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Irving's circle restored apostles in the 1830s, but did not use this name.
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Luther rejected any such restoration.
Check yourself
What does the Didache say about an apostle who asks for money?
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Chapter 11 addresses it directly.
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No.
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No.
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Right - written around AD 100, when travelling apostles still visited the churches.
Check yourself
Which Anglican document lists the historic episcopate among the essentials of Christian unity?
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No.
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Correct - alongside the Scriptures, the Creeds and the two sacraments.
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That is on oaths.
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No.
Objection drill
The denominations are dead bureaucracies. God is raising up apostolic leaders who actually get results - churches are growing fastest where apostles lead. You are defending structures, not the gospel.
A model answer
There is real force in the first sentence, and the four traditions should hear it: bureaucracy can smother mission, and many historic churches are shrinking.
But growth is not the test of apostolicity. The fastest-growing religious movements of the last two centuries include the Latter-day Saints and the Jehovah's Witnesses. Growth shows energy and appeal; it does not show that a movement teaches what the apostles taught. Wagner, a church-growth scholar, built his theory of apostles from the observation that strong leaders grow churches. That is a sociological observation, not a theological warrant.
Structures protect the gospel. The creeds, the episcopate and the Church's law exist so that no one leader can redefine the faith. Where they are absent, the history in this section shows the result: apostles and prophets who make failed predictions, attack the devotion of other Christians, and answer to no one. The early Church faced travelling "apostles" too, and its first rule for them was that they must not settle in to rule, and must not ask for money.
And the historic churches are growing too. In much of Africa and parts of Asia, Catholic, Anglican and Lutheran churches - with bishops and an ordained ministry - are growing rapidly, without new apostles.
Memory work
Turn each card over, then say honestly whether you knew it. Cards you miss come back sooner.