An article on Epaphras? Pardon? Who? Even those who have heard of him might wonder what we could possibly learn from some­one who’s mentioned in passing only three times in the New Testament (Col. 1:7-8; 4:12-13 and Philemon 23).

But to relegate Epaphras to obscurity because his name pops up only a few times in Paul’s letters would be a mistake. Why? Well, to begin with, among all the friends and co-workers of Paul, Epaphras holds the distinction of being the only one whom Paul explicitly commended for his intercession. It seems that, along with Paul, he realised the tremendous possibil­ities of working through prayer. Again, his example and practice in ministry, specifically church-planting, provides a model that may overcome a fundamental spiritual weakness that’s found in many places in the 21^st-century church.

Prayer is under threat in the church today. People find themselves forced to work longer and longer hours. There seems to be an ever-increasing demand to produce more and more — often with the same resources as before. It’s not surpris­ing that ministers and Christian leaders feel the pressure too. The Christian com­munity expects them to develop larger churches, to keep on “the cutting edge” of ministry, and to keep breaking new ground.

When this pressure is coupled with our natural tendency towards self-reliance, a great temptation arises — to simply try harder in the Lord’s service rather than to revive our efforts in prayer.

Eugene Peterson touches on this prob­lem in his book Working The Angles. Even though he speaks from a North American context, his words are relevant to Australia. He points out that most minis­ters are Augustinians in their pulpits. That is, we preach divine sovereignty, the pri­macy of grace, and the glory of God. But the minute we finish preaching, we become Pelagians. We put our confidence in what we do. We practice a theology that makes human effort the primary element in pleasing God. We demonstrate this ten­dency in our planning committees, in our anxiety to please and in our obsessive attempts to meet the expectations of peo­ple.

According to Peterson, this dogma produces the sort of thinking characteristic of the North American pastor:

If things aren’t good enough, they will improve if I work a little harder. Add a committee here, recruit   some more volunteers there, squeeze a couple of hours more into the workday.

Acting in this Pelagian manner comes quite naturally. The problem is that Pelagius seemed to be an unlikely heretic and Augustine an unlikely saint. By all accounts, Pelagius was urbane, courteous and convincing. Everyone seemed to have liked him immensely. On the other hand, Augustine squandered his youth in immorality, had some kind of Freudian thing with his mother, and made a lot of enemies. But the question is: which one is right?

While most theologians agree that Augustine was right, the vexing question is how did Pelagius come to organise our schedules? He has, if we are honest. But the trouble is that while our closet Pelagianism won’t get us excommuni­cated or burned at the stake, nevertheless it cripples our pastoral work. Indeed, it’s catastrophic to the church’s health and wholeness.

The way that Epaphras went about his ministry calls us beyond our natural understanding of serving Christ to a far better way, but one which challenges the priorities that many Christians have. From what we can piece together from the Acts of the Apostles and the letter to the Colossians, the church in Colossae was founded by Epaphras himself.

Apparently, he heard the gospel from Paul during his ministry in Ephesus in AD 53­-55 (Acts 19:10) and then returned to his old stamping-ground in Colossae. Some five to seven years later, Epaphras joined Paul in prison in Rome to tell the apostle of a strange teaching threatening the health of his home church and to remain with Paul to pray for the churches of the Lycus Valley (Acts 28; Col 4:12,13).

In the first and last chapters of Colossians we find a couple of references to Epaphras. Paul acknowledges his part in planting the church (1:6c-8) as well as his hard work and intercession for the churches in the Lycus Valley (4:12-13). From these fleeting references we are given a window into the pastoral ministry as it was conducted in the first bloom of the Christian faith. It remains a model for our practice until Christ’s return.

In the first reference to Epaphras, the focus is broadly on his practice of min­istry. In the latter, Paul focuses on his prayers which undergirded all his activi­ties. What, then, do we learn of his min­istry from Paul’s reference to it in Colossians 1:6-8?

Clearly, it was marked with great suc­cess because the three churches of Colossae, Laodicea and Hierapolis were the fruit. Paul tells us that, first of all, his ministry had been marked by a deep and systematic teaching of the Christian gospel that had drawn men and women to become sincere and dedicated disciples of Jesus Christ. Second, it was owned by Paul as a faithful, trustworthy work that was in full sympathy with his own teach­ing and practice. And, finally, it was a min­istry that was rooted in humility, hard work and sacrifice for the glory of God and the spreading of his gospel.

New churches will never be planted and established without persistent and comprehensive preaching about Christ in an absolute spirit of loyalty to the Bible. This ministry also demands workers who are full of zeal and are willing to pay the price of costly service. This was Paul’s pattern of ministry. It can also be discerned in the ministry of his fellow-workers such as Epaphras. The first preachers worked extraordinarily hard in the ministry of the gospel. Of course, all of this fits in with our activistic age very well. The gargan­tuan labours of people like Epaphras seem to justify the frenetic activity of some Christian workers that sometimes leads to ministerial burnout. This is particularly so when the pattern of activity described here in the first part of the letter has been embarked upon in isolation from the rest of what Paul says about Epaphras at the end of Colossians.

So what saved Epaphras from big­headedness or ministerial burnout? He had learnt that he could only preach the gospel effectively if he also simultane­ously prayed for the grace of God to bring forth great fruit! His practice of prayer, which is mentioned in Colossians 4:12-13 is a magnificent illustration of what the Lord Jesus meant when he said “for with­out me you can do nothing” (Jn 15:5).

So how are we to plant new churches and build up existing ones? By work­ing and praying hard in the energy with which God supplies us by his grace! Epaphras was the “bondservant of Christ”, which points us to the depth of his relationship with and reliance upon Christ. This is the key to his prayers — his knowledge of Christ’s love for him and of his love for Christ! It was remarkably like Paul’s own experience and ministry prac­tice. In fact, the apostle goes out of his way to stress the close correspondence between his own ministry and that of Epaphras. Both are involved in the same struggle for the gospel. Both are commit­ted to urgent intercessory prayer as part of that struggle along with their desire to bring the Colossians to full Christian maturity.

The way Paul describes Epaphras’ prayer life indicates that he knew what was happening in the churches he had planted, that he was in spiritual agony for them as they struggled with false teachers and the complexity and subtlety of their teaching, and that Epaphras was continu­ally asking God to strengthen and advance the faith of the Colossians so that they would grow in maturity as Christians through all these trials.

While Paul recognised the crucial part that Epaphras’ hard work and prayer had played in the founding of these three churches, implicit in his reference to Epaphras’ prayers is his belief “that God makes the church grow”. Nothing we are taught, no technique, no program can take the place of spiritual work immersed in prayer or the prayer that expresses itself in Christian labour.

Of course, we shouldn’t be sur­prised that we naturally incline towards hard yakka because we think we can “do” this for ourselves. But mature Christians understand that they will only see fruit if the Lord works. And they know that this usually happens as they pray. Therefore, it becomes crucial to our ministries that we do so.

We need to ask ourselves: do we pray with God’s help as an expression of our relationship with Christ? Are we driven to prayer because of what we know about the pressing needs of those who are pre­cious to us? Do we sense a need to pray because unbelief is so dominant in our country and the enemies of the gospel seem so strong? Do we pray because we realise just how important it is that the Lord’s word take deep root within Christians’ hearts? Do we cry out for the Holy Spirit to revive our congregations so that the Lord will reveal more of Christ and his glory to them? Do we intercede with God to raise up more labourers for his harvest who will work with zeal and for his glory?

During a visit to a congregation some time ago, the session clerk remarked to me that you could tell more about someone spiritually when you heard them pray than simply through talking to them or hearing them preach. His comment struck me. It reminded me of a famous statement by the renowned minister, Robert Murray M’Cheyne: “What a man is alone on his knees before God, that he is, and no more.”

By this standard, Epaphras was a mighty man indeed! But, we must remember that this was not his natural disposition; it was wrought by the grace of God alone. All of us, ministers, leaders and congregations, need to take a leaf out of the book of Epaphras by becoming more committed to the growth and wit­ness of our congregations and more resolved to continue in a ministry of prayer.