Jesus called twelve men to be apostles. They accompanied him during his preaching tours. He taught them in parables. He gave them power over unclean spirits. He sent them out to preach and to heal. These eyewitnesses are anchors. Their apostolic witness is foundation for later church generations.

The apostolic tradition soon becomes rooted in Rome, Antioch, Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Constantinople. Gradually Rome gains primacy. All roads lead there. Peter and Paul handed over their lives there. Rome is known for its charity to others, for its fairness in arbitrating disputes, and for having the purest doctrinal tradition."In the measure that a community is evangelical it has to grapple with the issue of how it is honoring apostolicity (Denise Lardner Carmody, An Ideal Church: A Meditation, p.35)."How are we to be APOSTOLIC?

First, each parish is to enjoy a good church order. "The community of Christ has to be a place of peace and concord. It cannot make antagonism, dysfunction, or confusion into business as usual, the order of the day. It has to establish sufficient orderliness to show that it remains the unified community that Jesus founded and for which he prayed....Order is not uniformity, making all soldiers march in lockstep. It can love variety, diversity, local color. But in necessary things, unity - and so, order (p. 36)."

Second,"a healthy church shows its good order by balancing self-concern with concern for the outside world (p.36)." Many parishes have developed their service internally - through worship, pastoral care, spiritual development, and formative education. We're still figuring out our concern for the outside world.

In addition, each parish learns to balance "a reverence for tradition and openness to the signs of new times. It is neither overly conservative nor overly innovative. It makes haste slowly, but it avoids stasis (p. 36)."

Apostolic balance requires three things: listening sessions, regular ministry meetings, and staff cohesion. First, a healthy parish does genuine dialogue. The entire parish needs to meet periodically to listen to the Spirit and to one another. Second, volunteer ministers need to do their thing. They need to meet regularly because ministry is more than a holy job. Members of pastoral and finance councils, religious education/formation boards, liturgy preparation committees, liturgical ministers (such as hospitality ministers/ushers, eucharistic ministers, music ministers, proclaimers of the Word), and others (such as hospital visitors and soup kitchen volunteers) have needs for dialogue, formation, fellowship, and skills development. Third, the professional ministers need regular meetings to give order to parish life. These men and women learn how to converse, discern, pray and plan. "The community must practice an ongoing discernment that enables it to determine prudently which proposed courses of action hold the best promise for bringing the church forward desirably. It must also practice an ongoing critique of what past choices have wrought, so as to avoid repeating mistakes and to capitalize on strategies that have turned out well. These processes require supervision, through both initiative and oversight. They also require judgments that bring the ongoing dialogue, discernment and criticism to term, when they have obviously reached a natural climax or when practical action is imperative (p.37)"