Spiritual Gift: Apostleship

I will get straight to what I believe, from studying the text, about apostleship. I have a hard time seeing this gift being used or given today. However, I believe every other spiritual gift is given or exercised today, so why not this one? I will do my best to answer that without writing a bunch of pages.

The Greek word for apostle is apostolos. This means it is someone sent forth with a message, to delegate, or with orders. This word is always in the passive, meaning apostles had no initiative but were instead put in this position (Matthew 10:1; Romans 1:1). Among the lists of Spiritual Gifts in the New Testament, Apostleship shows up only in 1 Corinthians 12:28 and Ephesians 4:11 and both times seem to be types of leadership roles.

Paul constantly called himself an apostle (1 Cor. 1:1; 2 Cor. 1:1, 11:13; Gal. 1:1, Eph. 1:1), but did it end with him? In 2 Corinthians 8:23, Paul calls some of the congregation apostolos. He also calls Epaphroditus an apostolos, in his place, in Philippians 2:25. It seems to me that apostle and evangelist (tomorrow's spiritual gift) are similar because they both deliver a message, although tomorrow you will see one major difference in definitions of the two.

So, whether or not apostleship is for today, I don't know. Some would say it is like leadership or the ability to plant churches. However, if we stay in the text we see that it is usually a messenger and all, except 3 (Philippians 2:25; 2 Cor. 8:23; and Acts 1:26), were instituted by Christ himself.