This is a guest post by Kate Vosburg. She has been on IV staff for almost 15 years, on 6 different campuses.  She loves serving alongside her husband, Dave, who is a professor on the campus where she serves.  With him as a faculty, on the inside of campus, there have been some amazing opportunities to share the gospel.  Kate is an evangelist who loves to be on the front-lines with her students, finding ways into unreached communities and sharing the Gospel.  Dave and Kate have 3 kids (Nate 6, Isabella 4, Diego 4) who keep Kate on her toes and laughing at their creative, crazy antics.

So, is reaching LGBTQ (Lesibian, Gay, Bi, Transgender, Queer) people worth it?  Many evangelical Christians seem to say no.  Not explicitly, of course.  But when we don’t actively reach out to people in the LGBTQ community and proactively address homosexuality in all its complexity, we basically opt out of LGBTQ ministry.  There are very few LGBTQ people who will enter a Christian space that has not made it clear that they’re welcome.  And I don’t blame them; everyone “knows” how Christians treat gay people (a stereotype that is grounded in many years of countless experiences).

The Deep Need

However, there is a deep spiritual hunger in the LGBTQ community, as far as I’ve found.  There are many gay people with Christian backgrounds, but they feel they were ostracized from Christian community once they came out.  There are many other gay folks who are spiritually curious and hungry, but they discount Christ because they have heard that his followers don’t want them unless they’re straight.  (And of course, there are also many of us Christians in Christian communities who have LGBTQ sexual desires and don’t know how to work deal with these desires, fearing to ask our Christian communities for help.)

Who will reach this lost group of people?  These people whom Christ loves and has come to rescue?  Who will help our Christian brothers and sisters who struggle alone?

Continue Reading

By Beau Crosetto

When some of us were at Urbana we got together for our first ever A.P.E gathering and we had a great time sharing, praying and encouraging each other about all things apostolic, prophetic, evangelistic.

[Make sure to subscribe to our A.P.E. Newsletter so you don’t miss the next one! Here is the last letter I sent out with some apprentice resources not found on the blog.]

One of the things that was prayed out was an image of a fan spinning but the light was out.

The interpretation on this image was that the temptation for us as catalytic leaders is to lead and be busy, essentially spinning around, but not be fueled by the constant light of Jesus.

We appear active and “on” but there is no light!

Continue Reading

By Jon Hietbrink

“When Jesus had finished speaking, he said to Simon, ‘Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.”

It wasn’t their first interaction, but it was the definitive one. In the course of an afternoon, Simon went from a fisherman hanging around the fringes of Jesus’ ministry to a fisher of men following his Lord, and this exchange became the fulcrum on which Peter’s life pivoted.  Jesus’ command was simple but ludicrous; Peter’s response was hedged but obedient; the result was abundant but terrifying. Invited into this encounter by Luke, we see far more than an isolated event, but a paradigmatic experience of what it means to follow Jesus: He often asks us to step into deeper water than we are comfortable with, and He does it to show us more of Himself.

Isn’t this “deep water” experience the regular testimony of Jesus’ disciples in the gospels? Consistently engulfed by the destitute, increasingly combatted by the elite, inexplicably commanded to feed thousands, prematurely (it would seem!) sent to proclaim the nearness of the Kingdom, and ultimately entrusted with God’s message of salvation to the ends of the earth, the disciples’ journey of following Jesus was regularly akin to jumping into the deep end of the pool and learning to swim. Being “over their heads” wasn’t an exceptional circumstance, it was relentlessly normal.

Continue Reading

I wanted to write this post and highlight a new feature that has been up for a few months

Blog Series!

You can find the tab on the very top of the blog and inside the page is organized content according to different series we are doing.

One of the great benefits of a blog that has many writers is the opportunity to do series like this and organize thoughts and posts around certain topics.

Let me highlight a couple of my favorites for you.

Continue Reading