2014 | Release the A.P.E.

4 Lessons Learned on the Missional Journey

4 responses
April 13, 2014

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By Laura Hairston

About 4 years ago, my husband, Ryan and I heard the term ‘missional’ for the first time. For us, it was a completely new concept learning to live as missionaries in the places God had already placed us. Also, hearing of the 60% who would never walk through the doors of the church on our best Sunday where we were on staff. And, hey, I grew up a southern Baptist girl in Texas – all of this rocked my world, as I am sure you can imagine.

So, we made a huge paradigm shift and life change.

ReThinking Witness: Creating a Culture for Discipling Skeptics

no responses
April 7, 2014

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A blog post about James & my new ebook was written last week highlight a section of our book. If you would like to read an excerpt before downloading, now is your chance.

When it comes to discipling skeptics and seekers, we’ve found that it’s easier for believers to get involved in evangelism when you have an evangelistic community that supports their endeavors. Not only that, they’ll also be more effective. To do that, you need to address the culture of your faith community. How would you change a church culture so that it supported discipling of skeptics and seekers? Here’s a summary of five (download our new eBook, Discipling Skeptics and Seekers,for the full text) of six rhythms that can help:

Read the full article with the five rhythms here.

How to Use Five-Fold Ministry in Your Church

one response
April 6, 2014

Today at the Vineyard Underground (a church that I help lead with a team of other people) we talked about the five-fold ministry in Ephesians 4 and how to identify with one or more of the callings. You can find the documents I used below.

Awesome: How to Live Life to the Fullest

no responses
April 4, 2014

Last night I had the privilege of speaking to 300 plus students at UCLA about how to live life to the fullest. They have been talking with students on campus all week about what it means to live an awesome life.

The Five-Fold Symphony: How the Gifts Work Together

6 responses
March 31, 2014

By Jon Hietbrink

God gives us gifts to play a symphony, not a solo.

Every significant discussion of spiritual gifts^[1] in the New Testament is situated in the context of a complex system—we are “one body with many parts” designed to operate in symbiotic harmony with one another. The problem is that the way we’re taught to understand and express our spiritual giftedness can often be a very individualized and siloed experience—we’re taught to understand our personal gifts, but we’re left to wonder how those gifts actually work together in the way God intended.

Free Ebook: Discipling Skeptics & Seekers

no responses
March 30, 2014

I am excited to announce that James Choung and I (Beau) have created a new ebook and it releases today! It is short (about 3 chapters of a regular sized book) so it will be easy to read through and could be a great book to give a leadership team just starting out in evangelism.

You can get it for free here.

How to Stop Running Fruitless Events

no responses
March 28, 2014

Here is a great article from the InterVarsity Evangelism blog. If you are calibrating your church or campus ministry to be more fruitful evangelistically, please read this. It has great advice. Here are a few excerpts below and a link to the whole post.

That’s right. Sixty newcomers have a great evening listening to someone explain the message of Jesus, love what they hear, and spend a long time discussing it afterwards with their Christian friends. Somehow, though, not a single one becomes a follower of Jesus.

Very odd. It’s not like this was a tough audience. What went wrong?

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How To Welcome A Prophet

2 responses
March 27, 2014

Yikes!

This is a guest post by Brian Sanders. He leads an incredible church network in Tampa Bay called Underground. He is one of the most inspiring leaders I know. I love listening to him teach and I love the way he thinks about leadership, church planting, and missional communities. He is an apostolic leader through and through and you see this no better than in the way he is the chief architect for his network of churches. But he also comes hard with timely prophetic words. One of which was his last post you can find here.

Prophetic types might be the hardest to welcome because their gift is often unwanted. Even the most refined prophets are hard to hear. The history of, well, history—is that religious people don’t just fail to welcome prophets, we kill them. Here, then are some tips on how to welcome (and not kill) your prophets.

Love Not Angst: What is Fueling the Change You Bring?

6 responses
March 25, 2014

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By Jon Hietbrink

As A.P.E. leaders, a key part of our gifting is the ability to see things shift and be catalysts for change. By God’s grace, we’ve been equipped with the capacity to imagine new possibilities and lead others into new realities, BUT it’s critically important that we take stock of what’s fueling the change we bring.

Aging APES: What happens when you become the leader of the movement?

no responses
March 23, 2014

Like a fine wine, A.P.E leaders need to develop well over time.

[This is part of a series on “How Do I Develop an Apostolic Leader?” You can read the other posts here.]

By Chris Nichols

Here’s the typical pattern.

A young, dynamic, energetic, gifted leader steps up and creates new energy and evangelistic zeal to a new (or existing) ministry context. Exciting things happen and the work grows. New dimensions are added and the work expands until the old structures can’t contain it any longer. The ministry begins to look for leadership to somehow get this new ministry animal in control and help it become sustainable. It’s the crucial moment both for the ministry and for leaders.

Who are they going to look for to lead it into the next season of development?