Beau Crosetto

Beau is the author of "Beyond Awkward: when talking about Jesus is outside your comfort zone". He is called by God is to raise up and release people that want to start new ministries (apostolic) as well as people that want to share their faith (evangelists). He currently is the Director of Louisiana for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. Beau is married to Kristina and they have three kids: Noah (12), Sophia (10) and Wesley (8).

The Call to Fundraise…joys, challenges & more

12 responses
October 2, 2012

Rome - mosaic - miracle fishing from New Testament in basilica of st. Peters

Jesus talking with Peter about the great catch

Raising support is a huge part of any missionary, pastor, or A.P.E. leaders life. I would venture to say that especially for apostolic leaders that are either going to oversee the mission of an organization or leave and go start new things, support raising and trusting God for provision will be a huge part of their life and calling.

I would also say that apostolic leaders in the marketplace, many who are entrepreneurs, are going to have to raise capital and trust God for financing in many projects.

Apostolic leaders risk big by God’s leading and many times those risks are financial.

I hope this story below really encourages you to stay the course and follow God into your calling no matter the financial ramifications or amount of trust you have to exercise.

Challenges in Fundraising

In a previous post about God calling us onward, I explained the joys and challenges of leaving your life behind in one city to go to another. I laid before you the difficulty of moving to Los Angeles and losing $25,000 of support in our transition.

As I shared with people the vision, some moved on because they felt called to other things. That is totally understandable and expected.

One person who stopped supporting our mission asked me,

“when do you get too old for this?”

Ouch.

After a number of people leaving our team, and not having any new people say yes to funding our mission to LA Greeks, it was hard many days to keep the faith and believe in our calling. As strong as you want to be and no matter how much you know you are called and heard from God, this kind of repsponse can be discouraging.

On my worst days I needed people to remind me of my call and not to give up as I dreamt about other jobs.

On my best days, I was full of faith, reminding my self that I do not live by sight but by faith and that God would provide what we need. Just hang in there and keep doing what you are doing. Be faithful in the little things every day.

However, the reality at the end of every day the last three months was this:

We were in LA now: a more expensive city, a bigger ministry, and more money to raise.

Because I took a director position I wasn’t just responsible to oversee my own support, but the other staff in the ministry and all the operating costs as well.

Breakthrough in Funding

Well just last Friday I got a game changing call!

Continue Reading

Check out the book winners! “Creating a Missional Culture”

one response
September 30, 2012

That was a fun competition everyone! I really enjoyed reading all of your comments, tweets and facebook posts! Thanks for participating and we will definitely do it again! This month to be exact!

Alan Hirsch has kindly shipped me five HARD BACK copies of “The Permanent Revolution” that he and Tim Catchim have written. We will be doing another competition and giving those away as well later this month! I Can’t wait!! make sure to subscribe here and stay connected with us!

Here are the winners and what they wrote!

Brian Chung – “Awesome Book!” (shared on his facebook timeline)

Michael Stalcup – “I’m working toward building up a missional community at Claremont McKenna College, especially trying to plant a group in the heart of CMC’s party culture. Already seeing God do some amazing things and I want more! And I want this book. :)”

Chris Land – He is our twitter winner and simply tweeted out the contest 🙂

Jorge Bermudez – “Missional is a way of living your faith wherever you are, intentionally and with passion.”

Kyle – “Missional means having a purpose-mindset to reach others near or far for the sakeof the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Good job guys! You will love the book! And sorry there aren’t any lady winners! I promise this was completely random 🙂 email me and I will ship them off to you!

When God calls us onward…

5 responses
September 25, 2012

Because the fundamental core of an apostle is “sentness” there will be times in the life of this person that God calls them onward. It is in the very fabric of apostolic leaders to push forward the “sent” nature of the church, and often times that is modeled by them personally.

Apostles are the first to leave, the first to break new territory, the first to go to new ground, the first to say,

“we have to take that land!”

They are obsessed with the “sentness” of God that Jesus models for us in John and charges us with in Acts.

Apostles are the first to leave, the first to break new territory, the first to go to new ground

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Well, this very year as I have been leaning into my apostolic gifting more fully than ever, God called me onward to Los Angeles.

I won’t ever forget last February, when I was preaching at Greek Conference, how God spoke to me in the midst of 640 students,

“I want you to go to LA and make this happen with me.”

I didn’t have full understanding of His voice and calling in that moment, but I did know God was speaking to me at this conference with 43 schools, and 640 students represented. None were from LA.

LA has 17 campuses with Greek Systems, and Greek InterVarsity was doing nothing intentionally to reach them! It was at this Greek Conference, that God stirred in me big time the sent nature of Himself and He essentially said to me,

“I want you to go. Let’s go do this thing together!”

Free Book Give Away: “Creating a Missional Culture”

27 responses
September 23, 2012

Who doesn’t like a free book???

Well I am happy to announce that I have 5 copies of “Creating a Missional Culture” by JR Woodward to give away to you this week!

Big Thanks to InterVarsity Press for giving me these books for you! They are helping us get the word out about JR (one of our writers!!) and our blog!!

This is a great book that really helps you lean into and get familiar with the Five-Fold Ministry laid out for us in Ephesians 4.

JR calls them “Equippers” and he urges us to assemble our churches around the five equippers and shows us how to do this inside the book!

It is a great read!

Here is how to enter yourself for the drawing…

The Best Way to Wake Up

one response
September 21, 2012

Geoff (left) and his fraternity brothers

[Hint: it’s not with Folgers in your cup!! make sure to read the testimony at the bottom!]

Jesus says in John 4,

34“My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. 35Do you not say, ‘Four months more and then the harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. 36Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. 37Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. 38I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”

There is no greater joy for any believer in my opinion than seeing someone accept Christ. Jesus talks about the food of the harvest and that is what sustains Him.

As an evangelist, this is the kind of thing I live on too. It is what motivates me and gets me up and out of bed every day.

This week was a hard week for me. I just felt a bit more lonely and down than usual and even doubtful about my call at times.

But then I woke up to this email yesterday!

Beer Pong, Fraternity, & Jesus

11 responses
September 16, 2012

[This post is part of the “Non Conventional Places A.P.E. Giftings Show Up” series. Read the rest of the posts here!]

A few Thursdays ago as I was prayer walking the Greek system with a student who is helping me to launch Greek InterVarsity on campus at USC. While on the walk, we decided to stop into his fraternity and say hi.

Some of the guys were playing beer pong and invited me back later to play with them at their party late that night. I don’t drink with students, but I did want to play beer pong and incarnate my self into this world of theirs for the purpose of building relationship and hopefully a great spiritual conversation. I also wanted to model for Alex what evangelism looks like. He lives in that house and has the opportunity for ministry every day.

We went back that night and had a blast! The party was bumping and they had 3 tables set up and people were going at it! My biggest takeaway in the first hour was that I surprised the heck out of them with how good I was at this game!

As I was leaving the night, I walked passed one of the guys that was my partner that night. He asked me what year I was and of course I said, “I am not a student, I am friends with Alex and I am a Christian minister on campus”. Like it always happens, he was very surprised and it was a little AWKWARD! But I simply asked him in that moment, “Are you curious about Jesus at all?” (Remember I spent some time with him that night having fun and building trust). He actually responded that he was curious.

So I sat down on that fraternity porch. It was loud, crazy and with many around we talked about his journey with faith and his soul entering college until 12am that night. He told me that he was looking for away to get back with God, and I told him, “I bet you didn’t expect God to send you a minister as a beer pong partner tonight?!”

Empowering Evangelists…InterVarsity’s Ignite Conference

8 responses
September 13, 2012

An ordinary every day student being equipped to go start something new at InterVarsity Southern California’s Ignite Conference

[I love training others in evangelism, and I do it for churches and InterVarsity Chapters all the time. If you would like me to come to your church or ministry and facilitate evangelism training, please email me to set up a time]

This weekend at our Regional Evangelism Conference “Ignite” I watched at least 500 students get vision, training and empowerment around the apostolic, prophetic and evangelistic giftings.

A word was preached imploring us to live by faith and start the new things God is calling us to go do. There were multiple seminars on topics like “Justice and evangelism” “Turning every day conversations into spiritual ones” “Starting new things with God” and “how to start prayer movements that empower evangelistic culture”.

I watched them hear from God, get trained and make plans to do what God asked them to do. I couldn’t help but think of who will be coming to faith on campus this year. I was reminded of this tweet I got last year just days after my seminar I led on spiritual conversations.

This tweet and this conference brought joy to my heart as I knew we were raising up more A.P.E. leaders. We are bringing a more complete and full picture of Jesus to each other, the campus and the world.

It brought together what Paul makes plain in Ephesians 4:1-16

Releasing the five-fold ministry is what shows the full expression of the church, and therefore Jesus. Without all five, we are showing just a shadow of who He is.

Unfortunately what I got to witness this weekend is not the norm in the church as many subscribe to a belief that the A.P.E. is not for today or if it is, it is only for leaders.

Thankfully this ordinary woman didn’t believe that “only a church leader could do this” and she got to experience the best joy in the world…seeing a friend come to faith because of her partnership with God.

**UPDATED at 8:55pm**

I just received this facbook update on our InterVarsity site. This is a report from just this last weekend.

Here’s a praise: a frosh who came to Ignite was physically healed.

During the healing prayer time, God stretched her shortened leg (from a ski accident and birth defect combo) 1-1.5 inches. So her legs are now almost the same length. Her back and hip problems are now clearing up. God also stretched her faith–as you might imagine.

She’s testifying at large group tonight. We’ll see what our community thinks of physical healing miracles. Thank you, Lord, for your mercy!

Interpreting Ephesians 4: The Five-Fold Giftings

19 responses
September 11, 2012

There is such a better view of the Kingdom of God and of the church when we are releasing all five gifts

[This post is part of the A.P.E. Theology series. Read the rest of the posts here!]

When it comes to interpreting Ephesians 4 and the five-fold giftings mentioned in verse 11, it is important to know that two main lines of thinking has crept up over the years.

1. Apostles and Prophets were just for the founders of the church (the 12)

2.The five fold ministry does exist today but only for leaders in the church. Not for everyone.

So if you come from a camp that believes one of those thought lines, or are going to a church with these beliefs, you are not going to hear teaching on the five –fold gifting much at all. If it doesn’t exist today, point one, then why teach on it? If it is only for leaders, then if it is talked about at all, it will be talked about with those leaders. Not with the common man or woman in a common place like Sunday morning worship.

This is just a shame and an inaccurate reading of Ephesians 4. It leaves us at 40% capacity and only empowering shepherds and teachers with a tiny bit of evangelism sprinkled in.

[I will write another article about these beliefs and unpack a bit more where they come from…stay tuned]

But for now, let me present to you an alternative way to read Ephesians.

Facing a trial? What gives you strength?

no responses
September 9, 2012

John Wesley Preaching in Ireland. (c) John Wesleys House & The Museum of Methodism; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

[This is part of the A.P.E. Pitfalls series. Check out the other posts here.]

If you are going to be a person who starts new things for God, takes any kind of risk, or wants to prohpetically call the church out into things on the horizon, you will face trials, rejection and at times marginalization.

What will you do at that point?

Well, Here is something that might help you!

John Wesley

Lets take a look into the journal of John Wesley!

He is what I would call the epitome of an Apostolic leader…He started new things, led movements of people and organized mission around the common person as well as anyone… He was the father of Methodism.

Often times we make the apostolic leader the sexy thing, when in fact it is often very hard to be called by God in this way and it comes with great costs. Often times much failure and rejection is part of the resume.

Take a peak at Wesley’s journal…

Release the A.P.E. Radio Interview

2 responses
September 7, 2012

[This post is part of the A.P.E. Theology series. Read the rest of the posts here!]

Here is an interview I got to do on a radio show in Seattle on August 4th, the second day of the blog! The show is called “Live From Seattle” and it is hosted by Doug Bursch. He started following us on twitter and asked me on to the show. I can tell Doug is a pretty cool dude and I can’t wait to meet him. He gets the APE.

Pretty cool huh?

This interview is 17min long and it helps you grab the intent of the blog and what we are trying to do with it.

He asks me questions like

who is this blog for?
How do you define Evangelistic?
How do you define Prophetic?
Do you have any pharisees on the blog? Yes, he asked me that!! But he was joking…listen to what I say!
What is our big dream for the blog…what do we hope to see happen here?

Check it out!