Kimberly Culbertson is a Shepherd Teacher who recasts the story of identity and community. She has taught in the inner city of Chicago, founded a publishing company, and designed group life strategy for both Axis at Willow Creek Community Church and for the newly-launched Mission Church. These days she works as Forge America’s Director of Communication & Care, where she gets to help equip missional leaders all over America, and blogs at BeBeloved.com, where she journeys alongside some amazing women in pursuit of healthy identity. As wife to Ben, mommy to Jack, and family-by-choice to Christa, Zeke, Zekie, and Elli, she spends her energy to move her family toward a full life. Kimberly is a recovering approval addict, a paint brush loving workaholic, and a walking billboard for hope in all its many manifestations.

We Culbertsons are an adventurous family.

In just over a decade of marriage, we’ve moved into Chicago to teach at an inner-city high school, adopted some family-by-choice, started an independent publishing company and snarky Christian literary journal, moved to help plant a church, and then moved again to become apartment missionaries in Schaumburg, Illinois.

After this last move, we started to refer to ourselves as gypsies.

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Here is a great post from Linson Daniel’s blog I came across. Check it out

I have been discouraged to see many young men losing vision for their lives. I have observed this both on campuses and churches at which I speak. It seems that many men are caught in perpetual adolescence. They don’t want to move into the “major leagues”. Some of these men see themselves as 16-yr old boys, and consequently everyone treats them that way.

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You may be wondering, “What is the history of the missional church? How did all this start?” Well here is a great place to read more about it. Brad Brisco does a great job laying out the foundation on his blog. Here is an excerpt here.

The Influence of Lesslie Newbigin

Upon returning home to England in 1974 from missionary service in India for nearly 40 years, “Newbigin took up the challenge of trying to envision what a fresh encounter of the gospel with late-modern Western culture might look like.”[4] In the book Foolishness to the Greeks, he posed the question: “What would be involved in a missionary encounter between the gospel and this whole way of perceiving, thinking, and living that we call ‘modern Western Culture?”[5]

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Here is a great article from Neil Cole’s Blog contrasting leadership styles and vision. This is a response to Neil from a CEO…

In this piece, he contrasts movement-based leadership — a growing trend in the church — with organization-based leadership — the current model in most churches. As a business person and a self-styled visionary leader, I felt like arguing with Neil on a few of his recommendations. He wants leaders to empower their followers to develop many, individual visions, whereas I prefer leaders to develop and promote a single vision for an organization. He wants to move away from strategic (controlling) leadership whose goal is to direct the organization toward a predetermined outcome, and replace it with process (order-imposing) leadership that leaves the outcome undefined. I prefer the strategic view for both business and personal reasons (according to the MBTI system, I’m type ENTJ, the “field marshal”).

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The best sober dance party you have ever been to! Greek Conference!

This is a guest post by Ross Haymond. He is a third year fraternity student at Purdue University and he is part of the Greek InterVaristy movement there. He is a leader of leaders and his job is to help get new ministry started in fraternities and sororities on campus. He has been growing in his apostolic leadership and really come alive to the idea of planting and spurring that on in multiplicative ways. I asked him to write me up some of his thoughts from last weekends Greek Conference and how he is seeing God move in his leaders!

This past weekend I was able to attend Greek conference in Indianapolis. This is where over 700 Greek students came together to learn more about Jesus and dive into seeing exactly how being Greek and Christian can come together and be a witnessing community back at their campuses. This was my second conference I have attended and believe that this one had a way bigger impact on my than the first one.

Since the Greek conference that was held in 2012 I have grown immensely and stepped into some new roles within the Greek IV chapter at Purdue University. Since joining the leadership team I have been able to see students coming to Christ and share my experiences and stories with Greek students in a variety of environments.

So this weekend entering Greek conference 2013 I was approaching in a totally different way. This time I was really paying attention to what God was doing in the students and realizing that many leadership qualities can be found in a ton of different places. I am going to give a little taste of some of the leadership qualities I was able to see in other students this weekend.

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Here is an interesting article on the elimination of the apostolic calling from many churches. Charisma Magazine posted it and I found it on Linson Daniel’s twitter feed!

It is tragic when the vast potential of an individual or entity is limited or eliminated because there is no room for their gifts. In the case of a lion, when captured and encaged, it loses its aggressive roar because it is forced to be localized into the confines of a cage. It may be a lion, but it is no different from a house cat because, like a house cat, it no longer has to claim its territory and hunt to satisfy its hunger, and is content to stay confined within a building.

To me, all of this is related to the condition of the local church after it ceases to recognize the ministry and function of apostles. This results in cutting off the pioneering spirit and apostolic call to conquer and expand kingdom influence.

I don’t necessarily think people have to use the title of apostle; the function is what is most important.

Read the whole article here