As apostolic leaders we get fired up every time we meet students who want to step out in mission. We want to help them vision for what God could do in their lives and their friends’ lives. We want to go with them into their corners of the campus and help them plant the gospel there!

But we’ve become deeply aware during this season of ministry that we can’t do life on life discipleship with everyone. We long to see a generation of college students mobilized for mission on Nebraska campuses, but we’ve wrestled with the question of how we can empower every student we work with to grow in lives of missional discipleship.

Here’s our attempt at putting together a simple, reproducible tool to help students develop some rhythms of missional discipleship. There are three areas: Up, In, and Out and each one has a weekly and a daily practice. Almost none of this is original on it’s own. We’ve borrowed and combined ideas from Michael Frost, Alan Hirsch, and Mike Breen. Check it out:

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

Earlier this week, I wrote about one of the first temptations planters face–not starting because we assume that it’s not harvest time. In our journey as a region, we’ve had to confront this temptation again and again as we set foot on new campuses and take Jesus at his word that “the fields are ripe with harvest”!

But what happens after you’ve succeeded at starting something new? Then what?

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

I know, I know. You’re busy. You don’t have time to start something new.

Mandy and Jon at DMACC

You’ve got no shortage of things to do–people to influence, teachings to prep, and to-do lists to tackle. Our lives as leaders are full and we often function with little margin. To be sure, many of us need to get better at saying “no” and not jumping at every opportunity that presents itself, but at the same time, I’m convinced that there’s a temptation that operates in many of us as planters– the temptation of not starting.

This year has likely been the busiest of my life–our region is growing and opportunities abound for fruitful ministry on our current campuses. But we’ve committed ourselves to becoming a planting movement, and so as a way to kick-off the Fall, it felt important for me to prioritize an opportunity to start something on a new campus.

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

Apostolic leaders are born not made….

You can identify them, train them, guide them, and encourage them, but you can’t create them.

While you can and should encourage every believer to be committed to and engage in mission, we have to be comfortable with the idea that Paul was serious when he wrote that all God’s people have gifts and they are in fact different from one another.

Too many ministries fall into the trap of believing that being Missional is the same as being apostolic and that any person can be developed into an apostolic leader.  So they press and push people with leadership gifts into attempting an apostolic leadership role that neither fits them nor ultimately advances the mission.  Leaders who are not Apostolic find themselves forced into places where they will face certain failure. Trying to do so will not only harm the individual but also frustrate the purposes of whatever mission you are attempting.

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

I recently heard a story from the life of St. Francis of Assisi that captured an essential lesson for me in apostolic leadership. We need friends!

The story goes like this:

St. Francis

When St Francis said yes to God’s call to “rebuild” the Church, to care for the poor and sick, and to proclaim the gospel, he said no to a lot of other things. He said no to the previous direction of his life, he said no to a life of luxury and worldly success, and he said no to his parents, who were wealthy merchants. In fact he literally took the extravagant clothing off his back and gave them back to his father before he walked out into the streets.

And that was a choice he had to live with everyday. Everyday Francis would walk to the heart of his city to preach the gospel and care for the poor and sick. Everyday he would walk past his father’s shop and everyday he would face a barrage of insults and ridicule from his father as he walked by. “You’re wasting your life.” “You’ve turned your back on us.” “You are a fool.”

In the loneliness of his calling, it was difficult for Francis to keep his father’s words from taking root in his soul. Had he been a fool? Was he wasting his life?

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