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…

Get to Know the A.P.E. Writers…Sarah Carter

no responses
September 19, 2012

Sarah with students on a summer project!

[This is a series designed to bring you into the the unique A.P.E stories of each writer on this blog. We hope each one of you can find a little of your A.P.E story inside of one of us. Read the other stories]

When I came to college, I was on the edge of faith. Not only was I faced with an onslaught of options to define who I was in that new and broader world, but I was also constantly nagged with a question about the Christian life…”Is this it?” Beyond just a restless sense of dissatisfaction, I’ve come to realize that question is the root of the A.P.E. in me.

Joining InterVarsity as a student answered many questions for me about what a community following Jesus could look like. Diverse, faithful, and risky, the students in InterVarsity gave me a taste of what being on the faith journey with good friends looked and felt like. Studying abroad in South Africa for a year expanded my American view of God and church and working with unwed, HIV-positive mothers in the townships gave me an insatiable desire to find God in the forgotten places.

Following graduation, I joined InterVarsity staff and during my first summer I took a small team of students to the Los Angeles Urban Project. This 5-week program gave us all a Kingdom theology grounded in God’s heartbeat for justice, and His preferential focus and call to those on the margins. It was here that my question of “Is this it?” was resoundingly answered by “Yes. This is what the Kingdom is like…”

From then, I was hooked. I have never been able to let go of a Gospel that “comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable.”

At a conference in San Francisco that we eventually brought to San Diego called Jesus, Justice and Poverty, a young woman shared her story about working and serving with the poor. As a white girl from a middle-class background like myself, she echoed the words in my heart when at the end of her testimony she cautioned,

“Don’t think that I do this because I am a great person or have anything to offer. This time spent in this community has saved my life.”

Every chance I’ve had to experience Jesus’ love and action for the broken, the prisoners, the poor has helped me understand and love Him more, and has saved me from a life of selfishness, oppression, and frivolity.

Prophet – Apostle

Therefore, in my very limited knowledge of APEST, I have found myself identifying with the prophet-apostle, unable to escape a “sent” life unleashing the Kingdom of God in anyway I can, and challenging the Church to do the same. There are many debates on how to interpret a prophetic role. I love Abraham Heschel’s definition in his book The Prophets,

“The prophet was an individual who said No to his society, condemning its habits and assumptions, its complacency, waywardness, and syncretism. He was often compelled to proclaim the very opposite of what his heart expected. His fundamental objective was to reconcile man and God.”

Why does the Church need prophets today? In my interactions throughout the world, and in our own country, I have increasingly encountered an abject dismissal of Christianity because of how it has been lived out by Christians. Our good news has been lost as the Church has lost our grasp on the sacrificial, unconditional love of Jesus, who challenged the religious power, spent his time with sinners, and invited all people into an upside-down Kingdom. The prophets in our midst can call us back to that love.

For our truth to have any power, we must live out this message as well as speak it. Not only will it help our churches and our evangelism, but the world aches to see this Kingdom come, bringing healing, justice, and true reconciliation. This is the purpose of our life here on earth, and we must take hold of it completely, being willing to give anything in our life for it. Along the way, this good news will transform believers as well as non-believers, churches, communities, and entire systems, giving us that kind of life that never needs to ask the question, “Is this it?”

What about you? Have you been asking yourself “is this it?” lately?

Coming to terms … James Choung’s story

5 responses
September 18, 2012

I’m supposed to tell a coming-of-age story. Not about becoming a man, though. (There’s actually not too much to tell there, anyway.) Or even about becoming an apprentice of Jesus. (I do have a little more to tell on that one.) But instead, I’m supposed to write about when I knew I was an Apostle, Prophet or Evangelist.

It’s not an easy assignment.

First of all, any story I might write will sound self-congratulatory. Imagine me in an ornate robe, curved pipe in hand, slinking back into a velvet armchair, and I start to speak in a slow, cultivated accent: “In a time when boys sought to be men, and men dared to dream, I looked down at my already gnarled hands, pondering the futility of life. That is, until a voice from heaven cracked through my thoughts like a thunderclap: ‘James, from this day forward, you shall be called … Apostle!’” It assails against my Korean upbringing to crown myself like that. Even Lebron received much derision for tattooing “Chosen1” on his back, even though, whether you like him or not, he can play ball. How much less have I accomplished?

Plus, these titles represent a new language to me. I’m still not comfortable with any of them. Perhaps my Gen X sensibilities doesn’t want to get labeled. Or sometimes people who carry labels like these are, well, freaky. I imagine people in white suits, cock-strutting on stage, wiping the sweat off their brow with a handkerchief, screaming into their microphones. Or I envision people who wear sandwich boards picturing silhouettes of bodies falling into flames, proclaiming that the end is near. If these titles don’t feel antiquated, they seem to be, at least, on the fringe of religious excess.

So why am I writing for this blog, again?

Get to Know the A.P.E. Writers… JR Woodward

3 responses
September 17, 2012

I never thought of myself as a “frat boy, “ but I became one. My roommate was invited to a fraternity rush party, and he wanted a friend to come with him, so I tagged along. I met some cool guys there, and before I knew it, I was pledging a fraternity and eventually became a full-fledge brother.

Little did I know that it would be in the Fraternity that I would meet two brothers who would cause me to consider the claims of Christ. I was working my way through college and didn’t have the money to go to summer school and pay for an apartment at the same time. Two of my fraternity brothers offered me a place to stay for free, and it was their hospitality and lives as Christ followers that provoked me to read the gospels. Through reading the gospel I fell in love with and surrendered my life to Jesus.

I happened to be the Resident Assistant in my dormitory. It was my responsibility to care for and help the sixty residents that lived on my hall. I didn’t know very much scripture, but I did know that God loved the whole world. I did know that God wanted everyone to be with Him so much so, that He put on flesh and bones, lived among us, died for us, and rose again. I didn’t know much, but I knew that, and that was enough.

Get to know the A.P.E Writers…Eric & Stacy Rafferty

2 responses
September 12, 2012

Eric & Stacy (left) with a group of students from UNO

[This is a series designed to bring you into the the unique APE stories of each writer on this blog. We hope each one of you can find a little of your APE story inside of one of us. Read the other stories]

We didn’t plan on moving across the country from So Cal to Omaha, NE. We were happily going about business as usual in our third year of leading a campus ministry in the LA area. But four short months later we were driving over the Rocky Mountains in a giant yellow truck full of everything we owned in the world. We had said yes to God’s spontaneous call to plant an InterVarsity Christian Fellowship chapter in Omaha, NE and in a matter of weeks we were there.

How did that happen?

Every Corner

A few things happened. The funding for our previous ministry dried up inexplicably. A few intercessors started telling us things like, “God is leading you in a new direction. Get ready for a change.” We even had an experience similar to the apostle Paul’s Macedonian call (Acts 16:6-10). I was sitting in a Starbucks asking God where he was calling us, and if it might be the city of Omaha where I grew up. When I didn’t hear anything I opened my computer and found an email from a Dean at Creighton University and his wife. I had never met either of them, but they told me they’d been praying for 15 years for InterVarsity ministry to be planted in Omaha and asked who they had to contact to get someone out there. That felt like a pretty clear call.

But the call that really moved us to pick up everything and go was a deeper calling. It was a call to plant the gospel on every corner of a campus and to do it in a way that showed the city what the Kingdom of God was like. It was a call to an apostolic and prophetic vision.

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!

Listen to the interview

Get to know the A.P.E. Writers…Shawn Young

4 responses
September 6, 2012

Compelled By My Inner APE

When the Apostle Paul wrote,

“Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.” –1 Cor. 1:26-27

He must have been thinking of me. I’ve never been a stellar student, (I take months to read books), and have often felt outclassed by my intellectual friends. When it comes to charisma, I am about as magnetic as a wet walnut. I love watching people who can light up a party the minute they walk in the room—they are marvelous in action. I’m the opposite of them. I think I actually suck light out of the room when I enter. I’m a social “black hole”.

That is, until I meet someone who shares my fixation with the profound life and current genius of “God’s own fool”, Jesus. That’s when a connection starts to happen, and a creative but very practical set of gears start whirring in my head, and before I know it, I’m actually influencing someone with a stream of ideas for extending the gospel to more people. After 20 years in college ministry, a few hundred Kingdom leaders have experienced my “serious foolishness” and I’m honored to have played some part in their adventures.

I didn’t know it, but these were signs of my inner APE.

Get to Know the A.P.E. Writers…Jon Hietbrink’s Story

2 responses
September 5, 2012

I had never thought of myself as a planter, let alone an apostolic leader.

I came of age as a spiritual leader in something of a “mega” campus ministry at Central College. It was the late 90’s, and the seeker-sensitive movement was gaining traction. In the space of a few short years, our InterVarsity chapter had grown from about 100 to averaging over 400 students a week (over 25% of the campus). We had the best worship band on campus, thoroughly relevant teaching, a compelling vision to grow, and a culture of invitation–we soon outgrew our room and had to find a different place to meet. I remember the crowd gathered for my first talk as a staff with InterVarsity. The room sat 625, it was standing room only, and I realized I was way over my head!

Go Plant

Three years later, ministry was still humming along. Our chapter was running about 350 students, we had seen more than 40 students come to faith over the course of the year, and our community had hosted a 24.7 prayer room for an entire semester (over 2,500 hours). On the outside, we were one of the largest, most fruitful InterVarsity chapters in the country, but on the inside, I was frustrated, tired, and restless. Was any of this effort making a real difference in the lives of students? Were students actually being transformed or just entertained? How long could I keep running the machinery of this ministry?