One of the key tasks of leadership is to get people to buy in to the mission – especially talented people that are all over the place.
One of the sad things that I see is apostolic, prophetic, and evangelistic leaders written off too quickly because they don’t fit ministry contexts primarily driven by shepherding and teaching activities. Because they are not fitting in well, they get distracted, pull in different directions, and often times are not brought into the center of the mission.
From the book Primal Fire, By Neil Cole with Dezi Baker, Ed Waken, Phil Helfer and Paul Kaak
As we look back over church history, we might be tempted to ask where all the APEs have gone? The church has long been dominated by pastors and teachers (who are often seen as one and the same), but the apostles, prophets, and evangelists have largely been missing from the local church context. Ephesians 4 is clear that all the gifts come from Jesus and that all the gifts are necessary for the equipping of the saints for the work of service. Did He stop giving certain gifts because they were cast aside or not appreciated? No, all the gifts are given until the body is fully mature, so all the gifts are present in every generation, though they may not be evident.
2014 was another great year for the RTA blog and two major things happened. We redesigned our website and launched an ebook that is a 101 guide to APE ministry. If you haven’t checked out our FREE Ebook, please download it and read through it with your teams. It will help many of your people need better empowerment into their callings as A, P, or E!
Now without further ado, here are the top five read posts of 2014.
This is a guest post by Jason Gaboury. He is the Regional Director of New York/New Jersey with InterVarsity. He directs and oversees the work of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship to undergraduates in that massive area!
Our nation is reeling again. When a grand jury failed to indict officer Wilson of any charge in the shooting death of Michael Brown, frustration and anger exploded in the street. Screens of smart phones lit up with tweets, articles, and commentary. Comments fly. Frustration escalates. There are outbreaks of violence and riots. Policing, particularly the militarized form used to ‘control’ the crowd is scrutinized. Pain is in the air.
How should Christians respond?
This is a guest post by Jeff Vanderstelt. He is a pastor at Soma Communities, an A29 church in Tacoma, WA. He is leader of leaders and a coach and trainer for church planters. His background includes music, business management, working with youth, training youth workers in North America and Europe and starting new churches.
“This is Jeff, that pastor I told you about that is not like a normal pastor,” Amy said as she introduced me to Clay. Clay and Christie had children who attended our local elementary with Amy’s children. Amy had told us many times that she didn’t believe what we did. However, she regularly introduced us to her friends thinking they might be interested.
We’d lived in the neighborhood for three years with the intent of bringing good news to this community, and that the syllables and sentences were meant to be enfleshed. We started by hosting a cookout every Friday night. At first we were told people didn’t do that in our neighborhood. However, the kingdom of God has the power to break in and create a new culture. It happened. Dinner parties became more normative, as did other celebrations.
I did an in depth interview on my book, Beyond Awkward, over on Frank Viola’s blog.
Here is the first question from the interview:
Instead of asking, “what is your book about,” I’m going to ask the question that’s behind that question. And that unspoken question is, “how are readers going to benefit from reading your book?”
This is a guest post by Josh Howard. He works with Central Indian Christian Mission. I met him in grad school and he has a fire for the gospel. I was so impressed one day when he told me how they share the gospel with Hindu people I have wanted him to share this story for years with us! So here you go.
Christianese.
It gets us into trouble—especially in India.
“Let’s eat the body and blood of Jesus.”
“Jesus saves!”
“Hallelujah!”
What?
Have you ever thought about what this sounds like to people who aren’t familiar with the Christian culture?
My friend Gibby passed this along to me and it’s a fascinating video about wolves and what happend to Yellowstone when they intruded them in 1995. It’s remarkable the change they brought on almost every level.
A great question to ask, “What if we we re-introduced apostles, prophets, evangelists back into our ministry?”
What could it do to the ecosystem of the church?
[tentblogger-youtube ysa5OBhXz-Q]
Today is the last day to get the 4 FREE bonuses that I am offering anyone that buys my book this week.
This opportunity will close at midnight tonight. I am giving away four resources that I think will bless any ministry leader greatly. These resources in themselves are worth more than the price of the book.
This week, in an effort to let people know about my evangelism book, Beyond Awkward, different people are posting blogs I have written taking you deeper into the content of the book.
If you buy the book by Friday night, you also receive 4 FREE bonus resources from me.
Bob Roberts Jr. is one of those people and he has a blog post on his site from me about the confusion in knowing the role of Holy Spirit and our own role in evangelism.
If you are anything like me then you struggle with this tension too: Who is supposed to make things happen in evangelism, God or me?
When it comes to seeking conversion in our friend’s and families lives, we don’t want to be annoying and pushy, but we don’t want to sit back and wait forever either. Some of us are more temperamentally on the side of things that says, “I need to make something happen” while others of us are more the “If its going to happen then God is going to do it”.
But effective evangelism is more nuanced and partnered than this. Both statements above assume a black or white reality when God is inviting us into the blended.
