196. The Difference between Discipleship and Ministry

As I talk with various leaders, I am finding that there is typically a misunderstanding about the difference between ministry and disciple making. Describing the difference between disciple making and ministry is kind of like describing the difference between a square and a rectangle. A square can be a rectangle, but a rectangle is not necessarily a square. They both have four right angles and four sides, but only the square has sides of equal length. Applying this to ministry and discipleship, you can do ministry without making disciples, but you cant make disciples without doing ministry.

Think about it like this....Jesus could have taught every sermon and parable in his ministry without the 12 disciples being around. In fact, Jesus could have healed, spoke truth to the Pharisees, died for our sins, and rose form the dead...all by himself.  Jesus could have had a dynamic ministry without ever discipling anyone.

So why invite 12 guys to follow you around and give them access to your life? The answer is this: Jesus wanted to build more than a dynamic ministry, he wanted to build a movement. In order to build a movement that outlives the founder, you have to make disciples. Ministry is not enough.  Some churches have dynamic ministry going on, which is great! God will move in and among his people when we obediently serve people. But without disciple making, it will never be become a movement, and you will likely be limited in the amount of ministry you will be able to do as well. After all, who is going to lead those ministries? Who will lead new ministries? Who is going to minister to the people you reach through those ministries? Without making disciples, you will not be able to develop leaders, and without leaders, ministry can only go so far.

However, if you make disciples, then you will get more ministry, and the people who come into the orbit of that ministry will come into contact with people who can make disciples, and this will eventually lead to more ministry and missional ventures in the long run. Sounds simple, sounds cute and trite, but don't be fooled. This is really how it works.

195. The False Dichotomy between Leadership and Servanthood

It is becoming increasingly popular to create a false dichotomy between leadership and servant hood. As the logic goes, having an organizational structure that identifies someone as "the leader" is somehow tyrannical and loaded down with exorbitant pitfalls. Truly spiritual people and organizations use "mutual submission" and "team based models" of leadership, as the logic would ensue.

First, let me say that most of the blogs and talks I hear on this topic are, at best, looking to shape leadership around the sacrificial, servant based, kenotic (emptying of self) values of the cross outlined in Philippians 2. We have all experienced the ego-centric leader, power hungry and addicted to prominence. However, I think that the term leadership is broad and often eludes simplistic definitions, especially when we factor in the dynamics of organization and cultural context. I will not offer a definition of leadership here, I'll leave that to the exploration of the reader. I will however ask one question that I think deserves attention and may have the potential to draw this kind of false dichotomy out into the open and expose it for what it is. The question is this:

If you were to ask any of the 12 apostles during Jesus' ministry who "the leader" was, what would they say?

There is no doubt that they would have said. They all, without question, would have said Jesus. Jesus was "the leader" of the 12, and the 12 knew it. This was not just a Jesus thing, it was a rabbi thing. In other words, it was the nature of a rabbi-disciple relationship. There is a leader and a follower.

This may at first seem overly simplistic, but facing up to this reality that existed between Jesus and the 12 leads me to ask another follow up question:

When Jesus told the 12 to go and "make disciples", wasn't he telling them to now become "the leader" with a potentially new group of followers?

The answer in my mind is an obvious "yes." If discipleship is fundamentally about imitation, then when I am being discipled by another person, I am choosing to follow that person for a season. It is an incubation period where I learn how to be a leader by following a leader. If I am imitating the one I am following, then by definition I am imitating a leader...no? This means disciple making is fundamentally about leadership training. When it comes time for me to expand my role from one who is being discipled to one who is also making disciples, then I will, by definition, be "the leader" of those who are following me.

The problem with most discussions about leadership is that they often don't factor in the equation of disciple making. An organizational structure that includes "the leader" does not have to be tyrannical or abusive, or un-spiritual. If so, Jesus would have been all those things. No, leadership can be exercised in such a way that the power and authority afforded to the leader can be stewarded for the empowerment of those who are following "the leader." This is how Jesus did it, and he asks us to imitate him. This is why I think that the practice of making disciples is axiomatic to any discussion leadership.

I have been on a church planting team in Montgomery Al that was organizationally structured with "the leader" and other "co-workers" who synergized around the over arching vision and values of "the leader." We had staff meetings, argued, debated, shared perspectives, and sometimes hotly disagreed. At the end of the day though, when we could not agree, something had to give. As naughty as this may sound, "someone had to make a decision." And this fell to "the leader." We trusted his heart, as well as his openness to us, and the Spirit. If we didn't, we would not have "followed" him as a leader. He was accountable to us in areas of character, as we all were to each other. How could we not be? We shared our lives together and were in close enough proximity to each other to notice character flaws and address them when necessary.

This is not to say leaders don't need accountability structures and communal processes to season their leadership. This is deserves another blog post, admittedly. The point I am making here is that we don't have to throw the baby out with the bath water. What we need to do is learn how to lead as Jesus led his disciples. We can not improve on what Jesus did. He called people to follow him, trained them, and empowered them to become leaders themselves. He gives us the authority to do the same thing (Matthew 28:18-20). Only now, it is not just "follow me." Our fallen nature requires an exception clause: as I follow Christ.(I Cor 11:1) Our leadership is held to the same standards (if not higher) as those who follow us. We all follow Christ, but not all are making disciples. Those who are making disciples both follow Christ and lead others in doing so, only to make other disciple makers, which is to say, by definition, leaders. 

194. Review of Multiplying Missional Leaders by Mike Breen

Wisdom is demonstrated in not just knowing what to focus on, but  also knowing what not to focus on. This kind of wisdom only comes from years of practice in one’s field. It takes experimentation, failure and a track record of success and fruitfulness to develop this kind of wisdom. Not many leaders have been willing to pay that price.  

Mike Breen’s new book, Multiplying Missional Leaders: From half-hearted volunteers to a mobilized Kingdom force, offers us the rare opportunity to peer into the mind of a wise, seasoned missional leader. For the past 20 years, Mike has poured his life into developing Biblical tools and strategies that effectively train leaders to reproduce themselves while pioneering missional communities. The global movement of disciple making, leadership development and missional communities that he now leads is essentially the culmination of a lifetime of experimentation and unquestionable fruitfulness both in Europe and the U.S.

Reading his new book is like lifting up the hood of a car and seeing what the engine of a missional movement looks like. Concepts in the present day missional movement that tend to be stand alone topics are integrated and brought into meaningful relationship with one another.  Topics like the fivefold giftings of APEST in Ephesians 4, the role of leaders in defining culture, the need for both discipleship and leadership, the criteria for selecting and training new leaders, the role of of an oikos(household) for leaders of leaders, the importance of developing both character(who leaders are) and competence(what leaders can do) in leaders, as well as an organizational process (pipeline) for training leaders, are all woven together in complimentary ways that show how each part plays a role in moving towards a leadership culture. Finding a book that brings all of this together is a rare find indeed.

While Mike gives us a broad view of the essential components for multiplying missional leaders, you can rest assured that the principles he lays out are not grounded in theory or trendy new speak.  No, this book has been written by a seasoned leader who has extracted these principles from scripture and enacted them on the ground in the real context of a post-christian culture. Mike Breen has focused the wisdom and success of the last 20 years into a rich, yet profoundly simple, format that brings together both the principles of scripture and the wisdom of experience into an integrated, systemic, process oriented approach to leadership development.

 All in all, this book will help bring clarity to areas of leadership that, up until now, have remained foggy, fragmented, and overly fixated on either or thinking. It brings a refreshing kind of wisdom that can only be found in seasoned practitioners who have walked the line and done the hard work of experimenting, learning from failure, and crafting their hard earned insights into useful principles that can serve the next generation of leaders. Save yourself some time, heart/head ache, and unnecessary failure and read this book. You, and those you lead, will be glad you did.

193. Apostolic Ministry and the Entrepreneurial Orientation Part 1

In our book The Permanent Revolution, me and Alan Hirsch spend a bit of time taking about the entrepreneurial orientation of apostles. The staple quality of entrepreneurs is what sociologists call "opportunity recognition." That is, entrepreneurs have an innate ability to recognize opportunities for either making money or advancing a cause. Where some see deficits, entrepreneurs see an opportunity for development. Where some see gaps, entrepreneurs see opportunities for growth. Where some see vacancy, entrepreneurs see opportunities for ventures. You get the idea.

Another staple quality of entrepreneurs is their ability to take risks. Entrepreneurial people have a certain tolerance for risk and ambiguity. They like the idea of launching out into the unknown and get a unique satisfaction out of making it to the other side, despite the odds. The destination sometimes is just as exciting as the journey itself.

As "sent ones", apostles have a God given drive to launch out and start new things. They thrive on the idea of taking risks and pioneering new ventures into unknown territories. This is a gift, one that should be celebrated and embraced.

However, like all giftings form God, they have to be exercised under the Lordship of Christ and go through a process of maturing and filling out. One of the common mistakes that immature apostles often make is responding to opportunity without a clear word from the Lord to do so. Just because you recognize an opportunity does not mean you should respond to the opportunity. On any given day, I will be driving through my city and think of several businesses I could start. I could list off to you the restaurants that are not in my city, the services not being offered in my city by various vendors and companies in other cities. I will see a trailer park and think, I could probably start a church there...who could I get to do that with me. I will drive by a huge city park with about 15 soccer fields while a soccer tournament is going on and think, I need to start investing my time in that people group, I know I could meet a person of peace there. On, and on, and on it goes. Sometimes it is just fun to play with the idea in my head about how it could all  look, and then sometimes it is quite frustrating to me because I become disoriented with all the opportunity that surrounds me.

I want to share something about a word the Lord gave me about two months ago. The previous plant I was involved folded about 9 months ago partly because of team issues. As a result, me and my wife are in transition right now and waiting on the Lord to reveal to us what he wants us to do next. I was in my bed one night about two months ago lamenting to God about how long he was taking to reveal "whats next" for us. As I wined and complained, the Lord directed my attention to the story of Peter walking on the water. I began to meditate on this story and I felt like the Lord said something to me. It was a word of rebuke. He said that I needed to learn from Peter and start asking permission before I step out of the boat. As I began to abide on this word for the next month, the Lord began convicting me about how quickly I moved into this previous plant and did not spend enough time observing, reflecting and listening to the Father's voice on whether or not I need to move forward into this particular opportunity. We did have team issues that ultimately led the team to disband, but I the Lord spoke a clear word to me that I did not ask his permission to move forward into this opportunity. I just moved forward and asked God to bless it.

So how do you know if you should respond to an opportunity? This is really important question for apostles to engage in.  As I reflected on the story of Peter walking on the water, there were three particular elements to Peter stepping out of the boat. Recognize Opportunity, Request Permission, Respond Accordingly.

Here are some of my reflections on these three components.

1. Recognized the Opportunity: He saw Jesus walking on the water and thought to himself, I want to do that too! Jesus is on the water, why don't I join him there!

2. Request Permission: Peter said to Jesus, "If its you, tell me to come out to you on the water." Peter did not just assume Jesus wanted him out on the water with him. Just because we see the Lord working some where, doesn't necessarily mean he wants us to join him there. When we recognize an opportunity, we should first ask permission form the Lord to "step out of the boat."

3. Respond Accordingly: Peter heard one word form Jesus...Come. That's all he needed. The important thing to see here though is that he is responding to the voice of the Lord, not to the opportunity itself. Just because you recognize an opportunity doesn't mean you should respond to the opportunity. What if Jesus would have said "It is me, but don't come out. I will meet you on the shore. Keep your seat in the boat with the rest of the team." My guess is that Peter would have stayed in the boat. But then again, this is Peter we are talking about here :-)

So the proper flow is to move from recognizing an opportunity to requesting permission, and then to launching out. It would look something like this.

If apostles are "sent ones" then it implies someone else is doing the sending. There is an actor external to the apostle that is directing the apostle towards a specific opportunity. The apostle is not the one who sends themselves, it is God who sends the apostle. So in essence, apostles respond to the voice of the Lord, not to the opportunity itself. If we bypass "requesting permission" and go straight to "responding" then our apostolic ventures will take on a certain "opportunistic" feel to them. Instead of being led by the Spirit, we will find ourselves being led by our own cravings for adventure and novelty. Mission then becomes a tool for self-actualization and not a mans by which we worship-fully offer our world back to God.

Paul demonstrates this process of learning how to respond to the Spirit in Acts 16 when he is trying to figure out which direction he should be going for his next venture. The direction the Spirit gave in this instance was more indirect than direct. The Spirit directed them by forbidding them to go certain places, but He did not actually give them a direct word saying "Go to Macedonia." Instead, Paul had a vision of a man pleading with him saying "Come over to Macedonia and help us." Its interesting how Luke records the decision making process that they used. A vision comes to the principal leader of the apostolic band, but then Luke says we sought to go to Macedonia "concluding" that the Lord has called us to preach the gospel to them.  The impression I get here is that they deliberated on it and had to make a judgement call on what the Spirit was up to. The Spirit was closing all the doors around them, and then a vision of an opportunity in Macedonia came to Paul. The point of the story, among other tings, is that Paul was being sensitive the leading of the Spirit here. He was a man on the move, but he had a desire to move in step with the Spirit, not in step with his own agenda.

So what about you? Have you ever moved to quickly on an opportunity without seeking to hear form the Lord and get His permission? Next pot we will look at the implications of Peter's walking on the water, sinking, and coming back to the boat for apostolic ministry. 

192. Apostolic Ministry and Team Formation Part 3

So far, in the last two posts on Apostolic Ministry and Team Formation (part 1, part 2) we have looked at Acts 1 and 2 for indicators about the importance of unity for teams that are doing frontier work. Roughly speaking, the 11 apostles had the same vision, values, vehicles and vocabulary...the three generative building blocks of any culture. In order to keep this level of unity, they could not just add anyone to the team. the new team member needed to have alignment with those 4 V's. unity in these four areas were critical for the viability of the team and its missional venture.

So where did they get this idea of unity from? Is it something they crafted on their own, or are they imitating the strategy of their original leader, Jesus?

Ironically enough, Jesus modeled and taught this concept of unity to them at the very beginning of His own ministry. In Mark 3, Jesus goes up to a mountain and invites 12 disciples to join Him as a team. After he chooses them, he goes with them into a nearby house to get their grub on. The crowds sniff Jesus out once again and interrupt their meal together.

Jesus' family catches wind that that He has selected 12 disciples to form a special group, and they say, literally, "he has lost his mind!" His family starts treking up to Capernaum, but before they make it to the house where Jesus and the 12 are staying, the Pharisees show up and claim He is casting out demons by the power of Beelzebub. Jesus gives a discourse on unity exposing the fallacy of their accusation. Once His family arrives, some of the people in the house alert Jesus that his family is standing out side. After they traveled all that way, you would think Jesus would give them an ear...but he doesn't. Instead, he looks around at those in the house with him and essentially says "This is my family."

There are two things I want to pay attention to in this section of scripture that I think throw some light on how Jesus provided a model to the 12, from the very beginning, that unity is important for team members who are doing pioneering work.

1. Chemistry: Notice how Mark says that Jesus called to Him "those He himself wanted." This means Jesus chose people whom He had a personal preference for. The basic gist here, I think, is that Jesus liked the guys He chose. He wanted to be around them, and they wanted to be around Him. This is really important when it comes to teams doing frontier ministry together. There needs to be a certain level of chemistry between the leader and the team, as well as the team members themselves. Jesus chose two sets of brothers you know (Peter & Andrew, James & John.)  This should say something to us about the need for personal connections among the team members.

2. Location: This is more subtle, but I think it is key to the interpretation of the text. Mark says in 3:19 that the discourse on unity and the teaching on extended-family all takes place in a house. Now this would be peripheral to me if I didn't know that the word for "house" in the text is "oikos"....the N.T. word for what we would call an extended family of anywhere from 12- 70 people (12 being in the incubation phase.) Jesus teaching on unity is taking place in a physical structure (house) where the relational structure of oikos, extended-family, orbits. This plays into the next observation.

3. Entities: Jesus mentions 3 entities that can not stand if they are divided: kingdom, house, individual (Satan.) If we are looking at scale here, kingdom is macro, house is "meso" and the leader would be micro, in this setting it is Satan. At the very base level, the leader has to have unity within themselves. As James would allude to, he can not be a double minded man who is, by default,  unstable in all his ways. The leader of the oikos provides the point of reference around which the oikos/household can unify. A collection of oikos/households can eventually grow into a "kingdom."

4. Extended family: Jesus essentially says that his family is comprised of those who are seeking the kingdom. What a great thing to establish in the beginning of his ministry, right at the forefront of selecting his team to be with him and travel around with him. Jesus frames the nature of the community that is beginning to coalesce around him as an extended family/oikos/household.

Isn't it interesting that Jesus chose 12 guys to function as a team and the very first "sermon" he gives is on unity, followed by a description of the community as extended family, and it is taking place in a house (oikos).....hmmmm....I cant help but connect the dots here myself. Unity, Team, Oikos, House...it all adds up to a strategical moment for Jesus to, in his typical creative fashion, kill several birds with one stone. Both the location and the content of what Jesus says combine to give a graphic portrayal of what Jesus is expecting from his new team and how he understands the nature of their relationships with him and each other. They need to function like a household, like an extended family with a level of unity that can resist the pressures of the adversary.  

It is not by accident that Mark, in the composition of his gospel, affords literary proximity to Jesus' teaching on unity and the extended family with Jesus' selection of the 12...it is literally in the same textual block of his gospel. (It precedes his next teaching block of the parables on the kingdom in Mark 4.) As the first gospel, Mark is looking to resource the discipleship and mission of the early Jesus movement. In one chapter, he does what all story tellers do: he compresses multiple themes into one story that provides a dense survey of necessarily principles related to discipleship, mission, teams and extended family/oikos.

Jesus knew what he was doing, and so did Mark as he recorded it. We have here, in Mark 3, the founding event that would later resource the 12 as they dealt with team issues and the need for unity at the beginning of the venture. Like every good leader, Jesus began with the end in mind. he did things in such a way that his followers could look back on their experience and draw valuable principles to help them move into the future.

Well, this concludes my thoughts thus far on the need for unity in apostolic bands launching out to do pioneering work. The frontier is not easy. It is filled with challenge and adversity. Don't go into the frontier with just anybody. Go there with people you have chemistry with, people who have a sense of unity and alignment around the Four V's of vision, values, vocabulary and vehicles. Covenant together around these four things and lean on that covenant to get you through hard times. It is the "oneness" of covenant that makes kingdom work possible.

191. Apostolic Ministry and Team Formation Part 2

In the previous post, Apostolic Ministry and Team Formation Part 1, we looked at the qualifications Peter laid out in Acts 1 for adding a new team member to the ministry and apostleship of the "12."
Essentially, the qualifications deal with exposure. The new team member needed to have been exposed to the ministry of Jesus in its entirety.  They needed to have observed Jesus from beginning to end. Following Jesus all that time while he was coming in and going out among them meant they would have been exposed to Jesus' mission, message, methods and miracles, the essential components that propelled the ministry of Jesus into becoming a movement. Most likely, Mathias and Barsabbas were a part of the 72 that Jesus sent out in the limited commission.

Their exposure to the ministry of Jesus form beginning to end is positioned them to experience unity on the team. The unity they had as a team was not based just on feelings or affiliation. Because they had been exposed to the ministry of Jesus from beginning to end, they were essentially grounded in what Mike Breen refers to as the 4 V's of culture: Vision, Values, Vocabulary and Vehicles. Here is a brief break down of the 4 V's:

Vision: "This is where we are going."
Values: "This is why we are going there."
Vocabulary: "This is how we will talk about it as we go there."
Vehicles: "These are the patterns, processes, and procedures that will help us get there."

If we apply these 4 V's to Jesus' ministry, it could look something like this.

Vision: The kingdom of God
Values: God loves people
Vocabulary: The parables
Vehicles: Discipleship, mission, extended family (oikos), prayer etc.

I am ofcourse painting with a really broad brush stroke here, but you get the idea. The 11 apostles had a level of unity in these areas that, say, James the brother of Jesus, could not have. James was not with JEsus from the begining, so, his exposure to Jesus was limited.

Unity around the 4 V's on a team is essential whether on the frontier or back at the settlement. One reason they call the settlement the "settlement" is because these 4 V's have literally, already been "settled." At every settlement is a core group of leaders who covenant together around these 4 V's in one way or another. This is what allows the settlement to stay together. One key difference between the settlement and the frontier however is that not everyone at the settlement has to have full buy in to the 4 V's in order for the settlement to succeed. Every settlement has a core of leaders who guard (and sometimes propagate) the 4 V's through out the organizational culture. In addition to this inner core, there is an outer ring of people who do not necessarily have buy in to the 4 V's. Some in the outer ring do not even know about them. Still some do not even care about them! Yet the settlement still keeps going because there are a group of leaders who embody and guard those four generative components of the organizational culture.

Things are different on the frontier. There is no outer ring of people in the start up phases of frontier work. When doing frontier work, it is the job of the leader(s) to provide clarity in these 4 V's for those who will be joining the team. The pioneering team is a micro-settlement. They carry with them the DNA of the 4 V's that will lay the cultural foundation for the first extended family on mission. The leader(s) say "This is where we are going (vision), and this is how we are going to get there (vehicles)." The way the leader(s) talk about the vision and vehicles when questioned by potential followers will be a starting place for establishing the vocabulary and uncovering the values that steer the pioneering venture. The initial leaders of the pioneering venture are the initial core leaders that are essentially the custodians of the culture that will be seeded and embodied into the founding systems of the plant. There is no outer ring, the leaders are both the inner and the outer ring, making them the first ecclesia to be planted and propagated in the new field. If there is no unity at the core, there will be no unity period. And Jesus was really clear when he said a house (oikos) divided against itself can not stand.

When a team has clear, definitive unity around the 4 V's....watch out! This is a recipe for kingdom breakthrough! Listen to what Luke tells us in Acts 2:1-4. 

"When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance."

The word for "one accord" in 2:1 is homothymadon. The word picture is a smoldering conviction, much like an ember or coal in a fire. So question....what happens when you blow wind on a collection of smoldering embers? They produce fire! This is exactly what happens on the day of Pentecost. The wind of the Spirit comes and catalyzes the unity that they already had as a result of the exposure they had to the ministry of Jesus. The Spirit did not work ex-nihilo. He was a catalyst of the training the apostles had already received as a result of their exposure to the discipling of Jesus. Once again, discipleship seems to be the foundational work that the Spirit utilizes to catalyze missional movements. 

Just so you know I am not stretching things here with the word "homothymadon" it would be good to notice that it is the same word used in Acts 15:25 where the apostles, elders and leaders in the Jerusalem council come to a unified decision (conviction) about the status of the Gentiles and the statutes that they will deliver to the churches planted by Paul and Barnabas. Unity here is not just surface level affiliations. They deliberated about this topic of the Gentiles, and they came to a place of unity as a group to where they could say they were all with "one accord" as to their decisions. 

When doing frontier work, it is absolutely essential that the initial team has "homothymadon," unified conviction as to the 4 V's. Initially, this is set forth by one or several leaders on the team. Those who join the team are essentially covenanting together around these 4 V's. They achieve a state of "oneness" that will hold them together as they traverse the rugged landscape of doing mission on the frontier. Just like any relationship, when times get hard, you lean on the covenant that holds the relationship together. When there is a disagreement among the team members apostolic band about one of the 4 V's, it can pose a real challenge to the viability of the missional venture. 

On the next post, I will explore a little bit more about why unity in the 4 V's is so crucial when doing frontier work. We will go straight to Jesus on this one, the pioneering leader of the movement we all belong to. 

190. Apostolic Ministry and Team Formation Part 1

A friend of mine named Doug Paul recently had a blog post about how the "WHO" of church planting is often more important than the "WHAT" of church planting. What Doug was basically getting at is that having the right people on the team of an initial church plant takes initial precedence over your cleverly devised plans of having strategic missional impact.

Coming off of a church plant this last year that did not quite make it because of team related issues has positioned me to process a lot of things related to the importance of "WHO" before the "WHAT." I too concur with Doug that the WHO should take precedence over the WHAT. This is not to diminish the  importance of strategy for a new church plant. It's merely to say that there is a cart and a horse issue here going on between the WHO and the WHAT. The WHO is the horse and the cart is the WHAT.

So do we see any primacy being given to the WHO in the New Testament when it comes to apostolic ministry? We most certainly do!  How about when Paul and Barnabas have a parting of the ways when it came to the issue of whether or not John Mark should be included on the team for their next journey? This is clearly a dispute over the WHO.

The clearest example I can think of however takes place in Acts 1 when the 11 Apostles were assembled together with the 120. The issue of who was going to replace Judas as one of the 12 was front and center. Jesus had ascended and was no longer around (physically speaking.) The 11 Apostles were in the process of transitioning into their role as leaders of the movement Jesus started which put them in a new season of life and ministry. They were on the front end of something new...the very first "church plant" if you will . Success in this venture was highly critical to say the least.

Before we get to the heart of what Acts 1 has to say to us in relation to the WHO of church planting, I want to take note of several things that are helpful to keep in the background as we process Acts 1 from a church planting perspective.

1. The 11 Apostles did not have a WHAT yet. Yes they had been discipled by Jesus, but they themselves were a bit confused about how things were going to unfold. For all they knew, Jesus was going to restore the kingdom of Israel and they would all be promoted to sitting in the thrones that were promised to them by Jesus in Luke 22:29-30. They were doing a lot of praying and waiting, but they really did not know WHAT was supposed to happen next. They were only given instructions to wait.

2. They were not actually given instructions to replace Judas. This is a bit of conjecture, but the text does not reveal it to us, so I am making a leap here. But the point is, Jesus did not leave them instructions to replace Judas and fill the empty slot. Instead, Peter takes the initiative and says that they should find someone to add to their number. It is almost as if Peter is imitating the actions of Jesus when he spent all night in prayer and selected the 12 from among the other disciples. Make of this what you want, but I think it is worth noting that Peter assumes the role of a leader and makes a decision to add someone to the team. This is what leaders do.

Well, so much for footnote observations. Now for the meaty stuff.

Acts one has given me a really good framework to assemble some key principles when it comes to the WHO of church planting. The following are some principles I have formulated that may be helpful to those of you who are in the beginning phases of wrestling with the WHO and WHAT of a new apostolic venture.

1. Peter starts off by explaining how Judas betrayed Jesus and consequently left a slot open on the team. This may seem obvious, but it is worth noting: everyone knew that the team had clear boundaries about who was in and who was out. You did not join the team by accident or by mere association. The leadership team of the 12 Apostles was clearly defined by both a number and a name. In referring to Judas Peter says in 1:17 that "He was one of our number and shared in our ministry." Peter understood the team to be made up of 12 people and that those twelve were a part of a specific "ministry."  There was a clear line to be crossed if you wanted to be on the team. The same should be true of apostolic ventures today. Naming the leader(s) and being clear about who is in and who is out with respect to leadership helps give the community a point of reference by which to gauge themselves in relation to those in the community who are putting themselves forth as models for imitation. Leaders define culture because by definition leaders have followers, and this means imitation is taking place. Without imitation, a culture can not form, and leaders are the ones who step forward and provide a model for imitation. Without a clear number and name for the leaders in the community, the followers will be paralyzed and the culture will morph and mutate towards any or every influence that comes to bear on the community.

2. Perhaps the most important thing to glean from Acts 1 are the qualifications Peter sets forth about who can join the team. Peter is really clear about this. The new team member would need to have been with them from the time of John's baptism to the time in which Jesus was taken up from them at the ascension. What is Peter getting at here? Why did the new team member need to have been around Jesus for the 3 1/2 years of his ministry in order to be a part of the team? One of the critical issues Peter is dealing with here has to do with whether or not the new team member has had adequate exposure to the teaching, training and tactics that the other team members have had in relation to the founder of the movement. Think about it, you are about to add someone to a team of 12 people who have spent the last 3 1/2 years together. They have all been discipled into a certain way of living and leadership in the kingdom modeled to them by Jesus himself. Those 12 people are now going to be tasked with representing the leader and continuing the movement that he started. Jesus built a particular culture with and among the 12. To add someone into that mix of 11 leaders who has not been acculturated is a recipe for division, something you definitely dont want in a start up venture. Jesus clearly taught that a house divided against itself can not stand, and this new team member is essentially going to be joining the leadership "oikos" or "household" of the 12. When you are about to launch out into the frontier and set your face towards the enemy, you need a level of unity and oneness on the team that can withstand the pressures of pioneering work. Peter was making sure the new team member would be on the same page and that they would not be inviting someone into their leadership culture who had not been adequately exposed to their cultural ethos of leadership and discipleship. 

As a side note, think about what it would have been like to be James, the brother of Jesus at this gathering in the upper room. He was in the group of 120 and was likely there when this whole process was taking place. How politically incorrect it was that James the brother of Jesus was not chosen to be a part of the team!! He wasn't even nominated!!! Talk about an awkward moment!!! Jesus' own brother didn't even qualify to be one of the 12!!! This just goes to show that decisions about WHO are really important when it comes to doing frontier work!!! Like some other the other members of Jesus' family, James did not follow Jesus form the beginning and therefore did not have adequate exposure to Jesus as a leader.

This was not an indictment on James' capacity or competence as a potential leader in the Jesus movement. It was merely an issue of exposure and experience with the cultural architect of the movement, the revolutionary leader named Jesus. 

3. Just so we don't get the idea that it was all about a mastery of scripture (teaching) skills (training) or strategy (tactics), Peter mentions something in his prayer that tips us off to deeper issues related to character. Peter says that the Lord is the one who "knows the hearts of men." Not only was there issues of exposure to the 3 T's, there were also issues of whether or not that person had the right heart to carry the weight of that leadership position. Did they have the right character in order to represent the leader of the movement? Since they could not know the hearts, they relied on the Lord's providential power to select the right person to join the team...they cast lots. How should we understand and apply this to apostolic ventures and team issues today....you tell me :-) That's why there's a comments feature below.

4. Lastly, its interesting that while neither James nor Barsabbas joined the team, they both feature in Acts 15 (vs 13, 22) as critical leaders in the Jerusalem council. James still gave input among the other 12 apostles and leaders, and Barsabbas was still chosen as a "sent one" to be a delegate of the Jerusalem church and its decree for the newly planted Gentile churches. Not making the team does not limit your potential as a leader. It just means there is another time or team for you to join.

In the next post I will be going deeper into principle number 2 and the importance of unity teams doing frontier work.

189. The Life Cycle of Innovation by MissioNexus

I get the videologs on a regular basis form this guy. He is a really good thinker on systems, organization and missional fitness. This video is a jewel. He lifts up the hood and peers into the engine of innovation and how it relates to the church in the West.


Learning at the Speed of Life - April VLOG - The Innovation Lifecycle from ehdesign on Vimeo.

188. Apostolic Ministry and Discipleship Part Four

Apostolic Ministry and Discipleship Part 1, Part 2, Part 3,

This blog is basically dedicated to all things apostolic and missional discipleship. I rarely enter into personal reflection for two reasons. (1) I am an NT (mbti) and the personal side of things is not that appealing to me in a public venue. (2) This blog is a way for me to chronicle my learning in relation to the outworking of my apostolic vocation with a distinct emphasis on being and making disciples and the challenges that revolve around church planting. This focus lends my thought process to more of a strategic, rational, utilitarian side of things. In other words, this blog reflects more on the mechanical, logistical, paradigmatic, process oriented side of the apostolic venture.

However, I occasionally break out of the mold and populate this blog with personal reflections and observations in my own biography. This is one of those posts. So if you are a regular reader and keep coming back for the conceptual, paradigmatic nature of the blog, this post is a momentary detour from the typical genre on this blog. Consider it a discipline of personal reflection.

It was not till 6years ago that I "discovered" that my primary vocation in the body of Christ is that of being an apostle...one who is sent to pioneer new expressions of ecclesia in movemental forms. Oddly enough, the guy that helped me in this discovery is Alan Hirsch, the guy I just got done co-authoring a book with entitled The Permanent Revolution. His book The Shaping of Things to Come, for the first time in my life, afforded me the language and conceptual framework I needed to locate myself in the broader spectrum of the ministry callings in the body. After that discovery, I had this overwhelming sense that I needed to spend all of my time researching, studying, and living more fully into my vocational identity as an apostle. This is actually what launched me into a maven mode of accumulating the ideas that lead to the formulation of the material that became The Permanent Revolution.

Before I read The Shaping of Things to Come, I had already been a part of an urban church plant in Montgomery AL with an organization called, at that time, Montgomery Inner City Ministry (since then it has been re branded as Compassion 21) This ministry was seeking to plant a church in the most violent, crime ridden government housing projects in Montgomery. their strategy was to target the most darkest neighborhood in a city, plant a church there, and move on to other projects having taken the toughest ground first. This approach lit me on fire! I started out volunteering and ended up becoming a summer intern. I played the role of "Timothy" (ironically) to a guy named Jonathan Mosby, who was playing the role of "Paul" in the church plant.As an intern, I spent the summer following him around and imitating his methods and practices of evangelism and shepherding. (not to mention doing all the menial tasks no one else wanted to do. Jonathan always reminded me that the word "intern" means...its always "your turn") After the internship, I went back to college, graduated, did an one year internship for campus ministry in Tuscaloosa at the University of Alabama with the University Church of Christ with a a dude named Craig Kelley (who is now plating a church in Auburn California with Stadia called Gold Country Church.) At the end of the first year in this internship, I felt a strong calling on my life to go back to Montgomery Al and work full time with Jonathan, Ken Kilpatrick, and a guy named Lynn Briscoe to do what, upon hindsight, I would now call saturation church planting in the housing projects of Montgomery AL. I was hired on as an "evangelist" and assigned my own neighborhood in the toughest projects of the city...Trenhom Court. My office, my ministry, my evangelism, my spare time...all of it...was spent in Trenholm Court housing projects. It was there I learned the art of doing cross cultural evangelism and incarnational ministry. Translating and incarnating the gospel in ways that the hood could engage it and make sense of it was where the battle was to be waged in that context. I

Needless to say, I learned a lot. It was one of the most invigorating, enlightening, (and challenging) experiences of church planting/ministry I have had. I would not trade it for anything. Lots of hard battles, long hours, lots of tears, coupled with fatigue, exhaustion and a hard learned lesson on the value of sabbath are just some of the experiences that helped shape my character during that first church plant. It was not rare to having shootings in the neighborhood where I would have to take cover in someones house or behind brick stairwells. I learned how to do what we coined as aggressive benevolence where we proactively met needs of people we were working with (what I wold now call Persons of Peace) instead of functioning like a government agency in the community dispersing goods with no relational context. I learned how to be powerless and yet earn respect in a cultural context that prized violence, toughness, and essentially being a bad ass at all costs. I learned how to love people who were just down right wicked (child molesters, gang leaders) and believe in people who repeatedly struggled with failure (drug addicts, teenagers and kids struggling to make sense of life in a jacked up environment.) I learned to read the Bible differently...as a missionary....as an apostle. Really, I will never read the Bible the same again. There is something about the frontier and the edge that develops your hermeneutic beyond the more one dimensional reading that takes place at the center. Missional

As a student of the life of Paul, I am starting to appreciate that formative time when I was allowed access to some leaders who were obviously farther along than I was in doing church planting and evangelism in a cross cultural context. I wanted to be the hero in the beginning....I am just being honest. But what I really needed was not to be Batman, but to be Robin. To be the guy who learns form a more experienced person, a more mature person than me so I could one day be, not the hero, but a more mature and effective leader. essentially, I needed to intern, to apprentice myself to another leader who could provide a model for me to imitate.

We see this same pattern in the life of Paul and Barnabas. Most apostles have a strong need for achievement and have a pretty strong appetite for adventure. When you put these two things together, then you have a recipe for pioneering leadership. However, the timeline of Paul's life reveals an interesting pattern as to how he evolved as a leader and what kind of evolutionary development took place that led him to become an effective church planter. Take a look at this time line below.

It is interesting to note that after his conversion, Paul demonstrated the same itinerant, zealous fervor in evangelizing that he demonstrated in his itinerant ministry as a bounty hunting Pharisee. However, whats interesting is that when he escapes Damascus through a hole in the wall and comes to Jerusalem, he undoubtedly does the right things i.e proclaiming Christ and convincing the Hellenist in the synagogues, but the way he went about doing it actually causes the church in Jerusalem some unnecessary drama and conflict. His boldness is a virtue until it emboldened the opposition unnecessarily. It's funny because the text says in Acts 9:30 that "When the brethren found out, they brought him down to Caesarea and sent him out to Troas." The word "sent" is actually "ex-apostelloed" which means "sent away" or even exiled. Ironic isn't it, Pauls first missional "sending" is actually characterized by being expelled from the Jerusalem church because of all the drama he was causing. 

What is really funny is that Luke is quick to tell us that the net result Paul being ex-apostelloed is this: "Then the churches throughout all Judea, Galilee, and Samaria had peace and were edified. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, they were multiplied." (Acts 9:31) So basically, even though Paul was bold, courageous, and pioneering, his style of leadership was not seasoned enough to navigate the unique challenges of proclaiming Jesus in Jerusalem context. Paul needed time away form the "center" to mature and formulate his ministry in a context more amenable to the phase of development he was in as a disciple and leader. That place was Tarsus for him. 


It's interesting to note as well that, as far as we know, Paul was not planting churches during his time in Tarsus. He was learning the art of evangelism and proclamation. However, notice that Paul is not being discipled by anyone yet... It is just Paul flushing out his impulsive desire to let everyone know about the Christ. We get a glimpse int the nature of his ministry in Acts 9:28 where it is characterized as "coming in and going out." This is a classic spatial pattern of an evangelists ministry in relation to the local community. It is like a bee leaving the bee hive, going out and gathering pollen, and coming back into the hive, just to leave and do it all over again. Paul spends the next 10 years in Tarsus.....that's a long time!!!! 10 years in his home town evangelizing. 

After about 10 years, for some reason Barnabas feels led to go and get Paul and brings him to Antioch. It is here that I believe Paul gets discipled by Barnabas in the context of a missional community. It is important to notice that almost 12 years have gone by since Paul's conversion. Paul may have popped out of the baptistry proclaiming Christ, but it was in a very raw, almost barbaric form that seems to have triggered unnecessary opposition and drama. Paul's apostolic ventures do not truly take shape until he has been discipled by Barnabas in a multi-cultural missional community (Antioch) that obviously had a been strongly shaped by prophets and teachers (Acts 13:1) 


The prophetic side of the Antioch community shows up not only in the description of the disciples there, but in also Barnabas's leadership characterized in Acts 11:23 as "encouragement" to "continue" with the Lord. The notion of encouragement is obviously a staple quality of the prophetic ministry (I Cor 14) as well as motivating people to remain faithful to their covenant with the Lord. The word "continue" in the text is the same word as "abide" in John 15. The principle of covenant oneness with the Lord comes to the fore here and is a classic feature of prophetic discourse and ministry in the O.T. scriptures. The prophet is looking to help close the gap between God and his people. Barnabas prophetically energized the community in Antioch and as a result, they experienced evangelistic fruitfulness. The impact of Barnabas's prophetic ministry actually translated into evangelistic impact, Luke says it like this "...and a great many people were added to the Lord." Addition, not multiplication, but this is the net effect of prophetic energizing around the gospel. Barnabas is basically a prophetic evangelist who is stirring the Antioch church towards covenant faithfulness to the Lord.  

Another sign of the prophetic nature of the Antioch community is their proclivity to meet the tangible needs of the Jerusalem church, that is, to do incarnational ministry. It seems that the Antioch church was a magnet for prophets because it says that "in these days prophets came from Jerusalem to Antioch." While there, a prophet named Agabus announced that a future famine was on the horizon. Like most communities with a significant number of prophets in it, they have a high intolerance to set idle in the face of a tangible need. They proactively take the initiative to send physical relief to the churches in Judea. They dabble in some social justice :-) 

If we zoomout for a moment and look at the evolutionary development of Paul's life, we see three things: (1) Paul had an intensive exposure to a prophetic leader named Barnabas for over a year (the word Barnabas literally means Bar=son of and Nabas = prophet in Hebrew). (2) Paul had an intensive exposure to how the prophetic ministry operated in a community, but he gained this exposure within the context of a discipling relationship with Barnabas. (3) Paul had significant exposure to a missional community which was predominantly comprised of prophets and teachers. In essence, Paul is a learner in this phase of his life, not a leader. It is not until Acts 13:13 that Paul appears to take the lead in his relationship with Barnabas. However, even here it is Barnabas that takes the lead on the first leg of their journey to Cyprus. Paul is still a follower and learner up to that point.  

Noticing this evolutionary development of Paul's life helps debunk our often misinformed notion that Paul was an effective apostolic leader and church planter from the beginning. This is definitely not the case. In fact, the exact opposite is true. His initial ministry was not apostolic at all. It was primarily evangelistic, and a coarse one at that. It is not until 10 years after his conversion that he enters into a discipling relationship with Barnabas. It is this strategic relationship, along with his immersion into a multi-cultural missional community, that cultivates Paul's potential as an apostolic leader. The pioneering, movemental history maker of Christianity  reveals a humble, slow start. 

How silly of us to expect people who have not been discipled to suddenly be effective leaders and church planters. How crazy of us to expect apostles to be wildly successful at planting missional communities when they have not had any exposure to missional communities or how the foundational ministry of the prophetic operates in a community. Barnabas, and the Antioch church provided a rich context for an apostle like Paul to be equipped and established for the adventurous and outright intimidating challenge of pioneering a movement of disciple making and missional communities across the North Western region of the Roman empire. Like all great leaders, their greatness was forged through frustration, failure, isolation, suffering and a period of time where they were trained and exposed other great leaders who invested in their development. 

Now back to personal reflections... 

I can see how I have greatly benefited from my exposure to people like Jonathan Mosby early on in what I now call my apostolic ventures. The more I reflect on my pathway of learning, the more I see the need for even someone like myself who, having co-planted in the past, "solo-planted" most recently, and am looking to lead another plant in the near future, to have adequate exposure to people and environments that have already demonstrated a level of competency and effectiveness in building a discipling culture and planting missional communities. This may sound foolish to some for me to say this as I have written what I hope to be a defining text on apostolic ministry. But I am not in the business of perpetuating the classic hero myth of leadership. We need to dispell this myth by truth telling. We have had enough of the false, unrealistic expectation of the solo-hero who appears out of no-where, fully formed and effervescently effective. Not even the greatest apostle was able to live up to this image. Paul's life tells an entirely different story.

As an apostolic leader, I want to be an example to other apostolic people and say that, just like Paul, we all need to be discipled and exposed to ways of being better apostles and leaders. The journey to becoming an effective apostolic leader may take 10 years, or 5 years.  It is different for everyone, but we are all on a learning journey. The important thing is that we remain open to learning and the leaders that we exposed to. We are disciples first, then apostles.  

187. Generate Coaching is up and running!!!

Well, its official now. Generate, a coaching and consulting agency for people and organizations looking to engage in missional ventures is now up and running. Here is a brief summary from the website of what Generate is initially looking to provide.

"Anyone starting something new will tell you it comes with it’s own set of challenges. Generate Coaching was started to help pioneering leaders navigate the unique challenges of doing frontier work. With a distinctly movemental approach, we provide strategic coaching to leaders as they seek to lay foundations for missional movements to take place.

If we look at almost any apostolic movement, there is a common pattern in which they develop. The diagram below illustrates the trajectory which apostolic movements take. Each of these developmental phases requires leaders to shift their focus and utilize different skill sets in order to release the generative capacities at each level.

Generate Coaching specializes in providing coaching relationships that focus on the skills of being and making disciples, along with challenges related to team formation and development. Without a healthy foundation in these two areas, it will be virtually impossible to catalyze a movement of disciple making and missional communities."

I am starting with discipling and team formation because it is at this level that you lay the necessary foundations for a movement to begin. In addition to using discipleship tools crafted by 3DM, I will also be integrating my own tools and wisdom that I have accumulated over the past 17 years in leadership, church planting, ministry and research. 

Those 17 years have been seasoned with significant success and...yes...failure. As an apostle, I have always been drawn to the frontiers, the wide open spaces that invite experimentation and innovative strategies. It has not always been easy, but it has been adventurous...and fruitful. It is out of this place of fruitfulness that I have felt led to share what God has invested in me. If you are interested in participating in a coaching relationship, look around on the site and contact me from there. 

186. "Copying Beethoven" and Discipleship

I recently watched a movie called "Copying Beethoven." The gist of the movie revolves around a lady named Anna holz who moves to London in order to become a composer. She gets the break of a lifetime and ends up being assigned by her employer to be Beethoven's scribe as it were. Her task was basically to "copy" all of Beethoven's compositions into legible formats that could be used by the orchestra during his performances. I want to highlight a few things I picked up on about discipleship form watching this movie.

1. Chemistry and Competence

In a previous post, I identified two focal points of chemistry in a discipling relationship: character and competence. If you have seen the movie "Copying Beethoven", then you know there was absolutely no chemistry in the area of character between Anna and Beethoven. In fact, Beethoven is depicted as a real jerk and it is questionable whether he had anyone who admired his character. In the movie, Beethoven was a great example of competency exceeding character, and it was a raunchy scenario indeed.

However, there was a scene where Anna reveals a potent chemistry with Beethoven's competency as a composer. In a moment of heated discussion, Beethoven in his typically abnoxious, confrontational manner erupted on Anna and asked her point blank "Why do you want to be around me?!?!?!?!" Trembling with pen in hand, Anna looks him in the eye and says with all the confidence she can muster "Because when I am around you, I feel like I can make music too." This is a great illustration of chemistry centered around competency. Anna was repulsed by his lack of character, but she was drawn to his competence as a composer.

2. Discipleship and Humility

Right before Beethoven is about to conduct the orchestra, Anna is summoned form her seat in the audience. away from her boyfriend, to meet with Beethoven in the conductors chambers. Beethoven is overtaken by anxiety as he is confronted with his incompetence to keep time and direct the orchestra adequately. His difficulties with hearing impaired his ability to stay in sync with the tempo of the music and the actual tempo of the orchestra as it plaid. Beethoven pleads with her to help him keep time by standing below the orchestra in front of him, so he can look at her movements and "copy" them. Here is a clip of the scene on you tube.



This is a great picture of someone who is obviously extremely competent in one area humbling themselves to imitate someone else who is competent in another area. Beethoven was a better composer than Anna, but Anna had greater competency in the area of directing and keeping time.

Discipleship is an exercise in humility. To imitate someone else, we have to be willing to take the posture of a learner. We have to be willing to own up to our incompetence in certain areas of our lives. We all have competence in various aspects of our lives, but we also have various levels of incompetence inother areas. When we are being discipled by someone, we are looking to develop the areas of our lives that currently demonstrate incompetency.

3. Discipleship and the Composition of Scripture.

At the end of the movie Beethoven is on his deathbed. Anna has developed an affinity for Beethoven, and looks to care for him at his bedside. Anna had spent so much time copying Beethoven's work she had grown intimately familiar with his methods and patterns of artistry.

As the movie closes, Anna finds herself scribing music as Beethoven leads her and tells her what to write. On several instances Anna anticipates Beethoven's thoughts and finishes his sentences for him, scribing the music onto the sheet of paper. In the process of imitating, transcribing and copying Beethoven, she began to think, write and compose music like him. In the process, she would discover her own inner sound.

I have to wonder if the concept of the inspiration of scripture could not stand to be infused with a healthy exposure to the concept of imitation and discipleship. Craig C. hill writes the following in his book In God's Time: The bible and the Future.

"Prior to photography, engraving was the principal means of creating and reproducing pictures. Images cut in wood, copper or steel were inked and transferred to hundreds or even thousands of sheets of paper. Prints, often published with accompanying text, were the popular media of the 16th-19th centuries, much as television is today. As with television programming, the quality of printmaking varied enormously. The great majority of prints were churned out quickly and sold cheaply to a mass audience. A smaller but still significant number were fashioned by accomplished artists who invested weeks or even months in the production of a single image.


Several of the best artists, such as Dürer and Rembrandt, attracted students who learned to engrave in their style. Some of these apprentices were so good that their work is all but indistinguishable from that of their teachers. In some cases, it is impossible to discriminate between, for example, a Rembrandt original and a print originating in the Rembrandt "school." The situation is further complicated by the fact that artists would occasionally compose part of a work themselves and then assign its completion to their students. The better the student, the harder it is to tell where the hand of the master ends and that of the apprentice begins.


If I owned such a print, I would be eager to know to what extent it was an "original." I could take the engraving to a series of experts, but they might well disagree amongst themselves. What should I do? I could apply White Out to all of the questionable bits, but the result would hardly be a truer or more appealing picture, and there is a good chance that I would obscure parts of the original in the process. A more sensible course would be to find satisfaction in knowing that, both directly and indirectly, the work reflects the genius of the master.


Now imagine that we possessed no original pictures by a certain master engraver, that his art could be "recovered" only through an analysis of the work of his students. Imagine, too, that the engravings of his students varied somewhat in style and subject matter. Any assessment of the master’s work based upon such evidence could be convincing on only a fairly general level. Detailed analyses that attempted to separate the master’s work from that of his students would at best be speculative exercises. In all likelihood, such studies would produce widely differing, even contradictory results reflecting the biases of the individual interpreters. One critic might claim that only prints containing horses are genuine; another might believe that only lines of a certain width could have been engraved by the master. The further such studies distanced the teacher from his students–and thus from the only source of possible evidence–the more speculative they would become. A master who exercised negligible influence over his "followers" would simply be unknowable. A modern-day account of such a figure would be almost entirely a product of its author’s own imagination.


Such is our situation when we undertake a study of the historical Jesus. Each of the four Gospels presents us with a portrait of Jesus composed by a later follower but containing traditions that go back to Jesus himself. How much of the resulting picture is owed to Jesus and how much to the Gospel writer and to the Church, which passed down and shaped the tradition before him, is impossible to sort out cleanly. There is no consistently reliable way of separating the "original" Jesus from subsequent Christian interpretations. This is especially true with respect to the content of Jesus’ teaching. Most scholars would agree that Jesus’ words underwent some modification and even expansion in the years prior to the writing of the Gospels, but there is no agreement whatsoever as to the extent and nature of these changes. For that reason, an endless parade of incompatible Jesus’ emerge from the workshops of scholars. In the unlikely event that someone did manage successfully to separate Jesus’ words from later Christian alterations and amendments, we would have no way of knowing it. The essential question, therefore, is whether the early Christians were, in effect, good students ("disciples") of Jesus, and thus whether the New Testament authors basically got Jesus right..."

Well, as an evangelical, if you will, I obviously think they got it right, but the mechanism that ensured there accuracy, in my mind, were not entirely mystical and devoid of human influence. There was also a sociological mechanism of imitation that contributed to the accuracy of the message being transcribed and transmitted to us. What if imitation was factored in to how we understand and explain inspiration? It is worth a look I think.

185. The Preface and Intro to The Permanent Revolution

well, the day is drawing nigh when the curtain will be pulled back and the book will be revealed. I have spent close to three years researching, studying, writing, and living out the apostolic vocation. This is a sneak peak of the preface and intro of the book provided by Jossey-Bass and Leadership Network. Hope you enjoy. (BTW, the book is ready for pre-order on amazon and is $10 cheaper right now.)

Preface and Intro to the Permanent Revolution

184. Learning in 2011

As I reflect back on 2011, I am thinking about some of the major kairos moments that were defining moments. This year has been a big year of learning for me in multiple areas. In fact, I sort of feel overwhelmed when I try to group all the kairos moments into themes or categories. I finally settled on using the two principles of Covenant and Kingdom to categorize my learning. So here is the readers digest version...

One of the ground breaking learning moments I had was in Indianapolis IN. We were participating in a Learning Community with 3DM. I was doing some scripture reading in John 15 at our hosts house in the morning. At that time, this was a rare practice for me. I did not know it at the time, but my heart had grown cold towards scripture, and as a result, my confidence in Jesus and the gospel was being seriously undermined by a lack of respect for, and interaction with scripture. This only added to the distance I was feeling between me and God. This kind of distance, as the writer of Hebrews implies, does not happen all at once. We drift away, ever so slowly, til we are so far out to sea, we do not know which way to row or turn back towards the land.

As I was reading John 15:1-8, I heard God say to me "I am not going to let you go any further until you get this this down." I knew exactly what he was referring to,. I needed to learn how to Abide with him. You see, I was 35 at the time, and I had never actually developed a consistent time to spend with the Father...ever. I was a classic survivalist. I wold work hard till I burned out, then I would seek nourishment and rest in God from my exhaustion. It was a cycle I had learned to perform really well. It became so much of a pattern in my life, I thought it was normal.

Really, what the Father was asking for was to pay attention to and strengthen the covenant relationship I have with him. Covenant is about relationship. It is about being one with God. It focuses on being, not doing. The major thing I have been learning in my life this past year is how to abide in the vine. I have been learning about the proper order of being rooted in covenant in order to be established for representing God in kingdom work and ministry.

This is a big lesson for me because I am wired for doing. I am wired for representation. I am not wired for being or relationship. I would rather do, pioneer, achieve than to relate, talk, or spend time nurturing, listening and enjoying someone. The lesson for me this year was that Covenant always comes before Kingdom. That is, I have to be one with God before I seek to represent him. I have to cultivate being before doing.

As I have humbled myself and repented over this past year, I have felt the darkness, the loneliness, the pride, the bitterness, the cynicism, and all the funk slowly begin to fade away. I can see a new day coming. Like a day star rising in the morning.

Me and my wife are currently in transition, and never before have I had to seek God like I have been seeking him lately. We are listening for what God wants us to do. For the first time in my life, I do not know what where we need to be. I know what I am called to do. I am called to plant churches, and possibly write another book, in that order. However, I do not have the slightest idea of where we need to go or who we need to partner with in order for that to happen. I am listening....I am praying....I am fasting....I am abiding....I am investing in my covenant relationships with the Father and with my wife. This may be what I am supposed to be learning right now. I may need to catch up on lost time and track.

It is not ideal not to know. Wanting to do something for God and feeling like you are on hold is a drag to be honest. I am not one to sit around saying "I am waiting on God" either. If anything, I get way ahead of God or leave God behind in my plans. So for the first time in my life, I am letting him lead and speak to me for direction in our lives. In the midst of this, I am learning to be content and to find joy in my covenant relationships.

So in 2011, my major kairos has been the primacy of covenant relationship with the Father. What was your pivotal learning moment in 2011?

183. Discipleship and the Fivefold Ministry of APEST in Ephesians 4

In our book on APEST and the apostolic vocation entitled The Permanent Revolution, we discuss the different impulses that run through the various five fold ministries of APEST in Ephesians 4. An additional slant on the five fold that we did not include in the book is how the various APEST ministries tend to approach discipleship. Because the different APEST ministries embody and express the various components of Christ's ministry while here on earth, then we should expect to see the various five fold ministries emphasizing certain aspects of discipleship contained within Christ's discipling ministry.  They each value and demonstrate a particular facet of Jesus' work on earth, so it is only natural that their interest in discipleship will be shaped by their inherent values. In other words, discipleship is attractive to the various APEST ministries for different reasons. So here are my thoughts on how each of the five view and value discpleship.

APOSTOLIC

Apostles, because they have an impulse for missional extension, see discipleship primarily as a mechanism for multiplication and leadership development. When you hear apostolic people talk about discipleship, it is typically from he angle of multiplying disciples and ensuring quality leadership to shoulder the movement. This particular feature of multiplication is undoubtedly front and center in the practice of making disciples. If discipleship is done well, then it will always lead to multiplication and leadership development.  This view of discipleship springs from the apostles values of reaching people in the most efficient and effective way. Multiplication from a movemental standpoint is far more effective than addition.

PROPHETIC

Prophets are looking to close the gap between how things are and how things should be. As such, discipleship is typically attractive to prophets if it is utilized to bring about tangible, concrete changes in the people and the status quo. Discipleship, then, for prophetic people is often a way to bring reformation and restoration to the people, places and power systems. Prophets value integrity and congruence between God's values and our values, between God's reality and our reality. If discipleship is cast in terms of bringing alignment between us and God, and therefore leading to a shaping and reforming of the present reality, then typically prophets are all in. However, the prophetic impulse is not necessarily concerned with the quantity of disciples so much as with the quality of disciples.

EVANGELISTIC

Evangelists, because they value conversion, see discipleship as a way to retain people who have been converted to Jesus. The evangelist is always looking to bring more people in, but if the quantity of people exceeds the quality of people in the community, then efforts to integrate people into the community will be undermined by issues related to maturity and selfishness. Most evangelistic leaders see discipleship as a way to get the community up to par in order to maximize retention and mobilize for outreach. Like the apostolic, they are looking typically focused on quantity, but they are typically not thinking in terms of multiplication, but rather addition.

SHEPHERDS

Shepherds value nurturing and protecting.  As such, shepherds tend to view discipleship as a means for personal transformation and spiritual development. They find great joy in walking with people through a maturing process. Discipleship is attractive to shepherds because it provides a vehicle to stay close to the sheep and be in touch with their needs. This is why shepherds are often content with small group ministry functioning as a vehicle for discipleship.

TEACHERS

Discipleship is attractive to teachers because it poses an opportunity for them to provide instruction and explanation to scriptural truths. Teachers are obsessed with learning and explaining things. Discipleship for a teacher is about rooting people in a biblical worldview and developing biblical literacy. There is typically not much emphasis on quantity either from a multiplication or an addition view point with teachers. They are concerned with quality understanding. If quantity comes into view, it is the quantity of people they get to "teach," which in their mind, is often equated with the act of discipleship. Jesus however, would beg to differ on this point I think.

So here is a summary table:

So which one is right? Well, as Alan talks about in his book The Forgotten Ways, the apostolic provides the optimal environment in which the other ministries can function. If we apply this to our discussion of discipleship, it is the concept of multiplication and the development of leaders that provides discipleship with the over arching field of meaning in which to organize and integrate the other features of discipleship. So mission once again comes to the fore as to how we understand the various aspects and features of Jesus' ministry expressed through the APEST ministries.

The emphasis of the teacher on biblical literacy and worldview finds its most fertile application when in the context of discipling people for multiplication. The emphasis of the shepherd on personal transformation finds its most optimal application when functioning within a broader, over arching mission to in turn allow that transformed life to influence other peoples lives. The prophetic emphasis on reformation and restoration finds its most potent force of change when wedded to the apostolic function of missional extension. Reformation without multiplication only amounts to revolution. Revolutions are short and die out when the leaders are removed. If discipleship can facilitate restoration, and restoration can be framed around the larger, more systemic function of multiplication, then the revolution could possibly become a permanent revolution, but not without the integration of the apostolic vocation and person, who, out of their own giftings, bring the issue of multiplication and leadership development front and center.

This is why the apostolic is said to be first, and foundational, in the church. Without the missional, extending focus on multiplication then discipleship will devolve into moralistic, informational, monastical, hermetical and local dimensions. That being said, if the apostolic impulse for multiplication functions autonomously and does not allow itself to be influenced and honed by the other giftings, it will take on a thoroughly mechanistic, utilitarian approach to discipleship that seeks to exploit human capital for the sake of achieving the mission. So while mission and multiplication should take priority among the other features of discipleship, it should not become the exclusive feature. Without the other five shaping the practice of discipleship, then it is hard to imagine how we can say that we are discipling people to look like Jesus. We need all five in order to demonstrate the fullness of Christ in the world. This is, after all, why the five gifts were given to the church, to re-present the full range of Christ's ministry in and through the body of Christ to the world.