I found this poem on Sam Metcalfs blog. (a great blog about the apostolic and missional issues.) Thought I would republish here. It is a nifty description of of the apostolic person and their experience in relation to institutional dynamics.
There’s a race of men that don’t fit in,
A race that can’t stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain’s crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don’t know how to rest. If they just went straight they might go far;
They are strong and brave and true;
But they’re always tired of the things that are,
And they want the strange and new.
They say: “Could I find my proper groove,
What a deep mark I would make!
Because apostolic people are intrinsically entrepreneurial, they often have a wanderlust of sorts. I have seen this very pattern in my own life, and in others. One of the people in scripture I relate to is Barnabas. As a Levite, he was tied to the Temple system, a system not so friendly to the entrepreneurial, pioneering types. It seems that Barnabas was an apostle in waiting. (Acts 14) and it took a genuine encounter with the gospel, and another apostle, Paul, to fully awaken this in him and legitimize it. Once this happened, it seemed that he was able to migrate away from the the institutional domain of the temple and venture out into the frontier.
I at one time was doing traditional ministry as a "pastor" and eventually discovered I was gifted apostolically. What a release! What an affirming experience to know you are not weird or a misfit. I was simply an apostle in a pastoral setting. Needless to say, it is not very conducive for a pioneer to be stuck at the settlement. It always makes me wonder how many apostolic folks out there think they some how do not fit in because they are stuck in a monolithic system that caters primarily to the settlers. Lets broaden the scope and recognize both pioneers and settlers.
There’s a race of men that don’t fit in,
A race that can’t stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain’s crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don’t know how to rest. If they just went straight they might go far;
They are strong and brave and true;
But they’re always tired of the things that are,
And they want the strange and new.
They say: “Could I find my proper groove,
What a deep mark I would make!
Because apostolic people are intrinsically entrepreneurial, they often have a wanderlust of sorts. I have seen this very pattern in my own life, and in others. One of the people in scripture I relate to is Barnabas. As a Levite, he was tied to the Temple system, a system not so friendly to the entrepreneurial, pioneering types. It seems that Barnabas was an apostle in waiting. (Acts 14) and it took a genuine encounter with the gospel, and another apostle, Paul, to fully awaken this in him and legitimize it. Once this happened, it seemed that he was able to migrate away from the the institutional domain of the temple and venture out into the frontier.I at one time was doing traditional ministry as a "pastor" and eventually discovered I was gifted apostolically. What a release! What an affirming experience to know you are not weird or a misfit. I was simply an apostle in a pastoral setting. Needless to say, it is not very conducive for a pioneer to be stuck at the settlement. It always makes me wonder how many apostolic folks out there think they some how do not fit in because they are stuck in a monolithic system that caters primarily to the settlers. Lets broaden the scope and recognize both pioneers and settlers.
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