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

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. The WHO really is more important than 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. The people come before the plan.

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.

182. Discipleship and the Person of Peace Part 5

As I reflect more and more on discipleship and the person of peace strategy (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4), I keep coming back to the topic of chemistry. In previous posts, I have developed the importance of chemistry being a fundamental component of the discipling relationship. It is not only the permission structure that allows challenge to take place, it is also the magnetic structure that draws two people into a discipling relationship.

When we talk about chemistry, we are basically referring to a certain kind of reaction that takes place between people when they connect or interact. Just like certain chemicals set off certain reactions when mixed with certain other chemicals, there is a certain kind of "chemical" reaction that can take place when two people encounter each other and interact over a period of time. The nature of that reaction can be either good, bad or neutral depending on a combination of factors, like say personality, season in life, maturity, circumstances of meeting etc. Good chemistry means at least one of the persons experienced a good reaction from the encounter. There was a certain level of congruity and positive energy that reciprocated between them. A certain something that often times can not be explained, but you know it when you experience it. In short, there is a certain attraction between two people, and I am not talking physical.

So what is the nature of this attraction? If good chemistry is a positive reaction to another person, how does this work itself out in a discipling relationship? What is it that attracts us to someones life and makes us possibly want to be discipled by them? What is the nature of chemistry in a discipling relationship?

I would like to suggest two fundamental elements of a persons life that can attract us to want to imitate someone elses life: Character and Competence.

Character: being attracted to someones character means you want to "be who they are." That is, the quality of their walk with God, the depth of their spirituality, the consistency and integrity of their life makes you say to yourself, "I would love to be the kind of person they are." Imitating someones character essentially means imitating the pattern and disciplines of their life that have led them to be the person that they are.

Competence: being attracted to someones competence means you want to "do what they do." If they are a good speaker, you want to be a good speaker. If they are a good evangelist, you want to be a good evangelist. If they are a good discipler, you want to be a good discipler. Competence could also be in the areas of parenting and raising your kids. It could be centered around someone ability to remain sexually pure while being single, or something associated with life skills.

With these two fundamental elements of character and competence, I want to offer this "elemental table" in order to distill the nature of chemistry in a discipling relationship.

High Character/Low Competence: When someone is attracted to someone else primarily because of their character, I call this Personal chemistry. It is centered around who the person is. Their personal attributes, personality, or way of being. Discipleship, in this sense, starts from a really solid foundation. Character is the most difficult thing to develop. So when this is the primary attractor, you have got first things first. Developing competence will find its proper place in this kind of relationship. 

Low Character/Low Competence: I label this kind of chemistry as Casual. Although this is not the most desirable scenario, a productive discipling relationship can still take place if the person being discpled has a significant level of maturity.

Low Character/High Competence: I use the term "vocational" for this kind of chemistry because the attraction is based on the competence of the potential discipl-er in relation to a certain kind of task or field of practice. When we observe a level of competence or mastery in an area of someone life that we also want to develop competence in, if I do not allow jealousy or envy to get in the way, then I am naturally drawn to want to be around that person. 

A word of caution: If vocational chemistry is the initial foundation of the relationship, then the relationship can potentially turn consumeristic where one person seeks to extract all the goodies from the other person in order to achieve their own goals. Acquiring the skills and competency of discipl-er becomes the primary goal of the disciple, leaving the essential element of character out of the equation. Aristotle would call this a utilitarian relationship, which in the world of discipleship and imitation, means the relationship devoid of any character development. 

A word of curiosity: Is it possible that this is exactly what took place in the relationship between Jesus and Judas Iscariot ? Could Judas have primarily been attracted to the the competency of Jesus as a leader and miracle worker? Could this explain the seeming lack of character development in Judas over the 3 1/2 years he spent with Jesus? What if Jesus' ministry did not produce the kind of political results Judas was looking for? What if this disappointment led Judas to enter into another utilitarian relationship with the religous leaders? What if he, through what he thought was a clever plan, decided to somehow manipulate the accrued social capital from Jesus' ministry towards accomplishing his own political goals? Either way we understand Judas, it is quite obvious that his competence exceeded his character. Increasing competence without increasing character is a recipe for trouble for all involved. So we should proceed with caution when this kind of chemistry is a starting point for a discipling relationship. 

High Character/High Competence:  I call this "radical" chemistry because it is the most desirable form of chemistry and allows the most optimal level of imitation to take root between a disciple and a discipl-er. This kind of chemistry between people is rare indeed, but when it is present, the potential for kingdom breakthrough is really high. 

A word of curiosity: When we think about Jesus and the twelve apostles, it is interesting to note that they are all listed in pretty much the same way each time in the four gospels. There are three groups of four, and the first person in each group is always the same. 

Could it be that the first group consisting of Peter Andrew James and John had a "radical" chemistry with Jesus? What if the second group led by Phillip primarily had "personal" chemistry with Jesus. That is, they were primarily attracted to the Character of Jesus. What if the third group led by James son of Alpheus had high levels of "vocational" chemistry with Jesus? What if they were primarily attracted to Jesus' competence as a teacher, leader or prophet? Think about it, both Simon the zealot and Judas Iscariot potentially had competing agendas that would potentially draw them into a utilitarian posture with Jesus. In other words, out of all the twelve, these two guys are most known for being vulnerable to a utilitarian posture towards their relationship with Jesus. It is all conjecture, I know, but it is worth reflecting on. 

The challenge from thinking about the nature of chemistry is to look at the people who are attracted to you and are open to being discipled by you and ask yourself: is this person attracted to my character, competency, or both? If both, I would say they should take priority when you decide who to invite into your inner circle and invest most of your time with.  

181. Discipleship and the Person of Peace Part 4

This week I am headed down to Montgomery Alabama to spend some time with a former church I used to work at. I keep in touch with their senior leader on a regular basis and have been sharing with them the breakthroughs we have had in the area of discipleship using the 3DM tools of Huddles and LifeShapes. The leaders of the church there have asked me to come down and do a presentation for them about those tools and the process of discipling people.

In previous posts on this topic of discipleship and the person of peace (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) I have stressed the importance of chemistry in the discipling relationship. But what about getting the ball rolling at an existing church? What if not all the staff at a church have good chemistry? What if they like each other but don't necessarily say to themselves "I would really like to imitate the life of my co-worker?" Can discipleship take place if there is no attraction or chemistry between the staff and leaders of a church?

I would say yes, but there is only one thing that can buffer the lack of chemistry in a discipling relationship: MATURITY. When I say maturity, I mean the willingness to listen, learn and be challenged by another person even if you do not aspire to be like them in some way. Since a discipling relationship is based off of invitation and challenge, then without a significant level of maturity in the one being discipled, it will be really difficult for that person to receive challenge from someone they do not have a significant amount of chemistry with. However, if there is maturity in both the discipler and the one being discipled, then a discipling relationship can be sustained long enough for one person to model and transmit value to the other person.

Having said that, if discipleship is fundamentally about imitation, then we have to be realistic about what will actually be imitated as a result of this kind of relationship characterized by low chemistry and high maturity. If one of the leaders on a church staff invites other staff members into a discipling relationship with low levels of chemistry, we should be clear about what it is that is actually going to be imitated so as not to have any kind of false expectations on the other staff members or the one leading it.

In order to asses this properly, we first have to ask ourselves a question: What is it that we imitate when we are in a discipling relationship? I want to suggest four facets of a persons life that can potentially be imitated in a discipling relationship.

1. Their Pathway: This has to do with the trajectory of their life. It can encompass past and present, or just the present. In other words, imitating someones pathway means you want to have the same formative experiences as them, you want to walk the same path in life as they are, or have walked. The basic desire here is to become what they have become and do what they do. It has a sort of vocational quality to it. If they are a teacher, you want to be a teacher. If they are a counselor, you want to be a counselor. If they are an entrepreneur, you want to be an entrepreneur. If they are a basketball coach, you want to be a basketball coach. If they are an effective evangelist, you want to become an effective evangelist. If they are an effective speaker, you want to become an effective speaker. Think of kids who go to college to become youth ministers because their youth minister impacted them in a powerful way. Sometimes, those same kids get to college and figure out they do not want to be youth ministers, they just want to impact kids. Sometimes this is the first thing that attracts someone to imitating another person. It is the most observable from a distance, before you actually interact with them and get to know the kind of person they are. We are often attracted to imitate people who show competence in an area that we ourselves would like to develop competence.

2. Their Personhood: This has to do with the character of a person, but can also include the particular style and even mannerisms (including language) of a person. I not only want to be good at what someone else is good at, I want to be like them as a person. Something about their persona and way of being human is attractive to me. Think of a kid who wants to be like a famous skateboarder. They will sometimes dress, talk, and even speak like them. They will skate the same boards, trucks and wheels as them. They will buy the same shoes and listen to the same music as them. This is at the heart of being attracted to someones life and wanting to imitate it. Wanting to imitate someones competence leads us to imitate their character, or personhood as well.

However, notice I did not use the word "personality." We are all uniquely designed by God and should seek to develop that design in community without seeking shelter in someone elses personality or temperament as the point of reference for how I should be or interact with other people. Our identity is found in Christ and the unique way he has formed us, not in someone elses unique wiring or personality. Personhood has more to do with character than charisma, but will include charisma to a certain degree.

3. Their Pattern of Life: This refers to the way in which they live their life, their habits, their rhythm of life, their ways of living. Being open to imitating someones pattern of life is heightened if you do not already have a pattern or rhythm of life that is fruitful. The order and pace of life someone else lives becomes appealing when you begin to make the connection that the character and competencies the person you want to be like are somehow connected to the patterns and rhythms of life that they have adopted. Patterns of life produce certain outcomes, and if I want the same outcomes as someone else, I typically have to adopt a similar pattern in my own life. This is the beauty of discipleship! Built within it are the motivational elements that facilitate transformation. However, if those patterns are unhealthy, then some pretty toxic things can be transmitted.

4. Their Process for Being and Making Disciples: The process someone uses to disciple us is actually supposed to be a part of what is imitated. This is why the process we use to disciple people should be simple and reproducible. When it comes time for me to disciple someone else, I will typically look back on the ways I was discipled and use that as a point of reference for how I will disciple other people. (This is why some of us have such a difficult time discipling other people. We were never discipled ourselves...you can finish the thought.) Inherent within a process are the tools and methods used within that process that give it form, substance and utility. This means the format, the stories, the level of interaction, vulnerability, use of scripture...the essential process will be replicated and reproduced by those we disciple, and those that they disciple.

In a discipling relationship characterized by low chemistry and high maturity, not every facet of a persons life will be imitated. So what exactly gets imitated in a discipling relationship where there is not much chemistry, but a significant level of maturity? Well, true to my visual, analytically minded self, I came up with a diagram!!!! Yes, the diagram is here to save the day!!!!

Here is a brief explanation of this matrix.

Low Maturity/High Chemistry: If I am immature, but have high chemistry with the one discipling me, then I will most likely be open to imitating the entire spectrum of their life. The twelve apostles were most likely in this category when he first chose them to be with him. They were immature, but in the fashion of their modern day culture, following a rabbi meant you wanted to not only know what they knew, or even do what they did, you wanted to BE them. You too wanted to be a rabbi, but not just any rabbi, you wanted to be like YOUR rabbi. There was a vocational, as well as a personal aspiration going on there. So the Pathway component can definitely be a factor in this kind of relationship.

High Maturity/High Chemistry: The Pathway dimension is dropped at this phase because one of the definitions of maturity is living into your own calling and vocation. It may overlap with the one who is discipling you, but it may not. Even if you are an evangelist and you are discipled by another evangelist, you will still have a different trajectory to your life, a different calling within a calling per se. And because vocation carries with it a sense of identity, as we mature we move away from wanting to imitate someone else's vocation and live into our own unique calling from God. But if there is a good level of chemistry in the relationship, we will still be open to imitating their Personhood, Pattern of Life, and Process of Discipleship.

High Maturity/Low Chemistry: If things are lacking in the chemistry department, but their is a strong level of maturity, then a discipling relationship can still take place, but imitation will most likely center around the disciplers Pattern of Life and Process of Discipleship. In other words, they will learn to imitate the mechanics and methods of being and making disciples, but they will likely not draw much energy form the disciplers Personhood or Pathway. In one sense, this is more like a coaching relationship. Skills and competencies in using particular tools and processes are transferred, but it is a more formal relationship. Also, the patterns of life that the discipler is living out in their own life as a result of their understanding and obedience to the pattern of Jesus' life will also likely be integrated into the disciplee's life via invitation and challenge.

Low Maturity/Low Chemistry: As alluded to in a previous post, this is a recipe for PROBLEMS! I learned the hard way on this one, so take it from one who knows from experience.

So, when looking at introducing and integrating tools and processes for discipleship among a church staff, its possible to begin a discipling culture. However, it will not become a full blown culture until the nature of the discipling relationships experience an upgrade in the chemistry department. to supplement this deficit on the front end, I would suggest some intentional, explicit teaching on the role of chemistry in discipling so the discipling relationships and process will not devolve into another glorified small group centered around the transfer of information. Tools and processes need to be utilized properly, and in an optimal environment in order to be effective and efficient. Proper utilization is characterized by calibrating invitation and challenge, whereas the optimal environment is in a relationship where chemistry present.

So, in the end, it still comes back to chemistry, but maturity can get you through the first initial phase of implementation to get the ball rolling. As I like to say, sometimes you have to be a bricoleur and work with what you got!

180. The Crisis Facing Seminaries and Theological Education

Mike Breen, Doug Paul and JR Rozko are provoking a really good conversation about the role of theological education in the future of the church. Here is a really good video framing the dilemma and a possible way forward.

Re-Imagining Theological Education | 3DM from Doug Paul on Vimeo.

179. An Encouraging Word for Church Planters form Ben Sternke

I have several blogs I read on a regular basis to stimulate thought and to vicariously participate in peoples apostolic journeys. Ben Sternke is one of those guys I read and reflect on. He has a great post for church planters I want to re-post here.

A Word for Church Planters from Haggai

by BEN STERNKE on OCTOBER 23, 2011

This morning I was reading the Scriptures from the Daily Office Lectionary and felt like God encouraged me with one of the passages from Haggai. I also felt like it might be an encouraging word for others out there who are planting new expressions of church. So if you’re doing the slow work of rooting a community of faith in discipleship and mission, this one’s for you!

The context is the rebuilding of the temple after the exile, and the Lord has “stirred up the spirit of the whole remnant of the people” to work on the building the house of the Lord, a place for him to dwell on earth. They begin in earnest, excited about the vision and expecting great things.

But pretty soon discouragement sets in. The work is hard. They are remembering the good old days of the former temple. They’re really not sure anymore if it’s going to be worth it in the end. So God sends them a word from the prophet Haggai:

“Who of you is left who saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Does it not seem to you like nothing? But now be strong… all you people of the land… and work. For I am with you,” declares the Lord Almighty… “And my Spirit remains among you. Do not fear.”

This is what the Lord Almighty says: “In a little while I will once more shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. I will shake all nations, and what is desired by all nations will come, and I will fill this house with glory… the glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house… and in this place I will grant peace.”

I think it might be a message for discouraged church planters, too. Those who are trying to plant churches rooted in discipleship and mission are often discouraged at the immensity and slowness of the task. It would be far easier (in some ways) to gather a crowd of eager consumers and give them what they want each week. When people are leaving and finances are tight, it’s hard to resist the temptation toward spiritual feudalism, where we as leaders act as providers of goods and services in exchange for a better paycheck and more people.

We are trying to build on an entirely different foundation (discipleship to Jesus). The foundation is the most important part of any structure, but it’s slow, messy, difficult work that doesn’t yield a lot of visible progress at the end of the day. If we’re discouraged about “results” the temptation will be to cut corners on the foundation.

So the encouragement for me this morning (and maybe for you) is simple, and straight from Haggai:

“Be strong and work, for I am with you.”

Though it doesn’t seem as impressive as other ministries or what you were involved in before, be strong and work, for I am with you, and my Spirit remains among you. You are digging deep and building strong foundations for a house that I can dwell in, a community I can live among. And while things look small and insignificant now, the glory of what is coming will be greater than the glory of what was.

Keep building the foundations of a house for me to live in, because this is ultimately what the world needs and desires. When you build with discipleship and mission, you are building on the unshakable foundation of my kingdom, and it will stand. I will fill my house with glory in time – for now, be strong and work, for I am with you.