Eric and Stacy Rafferty | Release the A.P.E.

Tutsi, Hutu, Genocide & Prophetic Multiethnicity

2 responses
February 13, 2013

genocide

By Eric Rafferty

[This is part of the series “Multi-Ethnicity in the Missional Church”. Read the other posts here]

In 1972 an intentionally multiethnic community of college students made a choice to prophetically reveal the Kingdom of God in their love for one another.

They crossed ethnic lines, broke rules, and cared for each other so sacrificially that the Kingdom of God was undeniably on display for their whole country to see. Just like the great prophets of scripture, their counter-cultural and prophetic example pointed many back to the heart of God, but it cost most of them their lives.

Multiethnic Ministry That’s Apostolic

no responses
January 31, 2013

An apostolic vision of multi ethnicity is about reaching every corner of a campus or city.

[This is part of the series “Multi-Ethnicity in the Missional Church”. Read the other posts here]

By Eric Rafferty

When multiethnic ministry is an expression of our apostolic calling it becomes something more than another value to care about. It is the benchmark of mission; the people of God sent to every culture. Apostolic multiethnicity is more than getting different colored people in a room together; it’s a diverse community of disciples being sent to every corner.

Multiethnicity: More than a Value

one response
January 10, 2013

multiethnicity

By Eric & Stacy Rafferty

[This is the start of a four part series on multiethnicity in the missional church. Unfortunately when we look at many of our churches, even missional ones, there is not much diversity among them. This series hopes to prophetically challenge the church and its leaders to cross cultures and build multiethnic communities!]

If you can’t tell from our tiny little picture, we come from different worlds. While a White guy from Nebraska falling in love with a Mexican

American girl from East LA sounds like the start of a romantic comedy (and a lot of the time it is hilarious), our cross-cultural relationship and the broader context of multiethnic community have been the deep waters of God’s discipling work in our lives.

Multiethnic community is where God called us each to jump ship and follow him in a new direction. It’s where He exposes our sin, selfishness, and cultural blinders every day. And it’s where God has revealed something of what his Kingdom is like.

Multiethnicity has become for us something more than just another value that Christians are supposed to care about. It has become a picture of the Kingdom at work in a community on mission together.

Here’s our story:

Taking students on a sex-traffic treasure hunt…

3 responses
December 12, 2012

What if success for your church or ministry was measured by the impact that you were having on the furthest corners of your city? What if instead of impact within your ministry, success was measured by how the world around you had changed?

One of our good friends has been on a roller-coaster journey with Jesus over the last year and her story is a powerful testimony of a vision for impact beyond a building.

Amy Becker leads a student ministry at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, and about a year ago she felt God beginning to invite her to have a bigger vision. Jeremiah 29 was a passage that held a lot of guidance for her.

The Laborers for the Harvest are in the Harvest!

2 responses
November 28, 2012

The harvest is plentiful!

When Jesus sent out 72 of his followers to proclaim the Kingdom of God in the towns and villages where he was about to go, he commissioned them with the worst motivational speech of all time.

I’m sending you out as lambs among wolves.

You will certainly be rejected.

And you can’t take any of your stuff.

As un-motivating as those promises may have felt, Jesus promised something else as he commissioned his “sent ones” that should fill each of us with hope even 2,000 years later:

The harvest is plentiful!

That is the spiritual reality. The harvest is plentiful.

He may have sent his 72 followers into rejection, complete dependence and suffering, but he also sent them into a plentiful harvest. The fields are ready and an abundant harvest awaits laborers who follow the Lord of the harvest into his harvest fields.

Jesus identifies the one limiting factor to this harvest being reaped: laborers.

Rhythms of Missional Discipleship

12 responses
November 7, 2012

As apostolic leaders we get fired up every time we meet students who want to step out in mission. We want to help them vision for what God could do in their lives and their friends’ lives. We want to go with them into their corners of the campus and help them plant the gospel there!

But we’ve become deeply aware during this season of ministry that we can’t do life on life discipleship with everyone. We long to see a generation of college students mobilized for mission on Nebraska campuses, but we’ve wrestled with the question of how we can empower every student we work with to grow in lives of missional discipleship.

Here’s our attempt at putting together a simple, reproducible tool to help students develop some rhythms of missional discipleship. There are three areas: Up, In, and Out and each one has a weekly and a daily practice. Almost none of this is original on it’s own. We’ve borrowed and combined ideas from Michael Frost, Alan Hirsch, and Mike Breen. Check it out:

Loneliness and the Need for Friends in Mission

2 responses
October 24, 2012

[This is part of the A.P.E. Pitfalls series. Check out the other posts here.]

I recently heard a story from the life of St. Francis of Assisi that captured an essential lesson for me in apostolic leadership. We need friends!

The story goes like this:

St. Francis

When St Francis said yes to God’s call to “rebuild” the Church, to care for the poor and sick, and to proclaim the gospel, he said no to a lot of other things. He said no to the previous direction of his life, he said no to a life of luxury and worldly success, and he said no to his parents, who were wealthy merchants. In fact he literally took the extravagant clothing off his back and gave them back to his father before he walked out into the streets.

And that was a choice he had to live with everyday. Everyday Francis would walk to the heart of his city to preach the gospel and care for the poor and sick. Everyday he would walk past his father’s shop and everyday he would face a barrage of insults and ridicule from his father as he walked by. “You’re wasting your life.” “You’ve turned your back on us.” “You are a fool.”

In the loneliness of his calling, it was difficult for Francis to keep his father’s words from taking root in his soul. Had he been a fool? Was he wasting his life?

Stop Trying To Be Famous

5 responses
October 10, 2012

A gathering of students from every college campus in Omaha being invited into mission on campus.

Great things can happen when we don’t care who gets the credit!

I’m just gonna put it out there. I love to get the credit when things go well. A real part of me wants to see revival happen in Nebraska under a banner that says Eric Rafferty in big shiny letters.

But I’m not sure if there’s a bigger obstacle to planting movements that go beyond ourselves and our ministries than the need to get credit for it.

This summer I read Church 3.0 by Neil Cole and it messed me up in a lot of ways. In one section Cole describes a decentralized network of churches called Awakening Chapels that he started in Long Beach, CA.

After five years of planting Awakening Chapels, Cole and his team were able to trace the network through five generations of multiplication. They had planted churches that planted churches that planted churches that planted churches! A fourth generation church even sent planters to Thailand and India.

That kind of rapid multiplication is inspiring but what challenged me most is that Cole couldn’t count the movement beyond that. Once the network jumped to India they just lost track of it. Third generation churches weren’t called Awakening Chapels and many of the fourth generation churches knew nothing about Cole or his role in planting the movement that had birthed their church!

As I read this story a part of me wanted to track Cole down, shake him by the shoulders and ask,

“Don’t you care that you’re not getting the credit for this thing? Doesn’t it bother you that your church multiplication network is spreading throughout India and it probably doesn’t even know your name?”

What if God could use you to win your whole city to Christ… but no one knew your name?

What if someone else got all of the credit?

Would you somehow feel cheated?

Continue Reading

How quickly can God change a life?

no responses
September 26, 2012

Jesus talking to Zacchaeus in the tree

How quickly can God change a life?

I’m just finishing up a powerful couple of days studying the gospel of Luke with a group of campus missionaries from around the world. And Jesus is going APE all over the place!

I was struck by Jesus the Apostle, who is sent by the Spirit of the Lord to proclaim freedom (Luke 4:18) and who sends his followers out with authority to take the message of his Kingdom to new towns (Luke 10:1).

I was by met by Jesus the Prophet who issues a prophetic proclamation that the Kingdom of God has come near (Luke 10:9) and a prophetic warning of judgment to cities that reject His messengers (Luke 4:24, Luke 10:12-15).

But I was especially challenged by Jesus the Evangelist who proclaims good news (Luke 4:18) and highlights his mission to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10).

Zacchaeus

The most challenging moment came last night when we dug into the story of Jesus and Zacchaeus in Luke 19. Jesus is 23 miles from finishing his journey to the cross, he has just one afternoon to pass through the city of Jericho and in that one afternoon he turns the city upside down. How did he do it?

He invited himself into the life of an influential but corrupt leader, he transformed his life, and he watched his repentance initiate a massive redistribution of financial resources in Jericho!

Here’s where I felt convicted: Jesus spent a few hours with Zacchaeus and he went from being a corrupt, isolated traitor, to sacrificially giving half of his wealth to the poor and probably giving the rest away to everyone he had previously extorted money from.

In a few hours.

How long does it take for God to change a life?

How long do I expect it to take?

I recognized that I often have embarrassingly low expectations for what Jesus can do in the lives of people I’ve just met.

Two Students Come to Christ

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

2 responses
September 12, 2012

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

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

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

How did that happen?

Every Corner

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

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