September, 2012 | Release the A.P.E.

Check out the book winners! “Creating a Missional Culture”

one response
September 30, 2012

That was a fun competition everyone! I really enjoyed reading all of your comments, tweets and facebook posts! Thanks for participating and we will definitely do it again! This month to be exact!

Alan Hirsch has kindly shipped me five HARD BACK copies of “The Permanent Revolution” that he and Tim Catchim have written. We will be doing another competition and giving those away as well later this month! I Can’t wait!! make sure to subscribe here and stay connected with us!

Here are the winners and what they wrote!

Brian Chung – “Awesome Book!” (shared on his facebook timeline)

Michael Stalcup – “I’m working toward building up a missional community at Claremont McKenna College, especially trying to plant a group in the heart of CMC’s party culture. Already seeing God do some amazing things and I want more! And I want this book. :)”

Chris Land – He is our twitter winner and simply tweeted out the contest 🙂

Jorge Bermudez – “Missional is a way of living your faith wherever you are, intentionally and with passion.”

Kyle – “Missional means having a purpose-mindset to reach others near or far for the sakeof the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Good job guys! You will love the book! And sorry there aren’t any lady winners! I promise this was completely random 🙂 email me and I will ship them off to you!

Get to Know the A.P.E. Writers…Luke Cawley

one response
September 27, 2012

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

Growing up, my sisters and I were the only kids in our school openly from a churched background. My family went to a small church of about thirty people, and there was only one other bible-believing church in our whole town. It’s the kind of background which programs into you the assumption that most people don’t know about Jesus and unless you talk to them they won’t get to know him.

Initially I had just a dull awareness of the need to speak about Jesus, but as my teenage years wore on I became increasingly frenetic in my attempts to talk with others about Jesus: I would bring him up in conversation with friends, I initiated a regular street outreach in my home town and I spent every summer involved in short-term mission projects.

The strange thing was that for all my activity and enthusiasm I didn’t see a single person open their life up to Christ.

Shortly before leaving for university, I read a book called The Cross and the Switchblade written by a man from rural Pennsylvania who nervously stepped into the heart of New York’s gangland and saw hardened criminals hand their lives over to Jesus. The book amazed me because it was told by somebody who actually seemed to know God.

It began to slowly dawn on me that for all my efforts to introduce others to Jesus, he was really little more than an idea or a doctrine for me.

I realized that the person most in need of God’s transforming power was me.

How quickly can God change a life?

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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

When God calls us onward…

5 responses
September 25, 2012

Because the fundamental core of an apostle is “sentness” there will be times in the life of this person that God calls them onward. It is in the very fabric of apostolic leaders to push forward the “sent” nature of the church, and often times that is modeled by them personally.

Apostles are the first to leave, the first to break new territory, the first to go to new ground, the first to say,

“we have to take that land!”

They are obsessed with the “sentness” of God that Jesus models for us in John and charges us with in Acts.

Apostles are the first to leave, the first to break new territory, the first to go to new ground

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Well, this very year as I have been leaning into my apostolic gifting more fully than ever, God called me onward to Los Angeles.

I won’t ever forget last February, when I was preaching at Greek Conference, how God spoke to me in the midst of 640 students,

“I want you to go to LA and make this happen with me.”

I didn’t have full understanding of His voice and calling in that moment, but I did know God was speaking to me at this conference with 43 schools, and 640 students represented. None were from LA.

LA has 17 campuses with Greek Systems, and Greek InterVarsity was doing nothing intentionally to reach them! It was at this Greek Conference, that God stirred in me big time the sent nature of Himself and He essentially said to me,

“I want you to go. Let’s go do this thing together!”

You Know You’re an Apostle When…Dave Ferguson’s Story

5 responses
September 24, 2012

You Know You Are An Apostle When…

“Dave, you are definitely an apostle.” I had planted a church, my friend worked for a Christian magazine and it was over a lunchtime conversation that I heard this for the very first time. Of course I knew about apostles in the Bible, but what did he mean, “Dave, you are definitely an apostle.” He went on to explain, “An apostle is one of the gifts God gave to equip the church.” Then he looked at me like I was an idiot, “Ever read Ephesians 4?” Of course I had, but no one had ever used the term “apostle” to describe me. So I asked, “Why do you think I’m an apostle?” As he finished up lunch he explained,

“An apostle is someone who can see over the horizon to what is next for the church. Wherever an apostle goes they start new things and leave fresh expression of the church in their wake.”

Free Book Give Away: “Creating a Missional Culture”

27 responses
September 23, 2012

Who doesn’t like a free book???

Well I am happy to announce that I have 5 copies of “Creating a Missional Culture” by JR Woodward to give away to you this week!

Big Thanks to InterVarsity Press for giving me these books for you! They are helping us get the word out about JR (one of our writers!!) and our blog!!

This is a great book that really helps you lean into and get familiar with the Five-Fold Ministry laid out for us in Ephesians 4.

JR calls them “Equippers” and he urges us to assemble our churches around the five equippers and shows us how to do this inside the book!

It is a great read!

Here is how to enter yourself for the drawing…

The Best Way to Wake Up

one response
September 21, 2012

Geoff (left) and his fraternity brothers

[Hint: it’s not with Folgers in your cup!! make sure to read the testimony at the bottom!]

Jesus says in John 4,

34“My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. 35Do you not say, ‘Four months more and then the harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. 36Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. 37Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. 38I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”

There is no greater joy for any believer in my opinion than seeing someone accept Christ. Jesus talks about the food of the harvest and that is what sustains Him.

As an evangelist, this is the kind of thing I live on too. It is what motivates me and gets me up and out of bed every day.

This week was a hard week for me. I just felt a bit more lonely and down than usual and even doubtful about my call at times.

But then I woke up to this email yesterday!

Get to Know the A.P.E. Writers…Sarah Carter

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September 19, 2012

Sarah with students on a summer project!

When I came to college, I was on the edge of faith. Not only was I faced with an onslaught of options to define who I was in that new and broader world, but I was also constantly nagged with a question about the Christian life…”Is this it?” Beyond just a restless sense of dissatisfaction, I’ve come to realize that question is the root of the A.P.E. in me.

Joining InterVarsity as a student answered many questions for me about what a community following Jesus could look like. Diverse, faithful, and risky, the students in InterVarsity gave me a taste of what being on the faith journey with good friends looked and felt like. Studying abroad in South Africa for a year expanded my American view of God and church and working with unwed, HIV-positive mothers in the townships gave me an insatiable desire to find God in the forgotten places.

Following graduation, I joined InterVarsity staff and during my first summer I took a small team of students to the Los Angeles Urban Project. This 5-week program gave us all a Kingdom theology grounded in God’s heartbeat for justice, and His preferential focus and call to those on the margins. It was here that my question of “Is this it?” was resoundingly answered by “Yes. This is what the Kingdom is like…”

From then, I was hooked. I have never been able to let go of a Gospel that “comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable.”

At a conference in San Francisco that we eventually brought to San Diego called Jesus, Justice and Poverty, a young woman shared her story about working and serving with the poor. As a white girl from a middle-class background like myself, she echoed the words in my heart when at the end of her testimony she cautioned,

“Don’t think that I do this because I am a great person or have anything to offer. This time spent in this community has saved my life.”

Every chance I’ve had to experience Jesus’ love and action for the broken, the prisoners, the poor has helped me understand and love Him more, and has saved me from a life of selfishness, oppression, and frivolity.

Prophet – Apostle

Therefore, in my very limited knowledge of APEST, I have found myself identifying with the prophet-apostle, unable to escape a “sent” life unleashing the Kingdom of God in anyway I can, and challenging the Church to do the same. There are many debates on how to interpret a prophetic role. I love Abraham Heschel’s definition in his book The Prophets,

“The prophet was an individual who said No to his society, condemning its habits and assumptions, its complacency, waywardness, and syncretism. He was often compelled to proclaim the very opposite of what his heart expected. His fundamental objective was to reconcile man and God.”

Why does the Church need prophets today? In my interactions throughout the world, and in our own country, I have increasingly encountered an abject dismissal of Christianity because of how it has been lived out by Christians. Our good news has been lost as the Church has lost our grasp on the sacrificial, unconditional love of Jesus, who challenged the religious power, spent his time with sinners, and invited all people into an upside-down Kingdom. The prophets in our midst can call us back to that love.

For our truth to have any power, we must live out this message as well as speak it. Not only will it help our churches and our evangelism, but the world aches to see this Kingdom come, bringing healing, justice, and true reconciliation. This is the purpose of our life here on earth, and we must take hold of it completely, being willing to give anything in our life for it. Along the way, this good news will transform believers as well as non-believers, churches, communities, and entire systems, giving us that kind of life that never needs to ask the question, “Is this it?”

What about you? Have you been asking yourself “is this it?” lately?

Coming to terms … James Choung’s story

5 responses
September 18, 2012

I’m supposed to tell a coming-of-age story. Not about becoming a man, though. (There’s actually not too much to tell there, anyway.) Or even about becoming an apprentice of Jesus. (I do have a little more to tell on that one.) But instead, I’m supposed to write about when I knew I was an Apostle, Prophet or Evangelist.

It’s not an easy assignment.

First of all, any story I might write will sound self-congratulatory. Imagine me in an ornate robe, curved pipe in hand, slinking back into a velvet armchair, and I start to speak in a slow, cultivated accent: “In a time when boys sought to be men, and men dared to dream, I looked down at my already gnarled hands, pondering the futility of life. That is, until a voice from heaven cracked through my thoughts like a thunderclap: ‘James, from this day forward, you shall be called … Apostle!’” It assails against my Korean upbringing to crown myself like that. Even Lebron received much derision for tattooing “Chosen1” on his back, even though, whether you like him or not, he can play ball. How much less have I accomplished?

Plus, these titles represent a new language to me. I’m still not comfortable with any of them. Perhaps my Gen X sensibilities doesn’t want to get labeled. Or sometimes people who carry labels like these are, well, freaky. I imagine people in white suits, cock-strutting on stage, wiping the sweat off their brow with a handkerchief, screaming into their microphones. Or I envision people who wear sandwich boards picturing silhouettes of bodies falling into flames, proclaiming that the end is near. If these titles don’t feel antiquated, they seem to be, at least, on the fringe of religious excess.

So why am I writing for this blog, again?

Get to Know the A.P.E. Writers… JR Woodward

3 responses
September 17, 2012

I never thought of myself as a “frat boy, “ but I became one. My roommate was invited to a fraternity rush party, and he wanted a friend to come with him, so I tagged along. I met some cool guys there, and before I knew it, I was pledging a fraternity and eventually became a full-fledge brother.

Little did I know that it would be in the Fraternity that I would meet two brothers who would cause me to consider the claims of Christ. I was working my way through college and didn’t have the money to go to summer school and pay for an apartment at the same time. Two of my fraternity brothers offered me a place to stay for free, and it was their hospitality and lives as Christ followers that provoked me to read the gospels. Through reading the gospel I fell in love with and surrendered my life to Jesus.

I happened to be the Resident Assistant in my dormitory. It was my responsibility to care for and help the sixty residents that lived on my hall. I didn’t know very much scripture, but I did know that God loved the whole world. I did know that God wanted everyone to be with Him so much so, that He put on flesh and bones, lived among us, died for us, and rose again. I didn’t know much, but I knew that, and that was enough.