I wanted to share this incredible story of healing that I heard this week. A major way that we explain the prophetic is in the ability to hear God and follow His voice into action and obedience. Prophetic energy pushes us to hear God and follow his voice into obedience. Many times following God’s voice leads us into praying for others healing and trusting him in the supernatural. This is a story from Julie Golingan Roberts. She is staffing a plant at San Joaquin Delta College in the Central Valley of CA.
Month: August 2014
Two Groups of People in Ferguson
In light of Michael Brown’s funeral today, here is a post on Jonathan Walton’s blog that I thought was great. I encourage you to read it and an excerpt is below:
Win 13 Free Books – Help Us Share
We are really excited about the response we have seen and heard about since releasing our FREE Ebook last Thursday. If you didn’t get it yet, download it here.
But we really want help from our APE tribe to help us spread the word and get this book into as many hands as possible so we are GIVING AWAY 13 FREE BOOKS to those that share!
Click to Tweet Now and Enter the Drawing
The APE Ebook is great for:
- Ministry Teams to read together
- Christians that want to get familiar with APE language
- Christian Leaders that want to go deeper with APEST and need stories and ideas
This ebook is designed for you to give it to your friends and team members so they don’t have to come to the blog and search through all the posts. This Ebook is totally organized for a 101 introduction so your friends can just read right through it and understand the APE callings, language, and how to implement them.
So we want to incentivize you to SHARE…
Loneliness and Planting: A Spiritual Discipline for A.P.E.s
This is a guest post by Alison Marie Smith. She works for Greek InterVarsity at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Her and her husband, Sean, moved to Utah four years ago from the great state of Michigan. She loves reading, running, making meals for her students, and sharing adventures with her husband. Alison blogs at www.alisonmariesmith.com
As a planter, I am attracted by the idea of going where no one has gone before. Four years ago I moved from Michigan to Utah and began planting Greek InterVarsity at the University of Utah. This was the first ministry for fraternity and sorority students in the state as well as in InterVarsity’s Rocky Mountain region. When I arrived in Utah, I was the only Greek InterVarsity staff within a 600-mile radius and few Greek students were involved in Christian ministries. At the time, many people in the West were supportive of Greek InterVarsity, but few understood the unique challenges and value of working with Greek students. It was isolating.
Release The APE Ebook
I am so excited to share with you all that the Release The APE ebook is out!
Jon Hietbrink, Eric Rafferty, and I have been working hard for months to compile top posts from this blog and turn it into a resource that you can share with your teams and friends to help them understand the APE callings more clearly and easily.
What is the Problem in Ferguson?
Dora Yiu will be writing monthly posts for the APE going forward! We are so excited to have her on the team. Dora is a full time staff director with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, a core leader at Flood Church San Diego and a life long follower of Jesus. After graduating from University of California San Diego, Dora went on to live and serve in the inner city of San Fransisco, ministering to and learning from the urban poor. Currently Dora serves as the Area Director for the San Diego Coast Area, overseeing UCSD and the University of San Diego.
“So… what exactly is the problem in Ferguson?”
This was a sincere and genuine question someone asked me earlier this week, and a question I myself have been pondering all week. It is a truly difficult question to answer because the truth is there is no specific singular problem in this situation but rather a myriad of different problems all intertwined and interlaced into a complex web spun into greater entanglement by the various voices (both boisterous and silent) in both media and social media outlets. I will not pretend to be an expert on anything, nor will I pretend that I understand or know enough of the details surrounding the incident or the events since the death of a young man named Michael Brown. But here are my humble attempts of sharing my reflections on what some of the pieces of the “problem” might be for those who might have this question but be afraid to ask it.
Three Ways to Engage with Ferguson
By Jon Hietbrink and Howie Meloch
It’s been more than a week since Michael Brown’s tragic death at the hands of police in St. Louis and in the midst of the continuing escalation of violence on the streets of Ferguson, it’s still hard to know how to engage. For some of us, his killing has (again) ripped open a wound laced with incredibly painful memories of personal and systemic racism—“How can this keep happening?!” For others of us, the shooting and its aftermath have provided a window into an experience that feels hard to understand.
There are many (some of whom are linked below) who have written deeply thoughtful and intelligent reflections in the wake of Michael Brown’s death—calls to action and advocacy, response and repentance. We don’t presume to have much to add to what’s already been said, but as we’ve prayed, mourned, and engaged during this difficult week, we wanted to share three brief thoughts for those of us who might feel paralyzed by uncertainty, unsure of how to engage at all in a situation that is so volatile and so painful for so many. Though there is of course much more that needs to be said and done in the wake of this tragedy, here are three humble first steps modeled on the life of Nehemiah that we hope might be an “onramp” for those of us looking for meaningful engagement around this painful situation.
Ferguson Links and Resources
In the midst of the tragic circumstances unfolding in Ferguson, Missouri, we believe it’s critically important that we listen intentionally to the voices of our brothers and sisters of color and allow their perspectives to influence our own.
Of course, there are many articles being written about what’s unfolding, and here are a few that we’ve found helpful over the last week—voices we’ve sought (and needed) to listen to.
- An interview with John Perkins (founder of the Christian Community Development Association)
- An article about the contextual factors that are in play in Ferguson
- An article exploring black rage in response to police brutality: (GRAPHIC)
- Five ways churches must respond
- An article written in response to the killing of Trayvon Martin, but still applicable today
- Some thoughts on responding as a white person
- A post on the need for Asian (and other non-black folks) to engage with these issues
- A sermon from Brenda Salter-McNeil on “Faith+Works=Life”
In addition, here’s some folks we’ve been following on Twitter to help ensure we are listening well to a diversity of voices:
- @druhart — Anabaptist scholar
- @cscleve — Social Psychologist
- @blackvoices — Huffington Post Black Voices
- @antoniofrench — Local Alderman in St. Louis
- @trymainelee — Journalist
We will love to keep updating these lists–who are you listening to that we could include?
Jesus Didn’t Slap Zacchaeus
Jesus consistently blows my mind. His responses to poor, sick, disabled and abused challenge me to my core and make me examine my heart daily; but today it’s His interactions with the rich and powerful that are astounding.
Catalytic Leaders Need Space
Recently Noah, my four year old, has been a bit difficult at home. He is listening poorly, pushing boundaries, and at times willfully going against what we say. We were told the twos were terrible and the fours terrific, but it feels the opposite to me.
Yesterday I took my two kids to the beach and I told Noah he could play anywhere he wanted as long as I could see him.
What ensued was telling.