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.

Interpreting Ephesians 4: The Five-Fold Giftings

19 responses
September 11, 2012

There is such a better view of the Kingdom of God and of the church when we are releasing all five gifts

[This post is part of the A.P.E. Theology series. Read the rest of the posts here!]

When it comes to interpreting Ephesians 4 and the five-fold giftings mentioned in verse 11, it is important to know that two main lines of thinking has crept up over the years.

1. Apostles and Prophets were just for the founders of the church (the 12)

2.The five fold ministry does exist today but only for leaders in the church. Not for everyone.

So if you come from a camp that believes one of those thought lines, or are going to a church with these beliefs, you are not going to hear teaching on the five –fold gifting much at all. If it doesn’t exist today, point one, then why teach on it? If it is only for leaders, then if it is talked about at all, it will be talked about with those leaders. Not with the common man or woman in a common place like Sunday morning worship.

This is just a shame and an inaccurate reading of Ephesians 4. It leaves us at 40% capacity and only empowering shepherds and teachers with a tiny bit of evangelism sprinkled in.

[I will write another article about these beliefs and unpack a bit more where they come from…stay tuned]

But for now, let me present to you an alternative way to read Ephesians.

Facing a trial? What gives you strength?

no responses
September 9, 2012

John Wesley Preaching in Ireland. (c) John Wesleys House & The Museum of Methodism; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

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

If you are going to be a person who starts new things for God, takes any kind of risk, or wants to prohpetically call the church out into things on the horizon, you will face trials, rejection and at times marginalization.

What will you do at that point?

Well, Here is something that might help you!

John Wesley

Lets take a look into the journal of John Wesley!

He is what I would call the epitome of an Apostolic leader…He started new things, led movements of people and organized mission around the common person as well as anyone… He was the father of Methodism.

Often times we make the apostolic leader the sexy thing, when in fact it is often very hard to be called by God in this way and it comes with great costs. Often times much failure and rejection is part of the resume.

Take a peak at Wesley’s journal…

Release the A.P.E. Radio Interview

2 responses
September 7, 2012

[This post is part of the A.P.E. Theology series. Read the rest of the posts here!]

Here is an interview I got to do on a radio show in Seattle on August 4th, the second day of the blog! The show is called “Live From Seattle” and it is hosted by Doug Bursch. He started following us on twitter and asked me on to the show. I can tell Doug is a pretty cool dude and I can’t wait to meet him. He gets the APE.

Pretty cool huh?

This interview is 17min long and it helps you grab the intent of the blog and what we are trying to do with it.

He asks me questions like

who is this blog for?
How do you define Evangelistic?
How do you define Prophetic?
Do you have any pharisees on the blog? Yes, he asked me that!! But he was joking…listen to what I say!
What is our big dream for the blog…what do we hope to see happen here?

Check it out!

Listen to the interview

Get to know the A.P.E. Writers…Shawn Young

4 responses
September 6, 2012

Compelled By My Inner APE

When the Apostle Paul wrote,

“Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.” –1 Cor. 1:26-27

He must have been thinking of me. I’ve never been a stellar student, (I take months to read books), and have often felt outclassed by my intellectual friends. When it comes to charisma, I am about as magnetic as a wet walnut. I love watching people who can light up a party the minute they walk in the room—they are marvelous in action. I’m the opposite of them. I think I actually suck light out of the room when I enter. I’m a social “black hole”.

That is, until I meet someone who shares my fixation with the profound life and current genius of “God’s own fool”, Jesus. That’s when a connection starts to happen, and a creative but very practical set of gears start whirring in my head, and before I know it, I’m actually influencing someone with a stream of ideas for extending the gospel to more people. After 20 years in college ministry, a few hundred Kingdom leaders have experienced my “serious foolishness” and I’m honored to have played some part in their adventures.

I didn’t know it, but these were signs of my inner APE.

Get to Know the A.P.E. Writers…Jon Hietbrink’s Story

2 responses
September 5, 2012

I had never thought of myself as a planter, let alone an apostolic leader.

I came of age as a spiritual leader in something of a “mega” campus ministry at Central College. It was the late 90’s, and the seeker-sensitive movement was gaining traction. In the space of a few short years, our InterVarsity chapter had grown from about 100 to averaging over 400 students a week (over 25% of the campus). We had the best worship band on campus, thoroughly relevant teaching, a compelling vision to grow, and a culture of invitation–we soon outgrew our room and had to find a different place to meet. I remember the crowd gathered for my first talk as a staff with InterVarsity. The room sat 625, it was standing room only, and I realized I was way over my head!

Go Plant

Three years later, ministry was still humming along. Our chapter was running about 350 students, we had seen more than 40 students come to faith over the course of the year, and our community had hosted a 24.7 prayer room for an entire semester (over 2,500 hours). On the outside, we were one of the largest, most fruitful InterVarsity chapters in the country, but on the inside, I was frustrated, tired, and restless. Was any of this effort making a real difference in the lives of students? Were students actually being transformed or just entertained? How long could I keep running the machinery of this ministry?

Get to Know the A.P.E. Writer’s…Beau Crosetto’s Story

no responses
September 4, 2012

One of the first Dorm Teams at San Diego State

I am primarily an Apostolic Evangelist in my gifting and calling so as we launch this blog, I am extremely excited to encourage others with this gift mix to fully live into these vocations so the Jesus mission can go forward and you can feel fully alive as you give yourself to God’s purposes.

The Apostolic Evangelist Came Alive in Me

When I first got to San Diego State as a staff in 2005, I was intent on seeing dorm ministry start. I was and am deeply passionate about starting new things in contexts where people who don’t know Jesus are hanging out.

So in 2005 when I had the discussion with the existing staff team about why this wasn’t happening, a bunch of excuses came out. The two main ones were 1) it is too hard to get into the dorms because there are six doors that take key cards before you get to the floor and you have to sign in at the front with a guest. Since we don’t know people in the dorms, we can’t get in. 2) Students wouldn’t really come to a bible study right on the dorm floor because it is weird.

I politely, or maybe not so politely, called BS, and said, “we are going to do this”. To give the team credit, they fully empowered me and unleashed me to go and start dorm ministry and make it the primary responsibility of my job to get dorm ministry started and to reach people who were not coming and would not come to our group. I was commissioned to reach people “out there”. I loved this and felt most alive.

The combination of the desire to plant and start something new as well as crack open a hard place (apostolic) with the desire for salvation in freshmen and people to hear the gospel at all costs (evangelistic) was so strong in me.

I will never forget the first day of school in the second year of dorm ministry at SDSU (2006). I was training up a two new student disciples that had committed to being dorm leaders with me. We had a team! The first week I modeled for them how to lead a scripture study right in the dorm and their job was to throw an ice cream party and invite the dorm door by door to come. This was a scary task for them but so good as they learned to risk, be rejected, feel awkward, and experience joy as people said yes to coming.

Release the Apostolic, Prophetic, Evangelistic…part 2

6 responses
September 3, 2012

[This post is part of the A.P.E. Theology series. Read the rest of the posts here!]

It is time we “Release the APE” Within the church and for the world just like Christians did in the early church. If the church is going to be effective in mission and healthy in growth, we must empower all five vocations as stated in Ephesians 4, not just two. We need the Apostle, Prophet, and Evangelist as well as the Shepherd and Teacher. We need the APE too, not just the ST.

Because it has existed in a “Christianized” society, the western church has become fascinated with calling every position in the church “Pastor” or “Teacher” and we have greatly emphasized these gifts. It is confusing to me when today’s Western churches primarialy only uses the Sheperd/Pastor and teacher titles, when Jesus clearly gave us five vocations as stated in Ephesians 4. Almost every church I go to has many leaders and those leaders are all titled “pastor” and “teacher”. You would be hard pressed to find Western churches that are actually releasing apostolic, prophetic and evangelistic leaders in a healthy way. You tend to either get no mention of the APE vocations or some crazy version of it that Biblically is hard to follow.

We need more books like The Permanent Revolution, where Hirsch and Catchim lay down a theoretical and theological grounding for the five-fold, and Creating a Missional Culture, where JR Woodward shows how the five-fold can work itself out in the local church.

Please hear me clearly at this point: We need pastors and teachers in the mission of God. What I want to challenge is the way we have overemphasized two vocations (Shepherd, Teacher) while leaving behind the other three more generative vocations (Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist).

Release the Apostolic, Prophetic, Evangelistic…part 1

14 responses
August 12, 2012

[This post is part of the A.P.E. Theology series. Read the rest of the posts here!]

“Inside of every apple is an orchard” – Donald McGavran

This is the beginning of a blog dedicated to unleashing the potential inside of every believer to lead movements in Jesus name. We firmly believe that every person following Jesus has an important role to play in advancing the Kingdom of God.

In the same way a seed produces a tree and then eventually an orchard, we believe that the Holy Spirit filling and dwelling in a soul (seed) can produce a disciple of Christ (tree) and in affect a movement of Jesus followers (orchard) radically changing the world.

There are millions of seeds all around the world waiting to be activated and sent on God’s Mission!

We believe the key to these seeds flourishing is the release of the APE!

It is time we “Release the APE” inside the church and to world just like we did in the early church. If the church is going to be effective in mission and healthy in growth, we must empower all five vocations, not just two. We need the Apostolic, Prophetic, Evangelistic as well as the Shepherd and Teacher. We need the APE, not just the ST.

Coming Soon! Launching Sept. 3rd

5 responses
June 27, 2012

The blog is being built as you read this. Posts will be launching September 3rd.

BUT…

We were just featured on TentBlogger, check it out!

Here is our blog’s promise to you the reader:

Release the APE is all about activating the Apostolic, Prophetic, and Evangelistic vocations into the world. We are committed to telling real time APE stories, sharing thoughts that shape the APE, and encouraging believers to live into APE vocations so that all the potential for God movements can be unleashed everywhere.

Feel free to subscribe here and catch us in your inbox or reader when we start.

Here are a few things for you to know in the mean time:

We will Launch September 3rd
Many writers will contribute on this blog (see the right sidebar for bios)
We will post five days a week
Learn more about us here
Please Promote the blog…like our FB page, Tweet about us, etc. Thanks!

Feel free to comment below to give us suggestions about content or things you are interested in talking and reading about. We would love the feedback.