By Beau Crosetto

Consider the potato.

It is fully formed and grown underground and unless you dig it up, you would never know that it was ripe and ready for harvest. You literally could walk right over it 100 times and never know.

I think there are harvest opportunities like this as well. There are communities ripe with potential and just waiting to be harvested. Cities that are ready for revival, campuses eager for the gospel message, neighborhoods longing for community and Jesus.

We just don’t know and we just don’t see it.

It is an interesting thought to think that there are communities of faith that are ready to form with little effort needed. It is very different than the usual thought of starting something new.

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By Luke Cawley

How’s your budget looking? Do you have all the money you need to fund your ministry for the coming year? If the cash isn’t there, do you have a plan to try and raise the cash that makes your work possible?

I am thinking a lot about money these days. I was recently involved in setting up a new organization called Chrysolis. I am hoping to move with my wife and kids to Romania soon and begin developing the work of Chrysolis in Eastern and Central Europe. Like most such pioneering work it needs money to make it happen. We don’t need piles of cash, but we would like enough to house and feed our family, and also to cover the general costs of our work. So, I do think about money fairly frequently and, like you with your ministry, I do have some thoughts about how we might be able to raise it.

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Jon Ferguson leading a baptism service in Chicago

By Dave Ferguson

Apostolic leaders lead from the front!  The apostle Paul led from the front. That’s why he could say,

“I urge you to imitate me. For this reason I am sending to you Timothy, my son whom I love, who is faithful in the Lord. He will remind you of my way of life in Christ Jesus, which agrees with what I teach everywhere in every church” (1 Cor. 4:16 – 17).

He felt confident enough in the mission that if others would just follow his lead, the mission would be accomplished. In fact, Paul felt confident enough that he was sending Timothy to lead them, because he knew that he had apprenticed Timothy and that if they just imitated Timothy’s life, they could accomplish the mission.

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

One of the key theological foundations in the missional conversation involves the concept of the missio Dei, or “mission of God.” It is God who has a mission to set things right in a broken world—to redeem and restore it to what was always intended.

Therefore, mission is not a program of the church. It is not something we invent. Mission is not something we initiate. Instead mission flows directly from the nature and purposes of a missionary God. It is not that the church has a mission; it is that God’s mission has a church. In other words, it is God’s mission, and the church is an instrument created by God to be sent into the world to join in his mission. This is a complete “game-changer” in several ways, but for now lets consider one.

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