Forming a 5-Fold Leadership Team Immersion

A 4-week Immersion in How to Awaken and Assemble an Elder Team or Church Planting Team Using the APEST w/ Aaron and Karrie Thomas About this Immersion In partnership with The V3 Movement and Seeds & Water Collective: Somewhere along the line, humanity has become clouded in our understanding of leading together: whether at work, home, or church, we’ve got …

Why Planters Are Equipped for Racial Justice

“If you are doing ministry in America and you don’t understand race, you’re not going to be an effective missionary.” – David Bailey As we witness this volcanic eruption of racial unrest spill out across the country, the urgency to end systemic racism has never felt greater. Yet the Church has never seemed so ill-equipped to live out God’s vision …

Church Without Walls Part 2

Covid19 has been tough on church worship services, but it has also exposed something beautiful—the Church can gather without walls. When you pare down the Church to its essentials, something potent is discovered at its core. Could it be time to re-explore the DNA of the church when it’s decentralized, when it takes on the form of a grassroots local …

Church Without Walls

Covid19 has been tough on church worship services, but it has also exposed something beautiful—the Church can gather without walls. When you pare down the Church to its essentials, something potent is discovered at its core. Could it be time to re-explore the DNA of the church when it’s decentralized, when it takes on the form of a grassroots local …

The 5-Fold Church Startup: A Resilient Planting Approach

God has wired all of us for ministry. When we uncover and awaken the five-fold typology (apostles, prophets, evangelist, shepherds, and teachers mentioned in Eph. 4) in our faith communities and our neighborhoods, we will not only be able to live out our calling, but also help others discover theirs.  If you want to plant churches that are resilient and …

Mutual Movemental Leadership

Re-imagining New Scaffolding In planting a missional-incarnational church you will collide with the big question “How do we do leadership in this new but old way of being the church?” Re-imagining and reconstructing leadership scaffolding are essential for being a movemental church in Post-Christianity, but it can be hard to find templates. I confess that my own history in leadership …

Five-Fold Proclamation: Part 3

In my first blog in this series I suggested that after years of teaching students to preach the way I was taught to preach (assign each student a text, which fit me well as a “teacher” on five-fold), I started to wonder, “Am I trying to force apostles, prophets, evangelists, and shepherds, to preach like teachers?”  I began to imagine, …

Five-Fold Proclamation: Part 2

In my previous post I suggested that after years of teaching students to preach the way I was taught to preach (assign a text, which fit me well as a “teacher” on five-fold), I started to wonder, “Am I trying to force apostles, prophets, evangelists, and shepherds, to preach like teachers?” To put it more positively, I began to imagine, …

Feelings vs Commitments

If you’re a church planter like me, then you’re aware that there’s been a growing emphasis on the 5-fold person gifts found in Ephesians 4:11-16: And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the …