Evangelicals “discover” apostles do exist today!

Leadership Journal is perhaps THE journal of journals for non-charismatic evangelical church leaders. It has its roots in Billy Graham and Christianity Today. It’s contributors are THE who’s who in the evangelical world - Willow Creek, Saddleback, etc. This was the camp that produced me, and then spit me back out when I started pointing out the Bible lists more apostles than just the Twelve.

You can imagine my delight to flip through my latest copy of Leadership Journal (Spring ‘08 - it’s not online yet) to discover the issue has two feature articles saying what I’ve been saying for a dozen years (and what the New Testament has been saying for 2000 years.) Apostles exist today!!!

Really, this is nothing new. Ephesians 4:11-13 explicitly says apostles are vital to the church, and will continue to be, “UNTIL we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”

For those who didn’t know there was any debate here, believe me, there is. In 2004, I wrote a book about these things (Obtainable Destiny, Creation House Press). At that time, the book was not welcome in evangelicalism. (The book is a commentary of sorts on 1, 2 Timothy and Titus which I decided to dub… the “Apostolic Epistles” instead of what we are all taught they were… “the Pastoral Epistles.”) My point was these guys were not sent out (apostolos) to be pastors and “hold people’s hands” for 30 years. They were apostles-in-training. My evangelical colleagues were okay calling me a church “planter” or a home “missionary”, but as I tried to point out, neither of those terms are found in the Bible. And to be clear, I wasn’t asking or interested to have a title attached to my name - it was about the recognition and release of the gift and its operation in the church.

I’ve come to believe the adversary doesn’t sweat much when 100 pastors is a state operate in their gifting. But the devil freaks out when 100 apostles are released in a region. Getting over our apprehensiveness with this gifting and its operation today will get us over a major hurdle in advancing the Kingdom of God in our regions.

My D. Min. studies, yes under my good friend Dr. C. Peter Wagner, led me to the conclusion that the closest thing to a church planter in the New Testament wasn’t a “pastor.” Pastors take care of sheep already in the fold. Evangelists win the lost but then they leave town. Only the apostle goes forth to establish lasting Kingdom outposts where they weren’t previously. Apostles are the pioneers, the church planters.

Suggesting such however, even just five years ago, you would have thought I was advocating we add a fourth person to the Trinity! I know there are wacko’s out there claiming to be apostles who are not. But even there, the fact that there are false apostles means there are real ones. In five more years, this will all be a non-issue and we can get on with the work of God and stop picking at each other. Here’s a quick summary of these two Leadership Journal articles:

ARTICLE #1 - Note the title/subtitle…THREE OVERLOOKED LEADERSHIP ROLES: We’re familiar with pastors and teachers, but todays world needs a leadership team that includes three biblical but forgotten functions. Here are some highlights…

If we take the five categories of church leadership from Ephesians 4:11, [we are] training leaders to be teachers and pastors for established congregations, but where [are] the evangelists, the prophets and the apostles to lead the mission of the gospel into the world… this divorce of apostles, prophets and evangelists from pastors and teachers has been disastrous for the local church and has damaged the cause of Christ and his mission.”

There is a great chart called the “Fantastic Five Diagram” which is old-school five-fold ministry stuff from the charismatic camp.

ARTICLE #2 - title/subtitle… APOSTLES TODAY? Rediscovering the gift that leaves churches and well-connected pastors in its wake. Apostles leave new churches in their wake!!! That’s it! I love the first sentence…

We all know about the apostles named Peter, Paul and John, but have you ever heard of Andronicus or Junia? Some are surprised to discover that the New Testament identifies more apostles than the twelve…

You get the idea. Evangelicals are just now discovering apostles do exist today. And, I’m thrilled! Maybe we can all work together again. And just maybe, the self-appointed, unaccountable heresy hunters will come under conviction and realize these verses are in the Bible after all.

My momentum book is about to be birthed

In 2003, I wrote a little 29-page booklet called “Maximizing Momentum: All Aboard the Move of God.” Long story, but it has since turned into a full-length book. Actually the full length book has been done for two years already. Last summer, I trained 100 church leaders in Ghana on these points. In the last five years I’ve taught this stuff at leadership retreats, to church plant launch teams, and to mission pastors. The feedback I’m getting is that there is nothing like what I have here and that the church desperately needs this message.

You say, what then is the hold up on it’s publication? Money. Still no breakthrough there but I’m going to press ahead getting it ready. My editor finished her work on this last summer and now I’m thinking about a creative layout and title. We had a little brainstorming session the other night on possible titles. At present, as you can see in the graphic, I’ve been going with the title “The Big Mo: Seizing the Crescendo Seasons of God’s Ever-Increasing Kingdom.” However, nobody in Africa last summer could figure any of that out - especially the “big mo” thing. My translator looked at me like I had broke out into tongues.

We are kicking around a few title ideas right now -
1. Unlocking the Secrets of Momentum
2. Momemtum Made Easy
3. Momentum Secrets
4. Crescendo: Momentum for the Church
5. Pastor Steve lights a fire under the butt of believers
6. Escalation in the End Times
7. _____________________________

I need some major feedback on this so, please, freely comment. If you are creative, shoot me a fresh title suggestion. If you like one of these, which one?

I’m bAAAaack - laughs and lessons from our Birmingham trip

Sorry to disappear from the blogosphere for a few days. I hope you were able to function for a few days without my life-giving insights into whatever I’m interested in. (Blame a hotwire.com $39 a night La Quinta hotel room that promised wireless internet but apparently the wires were missing that would have made it actually work.)

We just got back from Birmingham late last night. Went with 11 CATG peeps to Church of the Highlands for a spectacular church planting conference. Many things are rolling around in my head right now that will soon gel into more vision and passion for what we are doing right here in SD!

It’s always great to travel with friends. Lots of laughs… like yesterday when Pastor Dennis mis-spoke during a conversation about his baldness and talked about his using viagra and how that didn’t help his hair grow (he later tried to assure us he meant to say rogaine.) We flew from Birmingham to Dallas with Brian Houston - that was cool for the star-struck among us. I want to publicly thank Kathy for packing light this time… we knew you could do it!

Here’s some highlights:

- The greatest church planting “tool” is the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Jesus told his followers after three years of equipping… stay here in the upper room until you get what you really need to go out and take territory. Jesus sent people out to plant churches with POWER!

- Great word from Brian Houston on how we often focus on what we don’t have and only take notice of the lack… we miss what is right here in our own house- people, potential. We learned THE Darlene Zschech was once just a lady in his church named Darlene - now her song made America Idols top ten list - shout to the Lord! We often don’t see the “oil” in our own “house” because it doesn’t look like its going to look like when God touches it. We’ve got to raise people in our midst up and release them!

- Regarding prayer… a man on his face never falls from that position. Do we as leaders, at our core, really believe that prayer matters? How we run our ministries reveals whether or not we really believe that is true. The hard days in prayer are more important to God than the easy days.

More later…

Why I’m in Atlanta

We’re all busy, right? There are times I find myself in the middle of something asking “why am I doing this and is it really that important?” I don’t have time anything non-strategic. Especially now. Unnecessary trips, meetings, conferences, whatever… they get cut quickly.

So why am I in Atlanta right now? I come here several times a year to assess potential candidates for church planting. It is our goal in the Association for Related Churches to plant 2000 churches immediately. Here’s why planting more churches is essential…

Each year (between 2000-2005), 3,707 churches in America closed. And, 4009 new churches were planted each year during that time frame. For those of you not so good at math, that is a net gain of 303 churches per year. Before you smile and start feeling good about that… consider this - 3,205 new churches are needed a year just to keep up with the population growth.

That’s how many are needed JUST TO KEEP UP with the population growth rate. We need many, many more to begin to gain ground and take this nation for Christ. For those of you with kids, these numbers ought to be frightening. In twenty years, America will be a far different place for our kids, unless the church starts reproducing.

More on this later, but my friend (and father in church planting) Dave Olson, just wrote a very important book about the state of the church in America. The numbers are far worse than George Barna has been telling us. He’s said that 45% of Americans go to church. Dave recently completed the largest study ever done on the America Church and figured out the numbers are not even half that!!!

So again, it would take 3,205 new churches a year in America just to KEEP UP with the pathetic numbers presently in the Body of Christ. And, again, right now we are only at 303 in terms of a net gain.