The Apostlers

Bangkok House Church with Bro Artit (Sunday)



Me in my teacher outfit

What is a faster way to finish the Great Commission? My friend Thom Wolf suggest finding apostles. If we find those who already have the apostolic gift then we wont have spend years and years training them to jump start things becuase that is what they are already gifted to do. Thom calls this "apostling the apostlers."

It does seem that there is a chronological order to Eph 4:11, because Paul says, "first apostles."

I am using a small "a" and not a capital "A" here. I am not talking about the A postles who hung out with JC and wrote scripture. I mean the term as it relates to function in jump starting movements.

Brother Sunday asked me to evaluate his church. He is such a humble guy. He's not even a professional clergy dude. He is a businessman. Wish I was better at that. Maybe I can learn from him. After the worship service after we prayer walked the neighborhood and saw two Buddhist ladies pray to recieve Christ, he asked me, "so how do you think we can improve our church to help it to multiply." Okay Bro Sunday I think I will just hang out with you for a while. It was tempting not to say too much. So I asked, "the real question should be how can we make leading worshiping Christ in a small church soo easy that even a dummy like me can do it or better yet a new believer can led it?" So he's thinkin and praying about that.

I am going to wait about getting an English teaching job. Uncle Sam came through today in a really big way. Also Brother Sunday offered me a free condo to stay in as long as I want! I feel pretty good about that. I will be traveling up to northern Thailand this weekend to attend the IMB Buddy Block Annual General Meeting. Please continue to pray for me. Please pray that my friend's churches in Burma will continue to spread the Blessed News and that many more Buddhists here in Bangkok and there in Yangon and R state will continue to be enlightened by the Great Enlightener.

The Buddhy Block is the last of the gaints and Jesus fully intends on kicking in the door of the strong man and binding him up so that His church can terrorize the gates of hell. Neil Cole points out, "Gates are not offensive but defensive structures." The church is meant to be on the offensive, but sadly most believers are hidding behind the doors of their church or making Christian cultural enclaves.

Thankfully God does raise up people to redirect the Church. I think that these direction setters are often extroverted/task oriented individuals who have an entrepreneural spirit. They sometimes have a little pastoral/encourager giftings but that is secondary.

My friend Carol Davis points out that apostolic gifted people are usually THE most misunderstood individuals in the Church. They don't like to sit in meetings because they are alway thinking about the horizons and the vision of where the church should be headed. I have started to look for individuals who shake the legs when they are sitting down. George Patterson says calls these people "those with the itchy feet syndrome. They can't stop moving their feet." They are not happy in life unless they are starting something new! Paul was like this. Apostolic people are often accused of starting things but never finishing them. When these type people are "in Christ" and Christ is living His resurrected life through them they are NOT meant to finish things themselves!! They are meant to delegate and move on to the next mission and occasionally check back on the progress of the work that they started.

Carol says that if these folks don't move on then they tend to mess things up. This is one the reasons why I have relocated to Bangkok for now. She goes on to point out that apostolic people are rarely on church staffs because of the three dominant roles of Pastor, Teacher, and Administrators usually are threatened by these "rebels." They tend to be so out of the box that traditional institutions cannot handle them. In fact institutions tend to sufficate these people.

Do you know any apostolic type folks? How are they perceived by you or the institution that you are a part of?