Chapter 21: Equipping for Mission

Jumpstarting mobilization

Have you heard of APEST? If you haven’t, it stands for Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist, Shephard, & Teacher, and its drawn from Ephesians 4:11. From Peter Wagner to Alan Hirsch, the Ephesians 4:11 framing of leadership gifts in the church has been a signficant element in discussions around missional leadership for decades. There are also criticisms directed towards this leadership framing in the contemporary church as well, but I’m not looking to step into that particular conversation here. Rather, the purpose of this chapter is to emphasize the opening of verse 12: to equip his people for works of service. Equipping as a core purpose of leadership is a core component if we are to see the church activated & moblized.

I have helped teach missionaries-in-training, seminary students, pastors/ministers, and churches. One thing is clear. If we are going to see the church engage the emerging cultural landscape of North America with a missionary lens, equipping is going to be of paramount importance. Reaching other humans with the good news of Jesus, is going to require relational connection & relational investment. Evangelism that goes beyond the church-adjacent, is going to require ongoing relational dialog and an interpersonal display of the love of Christ. That doesn’t seem complicated, but many believers need a paradigm shift to move foward.

When I was serving in The Bronx, we gathered people in discipleship communities as home churches (as well as other settings), and at times, we also brought the groups together for a larger gathering. I began to notice something that confused and frustrated me. While new believers — especially those with little to no church background — were able to connect with others relationally, at least some of those who came from church backgrounds struggled with relational leadership. The folks with church backgrounds were polished and experienced when it came to presenting something on stage during larger gatherings. However, many struggled when it came to relational leadership and discipling others. Then, I did my doctoral research. In every single interview there was some tension in play that involved well-meaning believers from various church backgrounds who weren’t quite “getting” the mission outreach that the catalyst or planter was pursuing. Eventually, I began to grieve what I was observing. We have trained believers very effectively at maintaining our worship services and church activities, but if we are to mobilize the church in North America on mission, it is going to require some different ways of thinking.

First, churches will need to put relational ministries at the center of their activity. Proclamation, liturgy, etc. may play an important role, but they will need to support relational ministries. It is, of course, generally the other way around. Even churches who emphasize the macro & micro gatherings of equal importance in church life often devote a disproportionate amount of energy, attention, and budget to the Sunday service at the expense of the more relational and decentralized. It’s not necessarily intentional, but it happens. (To be fair, regarding budget, the Sunday service will always cost more than micro churches, which function more as house churches).

Church members will need to be equipped to initiate spiritual conversations with non-believers beyond the church-adjacent. This might feel a little awkward at first, but the goal should be to learn to have genuine, authentic conversations. It does appear that most church members are conditioned to think of evangelism as a type of sales pitch. With the exception of a few, most don’t want to do a sales pitch. As a result, they opt out of evangelism entirely. A church might launch an evangelistic program, but without believers who are comfortable becoming relational bridges for their skeptical or non-believing friends, neighbors, or co-workers, some of these initiatives may prove challenging to push beyond the church-adjacent. One of the shifts that will help churches to mobilize their members is shifting from evangelism strictly as a presentation to evangelism as a conversation. To get a jumpstart, our ministry, Global City, conducts evangelism training for local churches. Also, if you are a leader just seeking to wrap your head around this, here are a few books that might help: Jumpstart Healthy Evangelism: Making Disciples in a Changing World (Jared Looney) and Not Beyond Reach: How to Share Jesus with the Young, the Deconstructed, and the Non-Religious (Aaron Pierce) and Living Out Loud: Letting Your Love for God Flow into Your Everyday Language (Kevin King).

Also, this might be hard to digest, but the Sunday morning worship service cannot be the only doorway into the life of the church. Mobilizing disciples to build evangelistic dialog beyond the church campus, will widen the scope of evangelistic engagement. Also, forming discipleship communities in homes, public spaces, or out amidst secular culture, represents an incarnational bridge for the gospel. Identifying relational inroads will help redirect believers to become a gospel presence in a setting that fits who they are, and mobilizing disciples to form discipleship communities begins to send the church throughout the various corners of the city.

If we want to reach as many people as possible with the gospel, it is going to require multiplication strategies, and if we want to employ multiplication strategies, it will require an intentional application of the priesthood of all believers. If we desire to mobilize the priesthood of all believers, the believers will need equipping.