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An Explosion of Apostolic Ministry |
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Written by John White
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Friday, 22 February 2008 |
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"What is needed today is an explosion of apostolic ministry".
DAWN Update: An Explosion of Apostolic Ministry 7/10/07
The DAWN Vision, in a phrase, is the fulfillment of the Great Commission through saturation church planting. That is, the multiplication of vibrant families of Jesus throughout every region and people group. Our strategy, the way we seek to fulfill that Vision, is based on Luke 10:2 where Jesus explains that the key to the harvest is an army of harvest workers (apostles/church planters). So, our strategy, in a sentence, is to pray for (10:2b), identify, equip, connect and nurture apostolic church planters.
In simple church, a key word is “mutuality”. That is, every believer functioning as a priest to the other believers. (Think of the “one anothers” and of 1 Cor. 14:26.) There is no “pastoral staff person” who is going to do this for you in simple church. The same is true for DAWN. It is a “starfish-type of organization” that creates an environment where apostles can encourage and nurture one another (especially regionally) under the direction of the Spirit. There is no “DAWN Staff” who is going to do this for you. We are all in it together!
Dick Scoggins, a long time house church planter, helps us understand something of what this looks like in his article “Nurturing a New Generation of Pauline and Petrine Apostles”. One of his key insights is the difference between apostles called to the unreached (Paul) and apostles called to the existing people of God (Peter). Both need to be validated and encouraged.
Here are some quotes:
“So we see that there is an apostolic ministry to the unreached (the Pauline), but there is also an apostolic ministry to the existing people of God (the Petrine)… Western Christendom is in a key transition, perhaps undergoing as large a cultural shift as occurred during the Reformation (when I think that last great era of Petrine apostles brought the Church out of medieval forms and into modern forms). The world is changing, and the Western forms of church, birthed very much according to modernity, are not keeping up.
…What is needed today is an explosion of apostolic ministry. God is calling Pauline apostles to bring the Kingdom to nations without an indigenous, cultural expression of the Kingdom of God in local communities. God is calling a new generation of Petrine apostles to forge new communities in the West (and where Western churches have become the normative expression of the Kingdom in other cultures).
To read the whole article: http://www.missionfrontiers.org/2006/04/PDFs/11-12%20Scoggins.pdf
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