In this post, we’ll talk about reasons why ethnocentrism can be extremely damaging to your vision to multiply, and practical ways to address ethnocentrism.

Do I Have to be the Main Character?

As we mentioned in the first post, many past and even current missionaries can possess an ethnocentric or paternalistic view when they go to the field, perhaps without realizing it. Paternalism is the assumption that missionaries have superior knowledge, experience, and skills than local Christians and exert control over the local church and ministries. This can lead to a variety of issues that keep the ministry from bearing fruit that we’ll explore further in this post.

Part of this paternalistic/ethnocentric view that we as Western missionaries carry is the belief that we should be the “main character” in the ministry. Westerners have a higher cultural value of individualism, which emphasizes their own goals, rights, and decisions. It’s a deeply personal thing to feel called to the mission field, and most missionaries are very aware of the lack of access to the gospel in the fields where they serve. So naturally, we feel and envision that we are the ones responsible for bringing the gospel to these needy people and lands of darkness. We buy into the myth of the “Western savior” that is the hope and light for the unreached.

It’s an awesome privilege to be called to serve among the unreached. We know missionaries sacrifice much to respond to this calling out of many good motivations.

But Jesus is the Savior of the world, not us.

We get to be his ambassadors and get to join with him in the great work of seeing all peoples worship Jesus. God is moving and working in the countries where we are sent, likely through local or near-culture believers in that country or in the region.

We believe the most effective role for the majority of cross-cultural missionaries is to play a Barnabas role – empowering, coaching, and supporting local believers to multiply. In our view, this applies even beyond CPM ministry but to many other types of ministries, whether orphan care, theological education, or justice ministries. Western paternalism in missions has almost always led to negative consequences or at least non-lasting ministries, and we believe it grieves the Lord to see these same mistakes repeated over and over again.

Being the “main character” or having a Western savior perspective is one of the main barriers that keeps missionaries from having their most effective role as a Barnabas, therefore sabotaging their opportunity to be a part of what God is doing.

Baptism Through Binoculars

When we were first learning about movements, we kept hearing about this outsider role of being a Barnabas. It was a difficult mental shift to go from, “I’m going to be the one sharing, leading, and baptizing,” to “I am going to support local believers from the background.”

It’s not that movement practitioners don’t share and disciple – we absolutely do. We must be in the harvest, both out of obedience and to have the credibility to train others.

But we have to understand that our main effectiveness will be in serving and coaching local believers. As we investigated movements, we looked at about 50 case studies of how they started across the world. In nearly all of them, the outsider was partnering with a local or near-culture believer to catalyze multiplication. It was hard to argue with the pattern: if we wanted to see multiplication, this was the role we needed to play.

One story we heard from a movement practitioner really drove home the simultaneous sacrifice and joy of being a Barnabas. This practitioner served in a Muslim context with high persecution. If local Muslims that were interested in learning about Jesus were seen meeting with this white, American, Christian missionary, it would draw the attention of local Muslims and result in significant persecution.

So the outsider practitioner met with a few local, near-culture believers in a more neutral context and cast vision for multiplication, trained them in Biblical principles and practical tools, and encouraged them to go into these local Muslim villages where they would draw much less attention than he did, while coaching them from afar.

As these local believers began sharing and starting groups, he heard the reports and rejoiced but never got to meet the new believers face to face that he had indirectly invested in, prayed for, and loved deeply.

When it came time to baptize many of the new believers in the ocean, his local partner shared with him the time and place but told him, “Please don’t come to the baptism or it will attract unnecessary attention.” Instead, he got a boat about a mile down from the location of the baptism, and through binoculars, wept as he witnessed the celebration of new life among an unreached people group that he would not meet personally until heaven.

Are we willing to make this sacrifice? To take a background role in order that more people would hear and receive the gospel? 

To not be the main character?

How Ethnocentrism Will Sabotage Your Vision To Multiply

We believe that ethnocentrism can directly undermine your vision to multiply. We specifically chose the word “sabotage” because ethnocentrism is often a blind spot for workers, unlike more obvious challenges like team conflict or lack of funding.

These are some ways that ethnocentrism and paternalism can be a major barrier in your ministry:

Judgmental and Bitter Hearts: If our understanding of right and wrong, better and worse is based on our cultural perspective, many things in our host country will feel difficult. Over time, this can result in bitterness and a critical, judgmental spirit. We start to see all the ways that things can’t work in our country, that the people cannot be trusted. Those that don’t address ethnocentrism and bitterness in their hearts will often leave the field early, or start to withdraw into a cloistered missionary community where they do not interact with local people at all. For those that manage to grit it out, they will fail to thrive and eventually run out of motivation to serve.

Lack of Contextualization → Lack of Efficacy: If we believe that our cultural interpretations and expressions of obeying the Word and making disciples are the correct ones, we won’t look for contextualized expressions that might be more effective where we serve. This can apply to every aspect of ministry, from interpreting the Word, sharing the gospel, and ways that we worship. Using non-contextualized tools may attract people who are interested in our culture, but it will be difficult for them to apply tools from our context and multiply with them. We repeatedly see outsider trainers try to use a Western-created, non-contextualized training who are then bewildered when nothing works in a new context because they haven’t consulted a single local believer.

We met with the leaders of a globally well-known ministry in Thailand and asked them about their evangelism method. They told us that they shared using their organization’s tool (developed in the West) over 10,000 times in a year! But at the end of the year, it resulted in 10-15 consistent disciples joining their church. Just 0.1% of those they shared with stuck! We commended their amazing faithfulness and boldness but lamented the lack of willingness to try a more contextualized tool that might be more effective. 

Not Releasing Authority to Local Leaders: Many people understand using contextualized tools for greater effectiveness in ministry, but they still apply their ethnocentric values in evaluating local leaders. Without releasing authority to local leaders, the ministry can never fully indigenize and multiply further.

For example, in the West we might prioritize cultural values of leadership like being well-spoken, direct, and assertive. In Asia, leadership might be expressed by being more reserved, slow to speak, and having the final word. Neither of these cultural lenses are wrong, and they make sense within their own culture.

The problem is when outside missionaries, with a paternalistic approach that exerts control over local churches and ministries, fail to release authority and leadership to local leaders because of their own cultural biases. Emerging leaders may not look the same as leaders in the West, and we assume that we know best and that local leaders cannot yet be trusted. Out of a desire to make sure things are done “correctly,” we miss the opportunity to trust the Holy Spirit, empower local believers to take ownership, and encourage them to apply biblical principles in their own culture.

Overdependence on Outside Leaders and Money: Through a paternalistic perspective, we can assume that Western theology, curriculum, and resources are needed to help the struggling church among the unreached. We inadvertently create dependencies on outside leaders and resources that limit the local church and leaders from indigenizing and multiplying. 

When Helping Hurts is a well-known example of how a good desire of helping the poor by giving financial resources is actually damaging to the local people by creating over-dependency on Western resources. This type of “helping” happens across many types of ministries all over the world.

In consulting with experienced movement coaches, overreliance on outside money is a major barrier in catalyzing the multiplication of churches and disciples. Money brings different motivations and commitments, and we’ve heard of repeated instances of local partners who are driven by a salary and not a calling to make disciples. This can result in misreporting ministry results, an unwillingness to confront bad decisions from outsiders, and sometimes even direct deception in order to receive money.

There can be integrous and truly helpful ways to support disciple-making efforts among the unreached, but outsider practitioners should be very careful, thoughtful, and prayerful about anything involving outside money.

Ethnocentrism on Multicultural Teams: Increasingly, missions teams have team members from multiple different cultures and countries. They will bring in different values, communication styles, and preferences as individuals and from their cultural background.

If team leaders and team members aren’t aware of the cultural differences and have an ethnocentric view, this can lead to major conflicts that distracts you from your vision and can lead to teams fracturing. One resource for this specific situation of multi-cultural teams is Teamwork Cross-Culturally.

Barnabas Role without a Barnabas Heart: Lastly, simply playing the role of a Barnabas to train and coach local believers as an outsider does not necessarily mean that practitioners understand their own ethnocentrism. They may be trainers and coaches, but still inherently mistrust or condescend to local believers. We believe a Barnabas heart is critical to playing an effective Barnabas role. Local believers can easily tell when we are looking down on them or just see them as a means to an end. Lack of true relationship with your local partners leads to a lack of buy-in and ownership in the vision.

How to Address Ethnocentrism

Addressing ethnocentrism doesn’t require perfect understanding of varying cultures. Our job is not to decide what in the culture is right and wrong. But what is necessary is to posture ourselves in ways that directly offset ethnocentric thinking – namely as a learner with a humble heart of love.

Have a Heart of Humility and Love 

The primary way to combat ethnocentrism is modeled for us by Jesus himself! Jesus left the culture of heaven to live among and serve sinful humanity. Here is what Philippians 2 says about his heart posture: 

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves,  not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God,
    did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;

rather, he made himself nothing
    by taking the very nature of a servant,
    being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man,
    he humbled himself
    by becoming obedient to death—
    even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
    and gave him the name that is above every name…

Philippians 2:3-9

Many times, we experience feelings of offense, fear, or superiority when confronted with other cultures. These reactions are mitigated when we try to embody Christ’s heart of love and humility that considers others higher than ourselves. We are one in Christ and equal in the Kingdom with our brothers and sisters across the world. And the same Holy Spirit that works in us is also working in them! 

When we remember these things and seek to serve out of Christ’s love and humility, it becomes easier to both love the lost and to trust local believers. From there, a Barnabas partnership becomes a natural outflow of our ministry rather than feeling like a sacrifice.

Understanding our Ethnic Boundaries

Learning about our own ethnocentrism can be an overwhelming experience, as our ethnic identity is also closely tied to our personal identity, and it can be difficult to know the difference.

Alvin Sanders describes ethnic borders as “cultural traits that define our ethnic identity for ourselves and others.” He points out that people who come from the majority culture in their home country often haven’t had to think much about these borders because they naturally fit within them.

Most missionaries understand they’ll need to learn a new culture when they arrive in another country. But often that learning stays at the surface level – food, customs, language, and etiquette. What many missionaries haven’t yet wrestled with is how deeply their own cultural values and ethnic borders shape the way they see right and wrong. Without realizing it, they continue interpreting the world through their own cultural framework instead of learning to understand the perspective of their host culture.

There’s grace for us even if we are at the beginning of our journey of learning our own ethnic borders and those of our host country! Our encouragement is to take things one step at a time, with a heart of openness and humility.

One culture is not better or worse than another. Every people group is created ultimately in God’s image. And there are aspects of every culture that are marred by sin. We need the Word and the Holy Spirit to help us in this process of learning to live and serve across cultures.Alvin Sanders’ book, Bridging the Diversity Gap gives an outline of addressing your own heart to align with the Bible, learning about cultural dynamics, and then applying practical changes.

Discovering Cultural Values

One way to learn is from studying cultural values across different countries and cultures, including our own. There are several different frameworks for this, many of which had their origins in Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory. A resource specific for missions leaders would be from Livermore’s Leading with Cultural Intelligence, where Chapter 5 lists out 10 different cultural value dimensions like individualism vs. collectivism, power distance, low and high context. Although it’s a broad estimation, this book also shows how different regions of the world align with different cultural values.

One of the most difficult cultural values to navigate for Westerners can be low and high context, or direct and indirect communication. We had encouraged our teammates in our first term to be willing to learn and be flexible in interacting with local believers, but hadn’t given them much training on direct and indirect communication. I asked one teammate how their weekend was, and they said, “Yeah it was good but crazy. I got invited to one thing after church, and I just kept saying yes, and 12 hours later I was in someone’s home in another province!” As he described what happened, I realized that my teammate did a great job in being flexible and willing to learn, but hadn’t recognized that many of the invitations were simply being polite and indirectly they were not actually inviting him to go! 

Learning about your own and the host culture’s values can be a good, basic introduction to the differences between what you are used to and what the norms are in your host country. It can also be illuminating that people around the world have very different perspectives than our own – a key step in unraveling our ethnocentrism!

Be a Learner

When our team first landed in Thailand, we spent time brainstorming questions that we wanted to ask local Thai people, Thai believers, and Thai pastors. We set goals to ask these questions regularly in our day-to-day conversations and we wrote down our learnings into weekly reports. Through these informal surveys, we were able to generally learn about Thai motivations, values, concerns, and stressors, and even things like types of humor! Almost every answer revealed to us a vastly different perspective from our Western cultural lens. (The more formal version of these would be ethnographic interviews, if you’d like to dive deeper.)

When asking questions, try to stay open-minded with zero assumptions about what someone might say. In the moment of conversation, do your best to downplay any immediate judgment or emotional responses that might stem from your own cultural biases; these responses may actually be indicators to press in and learn more. Strive to listen well and not just wait for your next turn to speak, and continually be curious. Instead of jumping to conclusions, build the habit of asking “why.” And write down what you learn!
Even with a basic understanding of ethnocentrism, we still struggled many times figuring out a different culture and not being judgmental! Many of our ethnocentric values are so deeply ingrained that sometimes we cannot help our reactions and judgments. Something we learned from our pre-field cross-cultural training was the phrase, “It’s not wrong, it’s just different.” That phrase has been invaluable, especially when it feels like we are at a cultural impasse that can never be crossed. God is the one who judges what’s right or wrong. But we can embrace that differences exist and seek to understand them.

We’d also encourage you to be a learner in many different ways. Try to take in content from authors, writers, creators from a different background. Read books, watch movies, take in art made by people from different cultures. Ask your friends if they can bring you to different cultural traditions and festivals like holiday celebrations, weddings, funerals, etc. Go to museums and learn about history, traditions, and art. 

One of the biggest cultural experiences is in food! We learned from an Asian pastor how critical it is to be willing to “eat what is set before you.” He told us, “Most cultures share food around the table. If you can’t enter the table because of unwillingness to try different and sometimes strange foods, you can’t enter into the culture. If you can’t enter into the culture, you can’t enter into relationships.” Try every food offered to you at least once!

Lastly, learn the language. Too many missionaries today are overly focused on quick results and bypass learning language to work through translators. Taking the time to learn the language forces you to humble yourself and greatly improves your understanding of the culture. Learn language!

Being a curious, respectful learner will take you 80% of the way there. It requires the humility to say, “My cultural experience is not the only way and is not always the right way.”

Every Tribe, Tongue, and Nation

Deconstructing our ethnocentrism and learning another culture’s values can feel like an insurmountable challenge. Our desire in these two blog posts is not to make missionaries feel guilty or helpless, but to bring to the surface a potentially crippling obstacle that many are not even aware of.

We can’t change overnight. But if we take small steps in humbling ourselves and trying to be a learner, those things will compound and help you pursue the vision that God has given you in a Christ-like, culturally intelligent way. Local friends will notice your willingness and heart to learn and will give you a lot of grace even when you do make cultural missteps.

I think about the practitioner that witnessed baptisms through binoculars often. It is a sacrifice to be sure. But imagine the joy, when we reach the throne of God with all the nations in Revelation 7, clothed in white robes, when we meet those that we have prayed for, that we have indirectly invested in, that we have wept for. To see the fruition of the small sacrifice we made to lay down our ethnocentrism, to not be the main character in order that many would receive new life. 

That joy will last for eternity.

After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.

Revelation 7:9

“You can’t work with the Thai church.”

“They’re lazy, they don’t show up on time, and they lie to you by saying they’ll do something and then not do it.”

This was the repeated sentiment we heard from experienced missionaries during our early years in Thailand. We had learned that most CPMs are started by in/near culture believers, so we wanted to find Thai believers with a vision for multiplying disciples.

We sought out long-time workers in Thailand to learn how to approach this. But over and over, we heard: don’t even try. It won’t work. It’s too hard. Just do it yourself.

At the same time, we began visiting local Thai churches that seemed to carry a vision for disciple-making and church planting. We met vibrant, growing, Thai-led churches with goals like planting 100 churches or starting groups in every province in their region. And to our surprise, they warmly welcomed us to learn from them and partner together.

Over the last 12 years on the field, we’ve continued to hear that working with the local church is too difficult for cross-cultural missionaries — not just in Thailand, but in many places around the world. Yet by God’s grace, our experience has been marked by deep partnership and friendship with our Thai brothers and sisters. We also know many CPM practitioners who feel the same way, some even brought to tears when speaking about their local partners and friends.

So why is there such a massive gap between these experiences? Why do some cross-cultural workers grow skeptical or even bitter toward local believers, while others develop rich, life-giving relationships?

We believe one big reason lies with ethnocentrism. It’s one of the most sinister and destructive barriers for cross-cultural workers that sabotages their desire to have an impact among the fields they’re called to.

It affects not only their relationship with local believers, but their relationship with the local culture, their thriving on the field, and ultimately their long-term perseverance in their calling. 

In this post, we’ll look at what ethnocentrism is, how the Bible addresses it, and ways we can reflect on our own ethnocentrism. In our next post, we’ll discuss how ethnocentrism affects your vision and practical ways you can combat it.

What is Ethnocentrism?

Ethnocentrism is defined as “the tendency to evaluate other cultures based on the standards and values of one’s own culture, often leading to perceptions of superiority.”

When a goer moves overseas, it’s an extremely jarring experience. The language, climate, foods, traditions, expectations, and social dynamics can be completely different from the place you grew up. For many goers, there can be an initial honeymoon phase where they’re excited to learn and experience many new things. But after a few months, the ongoing feelings of confusion, of homesickness, of not fitting in can start to impact you. You get tired of being stared at on the street, being laughed at when you try to speak the local language, and you just want a dang burger instead of this funky tasting mystery meat.

Thoughts of judgment and criticism start creeping in:

“Why can’t they just do it the way we do it at home? It’s so much better that way.” 

“Why are people here so dishonest? Why can’t they just tell it to me straight?”

“Why is this thing so weird? Why can’t it just be normal?”

All missionaries have had thoughts like these, including myself and those on our team. Naturally, in an attempt to assuage the confusion we experience, we begin to measure things in our host culture against our home culture. The criticisms that we heard from experienced missionaries in Thailand assumed that certain cultural values in the West, like being hard-working, punctual, and communicating directly, are the cultural standards in Thailand. They aren’t! But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

Without an understanding of ethnocentrism, cross-cultural workers can become frustrated, bitter, and judgmental against the very culture and people they came to serve. And unfortunately, it’s not just an early season culture shock thing for many people. We’ve met several decade-plus missionaries who still say things like, “I honestly hate everything about this country but I guess we’re supposed to be here.”

Dr. Craig Ott in Teaching and Learning Across Cultures writes that “ethnocentrism not only can blind one to the beauty of other cultures but can also lead to condescending attitudes that block meaningful relationships with others and the ability to learn from them. In the worst case, it can foster racism and prejudice.”

The Lawnmower

In a pre-field cultural training that Jenn and I attended, the facilitator explained that the different places we were going to would have different cultural values and to be wary of ethnocentrism. To illustrate this, he told a story of his time in Indonesia where a neighbor asked to borrow a lawnmower. But after the neighbor used it, he kept the lawnmower in his own garage. After a couple of weeks, the facilitator, somewhat annoyed, finally asked the neighbor for his lawnmower back.

The neighbor said, “Of course!” When the facilitator asked the neighbor why he had not returned his lawnmower several weeks after using it, the neighbor explained, “In our culture, since we are part of the same neighborhood, it means we are part of the same community. What’s mine is yours and what’s yours is mine! I was just keeping the lawnmower in my garage until you needed it back, but you could have asked for it anytime!”

The facilitator posed a question to the group of future missionaries: did my neighbor steal my lawnmower? Jenn and I looked at each other and both thought – “of course not, the neighbor was just explaining communal culture. The facilitator even just explicitly said so.”

But the entire class answered in an uproar: “Yes! He stole it! He should’ve given it back immediately because it’s your personal property!” Some even aggressively contended that the facilitator should have called the police on the neighbor for theft.

We were shocked. Not only that the explicitly explained difference in cultural values went over everyone’s head, but also at the anger and disbelief that was in the response.

As we’ve reflected on this interaction, we’ve realized that the angry energy in the class’ response was because they had made a cultural misunderstanding into a moral issue. It was morally wrong that the neighbor did not return the lawnmower because of Americans’ high value of individuality and personal ownership. But the neighbor did not see it that way at all because of his own more collectivist cultural lens.

The lawnmower is a somewhat trivial example, but still such a small issue resulted in such a strong response from the group. We have seen missionaries, including ourselves, make this ethnocentric mistake in much higher stakes situations. We do this in how we train and model expressions of church, how we discuss theology, how we choose leaders, how we evaluate moral and discipleship issues. We measure local believers against our cultural interpretation of Scripture, instead of looking at how Scripture speaks into the local context.

Ethnocentrism and Paternalism in Missions History

There are countless examples of ethnocentrism, paternalism, and even cultural imperialism throughout missions history. Entire books, courses, and degree programs have been devoted to these topics, so we won’t try to cover them in depth here.

But we do want to briefly acknowledge how the painful parts of missions history can compound the problems that come with ethnocentrism today. We’re also troubled by how many workers are unaware of the historical dynamics in the places they serve, and how often the same mistakes continue to be repeated.

Paternalism “occurs when missionaries and their sending churches and agencies consciously or unconsciously assume that they possess superior knowledge, experience, and skills and, consequently, exert control over local Christians and their leaders. This control is almost always exerted through financial arrangements and the implicit authority of money.”

Missions history is littered with examples of paternalism, racism, and cultural imperialism (the imposition by a dominant community of its own culture onto another community) that led to destructive consequences for the name of Jesus around the world. In the most extreme cases, some missionaries had a view that they were not only bringing the gospel, but Western civilization to the “savage” or “heathens” in other parts of the world. They viewed non-Western cultures and peoples as inferior, and thought that planting churches meant dismantling the local culture. Is it any wonder that in many unreached places in the world, Christianity has a negative reputation and is seen as a Western, foreign religion?

Missionaries today need to be aware of what previous generations of workers have done, both good and bad, and in some cases, explicitly acknowledge the negative impact that has come with paternalism and imperialism. It’s especially important for those of us from the West to guard against a “Western savior complex” – the assumption that we are coming to rescue people who are helpless without us. Jesus is the Savior, not us. We should be aware of where he is working and join in that, which often is through the existing local church!

How the Bible Addresses Ethnocentrism

One of my favorite Bible studies is comparing and contrasting Jesus’ interactions with Gentiles and with Jewish religious leaders. I might post a blog on this topic in the future but I’d encourage you to study this if you haven’t!

The story of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:25-37 is the clearest example of how Jesus addresses ethnocentrism. When challenged by a lawyer about how to inherit eternal life, Jesus answers with the Great Commandment: love God and love your neighbor. And the lawyer, perhaps looking for a loophole to focus his “love” on those he prefers, replies, “who is my neighbor?”

And Jesus tells of a man beaten and left for dead, passed on by supposedly holy leaders, a priest and a Levite. But a Samaritan – avoided, judged, hated by the Jews – showed compassion to the man, cared for him, sacrificed his own resources, and showed mercy. The ultimate example of obedience to the Great Commandment was a person not just from a different culture, but a culture that the Jews hated.

Jesus’ example is love, humility, and compassion towards those from different cultures. He left heaven’s culture to walk on the earth as a Jewish man and make a way for all cultures to receive grace through the Cross. He condemns and rejects ethnocentrism by declaring God’s heart for all nations and explicitly showing his love towards non-Jewish people. The gospels are full of examples of this: the salvation for the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4), the grace for the Syrophoenician woman (Mark 7), the faith of the Roman centurion to name just a few.

Paul also embodies an anti-ethnocentric posture: “I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings” (1 Cor. 9:22-23). He is willing to lay down his own values, preferences, and even rights to be a minister to the Gentiles.

Scripture culminates in Revelation 7, perhaps the most anti-ethnocentric passage in the Bible, where the multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language is worshipping around the throne of God. There is no higher or lower culture, no better or worse cultural values – there are only the people rescued by Jesus clothed in white robes. And yet, the peoples still preserve their cultural identity – representatives from every culture are in the new heaven and the new earth but redeemed perfectly.

Reflection: Have I Been Ethnocentric?

If we are honest with ourselves for a moment, whether from our upbringing, personal experiences, or plain ignorance, there are people from other cultures that we instinctively judge, feel superior to, dislike, or even hate. We know missionaries that will travel half the world away to serve another culture but speak disparagingly and condescendingly about people of another skin color in a different part of their own hometown.

I was brought up to ignorantly fear black people and hate Japanese people for what they did historically in China, and believe that ethnic Chinese people were somehow superior to all others. I’ve had bitterness in my heart from racist experiences with white people. It took years of seeing God’s heart in Scripture and repenting, befriending people from different cultures, learning different perspectives, and even living in another country to unlearn these prejudices from my upbringing and my sinful heart.

Reflecting on our own ethnocentrism can be challenging because our cultural values are deeply tied to our cultural identity and therefore our personal identity. It also requires us to be honest with our own motivations in serving overseas. It can be overwhelming to discover and admit pride, sin, or a sense of superiority towards other cultures, perhaps even the people God has called us to serve.

Our encouragement is this – honest reflection about our ethnocentrism is necessary and it is worth doing. At best, we have some blind spots that can be removed to help us be more loving and effective in our calling. At worst, there are some deeply rooted and sinful perspectives that we didn’t even know we had and they are directly sabotaging what we are trying to accomplish in serving across cultures.

The good news of the gospel is that Jesus knows our hearts and loves us, even if we aren’t aware of these sins or haven’t reconciled them yet.

As you reflect on the questions below, try to come before God with openness, honesty, and humility. Come in a posture of surrender and repentance. Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal hidden assumptions, pride, fear, or bitterness in your heart. Allow God to heal and change your heart! From that, we believe you will not only become a greater servant to the people you’re called to, but become more like Christ in his love for all peoples.

Reflection Questions

• What kinds of people or behaviors are you quickest to judge? What standards are you using to judge them?
• Are there ways you subtly view local believers as less capable, less mature, or less trustworthy than believers from your own culture? How do you react when local believers do something differently than you would?
• Have past wounds, stereotypes, or experiences shaped the way you see certain cultures or ethnicities?
• In what ways might pride, superiority, control, or a “savior mentality” be affecting your ministry?
• Where are you failing to have the Philippians 2 posture of considering others more significant than yourself?

In this episode, Jenn and Cynthia discuss how perseverance in both times of crisis and in day-to-day obedience is essential to seeing movements. They share personal testimonies of surrender in times of suffering, and discuss practical ways for how to keep going when the work feels like an uphill battle.

Most-Read Posts in 2025

1. Be Barnabas – What is a NAV?
   • See other posts from the Be Barnabas series
2. What is the “Apostolic” and Why is it Important?
   • See other posts from the Apostolic series
3. Spiritual Warfare
4. Two Types of Kingdom Fruitfulness
5. Team Conflict

Being Barnabas – the role of an outsider in partnering with cultural insiders towards movement continues to be a key missions principle that we believe can unlock many missionaries’ most effective role in the Great Commission. In particular, finding a National Apostolic Visionary (NAV) to partner with can result in exponential multiplication among the unreached.

In order to find these NAVs, we focused on better understanding around the Apostolic gift, the Five-Fold gifts from Ephesians 4:11, and how to practically discern, partner with, and equip these apostolic leaders.

Understanding the Two Types of Kingdom Fruitfulness – the fruit of the Spirit and the fruit of multiplication can help us pursue the good works God has prepared for us with healthy balance. Of course, we want to see multitudes of people worship Jesus among the unreached. And, we want to see their lives and our own lives changed to look more like Jesus every day. Both are necessary!

Team Conflict and Spiritual Warfare remain as two critical topics that most missionaries face on the field and need equipping around. Without healthy conflict resolution and team interaction, it can be really difficult to concentrate on the ministry God has called you to do. Similarly, when we’re feeling discouraged and overwhelmed by spiritual attack, that can take over from everything else. Coincidentally, spiritual warfare can many times take the form of team conflict. Clearing both of these issues through community and reliance on Jesus can help you and your team focus on what you and your team are there to do!

Our Favorite 2025 Posts

1. Listening Prayer Part 1 and Part 2
2. Men and Women Leading Together
3. The Five Essential Elements of an Apostolic Leader
4. Bonus: The Dare to Multiply Podcast
   • See all the Dare to Multiply Podcast episodes

Listening Prayer is an aspect of interacting with God that permeates our everyday lives. It is a critical component of not only effective ministry, but daily obedience. Our movement coaches helped start the Listening Prayer Movement, where their primary tool when faced with any obstacle or opportunity is to ask God what He wants for them. It has grown into one of the biggest movements in the world off of that one question.

Men and Women Leading Together is something near and dear to our hearts as it’s how we operate in ministry and life. We think that learning how men and women work and lead together can lead to healthier and more impactful leaders, units, and teams. We’re excited to have some future posts around this topic in 2026!

Obviously in finding a NAV, it’s important to understand what the Apostolic gift is first. But the Five Essential Elements of an Apostolic Leader isn’t just another ministry tool or framework to find leaders. These elements are actually a result of a life surrendered to God, set apart for great works that will impact the unreached for eternity! Perhaps other than the Be Barnabas approach itself, these essential elements might be the ‘secret sauce’ in actually seeing movements catalyzed.

Lastly, the Dare to Multiply Podcast has been an exciting and stretching endeavor for Jenn as she both shares and learns from other missions leaders and movement practitioners. We hope this resource will be a blessing to many multipliers!

On to 2026!

In early 2026, we’ll publicly launch the coaching ministry that we’ve been working on for the past couple of years. We’re excited to provide opportunities for missions leaders to not only learn from our blog but to get hands on coaching and cohort-based training on topics around partnering with national believers, forming and developing teams, deepening your abiding, and other topics essential for leaders.

Our prayer for ourselves and for all of you is that 2026 would be marked by a deeper abiding and a richer fruitfulness than we’ve ever experienced before, resulting in worshippers from every tribe, tongue, and nations to the glory of God.

Happy New Year! Lastly, a poem that encouraged us this year that we hope will bless you.

Furnace by Gerard Kelly

May God in whose furnace faith is forged
In whose being beauty breathes
From whose dawning darkness flees
Shine on you

May the Father whose love for you
Beats with a rhythm time itself can’t stop
Whose presence in your exile
Is the promise of home
Whose certainties are deeper
Than the cellars of your city
Whose breath is life
Breathe on you

May the son whose story
Is a mirror of your own
Who has journeyed into darkness
To find a key to your prison
Who has dived the deepest oceans
To find pearls for your wisdom
Who has looked into your heart
And found a beauty worth the battle
Who has written your name
On a white stone carved in secret
Hold you

May the Spirit
Who has waited millennia to fill you
Who shaped the word that moved the wind
Of the morning that conceived you
Who holds the earth on which you stand
As a midwife holds a newborn
Who fully knows you
Wholly own you

So may God
The faithful Father
God the scarred Son
God the sculpting Spirit
Journey with you

Feel free to also directly subscribe to the Dare to Multiply Podcast on whatever application you use for podcast listening!

Feel free to also directly subscribe to the Dare to Multiply Podcast on whatever application you use for podcast listening!

In this episode, Jenn is introduced as a co-host for Dare to Multiply and gives practical advice around leading teams toward a multiplication vision.

‘Be Barnabas’ is what we call the role of the outsider in finding, equipping, and empowering a national apostolic visionary who is a cultural insider to catalyze movements.

We’ve written a number of posts about this Be Barnabas concept to help people understand the biblical background, learn how to get started, and some posts that go into further depth about finding apostolic partners.

Vision + Biblical Background
I. Intro + Mint’s Story
II. Why Be Barnabas?
III. Who was Barnabas from the Bible?
IV. What is a NAV?

How to Get Started
V. How to Find a NAV
VI. How to Partner with a NAV
VII. Life Together

Spiritual Gifts + Missions
VIII. Spiritual Gifts and Missions
IX. Spiritual Gifts and the Missions Field
X. Spiritual Gifts and Missions Teams

Partnering with Apostolic Leaders
XI. What is the “Apostolic” and Why is it Important?
XII. The 5 Essential Elements of an Apostolic Leaders
XIII. Indicators of an Emerging Apostolic Leader
XIV. Partnering with and Developing an Apostolic Leader

If Being Barnabas to find a national partner to pursue movements with is something you desire to do, we facilitate ‘Be Barnabas’ cohorts for people to learn and collaborate with other practitioners from similar contexts and stages of ministry. Learn more and contact us at yieldleadership.org.

1. Spiritual Gifts and Missions
2. Spiritual Gifts and the Missions Field
3. Spiritual Gifts and Missions Teams
4. What is the ‘Apostolic’ and Why Is It Important?
5. The 5 Essential Elements of an Apostolic Leader
6. Indicators of an Emerging Apostolic Leader

In this series, we’ve discovered what the word “apostolic” means, given the 5 essential elements of an apostolic leader, and discussed potential indicators of an emerging apostolic leader.

In this final post, we’ll talk about how to partner with and develop these proven or emerging apostolic leaders.

We’ve previously given some very practical steps for how to network with believers, build relational trust, and filter for a potential NAV through a “NAV Process.” This includes introductory meetings, discerning if they fit the NAV profile, vision casting, participating in ministry together, and finally piloting a training with them and their group.

Hopefully by the end of this process, you have 1-3 good candidates to partner with. As you partner together, keep the 5 essential elements and the indicators in mind to help you discern if they’re truly apostolically gifted.

But what happens if it turns out that they aren’t apostolic? What then?

Then you’ve spent time either learning about what you’re really looking for and / or you’ve found a local partner who has the vision to pioneer and multiply but may need some help in certain areas to see breakthrough. Either way, it’s time well spent. We’d encourage you to shoot for an apostolic leader because it’s a gifting that God clearly uses to pioneer. If He grants it, great. But any and all gifts can be used for the Kingdom. Any believer can be given a vision for multiplication and may have a crucial role in it. 

You’ll still likely find other faithful, vision-driven local believers that want to pursue multiplication – you should absolutely work with them! It could be that one of them has latent apostolic giftings and needs more time for those things to emerge. And no matter what, these local believers will have much greater effectiveness as cultural insiders in making disciples than we will. They may eventually help you find an apostolic leader that leads to breakthrough by training other believers or through the harvest, like how Paul raised up Priscilla and Aquila as leaders in Corinth who eventually found and developed Apollos. We believe that it’s best if the apostolic gift is involved somewhere in the movement work – through the insider believer, the outsider partner, a movement coach, or through the harvest. He will lead you to these types of people in His timing! Until He does, keep praying, looking, and partnering with faithful disciple makers towards multiplication.

Partnering With an Apostolic Leader

Here are some things we would encourage you to do with an emerging or established apostolic leader that you want to partner with. Some may happen earlier or later in the process of ministry, but all are beneficial in pursuing multiplication, identifying emerging leaders, and developing and using the apostolic gift!

Pioneer Together. As apostolic leaders are called to pioneer among new peoples and places, the first step is to do pioneering work together! Whether entering and preparing new areas through prayer walking, sharing with the lost, or catalyzing others through training, apostolic leaders will thrive in a pioneering environment. You can follow a MAWL (Model-Assist-Watch-Launch) process if you’re working with a potential apostolic leader who has never engaged in pioneering before. You’ll quickly be able to gauge their faithfulness, capacity, and gifting in harvest and catalyzing activities like seeing a fish in water! During the early stages with an emerging leader, you may need to set the parameters and guide a little bit more, but the apostolic leader will intuitively and earnestly start to generate more of the initiation of pioneering activities. Encourage them to pick the target people or places to start harvesting, the groups to train, the tools to use, and help them to gradually refine the vision that the Lord has given them. The goal is to empower them to grow into their gifting, not for them to become cogs in our ministry machine – so empower them by letting them take the lead and make decisions!

Train in Multiplication Principles and Practices. Being in the pioneering environment will feel natural and exciting for the apostolic leader, but pioneering activity does not necessarily equate to multiplication activity. Train and coach the apostolic leader in multiplication principles and practices. It doesn’t need to be a formal classroom setting to train; simply sitting together in a tea or coffee shop and talking through these things with a potential apostolic leader is great! Walking through the apostle Paul’s journeys is probably the best tool in showing a combination of principle and practice. Telling stories of movement, reading case studies, and introducing apostolic leaders to movement sources can help broaden their vision from simply expanding the Kingdom to catalyzing a multiplication movement. It can also be really helpful to show a process of how multiplication can happen, whether the 4 Fields or T4T or DMM processes. We use this Multiplication Cycle that combines elements from different streams of movement to help our partners understand how to pursue multiplication. For the sake of simplicity, we generally lean towards biblical training and tools over movement-jargon types of curriculum, though both are needed and helpful.

The apostolic leader will differ from other types of leaders when engaging in a vision for multiplication – they’ll believe it can be done. It’s the faith gifted to an apostolic leader to believe that God can and will do this miraculous work in their field, where many others may feel resistance or hesitance that it can happen. As with the first point – try to empower the local leader to make decisions about what ways are best to apply these multiplication principles in their context. As the cultural insider who is a foundation and DNA setter, they will likely be far more effective in choosing multiplication practices for their context after some initial guidance.

Focus on Apostolic Functions. Clinton’s Leadership Commentary on 1st and 2 Timothy has a number of very helpful articles around the Apostolic Function and Gift. He highlights 7 functions in particular:

1. Start New Ministries
2. Appoint Leaders
3. Establish Works (help newly started works to develop and grow)
4. Intercede for Works, both new and old
5. Combat Heresy
6. Resource New and Old Ministries
7. Test New Ministries for Validity

The last 3 functions – combat heresy, resource ministries, test validity – are probably later stage functions as opposed to the first 4 focused on starting new ministries, appointing leaders, and doing the work of intercession.

As we said in the post about indicators, an apostolic leader is likely to be a jack of all trades, multi-gifted in order to help the new ministry or work get off the ground. In a given week they might end up training, evangelizing, interceding, teaching, preaching, healing, shepherding, administrating ministry, leading worship, cooking food for the group, taking care of a believer’s kid, driving between multiple locations, answering the phone, helping a business, problem solving a strategic problem, encouraging a hurting believer, and 100 other things. As a leader of an emerging or multiplying work, they’ll have full plates! Your job as a Barnabas is to help them to focus. Spinning too many plates is one of the big pitfalls we see for apostolics, as their competency and the breadth of their vision drive them to end up doing everything.

As with any believer with a spiritual gift, they’ll be most effective when they can spend the majority of their time serving out of their gift instead of other things. Of course there’s some percentage of our time where we have to do things that we’re not gifted at – but honoring the Lord by releasing responsibility to other leaders is the role of an apostolic leader. Help them focus on starting new things, clarifying vision, investing in leaders, and interceding for the works! That leads us to…

Collaborate with and Release Authority to PESTs and Other Gifts. Again, one of the main pitfalls for an apostolic leader is to get caught up with all the needs of a new work and try to overcontrol everything by doing everything themselves. A critical component of an apostolic leader is to identify, appoint/recruit, develop, and release new leaders! Not just other apostolic leaders, but other Prophets, Evangelists, Shepherds, Teachers especially. These other gifts are greatly needed to establish and deepen the new works that the apostolic leader has started. Our post on the “Apostolic” covers some of the different functions of APEST leaders in a movement.

Many times a headstrong apostolic leader can butt heads with other types of leaders, especially shepherd/teachers who are particularly drawn to shepherd needs and grow maturity through teaching, which can feel slow to an apostolic leader. But a mature apostolic will be able to see their own limitations and know that Scripture teaches that we are all one body in need of each other (1 Corinthians 12). The apostolic really, really, really needs the other members of the body. A good way to see a ministry start quickly and burn out just as quickly is to leave it under the control of a fast-moving apostolic that never appoints other types of leaders to focus on health and depth.

Withdraw, Reflect, Listen, and Plan. With the apostolic leaders’ high proficiency, numerous responsibilities, and big vision, it’s likely that they will work themselves to the bone and straight to burnout. You as the Barnabas can play an intensely important role simply by reminding them and creating opportunities for them to do as Jesus did – withdraw to be with God (Luke 5:16). Many times, we’ll ask our partners to come meet us somewhere away from their place of ministry so that no one can knock the door down looking for them. We tell them to shut off their phone, and give them the first half of our time simply to rest and pray and spend time with God alone. We might spend the second half debriefing, hearing reports, training, and planning for future ministry, but our role is primarily to make space for them to rest in the Lord. In the whirlwind of busy ministry, the apostolic leader desperately needs to find the quiet space to reflect, listen to the voice of God, and plan and prioritize where they need to invest their limited time. These times are critical for them to evaluate and refine the vision they’ve received from God. When we cease to do this, we are doing ministry out of man’s power instead of God’s – and we’re guaranteed to fail one way or another.

Pulling our apostolic partners out of their ministry schedule for just a couple days of quiet, rest, and listening can make all the difference in seeing breakthrough in multiplication. But more than the strategic and ministry pieces, the apostolic leader desperately needs to focus on their intimacy and relationship and abiding with God. He cares so much more about our being than our doing. Allow them time and encourage them to hear from God for themselves and what He wants for them, not just the ministry.

Be a Friend and Encourager. Lastly, as the apostolic leader jumps into an emerging and thriving ministry, the list of problems, crises, needs, difficult people, conflicts, and burdens increases exponentially. Any ministry, and certainly pioneering ministry, can be extremely isolating and lonely for leaders. Not many will understand what they’re going through.

They need to first and foremost surrender those things to the Lord and find their motivation and peace in him. And they need a friend. Someone to listen to their frustrations, to be thoughtful in loving them, to point them to Jesus, to encourage them to persevere.

There’s a reason why Barnabas was called the Encourager. What a role he had in encouraging, supporting, empowering Paul. Without Barnabas, we don’t get the book of Acts.

I think Paul could call Barnabas a lot of things – mentor, advocate, co-laborer. My guess is when I get to ask him, he’ll first call Barnabas his friend.

How to Develop an Apostolic Leader

All of the above things will be great for an apostolic leader’s development in learning through doing. But there’s other ways to help them understand more about the apostolic gift that God has given them and use it effectively.

Study the apostolic. There’s plenty to study in the New Testament about the apostolic gifting, function, and ministry – basically anything about who Paul is or what he does will be informative. The book of Acts reveals much about the pioneering aspect and his letters give more insight into his own development, perseverance, and heart in being an apostolic leader. If you’re able, we’d recommend diving into some of the resources we listed in the 5 essential elements post. The more you can understand what the original model of the apostolic gift looks like, the better we can imitate it. It can also be helpful to read books and biographies about other pioneering leaders.

Interact with other apostolic leaders. If you’re able to, interact with other apostolic leaders. It’s hard to describe this but an apostolic leader is probably more used to resistance, hesitance, rejection from others around them when they begin talking about big vision and multiplication. Others can feel intimidated by their intensity or just the scope of their work. But when they’re in a room with other apostolic leaders that they trust, there’s a freedom and an excitement in getting to talk to others who get you. Others who won’t frown at their big ideas but encourage them and share their own experiences and ideas. It can make them feel like they’re not crazy – at least when they’re in a room of people as crazy as they are!

A couple of disclaimers in this – just because someone is an apostolic leader doesn’t mean they don’t feel insecurity or deal with comparison. Naturally when apostolic leaders gather the focus will be on ministry. But it’s a smart idea to bring the focus on God. Highlighting shared experiences and sufferings will draw out vulnerability and increase trust before you start trucking ahead on ministry topics. Creating safety in the room before jumping in to discussing ministry can help the interaction. Secondly, although we’d encourage apostolics to interact with other apostolics, there can be some intense friction in working together. We’ve had mentors advise us that apostolic leaders can probably agree or work together at a high, 30,000 foot perspective (let’s generally share tools, or have a semi-frequent coaching meeting together, or strategically parse out people and places to focus), but can step on each others’ toes when working closely together. The apostolic leader probably wants some freedom to pursue their own ideas, and working with another highly opinionated, highly confident leader might cause some problems. This isn’t always the case but just something to be aware of.

Find apostolic mentors. This is similar to the previous point, but finding an older, more experienced apostolic leader to mentor you, especially in personal development, can be a gold mine. Hopefully this mentor has experienced and gone through many of the pitfalls and problems that an apostolic leader faces and you can learn from their wisdom. Again, the apostolic leader will want freedom to try new things on their own, but they also will value a mentor’s wisdom and shared understanding of their experiences.

Develop other leadership skills. Since the apostolic leader has so many functions in establishing a new work, it can be helpful for them to also develop leadership skills that will support their gifting. Clinton lists out several including strategy, planning, change agent, leadership styles, motivating, inspiring, mentoring, organizational skills, team building, identifying and developing leaders, and communication skills. Even though an apostolic leader may do these things intuitively, equipping them with skills and frameworks to boost their efficiency is a good idea. Or focusing on shoring up weaknesses that they may have like shepherding skills can be beneficial.

Develop intimacy with God. Whether as an apostolic yourself or in helping your apostolic partner – focus on developing intimacy with God. Learn to hear the voice of God for everyday direction and decision. Being surrendered to God is an essential element for an apostolic leader, so practice the process of surrendering and receiving from God. The pioneering ministry has an avalanche of challenges and trials that we’ve noted repeatedly. At times, Paul mentions feeling “so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself” (2 Cor. 1:8). If God grants fruitful multiplying ministry, the challenges will also multiply accordingly.

Without this critical foundation of intimacy with Christ, the apostolic leader is guaranteed to fail. The Enemy is prowling to take out those that will greatly expand the Kingdom through isolation, sin, discouragement, and spiritual warfare of many kinds. Guard yourselves in His armor and through intimacy with Him. Fight to not allow ministry to become your idol. Fight to have Philippians 2 humility in the midst of ministry fruit.

It’s an example for all believers but especially the apostolic leader that we see Paul’s own dependence on the Lord grow over the years of his ministry, from being the least of the apostles (1 Cor. 15:9), to the least of the saints (Eph. 3:8), to the foremost of all sinners (1 Timothy 1:15). He constantly prioritized his intimacy with God, withdrawing to be with God as we see our Savior did.

If God’s pattern throughout Scripture and history is to raise up apostolic leaders to pioneer the least reached people and places for His glory, then there are people He has prepared in your field.

I firmly believe there are in- or near-culture believers that He intends to use to finish the Great Commission. If you’re reading this, and you have the heart to find these modern-day “Pauls,”’ then I believe you can be a Barnabas to them. Ask the Holy Spirit, have a heart to serve, have eyes to see these people, and He will lead you to them. Remember, it only takes one.

I’ll finish this series with an exhortation to the apostolic leader reading this or the Barnabas who will empower a national apostolic leader. Sometimes we feel the temptation to cut corners or skip over inconvenient things or treat people unlovingly in pursuit of the big vision. And we use the defense – “those people don’t understand us” or “it’s worth it to see more multiplication” or something of the sort.

Apostolic gifting without apostolic character produces apostolic malfunction.

Steve U.

What’s really happening is that ministry success and numbers and fruit have become our idol. Being overly busy is a badge of pride instead of a warning indicator that we are allowing our doing to overcome our being with Jesus. Increased isolation or surrounding ourselves with only others who enable us is explained off as being a contrarian, a pioneer, a barrier breaker instead of the truth that we’re not willing to humble ourselves and submit to a group of brothers and sisters in Christ.

Scripture is abundantly clear – the ends of ministry don’t justify the means. Being an apostolic leader doesn’t give us license to trample people, to steal and extract sheep, to be disingenuous about ministry numbers, to ignore clear discipleship and maturity problems in pursuit of the more and the faster. Unfortunately, we’ve seen apostolic leaders pursuing movement do these types of things repeatedly. I won’t attempt to judge their hearts, but there often is not a humility to even admit to these things or correct them. The very thing we claim to be effective at in catalyzing movements, the apostolic gift, becomes a testimony against the ministry we are doing and against ourselves.

Matthew 7 has a haunting statement from Jesus, that “on that day, many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not do… many mighty works in your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’”

My prayer for myself and to others reading this – 

May we keep our hearts tender before the Lord. 
May we always mirror the character and heart of Jesus to others in pursuing big vision for him. 
May we not twist the gift He has given to us for our own personal and selfish gain. 
May we not allow ministry to become an idol that keeps us from worshipping Jesus.

I’d recommend Andrew Murray’s books Humility and Absolute Surrender as regular reads to help us check our hearts. And about this specific topic of losing our way in pursuing movement, I highly recommend my friend David’s book, How to Pursue Great Works without Losing Your Soul.

Every believer, every gift can be used towards completing the Great Commission, but I believe that He means to use those with the apostolic gift as first in sequence to pioneer. My hope is that these few at the tip of the spear could be surrendered to Jesus and become who God has called them to be, leading to multiplying movements among the remaining unreached peoples and places of the world.

The world has yet to see what God can do through a man [or woman] who is totally yielded to Him.

Henry Varley

In our last two posts, we’ve defined what the “apostolic” is, and 5 essential elements of an apostolic leader. An apostolic leader needs to have all 5 elements of big vision, risking faith, foundation setting, leader developer, and surrender to God.

If you can find a clearly apostolically gifted, mature, national believer to partner with, that’s awesome! But, someone that gifted and experienced will likely already have many ministry responsibilities and it may take time to build trust with that leader in order to partner.

However, we are often looking for leaders with latent apostolic giftings that have not yet fully emerged. For one, I think apostolic leaders are relatively rare – there’s no research around this but talking to other CPM practitioners, generally the number is <10% of believers, if not <5%. Secondly, a fully mature apostolic leader is rarely available.

It may feel like trying to find the proverbial needle in a haystack. But our encouragement is this: It only takes one.

All it takes is one national ‘Paul,’ with the vision, faith, giftings, and surrender to catalyze a movement that will change the trajectory of a nation.

In the early 2000s, the president of Campus Crusade in Thailand, Pastor Nok, used his significant influence to gather 80% of the pastors in Thailand in a Congress to ask the question, “What will it take to complete the Great Commission in Thailand?” From that, they formed the National Plan to see the gospel go to every district and village in Thailand. The churches that our team currently work with came through introductions from leaders within the National Plan.

I asked one ex-pat worker who knew Pastor Nok well, “What is his story? How did he come to faith?” He told me that Pastor Nok was the first Thai Cru staff ever, and that he was led to faith by one American Cru staff member named Chip, who only managed to win and disciple one Thai person to faith in 10 years in Thailand. That was Pastor Nok.

It only takes one.

But how do you find that one? How do you discern if they have the elements to be an apostolic, multiplying leader? What do you do with them to develop them and help their gifting and vision emerge?

Barnabas: Recognizing Hidden Apostolic Potential

Out of anyone in Scripture, Paul was perhaps the most unlikely candidate to be transformed and used by Jesus for his purposes. Often the apostolic leader may emerge from the most unexpected of places. Barnabas saw the latent giftings in Paul – that he had a miraculous transformation from a persecutor of Christians to a chosen instrument to bring the gospel to the Gentiles (Acts 9:15), that he immediately and boldly shared the gospel with the Jews in the synagogue (Acts 9:20), and that he needed an advocate before the disciples in Jerusalem that didn’t trust him (Acts 9:27). Eventually, Barnabas spends a year with Paul in Antioch discipling others (Acts 11:26), likely identifying and developing Paul’s strengths, before the Holy Spirit sets them aside for the first journey in Acts 13.

When everyone else saw Paul’s evil background, Barnabas saw his new transformation and calling.

When everyone else didn’t trust who Paul said he was, Barnabas advocated for his faithfulness.

When opportunities arose for new ministry, Barnabas went to recruit Paul, developing his giftings and maturity.

And when the Holy Spirit called them to be set apart to start a new work in new places, Barnabas was beside Paul as he stepped fully into his giftings as an apostle.

We need to be like Barnabas, to have the eyes to see the potential in latent apostolic leaders, and the ears to hear from the Holy Spirit how to help them fulfill their calling.

Indicators of an Emerging Apostolic Leader

When we are looking for these apostolic leaders, we are certainly checking for the 5 essential elements. We’ll ask them questions like, what is your vision? How did you come to faith? What does your ministry look like? What obstacles are you running into? And we’re listening for big vision, willingness to risk, methods that look like multiplication or at least are different from the norm, leaders that they’ve developed, and signs of surrender. But a latent apostolic leader may not have had the chance to step into pioneering ministry, and therefore may not yet exhibit some of these elements. Apart from directly evaluating these 5 elements, we’ve observed some other hints of someone having an underlying apostolic gifting.

They don’t need to have all of these indicators, and just having one doesn’t mean that they are certainly apostolic leaders. But if you see some of these, it may be worth building trust and listening to the Holy Spirit about helping these leaders emerge into their calling and gifting.

Black Sheep – Often, latent apostolic leaders can be seen as black sheep that don’t fit the mold of their church. Other words could be non-conformist, oddball, contrarian. They are still part of the flock, still a sheep, but different from the rest. Sometimes church leaders don’t know what to do with this person who rocks the boat and may have a lot of new ideas that others aren’t willing to do. Whenever someone in Thailand tells me that another believer is interesting / weird / eccentric / not like the others – my radar immediately pops up. The latent apostolic leader is dissatisfied with the status quo, and it can cause friction with people in the church because their drive and desire is to pioneer, though they may not have personally clarified that vision yet.

Failed Entrepreneurs / Not Afraid to Start Things / Flexible Methodology – “failed entrepreneurs” was often a phrase that we were coached to look for in identifying apostolic leaders. That desire to set foundations, without a clear vision of their calling, can result in starting a lot of new businesses, ministries, and start ups. This boldness and risk-taking demeanor could be indicators of an apostolic leader. When we meet new leaders, we also want to see if they’re willing to be flexible in their methods or if they’re strongly tied to some kind of program or curriculum. If they’re willing to try new things to pioneer, that’s a good sign. If they’re wanting to simply grow their own ministry flavor, we would probably move on.

Anointed / Fruitful – Even before Paul started on his missionary journeys, he was faithfully sharing and discipling in Damascus, Jerusalem, and Antioch. He boldly and powerfully proclaimed the gospel and made disciples. Many times, we can meet a person that is saying all the right things – that they’re excited about multiplication, that they have a vision to pioneer – but the fruit of their lives doesn’t reflect that at all. It could be that they’ve never been empowered or equipped, and then there is an opportunity to help them live out that vision. But often, there is a lot of exciting talk without the actual faithfulness and fruitfulness indicative of a leader that God desires to use. Given the choice between someone who says the right things versus someone who has the fruitfulness of disciples and a godly life, I am taking the latter every time.

Character Immaturities – I’d imagine Paul was pretty rough around the edges when he first came to faith. Although he was certainly humbled by his Damascus road experience, there was still much of his old life – the prideful, highly positioned, well-known persecutor of Christians – that needed to be transformed. Though some of the disciples in Acts 9 were afraid of Paul, Barnabas came and advocated for him, eventually recruiting him and developing him into the minister to the Gentiles that he was called to be.

Similarly, a developing apostolic leader probably has some character immaturities that might be signs of opportunity. Sinclair says “self confidence, overassertiveness, and independence” along with stubbornness and overcontrol could be some character issues that an immature apostolic might struggle with. Miley adds impatience and being overextended in their commitments. You can see in these developing leaders the innate vision, passion, and drive to accomplish great things for God, but without the humility, testedness, and surrender needed for them to succeed. 

An immature apostolic has probably had many people in their church exhort them in their impatience and roughness, probably almost condescendingly so – “you’re young so you don’t get how things work.” “It’s nice that you have big goals and new ideas but we have to be realistic.” Increasingly they can balk against authority because of their internal conviction and what the Spirit is stirring up. When someone validates the vision they’ve received as well as challenges them to grow in their leadership to meet that vision, we’ve seen apostolic leaders respond with eagerness. There is a great opportunity for a Barnabas-type leader to say, “I see the potential in you and love your vision. I’d love to walk alongside you to help you grow in your ministry and your walk with God to see those things happen.”

Jack of All Trades / Multi-Gifted – For a yet developing apostolic that has started some new ministry, you may see that they are at least competent, if not gifted, to do many different types of ministry – evangelism, leader development, teaching, shepherding, mercy, administration, etc. In the pioneering environment, it may be necessary for an apostolic leader to play a lot of roles to get things started and God empowers them to do so. But the opposite pitfall for a multi-gifted leader is to hold on to control because they are so competent at so many things. Which leads us to…

Releasing Authority – The apostolic leader is willing and quick to release authority. As new disciples grow in their maturity and gifts, the apostolic leader is quick to empower every disciple to step into their authority to make disciples and serve God. Over control by leaders is a major barrier to multiplication. Apostolic leaders understand that they will play an important role of spiritual parent to many leaders, but they are also active in helping disciples step out in faith to grow in their dependence on God. If a leader expresses too much hesitation in letting disciples take simple steps of obedience like sharing the gospel or leading a discovery Bible study without them, that could be a barrier.

In coaching movement practitioners, identifying a national partner with apostolic gifting is one of the most complex and difficult parts of the process and something we get the most questions about. How do I know if it’s worth investing in this person? Should I spend more time with person A or person B?

Going out to share the gospel takes boldness but it’s relatively simple and straightforward – people are interested to know more about Jesus or they aren’t. But getting to know believers, building relationship with them, navigating language and culture, discerning their words, their actions, their vision, and their character is an art, not a science. It takes a lot of prayer, getting to know people, trying new things, and failing forward repeatedly before you might find someone. Sometimes, we’ve partnered with people for 3, 4, 5 years before it becomes evident that they are missing an essential element of an apostolic leader. And that’s OK. We don’t think of that time as wasted, but as time invested in trying to find a pioneering leader and learning what that might look like in our culture and mistakes to avoid. It’s also never a waste of time investing in local believers to grow in their disciple-making.

Hopefully, knowing the 5 essential elements and some of the potential indicators of a latent apostolic leader will help you in the process. Some practitioners we know met their apostolic partner in their first ever training – hooray for them, really. We were relatively fortunate and found our partner after about 3 years of ministry, 5 years in country. Some people we know took 10 years and hundreds of trainings and relationships to find their partner. It’s up to the timing of the Lord.

But remember – it only takes one.

Reflection Questions

1. Do you have a personal bias toward or against any of these indicators? Why?
2. Consider the local believers that you know. Do any of them display these indicators or essential elements?
3. Do you know local believers that seem to “say the right things” but lack demonstrated faithfulness and fruitfulness? Why do you suppose that is? How should you continue to engage with this believer?
4. Where are some networks or communities that you could build relationships to get to know potential apostolic leaders?

In this post we will get more practical with the 5 essential elements of an apostolic leader and a compilation of potential characteristics and functions of apostolic leaders from 5 authors: Clinton, Hirsch, Miley, Cole, and Sinclair.

Previously, we gave a basic definition of an apostolically gifted leader as one who God has supernaturally gifted to pioneer new works in new areas. But what are those gifts? Why are apostolic leaders uniquely suited to pioneer? How do I know if the person I’m partnering with is an apostolic leader?

The 5 Essential Elements of an Apostolic Leader

In their books, these 5 authors provide various characteristics and functions of an apostolic leader that we’ve compiled at the bottom. From their writings and our personal experience, we believe there are 5 essential elements that every apostolic leader must have. (This is an expanded version of what we’ve outlined in our Be Barnabas post, What is a NAV? )

1. Big Vision – An apostolic leader has a God-given, God-sized vision that extends beyond their own church.

An apostolic leader has a God-given, God-sized vision that extends beyond their own church.

We gave a definition of a spiritual leader adapted from Clinton previously as one who receives vision from God to influence the people of God towards the purposes of God. So any spiritual leader needs to have God-given vision. 

But the apostolic leader is given vision that is big – big enough that to many, it will seem impossible. They are given a vision that is beyond their own church, called by God to start a new work in a new place. Many times it is for whole regions or people groups that are not yet reached with the gospel. The apostolic leader is driven by this vision, constantly thinking about what it will take to accomplish this vision in a future-focused, big-picture perspective.

It’s the demand of Caleb who was 85 when he said, “Give me this hill country of which the Lord promised me (Joshua 14:12),” the most difficult land with the strongest opposition.

It’s the ambition of Paul to “preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else’s foundation (Romans 15:20)” after he had already sparked movements of the gospel from Jerusalem to Illyricum.

It’s the declaration of Hudson Taylor in pursuing the interior peoples of China when no one else would go, to say,

If I had a thousand lives, China should have them. No! Not China, but Christ. Can we do too much for Him? Can we do enough for such a precious Savior?

Hudson Taylor

It’s the passion of Samuel Zwemer, called the Apostle to Islam, who said,

The great Pioneer Missionaries all had ‘inverted homesickness’ – this passion to call that country their home which was most in need of the Gospel. In this passion all other passions died; before this vision all other visions faded; this call drowned all other voices. They were the pioneers of the Kingdom, the forelopers of God, eager to cross the border-marches and discover new lands or win new-empires.

Samuel Zwemer

2. Risking Faith – An apostolic leader has the faith to believe God can accomplish the vision, and the faith to take big risks for God.

This God-sized vision is accompanied by a God-given faith – faith to believe that God can accomplish the vision He has given, not just through the apostolic leader but beyond them. Clinton says that apostolic leaders generally have the gift of faith to go with their apostolic gift. This gift of faith doesn’t only believe God to accomplish the vision, but is a faith to risk doing big things for God in the most difficult circumstances. It would seem obvious that if a leader receives a big vision from God, that they would have the accompanying faith, but we have seen many situations where a leader has the big vision but lacks the faith. They are hesitant, cautious, afraid to take the steps necessary in pursuit of the vision that God has given. An apostolic leader must have this risk-taking faith in order to pursue a God-sized vision.

This faith allows apostolic leaders to fail forward, as the pioneering environment is a difficult and unknown situation and will require innovation, experimentation, creativity, and repeated failure. This faith strengthens apostolic leaders to be resilient against opposition and isolation. By trying big and new things for God, the apostolic leader will certainly face spiritual warfare and resistance to the gospel among the people they are trying to reach, but they should even expect opposition from believers and peers that don’t understand what they are doing. 

Many times the fruitfulness that comes from the risk and innovation of an apostolic leader can shine a light on other believers or ministry workers that can cause insecurity or comparison. Cole explains that “new approaches will always threaten the established and calcified systems left over from previous movements. It is quite common for apostles to be labeled as heretics by their peers and to be pushed out of the mainstream and into the margins.”

The apostolic leader has the faith to move forward in the face of opposition, whether from inside or outside. We have seen many apostolic leaders lose friendships, mentors, even family members who don’t understand what they are doing and why. Some of the authors mentioned an apostolic leader having thick skin, but I think that is an overly self-dependent description of their resilience in the face of opposition. It is the apostolic leader’s faith in God, to believe God for His promises, that gives them their safety against criticism, isolation, loneliness, and trial.

Unless there is the extreme element of risk in our exploits for God, there is no need for faith.

Hudson Taylor

Daily I expect to be murdered or betrayed or reduced to slavery if the occasion arises. Yet I fear nothing, because of the promises of heaven.

St. Patrick, the Apostle of Ireland

3. Set Foundations – An apostolic leader is able to set foundations through establishing the systems, structures, and DNA needed to start a new movement.

As we’ve mentioned, the apostolic leader is called to the pioneering environment, where there isn’t a successful playbook that they can follow. Paul said he does not want to build on someone else’s foundation because apostolic leaders are foundation setters. They create and cultivate the DNA, systems, and structures that are required for new movements to catalyze. Many faithful servants of God will have an apostolic passion, vision, and faith, but perhaps will lack the giftings and skills to see the breakthrough needed to multiply.

The process of what some people call the “Core Missionary Task” drawn from Acts is relatively clear – enter a new area, share the gospel, make disciples, plant churches, and develop leaders. Rinse and repeat to see multiplication. The difficult part of this is figuring out how to do each of these things. 

For example, Paul frequently entered a new place by going first to the synagogue to share with Jews or God-fearing Gentiles (Acts 13:5, 14; 14:1, 17:1, 10, 17; 18:4, 19; 19:8). With this approach, he was able to find people ready to hear the gospel and plant a house church that would be his center of operations for that city. Similarly, he created and adapted different methods of sharing the gospel, discipling, planting churches, and developing leaders for different places and different situations. The underlying principles and DNA of multiplication were the same, but he was gifted and in-tune with the Spirit’s direction to create the systems and structures that would multiply in each context.

When goers are sent to unreached places, the scope of the task can be overwhelming. Even if we can successfully adapt to living in a new culture and learning language, the challenge becomes learning how to create and contextualize effective methods for the process of multiplication. How should we enter new places and find spiritually interested people? What’s the most effective way to create interest and share the gospel? What methods of discipling would work among new believers in this context? What form should church take? What does a leader look like in this culture and how should we most effectively develop them? These questions are difficult enough without the complexities of trying to figure them out in a completely foreign culture!

The apostolic leader is gifted to generate new ideas, create contextualized applications of biblical principles, and are not afraid to fail in trying them. However, when the apostolic gift is missing, we find that movement practitioners can run into the same obstacles over and over again, unable to figure out a way to move forward.

This is why we believe that the outsider’s role is to find a National Apostolic Visionary leader to partner with. The National part because they understand the culture, and the Apostolic part because they will be gifted for the work. It’s best when the insider is the apostolic leader, but if the apostolic perspective is involved somewhere in the work – insider, outsider, coach, or from the harvest – there is an increased chance for multiplication.

Beyond just the initial foundations of gospel sharing and discipling, further foundations will need to be set by the apostolic leader including cultivating a multiplying DNA, establishing theological foundations, guarding against heresy and opposition, and ultimately cultivating networks and environments where other ministries can emerge.

4. Develop Leaders – An apostolic leader is able to recruit and develop leaders.

Another key function of an apostolic leader is the ability to raise up leaders – to identify, attract, recruit, develop, release, and send leaders out.

As a biased San Antonio Spurs fan, I believe Gregg Popovich is the greatest NBA coach. It’s evidenced not only by the championships and wins, but by his coaching tree – the number of players and coaches that have been produced under his mentorship. Pop is undoubtedly a great leader developer.

The Apostle Paul’s leadership tree is bigger and more impactful. In the New Testament we see him associated with Timothy, Silas, Titus, Priscilla, Aquila, Sopater, Aristarchus, Secundus, Gaius, Tychicus, Trophimus, Junia, Andronicus, Lydia, Jason, Titius Justus, Dionysus, Damaris, Crispus, and many more. Paul and Barnabas raised up local elders in every place that they started new work (Acts 14:23), as well as journeying with an apostolic band of co-laborers like Timothy, Titus, and Silas. He had a constant lens of identifying, attracting, and recruiting leaders.

I would say that Paul was a “machine” of leadership development, but that would only capture his output and not the posture in which he developed leaders. He says in 1 Thessalonians 2 how he was affectionately desirous for them and cared for them like a nursing mother (7), and how he exhorted, encouraged, and called them to walk in a manner worthy of God like a father with his children (11).

The apostolic leader has a unique ability to attract leaders. We’ve lost count how often people have said to our partner, Mint, “I want to be like you! Can you disciple me?” There’s a constant stream of people coming in and out of her home base in northeast Thailand, to be trained, developed, and modeled for, before being sent out as church planters to new provinces and coached toward further multiplication. Mint, almost aggressively, releases authority and sends out new leaders. She doesn’t keep them around to help her local ministry grow but empowers them to hear from the Lord to start new ministry. This last aspect is a critical indicator of whether someone is an apostolic leader – the push to release authority over leaders and disciples to multiply. Some great leaders may attract and develop leaders well, but ultimately keep them in-house to grow their own ministry. The apostolic leader’s vision will compel them to release and send out leaders. We pray that Mint’s leadership tree will surpass Pop’s and maybe even Paul’s!

5. Surrendered to God – An apostolic leader is surrendered to God, willing to give everything toward the vision, and prioritizes intimacy with God above all else.

From our experience, this 5th element is the most critical and can be the biggest barrier to an apostolic leader stepping into what God has for them.

The apostolic leader lives and labors out of surrender to God. In Romans 1:1, Paul describes himself first as a “servant of Christ Jesus”, and secondly “called to be an apostle.” It is out of his life belonging to Christ that his calling and ministry as an apostle flows.

Pioneering new works in new areas comes with unique challenges and complexities. But as we mentioned before, it also comes with unexpected opposition, isolation, failure, spiritual warfare, sin, and pride. Even the most driven personalities with big vision will find themselves battered and broken down in pursuit of the apostolic calling.

Paul describes being “so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself” (2 Corinthians 1:8). At some level, it’s true that all believers and all leaders will encounter suffering. But I think Paul’s example is that the apostolic leader is particularly tested through suffering. As we learned during our cancer journey, the thorn given to Paul in 2 Corinthians 12 is to bring Paul to a point of suffering and surrender and weakness. That weakness is given to humble Paul from his pride so that he can receive true resurrection power for the apostolic calling!

When faced with suffering, trial, and sin, the apostolic leader responds in surrender. They hunger for deeper intimacy with the Lord. They find their safety, strength, wisdom, and perseverance for the difficult work from Jesus. They seek His voice for the pathway to breakthrough. They understand that prayer and intercession is the work, and are unceasing in prayer for the churches as Paul was.

We’ve seen more than a few leaders with the first 4 elements fall to moral failure, burnout, pride, and isolation. To reframe Matthew 16 for movement practitioners – What will it profit us to gain ministry fruit but lose our own souls? Without surrender, it is impossible for leaders to fulfill the vision that God has given them.

One does not surrender a life in an instant. That which is lifelong can only be surrendered in a lifetime.

Elisabeth Elliot

In the next post, we’ll give some identifying indicators of an apostolic leader, and talk about how to partner with and develop an emerging apostolic leader.

Table of Apostolic Characteristics & Functions from 5 Authors

This is the compilation of the characteristics and functions of apostolic leaders from the authors we’ve referenced. A disclaimer that not everyone gave neat and tidy lists of characteristics and functions, and that these categories are a paraphrase of complex ideas from each author around the apostolic leader. Even if there isn’t an ‘x’ by a certain author for a certain category, they very well could mention that characteristic outside of their lists. If this is a topic you find important or interesting, I’d encourage you to read their books! I also put the lists / summaries of characteristics of each author at the bottom from which this table was created.

Lists and paraphrases of characteristics and functions of apostolic leaders

Robert Clinton – 1 and 2 Timothy: Apostolic Leadership + Unlocking Your Giftedness 

• A strong sense of call by God for establishing new works.
• An equally strong confirmation on the part of the leadership of the local church of which he/she is a part.
• A forceful personality which can trust God to do what is necessary in unusual situations in order to establish authority for God’s work.
• Usually will be a multi-gifted person having one or more other leadership gifts beyond apostleship.
• Ability to face new situations.
• A clear understanding of the nature of the church and its purpose.
• A personality which attracts people to follow.
• A person who can sense what God wants to do and is not afraid to try.
• A drive from within that cannot be satisfied apart from seeing people presently unreached being reached and included in a community of God’s people.
• Initiating new works of God, especially the planting of churches. (Paul & Barnabas, Acts 13; Paul Acts 16,18)
• Appointing Leaders – leadership selection (Paul & Barnabas do on fist missionary journey; Paul does on all his mission trips; Titus in Crete; Timothy in Ephesus)
• Laying foundations & overseeing these new works/churches – Leadership development; Teaching; Sending workers to solve problems, help develop leaders, teach and help followers mature. (Paul does this in Phillipi, Corinth, Ephesus, Rome & Crete)
• Serving as spiritual fathers and mothers. Paul sees himself as a father to his churches because he was the catalyst who brought them into existence by the Gospel. As their spiritual father, he retains the right to step in and intervene in communal affairs when he perceives they have deviated from the essential truths of the Gospel.
• Interceding for works, both new and old – carrying a burden for the works they initiate, resulting in intercession; release of spiritual power in situations (Paul does this for the churches he established.)
• Managing Crisis/Combating heresy – problem solving; correcting and stabilizing a deteriorating situation; Paul does this somewhat in Corinth and Crete and much in Ephesus.
• Resourcing new ministries and old ones – Resourcing apostolic ministries; mobilizing help to needy church situations (Paul & Barnabas in Acts 11; Paul in 1 Cor and 2 Cor)
• Contextualizing the Gospel to cross-cultural situations – applying truth to complex cultural situations 

George Miley – Loving the Church, Blessing the Nations

• They want to take on new initiatives.
• They have their own ideas of what they want to do.
• They easily influence people and gain a following.
• They do not fit the mold. They color “outside the lines.”
• They have a genuine hunger for a deeper relationship with God.
• They show impressive spiritual insight.
• They have noticeable areas of character immaturity.
• They are broad in their horizons and think beyond our church.
• They thrive on doing things that are challenging and risky.
• They claim loyalty to our church, yet seem critical and impatient.
• They tend to become overextended in their commitments. 
• Is like Jesus (Heb. 3:1). 
• Is a servant (Luke 22:24-27)
• Is tested (Matt. 4:1).
• Renounces his own life (Matt. 16:24-25).
• Walks in humility (Phil. 2:5,8)
• Is familiar with a sense of personal weakness (Luke 22:41-44).
• Carries spiritual authority with gracious restraint (Luke 23:34). Models the life of love (John 15:12-14). 

Alan Hirsch and Tim Catchim – The Permanent Revolution: Apostolic Imagination and Practice for the 21st Century

• Seeding the DNA of the gospel and the church by pioneering new ground
• Guarding the DNA of the Gospel and Ecclesia Through the Integration of apostolic theology
• Cultivating translocal, fully networked movements through vision, purpose, and the management of meaning
• Creating the environment in which the other ministries emerge

• An ability to invent the future while dealing with the past
• A willingness to break with traditional ideas and methods
• An ability to play multiple roles at the same time e.g. Paul as planter architect foundation layer ambassador partner
• High tolerance for risk
• A need to be different while supporters want the pioneer to be the same
• An understanding that many want the pioneer to fail
• Internal freedom to explore
• Sense of holy dissatisfaction
• Capacity for ideation
• Ability to take on risk
• Permission and the space to experiment
• Dogged resiliency

Daniel Sinclair – A Vision of the Possible: Pioneer Church Planting in Teams

• People readily catch their vision and feel led to join in.
• They have gifts of Bible teaching and leadership.
• They can be quirky and sometimes hard to get along with.
• They can have thick skins and hard heads. They tend (right or wrong) to not back down very easily—on anything!
• Areas of the flesh can include self-confidence, overassertiveness, and independence. When this is the case, you can see the Lord taking them through a process to grow in these areas toward greater fruit of the Spirit and total dependence on Christ.
• They want to have a good handle on everything in the ministry. This can seem like a tendency to overcontrol.
• They tend to become overextended in their commitments.
• Desire to pursue the impossible
• Desire to pioneer where others won’t or can’t go

Neil Cole – Primal Fire: Reigniting the Church with the Five Gifts of Jesus

• They are sent out to new people and new places.
• Apostles lay a foundation in a region or people group.
• Apostles are architects of multiplying methods – strategy / catalyze / systems.
• Apostles are custodians of DNA – guard against heresy.
• An Apostle is a planter of the gospel and of churches.
• An Apostle is a spiritual parent – model for others, relational authority.
• An Apostle is the scum of the earth – face a lot of opposition because they pursue new things.
• An Apostle’s authority is relational and results-oriented.
• An Apostle is at least competent in all the other roles – but can be tempted to be isolated and do it all themselves.