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

‘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 the last few posts, we’ve given a broad overview on why spiritual gifts are important for the mission field and how they can apply to the field context and on missions teams. In this post, we’ll try to address the term ‘apostolic’ and the critical role this concept plays in catalyzing movements among the unreached.

In our experience learning about and pursuing movements, the word ‘apostolic’ is thrown around a lot. Apostolic leaders, apostolic giftings, apostolic ministry. Coming from a background that essentially never used this word, it felt like everyone else understood something that I didn’t. But the more we asked about this, the more it was clear that many people were unclear about what apostolic really meant. We heard things like ‘failed business entrepreneur,’ or ‘charismatic leader’ or things of that nature that still left us confused.

12 years ago, I was in a missions training program that had us go through a spiritual gifts survey that included the APEST giftings from Ephesians 4:11 – Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist, Shepherd, Teacher. It was the first I had heard about APEST giftings. I took the test, and the facilitator asked the group of about 30 people to split into groups according to your highest rated APEST gifting. The two biggest groups were the evangelist and the shepherd, with some teachers and a few prophets sprinkled in. I went to the apostle group since that was my highest grade, and only one other person was there – my group leader who eventually recruited me into full time ministry and helped to mentor me. Puzzled, I asked him, “What the heck does apostle mean?”

Understanding APEST and the Word “Apostolic” from the Bible

In order to discuss the word ‘apostolic,’ we first need to understand what some people call the five-fold model of APEST leadership from Ephesians 4:11.

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ…

Ephesians 4:11

Alan Hirsch and Tim Catchim break down APEST and particularly the word apostolic for Western church contexts in their book, The Permanent Revolution. They argue that “the church’s capacity to embody and extend the mission and purposes of Jesus in the world depends largely on a… restructure of the ministry of the church as fivefold and to reembrace the revitalizing, intrinsically missional role of the apostolic person (emphasis added).” For them, the decline of the church in the West and the slowness of Kingdom expansion among the unreached is largely due to our misalignment with this fivefold ministry that was a defining marker of Paul’s ministry in the New Testament.

Originally, I intended to break down the word apostolic from Scripture as well as summarize several helpful resources around the term apostolic and the APEST framework. Thankfully, Mark G of Multiplying Disciples has already done so in a much more thorough manner than I could’ve done!

Please read his two posts first! The rest of this post will then expand on those ideas and give practical steps for how to identify and develop an apostolic leader towards catalyzing movements.

1. Apostles Meaning: Unlock Biblical Roles, Greek Origins, and Modern Mission

In ‘Apostles Meaning,’ Mark deep dives into the etymology and historical context of the word apostle and distinctions in usage of the word in the New Testament. He defines apostles as “representatives empowered with the authority of the sender and commissioned for specific purposes.” In the case of the New Testament apostles, they were sent out as representatives of Jesus on mission for expanding the early church. Mark explains that their core functions were to proclaim and evangelize, model Christian life, lay foundations for new ministry, and have a pioneer focus. Of note, Mark concludes and we agree, that “the role of the twelve apostles was unique and unrepeatable – no one today can claim their position as eyewitnesses of Jesus’s ministry and authoritative founders of the universal church. However, the New Testament pattern of missionary apostles – those sent to establish the church in new areas – continues today through pioneer missionary work. While many modern missionaries don’t use the title “apostle,” their function often parallels that of New Testament missionary apostles like Barnabas.”

2. Unlocking the Power of APEST: The Ultimate Guide

In ‘Unlocking the Power of APEST,’ Mark provides a summary of APEST drawing from important resources like Neil Cole’s ‘Primal Fire,’ and content from Alan Hirsch including ‘The Permanent Revolution.’ Specifically, Mark outlines how each of the APEST giftings apply to movements. He also provides the characteristics, functions, and examples for each of the fivefold giftings.

In addition to the Hirsh and Cole resources, we’d also recommend content from Robert Clinton (like his Leadership Commentary on 1 and 2 Timothy and related articles on leadership, including apostolic ministry, gifting, functions), George Miley’s Loving the Church, Blessing the Nations which has a number of chapters on apostolic leadership, and Daniel Sinclair’s A Vision of the Possible. I also have to credit Steve U’s resource Exploring the Apostolic Gift that put me on to many of these resources.

Definition of an Apostolic Leader

Mark G’s article gives Hirsch, Cole, and Breen’s definitions of an apostle:

I’ll add Clinton and Miley’s definitions as well:

Clinton: “The gift of apostleship refers to a special leadership capacity to move with authority from God to create new ministry structures (churches and parachurch groups) to meet needs and to develop and appoint leadership in these structures. Its central thrust is Creating New Ministry.”

Miley: “Apostolic leaders go first in sequence (1 Cor. 12:28). They are to blaze the trail, to pioneer, to initiate kingdom breakthroughs in new areas, and to lay foundations on which others can build.”

Simply put, apostolically gifted leaders are ones that God has supernaturally gifted to pioneer new works in new areas. In the next post, we’ll explore the characteristics of an apostolically gifted leader to understand how they are uniquely positioned to catalyze new Kingdom work.

Why is it Important to Understand the Term “Apostolic?”

Sinclair’s book captures how it can feel odd to talk about the term apostolic but also why it is critical to understand:

For years we have shied away from using the word apostle in relation to church planting work overseas. After all, people know that apostles were the “big shots” in the New Testament. To say, “God has called me to be an apostle,” sounds somewhere between gross arrogance and a delusional break from reality. This is an unfortunate confusion, because the ministry of apostles is at the very core of the Great Commission as well as the current work to bring the good news to those who have never heard. 

If this is true, then the calling, gifting, and nature of apostleship today is more vital to us than even concerns such as cultural anthropology, methodology, and missiology. What was true in the first century is just as true in the twenty-first century: without apostolic ministry the gospel does not break new ground. With regard to pioneer work, apostleship is everything. Indeed, it is why, in the Lord, the impossible is actually possible. 

Dan Sinclair, Vision of the Possible

Sinclair goes on to say that it can be more helpful to talk about the apostolic gifting, engaging apostolic ministry, or being on an apostolic team as opposed to using the title “Apostle” to avoid confusion in thinking someone is calling themselves one of Jesus’ 12 Apostles.

For those pursuing movement among the unreached, understanding the term apostolic is absolutely vital. We use principles from the book of Acts as our guidelines for movement, which is, after all, called the Acts of the Apostles. It is the work of God in multiplying the early church through the activities of those with the apostolic gift and calling!

As a disclaimer, I also understand why people can be nervous about exploring the word apostolic. For one, as mentioned above, the term is confusing and requires specificity when using it. This post and the related resources attempt to bring clarity to the confusion around the term. At the bottom we’ve added an “Apostolic Cheat Sheet” attempting to define various terms, including the difference between apostolic passion and apostolic gifting. The term apostle also means something different in more charismatic circles. But I think even more than confusion, embracing the importance of the apostolic gift means doing some reconciling with our own hearts.

When we talk about spiritual gifts, for the most part it can be an encouraging exercise because it means you have some kind of gift from the Holy Spirit to be used for ministry. But if we start to highlight that the apostolic gift is important for catalyzing movements, it can immediately shine a spotlight on ourselves – what if I’m not apostolically gifted? Can I still be a part of movement work? To me, the answer is emphatically YES. More on this later.

Secondly, and this is painful to admit, but some who claim to be apostolically gifted can have immaturities and pitfalls that can be a turn off to others. Clinton highlights that pride and isolation are some of the biggest issues for apostolics, because their nature is to be a barrier breaker and pioneer where few others would be willing to go. It’s almost in their nature to be a contrarian, to go against the grain of what the majority would imagine, to stand on the calling God has given them when no one else can see what they see. As a result, some can give off a stand-offish, defensive, prideful, and prickly demeanor. These are all legitimate critiques. I’ve also observed that the mature apostolic leader has been humbled through suffering, and that God can give a thorn in order to keep them humble, like He did with Paul (2 Corinthians 12).

Despite these issues, if we are pursuing movement among the unreached and we ignore how God uses apostolic leaders to pioneer, we are missing the pattern of the New Testament!

The Role of the Apostolic Gift in Movements

If we understand that spiritual gifts are used for the building up of the body, the church, then every gift is useful for movements because movements are meant to multiply the church!

But the role of the apostolic gift in movements is to start the new work.

In multiple places, Paul lists out apostles, then prophets, and then other gifts in sequence, including 1 Corinthians 12:28 (“And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers…), Ephesians 2:19-20 (“the house of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets…”), and of course Ephesians 4:11 (“And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers…”). Some might think these are listed in terms of value, but many commentators and the authors listed in this post think that these are gifts listed in sequence of ministry. If we look at the simple definitions provided by Mark G about the APEST functions in movements, it becomes a lot clearer!

Why is the apostolic gift important in starting new work? We talked about the context of the pioneering environment in our post about Spiritual Gifts and the Mission Field, and I defined the pioneering environment as “fields where the methods, systems, structures, institutions, and the sufficient number of disciple-makers to reach a people or place do not yet exist.” In these pioneering environments, there is no previous playbook that has seen success. Whoever goes to these places needs to innovate new ways to adapt the message of the gospel and the discipleship, church, and leadership structures that will be effective in that context. Inevitably, the process of innovating, adapting, and applying these methods will hit contextual, societal, or spiritual barriers. When you hit barriers, the apostolically gifted leaders are equipped to push through those barriers and further the work. We have seen repeatedly when that leadership gifting and perspective is missing, whether in national believers, our own team, or other leaders that we’ve coached, they run into the same obstacles over and over again and are unable to find a way forward. We’ll talk about how they apostolic leaders functionally do this in the next post.

Some of the authors we’ve listed say that they rarely see effective missions teams without an apostolically gifted leader involved. That may be true from their observation. From our study and experience, we would assert that the apostolic gift needs to be involved somewhere in the movement, whether from the insider leader which is best, from an outsider Barnabas, through a movement coach, or eventually emerging from the harvest. Without the apostolic gift, it becomes extremely challenging to push through barriers to multiplication.

However, those without the apostolic gift can absolutely have a role in movement ministry. How?

For outsiders, regardless of their gifting, our role in starting new work should be trying to find, empower, and support the national apostolic leader in pioneering movements.

If we look at the list of Paul’s companions throughout the New Testament, Paul, Barnabas, and a few others like Timothy and Silas are named as apostles. But many of the other names: Priscila, Aquila, Aristarchus, Onesimus, Gaius, Sopater, and several more, are not explicitly named as apostles or referenced as having apostolic gifting. In fact, in our team’s study of all of Paul’s companions, there’s really only one unifying descriptor for all of them: faithful.

If we can be like Barnabas, faithful to find and empower apostolically gifted national leaders, we can have a significant role in starting movements.

Finding an Apostolic Leader

After our initial language learning season, our team’s focus was to partner with local churches in order to find National Apostolic Visionary leaders that we could serve and empower to start movements. That meant first building trust with local churches, and secondly getting to pilot some multiplication focused trainings to see what kind of leaders we could identify.

For the first three years, we trained hundreds of Thai believers in biblical principles of multiplication and simple tools for evangelism, discipleship, and gathering as a house church. We modeled ministry by going out several times a week with these Thai believers to share on college campuses, in parks, in malls, and in markets. We traveled all over the city and to other provinces to train and form Thai disciple-making teams, with an eye out for an apostolic leader.

It was a fun, exhausting, challenging, stretching, chaotic several years of this pattern. There was a lot of faithful harvesting, some new believers, and a few new discovery bible groups that started, and we celebrated wildly with every step of faithfulness we saw from our Thai friends. But we still kept hitting repeated barriers with different groups. Many were focused on just growing their own church and couldn’t understand why we would want to release leaders to multiply – “just bring them to our church” was the standard reply. Some had difficulties with releasing authority to baptize or to lead a Bible study if they hadn’t been “formally trained” or ordained. And in many instances, people were willing to go into the harvest along with us, but lacked the leadership initiative to recruit others or keep the work going when we weren’t around. Even though we had so much joy engaging the harvest and seeing people faithfully make disciples, we weren’t seeing multiplication catalyzed like we were hoping. 

Finally, after 3 years of trying and failing, restarting with different groups, and running into barriers, the church planting pastor of the local church we had been working with said, “I think I’m understanding what you’re trying to do with CPM, and I think this will work better with our church planters in the rural areas. Could you go pilot with her?”

That’s when we met Mint. You can read more of her story in our first Be Barnabas post. It took several months of building trust with Mint and hearing her vision before we even piloted a training with her disciples, but from the beginning we could tell there was something different about her. For one, she had already taken the bold step of faith to be sent out alone to be a church planter after feeling called by God. She had endured several years of trials and challenges to start one burgeoning church. When we asked her what her vision was, she didn’t reply, “add people to my church” like most believers did. She said, “I want my church to multiply!” She had bold faith and she had vision to multiply. Good indicators!

After we started training, her team doubled the number of believers in 2 months! She had no problem releasing her disciples to baptize, and as we started to receive regular reports of baptisms, she was not even in the photos – her disciples ran baptisms without her there! After 7 months, she talked to each of the new households of believers and invited them to become house churches. Soon after she began to train in new areas, as well as send her best leaders to new provinces to start new church planting work. She continually recruited and developed and released leaders, and structured and restructured the teams to help them be faithful and fruitful according to their giftings.

She has some of the best intuitive understanding of movement and multiplication that I’ve seen. Many times we would come into coaching meetings and I would have a suggestion to deal with a barrier to multiplication that I wanted to make, but before I could even get there, she had already heard that from the Lord. When we ask, “how is your abiding? What are you learning from God?” to start our coaching meetings, it takes us about an hour for her to share all that she’s hearing and learning before we even get to the ministry coaching part. She is now overseeing a region of Thailand with multiple church planting teams sent out from her discipleship stream, and stepping into further roles to impact movement throughout the country.

Mint is a National Apostolic Visionary. She is able to do more in a year that I would be able to do in a lifetime. She has been uniquely gifted and called as an apostolically gifted leader to start new work among the unreached people and places in her country.

Quick Tool: Apostolic Cheat Sheet

Here’s a list of terms related to the word “apostolic” with various definitions from different authors. Hopefully this can help us differentiate and bring clarity to what we mean when we talk about the word “apostolic.”

Reflection Questions

• Do you agree or disagree with the definition and reasonings in this post? Why or why not?
• Do you experience internal tension or confusion when hearing the word “apostolic”? Why or why not?
• Who are potential people with apostolic gifting on your team, among local partners, or in your personal network that could help you in your ministry? What barriers are you facing in ministry that an apostolically gifted person could help with?
• Does your ministry strategy capitalize on using the apostolic gift and in finding nationals with this gift? If not, what changes can you make to highlight this?

In our previous post, we covered a simple definition of spiritual gifts and some key points about gifts. In this post, we’ll explore why using spiritual gifts is critical on the missions field.

As we’ve mentioned in our spiritual warfare posts, our encounters with spiritual warfare during our first short-term trip to Thailand opened our eyes to spiritual realities. It also made us begin to seek out the Holy Spirit and learn about spiritual gifts. As we discerned our calling to go and sought out development and preparation before launching, this category of the Holy Spirit (listening prayer, spiritual gifts, spiritual warfare) was a blind spot for us. As we heard stories from movement practitioners on the field, they shared about healings, demons being cast out, Muslims having dreams of Jesus, and supernatural usage of spiritual gifts. We studied Acts and saw miraculous signs and wonders accompanying the proclamation of the gospel.

It made us ask the question – how come these supernatural acts seem so prevalent on the mission field but feel so rare in our home context? And, if these things are happening and are critical to the work, what can we do to learn about the gifts and access them?

Part of the answer has to do with our own cultural and theological perspectives about the spiritual world, what Paul Hiebert calls The Excluded Middle. Another reason is that we simply are more self-reliant on our ‘natural’ skills and giftings rather than the Spirit’s power when we are in our own comfortable culture. Laboring cross-culturally can humble you quickly and turn you towards looking for power beyond yourself.

The truth is that we need the Spirit’s power for supernatural impact just as much at home as we do on the mission field – it just isn’t as apparent to us. But the field has a unique way to draw out the reality of our need for the Spirit’s power.

The Missions Field is a Pioneering Environment.

Floyd McClung coined the term ‘apostolic passion,’ which he defines as “a deliberate, intentional choice to live for the worship of Jesus in the nations.” It’s drawn from Paul’s ‘ambition’ in Romans 15:

“And thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else’s foundation, but as it is written, “Those who have never been told of him will see, and those who have never heard will understand.”

– Romans 15:20-21

I think many, if not most, cross-cultural workers have this apostolic passion. We not only desire to see Jesus worshipped among the nations, but have what McClung calls the apostolic abandonment and focus to give our lives and time and efforts towards making disciples among the unreached.

Those with apostolic passion will go to start new work among people and places where Jesus is not yet known. These missions fields are what I would call pioneering environments, where the methods, systems, structures, institutions, and the sufficient number of disciple-makers needed to reach a people or place do not yet exist. As such, pursuing disciple-making and church planting in a pioneering environment requires different approaches than in reached areas, including increased innovation, more flexible methodology, a higher rate of experimentation and failing forward, and more agile teams that can adjust quickly to change.

But above everything, pioneering environments require spiritual breakthrough.

The Pioneering Environment Requires Spiritual Breakthrough, Including Spiritual Gifts.

And they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs.

– Mark 16:20

As much as I believe that strategic and innovative approaches can be helpful in starting movements, too often we see cross-cultural workers put their hope in their strategies and tools rather than in the Spirit’s power. These unreached communities have been resistant to the gospel for potentially hundreds of years, and there are too many cultural, religious, historical, and most of all spiritual barriers to the gospel in these pioneering environments for human ability to make a dent. Even the perfect persuasive evangelism tool has no power to change the heart of someone who lives in darkness. Seeing people among the unreached repent and believe the gospel requires the Spirit to move in power!

Paul tells us that our struggle is not against flesh and blood but spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places (Eph. 6:12), and that “the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds” (2 Cor. 10:4). Throughout the New Testament, we see signs, wonders, gifts, and power coincide with the proclamation of the gospel in the mission field, whether through Jesus himself (Matthew 9:35), in the disciples (Luke 10:19), or through the early believers in Acts (Acts 14:3).

These spiritual realities of warfare that faced the early church should inform how we approach the pioneering environments that we are in! For every hour of planning, how many do we give to prayer? For every resource we develop, how much do we focus on receiving and using the Spirit’s power and gifts? Do our approaches even allow for “divine power to destroy strongholds,” or are they weapons of the flesh and human wisdom? These are questions that I need to ask myself often!

If we can see the battle is spiritual, just as Elisha’s servant had his eyes opened (2 Kings 6:17), the good news is that the “weapons of our warfare” are already promised and given. I love that in every one of the Great Commission passages, power is promised to accompany the commission to make disciples and preach the gospel. One significant aspect of this power is through the spiritual gifts that each believer is given.

We should expect, depend on, and regularly use the gifts of the Spirit in the work of pioneering movements.

Our Thai partners greatly outpace us in this category. Their primary method of entering new communities is by praying for needs. We train and practice praying for people with a simple prayer, and then see if God moves and opens their hearts to hear more about Jesus. Often, people request prayer for physical ailments and illnesses.

Early on in our partnership with Mint, we went with her to visit one new believer’s house that was 40 minutes down a dirt road. After going through a new believer lesson with the new believer Sarah, she introduced us to her mom. Sarah told us that her mom hadn’t been able to stand or walk for several months, and a doctor told them that she would likely never walk again because of severe osteoporosis. Together with Mint, we gathered to pray for Sarah’s mom. Nothing happened. We said our goodbyes and Mint told Sarah that she would come back next week to go through more discipleship lessons.

A week later, Mint and her team went back to Sarah’s house. And they prayed again for Sarah’s mom.

And Sarah’s mom stood up and walked down the stairs for the first time in months.

The next week, she walked into the nearby creek to be baptized by her daughter.

As more and more disciple-makers were trained to engage the harvest, reports of healings, miracles, and salvations began coming in weekly. 

• One new believer was beaten by her husband so severely that her right eye swelled and she was blinded in that eye. She came to the local house church and had the believers pray for her. The next day, she woke up, and the swollenness was gone and she could see! 
• In another province, a new believer discovered he had the gift of healing and met a sick woman while selling bus tickets. After praying for her, she invited him to her nearby village where he healed an entire group of elderly ladies and started a new group! 
• Another new believer was in the hospital and prayed for a person in the bed next to them that had stopped breathing and was declared dead – and they came back to life! 
• At one training, we heard one leader yelling “Go out! Go out!” into the phone which is the same word in Thai as the go in “go and make disciples” from Matthew 28, so we thought he was training. But one new believer was working on a rubber farm and a coworker put on an amulet and became possessed by an evil spirit. She didn’t know how to cast it out so she called this leader to cast it out over the phone!

Over the past 7 years of partnering with this network of church planters, we’ve heard dozens, if not hundreds, of answered prayer stories like these, and probably have missed hundreds more. We start almost every meeting or training with the question – is there anything you would like to praise God for? And stories begin flowing out. One of my favorites is where one new believer prayed for rain on their farm, and the storm poured out rain just on their land and stopped exactly at the border between their farm and their neighbor’s!

These types of supernatural breakthroughs are common and normative in movements, like those in the book of Acts. When normal, faithful disciples (and almost all of the above stories are from new believers) are released to operate in power, God shows up! Are we expectant of these things? Are we asking the Spirit for them?

Though All Gifts Are Useful, Certain Gifts Are Particularly Helpful in the Pioneering Environment.

Certain spiritual gifts are particularly useful in pioneering ministry work, and others are more useful for building up the body in the context of a local church or mission team.

To give some examples:

• Healing and Miracles – We see this as a standard aspect of bringing the Kingdom of God to the world. Accompanied with the proclamation of the gospel are signs and wonders like healing and miracles. The several stories from the previous section are examples of what it can look like!
  
• Evangelism – Obviously, evangelism gifts are valuable to pioneering environments! All believers should share the gospel regularly regardless of gifting, and, those gifted in evangelism should use it frequently! People with an evangelistic gift just seem to very easily connect with people, and can have more effectiveness in sharing the gospel and winning people to Christ.
  
  Before we launched as a team to Thailand, we tried to live out disciple-making rhythms in preparation for overseas work. Out of our team of 12, one teammate who was evangelism gifted had led more people to Christ than the rest of our team combined! We will talk more about Ephesians 4 later, but evangelism-gifted leaders shouldn’t only exercise their gift in sharing the gospel, but need to use their gift to equip others to share.

• Teaching / Training – At first glance, it’d seem that teaching would be a gift more appropriate for within the local church. But for teams trying to start movements with a ‘Be Barnabas’ approach, catalyzing near culture believers to share the gospel means there’s a lot of training! It means that those with a teaching gift who are able to handle the Word simply and equip near or in-culture believers to share the gospel, make disciples, and multiply churches is extremely valuable! Also, teaching gifts can be crucial in developing simple, reproducible, biblical curriculum that can be used in new multiplying works.

• Helps – Another gift that seems like it would be more suited to within the local church is helps. But a Be Barnabas approach means that the National Apostolic Visionary (NAV) leader is the “Paul” that God has chosen to pioneer new ministry among their people, and our role as outsider is to serve and support that leader. If we want to Be Barnabas, it requires a humbling of ourselves to serve that leader, and those with the gift of helps will be particularly suited to caring for, supporting, and providing whatever is needed for that NAV leader to thrive and multiply.
  
  One of our teammates gifted in helps walked alongside a local believer who was going through burnout. That believer wasn’t implementing movement practice or actively making disciples, so Jenn and I questioned if that was really the best use of that teammate’s time. But after helping this Thai friend take a sabbatical, this local believer came back and said – I want to devote my time to multiplying disciples! – and has recently started a number of new groups! As people not gifted in helps, we saw that time investment as questionable, but to our teammate, she was drawn to serve through her gifting. That’s why it’s critical that all the gifts have an opportunity to participate in the Great Commission! Side note – this is why we love the Be Barnabas approach! The apostolic and evangelist will clearly have value in supporting the NAV’s ministry, but so do the teachers, shepherds, and helpers in a very different and much needed way!

We Should Have the Ability to Identify and Develop Spiritual Gifts In Our National Partners.

Lastly, it’s critical that we have studied, practiced, and developed our own gifts and gifts in others so that we can identify and develop spiritual giftings in our national partners. When we’re looking for a “Paul”-type national partner who can catalyze movements, part of that is looking for a specific type of gifting. It’s in the name – a National Apostolic Visionary leader. We break down some of that in our article about what a NAV is. We’ll also have a future post further exploring the word “apostolic” including the apostolic gifting.

Although we have a certain eye out for apostolic leaders, we should also partner with local believers that have other giftings. Anyone who is ready to be obedient to the Great Commission to share the gospel and make disciples is worth investing in! At the end of the day, the goal is to multiply healthy churches, and that requires all of the gifts, though different gifts might be emphasized at different phases of ministry. For example, apostolic and evangelistic gifts might be most helpful in pioneering in a new area to win people to faith. But as churches grow, gifts like pastor/shepherding and teaching will need to be emphasized. As issues needing correction come up in the church, giftings like exhortation and prophecy will need to be elevated.

Do we know what the Word says about each of these giftings? Are we able to identify them in emerging leaders? Do we know how to develop these giftings and encourage local partners to use them to advance the work of multiplying churches?

In our next post, we’ll explore how different spiritual gifts can help edify the body, either in the local church context or on missions teams. Below are some questions for reflection about spiritual gifts and the missions field.

Reflection Questions

• Are you expectant for the power of the Holy Spirit to work in you and in your ministry? Why or why not?
• Have you seen the Holy Spirit’s power working actively in your ministry? In what situations, experiences, or people have you seen this most clearly?
• Are you, your teammates, and your national partners regularly using spiritual gifts in ministry? Why or why not? Where do you, your teammates, or national partners need greater development in this topic?
• How could God specifically use your spiritual gifts to move your ministry forward?

As we close out 2024, the Missions Leaders Blog has been around for about 18 months. We’ve been thankful for the opportunity to share lessons and encourage other leaders who are pursuing pioneering work among the unreached.

We have some exciting things in store for 2025, as we launch a new ministry focused on helping missions team and ministry leaders abide, lead effectively, and pursue multiplying ministry throughout the world.

But for now, here are some of the top posts from 2024 along with some of our favorites!

Most-Read Posts in 2024

1. Team Conflict
2. Women in Leadership
   • Other posts from Women in Leadership:
   • Internal Barriers (Part 1)
   • Internal Barriers (Part 2)
3. Spiritual Warfare Part 1 and Part 2
4. Be Barnabas – What is a NAV?
   • Other posts from the Be Barnabas series:
   • Be Barnabas: Intro & Mint’s Story
   • Why Be Barnabas?
   • Who Was Barnabas from the Bible?
   • How to Find a NAV
   • How to Partner with a NAV
   • Be Barnabas – Life Together
5. Lessons from Cancer: Suffering Leads to Surrender
   • Other posts from the Lessons from Cancer series:
   • Lessons from Cancer: Surrender the Self to the Point of Death
   • Lessons from Cancer: Receive Resurrection Life and Power

Team Conflict continuing to be a highly read post just highlights for us how prevalent and intense of a topic interpersonal conflicts on missions teams continues to be. Although this topic arguably has the most resources, team conflict can be an issue that can make or break teams. In the past 10 years, Jenn in particular has mediated several conflicts in and out of our team (including an 8 hour session this past year). Please reach out to contact@missionsleaders.com if you’re desiring specific coaching around conflict mediation!

Women in Leadership takes the second spot! Research shows that single women outnumber single men on the field up to a ratio of 7 to 1! And despite the great need for leaders among the unreached, there remains significant confusion and numerous internal and external barriers for women to enter into roles of missions leadership. Jenn will continue to break down these issues to encourage and empower women throughout the unreached to take up the role God has called them to!

Spiritual Warfare was one of our earliest posts, and one that people ask us about most frequently. The Enemy’s opposition is strongest against those pushing forward the Kingdom on the front lines. Goers, and especially leaders, need to be equipped and able to equip others to engage in spiritual warfare.

The role of Barnabas and lessons of suffering that lead to surrender and resurrection life are two of the topics that we felt were most important for us to share on this blog.

Our Favorite 2024 Posts

1. Reflections from 10 Years on the Field – Part 1 and Part 2
2. Be Barnabas – Life Together
3. How to Recruit Teammates Part 1 and Part 2

Reflections from 10 Years on the Field was the culmination of Steven’s processing during our first sabbatical this past summer. The sheer volume of intensity and weightiness from our time starting a new team and leading it to expand into three teams was surprising and churned up a lot of emotions to bring to the Lord. But ultimately, that reflection and processing led to gratitude and joy that God allowed us to be a part of so many significant moments, relationships, and Kingdom opportunities.

Be Barnabas – Life Together is one of our favorite posts, not only from the series, but overall. We were both in tears as we wrote this post, praising God for allowing us to have such close relationships with our Thai partners. There are many biblical and strategic reasons to take a Barnabas role as an outsider pursuing movements, but the relationships we get to invest in and that we receive blessing from are some of the things we most cherish from our time on the field.

How to Recruit Teammates is similarly another topic that many new team leaders ask us about. Ultimately, the Lord will bring the right people to your team. Although it can be a pain sometimes (a lot of times!) to enter into all the cultural transitions, interpersonal conflict, and personal development issues that come with leading new teammates, looking back at how the Lord has given us some of our closest friends and co-workers filled us with thankfulness that we had the privilege to lead others towards Jesus and his purposes.

That’s it for 2024! We’re eager and ready to post more resources and stories for missions leaders in 2025. To those reading, may Jesus draw so nearly to you through abiding that you experience oneness with him, and that oneness would lead to many others to know the hope that we have in him.

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The last few posts have been more instructive about the process of what to do to begin partnering with a National Apostolic Visionary to pursue movements. We wanted to focus on the first few practical steps in partnering with NAVs, as we feel there is a lack of training around how to start. However, as you get into a ministry partnership, there are numerous movement resources to help you think through, plan, and implement movement practices in your field. You can see the Resources page for some of these movement resources.

We will probably have more posts about Being Barnabas in the future, but for now, we wanted to shift gears from practical instruction to illustrate the relational dynamic that we have with our partners and what we’ve heard from other CPM practitioners about their partnership with NAVs. Sometimes we can get caught up in “catalyzing things” and miss the people that we are supposed to be loving and serving. What could be a beautiful image of partnership in the gospel with a NAV quickly becomes something evil and prideful when we are manipulating people towards a ministry goal instead of loving them and authentically serving them towards a mutual vision from God.

One of the best descriptions we’ve heard of the relational dynamic between a movement practitioner outsider and a national partner insider was given by a national partner in South Asia. He broke down Paul’s relationship with the Thessalonians, and in particular focused on 1 Thessalonians 2:7-12.

But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.

For you remember, brothers, our labor and toil: we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God. You are witnesses, and God also, how holy and righteous and blameless was our conduct toward you believers. For you know how, like a father with his children, we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.

1 Thessalonians 2:7-12

He highlighted the metaphors Paul uses to reflect the depth of their love and care towards the Thessalonians, “like a nursing mother…” and “like a father with his children.” Ultimately, the relationship is summarized in the words, “we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves.” This is the level of depth and unity that a true partnership in the gospel can birth.

Instead of just telling you what aspects we think are important for you to have in a ministry partnership with a NAV, we wrote a few short stories from our experiences with our partners to illustrate what it could look like. We aspire to have the type of partnership that Paul had with the Thessalonians, likely reflected from his relationship with Barnabas. Despite differences in age, culture, experience, or language, we believe that we have oneness with Christ, which therefore means we have a oneness and unity with other brothers and sisters in Christ (John 17:21). We hope that Barnabas’ example, Jesus’ exhortation, and some illustrations from our relationship with our friends would encourage you to humbly serve, sacrifice, and invest your lives to see national brothers and sisters multiply the gospel to those who have never heard.

_______

Being Family Together
_Steven

After one very long ministry trip to a neighboring province, Mint, Jenn, and I arrived back late at her house where her Mom had cooked dinner. Everyone else had eaten a few hours ago, but the three of us ravenously devoured mom’s epic fried chicken and gaeng som, an insanely spicy and sour southern Thai curry. From the beginning, we had made a habit of going to Mint’s house and eating her mom’s food after every training.

When I asked for seconds of rice, Mint’s mom broke into a big smile and chuckled. I looked at Mint who was also smiling. I asked, “Why’s your mom smiling?” Mint said, “she’s smiling because you finally stopped being polite and asked for more food!” Whenever we see Mint’s mom, she greets us with “​​ลูก! เป็นยังไงบ้าง?” – which means, “my children! How are you?”

Later on, Mint’s brother-in-law told me, “we’ve had other people from churches or groups try to come and help us or run a training. But whenever the training was over, they would keep to themselves or go off and do their own thing. We knew that you cared about us and not just what we did because you guys always came over for dinner.” He always greets me with a big smile and a big hug, and asks me when I’m going to lose the 10 pounds I told him I would lose.

_______

Celebrating Fruitfulness Together
_Jenn

In 2019, Mint’s ministry began to bear fruit, and quickly. Our memories of that year are mostly a blur as we tried to keep up with all that God was doing. Most weeks, we traveled with Mint as she visited new believers and churches, energized by weekly reports of salvations, baptisms, and healings. Though we were so excited, we were also incredibly tired!

To take a breath, we planned a small prayer retreat at an airbnb in Bangkok. We asked Mint to take a pause for a couple of days so that we could pray together, listen for guidance from the Holy Spirit, and plan out our next goals.

On the first day, I handed Mint a sheet of paper and asked her to write what she had seen God do, what she was thankful for, and to draw a generation map of where the ministry was currently at. She prayed silently for a moment, listening to the Holy Spirit. And then she started to draw. New churches were represented by a circle, and a dotted circle delineated a Discovery Bible Study group. Circles began covering the first, then the second, and then the third page as she drew out how God had been moving. She shared with us story after story of people whose lives had turned from darkness to light. Tears of joy and gratitude fell freely from all of us as we realized how God had been working.

I asked Mint, “how do you feel about all of this?”

She replied, “I’m nothing special. I never thought God could use me like this.” 

Before we shifted toward setting goals, we had a time of listening prayer, asking God to speak into our plans. As I listened, the Holy Spirit put a Thai worship song on my mind that I had only heard once or twice. Unsure with what to do with this word, I asked Mint, “do you know this song? Maybe we can sing it?”

A huge smile came across her face. “This is the song God used to call me to be a church planter!” In God’s kindness and wisdom, He brought to my mind a song that was significant in reminding Mint of His faithfulness when she first started this new ministry. As Mint’s ministry began to multiply, the song took on new meaning as our celebration of God’s fulfillment of His promises!

_______

Suffering Together
_Steven

After the first 5 house churches were planted, Mint’s ministry took off. Before we met her, she spent 2 years of difficult laboring to get to her first house church of about 15 people. 7 months after our first training with her team, there were 70 new believers and 5 house churches. 3 months later, 120 new believers and 12 house churches. We were traveling constantly with her throughout her region to train new church planters and follow up with new believers.

But with the highs of fruitfulness also came the lows of resistance and trial. During one coaching meeting, she shared with us that some new believers had gotten into a dispute about money with another believer in the church. Even though Mint tried to resolve the conflict, the new believers decided to leave the church without a word. Instead, they simply left their Bibles on Mint’s doorstep and disappeared.

Mint was devastated.

She said, “it wasn’t just that they rejected us, but that they rejected Jesus too.”

She also told us that this same month, her dad had decided to leave them in the northeast and move back down south to his second wife. Mint’s mom had just baptized him a few months before.

We sat in silence and mourned together with her. And with as much feeling and intention as we could convey in our limited Thai, we prayed for Mint and asked God to be her comfort.

________

The first time I hugged Mint after three years of working together was in the hospital. We were in a province I had never been before to help train some new church planters that Mint had raised up. Upon arriving to the hotel after a 6 hour drive, Jenn had multiple seizures and was taken to the hospital in an ambulance.

After texting my teammates to pray, the first person I called was Mint, searching for the Thai words to explain “faint, unconscious, seizure.” She told me to tell the hotel to call an ambulance and was there in 10 minutes next to me as Jenn started her 3rd seizure.

We rode in the front of the ambulance together; I remember that Mint was carrying Jenn’s shoes for her. When we were getting ready to move from the government hospital to the international hospital, Mint disappeared for 10 minutes and came back with the bill paid. She wouldn’t let me pay her back.

Around midnight as the hospital was closing, I went to the lobby where Mint and some of her teammates had been waiting for almost 6 hours. With tears in my eyes, I told them thank you for being with me that day, and I gave Mint a hug. For context, Thai culture isn’t very touchy as they ‘wai’ each other instead of hugging or handshaking, and Mint in particular isn’t a touch person. Jenn and I aren’t sure if we’ve even seen Mint hug her own family. But it felt like we had been through something significant and intense together and a ‘wai’ just wouldn’t suffice; she was there with us through one of the worst days of our lives.

The next day, she ran the training for the new church planters by herself and was back at the hospital to see Jenn. 

After we were gone from Thailand for almost 2 years for Jenn’s treatment in the States, we came back to see her and it was like things just picked up right where they left off. Mint gives Jenn a hug now almost every time we see her.

________

Encouraging Towards Jesus Together
_Jenn

Two days after my seizure, Talia sent a text to me and Steven.

“Last night, I had a dream about Jenn. I was really worried and woke up early to pray for her. Jenn, please don’t work too hard!” 

To that point, we hadn’t updated most of our Thai friends about what had happened, and I was recovering in a hospital ICU. It still blows our minds that the Holy Spirit had alerted her of my situation from hundreds of miles away.

After Steven told her the news, Talia responded immediately:

“Jenn, I thank God that we are going through these situations. Everything that happens is in God’s control and in his care. I believe we will see and understand His promises much more, together.”

At the time Talia texted this to me, she was incredibly sick herself. For months, she had been fighting constant weakness and nausea, eventually ending up bedridden from hyperthyroidism, with doctors unable to figure out a medical plan. For the next two years the Lord knit our hearts to each other for a season of suffering and sickness that we would weather together. 

While we fought our respective battles, Talia and I texted constantly. One of the terrible effects of sickness is isolation and loneliness. With brain cancer, no one else was able to experience what my body was going through the way I did. I didn’t have the energy to explain my experiences and the storm of emotions in my heart. But Talia and I had each other – no explanations needed.

We shared with each other verses about God’s promises in suffering, frustrations with sickness, the painful words of people around us, and pictures of new clothes we needed for our changing bodies.

As Talia’s condition worsened, she expressed to me that I had become one of the few people who she felt understood by and who encouraged her. I felt exactly the same. The lessons that she was receiving from the Lord mirrored the things that I was learning. I once asked her, has God given you any promises during this season of suffering?

She said, “God has given me a vision that he will heal me and that I’ll return to my former strength! And that many people will believe in him through my testimony. I want to spend the time I have left to serve him and share the gospel and my story to as many people as I can!” 

625 days after my seizure, we reunited with Talia in Thailand. Although our bodies were exhausted and changed from 2 years of disease and treatment, we were overjoyed to be on the other side of a season of sickness and to meet face to face again. Meeting together also gave us renewed focus and resolve to take the lessons that God had been teaching us through sickness and move forward with His work in Thailand.

When we first launched to Thailand, we knew that our role was to partner with Thai leaders to help them complete the vision God had given them. What I didn’t expect was that God would give me someone that would understand what I was going through better than almost anyone in my most difficult season, despite being across an ocean and a language barrier. I had in mind to have a close relationship with a partner in the ministry, but my good Father knew that what I needed was a dear sister and friend to encourage me in Christ.

I’m confident that God had me and Talia go through our treatment seasons together to reflect to each other what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1: 

Blessed be the… God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God… Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.

2 Corinthians 1:3-4, 9-10

As we head into 2024, here are our top 5 most read posts of 2023!

1. Why Be Barnabas?
2. 625 Days and Talia’s Story
3. Lessons from Cancer: Suffering Leads to Surrender
4. Team Conflict
5. Lessons from Cancer: Surrender the Self to the Point of Death

We have a lot on deck for next year, including the last few posts for the Be Barnabas series, as well as other posts about personal and team thriving. In 2024, we hope to connect with even more missions leaders to learn from and share lessons with; we’d love to connect with you personally! Please reach out at contact@missionsleaders.com. We hope you have a great Christmas / New Year’s season!

We hope this poem from Amy Carmichael will encourage you to continue in the way of Jesus, even through all of the ups and downs.

Thy Way is Perfect by Amy Carmichael

Long is the way, and very steep the slope;
Strengthen me once again, O God of Hope.

Far, very far, the summit doth appear;
But Thou art near, my God, but Thou art near.

And Thou wilt give me with my daily food,
Powers of endurance, courage, fortitude.

Thy way is perfect; only let that way
Be clear before my feet from day to day.

Thou art my Portion, saith my soul to Thee,
Oh, what a portion is my God to me!