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

Do I Have to be the Main Character?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Baptism Through Binoculars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To not be the main character?

How Ethnocentrism Will Sabotage Your Vision To Multiply

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to Address Ethnocentrism

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

Have a Heart of Humility and Love 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Philippians 2:3-9

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

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

Understanding our Ethnic Boundaries

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

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

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

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

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

Discovering Cultural Values

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

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

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

Be a Learner

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

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

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

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

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

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

Every Tribe, Tongue, and Nation

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

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

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

That joy will last for eternity.

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

Revelation 7:9

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

Main Resource:

Humility: The Journey Toward Holiness by Andrew Murray, a missionary to South Africa in the 1840s, is highly recommended reading for anyone who joins our team. Murray’s writings challenge and focus our hearts to love Jesus through deeper abiding that starts with a humble and surrendered heart. It is only out of this constant dying to self are we able to access the power and presence of God for our ministry.

Quotes:

Here are a couple excerpts that we consistently return to.

When people are frustrating:

Accept every humiliation, look upon every fellow-man who tries or vexes you, as a means of grace to humble you. Use every opportunity of humbling yourself before your fellow-man as a help to remain humble before God. It is by the mighty strengthening of His Holy Spirit that God reveals Christ fully in you.

When life feels out of control:

Humility is perfect quietness of heart. It is to expect nothing, to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing done against me. It is to be at rest when nobody praises me, and when I am blamed or despised. It is to have a blessed home in the Lord, where I can go in and shut the door, and kneel to my Father in secret, and am at peace as in a deep sea of calmness, when all around and above is trouble.

When feeling powerless:

Here is the path to the higher life: down, lower down! Just as water always seeks and fills the lowest place, so the moment God finds men abased and empty, His glory and power flow in to exalt and to bless.

This has been one of the most impactful books on our walks with God and we highly recommend it to you!

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Now that we have learned some principles from Barnabas and know what we’re looking for in a National Apostolic Visionary (NAV), how do we find one? From here, we’ll start to get into the practical steps of what you might do to filter for and find a NAV to partner with in pursuing movements.

The process will generally follow this order, but different things can happen simultaneously or there might be some back and forth. CPM methods are often presented as a step-by-step manual for the sake of clarity and confidence, which is important, but the reality is that any kind of ministry – especially CPM – is messy, random, and frequently not what you expect or plan!

So you’re bought in to pursuing CPMs among the unreached, you have an understanding of CPM methodology and have received some training, and you’re on board with a ‘Be Barnabas’ approach of finding a NAV to partner with in catalyzing movements. Now what do you do?

Learn language and culture

To us, this is still an essential component for goers that want to live and serve among the unreached! In a few places in the 10/40 window, English may be commonly used, or perhaps working through translators is a standard method of ministry. For most goers, this won’t even be an option and learning language will be a necessity. Although there are benefits to the translator approach (e.g. don’t have to spend time learning language before entering into ministry, automatically have an insider to help train and hopefully develop as a leader), there are also shortcomings and limits (e.g. immediately brings a paternalistic relationship / power dynamic as you are the one paying the translator, limits your understanding of what’s happening in the other language and even in cultural interactions). 

Even if working through a translator might be a faster way to get started in ministry, our personal experience is that it can really help in a partnering relationship to speak the heart language of your partner. Conversely, not speaking the heart language can potentially become a limiter over time. It’s a way we can serve our local friends by not making them speak our heart language at the cost of their discomfort, as we are there in a Barnabas role to support and encourage them. Additionally, language learning leads to cultural learning, as deeper concepts relating to life, spirituality, family, and ministry will not directly translate to English and a Western worldview. 

We’ve heard from more than a few goers about the confusion that can happen in working through translators. CPM practitioners will often hear reports through translation that don’t line up with what is being reported in the local language. Sometimes it’s an unintentional translation mistake, but other times a paternalistic situation or cultural components might cause a local partner to over or under report or otherwise miscommunicate for the sake of saving face with the outsider who is paying them.

There’s an abundance of other reasons to learn the local language, including your own thriving in the culture, the ability to deepen in relationship and fellowship with local believers including your partners, and at least some ability to help national partners contextualize tools and lessons used in ministry.

This does not mean that you cannot engage in the process of connecting with potential NAVs until you’ve mastered language! For local leaders that do speak English or that you can fumble through conversations with basic language, you can still spend time connecting and networking. Meeting leaders is also a great way to stretch your language learning and motivate yourself to improve by preparing for those types of meetings in a different language.

Network With Leaders

Whether you’re starting to learn language and need to have initial conversations in English, or you’re advanced in language and able to communicate fluently, the next step is to network with many national or near culture leaders. These can be local pastors, ministry leaders, or lay leaders, but the emphasis is on connecting with leader-types, as we are looking for NAVs! These leaders might be potential NAVs themselves, or might connect you to other leaders who are NAVs.

How do you meet these local leaders? This can range from cold-contact showing up at a church (if possible) to having other expat missionaries connect you with local believers. Conferences and trainings can be places to meet many leaders in one place. One CPM practitioner we know moved to a new area and decided to contact nearly 200 churches on facebook in his region with a simple message about desiring to learn from their church about what they do in disciple making. In Thailand, we had a long-time missionary connect us with two main churches when we asked, “Who has a vision for disciple-making and church planting? Could we learn from them?” These are still our team’s main two partners after 9 years!

Obviously, if you’re in a creative-access country, you’ll need to be much more discerning in how you meet these local leaders, for the sake of their safety. Additionally, there will be areas in the 10/40 window that have a very low number of local believers, but very few countries that will have none at all. You could potentially find near culture believers from a nearby country in the region that has a larger number of believers and more available access to them. As the world is increasingly globalized and peoples move from place to place, mobilizing near culture believers to some of the least reached places could be an extremely effective approach, or at least likely to be more effective than Westerners entering these closed countries. Whatever your situation, think creatively about how to connect with national or near-culture leaders. Of course more connections is a bigger pool of leaders to filter, but remember – you only need to find 1 NAV, one ‘Paul’ in order to start a movement! Even finding one or two local believers to partner together with in the work can greatly increase your effectiveness.

When you get connected with these leaders, have a posture like Barnabas! Humble, others-focused, serving. If you’re younger or newer to a country, you can lead with, “I’ve heard amazing things about your church or ministry – I would love to buy you a coffee and hear your story and learn from you!”

Once you’ve secured a meeting with them, here are some things you can do during that meeting. This is just an outline, so follow the Holy Spirit’s guiding! You’re looking to see if that leader has the characteristics of a potential NAV, but in particular you’re looking for a vision to make disciples or plant churches. Even if the other characteristics are not apparent or possibly have yet to emerge, it’s likely that a leader with outward vision can connect you to other outward-focused leaders that they know.

Ask Questions to Learn About Them and Their Vision

After short personal questions and introductions, we almost always lead with the question, “What is the vision that God has given you?” One pastor that we asked this question to in southern Thailand said, “I’ve met many missionaries, and you are the first to ask me what vision God has given me. They normally want me to join them in their vision!” It may come out of a personal excitement or vision for CPM that God has given them, but many earnest missionaries may lead with sharing their own vision instead of coming in with an empowering approach. This can result in national leaders not wanting to work with us! 

We’re looking for outward focused ministry visions, not just a desire to add to their own church or ministry. For this particular pastor, he said, “I want to see a church planted in every province in southern Thailand – I believe God has given me the responsibility to see the gospel go to all these places!” Good start! Another Muslim-background believer (MBB) NAV that we partner with said, “I want to see 1 million Muslims come to faith in my lifetime!”

When we asked this question to the head church planting pastor of the network we partner with, he literally pulled out a multiplication table from his pocket. The Lord had given him a vision for multiplication to see 33,000 churches planted throughout Thailand. For context, there’s only about 5000 churches currently in the country. All of these are great examples of potential NAVs with big vision! Some of these leaders with great vision ended up being ready to receive training and help towards catalyzing CPM, and others decided to pursue different paths. That’s fine and not every leader with a big vision will end up being someone you partner with. But having externally focused vision for God’s glory – in evangelism, making disciples, multiplying churches, or reaching peoples and places – is a necessary component that we’re looking for during this investigation process.

Other questions you can ask include how they came to faith, about their current church or ministry’s history or current goals, asking about their family or hometown, or about a mutual connection that you have. In general you’re trying to learn how God is moving in their lives, get to know them in general, and build rapport and relational trust along with discerning if they have an externally focused vision.

One more note about the Barnabas approach is that our personal conviction is to honor the local church and generally try to preserve unity with other Christian leaders, even if we don’t end up partnering with them. Other leaders have legitimate and wonderful ministry visions from God that might be to rescue women in sex trafficking, start schools for marginalized children, develop online ministries, raise up more worship leaders, or any variety of visions, and these are all great! We don’t chastise or shame them for goals that God has given them. But we are looking for these apostolic type leaders that want to explicitly pursue the Great Commission, who have a Romans 15 vision to bring the gospel where it is not known. Again, for earnest and apostolic missionaries who are excited about CPM, we can sometimes shoot ourselves in the foot by perhaps unintentionally shaming other leaders that don’t have a similar vision to us. But as 1 Corinthians 12 tells us, no part of the body can say we have no need for other parts. And that the local church is the bride of Christ who is to be cherished (Eph. 5:29-30). We see in Scripture and we find in our experience that honoring all the parts of the body, including the traditional or ‘legacy’ local church results in a good reputation with leaders that leads to opportunities to partner with others. In short, don’t burn bridges! We’ll have a future post about how to “speak church” and communicate in an honoring way with leaders in the local church about CPM.

Share About Yourself and Vision Cast for Movements

While every conversation will be different, we’d encourage you to mostly ask questions, listen, and learn from potential leaders, at least for the first couple of meetings. However, you should share at least some about who you are, what God has called you to, and your vision for movements! In vision casting, we recommend that you listen well in order to shape your vision cast to the things you hear that they are passionate about. If they’re passionate about sharing the gospel, vision cast about how CPM helps believers sow broadly. If they’re passionate about raising up leaders, share about CPM is focused on empowering and developing lay leaders. After hearing their vision, we will ask a follow up question – what’s your approach or plan to get to that vision? How is it going? From their answers, we are looking for a felt need that we can meet with CPM training.

As we mentioned in the ‘Why Be Barnabas’ post, many times as believers from the West we have a low credibility in evangelism, but a high credibility to other believers as a trainer or leader. Our experience among Thai believers is that they are drawn towards our story of how God called us to be a part of the Great Commission – leaving our families, jobs, homes to obey God and see the gospel go to every people. Share your story!

Also share briefly about movements and gauge their response. As you hear about what their felt needs are in pursuing the vision God has given them, you can share about what you’ve learned in Scripture about multiplication and about what God is doing around the world in movements. 

As a reminder, when we meet with these potential NAVs, we are looking to see if they fulfill all or at least some of the NAV Definition: a National Apostolic Visionary who is willing to be flexible in their methodology and is surrendered to God. If we meet a leader with big vision who is a die-hard Alpha Course or G12 advocate, they might not be a great fit yet to partner with. If we meet a leader who has external vision and is open in methodology but he and the people in his church are too consumed with executing the Sunday worship service to have time for evangelism and disciple-making, we’ll keep the relationship with them but we might spend more time with other leaders who are more open.

As an example, here are some points that we’ll share in the vision casting component:

• Share briefly about how God called us to go overseas.
• Emphasize that we believe that Thai believers are the ones that will be best in reaching their own people, and that we believe our role is to support and come behind them.
• Introduce movements: “Before we moved to Thailand, we learned about an amazing thing that is happening all around the world through multiplication called Church Planting Movements. It follows the principles from Jesus’ ministry and the book of Acts, and it’s bearing much fruit in many different places around the world.” Here we’ll share a brief story of some movements that we know and the impact that it’s having in multiplying disciples and churches.
• Explain that we have some simple and Bible-focused training to help believers make disciples and plant churches in a simple, reproducible way.
• “Would this be something you’re interested in?” And gauge their response!
• If they want to learn more, we might draw a framework of the process and explain it in more detail – we use a framework called the Multiplication Cycle, and others might use Four Fields.

Connect with Other Leaders in Their Network

After hearing from them and vision casting, we’ll ask – “Who are 5 other leaders that you know who have a vision to multiply and might be interested in this? We would love to connect with them and learn from them as well.” After a few meetings, hopefully you will have a potential NAVs list of one or two dozen people to meet!

Build Relational Trust

A key learning we’ve discovered in trying to find and develop relationships with NAVs is that Trust = Relationship + Credibility. When we find a potential NAV who we think is someone that we could partner with, we want to build enough trust with them (in both directions – us trusting them and them trusting us) to engage in a new type of ministry and be given the opportunity to train them and their people. If you have high credibility, whether from previous movement experience, seminary degrees, or even just being older and experienced, you don’t need to build as much relationship. If you have low credibility, you’ll need to spend more time and effort to build relationship with these leaders to gain their trust. For many new goers to the field, you’ll likely have low credibility, so be willing to build relationship through spending time with these leaders and their people or church, through humility in your approach, and through serving like Barnabas! 

In the early days of trying to build trust with our current partners, we were 25 year olds who didn’t have seminary degrees and hadn’t seen much movement fruit, so we spent significant time as learners and in relationship building. This was primarily during our language learning season and according to people’s bandwidth, but we attended small groups, helped serve in various ministries in the church, and had a lot of meetings (and hundreds of texts!) with leaders to learn and vision cast. Over time, as our partners have seen fruit, we are increasingly invited and requested to meet with other local leaders who are hearing about what God is doing through our partners. Thai leaders will now quickly invite us to train them and we have to be discerning about how we spend our time, which is a good problem to have! As our credibility has gone up, mainly through our partners, other leaders are quick to trust us.

As an example of building relationship to gain trust, we heard a story of one CPM practitioner who knew of a national ministry leader that oversaw 400 church planters in India. Over a span of 10 years, whenever he was in this national leader’s city, he would ask for a meeting and ask how he could help. He would assist with various needs like providing educational materials, medical supplies, or Bibles, but whenever they met, this goer would have a posture of humility and heart to serve, knowing that this church planting ministry leader was clearly a NAV. After nearly 10 years, the national leader asked, “I know you want to be involved in church planting but you have never planted a church. How do you think you could help me?” The goer replied, “We have some simple methods for church planting we’d like to try – give us your newest, most immature, most troublesome church planter and let us try partnering with him for 18 months.” Through that ‘immature’ church planter, they were able to catalyze a movement – and he ended up inheriting the leadership role of the national leader and overseeing the entire ministry.

Especially if you are starting out in trying to find new partners, be willing to serve and do anything to gain trust if you meet a key leader who you think is a NAV. Pray and discern from the Holy Spirit who you should spend your time with! The above story is not to say that it will take 10 years to build enough relational trust to partner with someone, but that it’s all dependent on God’s timing! You can’t control if it’s in year 1 or year 10 that God connects you with the NAV that He desires to use to multiply. But you can control your approach and your posture of humility and serving. One of our CPM coaches told a story of how they invited their main partner to an early CPM training. Our friend literally ran into this national leader on the street and said, “Hey! We are doing a training about church planting this weekend, would you like to come?” Later on, the national partner shared with this practitioner: “Honestly, when you invited me, I thought – what do you have to teach me about church planting? I have planted several churches and you haven’t planted any. But because you were kind to me, I came to your training. And God revealed a way to multiply churches through this training!” They are now seeing exponential growth and multiplication all throughout their country.

Conclusion

Hopefully these are some helpful steps and examples to help you begin to connect with potential NAVs and build relational trust with them. In our next post, we’ll share a general process and scoreboard that will help you filter down to the best NAV candidates to begin partnering with.