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?

My grandparents ran a wholesale grocery in Venezuela that my dad worked at during his college years. So it’s part of his heritage to go and visit a grocery store in whatever new country or city he visits.

With us living in Thailand, he’s almost as excited about the bounty of fruit as he is to visit us! He wakes up early with his jetlag in full force, and is back before we’re up with bags and bags of fruit. Durian is particularly popular in Southeast Asia and a delicacy for my dad. But it’s terribly stinky and is banned in most hotels.

One time we stepped off the elevator into the hotel floor where my parents were staying and immediately smelled the durian down the hall. Of course, my dad was the culprit, willing to even break the rules and invoke societal / hotel staff shame onto us for the sake of his precious fruit!

When he looks for fruit, he’s focused on two things. Quality and quantity. That the fruit tastes fresh, sweet, and delicious, and that there’s a lot of it!

The word fruit or fruitful shows up in Scripture 200+ times. But it’s a word in ministry that can sometimes bring up tension, especially when we value one type of fruitfulness over another. It happens when we as leaders are trusting in our own effort to produce fruit instead of bearing fruit through God’s methods.

The Warning of Not Bearing Fruit

There is a troubling passage in Matthew 21 where Jesus encounters a fig tree that does not bear fruit.

In the morning, as he was returning to the city, he became hungry. And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And he said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” And the fig tree withered at once.

Matthew 21:18-19

The tree has leaves on it! It looks like it is supposed to be healthy and bearing fruit. But it has no fruit, and Jesus curses it and it withers.

Right before this happens, Jesus drives out all the merchants from the temple, because they’ve made God’s house of prayer into a den of robbers. And he also condemns the chief priests and Pharisees for looking like spiritual people but not bearing any spiritual fruit.

John 15 has a similar warning, that a branch that does not bear fruit will be cut off and thrown into the fire and burned.

Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away… If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.

John 15:2, 6

This idea of fruitfulness, or the lack of it, used to keep me up at night. What does it mean to bear fruit? If I don’t bear fruit, will I be cut off and burned? Or cursed like the fig tree?

What is Fruitfulness?

So what is fruitfulness?

Like my dad, when we think of fruit and how to evaluate it, we think of two things: quality and quantity. For quality, we look at the fruit’s health, flavor, and condition. For quantity, we look at its ability to reproduce more of itself.

Scripture also defines Kingdom Fruitfulness in these two ways – quality and quantity. For the disciple of Jesus, the quality of their fruit is the fruit of the Spirit, or their Christ-like character. And the quantity of their fruit is the multiplication of disciples. Let’s look at these two aspects.

The Fruit of the Spirit

So the first one is the fruit of the Spirit. Let’s read Galatians 5:22:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

Galatians 5:22-23

Paul gives us a pretty clear definition of what fruit of the Spirit is in Galatians. All of these are attributes of godly character. The New Testament mentions fruit in this manner many other times. In Ephesians 5:9, that the “fruit of light is found in all that is good and true and right” or in Hebrews, where discipline “yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness” (Hebrews 12:11).

When you have a relationship with Jesus, he changes you. He changes your character, your desires, the way you think and act. When we are saved by Jesus and put our faith in him, he gives us new hearts to obey and desire him. And he continually sanctifies us, prunes us so that we can look more like him in character.

When I started dating Jenn, I was only 19 years old. I had never had a girlfriend before! I was selfish with my time, mean, rough with my words, and I became angry easily (why did she start dating me?). Over the last 15 years together and 10 years of being married, being with Jenn has changed my character! Through a lot of time spent together and many tears, mistakes, and conflicts, I learned how to be nice in my words and affirm her, I learned how to give up my personal time to spend quality time with her, I learned how to calm down and be gentle instead of angry. I learned that when we choose restaurants, we are choosing the restaurant that she wants! Basically I just learned the very important point: Happy wife, happy life! I have changed a lot since being with Jenn. But being with Jesus has changed me incomparably more.

Being with Jesus changes who we are!

He can turn an angry person into a kind person because he is kindness.
He can turn an anxious person into a peaceful person because he is peace.
He can turn a selfish person into a loving person because he is love.

And the more we abide in Jesus, learn from him in his Word, and start living our lives according to the way he has taught us, we will change more and more. He changes our character, and the result is that we bear the fruits of the Spirit.

If you are unsure whether you are fruitful or if Christ is sanctifying you, look at what Paul lists out as the fruits of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. If your desires, thoughts, and actions are orienting more in line with these things, the Spirit is working in your life! Thank God and ask him for more. 

The Fruit of Multiplying Disciples

The second type of fruitfulness that the Bible talks about is the fruit of multiplication. It starts with the very first command that God gives to man when He created the world in Genesis 1: “Be fruitful and multiply.” Later in Genesis 12, God gives this promise to Abraham that multiplication will happen through his descendants, to bear his image and His glory across the whole world.

But Jesus gave us a new command in Matthew 28, a Great Commission –

Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey all that I have commanded you.

Matthew 28:19

So now, we are not only meant to multiply through having physical descendants, but through multiplying spiritual descendants, or by making disciples of Jesus.

This spiritual multiplication is seen throughout the Old and New Testament. In Mark 4 Jesus tells a parable about the Kingdom of God.

The sower sows the word. But those that were sown on the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.”

Mark 4:14, 20

He explains that in this parable, the sower sows the Word or the gospel, and different people respond to the Word differently. Some do not receive the Word, some receive but are not fruitful, but the 4^th soil, the good soil, receives the Word and bears fruit. And they don’t only bear fruit, but they multiply, 30-60-100 times!

How does the multiplication of disciples happen? Paul shows us in 2 Timothy 2:2:

And what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.

2 Timothy 2:2

Paul tells Timothy that whatever we receive, whatever we learn, we need to pass on and share with others. If you are a believer today, you have received the good news of Jesus. The Bible says that we need to share that gospel with others! And we need to teach those other people to share with others!

When we obey this command to make disciples and teach others to obey, and they teach others, and they teach others, we can multiply disciples. 30, 60, and 100 times! Through multiplication, we can see many thousands or millions of people come to know Jesus!

I first learned about multiplying movements when I was in college. Jenn and I were part of a campus ministry leadership team overseeing 300 students. None of us really knew how to share the gospel or how to disciple others. Maybe 5-10 people a year would come to faith, mainly by inviting friends to large events.

We went to a conference and heard Ying Kai’s story. He was a church planter in China in the early 2000s, in an area with 20 million people. At the rate that he was seeing people come to faith, about 200 people every 3 years, he would still not be able to reach even .1% of the population. He was challenged by the question, “How many people will hear the gospel today?”

From Matthew 28 and 2 Timothy 2, he created a simple method called training for trainers, or T4T. He would train people in how to share the gospel, and challenge them to share it 5 times each week. Every new believer was trained and challenged to share 5 times each week as well.

His first training group was with one group of uneducated farmers, just 30 people. He taught them how to share their testimony of how Jesus changed their life, and share a short gospel message. And they set a goal to share 5 times a week and train others. Within 3 months, this group of 30 farmers had led 200 people to faith and formed 27 small groups. And they were training all the new believers to also share and teach others. And then they started multiplying! By the end of the first year, 10,000 people had believed in Jesus and 906 small groups had started. At the end of 10 years, this one group of 30 farmers had multiplied into 1.7 million new believers, and 150,000 churches started! This is a true story of multiplication today!

The organization that Ying Kai was a part of didn’t believe the numbers he was reporting. So they sent in a research team to confirm the statistics. They found out that he was under-reporting by almost 60%! God was multiplying so fast that they couldn’t even track all that was happening.

Many of us among the unreached are in places where this type of multiplying, exponential growth seems impossible. Just seeing one friend come to know Jesus would be amazing. And that is where it starts – by reaching out to even one friend. But from there, do we believe that God’s method is multiplication? That the things happening in the book of Acts, and in movements throughout the world, can happen through and around us?

Do we believe that Jesus wants us to bear the fruit of multiplication?

Which Type of Fruitfulness?

In Japan, there is a culture of giving super-expensive fruit as gifts. In 2023, two mangoes sold for 600,000 Japanese yen or close to $5000! We were curious at what all the hype was about, so we tried one much cheaper, but still very expensive, $10 mango. For context, a kilogram of mangoes is between $1-3 in Thailand.

Was it delicious? Very. But 10x the price delicious? Not even close. (Thai mangoes are also awesome.) It left us somewhat dissatisfied after basically only getting a couple bites each. On the other hand, I’m sure many of us have gotten a large but cheap batch of fruit that is bland, or mushy, or just not tasty. Lots of low quality fruit isn’t exactly enjoyable either.

In ministry or missions leadership, it can sometimes feel like we are stuck between the choice of focusing on quality or quantity of fruit. Some might be gifted shepherds and teachers who help people grow deeper in Christ, but can’t remember the last time they met a non-believing friend much less shared the gospel. Others may be seeing crazy huge multiplication numbers of new believers, but the discipleship level is shallow. All the training and coaching is focused on evangelism, and not much energy is spent towards pursuing holiness.

For me, pursuing multiplying movements means that I can often get stuck in the latter pitfall. So much of our focus is around how to get the gospel to 70 million unreached in Thailand that we can forget to ask if we are producing healthy and good quality fruit that is pleasing to God.

We’ve told our partner Mint’s story before, and it has been our joy to see her multiply in her region of Thailand. But a couple years ago during a coaching meeting, when we asked her about how her disciples are doing, she told us, “Many of them are sharing the gospel and discipling others, but they are struggling in their marriages. There’s a lot of conflict and they have never had examples of godly marriages.”

So her idea was to gather her disciples together, not for an evangelism or multiplication focused training, but a marriage / family camp! We invited Talia and her husband, who have a great marriage, to come and train on different aspects of a godly marriage, including centering their relationship around Jesus and learning to serve each other through their love languages like gifts and words of affirmation.

Through the family camp and some other coaching, one of Mint’s main disciples Bee felt convicted that she needed to share some personal sin with her husband, Not. They had been struggling in their marriage, even considering separation since it was so difficult. After she confessed, Bee and Not experienced newfound trust and restoration in their marriage. Later that week, one of the people Bee had shared with called her back and invited her to start a Discovery Bible Study in her shop! Bee attributes it to God’s kindness in giving her new disciples after she had the courage to obey the Spirit’s conviction in confessing sin. The fruit of heart change in Bee’s life led to the fruit of new disciples in her ministry!

Reflection

We know that Jesus gives a warning against not bearing fruit. And we know that abiding is how we get more of Jesus, which results in heart transformation and disciple multiplication. If you are bearing fruit in some way or another, praise the Lord for the work of the Holy Spirit in and through you!

But sometimes we have to self-assess whether we are producing fruitfulness in one category and not the other. Do we believe that abiding in Christ can help us to bear the fruit of character and multiplication, in our own lives and in those we lead?

Below are some questions for reflection, for your own life, in your ministry, or with your team.

1. Are you / your ministry / your team bearing the fruit of Christ-like character or of new disciples? If yes, then thank God for how He is working in your life!
2. Do you / your ministry / your team have a tendency to fall into the pitfall of quality over quantity of fruit, or of quantity over quality? Why? 
3. What would it look like if you could see both types of fruit consistently produced in your life? 
4. If you identify with one of these pitfalls, how can you reorient your heart and make tangible changes to address these issues? 
5. As a leader, how can you lead your team and / or ministry towards greater multiplication AND more Christ-like character? (e.g. if you have a ministry focused on care or teaching, how can you multiply those efforts? Or, if you lead a multiplication ministry, how can you emphasize greater health and deepen character?)