One day last week I had some conversations that kept me up all night. That doesn’t happen to me every decade. I have a gift of sleep. Doesn’t even happen when I travel. But that night was different. Dreams. Tossing and turning. And I think, lamenting. I remember breathing out, “oh no!” several times through the night. In the morning I recalled three significant dreams on the same theme. I’ll skip describing the dreams, but here’s what they showed me…..

1. Church

As I’ve written before, I understand church development as usually following the Ephesians 4:11 APEST list in order, for example:

1. Apostles – preach and demonstrate the kingdom
2. Prophets – help people hear the voice of God
3. Evangelists – connect people personally with good news in their suffering
4. Shepherds – guide people into a loving faith community
5. Teachers – help discern what to stop and what to multiply

In North America, we bemoan the lack of apostles and prophets, don’t usually mention evangelists, and settle for pastors and teachers. Actually, I think we don’t really even have pastors, just teachers called pastors. Because that’s what most of us want: better, deeper, richer, more meaningful teaching.

I used to think that was because apostles, prophets and evangelists are messier, so we’re scared. Or there’s a more obvious need for the Holy Spirit with the first three, so we’re careful. Now I’m thinking that maybe we think we’re at step 5, so then Teachers is what we need.

But what if we’re not that far along. What if we’re at step 1, needing Apostles to proclaim the kingdom of God? Jesus said that’s why he came: “I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God… for I was sent for this purpose” (Luke 4:43). How often has the kingdom been preached at your church? Have you experienced life in the kingdom? Are you sharing the good news of the kingdom of God? Or just personal salvation?

2. Sending Missionaries

At our mission agency, we use the Mission Strategy Map to describe how movements emerge and multiply. There are 9 stages for any community, culminating in them together sending missionaries out to new people groups.

When we run mission training events, we often send people out either overseas or to a new community in their city. They learn lots, but typically we don’t see a multiplying movement come out of the program. More often we don’t see much fruit at all. We improve our training, add more practical activities and work more closely with existing ministries on the ground. Why isn’t this flourishing?

Sending people out to a community of people they’ve never met is a stage 9 activity. But what if they’re in stage 1? What if no one has been sent to preach the good news of the kingdom to them? What if they’ve been going to church for 20 years and never heard teaching on the kingdom of God? Jesus and Paul both thought it was worthy of a lot of hours of conversation:

• Jesus appeared to them over a period of forty days, speaking about the kingdom of God. – Acts 1:3
• Paul entered the synagogue and spoke boldly there for three months, arguing persuasively about the kingdom of God. – Acts 19:8

In the past 50 years of attending Sunday services in Canada across several denominations, I can’t remember anyone teaching on the kingdom. I can remember sermon series that had “kingdom” in the title, but they seemed more like Bible overviews. I never really clearly heard what it was. Or, maybe I didn’t have ears to hear. Is that normal or are you having a different experience?

3. Training Missionaries

How would you train people to start a multiplying movement of disciple makers? In North America we tend to gather them together for a week or more, give them a great experience, solid teaching, and lots of practice. But it’s tough for most of them to translate that into their context when they leave.

It would probably be more effective to send the trainers out to their location. Like, have a couple of experienced, fruitful trainers come and stay at your house for a week, prayer walk with you, get you free from some demons, introduce you to your neighbors, lead some people to Christ, baptize them in your hot tub, eat the Lord’s Supper with them, and send them out to do the same. That’s not unusual overseas (minus the hot tub part), and it’s very effective.

OK let’s try that. Now, who are the trainers? Where are the fruitful, multiplying disciple makers who can kick off that kind of movement in a new community? We have met many overseas. I can maybe think of a few in North America. But wait, how are we offering all these training programs if we have no trainers? What if we’re not as far along as we thought either?

Getting Ahead of Ourselves

When we overestimate how far along people are, we’re perpetually shocked at how little fruit there is, given how amazing they are. This is another way of saying we are continually judging them against our picture of where they should be. That’s actually just mean. We need to meet people where they’re at. Maybe they’re in full-time ministry but no one has ever even told them about the kingdom of God. Is that their fault? We can start there.

Which of course ends with, I’m not as far along as I thought. I’m catching on to some of these things last week. I’m 58. I’ve been in full-time ministry for 20 years.

How about you? Is your citizenship in God’s Kingdom or have you chosen some rival kingdom, like your job, family, ministry, money, church, health, etc. and justified it by saying that building up your chosen kingdom is actually serving God’s kingdom?