Upcoming APEPT missionality workshop with Dr. Curt Watke on November 5 and 6. The workshop will take a look at the following:
Five roles are to equip believers to do the work of ministry and to edify the body of Christ. These five roles, the Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors and Teachers, were given to each and every church for an equipping purpose. (Eph 4:11-12).
However, for many centuries churches have approached ministry institutionally. Controlled by pastor/teachers, ministries have often been ingrown and internally focused. Those with special gifting in apostolic, evangelistic, and prophetic roles often have not found a place of ministry in the current ministry structures. Many times they have had to set up "para-church" organizations in order to follow God's missional calling.
Today many churches are "churches with missions" meaning that they give, support, and otherwise further mission causes -- but they don't know how to be missional. Missional congregations know how to act like a missionary within their sociocultural context. Missional congregations understand the diverse cultures in their community, respond interculturally, and develop contextual approaches to reach and disciple them. Missional congregations honor, support and equip believers to function in apostolic, evangelistic, and prophetic roles within the cultural context to which God has called them. The Pastors and Teachers of missional congregations -- seeing themselves as co-laborers with gifted believers who have apostolic, evangelistic, and prophetic roles -- provide support, assistance, and training for these roles in their local congregations.
You are invited to attend the upcoming APEPT Missionality Seminar. This seminar is based on the Ephesians 4:11-16 passage that deals with equipping the saints for the work of the ministry. However, what is unique about the workshop is that it addresses how churches can work together as teams in missional ministry and outreach. At least one of these five roles has been given to every believer in your church. And the Ephesians 4 passages indicates that your church has gifted people in each of these functions. By taking the FREE APEPT Missionality Survey, you can find out how God has wired you with a unique blend of missional roles and how your role functions missionally.
The seminar provides an opportunity for you to meet others who have the same gifted wiring as yourself -- and to meet others who are uniquely different from you. Together you experience ways in which these roles shape your personal mission and how you can contribute to kingdom growth. You will also learn how an imbalance of missional leadership negatively impacts your church's ministry.
Dr. Curt Watke will be with us to lead the seminar. He is a North American missiologist with a passion for reaching the diverse people groups across North America. He has developed cutting edge contextual resources for helping churches connect with their culture.
He has served churches in Georgia, Virginia and Pennsylvania and trained church planters who started postmodern Anglo, Mandarin, and Portuguese-language churches in Canada. He has trained pastors on three continents, holds two masters degrees and a doctorate (PhD) with a double major in both missiology and in evangelism. His major professors were Drs. Roy Fish, Malcolm McDow, Daniel Sanchez, and Ebbie Smith.
He has conducted sociocultural research in both the United States and Canada; served as a professor of Evangelism & Church Planting at Prairie Bible College and Graduate School in Alberta, Canada and has taught at four other seminaries and graduates schools in the United States and Canada including Southeastern Seminary, Southwestern Seminary, Golden Gate Seminary and Heritage Baptist Seminary (Canada). He founded the Intercultural Institute for Contextual Ministry in 2003 after serving in the Church Planting Group at the North American Mission Board, SBC.
He has been the principal researcher in the following research projects: SITESCAPE Location Typology (2007); APEPT Missionality Questionnaire (2008); MissionCraft: Forecasting Rate of Church Closures (2008); MissionPoint: Active Evangelical Presence by Census Tract (2009).
He has also developed the following online resources: MissionalZipcode.org (Missional Zipcode Catalogue, 2008); MissionalCorps.org (social networking for mission, 2008) and MissionalCyclopedia.org (online cyclopedia similar to Wikipedia).
And he has co-authored the following books and materials: Ministry Context Exploration: Understanding North American Cultures (w/ Bruce Scott, 2002); and Starting Reproducing Congregations (w/Daniel Sanchez & Ebbie Smith, 2003).
