::Rants-APEST in practice If anyone has spent any time around Forge hearing Alan Hirsch talk about leadership, or if anyone has read either "The Forgotten Ways" or "The Shaping of things to come", you will be aware of APEPT (or as Al is referring to it now, APEST).

APEPT is an acronym for the discussion regarding leadership in the church. The letters stand for the list that Paul gives in Ephesians, Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist, Pastor and Teacher.

Al has moved to the APEST acronym instead, replacing the second P (Pastor) with S for Shepherd.

The idea is that a leadership team should be composed of the diversity of roles that Paul outlines, with the observation that in the majority of churches, leadership teams are dominated by Shepherds and Teachers.

missio Dei are moving into a space where we are needing to think about being a little more intentional about our leadership structure. So with APEST as a framework, we tried to think about functional structures around this.

The big question was, how do you engage in this kind of exercise in a way that:

1. is humane, and does not roughly pigeon hole people,
2. does not create a situation where an individual can impose a view of themselves upon the group,
3. does not impose upon an individual a "group think" label and finally,
4. is open to a discerning process?

With this in mind, Lisa and I mused over it for a few weeks, having lots of conversation, reflection, discussions with others within missio Dei and outside of our community. We finally settled on the following process...

1. We spend a gathering talking about the process that we were about to enter into. We asked people to take a few weeks (we meet in a larger group fortnightly) to prayerfully consider others in the community. We gave a list of names to everyone and asked them to start to make notes against all of the names on the list, including their own name, being prayerful as they did so.
2. When we gathered, we spend some time on each of the roles, trying to get a working definition of each. We utilised a number of different perspectives and definitions, not just the ones that Al outlines in his book. After discussing each role, we asked people to look at their lists again, and make any changes or notes to what they had already made to their list.
3. After we went through each of the roles, we then distributed a number of pieces of A4 paper. On the front of each piece of paper was the name of one of the people in missio Dei.
4. Everyone then had a few minutes to take one last moment to reflect on the person. When they had decided which two roles that person most exemplified, they selected two sticky notes. There were five different colors, each representing one of the roles.
5. When you selected the two pieces, you could either simply place them inside the folded piece of paper, or you could write something on the sticky note, indicating the how any why, ie: "you often include people, and ask questions that make us think about those who are not here yet but need to belong to a faith community, therefore I chose evangelist" or some such.
6. Once you placed your two, different colored sticky notes inside the folded piece of paper, you closed it and then passed it to your left.
7. The process was repeated until everyone had a chance to comment about others in the group.
8. If you got your own, you didn't open it, you just passed it immediately to your left.
9. We included the children in this process as well.
10. If you were stuck for roles, we encouraged people to write something to help the group discernment process.

When we finished, each person was handed their piece of paper, we were pretty excited to find that the majority of people, had mainly two colors in their little booklet. We let people take some time digesting what they found, including the comments that people had written. There was one rainbow instance (one person who had multiple colors) and one instance with little written inside of it.

In both instances, the suspicion was that these people were not really well known by the group, and therefore the process for them would take a little more time.

Once people had time to digest, we went around the group, asking people what they felt. It was by far and away, a very affirming experience for people. It was affirming in two ways. Firstly, there were those who had some idea of what their contribution was, and to have this confirmed was very affirming and encouraging.

Secondly, there were those who had some idea, and were pleasantly surprised by an aspect of their personality and life that they had not considered. At the conclusion of that gathering, everyone was asked to take away their little booklet and spend another two weeks reflecting on the contents. When we gather this week, well, I just might have to wait to see what happens and then I will write up the upshot.

If you have any experiences of trying to work out APEST, I would love to hear from you!

Labels: Church, Forge, Mission

  Posted by Stephen @ 8:31 PM