Hello, Disciple-Makers.
At the bottom of this article, I give you a full chapter of my new book. The one on the strengths and weaknesses of the spiritual leadership gifts in Ephesians 4:11, and how the Body of Christ is struggling while operating at 40% leadership capacity.
I hope you enjoy it!
💥237💥 of you have taken the online Ephesians 4:11 APEST Assessment at thegreatteam.org!
💥237💥 of you have a better idea of how God knit you together in your mother’s womb (Psalm 139) in order to fulfill the good works God prepared for you to do (Ephesians 2:10).
Version 1.0 was a useful tool to help you step more deeply into your disciple-making style and approach. My favorite thing about the assessment is that it doesn’t just slot you into one of five categories, like you are locked into a box with 20% of the body of Christ stuck in a world of vanilla and chocolate. But it takes your dominant gift to determine WHAT you do best in the Great Commission, and combines it with the HOW you most comfortably operate with your second-highest gift.
This gives you a clear view of your strengths and weaknesses, plus a disciple-making approach that best fits your GIFT MIX. Kinda like a recipe: a cup of teacher and a tablespoon of shepherd 🍪.
WELL!
I’m excited to announce that my friend, Josh Buckner, and I just launched version 2.0 of the assessment. One constraint in version 1.0 was that the scoring rubric didn't allow much room between the gift scores. So the five scores for each gift were too close to give a good read on the order of gifts.
WE FIXED THAT!
👉And now we’d love for you to take the assessment again for a couple of reasons.
Better results for you to more clearly identify your spiritual leadership function.
Help us improve the assessment even more with comparison results from your two tests.
So, if you are interested in a better version of the assessment, hop on over to thegreatteam.org and take it again.
OR if it’s your first go of it, you’ll learn so much about your disciple-making giftings.
NOW! Here is Chapter 6 of my new book, Hand to the Plow: The Guidebook for Everyday Disciple-Makers.
USE DISCOUNT CODE: SUBSTACK for 20% OFF
Or find the Audiobook on Audible, Spotify, or your Favorite e-Book Distributor
Hand to the Plow: Chapter 6 - Disciple-Making is a Team Effort - A “Great Team”
If I had to put one thing at the top of the list of skills I’ve learned in twenty years’ experience to be more effective in making disciples on specific mission fields across the United States, it would be this principle.
We must operate in the model of Ephesians 4:11 and activate the “GREAT TEAM” to be on mission together.
This is what we are going to focus on in chapters 6 and 7. We’ll talk about the dynamics of working with a disciple-making team. We’ll explore how to build one and work together as you do more in partnership than any of you could do alone.
As we begin, let me tell you about a community soccer game. Not the World Cup. Just a scrimmage between two groups of neighborhood kids. One team had players who were fast, aggressive, and could all shoot. Great athletes, but every one of them sprinted toward the ball the moment it was kicked, leaving the entire rest of the field wide open. Nobody held position. Nobody set up plays. Just eleven kids chasing the same ball.
👎 They lost 7–1.
The other team? They had one kid who hung back and held the defensive line. One who orchestrated passes from the middle. One whose only job was to see the field and communicate. One natural scorer who got the ball in the right moment every time, because the right people put it there.
🎉 They won. And it wasn’t even close.
The difference wasn’t talent. It was team.
That image lives in my head every single time I sit with a group of well-meaning, passionate disciple-makers who are all running toward the same ball and burning out in the process. In Western culture, we have been taught to value individual spiritual gifting, personal devotion, and solo ministry
And that’s okay, as long as we recognize that we have done it at the expense of what it means to function as a unified, differentiated, healthy team. And as long as we are okay with bottlenecks to multiplication of disciples, we can continue to operate like that.
The Apostle Paul had something profound to say about this. And he said it in the fourth chapter of his letter to the church at Ephesus. I want to walk you through it slowly, because if you miss what Paul is doing here, you will miss one of the most important frameworks in the entire New Testament for understanding both the church AND your personal calling inside it.
The Church of God Is Made Up of Transformed Communities - Ephesians 4:12–18
Let’s start at the finish line. Before we talk about how the church gets healthy, let’s talk about what a healthy church looks like when it gets there. As you read this passage, imagine being part of this church. I always say that if I were to find this church, I’d jump in headfirst and never turn back. However, one of my early mentors, Earl Ballard would say, if you find it, don’t join it, you’ll mess it up!
Paul paints the picture vividly in Ephesians 4:12–16:
“...so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that
is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.”
- Ephesians 4:12–16 (NIV)
Read that slowly. Then read it again.
Paul is describing a church that is:
Equipped for works of service - not just attending service, but actively doing it.
Built up and unified - moving toward oneness in the faith, not fragmentation and division.
Mature - not tossed around by every new theological trend or cultural pressure.
Speaking the truth in love - courageous enough to be honest, humble enough to be kind.
Connected in function - “every supporting ligament” doing its work, each part contributing to the whole.
Does this describe your current disciple-making community?
For most of us, if we are being brutally honest, the answer is no. Not because the people around us don’t love Jesus. Not because the desire isn’t there. But because we have been missing something critical. Something Paul identifies in the verses that precede this picture of maturity and health.
Greg Getz reminds us, you can’t get to Ephesians 4:12–16 without the framework and team of Ephesians 4:11.
You Can’t Get There from Here - Verse 11
Here’s the handle that opens the door to living life in that kind of rich faith community. Before every part can function in unity and strength, Paul says Christ gave five specific kinds of people to lead the church.
Apostles. Prophets. Evangelists. Shepherds. Teachers.
We call this the APEST team. And here is what I want you to understand before we unpack each one: this is not a spiritual gifts inventory. This is not a personality profile. This is not a checklist to see which one feels most like you so you can specialize in it and ignore the others.
APEST is ministry architecture for church leadership. It’s God’s GREAT TEAM for equipping the whole Body for the whole mission.
Greg Getz says that in the Bible we have all these short little pithy “greats” that all pack a ferocious punch.
The Great Commission (Matt 28:19-20)
The Great Commandment (Matt 22:37-40)
The Great (Golden) Rule (Matt 7:12)
The Great Target (Acts 1:8)
The GREAT TEAM is another one of those powerful “GREATS.”
This is God’s strategy to utilize the Body of Christ to take beachheads, baptize believers, teach them the commands of Christ, and advance His message at a velocity that changed the entire known world within a couple of hundred years. AND to sustain that movement so that now, 2000 years later, we can still experience the fullness of what it means to be ambassadors of the Kingdom of God led by the King of the Kingdom living in Kingdom embassies.
And here’s the part that should disturb you if you’ve been sitting in most of Western Christianity for the past few generations. We have functionally operated with only about 40% efficiency at best, with only two of these five leadership functions being embraced and raised up.
Think about what most churches celebrate, hire, and build their entire infrastructure around. Pastors (Shepherds) and Teachers. The Sunday sermon. The pastoral care structure. The Bible study curriculum. The small group discipleship models. All rooted in the shepherding and teaching functions.
None of that is bad. I want to say that clearly. The shepherd nurtures and the teacher grounds. And the Body needs both. But when you run your entire disciple-making ecosystem on two of five cylinders, you are going to miss something. You’re going to miss three things. And those three things might be the very functions the church needs most desperately in the culture we live in right now to see disciple multiplication.
The Unbiblical Model of Parachurch
❓Quick Question.
Where in Scripture do you read about a church and parachurch paradigm sending out missionaries and evangelists to independently operate and build quasi-church organizations to fulfill a gap that the “real church” is ill-equipped or unwilling to fulfill? Seriously, show me the chapter and verse.
Now, of course, we find the church laying hands upon and sending out missionaries and evangelists, but those operate blessed by and alongside the church as they plant new churches, oftentimes starting in homes or among oikos or family groups.
We have invented an entire system that is not supported by a biblical model. And certainly not found in the Jesus or Pauline model. Let’s restore the original plan for the gathered and scattered church to live in harmony and partnership with one another as these functions fulfill their God-given ministries.
So, What Do These Team Members Do?
Great question! In short, here is an overview. The apostle expands. The prophet discerns. The evangelist reaches. And without those three functions actively working alongside the shepherd and the teacher, the church turns inward, loses its missional edge, and eventually becomes a really excellent resource center for the already convinced.
That is not the church Paul is describing.
The picture Paul paints in verses 12–16 results from all five functions working together. It is a church that effectively fulfills both roles of maturing and multiplying, sustaining and advancing, nurturing and confronting. It is the GREAT TEAM in action. And that is exactly what we need to build in order to see the Kingdom advance.
The Gathered and the Scattered Church
Before we go further, I need to establish a framework that will make everything that comes next make much more sense. I want to simplify this seemingly complex 5-fold model into a bi-fold functioning whole, kind of like two sides of the same coin. It is the distinction between the gathered church and the scattered church.
The gathered church is what most of us picture when we hear the word
“church.” People coming together. Sunday services. Worship. Proclamation. Communion. Passionate Prayer. It is the assembly. The ecclesia. It is real, it is beautiful, and it matters.
But the scattered church is what happens when those same people leave the building on Sunday morning and re-enter the world. It is the disciple-maker at the water cooler. It is the mom in the carpool line. It is the young professional who goes back to Monday with his faith intact and his mission in view. It is the church operating as salt and light in the very places where salt and light are needed most.
The gathered church is where we are equipped. The scattered church is where we are sent.
Here’s the problem we have developed in the West. We have built an entire ecosystem that is very good at gathering. We have invested billions of dollars in buildings, sound systems, parking lots, children’s wings, and production quality that make the gathered experience more and more compelling. And in doing so, we have unintentionally trained the people of God to think of church as THE place where spiritual things happen. But the church was never designed to be the destination. It was designed to be the launch pad.
When Paul writes about the GREAT TEAM in Ephesians 4, he is not writing about roles that only function inside the Sunday gathering. He is describing a team of equippers who prepare the entire Body to live on mission in every corner of the city.
➠ Apostles pioneering new territory.
➠ Prophets hearing the voice of God for the community.
➠ Evangelists modeling and multiplying gospel conversations.
➠ Shepherds nurturing the relational health of the community.
➠ Teachers grounding the whole enterprise in the Word of God.
The APEST functions best when the church is on the move, both gathered AND scattered.
When you understand the gathered and the scattered together, the APEST begins to make perfect sense. Because every one of those five functions has a powerful role to play in both spaces. The question is whether we are developing all five, or just the two that make our Sunday mornings run more smoothly.
Let’s meet the team!
An Overview: God’s Great Strategy
There are two ways to read Ephesians 4:11, and the one you choose will determine whether APEST is a fascinating theological footnote or a transformational framework for how you build your disciple-making team.
You can read it as a list of job titles. Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist, Shepherd, Teacher. Box checked. Moving on.
Or you can read it as a mission architecture. Five distinct, irreplaceable functions that together produce the full picture of the beautiful community we read about in Ephesians 4:12–16.
The APEST is not describing five types of professional ministers. They are not roles to be filled. Verse 11 describes five kinds of Kingdom DNA that exist in every healthy disciple-making community. The community best reflects the Kingdom of God when all five are present and active.
Each of these functions asks and answers a fundamentally different question about the mission. In other words, these are functions that are fulfilled by gifts that God gives to leaders in the Body of Christ to multiply healthy disciples and disciple-making communities.
Think of it this way. A body needs more than one organ to function. A body with only lungs would not last long. A heart-only body would not get far. The body works because every system is present, connected, and doing its part. The APEST is the organic, Spirit-given ministry anatomy of the leadership in communities of disciples.
Here is what each function brings to the table. And here is what the team looks like when it is missing any one of them.
The Apostle — The Pioneer
The word apostle comes from the Greek apostolos, meaning “one who is sent”. And the sent-ness is the whole point. The apostle is the boundary pusher. The pioneer. The person who is wired to look beyond what already exists and ask, “What is God doing over there, and how do we get there?” They are missional visionaries by nature, drawn toward unreached people groups, uncomfortable with the status quo, compelled to expand the Kingdom into spaces where it does not yet exist.
The question the apostle answers is “Where is the Kingdom not yet, and what do we need to do to take it there?”
Strengths of the Apostle:
Apostles see what is possible before anyone else does, and they have the courage and catalytic energy to go first. They are church-planting, movement-launching, mission field-crossing people who raise the vision of a community and keep it from shrinking into itself. They are entrepreneurial in the best Kingdom sense of the word. They see forests, not trees (how do we reach this CITY?). They think in movements, not in maintenance.
Apostles also have a God-given ability to connect different parts of the Body with each other. Paul was not just planting churches; he was building a network of churches that served and strengthened one another. Apostolic people are networkers, not just pioneers.
Blind Spots of the Apostle:
The same drive that makes apostles extraordinary pioneers can make them difficult teammates. They are frequently frustrated with anything that feels like it is slowing the mission down, which, in their view, is almost everything. They can leave a trail of unfinished things behind them in their rush toward the next frontier. They can undervalue the shepherding and teaching functions that keep the people they launch connected and maturing.
Apostles can also be perceived as disruptive or threatening in environments that value stability. A healthy institutional church culture can sometimes unconsciously suppress apostolic gifting because it keeps asking questions that make everyone else uncomfortable. When that happens, apostolically wired people often leave and build something new. Sometimes that is God’s design. Sometimes it is a loss that could have been avoided.
The value the apostle brings to the team:
Without the apostle, a team turns inward. The mission shrinks. The community becomes focused on serving itself rather than expanding the Kingdom. The apostle is the function that keeps reminding everyone, there are people in this city who have not yet joined the Kingdom, and we are responsible for going to them.
In a disciple-making team, the apostle is the one who keeps asking, “Who are we not yet reaching? What new mission field is God calling us into? Who in our network is ready to be sent?”
The Prophet — The Discerner
The prophet is perhaps the most misunderstood member of the team. Mention the word “prophet” in most church contexts and you will get one of two reactions: either enthusiastic charismatic excitement or cautious and protective discomfort. I want to offer you a third option.
The prophet is the person on the team who is most attuned to what God is saying in the present moment. Not necessarily a person who gives ecstatic utterances (though that is not ruled out). Rather, a person whose dominant question is: “What is God saying to us right now, and what does faithfulness to that word require?” The prophet holds the community accountable to the moral and spiritual integrity of the mission. The prophet has an extreme sensitivity to the Word and Will of God and will die on the mountain of keeping the movement aligned to those two voices.
The question the prophet answers: “What is God saying, and are we listening, and living, accordingly?”
Strengths of the Prophet:
Prophets have a remarkable ability to see what others miss. They notice spiritual drift before it becomes a crisis. They feel the disconnect between what a community is saying and what it is actually doing. They have an internal compass that points toward God’s heart with unusual accuracy, and they carry a holy urgency that calls communities to deeper faithfulness, greater integrity, and more courageous obedience.
In a disciple-making context, prophetic people are the ones who notice when a team is drifting from its mission, when a relationship is being neglected, when prayer is becoming perfunctory rather than passionate, when the Holy Spirit is being politely scheduled rather than genuinely sought. Or when injustice is present in the mission field. They are often the spiritual barometer of a community.
Blind Spots of the Prophet:
Prophets can be hard to be around. They are not naturally gifted at diplomatic delivery, especially when un-discipled. The same sensitivity that makes them extraordinary discerners can make them blunt, intense, and occasionally exhausting. They feel things deeply and can carry a burden of righteous frustration that, if not held in community, becomes cynicism or harshness.
Prophets are also easy to dismiss. The person who keeps saying “I feel like God is calling us to more” or “I sense we’re missing something” can be perceived as a constant dissatisfied presence rather than a genuine voice of discernment. Healthy teams learn to receive the prophetic voice without being destabilized by it.
The value the prophet brings to the team:
Without the prophet, a team loses its spiritual compass. Drift becomes the norm. The gap between the vision and the actual lived reality of the community grows without anyone naming it. The prophet is the function that says, “Let’s stop, get honest, and listen to what God is actually saying before we take another step forward.”
In a disciple-making community, the prophet is the one who calls the team to prayer, who exposes the spiritual condition of the mission field, who asks hard questions about integrity and obedience, and who keeps the community tethered to the voice of God rather than just the momentum of activity.
SIDE NOTE ON APOSTLE AND PROPHET TEAMS
First off, these are the two most controversial functions in the team as they carry similar names to biblical roles and authority figures. I want to note that we are not talking about capital “A” apostles and capital “P” prophets.
Those were biblical authority figures in the scriptures. There were 12
Apostles who walked with Christ and a limited number of biblical Prophets.
However, it is important to note that many other figures in the New Testament, after the death and resurrection of Christ, were referred to as apostles and prophets. The lowercase version represents spiritual giftings and functions given by the Holy Spirit to serve the advancement of the Kingdom of God and the communities of God’s people on planet Earth.
The early church wasn’t using “apostle” as a brand label. It was a mission word. A sending word. It wasn’t using “prophet” as the actual voice of God, but a signpost pointing to God’s will and way. And that’s important for how we think about the office versus the function today.
Also, I wanted to take a brief time out in the middle of this 5-fold fly-by to share that the apostle-prophet combination is the most powerful and effective pairing of the APEST team when it comes to advancing the message of Christ. It is why the apostle Paul wrote to the Ephesian church in Ephesians 2:20 that the church is “Built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone.” Why, you ask. Good question.
Because the role of this 2-person team is to establish beachheads among unreached people groups in the name of the Most High God. The apostle will do that at any cost, including questionable practices and mild heresy. The prophet can’t stomach those, so he/she keeps the apostle aligned with the Word and Will of God. That requires tremendous love and partnership between these two people. The apostle and prophet, and all the other functions for that matter, must walk in love for each other and honor one another before themselves to make this work. They must be on a co-mission to advance the best news that has ever been.
THAT IS INCREDIBLY DIFFICULT AND REQUIRES EXTREME LOVE AND UNITY!
When it’s done well and with godliness and humility, it is a sight to behold! It’s worth the effort, and we owe it to Jesus to figure this out!
The Evangelist — The Recruiter
This one should be more familiar to you. But I want to challenge the picture you probably have in your head. When most of us hear “evangelist,” we picture a big tent, a microphone, an altar call, a bullhorn, a street corner, and a crowd. And while that is one expression of the evangelistic function, it is far from the only one and often not the most effective one.
The evangelist is the person who is wired, breathes, and can’t stop thinking about people who are far from God. Not in a manipulative, agenda-driven way. In a genuine, relational, life-sharing way. Evangelists are the people who find that spiritual conversations come naturally to them, who light up when they meet someone new, who are always thinking about the bridge between someone’s everyday story and the story of Jesus. They are masters at gathering and attracting a crowd.
The question the evangelist answers: “How does the Good News become accessible to the people in front of us?”
Strengths of the Evangelist:
Evangelists are extraordinary at building bridges. They have a gift for finding common ground, for making people feel seen and valued, and for transitioning conversations from surface-level to spiritually significant without making people feel ambushed. They carry a contagious joy about the Gospel that makes the message feel like an invitation rather than a transaction.
In a disciple-making team, the evangelist is the one who constantly models what it looks like to live on mission in everyday life. They are who you want someone to shadow when they are learning to have spiritual conversations. They make the mission feel possible and even joyful.
Blind Spots of the Evangelist:
Evangelists can sometimes be more excited about making converts than making disciples. The joy of the first conversation, the moment of spiritual breakthrough, the new believer’s prayer, these moments energize them. But the slower, more demanding work of walking someone through the long journey of discipleship can feel like someone else’s job.
Evangelists can also overestimate how naturally this comes to everyone around them. Because gospel conversations feel natural and easy to them, they can accidentally guilt-trip or pressure the rest of the team into feeling like failures because they don’t share the same fluency. Healthy discipled evangelists learn to model and invite rather than compare and condemn.
The value the evangelist brings to the team:
Without the evangelist, a team becomes insular. The focus drifts from the mission field to the already-gathered community. The language, the culture, and the priorities of the team begin to orbit the internal world rather than the external one. The evangelist is the function that keeps the front door open, that keeps the community’s eyes on the people who are not yet in the room.
In a disciple-making community, the evangelist is the one who models spiritual conversations, who identifies persons of peace, who generates the relational momentum that leads to new disciples. They are often the first ones across the bridge, and they pull everyone else along with them.
The Shepherd (Pastor) — The Nurturer
Now we come to the two functions that most Western churches highly value and are very, very good at. Let’s start with the shepherd, which most of us know as the pastor.
The shepherd is the relational backbone of the community. They are attuned to the emotional and spiritual health of the people around them. They know who is struggling. They notice who has gone quiet. They show up when things are hard, not because they are performing a pastoral duty, but because they genuinely cannot NOT show up. The needs of people are not burdens to the shepherd; they are the mission.
The question the shepherd answers: “Is every member of this community genuinely cared for, known, and walking in health?”
Strengths of the Shepherd:
Shepherds create the kind of safety and belonging that makes a disciple-making community sustainable over the long haul. People stay in communities where they feel genuinely known, seen, and loved. Shepherds build that culture. They are the ones who remember the names, the stories, the prayer requests. They hold the relational fabric of a team together in ways that are often invisible but essential.
Shepherds also play a critical disciple-SHIP role. They are often the ones who notice when someone is stuck, when a disciple needs a different kind of investment, when the pace of someone’s journey needs to slow down. Their sensitivity to people makes them extraordinarily effective one-on-one disciple-makers.
Blind Spots of the Shepherd:
The shepherd’s greatest weakness is also their greatest strength. Their fierce loyalty to the people they are caring for can make them resistant to the kind of sending and releasing that multiplication requires. The apostle says, “It’s time to send them.” The shepherd says, “But are they really ready? What if they need more support?”
Shepherds can also struggle with the tensions of maintaining relational health in a growing, multiplying community. They are most effective in smaller, more intimate contexts. As the community expands, they need to learn to build shepherding capacity in others rather than trying to carry the whole relational weight themselves.
Shepherds can also unconsciously create dependency. Their care is so genuine and so consistent that people can grow to rely on them rather than developing their own relational and spiritual health. Healthy shepherds learn to care in ways that develop maturity rather than fostering neediness.
The value the shepherd brings to the team:
Without the shepherd, a disciple-making team becomes a movement without a home. People can get so focused on the mission that they neglect the health of the community doing the mission. Burnout, relational fractures, unprocessed grief and trauma, these are what happen in movements that have no shepherd voice calling the team to slow down and care for one another.
The shepherd is the one who makes sure that nobody falls through the cracks. They are the voice that says, “Before we talk about the mission report, I need us to check in with each other.” That voice is not slowing the mission down. It is keeping the team healthy enough to sustain it.
The Teacher — The Grounding Voice
The teacher is the last member of the APEST team, and in most of the ministries and communities that I have served and been a part of, the teacher and the shepherd have together been treated as if they are the entire team.
The teacher is the person who is driven by the question of truth. Not just what we believe, but why we believe it, how it connects, and how it should change us. Teachers have an extraordinary ability to take complex biblical truth and make it accessible, and applicable. They give a community its theological stability and depth.
The question the teacher answers: “What is true, why does it matter, and how do we build our lives on it?”
Strengths of the Teacher:
In a world of theological trends, cultural pressures, and the constant noise of competing narratives about who Jesus is and what the Gospel means, the teacher is the voice that says, “Let’s go back to the text. Let’s root ourselves in what is actually true.” They protect the community from the doctrinal drift that Paul is describing in Ephesians 4:14, “being tossed back and forth by every wind of teaching.”
Teachers also raise the quality of every other function. An apostle with a strong theological foundation is a much more sustainable pioneer than one who is flying on vision alone. A prophet grounded in Scripture is far more discerning than one whose impressions are unaccountable to the Word. A teacher adds balance to the whole team.
Blind Spots of the Teacher:
Teachers can mistake information for transformation. The ability to explain a passage is not the same as the ability to lead people to obey it. Teachers can develop a culture that values knowledge over discipleship, producing communities that are educated but not particularly fruitful in mission.
Teachers’ deep respect for the text and the tradition can make them cautious about new ministry models, new approaches, or new missional strategies. This caution is sometimes exactly what a fast-moving apostolic team needs. But it can also calcify into a reflexive resistance to anything that feels unfamiliar.
The value the teacher brings to the team:
Without the teacher, a disciple-making community becomes vulnerable to theological instability, personality-driven leadership, and the kind of shallow “movement energy” that eventually burns out or goes off the rails. The teacher is the function that says, “Let’s make sure what we are building is built on the right foundation.”
In a disciple-making team, the teacher is the one who ensures that the disciples being made are actually being shaped by Scripture, not just by the personality of the disciple-maker. They equip every member of the team to handle the Word with accuracy and confidence, so that the Gospel being reproduced is the real one.
How to Function as THE GREAT TEAM
Now that we have met all five members of the team, I need to be honest with you about something. Knowing about the APEST is not enough. Identifying your primary function and then retreating into your lane is not the goal. In fact, that misses the point entirely.
The goal is not to identify which one you are and then operate exclusively out of that function while tolerating the others. The goal is to learn to function as a team, a genuine, collaborative, mutually submitting, kingdom oriented GREAT TEAM, where every voice is heard, every gift is deployed, and the result is the mature, unified, equipped Body that Paul describes in Ephesians 4:12–16.
Here’s the hard truth: most disciple-making teams are not functioning as “Great Teams” yet. They are functioning as collections of gifted individuals who have not yet learned how to value the functions that are different from their own.
The apostle is frustrated with the shepherd for slowing things down. The shepherd is anxious about the apostle moving too fast and leaving people behind. The prophet is waiting for everyone to stop and pray, while the evangelist is already out the door meeting the next person. The teacher is concerned that no one is reading deeply enough, while the apostle is wondering if the teacher is overthinking what should be a simple yes or no.
Sound familiar?
Every one of those tensions is real. And every one of them is a gift, not a problem, IF we know how to steward and disciple them to maturity.
The Chapter in a Single Sentence
The Kingdom does not advance through lone rangers and spiritual superstars, but through a unified Great Team, apostles pioneering, prophets discerning, evangelists reaching, shepherds nurturing, and teachers grounding, all five functions working together the way Christ designed them in Ephesians 4:11, so that the whole Body is equipped for the whole mission.
It’s Your Move, Again!
Every person reading this book is wired primarily toward one or two of the APEST functions. Identifying your primary function is not optional; it is the foundation of healthy team contribution. You cannot give what you do not know you have. And you cannot develop what you cannot name.
Take time to honestly assess which of the five functions you are most naturally drawn toward. Which question energizes you? Which function, when you are operating in it, makes you feel most fully alive in your Kingdom assignment? That is your primary lane.
That’s why I built the simple and accurate assessment tool at thegreateam.org. Hop over there and give it a run. It is especially effective at identifying your top two functions and creating a disciple-making style report nuanced by the function of your top gift and the style or DNA of your second gift.
Find the Entire Book at All Online Bookstores and the Audiobook at your favorite audiobook distributor. Bulk discounts at myhandtotheplow.com
I strongly affirm your presentation. I would only suggest it leaves a couple of matters our. First, the weakness of this model is its strong focus on individualism.
Second, the focus of Jesus and the church biblically is not on individual evangelists but on planting and multiplying orchards.
Your focus on teamwork probably includes that but I think the model Jesus presented is reproducing systems of Christians who together entire assemblies of highly functioning powerhouses of truth, fruit, gifts, and power.
In order to do that, the Holy Spirit must be a central reality.
My hunch is that your approach would do all of that.