The Great (and Worrisome) Irony of APEST

Last updated on: May 6, 2022 at 12:45 pm By Bob Robinson

There is an irony that might be missed by those who have embraced the APEST typology advocated by Alan Hirsch, Mike Breen, and others in the Missional Movement. In our desire to overcome an overbearing leadership structure that was found in putting so much power in the Shepherd-Teacher, we are in danger of creating yet another overbearing leadership structure but with different leaders. We worry so much about the destructive nature of institutionalism that we shift the focus from 2/5... Read more

Work Didn’t Always Suck

Last updated on: April 27, 2018 at 1:08 pm By Bob Robinson

In our day, we know that work can often be frustrating. We get together with friends after a long week of work and moan, “Work just sucks!” But that was not always the case. While we know that work is currently broken in various ways, we must remember that work was once part of the very good creation. A major part of the good news of the gospel is that work has been redeemed and can also be redemptive! “The... Read more

A Caring Critique of Alan Hirsch’s APEST Paradigm for Churches

Last updated on: May 6, 2022 at 12:17 pm By Bob Robinson

So, I was going through my Facebook feed and came across a post on April 12 from Brad Briscoe, the director of strategic development for Forge America (the organization that Alan Hirsch founded when he first came over from Australia) that stated, “I am convinced that if a person denies or discounts the importance of #APEST in Eph 4:1-16, they simply haven’t dealt with the topic in a serious manner.” I was astonished at that bold statement, so I had... Read more

Good Friday and Easter Accomplished a Whole Lot More Than We Think

Last updated on: April 6, 2017 at 4:10 pm By Bob Robinson

We have been led to believe that the only thing that the shed blood of Christ accomplished is our personal justification. Perhaps, like the churches and seminary I attended, the focus of your church was very much on the Book of Romans. I had come to the conclusion that all I need to know about the shed blood of Christ on the cross is found in Romans. Romans is, after all, the primary document of the New Testament, spelling out what... Read more

The Mission of God is Not Limited to Humanity, But Humanity is the Key to It All

Last updated on: April 3, 2017 at 5:35 pm By Bob Robinson

What is the Mission of God? And what do we humans have to do with it? I agree with Christopher Wright in his book The Mission of God’s People: A Biblical Theology of the Church’s Mission, that the missio Dei is “The story of how God in his sovereign love has purposed to bring the sinful world of his fallen creation to the redeemed world of his new creation…It is a vast, comprehensive project of cosmic salvation.” The mission of God... Read more

Jesus is More (But Not Less) than a Carpenter

Last updated on: March 24, 2017 at 3:00 pm By Bob Robinson

“Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?’ And they took offense at him” (Mark 6:3). Tom Nelson writes, “As I slowly pondered these words, I began to reflect on the significance of Jesus spending so much of his time on earth working with his hands in a carpentry shop. Here was the Son of God sent to earth on a... Read more

Are There Two Kinds of Grace?

Last updated on: March 16, 2017 at 3:16 pm By Bob Robinson

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. As God created everything in the cosmos in an orderly way, we read in Genesis 1 that “God saw that it was good.” After God made it all, we read, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” (Genesis 1:31) Think about it. It was very good! How dare we think that our sin can nullify that which God has made! But that is exactly the implication... Read more

Four Ideas for Handling a Bad Boss

Last updated on: June 29, 2019 at 3:36 pm By Bob Robinson

Oh, Mondays! As you get ready for work, you realized, “Ugh! I have to work with that boss again today!” Perhaps your boss yells at you or your boss demeans you with passive-aggressive behavior. I’ve had both kinds of bosses. One guy acted like his team was in the military and he was a drill sergeant – he actually thought he could motivate us by yelling at us. It just made me shrink up into the fetal position in my emotions, no longer... Read more

The Good Creation Remains

Last updated on: June 29, 2019 at 3:39 pm By Bob Robinson

A careful reading of the Bible will see that the original creation is corrupted but not unredeemable. We’ve all heard well-intended people say that this earth is “not our home.” The presumption is that this creation is so corrupted by sin that it is irreparable. The goal for Christians, in this view, is to escape this evil creation and go somewhere else. We call that place “Heaven.” But here’s the Bible’s true teaching: Sin does not abolish God’s love for... Read more

Your Identity Doesn’t Come from Your Work

Last updated on: March 7, 2017 at 2:06 pm By Bob Robinson

So, you’re at a gathering and you meet someone for the first time. He asks you a key question so that he knows who you are: “What do you do?” What we do is so inextricably linked to who we are. It just is. Why? Because, in the beginning, God made humans this way! In Genesis, God says, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule…” So God created mankind in his own... Read more