Hello, this is Guenther Hess from Rapid Church Planting. I have just one question. How would we start an apostolic hub from scratch? And
I believe an apostolic hub is not so much about an organization, how we organize things.
An apostolic hub, first of all, is a spirit. It reminds me of when I was a child and we went every Sunday morning to my grandmother’s house. The whole family gathered there, family decisions were made there. We just had a normal breakfast. We had fun together. We went on walks, and it was always a wonderful time. First of all, I believe that an apostolic hub has a lot to do with a real, I mean, real family atmosphere.
How do you start? Maybe you think it starts with an apostle. I don’t think so. In Antioch, where we had this hub situation, at the beginning there was not so much talk of apostles. Yes, there were alignments with apostles from Jerusalem.
They had exchange, so they were like in a network. I believe it is important that we have something like an apostolic hub roundtable. That’s just a thought that crossed my mind.
Why don’t we have a WhatsApp group, or whatever, where we meet together and discuss how this baby that the Lord wants to birth could look like, so we are in a network.
But then, how to start a group? I believe it is very easy. ln Act II the church started by meeting in a house, by eating together, and by prayer. I think these are the main ingredients.
So why don’t you start if you have this desire from God–and only recently I spoke with someone. It really touched my heart because she said in the 1980’s God spoke to her about the apostolic and the apostolic hubs, in a Baptist environment.
Even in a charismatic church, there was not much talk about the apostolic in those times. So, God has prepared her for such a time as this, for this new movement of massive, massive roll-out of apostolic hubs worldwide.
And I believe that that is one of the most strategic things that we can do to expand the kingdom of God, to build such family oriented, training resource centers.
It is family based. How do you train your children in this? Will they sit like school pupil in rows before you? No. They sit around the table with you, and they grasp who you are. So, an apostolic hub, I want to repeat that once again.
First of all, it’s a spirit, like the atmosphere in the family. So why don’t you start to gather, 3-4 like-minded people and start to eat with them. When I came here to Cyprus, I gathered people around me, not by a teaching and great spiritual stuff. No, I tell them, come every evening and we can have dinner. So, after a while people ask me, so what’s the name of my church? I was quite astonished as I never thought about having a church. Who am I?
I had to think a little bit about it. And I thought maybe the name of my church is dinner. That’s how an apostolic hub can start. And if you add to this, real fellowship, which develops normally through having fellowship with meals, and you add prayer. You earnestly pray and if you have patience that God can lead you step by step then I believe that it would be possible that just a few ordinary people can start an apostolic hub.
Most likely it will happen after a certain time, God will call people during prayer times, “you have a prophetic gift, you have an apostolic mind set….” Maybe they are not full-grown apostles yet, but the Lord will start to speak about that.
Just a last thought to wrap that up. So, most likely when you have successfully developed an apostolic hub, and then a lot of international apostles will be interested, and they will say please align to myself. And could be, so I don’t say anything against that. But what I’ve learned when it comes to food, talking about dinner today, why don’t you rely more on home grown vegetables? Why not give yourself time—or the group—that some local people are raised up by God and put in their positions and into their callings. Why don’t you have home-grown prophets? Home grown teachers? Home grown evangelists? And finally, home grown apostles?
We are always open to being in a network with other people. Right to me an email, go to rapidchurchplanting.net and get in contact with us.