Narrated by Scott Tucker

Years ago I received what Saint John of the Cross would have called a locution directly from God´s Holy Spirit. It was so clear a word that it seemed like an audible voice. I even looked up and around the room to see where the voice came from. He said: “I don´t want a mission agency, I want a MISSIONARY ORDER! It was a strong word and almost said as a rebuke. At the time that I heard that word I was very perplexed and it caused me to spend hours studying God´s word and the history of missions for the next 5 or so years. I knew the Lord was not asking me to become a Roman Catholic though I must admit I have learned many things from the great founders of Christian Monastic and Apostolic orders. I have spent the rest of my life trying to build a missionary order that we call the Iberoamerican Frontier Missions Brothhood. It has been a very difficult and often a very unthankful task and because of it I have been one of the most misunderstood missionaries in Latin America.

Several years later after an event we hosted about the need for professionals and ordinary vocational works of all kinds as tentmaking missionaries and entrepreneurs to serve the Lord of the Harvest in creative countires I received another word from the Lord. This time the Spirit just said the two word phrase: “Apostolic Communities“. I cannot tell the whole story here since that is not the purpose of this series of podcasts. But I can tell you that one of the keys I discovered out these experiences is that missionary orders are “apostolic communities” and that God uses these communities not only to pioneer unreached fields of mission among unreached people groups but they also often become vital streams of the Spirit (Ezekiel 37) that can cause the dead bones of once vital churches movements to come to life again and then aftwards flow outward to bring life to hunded and thousands of dead fish species in the dead sea of humanity (Ez. 47). The need today is not so much for a reformation, the first failed to reform the chruch (See Stephen Perk´s new book: Disciple the Nations), but for a renaissance of the Christian Movement. God is not dead but many churchly structures and even missionary structures are dead or dying. This little book holds some of the keys that are needed in the church today that God has used time and again in the history of the Christian Movement.