Theme
The New Testament knows nothing of the isolated, heroic solo church planter; planting was always executed by plural, polycentric apostolic teams. Jones differentiates between Strike Teams (mobile pioneers who break hard ground and plant) and Fist Teams (entrenched local teams combining all five APEST callings). A reader learns how to recruit, align, and deploy balanced teams where apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers operate as a unified fist.
Peyton Jones is an American serial church planter, author, speaker, and trainer who has spent his career reframing church planting as both an "art and a science" and insisting that planting is never the goal but the inevitable result of disciple-making. A native of Huntington Beach, California, born in Washington, D.C., he left a career as a psychiatric and drug-rehab nurse to enter full-time ministry at nineteen, and then spent roughly twelve years planting churches in Wales — by his own description "the most unchurched part of the UK, with less than 1% church attendance." He began as an evangelist at Sandfields, the historic Aberavon church once pastored by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, where in 2001 he helped plant its first daughter church, before founding New Breed Church Planting and pioneering unconventional planting locations across what he experienced as a post-Christian frontier. He earned an MA in Theology (Pastoral Studies) from W.E.S.T. (Wales Evangelical School of Theology) in 2010. Returning to the United States, Jones built a training and media footprint around an apostolic, first-century vision of church planting: he authored and rewrote church-planting curriculum for the
