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Ministry Confronts Secularisation, by Sam Hey

by Geoff 20 May 2012 No Comments

Ministry Confronts Secularisation

by Sam Hey

 

Dr Sam Hey teaches at the School of Ministries, Christian Heritage College, Brisbane, a ministry of Christian Outreach Centre.  In this paper, adapted from his Ph.D. research with Macquarie University, Sydney, he surveys theories of secularisation and revival.

 

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An article in Renewal Journal 18: Servant Leadership:

This paper grew out of a study of the history and growth of an indigenous Australian charismatic group, the Christian Outreach Centre (COC) movement.  In this study, two factors stood out.  The first was efforts of new religious groups such as COC to counter the forces of secularisation and institutionalisation that act on the church.  The second was the group’s revivalist emphasis on experientialism, the supernatural and healing, its appeal to past biblical models for the church and ministry and its adaptation to modern technological society.

If church and ministry are to be effective in society today they need to better understand the changes that are taking place in the world and the extent to which practices and structures aid and hinder their mission.  They must learn to adapt to a changing world without losing the core Christian values and beliefs that make their message so powerful.  It is the purpose of this paper to examine some of the changes taking place in society and to consider the ways that revivalist groups such as the COC are adapting to them.

The Secularisation Thesis

The secularisation thesis predicting the decline of religion in modern societies became the dominant paradigm for religious change in the twentieth century.  Two of the main advocates of the secularisation theory were Peter Berger and Bryan Wilson.  Berger used the term ‘secularisation’ to describe a process ‘by which sectors of society and culture are removed from the domination of religious institutions and symbols.’[1]  Similarly, Wilson applied the term secularisation to ‘the process by which religious institutions, actions and consciousness lose their social significance.’[2]

The term, secularisation, was not only used to describe the restriction in the influence of religion due to changes within modern society, but also the adaptation of religion to the changing values of society.  Many contemporary scholars suggested that traditional religious beliefs, teachings and practices would struggle to survive in the modern world, suggesting that they were more suited to past cultures and belief systems. They predicted a continued decline in institutionalised religion.  This decline has been variously referred to as the most significant trend in religion[3] and the ‘greatest problem facing the church,’[4] the ‘great contemporary crisis in religion’ and the great ‘drama of our times.’[5]

Clarification

One of the weaknesses of the secularisation theory is the lack of clarity that surrounds the term ‘secularisation.’  The term needs to be carefully elucidated to avoid the vagueness that frequently surrounds its use.  Secularisation is used to describe the transfer of activities from the religious to the non religious, the differentiation of religious and non religious activities, the transformation of institutions from religious to less religious spheres, change in affections and loyalties and the changing roles of religious people in a modern, complex society, the change of the locus of social control from the religious sphere to the technical and bureaucratic spheres, and increasing government responsibility for traditionally religious activities including education and welfare.

Religious decline has also been linked to other developments in modern society including industrialisation, urbanisation, economic and social development, loss of community, rationalisation, modernisation, professionalisation, bureaucratisation, and pluralisation.  It can also be linked to the failure of civil religion, particularly in Europe, and to changes in the relationship between the political and religious spheres.  Religious decline can also be partly explained by changing immigration and childbirth patterns, and changes in family formation.  A decline in church attendance is also linked to the increased social and geographic mobility of the population, factors that have been an integral part of growth and social change in Australia and overseas.

In this study secularisation means the accommodation of church and religion to the demands of modern twentieth century society.  This study will set out to show that this relationship is neither simple nor linear.  It is a complex combination of many contributing factors, both within the church and outside of it.

Modern science was held to be the prime cause of religious decline through secularisation.[6]  However, the rise of post modernism demonstrates that the notion that enlightenment rationalism, empirical knowledge and scientific knowledge provide an absolute epistemology is questionable.  A simple linear relationship between the rise of scientific thinking and religious decline is by no means clear.

On careful examination, the challenges to faith attributed to secularisation are found to be due as much to structural changes accompanying modernisation than to deeper philosophical shifts in attitudes towards religion and science.  The perceived decline in the influence of religion is strongly related to the rapid increase in the size and complexity of modern society.  While ‘clergy’ were the largest professional group in the early 1800s, with roles including teaching, counselling, keeping law and order and government clerical responsibilities, by the end of the twentieth century these roles had been replaced by increasingly specialist positions.  Clergy were relegated to the periphery and religion was confined to the private sphere.

Consequently, part of the challenge facing the church is the need to redefine and rediscover the role of the clergy in a rapidly changing and increasingly specialised society.  Traditional religions that invested heavily in past models and practices have often been ill equipped to adapt to changes in society.  The churches have struggled to come to terms with increasing globalisation and pluralism and from revolutions in transportation and communication.

Churches have also been challenged by the decreased dependence of people on religious institutions through the increased power that modern society has given to individuals.  Hierarchical, centralised, theologically-complex religious bodies have found it increasingly difficult to relate to an egalitarian society that was characterised by individualism and freedom of choice.

The threat to institutionalised religion has been further increasing by greater competition from a growing range of attractive leisure activities, greater affluence and increasing consumerism.  The decrease in religious observance can be linked to increased mobility, the development of the motor car, competition for leisure time through electronic media, changing participation rates in the work force and a decline in local, community life.[7]  Prosperous, modern Australians have replaced trust in God and the church with a commitment to individualism, leisure and the family.  Churches that have failed to respond to the many changes in society have declined, while others that see change as opportunity have grown.

Secularisation Within Churches

The most significant impact of secularisation on religion has not occur outside churches but within them.  Berger observed that with the passage of time, established churches tend to become more inclusive, tolerant and open to the secular world.[8]  As new religious groups seek acceptance by established churches and the wider society their more extreme views become moderated.  The inclination to want to change society tends to decline.  There is usually an increasing value placed on social decorum and rational decision-making.  The value placed on less comprehensible areas including emotionalism and the supernatural decreases.[9]  Over time liturgies and doctrines tend to become fixed in more concrete forms.

Established groups have a considerable investment to protect.  They tend to look to fixed dogma and past history for security and to be wary of experimentation and new methods.  Spontaneity, lay involvement and charismatic gifts tend to decline.  The pursuit of security poses a strong challenge to church members who wish to pursue the transcendent, experiential, supra-rational religious expressions or pursue more confronting forms of evangelical outreach.

Five Dilemmas of Institutionalisation

It is inevitable that the more religious institutions develop, the more that spontaneous, unpredictable, experiences of the ultimate will be reduced and replaced by established religious forms that are concrete, routine and predictable.

O’Dea defines institutionalisation as the ‘reduction of a set of attitudes and orientations to the expected’ and ‘regularised behaviour.’[10]   O’Dea (1961) identified five dilemmas that arise from institutionalisation.

Firstly, he observes that pre-institutionalised religious groups are characterised by solitary charismatic leadership, singleness of purpose and a high level of sacrifice by all who are involved.  As initial, high levels of selfless motivation weaken, they are replaced by a more complex mixture of motivations.  These include the pursuit of economic security, stability, respectability, prestige and power.

The second institutional dilemma identified by O’Dea involves the need to objectify religious symbols and ceremonies.  As symbols and ceremonies are formalised the people are increasingly separated from the experiences that initially shaped them.  This objectification can aid worship, but it can also become a barrier to an experience of the sacred.

Thirdly, organisational administrative structures help to effectively meet members needs and bring them a sense of security, leads to the elaboration and specialisation of organisations.  Unfortunately as the organisational centre grows, people near the periphery of the organisation can tend to feel distanced and isolated.

Fourthly, as institutions reduce the message to concrete, rational terms the emphasis on inner, mystical experiences tends to diminish.  The guidelines and rules that delimit the message also remove its sense of other worldly mystery.

Fifthly, O’Dea observes that as religious groups grow, their emphasis on the values of society tends to increase, while the emphasis on religious experience decreases.  Secularisation and desacralisation are commonly observed to increase as institutions grow.  There is a tendency for leaders of established churches to become isolated from their constituents. The strategies that consolidate an organisations power inevitably decrease the opportunities for the self-expression of members. There is a tendencey for the upper classes to be favoured and the lower classes to be neglected.

Dean Kelley observes that mainstream churches tend to become more relativistic and luke-warm over time, and to lose their ability to provide clarity of purpose and an ultimate, other worldly sense of meaning to life.[11]  A decline in vitality and attendance is often observed as churches become overly institutionalised.  The formation of new religious groups can be seen as a reaction to the process of institutionalisation.

Working class people frequently feel alienated by traditional denominational churches. Hynd suggests that their emphasis on complex rationalism isolates those who seek a more mystical encounter with God and a simple experiential faith.[12] The growth of new religious groups often occurs when large numbers of people find their inner religious impulses remain unmet.  The rapid growth of new sectarian groups is further encouraged by the high demands that they place on their members and their tendency to reduce the number of ‘free riders.’  Strictness makes the new groups appear more credible to their members and brings increased commitment and growth.   Established churches that have lower costs and greater acceptance of ‘free riders’ often show slower growth.

Decline Questioned

Secularisation and institutionalisation create pressures within society that require a redefinition of religious practice and community in order that religious solutions continue to work.  The emergence of revivalist groups challenge the notion that secularisation and religious decline are inevitable.  The growth of revivalist groups provides support for the observation that demand for the transcendent and the wholly other remains strong, even in times of rapid modernisation.

Finke, Stark, Bainbridge and Yinger have all challenged the inevitability of decline through secularisation and argue that the evidence for the persistence of religious desire is considerable.[13]  They argue that in the American context the decline in established churches due to secularisation has been matched by the birth and growth of new religious groups.

Stark and Bainbridge argue that secularisation is ‘a self-limiting process that engenders revival’ (sect formation).[14] They observe that decline through secularisation is frequently matched by increased enthusiasm and commitment through religious renewal groups.  The processes of secularisation and revival are two forces which act in tandem.  They propel cycles of religious change that are ever acting on society.  They are part of the ebb and flow of correction and vitality that continue to shape religious development through the ages.

Robin Gill’s significant work, The Myth of the Empty Church (1993), challenges the notion that traditional views of secularisation account for religious decline in the twentieth century.   He provides evidence that church decline was due to structural and organisational difficulties in coping with population and cultural shifts.[15]   Gill recognises that an exception to decline is found in Pentecostal and charismatic evangelical churches.[16]

The hypothesised religious decline of secularisation theorists failed to account for the rapid growth of Protestant and charismatic Christianity that occurred in Europe, Africa, South America, Asia, the former socialist countries and in one of the most developed countries in the world, the United States of America.  It also failed to account for the growth of Pentecostal and charismatic groups.

Revivalism

It is clear that revivalism has the potential to be one of the significant forces counteracting secularisation and institutionalisation.  Revivalism has been defined as

A type of religious worship and practice centering in evangelical revivals, or outbursts of mass religious fervour, and stimulated by intensive preaching and prayer meetings.[17]

Revivalist groups are both re-active and pro-active.  They react to changes in society and the church by promoting a return to values and practices that they perceive to have existed in the past.  Revivalist groups can be viewed as reactionary responses to the processes of secularisation and institutionalisation that are inevitable bi-products of the growth and maturing of established religious organisations.  They are a reaction to the tendency in established religious hierarchies to rationalise and objectify the transcendent in order to contain the wholly other in their words, rituals and beliefs.  Revivalists seek to restore less institutional, less hierarchical and more mystical forms of the Christian tradition that more highly organised religious groups try to represses.

Revivalist groups seek to counter the established churches’ emphasis on rationalism with an emphasis on individual religious experience including conversion and supernatural healing, miracles, prophecy and glossolalia.  Formality in established churches is replaced in revivalist meetings by spontaneity and informality.  While established churches spend most resources meeting the needs of middle class adults leaving the lower class and unchurched young people neglected, revivalists, on the other hand, pursue outreach to the lower classes and young people who are responsive to their contemporary methods.

While established churches develop complex, rationalised doctrines, revivalist groups counter this trend with simplified teachings based on biblical allegories and metaphors and uncomplicated, narrative-based messages.  They use simple, expressive songs that empower ordinary, untrained, lay people, neglected by established churches.  As sociologist, Bryan Wilson observes, ‘Inner feeling has been hailed as more authentic than intellectual knowledge.’[18]  The complex politics of highly structured centralised, hierarchies and credentialled, highly trained clergymen are replaced in revival movements by egalitarian communities in which the charismatic gifts of each member are valued.  Revivalists give greater opportunities for the ‘ordinary’ participant.

Decentralisation is emphasised by revivalists through the formation of large numbers of small, tightly knit communities that provide contexts for intimacy, support and growth and to provide opportunities for every member to express themselves.  The observations by sociologists such as Wilson,[19] and Stark[20] provide considerable insight into the way in which processes such as institutionalisation, bureaucratisation and secularization in the Methodist church engender new revivalist groups such as the COC.  Their insights also help to explain the development of these groups and the contribution that they can make to religious change.

Revival movements such as the Reformation, Pietism, Methodism and more recent developments within Evangelicalism can be seen as expressions of an ongoing effort to reverse the effects of secularisation and to restore the place of the supernatural and mystical to life and society. 

These movements are also the products of particular historical and cultural processes prevailing at the time of their formation.  The twentieth century Pentecostalism and the charismatic revival movements show characteristics that were peculiar to the decades in which they developed.  They also continue in the western, evangelical, revivalist tradition and form part of ‘a path that involves many turnings but no basic change in direction.’[21]

Church-sect theory

Church-sect theory has been particularly successful in explaining the development of many twentieth century sectarian developments including Pentecostal and charismatic groups.  In church sect theory a church is defined as a religious group that accepts the social environment in which it exists while a sect is said to be a religious group that rejects its social environment.[22]

Churches are defined as large complex organisations with a long history of investment in the past.  As established churches mature they tend to become more centralised, develop a hierarchical administrative structure and rely on professional, well educated ministers, specialised administrators and theologians to oversee their activities.  Church leaders are expected to have more training, knowledge and faith than the laity.  While this provides stability and credence, it also disempowers the laity and also increases the sense of alienation and distance between the church and its constituents.  Dempsey observes that extensive theological training favoured by churches isolates clergy from their congregations and frustrates the clergy and congregation.[23]  This frustration contributed to the resignation of a large number of clergy from traditional churches in the late 1960s.[24]

As established churches become more than one generation old their attention and energy is absorbed by the next generation who inherit membership through birth.  Fewer resources or energy are available for evangelism.  The conversion experience receives less prominence as established churches increasingly define the requirements for salvation through formalised dogma and ritualised services.  Second generation adherents inevitably lack the emotional emphasis of first generation adult converts.

While some sectarian groups are characterised by a desire to be left alone, others are motivated by a desire to resist and promote social change.  Bainbridge identifies the latter as being particularly important.  He says that a sect is a religious movement  [that] is a relatively organised attempt by a number of people to cause or prevent religious change in a religious organisation or in religious aspects of life.[25]

Developmental Stages

A number of stages can be discerned in the development of revivalist groups.  They typically begin as small, obscure protest groups within established churches.  Wach notes that the pressures on these ‘protest within’ groups lead to intense devotional practices and strong community bonds.  He describes them as,

a loosely organised group, limited in numbers, and united in common enthusiasm, peculiar convictions, intense devotion, and rigid discipline, which is striving to attain higher spiritual and moral perfection than can be realised under prevailing conditions.[26]

Such small, ideological groups provide a hot house in which revivalist dreams can flourish.  Revival movements initially adopt many of the teachings and practices of the existing churches from which they emerge and this gives them stability and confidence.  In seeking to revive experience and the supernatural that they perceive to have been lost they place an emphasis on conversion and activities such as healing and prophecy.  Opposition from stakeholders in traditional churches gives the new groups a greater sense of purpose and camaraderie and provides a force against which the groups can unite.

Building the Group

Most effort and resources in new religious groups are used in meeting the needs of its members.  After these initial needs are met, fast growing revivalist groups may have surplus resources and leaders and be able to initiate further groups.  Other independent groups may also seek to affiliate with successful sectarian groups.  Most charismatic groups remain small and many die out without impacting more than a small number of people.  Others such as the COC grow rapidly enough to survive.

Within six years the COC had grown from twenty-five to over a thousand people and had started seven other churches.  It also attracted two similar charismatic groups from New South Wales that merged with it.  Within a decade it had commenced similar groups overseas.  This national and international expansion was aided by the development in the twentieth century of modern transport systems and electronic communications media.

Second generation

The second generation ‘established sect’ has very different challenges and characteristics from the first.  The initial concerns of a protest movement are replaced by organisational and denominational requirements of a large, expanding organisation.  An emphasis on cognitive knowledge and group responsibility leaves little room for spontaneous, intuitive actions, emotional expression, supernatural guidance or mystical beliefs.  As the group achieves some degree of respectability, conflict with society and other churches will decrease, and the distinctive beliefs and practices are modified.  Gerlach and Hine observe that speaking in tongues usually occurs less often in the second generation and they have fewer charismatic experiences.[27]

The need for the training of second generation children, the acquisition and management of property and the achievement of social respectability shape the second generation agenda.  As leadership and teaching needs increase a division of labour is required.  ‘Charisma’ is often routinized and economic, political and social needs begin to predominate.

New Models Proposed

Stark and Bainbridge have provided one of the most systematic attempts to provide a new general theory of religion that takes recent developments into account.  Stark and Bainbridge’s rational choice model[28] views secularisation and religious revival as cyclical developments that repeatedly occur throughout history.

A number of scholars including Fink, Stark and Bainbridge argue that ‘rational-choice theory’[29] and models of a ‘religious economy’ are better able to explain religious change and sect development.  Our historical understanding is likely to be increased through the recognition of increased consumer demand, freedom of choice and plurality of opportunities in shaping religious developments.  They suggest that the constant pressures of institutionalisation and religious desire drive a cycle of secularisation, disenchantment, revival, and religious innovation.

While secularisation theory focuses on consumers, predicting a decline in their religiosity, the newer economic paradigm focuses on suppliers, predicting the emergence of new religious ‘firms’ that meet consumer demands and increase religiosity.  New religious groups arise when neglected members set out to explore new opportunities and to seek out unrestricted pathways to the transcendent.

Religious economic theory assumes that people’s innate desire for the transcendent, wholly other remains at roughly the same level in any society and at any time of history.  It holds that people are essentially homo religious.[30]  Religious economy theory is based on the notion that rational choice and free competition in an open market of religious institutions are well able to explain changes in religious market share.  The theory says that in an increasingly religiously plural society, successful religions must be marketed among competing religious institutions.  This competition has encouraged the emergence of new religious groups that revive neglected religious areas, and empower people whom traditional denominations have overlooked.  Theorists argue that the actions of church and clergy are rational responses to the constraints and opportunities in the religious market place.

The models proposed by Stark and Bainbridge suggest that as Australia moves from the dominance of established traditional churches and sees the emergence of competing sects with an emphasis on revivalism, higher rates of church attendance are likely to result.  Revivalist groups are likely to emerge which aid religious change and a resurgence in attendance.  Pentecostal and charismatic revival groups have been unique in that their growth has been so rapid and widespread.

The economic model proposed by Stark and Bainbridge is not without its weaknesses.  There is an over reliance on simple exchange theory to explain complex human behaviour and religious belief and the revival and religious resurgence are not inevitable.  Their use of the terms ‘compensators’ and ‘rewards’ emphasises immediate material concerns and negates the existence of mystical, other worldly realities.

Their theory also over emphasises the similarity of widely divergent religious groups and religious motivators.  While Stark and Bainbridge’s theory has been successful in expanding our understanding of religious life, it gives insufficient consideration to the incorporation of economic practices of the surrounding society into the life of churches and sects they describe, nor does it consider other examples of churches and sects that do not fit their model.  Despite these weaknesses, the Stark – Bainbridge theory provides a useful and testable model for religious development and it provided a wealth of insights into religious history.

Implications for ministry

Churches have too often been confused as the nature of the challenge that they face from the surrounding society.   Many have assumed that declining numbers are inevitable and that their needs are best met by resisting change. If the church and ministry are to remain effective they must recognise that secularisation and institutionalisation are dulling the impact of their message.  Churches need to see themselves less as bureaucratic organisations and more as organic structures in which all members and their tasks are valued.  Churches today need to recognise that religious desire remains strong, but that people are seeking religious expression that is able to compete with the many other demands placed on them by a changing society.   The religious message must be expressed in contemporary terms.  Only as church leaders understand the nature of change in society will they be equipped to communicate their invaluable, unchanging message to a rapidly changing, but needy world.

References

[1] Peter Berger, The Social Reality of Religion, (Middlesex, England: Penquin, 1973), p. 113.

[2] See also Wilson Bryan R. Religion in a Secular Society (London:Watts, 1966), p.  xiv; Wilson, B.R.  Religion in Sociological Perspective. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 149.

[3] W.  Seward Salisbury, Religion in Culture (Illinois: Dorsey Press, 1964),  p. 289

[4] Salisbury, 1964, p. 280.

[5] S.  S.  Acquaviva, The Decline in the Sacred in Industrial Society.  Patricia Lipscomb (translator) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979), p. 196.

[6] Peter Berger, A Far Glory  (New York: Anchor, Doubleday 1992), p. 26.

[7] P.  Hughes, 1991 ‘Types of Faith and the Decline of Mainline Churches.’ In Black, Alan W.  Religion in Australia: Sociological Perspectives, (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1991), p. 102.

[8] Peter Berger, 1973. The Social Reality of Religion, Middlesex, England: Penquin., p. 136.

[9] Werner Stark, The Sociology of Religion (London: Routledge, 1967), p. 132f; Wilson, Bryan R. Religious Sects. (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. 1970), p. 66.

[10] Thomas O’Dea ‘Five dilemmas in the institutionalisation of religion’ Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 1961, 1, pp. 30-39, 32.

[11] Kelley, Dean M.  Why Conservative Churches are Growing (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), p. 37.

[12] Douglas Hynd,  Australian Christianity in Outline.  (Sydney: Lancer Books, 1984).

[13] Stark, Rodney and William Simms Bainbridge. A Theory of Religion. New

York: Peter Lang. 1987; S. S. Acquaviva The Decline in the Sacred in Industrial Society. Patricia Lipscomb (translator) Oxford: Blackwell, 1979, p. 196; Yinger J. Milton 1970, The Scientific Study of Religion, New York: Macmillan, p. 21.  Harley and Firebaugh said that the most interesting thing about belief in the after life in the United States from 1973 to 1991 is what it was not doing: it was not declining.  B.  Harley and G.  Firebaugh ‘Amercan Belief in An Afterlife: Trends over the past two decades,’ Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1993, 32 (3) pp. 269-278.

[14] Stark, Rodney and William Simms Bainbridge. 1985. The Future of Religion:

Secularization, Revival and Cult Formation. Berkeley: University of

California Press.p. 230, 429-430. Time and space do not permit extensive examination of their suggestion that secularisation also leads to innovation, i.e. cult formation.  It is beyond the scope of this thesis.

[15] Gill, Robin. The Myth of the Empty Church. (London: SPCK.1993), p. 189.

[16] Gill, 1993, p. 2.

[17] F.L.  Cross & E.A.  Livingstone, (eds) Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974), p. 1183.

[18] Wilson, Bryan R. Contemporary Transformations of Religion. (Oxford: Oxford

University Press. 1976),  p. 37.

[19] Wilson, Bryan R. 1970. Religious Sects. (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970), p. 66.

[20] Werner Stark, The Sociology of Religion (London: Routledge, 1967), p. 126.

[21] Yinger J. Milton  Religion, Society and the Individual  (New York: Macmillan, 1957), p. 283.

[22] Johnson, Benton. On Church and Sect. (American Sociological Review 28:539-549. 1963), p.542; See also Charles Y. Glock and Rodney Stark, Religion and Society in Tension, (Chicago: McNally and Co. 1965), p. 243.

[23] K. C. Dempsey  (1969) ‘Conflict and Harmony in Minster-Lay Relationships in an Australian Methodist Community,’ Ph. D Thesis, University of New England, Armidale, 1969.

[24] Norman W. H. Blaike The Plight of Australian Clergy  St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1979, p 32.

[25] Bainbridge William Sims, The Sociology of Religious Movements.  (New York: Routledge, 1997), p. 3.

[26] Joachim Wach, Sociology of Religion, (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1944), cited in Hill, 1973, p. 76.

[27] Gerlach Luther P. and Hine Virginia H. People, Power, Change Movements of Social Transformation (Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill, 1970), p. 5.

[28] Stark and Bainbridge, 1980, 1985, 1987.

[29] Stark, Rodney and Laurence R. Iannaccone. 1994. “A Supply-Side Reinterpretation

of the ‘Secularization’ of Europe.” Journal for the Scientific Study of

Religion 33(3): 230-252; Iannaccone, Laurence R.  ‘Economics of Religion’ Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. XXXVI, Sept, 1998, pp. 1465-1496.  p. 1468.

[30] R. Finke, and R.  Stark, 1988.  ‘Religious economies and sacred canopies.’  American Sociological Review 53, p. 41-49.

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Contents:  Renewal Journal 18: Servant Leadership

The Kingdom Within, by Irene Alexander

Church Models: Integration or Assimilation? by Jeannie Mok

Women in Ministry, by Sue Fairley

Women and Religions, by Susan Hyatt

Disciple-Makers, by Mark Setch

Ministry Confronts Secularisation, by Sam Hey

Book Reviews:
Jesus on Leadership by Gene Wilkes
In the Spirit We’re Equal by Susan Hyatt
Firestorm of the Lord by Stuart Piggin
Early Evangelical Revivals in Australia by Robert Evans 

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Disciple-Makers, by Mark Setch

by Geoff 20 May 2012 No Comments

Disciple-Makers

by Mark Setch

Rev Dr Mark Setch adapted this article from his research for his Doctor of Ministry degree at Fuller Theological Seminary titled “Developing Disciple-Makers: Reclaiming our Call to be an Apostolic Disciple-Making Church.”

Renewal Journal 18: Servant Leadership – PDF

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An article in Renewal Journal 18: Servant Leadership:

Before ascending into heaven the Risen Christ gave his disciples a commission.  They were to go and make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19).  Within the Acts of the Apostles, Luke records the results of the early church’s obedience to Jesus’ commission.  As people sent into the world by Jesus, they made disciples.  The early church grew because those disciples in turn made more disciples, who made more disciples.

At the beginning of the third millennium the mainline denominational church is in crisis.  Over the last twenty years membership has been in decline.  In recent years this decline has become more significant.  Declining numbers lead many commentators to conclude that our world in its twenty-first century is post-Christian; they allege the Christian church has outlived its usefulness and has no prominent place in a postmodern world.  There is, however, growing evidence to suggest that this conclusion is inaccurate.  Alongside the declining mainline church, there is an emerging twenty-first century church which is vital, dynamic, healthy, and growing.

Why are some churches growing while others are fading into oblivion?  It is my conviction that declining churches are those in which the Great Commission has lost its power.  Going into the world is no longer a priority.  Instead, the evangelistic focus (if one exists) is that of inviting people to come and be a part of the congregation.  The problem is that fewer people are accepting the invitation.  Mission is often framed by covert concerns which seek to protect the church from being infiltrated by the culture of our postmodern world.  Consequently, the culture of the church is usually set apart and distinct from the culture of the world in which people live, work, and recreate.

For many unchurched members of our population, there appears to be little reason or relevance to include the church as a central part of life.  Even though life includes pain and struggle, and a desperate search for hope and meaning, the established church is generally not perceived as providing answers to life’s questions.  Furthermore, disciple-making within these churches is not perceived as being the responsibility of everyday Christians.  It is perceived to be the responsibility of ordained clergy, leaders, and those who are more evangelistically inclined.  Disciples are no longer making disciples, who in turn make more disciples.

On the other hand, healthy and dynamic churches are those in which the Great Commission has reclaimed its power.  Evangelism is given a high priority.  Rather than being focused on trying to get people into the church, the vision of these congregations is to take their church into the world.  The mission of these congregations is driven by the challenge of incarnating the timeless gospel of Jesus Christ into the culture of our postmodern world.  In other words, they are functioning as apostolic (sent) churches.  Disciple-making is not the responsibility of a select few.  Every Christian is called to make disciples, who are disciple-makers; therefore disciples multiply.  These churches develop apostolic disciple-making congregations.

This paper articulates a call for the Church of Jesus Christ to reclaim the Great Commission and become an apostolic disciple-making church.  Such a church will enter the postmodern twenty-first century world and develop disciple-makers.  For many people this represents a new and different paradigm for understanding and experiencing both church and discipleship.  It involves a paradigm shift which is essential if local church congregations and denominations are to become a healthy and vibrant part of the emerging church of the twenty-first century.

In order to illustrate the facets of this paradigm shift, this paper will be divided into three sections.  Firstly, I will present a disciple-making theology of discipleship.  Secondly I will present a disciple-making theology of the church.  Finally I will describe some of the current research into growing vital churches, concluding that this research in fact supports an apostolic disciple-making paradigm of the church.

1.      A disciple-making theology of discipleship

The Great Commission encapsulates the primary call on the life of the Christian to make disciples, who in turn make more disciples.  When this is not happening, the church stagnates.  Similarly, congregations will not grow in vitality and numbers when their evangelism strategies are based on a passive philosophy of ‘come and join us’, rather than on an active one, ‘go into the world.’

The challenge which is therefore facing the church today is to reclaim the power of the Great Commission.  To do this involves two interrelated paradigms.  The Great Commission demands an apostolic paradigm of the church.  An apostle is one who is sent.  An apostolic church is therefore a church which is sent into the world.  This is the focus of the next section.  It also demands a disciple-making paradigm of discipleship, which emphasises multiplication of disciples as opposed to the mere addition of disciples.  This paradigm is the focus of the following discussion.

The Great Commission as the Christian’s Primary Call

Within the Gospel according to Matthew, it is recorded that before ascending into heaven, the risen Jesus gave his disciples a commission.  The commission was delivered in this way:

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.  And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age (Matthew 28:18-20).

While only Matthew presents the commission as succinctly and as clearly as this, each of the other Gospel writers record the Risen Jesus as sending his disciples into the world to make more disciples.  Jesus sent his disciples into the world to bear witness to what he taught them in word and action.  He called them to continue his ministry of proclaiming the kingdom of God. He knew that the only way in which this ministry would continue throughout the ages is by his disciples making disciples, who in turn make more disciples.  Jesus promised that he would be present with them through the empowering of the Holy Spirit to fulfil this ministry of disciple-making.

The Great Commission therefore reflects the primary call on the life of the Christian to make disciples, who are disciple-makers.  In other words, true discipleship is about multiplying disciples.  What then is a disciple?  How does one ‘make disciples’?  To understand the power of Jesus’ command to go and make disciples, the dynamic inherent in the term ‘disciple’ needs to be understood.  Only then can we appreciate what it means to ‘make’ one, and therefore capture what Jesus is commissioning us to do.

Multiplying Disciples

Within the New Testament, four key Greek words and their cognates are connected with the word ‘disciple’:  akoloutheo, follow; mathetes, learner, pupil, disciple; mimeomai, imitate, follow; and opiso, behind, after.  A study of these words reveals that Jesus’ call to discipleship was decisive, inclusive, permanent, and active.[1] A disciple is someone who responds to Jesus’ all-inclusive and unconditional call to follow him.  Disciples follows Jesus by learning and applying his teachings so that the values, attitudes and actions of Jesus are reflected in the disciple’s own life.  Ogden provides a succinct definition of disciple which encapsulates these characteristics.  He states that “a disciple is one who responds in faith and obedience to the gracious call of Jesus Christ.  Being a disciple is a lifelong process of dying to self, while allowing Jesus Christ to come alive in us.”[2]

However, a disciple is also someone who goes and makes disciples, who makes more disciples.  In other words, the command to ‘make disciples’ is not fulfilled unless those who have become disciples are discipled in such a way that they themselves are eventually making more disciples.  Thus, according to the Great Commission, disciple-making is about multiplying disciples, not adding disciples.  More often than not, disciple-making within the church has been presented as a process of addition.  This paper argues that the words of the Great Commission commands Christians to make disciples, who in turn make more disciples, multiplying the number of those who are followers of Christ.

Levels of Disciple-Making

Within the Church today, there are at least three different levels of understanding of disciple-making: by clergy, by leaders, by disciples making disciples.

1. The first is where professional clergy are the disciple-makers, while the laity are the disciples. 

There is an understanding within many mainline churches that the clergy make disciples and the laity live and serve as disciples.  While not always stated as explicitly as this, it is certainly implicit.  Loren Mead contends that the clergy-laity dichotomy is leftover from the church in the Roman Empire, subsequent to the conversion of Constantine in 313AD.  During this era it was assumed that people were part of the Church by birth, rather than by choice.  Ministry became the responsibility of the professional clergy.[3]

This level of understanding is disciple-making by addition- and a very limited addition at that.  Any member of the clergy will affirm that pastoral care of a congregation is an all-consuming job.  The more pastoral care a clergyperson gives to members of a congregation, the more they expect it from the clergyperson.  Therefore, the opportunity to add new disciples – ‘add’ being the operative word – is severely limited by time and the energy of the one or few.  Consequently it is no surprise that most clergy admit that only a small minority of unchurched people, with whom they have contact, become regular worshipping members of the congregation.

Despite its gross ineffectiveness, disciple-making by limited addition is still practised in many mainline church congregations today.  Hence, these congregations are declining rapidly.  Many are extinct and many more will be extinct within a short time.  Disciple-making by limited addition is ineffective because it does not reflect the heart of the Great Commission, which is a call to all Christians to be disciple-makers who multiply rather than add disciples.

2. The second is where all Christian leaders are seen as being called and equipped to make disciples. 

Rather than being limited to professional clergy, every leader makes disciples.  However, they are not necessarily producing disciples who in turn make more disciples.

Ephesians 4:11-12 are pivotal verses in support of this understanding:  “The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up the body of Christ.”  When clergy are seen as the disciple-makers, the role of the laity is to assist the clergy in their ministry.  This scripture conveys the reverse as being true.  Leaders are called to equip all Christians for their particular ministry.  Christians will minister according to the particular spiritual gifts given to them.  Ephesians 4, 1 Corinthians 12 and Romans 8 list some of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which are distributed to all believers as the Lord determines (1 Corinthians 12:6,11).

This understanding affirms the call of all Christians as ministers who exercise their particular spiritual gifts interdependently with others in the Church.  In this way the body of Christ is built up.  According to this understanding, disciple-making occurs when leaders empower disciples to exercise their spiritual gifts in ministry within the body.  Disciples are made as people discover and begin to exercise gifts of leadership, service, teaching, healing, music, hospitality, and so forth for the building up of the body.

While this understanding of disciple-making is significantly more effective than disciple-making by limited addition, it still falls short of the intent of the Great Commission.  According to this level of understanding, disciple-making is equated with helping Christians discover their spiritual gifts and releasing them into ministry.  People can be equipped for ministry, and use their spiritual gifts in the church, without intentionally making disciples themselves.  For example, through the ministry of equipping leaders, a Christian may discover he or she has the gift of teaching and a passion for ministry with children.  However, unless this person is intentionally seeking to make disciples by leading and nurturing more people into this ministry, then the church leadership is left to make more disciples.  Equipping leadership is vital for disciple-making, but by itself is insufficient.  It is still disciple-making by addition, which again falls short of the intent of the Great Commission.

3. The third level of understanding is where all Christians are called and equipped to make disciples, who make more disciples.  

At this level, leaders are called to equip people for ministry according to Ephesians 4:11-12.  Those who are released into ministry are given responsibility for making more disciples.  It is not only the responsibility of equipping leaders to make disciples, but the responsibility of all disciples to make disciples, who in turn make more disciples.  This is disciple-making by multiplication, and it reflects the full intent of the Great Commission.  This understanding incorporates the dynamic of reproduction as well as the dynamic of equipping.  Churches in which there is equipping leadership and disciples making disciples are vital, growing churches.

A Biblical Theology of Disciple-Making

1. The Disciple-Making Ministry of Jesus

Even a cursory reading of the Gospels, and particularly the synoptics, leads the reader to conclude that Jesus’ primary purpose was to proclaim and inaugurate the kingdom of God on earth.  He did this through teaching, through supernatural signs and through human acts which demonstrate the Kingdom qualities of righteousness and justice.  However, it is also clear from the synoptic Gospels that Jesus did not pursue the task of proclaiming the Kingdom of God in isolation.  Rather than miraculously impart knowledge and gifting to the multitudes that followed him, he chose to invest time into mentoring a small band of followers whom he personally selected to be his disciples.  Jesus’ strategy in doing this was obvious.  He intended his ministry to continue long after his ascension, therefore he devoted time to making disciples who would continue his ministry.  These disciples would in turn make more disciples and so on, in readiness for his return.

The Gospels also reveal the method that Jesus used in making disciples.  As stated previously, it began with a call – an invitation to follow him.  Jesus then taught them about the Kingdom of God and what it meant to be in relationship with God.  The disciples sat with him as he taught the crowds (Matthew 5:1 ff), and he spent time giving them specific teaching (e.g. Matthew 10:5 ff).  Jesus modelled the attitudes, behaviour, and actions that he wanted them to emulate.  He modelled a heart of compassion (Matthew 15:32-39; and Mark 6:34), and a ministry of healing, deliverance, and miracles (Matthew 8:14, 23-27, and 9:18-25).  Jesus taught them about prayer, including praying with a right attitude (Matthew 6:5-15), praying for the lost (Matthew 9:38), and persisting in prayer (Luke 1:1-13).  He modelled a life of prayer to them (Matthew 14:23; and Luke 6:12), and revealed his heart for the lost (Luke 15).  Jesus challenged wrong attitudes within them (Mark 9:33-37, and 10:35-45), and instructed them to be cleansed from sin (Matthew 15:1-20, and 23:1-36).

Included in this training, Jesus sent them out to do what they had observed him doing.  We read that Jesus “called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits . . . So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent.  They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them” (Mark 6:7,12,13; also Matthew 10:5-42; and Luke 9:1-6).  In a similar fashion, Luke records Jesus sending out seventy others in pairs, giving them a similar commission.  They also returned, rejoicing because the demons submitted to them (Luke 10:1-12, and 17-20).

As Jesus’ earthly ministry was drawing to a close, he began preparing his disciples to continue his ministry without his physical presence, but with the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.  Within his farewell discourses as recorded in John, chapters 13 to 17, Jesus assures his disciples that after he has gone, they will remain in full fellowship with him through the Holy spirit (14:15-17, and 15:26 f.).  People will know they are his disciples, as they continue to serve others in the way that he taught them (John 13:34,35).  The final phase in Jesus’ discipleship training is encapsulated in the Great Commission, as he sent them out to make disciples, as he had made disciples of them first (Matthew 28:18-20).

Jesus’ method of making disciples can be summarised as follows:  He called them to follow him; he taught, modelled, and ministered with them; he sent them out to minister to others and them come back and reflect with him; he prepared them to minister without him; and then sent them to go and make disciples of others, thus repeating the pattern that he modelled.  It was an approach of disciple-making by multiplication.

2. The Disciple-Making Ministry of the Early Church

The early church continued Jesus’ ministry of disciple-making by multiplication.  Following Pentecost, the apostles continued to minister in the way they had learned from Jesus.  They preached and confirming signs followed; consequently, the Lord added daily to their number those who were being saved (Acts 2:47).  However, the fact that the Christian Church still exists today bears witness to the fact that the disciples did more than only preach, teach, and heal.  The ministry of Jesus Christ continues today because the early disciples continued his ministry, and made disciples who continued Jesus ministry, as Jesus had commissioned them to do.  These disciples in turn made disciples, who in turn made more disciples.

It is not clear within the early chapters of the book of Acts which disciples are making disciples.  However we are told that the three thousand who heard Peter’s Pentecost sermon were baptised and began to devote themselves to “the apostles teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and prayers” (Acts 2:42).  We can assume that many of these new disciples began to make more disciples (Acts 2:47).  Consequently, there was a need to expand and diversify the leadership base with the commission of the seven (Acts 6).  Consequently, the number of disciples increased greatly (Acts 6:7).

Within later chapters of the book of Acts, we read that it was a disciple named Ananias who laid hands on Saul after his conversion (Acts 9:10, 17).  Someone had obviously discipled Ananias, who in turn continued to make disciples.  Early in Saul’s ministry he had disciples (Acts 9:25).  Barnabas and Saul disciple John Mark (Acts 12:25).  We read that together they “made many disciples” and “strengthened the souls of the disciples” in Lystra, Iconium and Antioch, and appointed elders in each church (Acts 14:21-23).  Paul also discipled Timothy (Acts 16:1), Erastus (Acts 19:22) and Titus (Titus 1:5).

The disciple-making relationship between Paul and Timothy closely follows the principles that Jesus laid down.  Just as Jesus invited his disciples to follow him, so Paul invited Timothy to accompany him as a follower of Jesus (Acts 16:1-3).  Paul modelled ministry to Timothy (Acts 16:5, 2 Timothy 3:10-11), taught him (1 Timothy 1:18, and 1 & 2 Timothy), and they shared together in ministry (Acts 16:4-5; Philippians 1:1; Colossians 1:1; 1 Thessalonians 1:1; and 2 Corinthians 1:1).  During this time, Paul taught Timothy the things that were needed for him to grow in maturity in the faith.  He encouraged him to be a person of prayer (1 Timothy 2:1-4), to continually be cleansed of sin (2 Timothy 2:20-26) and to study the Scriptures (2 Timothy 3:16-17).  Paul demonstrated to Timothy the same passion for the lost that Jesus demonstrated to his disciples (1 Timothy 1:12-16, and 2:1,4).  Just as Jesus sent his disciples out on their own when they were ready, so Paul did with Timothy (Acts 19:22; 1 Corinthians 4:7; 1 Thessalonians 3:2; and Philippians 2:19).

Most importantly, Paul sent Timothy to make disciples, who would in turn make more disciples.  Paul says to Timothy “what you have heard from me through many witnesses entrust to faithful people who will be able to teach others as well” (2 Timothy 2:2).  Like Jesus, Paul’s method of disciple-making was one of multiplying his ministry by building the kingdom in others, not being merely content to add names to the list of those saved.  Paul understood that it was imperative to reproduce himself in those who would follow after he had gone.

21st Century Disciples

In summary, a twenty-first century disciple of Jesus Christ will understand his or her primary call to be that of making disciples who are disciple-makers.  They will be men and women of prayer, who faithfully study the Scriptures, who grow in holiness through confessing and repenting of their sin.  They will have a heart for the lost, which will motivate them to bear witness to their faith in word and action, through which they will make disciples.  Twenty-first century disciples will learn from those who are discipling them how to share their faith with others.  They will work with their disciplers in discipling others, and under their guidance will be released to make disciples.

However, twenty-first century disciples cannot make disciples on their own.  They need to be part of a disciple-making church.  The post-Pentecost disciple-making occurred within the context of a growing Church, sent into the world.  It was an apostolic church.  Therefore, not only do disciples need to comprehend the full intent of the Great Commission, so does the Church.  The Church needs to understand the implication behind Jesus’ word ‘go’ (Matthew 28:18; and Mark 16:15)[4], and ‘send’ (John 20:21), and witness to the ends of the earth (Luke 24:48; and Acts 1:8).  This is the focus of the next section.

2.      A disciple-making theology of the church

The Great Commission as the Church’s Apostolic Calling

The phrase ‘make disciples’ is not the only important component within the words of the Great Commission as recorded in Matthew 28:18-20. The disciples are to ‘go’ and make disciples.  They were not commissioned to stay and make disciples, but to go.  They were ‘sent’ (John 20:21).  The disciples were only to wait long enough to receive the empowering of the Holy Spirit.  After being baptised with the Holy Spirit, they were to bear witness to Jesus to the ends of the earth (Luke 24:49; and Acts 1:5,8).

It is also important to emphasise that this commission was not given to the disciples individually, but collectively.  These eleven disciples were the founding nucleus of the world-wide disciple-making community, who would become known as the Church.  He purposefully established this ministry of disciple-making in the context of community.  The call is for the community of believers to both go forth and make disciples, as one community.  The vine and branches allegory of John 15 provides a conclusive reference to the coming community.  “The idea of many branches being knit together by being joined by one stem is a vivid illustration of corporateness.  Not only can no branch exist without being in living contact with the vine, but the branches have no relations to each other, except through the vine.”[5]

However, it is Jesus’ high priestly prayer in John 17 that provides the strongest evidence of his intention that his mission continue through his disciples as a unified community, not as individuals.  In his prayer to the Father, Jesus says:  “as you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world” (John 17:18).  Jesus’ prayer that the disciples be one (John 17:21-23) clearly emphasises the importance of community for the continuation of the mission of Jesus.

There is no doubt that the mission of Jesus to proclaim the kingdom of God in word, sign and action is to be continued by his disciples in the context of an interdependent community when we consider the evidence:  the commission to the twelve (Matthew 10:5-42; and Luke 9:1-6), the commission to the seventy (Luke 10:1-12), and the post-resurrection commission to the disciples (Matthew 28:18-20).

An Apostolic Church

This community of disciple-makers is therefore destined to be an apostolic community, which begins as an apostolic church – a ‘sent’ church.  The Greek word apostello means ‘to send’.  The word appears 131 times in the New Testament, 119 of which are found in the Gospels and Acts.[6]  It is the word used to describe Jesus ‘sending’ the twelve disciples on their mission to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal (Luke 9:2).  It is also used to describe the appointing of the seventy and ‘sending’ them off in pairs in mission (Luke 10:1,3).  The Greek word pempo which also means ‘send’ is used as a virtual synonym for appostello in John, Luke and Acts.[7]   The word apostolos is translated ‘apostle’.  Initially referring to the twelve apostles (Luke 6:13; and Matthew 10:2), it described being sent as an envoy or ambassador (2 Corinthians 5:20).  Later Paul, Barnabas and others are referred to as apostles (for example, Acts 14:14; and Romans 16:7)[8].

The Church of Jesus Christ is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets (Ephesians 2:20).  In other words, those who are called to the office of apostle (Ephesians 4:11) are not the only ones whom Jesus has sent into the world with a message.  Rather, apostles are to give leadership to the building of a ‘sent’ Church.  Jesus made this clear in the words of the Great Commission.  He did not say to the eleven disciples (also referred to as apostles in Matthew 10:2) “go, therefore and proclaim my message”.  Rather, he commissioned them to “go therefore and make disciples”.  In other words, he commissioned them to be an apostolic people.  The reason that the early Church congregations went a long way towards fulfilling Jesus’ challenge to be his witnesses to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8), was because the apostles began to build and lead an church.  The apostles went into the world, growing and multiplying a community of believers – believers who were sent, and went back into the world.

Jesus established the church as a disciple-making church.  A disciple-making church is an apostolic church.  The Great Commission therefore demands a multiplication paradigm of disciple-making, and it demands an apostolic paradigm of the church.  Despite the fact that many congregations of most Christian denominations throughout the world confess that they believe in the ‘one holy Catholic and apostolic church’, the majority of congregations of mainline churches do not understand what it means to be an apostolic church.  The following section describes three different levels of understanding of the church which exist today.  Following this is an apostolic theology of the church and a profile of the twenty-first century church.

The Purpose of the Church

Three levels of understanding about the purpose of the church parallel the three levels of undertstanding of disciple making.

1. The Church as Caring for the People

This understanding of the role of the local church as caring for the people parallels the understanding of the clergy as disciple-makers[9].  Within the Christendom Paradigm, the primary role of the local church is to care for the people who are part of it.  A church in which the primary role is caring for the people is a highly institutionalised church.  The more people in the congregation, the more clergy are needed, when the primary role of the clergy is to care for the people.  The more clergy that exist, the more administration is needed to maintain an acceptable level of care.  Administration is also needed to ensure that mission happens overseas or in remote and less fortunate parts of the country.  Missionaries need to be trained and funds needs to be raised.  The responsibilities, however are taken out of the hands of ‘ordinary’ Christians.

A church in which the primary role is to care for the people is in direct disobedience to the Great Commission, as this understanding restricts disciple-making to the sole responsibility of the clergy.  However, the institutional church structures ensure that the primary focus of their time and energy is on those already in the church.  A church in which the primary role is caring for the people is an inward focused church, which is in direct contrast to the emphasis of the Great Commission.

2. The Church as Building Up the Body

Declining church attendance, combined with the influence of the charismatic movement, contributed to a different level of understanding of the church.  A key part of this change is re-exegeting (or rediscovering) Ephesians 4:11-12:  “The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.”  Whereas the second level of understanding of disciple-making focused on the phrase “to equip the saints for the work of ministry”, this second level of understanding of the Church’s role focuses on the phrase “for building up the body of Christ.”

This represents a significant move from the first level of understanding.  It is the whole people of God, not the clergy who take responsibility for the building up of the body of Christ.  All Christians care for one another, and discover and exercise their spiritual gifts.  Paul’s analogy of the church as a body, as expounded in 1 Corinthians 12 and other places, plays a large part in the thinking behind this understanding.  In order to be a disciple-making and multiplying community of faith, the church must perceive itself as a body of believers, each with different gifts to be exercised together.

However, this second level of understanding is limited because it tends to see the building up of the body as an end in itself.  A congregation may encourage the exercise of the gifts of the Spirit by all members.  The fruits of this may be evidenced by creative and diverse worship experiences, and strong ministries for and with children, teenagers and young adults.  There may be a small groups ministry which caters for all ages, led by trained and gifted leaders.  However, these ministries are often developed with the implicit, or even explicit, assumption that this wonderful demonstration of the ‘building up of the body’ will automatically draw in potential disciples.

Churches which work at building up the body usually do experience seasons of numerical growth.  However, analysis of this growth usually reveals the majority of it as being Christians transferring from ‘less exciting’ churches to a church which ‘meets their needs’.  Such churches inadvertently send a message which says ‘come and join us’.  This message is contrary to the charge of the Great Commission to go into the world and make disciples.  Congregations in which the building up of the body is an end in itself fall short of the intent of the Great Commission.  Apart from the ‘end in itself’ perception, there are several other reasons why congregations, who embrace this level of understanding, fall short of the intent of the Great Commission.

Firstly, the understanding of the Church as body often exists in parallel with the clergy/laity paradigm.  That is, the clergy strongly encourage the discovery and exercise of spiritual gifts by all members of the congregation.  However, they are limited by denominational regulations, practices, and expectations of the people.

Secondly, there is often within this level of understanding a strong conviction that mission flows out of nurture.  Christian nurture, evidenced by teaching and pastoral care, is seen as primary.  Mission and evangelism is ineffective, unless the body is built up through solid teaching and care.  Biblical teaching and pastoral care are important and vital to the growth of the body.  However, if they are given priority over mission, then mission never happens.  For example, many Christians consider themselves to be ‘mature in faith’ (Ephesians 4:13) and do not see it as important to make disciples of others.

The more nurture and fellowship that people receive, the more they demand.  The more emphasis that is placed on nurture, whether by clergy or by small group leaders, the more people value having ‘their needs met’, and the less motivated they become to engage in mission.  Giving nurture priority over mission encourages an introversion which is at odds with the intent of the Great Commission, which commissions all believers to ‘go’ (Matthew 28:19; and Mark 16:15), to be ‘sent’ (John 20:21), and to be witnesses to the ends of the earth (Luke 24:48; and Acts 1:8).  The early church was obedient to this commission, giving mission first priority.  As they did this, they experienced nurture and fellowship like never before (Acts 2:41-18, 4:29-35).

3. The Church as Extending the Kingdom

The third level of understanding of the purpose of the church is to continue Jesus’ ministry of proclaiming the kingdom of God in word and action.  This is done in the spirit and pattern of the early church, of being sent into the world with the good news of the gospel.  The ethos of ‘building up the body’ is vital to this understanding of the church.  However, building up the body is not an end in itself, but a means to an end.  The end is to extend the kingdom of God by making disciples, who make disciples.

The kingdom of God is extended when the lost are found, and so searching for the lost is the primary focus of the church which is sent into the world.  Congregations which reflect this understanding are kingdom oriented, as opposed to church oriented.  Howard Snyder expresses it this way:

Church people think about how to get people into the church; Kingdom people think about how to get the church into the world.  Church people worry that the world might change the church; Kingdom people work to see the church change the world.[10]

A kingdom-oriented congregation is an apostolic congregation – a ‘sent’ congregation.  It reflects the full intent of the Great Commission – to go and make disciples.  The following section argues that the ministry of Jesus and the early church as recorded in the scriptures, articulates an apostolic theology of the church.  It is a theology of the church which affirms this level of understanding and purpose of the church.  It reflects the full intent of the Great Commission.

An Apostolic Theology of the Church

The ministry and teaching of Jesus lay the foundation for the apostolic ministry of the Church.  The book of Acts records the early church continuing this apostolic ministry of Jesus, in obedience to the Great Commission.  The apostle Paul, a key apostle and theologian of the early church, continues to develop this apostolic theology of the church, building on the teaching of Jesus.

1. The Apostolic Ministry of Jesus

By first sending out the twelve (Mark 6:7,12,13; Matthew 10:5-42; and Luke 9:1-6) and later the seventy (Luke 10:1-12, 17-20), Jesus not only demonstrates his equipping style of leadership, but role models an apostolic or ‘sending’ component to the ministry.   Just as the Father sent Jesus to the world for an apostolic mission, so Jesus sent his disciples to continue in that mission (John 17:18, 20:21).  In proclaiming the Gospel of the kingdom, Jesus did not remain within Nazareth, but moved throughout Galilee and beyond, eventually to Jerusalem.  His mission was apostolic.  Two features of this apostolic mission are consistently noted:  the proclaiming of the good news of the kingdom, and the miraculous signs which followed.

When Jesus sent the twelve and then the seventy, this pattern continued.  He sent them to proclaim the good news and to heal the sick and cast out demons (Luke 9:1-2, 6; and 10:9,17).  He commissioned his disciples to be a community of believers who would continue this apostolic mission.  They were commissioned to “go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19), to “go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation” with signs following (Mark 16:15-18), and to be ‘witnesses’ (Luke 24:48) “in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

Jesus’ apostolic ministry was reinforced with apostolic teaching.  This teaching is most clearly articulated in two parables concerning the sowing of seed (Mark 4:1-20, 26-29), and his statement about the harvest (Matthew 9:35-38; and Luke 10:2).  Matthew records the following:

Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and sickness.  When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.  Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to sent out labourers into his harvest’ (cf Luke 10:2).

Again the pattern of Jesus’ apostolic ministry is noted:  proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom, with signs following.  However, Jesus is lamenting the fact that there is a harvest of souls for the kingdom, but a shortage of workers to bring in the harvest.  He gives a call to prayer – to pray to God for workers, who will be sent into the harvest – first as Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and sent them on their mission (Matthew 10:1-42).

However, a harvest will not come unless seeds are planted.  Within Mark 4 Jesus tells a parable of a sower, who sows seed.  Some of the seed does not survive because it falls on the path, on rocky ground, and among thorns.  However that which fell on good soil brought forth grain, and grew up to yield thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold.  (Mark 4:3-8).  The seed is the word of God (Mark 4:14).  Mark then records Jesus’ Parable of the Growing Seed:

The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.  The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.  But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come  (Mark 4:26-29).

What is the clear message for disciples who are disciple-makers in an apostolic church?  The disciples are responsible for the sowing, God does the growing, and the disciples then come and bring in the harvest.  It is not possible to harvest without first sowing.  It is of no use sowing, unless harvesting also takes place to bring in the fruits of the sowing.  It is not the sower or the harvester’s role to grow the plants, as this is up to God.  The harvester’s role is to take whatever measures can be taken to ensure that the environment is maximised to release its growth potential.

2. The Apostolic Ministry of the Early Church

The day of Pentecost as recorded in Acts 2 marked the beginning of the fulfilment of the Great Commission.  With the coming of the Holy Spirit to give power to witness as promised (Luke 24:49; and Acts 1:8), the disciples responded to Jesus’ call to go into the world.  Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, began to preach the good news of the Gospel of the kingdom, and three thousand people became disciples.  These disciples were baptised, and then “devoted themselves to the apostle’s teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42).

The book of Acts is the record of the apostles continuing Jesus’ ministry to proclaim the Kingdom in word (e.g. Acts 2:14-36; 3:1 ff; 4:8 ff; and 8:4 ff), in sign (e.g. 3:1-10; 5:12-16; and 8:4-8), and in action (e.g. 4:32-37; and 6:1-4).  Jesus’ commission to ‘go and make disciples’ is obeyed (e.g. Acts 2:37-47; 6:1-7; 8:9 ff; 10:1-44; and 13:1 ff).  Peter and the other apostles moved throughout the region, preaching the gospel with signs following.  They were fulfilling the apostolic commission that Jesus gave them.  They were apostles (apostolos), sent by Jesus to continue his ministry of extending the kingdom of God.

The early church was not only a church with apostles, it was an apostolic church.  The apostles, who were sent in obedience to the Great Commission, not only made disciples, but disciples who were disciple-makers.  The record of the early church supports this:

That day a severe persecution began against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout the countryside of Judea and Samaria . . .Now those who were scattered went from place to place, proclaiming the word.  (Acts 8:1, 4).

As it was with Jesus and the apostles, the disciples of the apostles were sent to continue Jesus’ ministry of proclaiming the kingdom, and signs followed.  The teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread, prayer, worship and service, and care (Acts 2:37-47, 4:23-37) were not ends in themselves, but responses to the apostles being sent.  They continued the mission of Jesus, going into the world to make more disciples, who were equipped to make more disciples.

3. Paul’s Apostolic Theology of the Church

Upon his conversion, Saul, who later became known as Paul, became one of the most significant apostles of the early church.  In his apostolic ministry of teaching, he reinforced Jesus’ apostolic teaching, thus developing an apostolic theology of the church.

Building up the body

As previously stated, Paul affirmed that God gifts leaders for the role of equipping the whole people of God for the work of ministry.  Through this equipping, the body of Christ is built up  (Ephesians 4:11-12).  It is not the people who do the building, but Christ (see Matthew 16:18).  Paul states that the church receives its life and authority from Christ as the head of the Church (Ephesians 4:15-16).   The church is totally dependant on Christ for its direction and life.  This truth is affirmed by Jesus’ statement when he says that he is the true vine and we are the branches (John 15:1-11).  He says, “apart from me you can do nothing” (verse 5).

Also, the individual Christians, who are members of the church (the body), are interdependent, rather than dependent on each other.  In 1 Corinthians12:12-30, it is clear that each member of the body is assigned a particular gift (charis) to be exercised in mutual giving and receiving, for completing tasks within the fellowship, and in fulfilling its commission to proclaim the good news to the world.

Clearly then, Paul teaches that the individual members of the church, in and of themselves, do not constitute the whole.  Rather, the unity of the body, and the life of the body comes from Christ himself:  “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.  For in the one Spirit we were all baptised into one body”  (1 Corinthians 12:12 f.).[11]

This understanding of the church, as a living, dynamic organism, holding in tension unity and diversity, illustrates the disciple-making call of the church.  Disciples cannot be effective disciple-makers on their own, because they do not possess all the gifts, as Christ did.  However, disciple-making happens in the church, as disciples together witness and service Christ in the world, and subsequently fruitful disciple-making develops.  This does not infer that individual disciples cannot lead others into a relationship with Jesus Christ.  However, the ongoing nurture and mentoring of a disciple, who becomes a disciple-maker, is made more effective when it is provided by more than one disciple.  It is within the context of the church–the body of Christ–that holistic disciple-making occurs.

Through the equipping of the saints for ministry, God releases the gifts of the Holy Spirit, through which Christ builds the body.  Paul gives illustration to this in his statement:  “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth” (1 Corinthians 3:6).  In saying this, Paul reinforces Jesus teaching on the parable of the growing seed (Mark 4:21-25).

Extending the kingdom

Paul’s teaching on the Church in Ephesians also clearly emphasises that the building up of the body is not an end in itself.  He states that leaders are given to equip the saints for ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ “until all of us come to the unity of faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13).  The building up of the body is for the purposes of extending the kingdom of God.  This is why Paul tells that Corinthian Christians that the have been reconciled to Christ, and have been given a ministry of reconciliation.  They are to be ambassadors for Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17-21).  This is why he told the Philippian Christians that it is through God at work within them, enabling them to will and work for his pleasure, that they will shine like stars in the world (Philippians 2:13,15).  This is why Paul, in his discipling of Timothy, urged him to pray for everyone, as God desires everyone to be saved (2 Timothy 2:4).

Within these words we hear Paul’s apostolic heart for the church.  This is further reinforced in his teaching in chapter one of the letter to the Ephesians.  We read that Jesus is not only head of the Church, but head of all things:  “And he has put all things under his (Christ’s) feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him which fills all in all” (Ephesians 1:22-23).  God has “a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him (Christ), things in heaven and things on earth” (Ephesians 1:10).  God’s plan and desire is that everyone is saved (2 Timothy 2:4).  He does not want “any to perish, but all to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).  God’s plan is to be fulfilled through the church, which is to “fully reveal Christ’s headship over the whole created order.”[12]

In commenting on the significance of Ephesians 1:22-23, Frank Laubach makes this statement:  “When Christ was here on earth, he was limited to performing his ministry in one place and at one time . . . He healed whoever he touched, but his touch was necessarily limited by time and space . . . As the body of Christ, the Church is Christ’s multiplied hands, feet, voice and compassionate heart.”[13]  In other words, as the body of Christ, the Church multiplies disciples who multiply the Kingdom ministry of Jesus.  The Kingdom ministry of Jesus is extended when the church functions as an apostolic church–a body of interdependent disciple-makers sent into the world to make disciples, who in turn, make more disciples.

The Great Commission Revisited

It was concluded in the first section that the Great Commission demands the primary call of the Christian to be a disciple who is a disciple-maker.  This call requires a multiplication paradigm of disciple-making.  This second section now concludes that the Great Commission also demands an apostolic church – a church sent into the world, with leadership that equips people for an interdependent ministry of disciple-making.  Through this, the body is built up and the kingdom of God is extended, thus continuing the ministry of Jesus in the world.  This requires the church to adopt an apostolic paradigm.

The multiplication paradigm of disciple-making demands leaders who equip and multiply.  The Apostolic paradigm of the church demands apostolic leadership.  Leadership which is equipping, multiplying and apostolic is life-giving leadership.  It demands a disciple-making and sending approach.  When this occurs, the power of the Great Commission is restored and the spirit of Jesus and the early church is reflected in the life of the twenty-first century church.

3.                Current research into vital churches

Current research confirms that vital growing churches are those which have reclaimed an apostolic disciple-making vision.

Episcopal Priest and President of the Alban Institute, Loren Mead, published a book in 1991 called The Once and Future Church.[14]  Mead challenges the mainstream church as continuing to operate within a Christendom Paradigm dating back to Constantine, whereas we live, work, and witness within a Mission Paradigm.  In 1996 he published another book in which he identifies five challenges for the church if it is to effectively transition into a mission paradigm:  (1) to transfer the ownership of the Church from clergy to laity, (2) to find new structures to carry our faith, (3) to discover a passionate spirituality, (4) to feed the world’s need for community, and (5) to become an apostolic people.[15]

In 1993 United Methodist Minister and Director of 21st Century Strategies, William Easum, published a book titled, Dancing with Dinosaurs:  Ministry in a Hostile and Hurting World.[16]  As a Church Consultant who travels some 300 days of the year, Easum observes first hand many churches in the United States.  He concludes that churches effectively ministering into the twenty-first century are churches where:  (1) small groups replace programs, (2) pastors equip persons, rather than do ministry, (3) effective worship is culturally relevant, (4) buildings are not important, and (5) weekday ministries overshadow the importance of Sunday.  In addition to this, he lists three essential ingredients:  (1) biblical integrity, (2) evangelism, and (3) quality.

George Hunter III, who is a professor at Ausbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky, surveyed nine churches within the United States whom he identified as being apostolic congregations.  Some of these churches were independent, while others were part of a mainstream denomination.  Hunter states that apostolic congregations are different from traditional congregations in fifty ways, but identifies ten distinctive features which account for about 80 percent of the difference, those being:  (1) grounding believers and seekers in Scripture, (2) disciplined, and earnest in prayer, with an expectation and experience God’s action in response, (3) understanding, affinity, and compassion for the lost, unchurched, unchurched people, (4) obedience to the Great Commission–more as warrant or privilege, than mere duty, (5) a motivationally sufficient vision for what people, as disciples, can become, (6) adaption to the language, music, and style of the target population’s culture, (7) willingness to work had to involve everyone, believers and seekers, in small groups, (8) advocation of the involvement of all Christians in lay ministries for which they are gifted, (9) regular pastoral care of members through regular spiritual conversation with someone who is gifted for shepherding ministry, and (10) engagement in multiple ministries to unchurched people.[17]

The consistent findings of this research is obvious.  However, there are two expressions of current research which have considerable impact throughout the church at present.  The first is undertaken by C. Peter Wagner[18], into what he calls the New Apostolic Reformation.  The second is undertaken by Christian Schwarz[19], into what he calls Natural Church Development.  Findings of this research are consistent with those above.  However, they clearly reveal a way of reclaiming the power of the Great Commission through recapturing the apostolic vision of the church and reinforcing a disciple-making by multiplication paradigm, respectively.

The New Apostolic Reformation

Wagner contends that the mainline church crisis exists because their institutional structures represent “old wineskins”[20].  Jesus said:  “Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; otherwise the skins burst, and the wine is spilled; and the skins are destroyed; but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved” (Matthew 9:17).  Since Christ began building his church 2000 years ago, it has changed many times in the way that it has grown.  With each change, a new wineskin was required.  The growing vital churches, which are independent churches, members of apostolic networks, and congregations within mainline denominations, are part of a new wineskin being formed.  Wagner calls this new wineskin the New Apostolic Reformation, and local churches whose ministries embrace this as new apostolic churches.

The expression “new reformation” is not new.  Greg Ogden[21] and Lyle Schaller[22] recently published books titled The New Reformation, and William Beckham authored The Second Reformation.[23]  The first reformation is the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century.  This reformation was largely theological, whereas the new reformation is not so much a reformation of faith, but of practice.  Wagner states that “this current reformation is not so much against corruption and apostasy as it is against irrelevance.[24]  The word ‘apostolic’ is used because churches which identify with this movement give a high priority to reaching out in effective ways to the unchurched.  Many churches, who identify with this movement, also recognise the New Testament office of apostle as alive and well in the church today.

In observing new apostolic churches, Wagner identifies nine common characteristics, as follows.[25]

New Name.  The name of new apostolic churches is more likely to reflect the vision of the church, or the region or community in which it is situated, rather than the denomination.

New Authority Structure.  An indispensable quality within new apostolic churches is strong, visionary leadership.  Pastors of these churches are perceived as the leaders of the church; whereas in most traditional denomination churches, the parish council or board of deacons lead, and the pastor is an employee.

New Leadership Training.  Within new apostolic churches, all members are encouraged to discover their spiritual gifts and use them for ministry, while leaders are mentored and trained through seminars or conferences, or in-house bible schools.

New Ministry Focus.  Many denominational churches are heritage driven, with their ministry philosophy being determined by their historical antecedents.  Conversely, new apostolic churches are vision driven, being more concerned about where God is leading in the future, than how we lead in the past.

New Worship Style.  Contemporary, culturally relevant worship is a key characteristic of new apostolic churches.

New Prayer Forms.  A fervent and uncompromising commitment to prayer is another essential dynamic within new apostolic churches.  Days of prayer and fasting, prayer walks, and prayer summits will be scheduled on a regular basis.

New Financing.  Whereas most mainline denominations are facing a serious funding crisis, new apostolic churches have relatively few financial problems.

New Outreach.  The primary focus of the new apostolic church is reaching out to the lost and hurting.  Focused, strategic evangelistic ministries, ministries of care and compassion, and new church plants all feature prominently on their agenda.

New Power Orientation.  Not all new apostolic churches consider themselves to be charismatic, nevertheless they display an openness to the Holy Spirit and affirm that all of the New Testament spiritual gifts are in operation today.  Unlike many mainline denominational churches, they encourage ministries of healing, deliverance, spiritual warfare, prophecy, and so forth.

There is an obvious correlation between Wagner’s characteristics and those identified by Mead, Easum and Hunter III.  Even more significant is the correlation between the characteristics of the New Testament apostolic churches, as described in this chapter:  strong apostolic leadership; people sent into the world to proclaim the Gospel, with signs following; devotion to the apostles teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread and prayers, and the raising up new leaders.  It appears as though the profile of a twenty-first century apostolic church includes the characteristics identified by Wagner and others.

Natural Church Development

From 1994-96 Christian A. Schwarz, head of the Institute for Church Development in Germany, undertook what he claims to be the most comprehensive study ever conducted on the causes of church growth.  He surveyed more than one thousand churches in thirty-two countries on five continents.  Schwarz says:

To my knowledge, our research provides the first world-wide scientifically verifiable answer to the question, “What church growth principles are true, regardless of culture and theological persuasion?”  We strove to find a valid answer to the question “What should each church and every Christian do to obey the Great Commission in today’s World?”[26]

Published in 1996, Schwarz’s research identifies eight ‘quality characteristics’ of growing churches:  (1) empowering leadership, (2) gift-oriented ministry, (3) passionate spirituality, (4) functional structures, (5) inspiring worship, (6) holistic small groups, (7) need-oriented evangelism, and (8) loving relationships.[27]

Schwarz states his conviction that many Christians are sceptical of church growth because to them it presents techniques which seek to achieve church growth using human abilities, rather than God’s means.  In contrast to this, Schwarz presents a different approach to church growth, which he calls ‘natural’ or ‘biotic’ church development.  “‘Biotic’ implies nothing less that a rediscovery of the laws of life (in Greek, bios).  The goal is to let God’s growth automatisms flourish, instead of wasting energy on human-made programs.”[28]

As discussed earlier in this chapter, Schwarz’s approach recaptures Jesus’ teaching in the Parable of the Growing Seed (Mark 4:26-29).  That is, disciples do the sowing and the reaping, but God does the growing.  Schwarz’s understanding of church growth affirms the Church as a living, dynamic organism, rather than an institution; thus, his understanding reflects Paul’s theology of the church, as described earlier in this chapter.  He sees growth and development resting in principles which promote the health of churches.  “Effective churches are healthy churches; healthy churches are growing churches–they make more and better disciples.”[29]

If, as Jesus and Paul emphasise, it is God that does the growing, what specifically can disciples do within the sowing that prepares for God’s growth to be released?  The real values of Schwarz’s research is that he addressees this very question.  He identifies ‘biotic’ principles which facilitate God’s growth.  Three of these principles are particularly relevant to the paradigm of disciple-making by multiplication.

Interdependence.  This principle affirms Paul’s teaching of the church as a body consisting of interdependent members.  Church structures and practices should encourage an interdependent relationship between each of the various ministries within the congregation.

Multiplication.  The principle of multiplication applies to all areas of church life:  “Just as the true fruit of an apple tree is not an apple, but another tree; the true fruit of a small group is not a new Christian, but another group; the true fruit of a church is not a new group, but a new church; the true fruit of a leader is not a follower, but a new leader.”[30]

Functionality.  This principle asks whether the ministry is bearing fruit, in terms of both quality and quantity.  This may appear to be obvious, however, numerous churches have ministries that go on ad infinitum without this type of periodic evaluation process.

When the eight quality characteristics are considered in light of these biotic principles, it is the adjectives rather than the nouns that are important.  For example, when the multiplication principles are applied to leadership, they empower the leadership.  When the principle of interdependence is applied to ministry, it becomes gift-oriented ministry.  When the principle of functionality is applied to a congregation’s organisational structure, it becomes a functional structure.  The application of these biotic principles therefore provide a healthy environment for an apostolic disciple-making church to develop and grow.[31]

Conclusion:  a profile of the twenty-first century church

While taking totally different approaches, Wagner’s New Apostolic Reformation and Schwarz’s Natural Church Development each affirm an apostolic paradigm of the church and an multiplication paradigm of disciple-making.  Each of these is required to restore the power of the Great Commission.  Neither Wagner’s nor Schwarz’s research reflects exclusive indicators of healthy, growing churches.  However, based on biblical and theological evidence, and the sustained growth of some contemporary churches, it appears as though Wagner’s and Schwarz’s research describe characteristics of apostolic disciple-making congregations..  Thus, apostolic disciple-making congregations reflect the church of the twenty-first century.  This is a church which embodies the full intent of the Great Commission.

A mission strategy for an apostolic disciple-making church will therefore reflect the presuppositions of the apostolic paradigm of the church.  It will emphasise a primary purpose of being sent into the community.  The life of the congregation will reflect an interdependent body of believers, equipped for the ministry of sowing and reaping the harvest which God will grow.  The disciple-making strategy will reflect the presuppositions of the multiplication paradigm of disciple-making.

It will emphasise the primary call of each member of the church to be disciple-makers at every level of church life.  The disciple-making strategy of Jesus and Paul will be implemented, ensuring growth in maturity of disciples, who make more disciples.  The lost will be found.  The sick will be healed.  The demonised set free.  The Kingdom will be extended.  And God will be glorified.

References

[1]Colin Brown ed., The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (Exeter, United Kingdom:  Paternoster Press, 1986), 480-494.

[2] Greg Ogden, Discipleship Essentials (Downers Grove, Illinois:  Intervarsity Press, 1998), 24.

[3] Loren Mead.  The Once and Future Church (Washington DC:  Alban Institute.  1991).  13-22.

[4] The Greek for this word ‘go’ literally means ‘having gone.’

[5] ibid., 723.

[6] E. von Eicken and H. Lindner, “Apostello”, New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology Volume 1, ed. Colin Brown (Exeter, United Kingdom:  Paternoster Press, 1986), 128.

[7] ibid.

[8] D. Muller, “Apostello”, The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology Volume 1, ed. Colin Brown (Exeter, United Kingdom:  Paternoster Press, 1986), 130.

[9] The understanding of clergy as disciple-makers is described in Chapter One.

[10] Howard Snyder, Liberating the Church (Downers Grove, IL:  Intervarsity Press, 1983), 11.

[11] A detailed discussion of this is found in S. Wibbing’s article “Body” in The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology Volume 1, ed. Colin Brown (Exeter United Kingdom:  Paternoster Press, 1986), 232-38.

[12] Synder, Liberating the Church, 59.

[13] Greg Ogden, The New Reformation (Grand Rapids, Michigan:  Zondervan, 1990), 32.

[14] Mead, The Once and Future Church.

[15] Loren Mead., Five Challenges for the Once and Future Church (Washington DC:  Alban Institute, 1996).

[16] William Easum, Dancing with Dinosaur (Nashville Tennessee:  Abingdon Press, 1993).

[17] George Hunter III, Church for the Unchurched  (Nashville, Tennessee:  Abingdon, 1996), 29-32

[18] C. Peter Wagner, Churchquake  (Ventura, California:  Regal, 1999).

[19] Christian Schwarz, Natural Church Development (Carol Stream, Illinois:  Churchsmart, 1996).

[20] Wagner, Churchquake, 15-16.

[21] Ogden, The New Reformation.

[22] Lyle Schaller., The New Reformation (Nashville Tennessee:  Abingdon Press, 1995).

[23] William Beckham,  The Second Reformation (Houston TX:  Touch Publications, 1997).

[24] C. Peter Wagner, Churchquake 36-37.

[25] C. Peter Wagner, The New Apostolic Churches (Ventura California:  Regal, 1998), 18-25.

[26] Christian Schwarz, Natural Church Development, 27.

[27] ibid., 22-37.

[28] ibid., 7.

[29] Robert E. Logan, Beyond Church Growth (Grand Rapids, Michigan:  Fleming H. Revell, 1989), 17.

[30] Schwarz, Natural Church Development, 68.

[31] For a more detailed discussion of the eight quality characteristics and the biotic principles, refer to Schwarz, Natural Church Development, 22-82.

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The Kingdom Within, by Irene Alexander

Church Models: Integration or Assimilation? by Jeannie Mok

Women in Ministry, by Sue Fairley

Women and Religions, by Susan Hyatt

Disciple-Makers, by Mark Setch

Ministry Confronts Secularisation, by Sam Hey

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Christian leadership, Christian ministry

Women In Ministry, by Sue Fairley

by Geoff 20 May 2012 No Comments

Women In Ministry

by Sue Fairley

 

 

Dr Sue Fairley, (Ed.D., Griffith University), wrote as the Principal of Trinity Theological College in the Uniting Church in Queensland, Australia

 

Renewal Journal 18: Servant Leadership – PDF

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Women in Ministry, by Sue Fairley:
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An article in Renewal Journal 18: Servant Leadership:

Cultural images do not change easily,
especially those weighted with the aura of sacred tradition.
(Carroll, Hargrove and Lummis, 1983:ix)

If there is one tradition that is heavily weighted with the “aura of sacred tradition”, it must surely be leadership within the church and whether women should be part of that leadership – especially in the ordained ministry.

The distribution of positions of formal leadership in the church has become the focus of concern for many women in recent decades.  Women have sought – and in some cases obtained – access to the ordained ministry, a leadership position occupied almost entirely by men during most of church history.

Pentecostal and Charismatic women often demonstrated a biblical recovery of women’s leadership in ministry, both as individuals and also in shared ministry leadership either with a husband or in a team.  Aimee Semple McPherson led the largest pentecostal church in the world in the 1920s, built the 5,000 seat Angelus Temple, founded the Foursquare denomination, and raised huge financial and material support for people during the depression and World War II.  Kathryn Kuhlman pioneered a new era in healing evangelism from the 1950s.  Janet Lancaster, known affectionately as Mother Lancaster, the first Pentecostal pastor in Australia, founded Good News Hall in Melbourne and published Good News for 25 years from 1910.  Women have pioneered church planting and leadership in missions for over a century, including in Pentecostal missions.

Pentecostal/Charismatic attitudes

To pick up the perspective of Pentecostal/Charismatic Christianity I would like to refer to an unpublished report that Susan Hyatt presented to Hyatt International Ministries in Dallas, Texas in March 2001.  She suggests that there is no uniform trend in terms of where women in Pentecostal/Charismatic Christianity are heading.  Some Pentecostal/Charismatic women are embracing a traditional, subordinate role.

But many others are unwilling to be disobedient to the Holy Spirit by obeying the dictates of distorted Christianity.  We are discovering that Jesus taught the equality of men and women in every respect, including substance and value, privilege and responsibility, function and authority.  We are uncovering the truth of biblical equality and we are proclaiming it far and wide by every possible means.  Nevertheless, we are not driven by such a cause; rather we are seeking to be led by the Spirit in all we do.

Hyatt then shared her own experience as a Pentecostal/Charismatic American woman:

“I enjoy unfettered freedom and opportunity to advance the truth of biblical equality.  Pentecostal/Charismatic women know in their hearts by the indwelling Holy Spirit that they are equal with men in terms of substance and value, privilege and responsibility, function and authority.  However, because of cultural and religious baggage, most do not know this truth in their heads.  This discrepancy between head and heart is the cause of many struggles for Pentecostal/Charismatic women.  My job is to give the biblical truth that brings harmony between the heart and the head.   My book In the Spirit we are Equal presents an historical and biblical argument for gender equality.  Others are also advancing this truth among Pentecostal/Charismatic.  For example, the leading periodical for women in the movement in America is Spirit-Led Women.  You will notice a recent lead article “Ten Lies the Church has told Women” by a leading male Pentecostal/Charismatic editor and writer Lee Grady.  This is an example of an encouraging partnership that is developing amongst some Pentecostal/Charismatic men and women to bring about biblical equality for women.

In general we are seeing two important advances.  Slowly we are seeing a release from gender-defined roles for women to gift-defined living.  And we are seeing a greater sense of egalitarian partnership between men and women.  We are seeing an increase in Pentecostal/Charismatic women taking leadership positions in various areas such as communications and the arts, education  (including theological education), business and technology, law and government.  Pentecostal/Charismatic women are also increasing their influence in dealing with domestic abuse, pastoral counselling and medical concerns” (Hyatt 2001).

Traditional church attitudes

The Uniting Church in Australia has practised women’s ordination since its inception in 1977.  Acceptance of women’s ordination is, in fact, one of the “bases of union”, indicating that congregations will be accepted into the denomination only if they endorse women’s ordination.  Persons being ordained within the Uniting Church must also accept that principle.

However, other denominations are still debating the issue and it is causing a great deal of controversy.  Before I deal with some of the issues which face women in ministry today, I will explore some of the issues that have been identified in the literature.

The first issue is leadership and gender.  In the past two decades the struggle to clarify the foundations for effective leadership in the church has been greatly complicated by the overlay of gender.  When social scientists write about differences between men and women, popular culture presumes that these can be translated into gender-based leadership differences.  The social science writings by scholars such as Mary Belenky and Carol Gilligan have focussed on the ways in which women differ from men in modes of understanding, psychological development, career paths, and frameworks for ethical decision-making.  For many it is a relatively simple leap to presume that gender-based leadership differences exist.  From that assumption they then work to develop gender-based theories of leadership.

Roels (1997) has explored a variety of gender-based theories of leadership and she believes that we “limit the flexibility of our responses to changing circumstances when we, first of all, label leadership styles as female or male…Every leader, whether male or female should be encouraged to build a full range of leadership strategies and responses…Both male and female leaders must struggle to find a biblical vision for leadership that diligently avoids the pitfalls of gender-based leadership (p.53).  This biblical vision is expressed in Scripture passages such as 1 Corinthians 12 where Paul identifies administrative ability as a specific spiritual gift which is not restricted by gender.

A second significant issue is the controversy over women’s ordination which came to the fore in the last half of the twentieth century.  This has occasioned increasing questions that have to do with women’s roles, female character, and sexuality.  However, it was not always like that.  Women’s leadership in Christianity is a dramatic and complex story.

Jesus himself challenged the social convention of his day and addressed women as equals.  Many women were prominent members of his group.  During the first and second centuries, when congregations met in homes, women were prominent as leaders.   However, by the third century, the processes of institutionalisation gradually transformed the house churches, with their diversity of leadership functions, into a political body presided over by a monarchical bishop.  This spelled the beginning of the end for women in church leadership.

Over the next two centuries, the legitimacy of women’s leadership roles was fiercely contested.  Opponents of women clergy appealed to a gender ideology that divided society into two domains – the polis (city), a male domain – and the oikos (household), a female domain.  This system gave a great deal of power to women in the household while attempting to segregate them from public, political life.  This meant that women exercising leadership in churches were usurping male prerogatives.  As the church became increasingly institutionalised during the third and fourth centuries, these arguments carried greater weight (Torjesen, 1993).

Understanding why and how women, once leaders in the Jesus movement and in the early church, were marginalised and scapegoated as Christianity became the state religion is crucial if women are to reclaim their rightful, equal place in the church today.

As the architectural space in which Christians worshipped became a more public space, and as the models for leadership were drawn increasingly from public life, women’s leadership became more controversial.  Because the public-versus-private gender ideology restricted women’s activities in public life, the new leaders of the church were not as comfortable with women’s leadership in the churches.

From the fourth century to the twelfth-century councils struggled to impose celibacy on the clergy.  As Christianity became a state religion and adopted the attitudes toward gender roles of Greco-Roman society, fewer women held church offices.  During the medieval period the papacy’s struggle to assert its authority over the clergy let to a particularly perverse and destructive construction of female sexuality.  Through the mechanism of the Inquisition a theory of sexuality was created that demonised sexuality be attributing the power of sexuality to demons.  The resulting persecution fell more heavily on women than on men (Torjesen, 1993).

The struggle to impose celibacy on the clergy took more than six centuries!  By the sixteenth century there was widespread consensus that the monastic system, which had formed a basic structural element of medieval society, had become corrupt.  There was widespread disillusionment with monastic life, but out of this disillusionment there evolved a new theology of sexuality.  Its most colourful proponent was Martin Luther, who initiated the German Reformation in the early 1500’s with a series of tracts addressed to the common people.

Luther’s argument was based on Genesis 1:27 which states that male and female were created in the image of God.  If God created the bodies of male and female, then the body is good because it is a bearer of God’s image.  And if the body is good, then sexuality is good (Schick, 1958).  When Luther reflected on Genesis 1:28, God’s command to “be fruitful and multiply”, he understood that not only was sexuality good, but, more than that, it was a divine ordinance.  Therefore, Luther argued, vows of celibacy were contrary to the will of God and priests should be allowed to marry.

In the end, Luther’s ideas on marriage and child-rearing led to the formation of a new denomination and the split from the Roman Catholic Church.  The teachings of the Reformers on sexuality were radical and liberating for women.  However, marriage was still seen as patriarchal and women were still deemed inferior to man by nature.  When the Protestant reformers, (as they came to be known), abolished monasteries, they enshrined in its place the sanctity of marital sexuality.  The new ideal of womanhood became domestic womanhood.  The authority and the autonomy of the nun following the religious vocation were undermined.  The only true religious role open to women of the Reformation was as a helpmate to a man (Torjesen, 1993).

Major cultural shifts

The reaffirmation of sexuality by the reformers did not restore women to a position of equality with men.  It would take many more centuries for this inequality to be challenged.  In fact, it was not until the 1960’s and 70’s that many of these issues resurfaced and, for the first time, were really challenged.  Why did it occur then, and why did so many women choose to enter the ordained ministry as well as many other traditionally male occupations?

Carroll et. al. (1983) suggest that: “What made the 1970’s watershed years was the occurrence of major social and cultural shifts following World War II, especially during the 1960’s, making it possible for women to consider (or press for) ordained ministerial status as a way of responding to God’s call” (p.8).   It is hard to believe that only in the 1970’s did significant numbers of women feel that they were called by God to be ordained.  More likely, many women down through the years have experienced a call to the ministry, but have found the opportunity to respond by becoming ordained blocked to them.  When ordination was not possible, many of these women expressed their calling to ministry as lay volunteers or in the church-related occupations that allowed women to participate.

Not only has the climate changed to make it possible for women to consider these traditionally all-male professions, but there has also been a major shift in attitudes about the female role.  Prior to the 1970’s, and especially in the 1950’s and 60’s, a woman’s role was to be a good wife and mother.  Now it is totally acceptable for women to have both careers and families.

A final major shift that has made it possible for more women to enter the ordained ministry is the sharply declining birth rate.  Since the early 1960’s this has allowed women the freedom to explore career options that childrearing responsibilities previously precluded.  This has meant that many women pursue ministry studies in their mid to late thirties and forties.

However, the shift that has allowed women to respond to a call to ordained ministry does not guarantee that other clergy will accept women into the profession.  Neither does it guarantee that they will experience theological education in the same way as their male colleagues.

Women and Theological Education

Getting denominations to accept the ordination of women was one thing but changing the way women experienced theological education was a different matter.  This is another significant issue.   A quick review of the literature in this field will demonstrate this.  In 1980 the Cornwall Collective, composed of women who were working in ongoing projects within theological education, published a book titled Your Daughters shall Prophesy: Feminist Alternatives in Theological Education, outlining feminist criticisms of theological education and proposing some basic revisions, including some alternative forms of theological education.  The Cornwall Collective criticized theological education for its division of theory and practice, its organization of disciplines, its reliance on claims of “objectivity”, and its use of the model of university education, which lack any concern for integration or spirituality.  They called for theological education to be more holistic, more aware of its political nature, more community-oriented.

Five years later, the Mud Flower Collective produced God’s Fierce Whimsy, a book dedicated to “help” theological education, because the authors of the book found that theological colleges are “arenas in which lukewarm truth and uninspired scholarship are peddled” (p.204).  The Mud Flower Collective offers much the same analysis of theological education as does the Cornwall Collective (Chopp, 1995).

The difference between the 1980 Cornwall Collective and the 1985 Mud Flower Collective could be interpreted as revealing increasing frustration at the inability to get feminist issues heard within theological education.  This increased frustration, suggests Chopp (1995), identifies as problematic the very same issues that the Cornwall Collective found prohibitive to good theological education.  The Mud Flower Collective cites such issues as the politics of education, the role of cultural pluralism, the standards of excellence, the relation of theory and praxis, the role of community, the claims of validity in scholarship, and the structure of theological reflection as the problems for women in theological education.

Thus, the problems of women and for women in theological education are not merely women’s historical lack of participation, but how theological education is defined, formed and structured.  Once a critical mass of women appeared in theological education, problems of the structure, purpose, and nature of theological education became more and more evident (Chopp, 1993).

This critical mass of women began to appear in many theological colleges around the world in the 1980s.  As Chopp (1993) points out, once the students in theological education were white, young, and male, largely from working or middle-class backgrounds.  Raised in the church, many aspired to serve God and become religious practitioners.  Now these subjects are few and far between in our theological colleges.  Many of the subjects today are women and men who are older and who have not been raised in the church.  Lifestyle differences, theological pluralism, and cultural diversity are apparent in the student body of most theological colleges.

Women in theological colleges discovered very quickly that they were affirmed when they indicated a calling toward areas of service that parallel those assigned to the female by Western culture, while they were gently discouraged when they indicated they had other goals such as the ordained ministry.  It takes courage to cross culturally established boundaries, and so many women put off “the call” as long as possible hoping it might go away.

The Old Testament provides many examples of people who struggled with the reality of their call to the service of God and the nature of that call.  Women can certainly identify with that struggle.  Behind them is a long tradition of the suppression of women’s gifts, and surrounding them sometimes is an atmosphere of questioning and suspicion.  With few role models women often fight a lonely battle.

The years spent in theological college provide an opportunity for women to think and evaluate but not all women find that experience a helpful one.  Some women found that on the whole, male faculty were warm and friendly, but some felt that male faculty were patronizing.  It seems as if male faculty were more inclined to treat women seriously if they were academically superior.  There was also concern expressed about the selection of textbooks and set readings that tended to be mostly written by male scholars, even though in many fields now there are renowned female scholars.

One of the most common complaints from women is the lack of women faculty.  It is still rare to find women faculty members in teaching positions such as theology.  This is true in my own experience – I am the only female on our faculty and my area is Christian education.  Some women also felt that there is not enough being done in theological colleges to confront both men and women with the sex stereotypes that influence their thinking and acting.

A great deal of research is being done and pressure is mounting to make theological education a more inclusive experience.

In 1997 Kathleen Hughes was asked to present a paper at a meeting of Theological Schools in America addressing these questions: What changes can we expect from a program of theological studies?  Is the student potential for change boundless or is it actually quite limited?  Is it possible that in a course of studies students moves from very narrow and rigid viewpoints to broader understandings of the tradition of the church and so on?  In considering the classroom as the locus of conversion of a person’s beliefs, attitudes, behaviours, values, viewpoints and perspectives, what is helpful in effecting such change?

Hughes (1997) found from her research with exiting women students that the change that happened in them was that all had learned to trust their own human and religious experience as valid and true.  Further, they claimed that their intellects were stretched and their powers of discernment were sharpened.  “Women regularly have a difficult adjustment to theological studies when they experience themselves as simultaneously a subtle threat to others even while they have little personal self-confidence that they can do theology, learn a new theological vocabulary, and so on.  Each of these women said she began her studies wondering ‘Can I do it?’” (Hughes, 1997:5).

Many of the women also indicated similar questioning and doubt.  “I am struck by what an awesome responsibility it is and wonder if I am equal to the task.” “I am deeply grateful to the faculty for their affirmation and belief in my call.”

These women actually helped each other to accept their own potentiality.  As women students realised that faculty respected them and their opinions, and fellow male students were willing to dialogue with them as equals, their confidence grew.  In our college many of the women students are actually the highest achievers.

General issues facing women in ministry today

Let’s turn now to some of the issues that face women in ministry today as we commence this new millennium.  I would like to use a Scripture passage as the basis for my comments.  It is from Numbers 13:1-2, 17-20, 25-28.

This report of the spies to Moses is one of the earliest “good news – bad news” stories on record.  I will to use this passage to highlight some good news and some bad news in relation to issues that women in ministry are facing.  We will use the terms “milk and honey” and “giants” to represent the good and bad news respectively.

Milk and Honey:  The land now shows many positive aspects.

1.                 Women who have entered the ordained ministry are generally dedicated and competent individuals who have a strong sense of calling to serve God this way.  In the past many of these women would have had to be content to serve as highly committed laity, frustrated perhaps, but resigned to their exclusion from the ranks of the ordained.

2.                 The situation of women being a curiosity in theological colleges has changed dramatically and most recently graduates found their experience of theological college to be positive.  That is certainly true in my research.

3.                 The job market has improved although there are still some problems.  The positive aspects deserve highlighting.  Most recent women graduates have not found difficulty obtaining a placement and they have not been sent to declining congregations.

4.                 As women enter parish positions they are functioning competently as pastors and many have found that males who were not happy to have a woman minister in the beginning have changed their attitudes once they saw that the person was competent.  Fears that having a clergywoman would bring on decline in the congregation are not supported.

5.                 Generally lay leaders have favourable experiences when their congregation is served by a woman pastor.  This has had a spin-off effect for other women pastors.

6.                 Most women in ministry report generally positive relationships with other male clergy and church officials.

Giants:  However, the land is not all flowing with milk and honey.

1.                 Clergywomen still face obstacles to their full participation in the ordained ministry of the church.  In almost every instance of “good news” we could probably find a corresponding negative note.  Women are less likely than men to be encouraged by either their parents or pastors to consider the ordained ministry.  Cultural stereotypes continue to operate and deprive women of needed support at an important time of personal decision making.

2.                 In relation to the job market, there are still some giants to be overcome.  The resistance of some church officials to women clergy in key leadership roles ranges from polite neutrality to refusal to allow women to participate.

3.                 There are still some lay people who struggle to accept women clergy and if they are the key leaders of the congregation, it can mean that a woman pastor will not be called to that church.

4.                 Single ordained women face some particular obstacles particularly in relation to suitable appointments.  Many of the rural congregations find it more difficult to accept a woman – let alone a single woman.  Single women clergy also often suffer from loneliness because of the lack of support from a spouse.

5.                 One of the biggest difficulties for married women clergy is the balancing of home, marriage and career.  The temptation to be “superwoman” is strong.  Some women feel that they have to conform to a higher set of expectations than men do.  Even in more “modern” marriages where couples have worked to overcome traditional sex-role distinctions, combining fulltime ministry and motherhood poses a problem for a large number of clergywomen.

6.                 Linked with this is the problem of the spouse’s work commitment.  Often this limits the possibilities of placement.

7.                 There is still the persistence of sexism in the churches as well as the culture, although now perhaps they are more subtle.  For example articles written about the ordained ministry which only use the male pronoun; lists of successful clergy which are all male; typecasting women into particular kinds of clergy positions.

8.                 Climate of anxiety among laypeople in relation to declining membership and the future of the church.  This anxiety fosters resistance to any innovation which might be suspected of further endangering the already fragile institution – women clergy are still seen by some as an innovation.

9.                 Resistance from the male clergy – some still believe that they are the only ones who should be ordained.  The “sacredly masculine” image of the clergy is hard to shake!

10.             The exercise of authority – the doctrine of the “priesthood of all believers” emphasises that ministry belongs equally to all Christians, although clergy have special functions for which they are set apart.  These functions include preaching, teaching, administering the sacraments, etc.  Clergy perform their special functions of ministry to enable laity to perform their ministry.  Sometimes this can lead to a blurring of lines of authority which makes it difficult for any clergy person, but sometimes it is more difficult for women clergy, particularly if they have some very strong laypeople in their congregations.

11.             There are not many appropriate female leadership models or mentors although this is improving now that some women have been ordained for quite a long period of time.

12.             A challenge for Pentecostal/Charismatic women (according to Hyatt, 2001) is the process of renewing their minds in the knowledge that they are equal with men.  Changing the mind is one of the greatest struggles we all face.  What we think about women determines our behaviour in relation to womanhood.

How can we begin to overcome “the giants” and reach the promised land?

I want to mention three ways in which Tillich suggests the church has exercised leadership in social change.

1.                 Silent interpenetration.  Women clergy in some denominations are now becoming what we could call a critical mass.  Their silent or not so silent interpenetration of the church’s ordained ministry should reduce the present inequities and overcome some of the obstacles to full acceptance of women clergy.

2.                 Prophetic criticism.  Active, vocal advocates both women and men, for full acceptance of women as ordained ministers are crucial if the process of change is not to be interminably slow.  Advocates are needed to ensure the representation of women in positions of leadership within the denomination.

3.                 Direct political power.  The present situation of clergywomen can be considerably helped if clergywomen are better prepared for the situations that face them as ordained pastors.  Women need to understand the “land” they are trying to occupy.  They need to have a realistic picture of what the current situation of ordained ministry is like.  This needs to include an understanding of what the job situation for clergy is in their denomination, what salaries are reasonable to expect, how to use the denomination system and how it works.  There is a better understanding of power and the political process within congregations.  What are appropriate leadership styles in dealing with situations for which they are very few cultural models for women?

If these and other issues can be addressed then women will not merely have reached the promised land of full acceptance into ordained ministry.  They will have contributed to the quality of life in that “land” for all who occupy it.

Conclusion

Returning to the passage from Numbers we know that the people did not occupy the land that flowed with milk and honey for a long time because they were too afraid of the giants that dwelt there.  However, there were two spies who were courageous enough to encourage the people to overcome their fears – Joshua and Caleb.  We can all be like Joshua and Caleb and encourage women to enter the promised land and with the help of the Lord to overcome whatever giants they might meet along the way.

Susan Hyatt (2001) points the way to this promised land:

There is no reason why, in this era of Pentecostal/Charismatic outpouring of God’s Holy Spirit, that we should succumb to religion.  We must realise that the Spirit of God does not come to confirm that what we believe about everything is right and that what other Christians believe is wrong.  Rather, the Spirit comes to help us in our human weakness, to empower us, to comfort us.  And the Spirit comes to guide us into all truth!  That is to say, the Spirit comes to open our understanding and to help us change the way we think.

To continue with our analogy, that may be our giant that we need to confront.  It is my prayer that we will allow the Spirit of God to change the way we think about ourselves as women and men so that we can think of ourselves in the same way that Jesus did.

References

Carroll, J.  ed.  1997.  Being There: Culture and Formation in Two Theological Schools.  New York: Oxford University Press.

Carroll, J., Hargrove, B. and Lummis, A.  1983.  Women of the Cloth: A New Opportunity for the Churches.  San Francisco: Harper and Row.

Chopp, R.  1995.  Saving Work: Feminist Practices of Theological Education.  Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press.

Cornwall Collective.  1980.  Your Daughters shall Prophesy: Feminist Alternatives in Theological Education.  New York: Pilgrim Press.

Hughes, K.  1997.  “Conversion of Heart and Mind” in Theological Education 33 (2): 1-10.

Hyatt, S.  2001.  Report for Partners and Friends of Hyatt International Ministries, (unpublished) Dallas, Texas.

Mudflower Collective.  1985.  God’s Fierce Whimsy: Christian Feminism and Theological Education.  New York: Pilgrim Press.

Roels, S.  1997.  Organisation Man, Organisation Woman: Calling, Leadership and Culture.  Nashville: Abingdon Press.

Shick, G.  1958.  The Estate of Marriage in Luther’s Works Vols.1 and 45.  St Louis, Mo: Concordia Publishing.

Torjesen, K.  1993.  When Women were Priests.  San Francisco: Harper.

Susan Hyatt’s report, quoted in this article, is given in full in the following article, “Women and Religions”.

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Contents:  Renewal Journal 18: Servant Leadership

The Kingdom Within, by Irene Alexander

Church Models: Integration or Assimilation? by Jeannie Mok

Women in Ministry, by Sue Fairley

Women and Religions, by Susan Hyatt

Disciple-Makers, by Mark Setch

Ministry Confronts Secularisation, by Sam Hey

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In the Spirit We’re Equal by Susan Hyatt
Firestorm of the Lord by Stuart Piggin
Early Evangelical Revivals in Australia by Robert Evans 

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Church Models: Integration or Assimilation? by Jeannie Mok

by Geoff 20 May 2012 No Comments

Church Models: Integration or Assimilation?

by Jeannie Mok

Jeannie Mok

Mrs Jeannie Mok wrote as a pastor at International City Church, Brisbane, and the Principal of the Asian Pacific Institute, which offers accredited diploma (Australian), bachelor and masters degrees (from Manchester University) in multicultural and Pentecostal-charismatic studies and corporate cross-cultural training.  This paper is based on two articles written for Alive Magazine.

 

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An article in Renewal Journal 18: Servant Leadership:

 

Now that Australia is the most multicultural nation in the world, should churches alter their organizations to suit such a diversity of people?

Occasionally, the odd conservative politician may assert that it is the duty of migrants to become like all other Australians (whatever that may be) and not expect people to change things for them; after all, they are the ‘foreigners’ who came into this country, so shouldn’t it be a case of ‘when in Rome, do as the Romans do’?

Similarly, why worry about what church model to plant or restructure – after all, these new migrants are the ‘latecomers’ and they should try to fit in or assimilate into existing structures!  And unfortunately, many churches do think this way and remain the way they are.

I would like to suggest that one of the key factors determining how we organize our churches depends on what we think about other peoples and their cultures.  A close look at the variety of churches in Australia will reveal that how we organise our ministry and churches has in fact resulted from several myths or assumptions about ourselves and our culture and how we view foreigners and their cultures and communities.

These key assumptions influence the essential ‘flavour’ of a church and it will be shown that very often, these are misleading, bordering on racial prejudice, and should be replaced by more appropriate biblical principles.

An assumption that has existed for centuries has been Parochialism (the only one way assumption) – the ‘my way is the only way’ belief, where there is no real recognition of any other way of living, working or doing things.  British Colonial practice is a classic example of a policy aimed at making Englishmen out of the natives. Not surprisingly, the European missionaries in Africa and in Australia followed this lead and forced indigenous peoples to give up native ways and renounce traditional ‘pagan’ beliefs and practices.

In our cosmopolitan world, Parochialism should be replaced by Equifinality [1] (our way is not the only way) that suggests that there are many culturally distinct ways of reaching the same goal, or of living one’s life.  In fact, there are many equivalent ways to reach a final goal.

Traditional Western Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) Churches reflect a parochial way of thinking.  They tend to therefore to be mono-cultural, carrying on in ways that ignore cultural differences.  Such churches could be Exclusionary, with one group dominating the others as all key decision making and administrative matters are in their hands.

In such Australian churches, if you do not speak the dominant language, you either sink or swim!  Thus foreigners will always remain on the fringe since cultural differences are seen as a problem.  Bible study groups, cell groups, etc., will not accommodate language differences.  Often, there is a negative evaluation of culturally different people, especially if they are from non-European countries.

Another belief is Ethnocentrism (the one best way myth /our way is the best way).  Such organizations recognize people’s differences but believe that their way is still the best, since all other ways are inferior versions.  This has in turn led to the establishment of Ethnocentric institutions which acknowledge that there may other ways out there, but “we feel ours is really the best way”.

It is true that in such clubs and organizations, the chief purpose is to preserve special cultural and linguistic understandings and customs that have generally diminished in a cosmopolitan or multicultural setting. And undoubtedly, the flow-on benefits are important as it is not possible to express certain beliefs and feelings outside the boundaries of specific psychological/cultural/linguistic traditions.

Thus ethnocentric churches are very much like monocultural clubs where race is the primary discriminator – membership is limited to a certain ethnic community (all Chinese or all Spanish or all Greek), but inclusive of all different classes and educational levels, with a limited number of selected non-group members and outsiders.  Such churches are closed ethnic enclaves but within each national group (e.g. Chinese) is contained a multiplicity of ethnicities (Taiwanese, Hong Kong, Malaysian/Singaporean Chinese, Mainland Chinese).  Policies change only under pressure since traditions are highly prized.  Gender could also be a discriminator in the management of the church – in favour of male leadership.  For example, Chinese evangelical churches are traditionally run by male pastors; female pastors are rare, and not highly respected by older members.

Then there is the Similarity myth which asserts that “people are all alike” or “they are all like me” since we all have the same life goals, career aspirations and activities.  This belief is faulty since a study of people’s values, attitudes and behaviour in 14 nations showed that whilst people felt more comfortable believing that this ‘similarity’ exists, this was not the case.[2] Apparently, people felt more comfortable believing in this similarity since ‘Differences’ were regarded as a threat.  Unfortunately, there are problems associated with this belief.  One gets disappointed and feels anger or surprise when people do not act as one expects them to.  Furthermore, this assumption denies the individuality of people, and negates their distinct characteristics.

Thus, it must be acknowledged that people share similarities and differences. (They are not just like me since many people are culturally different from me.  Most people have both cultural similarities and differences when compared to me).  It is thus a good thing to assume that there are differences first when meeting a ‘foreigner’, unless similarities are proven.

The Similarity assumption is akin to the Homogeneity or the Melting Pot Myth (We are all the same since everyone is and wants to be like the majority).  Homogeneity proponents state, however, that as a nation of many distinct cultures, they realize that it is impossible to get all to be the same.  Thus newly arrived migrants have to be integrated with the rest of Australians and become like everyone else.  And since Australia is basically ‘Waspish’, the newly-arrived must assimilate into the new ‘Home’ culture.

These two assumptions (Similarity and Homogeneity) often underlie non-discriminating and culturally aware organizations like International Churches and ‘Melting Pot’ Assimilationist Churches.  These Churches recognise cultural similarities and differences but choose to attempt to minimize the diversity by imposing single one-best-way solutions on all management situations.

Most international churches believe that they are multicultural, but in reality they are not, since there is still the one dominant culture (the ‘Waspish’ normally).  Competence requirements are higher for outsiders – especially fluency in the dominant language.  But such churches do attempt to seek change by changing race and gender profiles.  They will have a Missions group and international food festivals, etc., and allow token representation in management, and over time these could evolve into multicultural churches.

‘Melting pot’ churches operate on the belief that various cultural groups from all nations, must be treated with essential equality since “We are all Australians and we accept an Australianised form of English, and Christian moral principles and values.”  The belief is that in time, all will be unified as one large heterogenous ‘stew’ as cross-cultural marriages abound.  In such churches, individual ties to ethnic groups culturally rooted to other parts of the world are not so important, as these are actually regarded as potentially disruptive or distracting.  There is also the mistaken belief that as all are equal, all will have an influence in the pot.  Hence, this ‘multicultural stew’ method is seen as truly the best way of unifying everyone.

This all sounds most reasonable but in reality, new migrants are under pressure to conform and accept dominant cultural principles.  In Australia, they have to melt into an essentially Anglo-Celtic Protestant pot to be accepted.  They must shed essential aspects of their traditional cultural belief and practice if they are to fit in nicely.  The ‘Melting Pot’ is in reality the melting away of non-Anglo-Saxon traditions.[3]

The fact is that Heterogeneity or Cultural Pluralism is a hallmark of our society today. (We are not all the same); there are many culturally different groups in society.  It therefore makes sense that in our policy and practice, we need to consider the many equivalent or culturally distinct ways of reaching the same goals, since our way is not the only way!

One model of a Multicultural Church utilises the Equifinality or Parallel approach.  These are churches that recognise cultural similarities and differences; and allow parallel approaches based on members’ cultures to be used simultaneously in each management situation.  Such a church utilises a common language (through necessity), although diverse languages are still used widely for the respective ethnic groups.  Senior management is committed to power-sharing practices, and incorporates leaders to represent each major ethnic group found in the church.  It is usual to find that the key leaders can operate in a variety of languages, and are able to switch methods of cross-cultural communication to deal with the various ethnic groups.

Perhaps the ideal multicultural church is the Synergistic church, totally committed to the multicultural vision.  This church recognizes cultural similarities and differences and uses them to create new integrative solutions to organizational problems that go beyond the individual cultures of any single group.[4]

For instance, at their combined celebrations, when the Spanish, Chinese and English-speaking congregations come together, International City Church in Brisbane, has ‘invented’ a new kind of praise and worship session with worship leaders from the three language groups leading the mixed congregation in songs incorporating all the three languages; so that all can participate in the same song!  (Incidentally, this unique blend of languages has resulted in a project to produce the first real multicultural Praise and Worship CD in Australia).  Such a church also recognises diversity as a valuable strength (as productive, creative and resource-rich).  Initially, there may be many communication problems, but once this is overcome, huge benefits are realized.

Given the fact that Australia’s demographic profile has changed so radically recently, perhaps it is time for us to re-think our churches.  Should we now work hard at evolving our churches into Multicultural and Synergistic churches?  Are we inclusive and totally ‘user-friendly’ to the harvest (boat people and all) that awaits us in our own backyard?  Or are we still focusing on a traditional (middle-class ‘Waspish’) clientele that is fast diminishing?

We cannot totally eradicate our cultural biases.  An immediate start would be to replace the Golden Rule (Do unto others as you would have them do unto you), with the Platinum Rule (Do unto others as Jesus did unto you).

References

Samovar L.A., Porter R.E. Intercultural Communication: A Reader   Wadsworth Publishing Co, USA 1997

Simons G.F., Vasquez C., Harris P.R. Transcultural Leadership: Empowering the Diverse Workforce Gulf Publishing Co Texas 1993

Weaver G.R. Culture, Communication and Conflict: Readings in Intercultural Relations   Simon and Schuster USA 1994

End Notes

[1] Nancy J. Adler, Domestic Multiculturalism: Cross-Cultural Management in the Public Sector (102) in Gary R. Weaver (Ed) Culture, Communication and Conflict: Readings in Intercultural Relations Simon and Schuster Custom Publishing MA, USA (1994)

[2]  ibid (102)

[3] R. Janzen Five Paradigms of Ethnic Relations (65) in Larry A. Samovar, Richard E. Porter Intercultural Communication Wadsworth Publishing Company USA 1997

[4] Nancy J. Adler   Domestic Multiculturalism (110)

©  Renewal Journal #18: Servant Leadership (2001, 2012)  renewaljournal.com
Reproduction is allowed with the copyright included in the text.

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Also: 24/7 Worship & Prayer

Contents:  Renewal Journal 18: Servant Leadership

The Kingdom Within, by Irene Alexander

Church Models: Integration or Assimilation? by Jeannie Mok

Women in Ministry, by Sue Fairley

Women and Religions, by Susan Hyatt

Disciple-Makers, by Mark Setch

Ministry Confronts Secularisation, by Sam Hey

Book Reviews:
Jesus on Leadership by Gene Wilkes
In the Spirit We’re Equal by Susan Hyatt
Firestorm of the Lord by Stuart Piggin
Early Evangelical Revivals in Australia by Robert Evans 

Renewal Journal 18: Servant Leadership – PDF

Revival Blogs Links:

See also Revivals Index

See also Revival Blogs

See also Blogs Index 1: Revivals

GENERAL BLOGS INDEX 

BLOGS INDEX 1: REVIVALS (BRIEFER THAN REVIVALS INDEX)

BLOGS INDEX 2: MISSION (INTERNATIONAL STORIES)

BLOGS INDEX 3: MIRACLES (SUPERNATURAL EVENTS)

BLOGS INDEX 4: DEVOTIONAL (INCLUDING TESTIMONIES)

BLOGS INDEX 5: CHURCH (CHRISTIANITY IN ACTION)

BLOGS INDEX 6: CHAPTERS (BLOGS FROM BOOKS)

BLOGS INDEX 7: IMAGES (PHOTOS AND ALBUMS)

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Christian leadership, Christian life, Christian ministry

The Kingdom Within, by Irene Alexander

by Geoff 20 May 2012 2 Comments

The Kingdom within:

The inner life of the person in ministry

 

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An article in Renewal Journal 18: Servant Leadership:

Dr Irene Alexander wrote as the Dean of the School of Social Sciences at Christian Heritage College, Brisbane, which offers a Bachelor of Social Science degree that includes majors in Counselling and Biblical Studies, as well as postgraduate awards in Counselling and Human Studies.  Irene researched Epistemic Development in Adolescence for her Ph.D. degree from the University of Queensland.

More than any other single thing, Jesus spoke about the kingdom. In parable after parable, teaching after teaching, he showed us what the kingdom is like – a treasure hidden in a field, a father who welcomes an undeserving son, a vineyard owner who gives more than is fair to the labourers, a feast to which are welcomed those from the highways and byways, a place that is open to the poor in spirit, the broken and the sinner.

It seems that much of this teaching is about a kingdom which can be visible – a quality of relationships where the poor are ministered to, where people show love to each other, where each person can be accepted and receive God’s love.

However as we take the idea of the kingdom a little further we see that this kingdom is the place where the king reigns – not a physical place but a spiritual one – one which indeed engenders visible results, but one which is initially and primarily an inner place – the kingdom within.

Certainly, Jesus’ teaching shows us the possibility of a kingdom without – a kingdom where people are ministered to. Much of his teaching has clear outward results – healing the sick, giving to the poor, setting free the oppressed, welcoming in the marginalized.  But this visible kingdom is the result of an inner relationship, an inner responsiveness to God.  Some of his teaching clearly speaks to an inner reality rather than an outer one.  “Take the log out of your own eye before you try and take the speck from your brother’s eye.”  What does this mean but an attending to our own heart secrets, our own weaknesses, before we try and correct each other.

Inner life and outer mask

Proverbs 4:23 tells us to “guard the heart for from it flow the springs of life.”  What does it mean to guard the heart, to be aware of this inner world?  John Sanford in The Kingdom Within uses the teaching against the Pharisees to show the difference between the inner world and the outer mask which we show to others.  Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for their hypocrisy.

The word hypocrite means actor, and refers to the idea that actors of those days wore a mask which depicted their character. So the hypocrite was the mask wearer. The Pharisees wanted the world to see them as generous, holy, righteous people – that was their outer public behaviour.  But Jesus exposed the inner poverty, the inner sins of the spirit, of much more concern to him than the sins of the flesh.  “Alas for you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites!  You clean the outside of the cup and dish and leave the inside full of extortion and intemperance” (Matthew 23:25).  And in Luke 16:15: “You are the very ones who pass yourselves off as virtuous in people’s sight, but God knows your hearts.”

So the way to God has more to do with the inner life than the outer mask. Richard Rohr speaks of the way each person tries to find their way to God. They try to discover and fulfil the requirements necessary to please God. Many of us, especially those of us who grew up being good find that for a time we feel we do fulfil the necessary conditions.

However at some time most of us, and perhaps more quickly the more broken of us, experience God differently.  We have some experience in which we find ourselves ‘in God’ where we know that we do not have to do anything to be accepted or approved of. We simply have to rest in him.  The broken and the mystics find that place more quickly.

The others of us may wrestle back and forth with fulfilling the requirements.

Often the church has taught us that we have to be good to get God’s approval.  The cross demonstrates to us that it’s all grace.  I enter into a relationship with a God who utterly loves me and as I learn to abide in his love, and look to him for direction I fulfil the law of love without even thinking about it.  And so is fulfilled ‘all the law and the prophets’.

Living in a love relationship

Living by requirements is eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Living in relationship with the living God is eating of the tree of life.

Eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, choosing to evaluate good and bad from a place of autonomy, has given us a mindset of constant evaluation.  And so we continuously evaluate everything that happens around us – and within us.  “I don’t like her hair colour, that shirt doesn’t suit him, he shouldn’t talk like that, she should be more extraverted.”

God’s idea was that we should eat of the tree of life, walk in relationship with him, and with each other and experience life in all its abundance.  When we walk in a love relationship with someone we are far less likely to be criticising and trying to change;  instead we enjoy, and we notice. Certainly we notice their hair colour, their way of talking and their introversion but instead of judging we accept and appreciate the difference from ourselves. Living in a love-relationship enables us to accept difference and imperfection and walk alongside the other person, standing with them in their ‘working out their salvation’.

In the garden of Eden story there is no mention of Adam and Eve being good.  They were called to the dominion mandate – to look after the earth – to bring it to fruition; they were called into relationship with God and with each other. There is no mention of rules and laws and constant evaluation.  The story simply states that they were naked and not ashamed.

Paradise was where people could be known for who they were and not be ashamed.  I believe this is what God calls us to – a place, a quality of relationship with him and with each other in which we can be real and accepted anyway.  Gary Hayachi, in explaining these ideas, says this is the gospel in a nutshell – it’s not about being good; it’s about being real.

Gary goes on to say that the one criticism that is levelled at the church over and over is hypocrisy.  “You hypocrites.  You tell us to be good, but look at you.”  I believe that if the church truly understood that it is not about evaluating and comparing and living up to standards, but rather it is about being known for who we are in our relationships, being conspicuously imperfect, but living in God’s grace – then the world would be drawn to that reality and true humility.

When Adam and Eve, and we in them, chose to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, we chose a righteousness based on comparison and living up to standards; a righteousness that had more to do with behaviour and beliefs than a heart attitude and relationship.  We became caught in a mindset of comparison and evaluation which did not free us from wrongdoing but only showed us when we did wrong. As a response to this choice God gave us the Law – a way of evaluating our behaviour which at least kept us in line with the way the world was designed.

However this was not his original plan, nor was it his final response.  The Law was simply a way of bracketing our behaviour until God could reveal a better way.  The Law was like a fence that kept us from wandering off into licence and perversion.  A schoolmaster, a babysitter, to bring us to Christ.  And then, in Paul’s wonderful words of freedom in his letter to the Galatians, God revealed a better way.

When the fullness of time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, under the law, in order that he might redeem those under the law, that they might receive adoption as sons.  And because we are sons, God sent forth the spirit of his Son, into our hearts, crying Abba, dear Father.  Therefore I am no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir to the living God.

God’s plan was, and is, that we should walk in life, in relationship with him, fulfilling all the law and the prophets by our love relationship with him, as his children, and our love relationship with each other – brothers and sisters.

Grace, not works

We live in a new covenant where righteousness is based on grace not works. The disciples who lived with Jesus understood that he was the Messiah, but they did not seem to see the perspective of the new covenant.  That was Paul’s revelation.  When Peter preached on the day of Pentecost he simply stated that Jesus, the Messiah, who you crucified, was raised up again by God.

Apparently it was not uncommon for men to claim themselves to be the Messiah, but of course they eventually died and no more was heard of them.  When the Christians however started proclaiming the Christ there was swift persecution.  Why this drastic reaction?  The fact that there were differences between the Greek Christians and the Jewish Christians gives some clue.  Stephen, the first martyr, was made a deacon when there were complaints that the Greek widows were being overlooked.  When there was persecution in Jerusalem, the disciples stayed there – it seems to have been the Greeks – who did not uphold Jewish law, who were the ones who dispersed.

The point then which drew such wrath from Saul the Pharisee, had to do with the law.  Saul, that ‘epitome of legal rectitude’, understood something the disciples did not.  He knew the law.  He knew that any true Messiah must uphold the law.  But the Christians were preaching a crucified Messiah.  And Paul knew the scripture – he quotes it in one of his letters – that said “Cursed is anyone who hangs on a tree.”  A crucified Messiah could not be upholding the law, because he is cursed by that law.  A crucified Messiah was a contradiction in terms. It could not be.

Paul saw that what the Christians claimed struck at the law as the covenant of righteousness with God.  He turned against the Christians as one with all legal righteousness and outrage.  It is no wonder then that when he met God on the Damascus Road, and asking him who he was found that he was Jesus, the one you are persecuting, the crucified messiah, – it is no wonder he was struck blind for three days.  For three days he must have been totally rethinking the place of the law and the basis of righteousness.

When the three days were over Paul understood something the other disciples did not.  He understood that the old covenant was obsolete (Hebrews 6:13).  He understood that the only way to righteousness was faith and grace.  It is not surprising that he vehemently opposed the other disciples when they tried to still keep some of the law, wondering if circumcision should still be practiced.  Paul knew they had missed the point completely – it’s all or nothing when it comes to the law.  You who began in the spirit, he raged at the Galatians, will you now finish in the flesh?

Home free

At the Cross God changed the rules.  He finished with the old basis for righteousness, the old purity code which gets us into his presence by our behaviour.  He declared us free to walk into relationship with him, saved by grace alone, with a righteousness rooted in Jesus sacrifice.  I can now dance into the presence of a holy and righteous God, and know that his grace is sufficient, and that I am home free.

As I look at the cross I see the awesome love of God and I am inspired to give my life to him, not because I must, not to earn his approval, but in freedom, a response of love to his.  And I am drawn into a love relationship with him, whereby I live daily looking into his eyes and choosing to walk in his ways.

Many of us have grown up in a modernist world that upholds the absolutes of law and morality and hierarchy.  A postmodern perspective is far more likely to value relationship and spirituality and an authority based in authenticity.  As I walk the journey with another I do not bring in rules and requirements.  Instead I will, as Dan Allender says, look for the footprints of God in their story.  John 1 says God lights every person who comes into the world.  His footprints will be there in everyone’s story.  As I listen and walk with them I will find some evidence of his Being, some way to walk the journey, respecting their individual relationship with God, whoever at that point they conceive God to be – finding freedom and responsibility.

This kingdom within, then, is about being real – real with God and real with each other. Abiding in Christ – finding our true selves, naked and unashamed because of God’s grace. And then living out that relationship in honesty and humility in our relationships with each other.  Living in conspicuous imperfection (Sims’ phrase), and openly known for who we are.  This is freedom – and life abundant.

References

Nouwen, H. J. M. (1989).  In the name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian leadership. New York: Crossroad.

Rohr, R. (1999). Everything belongs: The gift of contemplative prayer. New York: Crossroad.

Sanford, J. A. (1970).  The kingdom within. New York: Paulist.

Sims, B. J. (1997).  Servanthood: Leadership for the third millennium. Boston: Cowley

©  Renewal Journal #18: Servant Leadership (2001, 2012)  renewaljournal.com
Reproduction is allowed with the copyright included in the text.

Renewal Journals – contents of all issues

Book Depository – $8 free postage worldwide
Book Depository – Bound Volumes (5 in each) – free postage

Amazon – $8 Renewal Journal 18: Servant Leadership
Amazon – all journals and books – Look inside

All Renewal Journal Topics

1 Revival,   2 Church Growth,   3 Community,   4 Healing,   5 Signs & Wonders,
6  Worship,   7  Blessing,   8  Awakening,   9  Mission,   10  Evangelism,
11  Discipleship,   12  Harvest,   13  Ministry,   14  Anointing,   15  Wineskins,
16  Vision,   17  Unity,   18  Servant Leadership,   19  Church,   20 Life
Also: 24/7 Worship & Prayer

Contents:  Renewal Journal 18: Servant Leadership

The Kingdom Within, by Irene Alexander

Church Models: Integration or Assimilation? by Jeannie Mok

Women in Ministry, by Sue Fairley

Women and Religions, by Susan Hyatt

Disciple-Makers, by Mark Setch

Ministry Confronts Secularisation, by Sam Hey

Book Reviews:
Jesus on Leadership by Gene Wilkes
In the Spirit We’re Equal by Susan Hyatt
Firestorm of the Lord by Stuart Piggin
Early Evangelical Revivals in Australia by Robert Evans 

Renewal Journal 18: Servant Leadership – PDF

Revival Blogs Links:

See also Revivals Index

See also Revival Blogs

See also Blogs Index 1: Revivals

GENERAL BLOGS INDEX 

BLOGS INDEX 1: REVIVALS (BRIEFER THAN REVIVALS INDEX)

BLOGS INDEX 2: MISSION (INTERNATIONAL STORIES)

BLOGS INDEX 3: MIRACLES (SUPERNATURAL EVENTS)

BLOGS INDEX 4: DEVOTIONAL (INCLUDING TESTIMONIES)

BLOGS INDEX 5: CHURCH (CHRISTIANITY IN ACTION)

BLOGS INDEX 6: CHAPTERS (BLOGS FROM BOOKS)

BLOGS INDEX 7: IMAGES (PHOTOS AND ALBUMS)

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Christian life, Christian ministry, Christian renewal, Geoff Waugh ,

Unity not Uniformity, by Geoff Waugh

by Geoff 19 May 2012 2 Comments

Unity not Uniformity

by Geoff Waugh


Dr Geoff Waugh published Body Ministry, a popular version of his Doctor of Missiology degree dissertation from Fuller Seminary.  This article is reproduced and adapted from Chapter 4 of Body Ministry: “Spiritual Gifts – From limited to unlimited”.

Renewal Journal 17: Unity – PDF

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Jesus insists on unity, not uniformity.  We are one in Christ and will be forever.  That unity is incredibly and eternally diverse.  We are all created different and unique.  We have many different gifts and abilities.  These are meant to flow together in powerful unity.

Miracles in Ghana, West Africa

God honours and blesses unity.  I saw that vividly in my first trip to Africa.   Pastors from the mountain town of Suhum, about 50 miles north of Accra the capital of Ghana, invited me to speak at crusade meetings at night and teach pastors and leaders each morning.

Four of us flew from Australia to West Africa in June 1995 during the mid-year vacation at the college where I taught.  I did not realise that heavy monsoon rains fell in Africa in June!  So we arrived on a Monday amid pouring rain.  The meetings were planned for Tuesday night through to Friday night, with various independent and charismatic churches co-operating.  Their leadersd and youth groups shared leading the extended worship each night.

When we arrived at Suhum on Tuesday evening the whole town was in a black-out because heavy rain had affected the town’s electrical supply.  Our team of Africans and Australians prayed in the mud at the market place which the team had prepared for the night meetings: “God, we are here serving you and we ask you to take over and do what only you can do.”

Within 10 minutes the rain had ceased and the town power was on again.  Our excited Africans began exclaiming, “This is a miracle.  We will be talking about this for years!”  Those monsoon rains held off till Saturday, and then the next week the deluges made international news on TV.  But we hadover three days of clear, cloudless skies and tropical sun.

Every night we saw hundreds respond for prayer, and many gave salvation and healing testimonies.

The pastors and leaders had asked me to teach about spiritual warfare in the morning sessions in a local church.  As I prayed the Spirit impressed me to teach about unity.  So I did.  Prayers become powerful against evil when we are united, as Jesus demanded.

During the second morning as pastors and leaders prayed specifically for one another and confessed any resentments or hostilities, I had an open vision.  I clearly saw the church fill with a bright, golden light which swallowed up the blackest black I had even seen.  The Africans became more excited.  Men and women shouted prophecies.  Youths danced vigorously.  I looked on perplexed, perspiring under the hot iron roof dressed in the mandatory suit of pastors and speakers!

That night miracles began in the long worship.  An old man now blind discovered he could see as they worshipped and danced.  Even the offering was a long process of dancing in lines, waving coloured cloths as they filed passed the offering box at the front, led by the pastors.

Their co-operating and unity had opened the way for powerful spiritual warfare.  Everyone knew that a powerful ruling spirit dominated that area, but now it was gone.  People felt the4 difference and enjoyed the freedom.

Later on teams went out in power evangelism, praying for people to be set free.  The town market became unusually profitable and people could sell their vegetables and goods.  Churches found new vitality.  Previously isolated independent church, often competing, discovered united strength, love and unity.  God blessed their unity.

The ascended, victorious, all powerful Christ, having conquered sin and death and hell now reigns supreme.  He is the head of his body, the church.  He gives gifts to his church, specifically those called under his authority to exercise authority in the church as leaders so that all God’s people may be equipped for ministry.  That is a powerful body, the body of the risen Christ.

Our Lord’s intention for his church is for us to grow till we reach the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ who is all and in all (Colossians 3:11).

Body ministry requires spiritual gifts.  The body of Christ ministers charismatically.  There is no other way it can minister as the living body of the living Christ.  He ministers in and through his body, by the gifts of his Spirit.

Spiritual gifts differ from natural talents

Charismatic gifts of the Spirit are different from natural talents.  We can do much through dedicated human talent, but that is not body ministry through spiritual gifts.  Natural talents do need to be committed to God and used for his glory.  They can be channels of spiritual gifts.

Someone may sing beautifully or speak eloquently.  That natural gift becomes a spiritual gift when it is anointed by God for ministry.

Spiritual gifts constantly surprise us.  They often show up with great power in unlikely people and in unlikely ways.

A common misunderstanding, for instance, is that those with an effective healing ministry must be especially holy people.  However, many are not.  They may not be faultless ‘saints’.  Gifts of the Spirit are given by grace, not earned by consecration.

Young, immature Christians may have powerful spiritual ministries, as they discover and use their spiritual gifts.  Many do.  That is no proof of consecration or maturity, even though to please God we need to offer ourselves to him in full commitment.

Romans Chapter 12 explains this.  The well known first two verses challenge us to offer ourselves fully to God and so discover his will for our lives.  Paul then explains that knowing God’s will involves being realistic about ourselves and our gifts.  If we know and use our God-given gifts, we fulfil God’s will for our lives.

Body ministry, then, depends on the use of spiritual gifts, not just the use of natural talents dedicated to God.  Both are vital for committed Christian living, and both will be present in the church.  However, the church is not built on committed natural talent, even though churches sometimes operate that way.

Spiritual gifts differ from Christian roles

Similarly, spiritual gifts are not Christian roles or tasks.  All Christians witness, but only some are gifted in evangelism.  Every Christian has faith, but some have a gift of faith as well.  All must exercise hospitality, but some are gifted in hospitality.  Prayer is for all of us, but some are gifted in intercession.

We all have Christian roles such as leaders, helpers, servers, prayers, and supporting one another.  Gifts of the Spirit can flow through these tasks.  Our spiritual gifts add a deeper dimension to our roles or tasks – they add the depth dimension to those ministries.

Spiritual gifts flow strongest in unity with incredible diversity.

1.  Unity

Each passage on the gifts of the Spirit stresses the importance of being one body (1 Corinthians 12:12‑13; Romans 12:4‑5; Ephesians 4:4).  The whole context of Paul’s teaching on the gifts of the Spirit is one of unity with diversity; one body with many parts functioning in harmony.  Paul repeats many themes in the three key passages in 1 Corinthians 12, Romans 12, and Ephesians 4:

  • One body:  The church is the one body of Christ on earth

(1 Corinthians 12:12‑27; Romans 12:4‑5; Ephesians 4:4‑6).

  • Gracious gifts:  They are given, not earned and not achieved

(1 Corinthians 12:1, 4, 6, 8‑11; Romans 12:6; Ephesians 4:7‑8, 11).

  • All Christians have gifts:  There are no exceptions; and each gift is important

(l Corinthians 12:7; Romans 12:6; Ephesians 4:7).

  • Gifts differ:  Value our differences; we need each other

(1 Corinthians 12:4‑7; Romans 12:4‑6; Ephesians 4:7 8).

  • Unity:  They function in unity and promote unity

(1 Corinthians 12:12‑13, 25; Romans 12:4‑5; Ephesians 4:3, 13, 16).

  • Maturity:  Spiritual gifts build up the body in maturity

(1 Corinthians 12:7; Romans 12:9‑21; Ephesians 4:12‑15).

  • Love:  Love is the top priority; gifts must be used in love

(1 Corinthians 13; Romans 12:9‑10; Ephesians 4:4, 15‑16).

Without unity expressed in love, diversity destroys the body’s ministry causing chaos, division, sectarianism, and impotence.  This is Paul’s theme in 1 Corinthians 12-14.

Paul had to correct the divisions in Corinth by emphasizing the unity of the body, bound together in love.  Gifts are not to be a source of division and strife, but an expression of unity and love.  Unless rooted and grounded in love, the gifts are counter-productive.

Unity in the body of Christ allows that body to function well, not be crippled.  No one has all the gifts.  We all need one another.  No one should be conceited about any gift that God has given.  No one claim that their is gift the most important, and magnify and exalt it at the expense of others.  Gifts are to be used in humility and service.  We do not compete.  We minister in harmony and co-operation.

Paul’s great theme, “in Christ,” expresses the unity essential for body ministry.  In Christ we are one body.  In Christ we live and serve.

Love lies at the heart of body ministry.  The body is one, bound in love.  The body builds itself up in love (Eph.  4:16).  That is why 1 Corinthians 13 is central to Paul’s passage on spiritual gifts in the body of Christ.  “Make love your aim,” he insists, “and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts” (1 Corinthians 14:1).

Jesus insisted on love.  “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.  By this all mean will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35).

Our unity is not based on doctrine, but on Jesus.  Unity comes from who we are, the body of Christ.  This is a fact, not a hope.  We are one in Christ.  We are one in the Spirit.  God has made us one.  Unfortunately, being sinful, we often fail to live out that reality.

A Christ-like attitude, in humble kingdom thinking and love overcomes competition and critical spirits that divide us.  That’s where we see the Holy Spirit moving in power among us as we obey the Lord’s command to love and serve one another.

Breathtaking community transformations are now happening around the world where we live this out in unity.  Whole communities transformed by God now witness to his power to heal the land and the people when we repent and unite in obedience to his requirements.

Almolonga in Guatemala, Cali in Columbia and villages in Fiji all provide outstanding examples of this transformation.  This information is from George Otis, 2000, “Snapshots of Glory” reproduced in Renewal Journal, Issue 17

Almolonga, Guatemala

The town of Almolonga in Guatemala in South America, typical of many Mayan highland communities, suffered from economic depression, inebriation, and crime.  The four gaols were full this town of 19,000.  Many criminals had to be transported to gaols in the capital city.

Guatemala City pastor Harold Caballeros reported that, “the town suffered from poverty, violence and ignorance. In the mornings you would encounter many men just lying on the streets, totally drunk from the night before. And of course this drinking brought along other serious problems like domestic violence and poverty.  It was a vicious cycle.”

Donato Santiago, the town’s chief of police, said, “People were always fighting.  We never had any rest.”  Now with crime dramatically diminished and the gaols no longer needed, police chief Santiago, says with a grin.  It’s pretty uneventful around here.”

A few Christian leaders began regularly praying together from 7 pm to midnight in the 1970s. As they continued to pray in unity, increasing numbers of people were being healed and set free from strong demonic powers or witchcraft.  Churches began to grow, and the community began to change. Crime and alcoholism decreased.

Within twenty years the four gaols were emptied and are now used for community functions.  The last of Almolonga’s gaols closed in 1994, and is now remodelled building called the ‘Hall of Honour’ used for municipal ceremonies and weddings.

The town’s agricultural base was transformed. Their fields have become so fertile they yield three large harvests a year. Previously, the area exported four truckloads of produce a month.  Now they are exporting as many as 40 truckloads a day.  Farmers buy big Mercedes trucks with cash, and then attach their testimony to the shiny vehicles with huge metallic stickers and mud flaps declaring, The Gift of God, God is my Stronghold and Go Forward in Faith.

Some farmers provide work for others by renting out land and developing fields in other towns. They help people get out of debt by providing employment for them.

On Halloween day in 1998, an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 people gathered in the market square to worship and honour God in a fiesta of praise.  Led by the mayor and many pastors, the people prayed for God to take authority over their lives and their economy.

University researchers from the United States and other countries regularly visit Almolonga to investigate the astounding 1,000 per cent increase in agricultural productivity.  Local inhabitants explain that the land is fertilized by prayer and rained upon with God’s blessings.

Unity did not happen overnight.  It took time.  It needed a small group of persistent leaders who began praying together, crying out to God for mercy and for change.  That usually happens when we are desperate and realise that we need God’s intervention.

We are desperate, or should be.  We live in tough times as persecution and calamities increase globally.  But there is hope.

Some leaders now look beyond their doctrinal and denominational differences to seek the Lord together in unity, as he told us to do in humility, prayer, seeking him and in repentance (2 Chronicles 7:14).

God can change whole cities, such as happened in the city of Cali in Columbia.

Cali, Columbia

Columbia in South America was the world’s biggest exporter of cocaine, sending between 700 to 1,000 tons a year to the United States and Europe alone.  The Cali cartel controlled up to 70 percent of this trade.  It was called the largest, richest, most well organized criminal organization in history.

The drug lords in cartels ruled the city through fear. At times 15 people a day were killed, shot from the black Mercedes cars owned by the cartels. Car bombs exploded regularly.  Journalists who denounced the Mafia were killed. Drug money controlled the politicians.  By the early 1990s the cartels controlled every major institution in Cali including banks, business, politicians and police.

The churches were in disarray and ineffective.  “In those days,” a pastor recalls, “the pastors’ association consisted of an old box of files that nobody wanted.  Every pastor was working on his own; no one wanted to join together.”

A few discouraged but determined pastors began praying together regularly, asking God to intervene. Gradually others joined them.  A small group of pastors planned a combined service in the civic auditorium in May 1995 for a night of prayer and repentance.  They expected a few thousand people, but were amazed when 25, 000 attended, nearly half of the city’s evangelical population. The crowd remained until 6 o’clock the next morning at this the first of the city’s now famous united all-night prayer vigils held four times a year.

Two days after that event in May 1995, the daily newspaper, El Pais, headlined, “No Homicides!” For the first time in anyone’s memory, 24 hours had passed without a single person being killed. Then, during the next four months 900 cartel-linked officers were fired from the metropolitan police force.

By August 1995, the authorities had captured all seven of the targeted cartel leaders. Previously the combined efforts of the Columbian authorities, and the American FBI and CIA had been unable to do that.

In December 1995, a hit man killed Pastor Julio Ruibal, one of the key leaders of the combined pastors’ meetings and the united prayer gatherings. 1, 500 people gathered at his funeral, including many pastors who had not spoken to each other in months. At the end of the memorial service, the pastors said, “Brothers, let us covenant to walk together in unity from this day forward. Let Julio’s blood be the glue that binds us together in the Holy Spirit.”

Now over 200 pastors have signed the covenant that is the backbone of the city’s united prayer vigils. What made the partnership of these leaders so effective are the same things that always bring God’s blessings: clean hearts, right relationships, and united prayer.

As the kingdom of God became more real in Cali, it affected all levels of society including the wealthy and educated. A wealthy businessman and former mayor said, “It is easy to speak to upper-class people about Jesus. They are respectful and interested.” Another successful businessman adds that the gospel is now seen as practical rather than religious.

Churches grow fast. One church that meets in a huge former warehouse holds seven services on a Sunday to accommodate its 35, 000 people. Asked, “What is your secret?” they point to the 24-hour prayer room behind the platform.

A former drug dealer says, “There is a hunger for God everywhere. You can see it on the buses, on the streets and in the cafes. Anywhere you go people are ready to talk.”

Cali police deactivated a large 174-kilo car bomb in November 1996. The newspaper El Pais carried the headline: “Thanks to God, It Didn’t Explode.”  Many people noted that this happened just 24 hours after 55,000 Christians held their third vigilia – the all night prayer vigil that includes praise, worship, dances and celebration mixed with the prayers and statements from civic and church leaders.

City authorities have given the churches free use of large stadium venues for their united gatherings because of their impact on the whole community, saving the city millions of dollars through reduced crime and terrorism.

Fiji, South Pacific

Fiji now has significant examples of effective community transformation, based on honouring God in unity between churches and communities.  Fiji has experienced many military coups.  In spite of this, Fiji also experiences significant unity in local village communities and among many churches.

The 2005 documentary report titled Let the Seas Resound, produced by the Sentinel Group (www.sentinel.com), identifies examples of transformed communities in Fiji, featuring reconciliation and renewed ecosystems.  The former President of Fiji, Ratu Josefa Iloilo, and former Prime Minister, Laisenia Qarase, include their personal comments in this video and DVD report, now distributed worldwide.

In September 2004, 10, 000 people gathered to worship together in Suva, Fiji, drawn by reconciliation initiatives of both government and church leaders.  Only four years previously such unity among government and church leaders was unimaginable.  Ethnic tensions flared in the attempted coup of May 2000, when the government was held hostage for 56 days, and violence erupted in the streets of Suva.

As people of Fiji unite in commitment to reconciliation and repentance in various locations, many testify to miraculous changes in their community and in the land.

Three days after the people of Nuku, north of Suva, made a united covenant with God, the water in the local stream, which for the previous 42 years had been known as the cause of barrenness and illness, mysteriously became clean and life giving.  Then food grew plentifully in the area.

Fish are now caught in abundance around the village of Nataleria, where previously they could catch only a few fish.  This change followed united repentance and reconciliation among all the churches and in the whole village.

Churches in the Navosa highlands north of Sigatoka came together in reconciliation and unity.  Some people in that area grew large marijuana crops worth about $11 million.  Nine growers were involved.  The team leaders told the farmers that it was their choice, that they should obey God and trust him for their livelihood, without any promises from anyone to do any­thing for them.  If they could not, then they should not participate in the Healing Process.  By the time the Process had finished, the people had destroyed the crop as part of the reconciliation Process.  After the HTL ministry, a total of 13,864 plants were uprooted and burnt by the growers themselves.  There were 6,000 seedlings as well.

Many island communities in Fiji and the South Pacific now report similar ecological and community transformation.  See my book, South Pacific Revivals for further examples of healing of the land through reconciliation and unity among churches and communities.

This is not only an island phenomenon, where it may be easier for whole communities to come together.  It happens in towns and cities too.

When we obey our Lord who requires unity in his body, we see miraculous changes.  That unity can be lived out amid God-given diversity.

2.  Diversity

Our unity is expressed in the diversity of gifts.  There is one Spirit; his gifts are incredibly diverse.

The point is developed in all the body passages of Paul.  Diversity is to be celebrated, not squashed; encouraged, not smothered; developed, not ignored.

Body ministry will use these gifts.  God’s Spirit moves among his people in power to meet needs and minister effectively.  Those gifts need to be identified and used, and in the process, as in Jesus’ life and ministry, special anointings enable effective use of all the Spirit’s gifts.

The best use of spiritual gifts is proper use, not misuse nor disuse.  Paul describes various streams of God’s gifting.

1. God our Father gives personal gifts in grace.  Often seen in our personalities and preferences, these motivating gifts include prophecy, ministry, teaching, exhorting, giving, leading, and showing mercy in compassion (Romans 12:6-8).  They blossom in us as we offer ourselves to God, not being conformed to this world but being transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:1-2).

2. Jesus Christ, the Head of his Church, gives leadership gifts to his church, including the gifts of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers (Ephesians 4:11).  These gifts are the people – not just their ministries such as evangelising and teaching.  They may be full-time or part-time, paid or unpaid.  Most are unpaid, as with Jesus and the apostles.  Think, for example, of the huge army of voluntary home group leaders giving pastoral care to millions of people, and reaching out to others in natural friendship evangelism.

3. The Holy Spirit manifests himself in our lives with gifts given to each of us for the common good.  They include a word or revelation of wisdom, a word or revelation of prophecy, faith, various gifts of healing, miracles, prophecy or speaking from God, discerning spirits, various kinds of tongues, and interpretation of tongues (1 Corinthians 12:7-11).

Paul even ranks God’s gifts in order of ministry importance in the church, first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, of helping, of guiding or administrating, and of different kinds of tongues (1 Corinthians 12: 28).  We sometimes mix up the order and emphasize the least the most!

Not only are we rediscovering the many and varied gifts of the Spirit in the 21st century, but we are also rediscovering the vital biblical truth that these gifts belong to all God’s people, not just the leaders, pastors or clergy.  Together we learn to be supernaturally natural.

That motivates us all to be involved in ministries which include all the various manifestations of God’s Spirit among us all.

The diversity of these glorious gifts can be summarised in the following way for a simple, practical application to ministry:
motivational gifts from God our Father,
ministry gifts from Christ Jesus our Lord and Head, and
manifestation gifts from the Holy Spirit our Comforter and Friend.

Motivational Gifts from God our Father

Romans 12:6-8 lists gifts in a passage about discovering and doing the will of God in the body of Christ, using our God-given abilities.  This list corresponds closely to our natural God-made abilities filled with God’s Spirit.  Some writers suggest that knowing these God-given gifts in our lives motivates us to serve him well for his glory.

1.  prophecy:  so prophesy in proportion to our faith;

2.  ministry:  so use it in ministering or serving;

3.  teaching:  so use it in teaching;

4.  exhorting;  so use it in exhortation;

5.  giving:  so give liberally;

6.  leading:  so lead with diligence;

7.  showing mercy:  so do it with cheerfulness.

Most of us do all these things in various ways, but each of us will be gifted more strongly in some of these gifts.  Knowing our gifting helps us serve the Lord with gladness, fulfilled in our calling.

Ministry Gifts from Christ Jesus our Head

Ephesians 4:11 summarises the leadership or ministry gifts given by the risen Lord, Head of his church.  These gifts differ from all the other lists of gifts because it is the person who is the gift of Christ to his church, not just their ministry gift:

1.  apostle:  sent by the Lord (originally the 12);

2.  prophet:  speaking from the Lord;

3.  evangelist:  proclaiming the gospel of the Lord;

4.  pastor:  shepherding the Lord’s people;

5.  teacher:  instructing the Lord’s people.

Increasingly, these gifts are being recognised and developed in local churches.  Usually, where people are gifted by the Lord in these ways, they become leaders in the church, often unpaid (as in home groups or specialised ministries such as with youth or children), sometimes paid (as on staff, part time or full time).  This list in Ephesians is not a list of local church staff, although the staff will have some of these gifts.  The more that the leaders in the church, voluntary and paid, can exercise and be supported in these ministries, the more the church will demonstrate the anointing and power of the Spirit in its life.

Manifestation Gifts from the Holy Spirit

1 Corinthians 12, gives two useful lists of manifestations of the Spirit in the body of Christ.  Some people use the following helpful categories:

The power to know:

1. word of wisdom:  a divine understanding for a need;

2. word of knowledge:  a divine revelation about a person or event;

3. discerning of spirits:  a divine awareness about spirit powers;

The power to act:

4. faith:  a divine enabling

5. healings:  a divine provision of wholeness;

6. miracles:  a divine intervention supernaturally;

The power to speak:

7. prophecy:  a divine word given;

8. tongues:  a divine unknown language (occasionally known to others);

9. interpretation of tongues:  a divine revelation of a message in tongues.

Paul emphasizes the importance of these gifts, and strongly argues that we need one another because we are all gifted differently.  The eye cannot say it does not need the hand; the head cannot say it does not need the feet.

Gifts are gifts of grace.  We all need God’s grace as we grow in using these gifts, and appreciating them in one another.

1 Corinthians 12:28 then arranges various gifts in an order of ministry significance:

1. apostles

2. prophets

3. teachers

4. miracles

5. healings

6. helps – service

7. administration

8. tongues

Leadership in the church is crucial for it can release or stifle the use of the spiritual gifts of God’s people.  Leaders do not need to envy or fear God’s gifting in his people.  The more the body of Christ lives in its gifting and calling, the more the leaders themselves are able to live in their own gifting and calling, and not be overloaded with ministry which is neither their gifting nor their calling.

We all have many gifts from God but some people are gifted by the Spirit more fully than others in various ministries.  Gifts may emerge unexpectedly as we believe and obey the leading of the Spirit in our lives.  We often discover God’s gifting as we serve one another in various ways, for the Spirit then anoints us for those ministries.

Preaching, for example, can become prophecy as it is anointed by the Spirit of God.  That prophetic ministry may happen unexpectedly in the process of a sermon.  It may also be given in preparation as a word directly from the Lord.

Compassionate service and healing prayer will at times be anointed powerfully by God’s presence in signs and wonders to heal.  Our gift, anointing and role then merge together into strong spiritual ministry.

So role, spiritual gift, and anointings cannot be clearly divided.  Indeed, as the Spirit of God moves in greater power among all members of the body of Christ, the ministry of that body becomes increasingly anointed.

Then the professional is swallowed up in the spiritual; natural ability is suffused and flooded with supernatural life; the human is filled with the divine.

Jesus lived this way.  He laid aside the rights and powers of his divinity, though still being divine.  He became fully man, not superboy nor superman, but fully man, the second Adam without sin.

Then filled with the Spirit from his baptism at around 30, he lived and ministered in the power of the Spirit.  He was filled with the Spirit, led by the Spirit, anointed by the Spirit, and empowered by the Spirit.  He showed us how to live a Spirit-filled life.

Following Pentecost, his followers did the same, though not sinless like Jesus.  They too were filled, led, anointed, and empowered by the same Spirit of God.  So the gifts of the Spirit functioned fully among them also, though limited or marred by human weakness and sin, as Paul often pointed out in his letters.

You can ask for this, and expect it.  The leaders and Christians in the New Testament church did that.  They constantly prayed that believers would be filled with the Spirit.  And they prayed for boldness to live courageously in the power of the Spirit and for God to confirm his word with healings and signs and wonders (see Acts 4:29-31).  God answered those prayers.

A Body Ministry 1See also Body Ministry

This article has selections
from Body Ministry

©  Renewal Journal #17: Unity (2001, 2012)  renewaljournal.com
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Contents:  Renewal Journal 17:  Unity

Snapshots of Glory, by George Otis Jr.

Lessons from Revivals, by Richard Riss

Spiritual Warfare, by Cecilia Estillore Oliver

Unity not Uniformity, by Geoff Waugh

Reviews: Transformations DVDs; Informed Intercession, by George Otis Jr.

Renewal Journal 17: Unity – PDF

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GENERAL BLOGS INDEX 

BLOGS INDEX 1: REVIVALS (BRIEFER THAN REVIVALS INDEX)

BLOGS INDEX 2: MISSION (INTERNATIONAL STORIES)

BLOGS INDEX 3: MIRACLES (SUPERNATURAL EVENTS)

BLOGS INDEX 4: DEVOTIONAL (INCLUDING TESTIMONIES)

BLOGS INDEX 5: CHURCH (CHRISTIANITY IN ACTION)

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BLOGS INDEX 7: IMAGES (PHOTOS AND ALBUMS)

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Christian life, Christian ministry, spiritual gifts

Spiritual Warfare, by Cecilia Estillore Oliver

by Geoff 19 May 2012 5 Comments

Spiritual Warfare

by Cecilia Estillore Oliver

Dr Cecilia Estillore Oliver is a medical doctor who has a Bachelor of Ministry degree from the School of Ministries in Christian Heritage College (also Citipointe Ministry College) in Christian Outreach Centre, Brisbane.

 

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An article in Renewal Journal 17: Unity

 

The Great Commission for worldwide evangelization was thrust into the hands of the early church by Jesus Christ prior to his ascension.  A study of the New Testament reveals several keys to fulfilling this mandate.  One of those keys is spiritual warfare and its relationship to the Great Commission and in particular, to revival and evangelism.

Cities are central to God’s redemptive strategy.  The Great Commission begins with a city – Jerusalem – and culminates when another city – the new Jerusalem – becomes God’s dwelling with his people.  In order to fulfill the Great Commission, we must reach every city on earth with the gospel.  In order for the gospel to reach every creature, The Church is called to engage the forces of evil.  The battleground is the heavenly places.  This is where the battle for our cities is won or lost (Silvoso 1994:21, 97

Warfare Principles

As Christians living in this fallen world we are caught in the spiritual war raging between the kingdom of darkness under Satan’s rule and the kingdom of God.  This spiritual battle is described by Paul in 2 Corinthians 10:3-4:

For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh.  For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds.

The church, ministering in the power of God’s Spirit, has many answers to human needs and problems, including personal and community health and wholeness, if we take seriously the ministry of Jesus and how he has commissioned us to do what he did (Matthew 28:18-20).  This does not ignore God-given medical ministries and resources, but acknowledges they are only a part of God’s provision for our needs.

Satan is a master strategist in perverting God’s plan and purposes for the nations.  His kingdom consists of a hierarchy of principalities, powers, rulers and wickedness in high places which he has assigned over people, cities, and nations, veiling their eyes with deception and lies from seeing the truth of God (Ephesians 6:12; 2 Cor. 4:3-4).

Unfortunately, Christian ignorance and complacency have given the enemy ground to advance.  The New Testament exhorts believers not to be ignorant of the schemes of the Devil whose main aim is to kill, steal and destroy mankind and all creation.  Therefore, Christians are called to be proactive and militant in waging war in the heavenly places.

The real battle is spiritual and all evangelistic crusades regardless of their high technology will be minimally effective unless the battle is won in the spirit realm.

How then do we go about doing spiritual warfare?  In doing spiritual warfare a few basic principles need to be understood.

First, we need to understand that we must have a personal intimate relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.  We need to be yielded and humbly submitted to his Lordship.

Second, we need to resist the devil and flee from his evil ways.  Holiness and purity of heart are important in maintaining strong armour as we advance into spiritual warfare (James 4:6-7; Ephesians 6:11-12).

Third, we need to know and understand our identity, position and victory in Christ Jesus.  In short, our worship of God should lead us to warfare against evil.

Delegated Authority

These principles must be backed up by our knowledge and understanding of the fact that Christ has won the victory through his death on the cross and his resurrection from the power of death.  According to Colossians 2:15, Jesus defeated and disarmed Satan and his cohorts and made a public spectacle of them.  Through our belief in Him, we are delivered from the kingdom of darkness and translated into the kingdom of light, forgiven and redeemed by the blood of the Lamb (Colossians 1:13-14).

With that same power over sin and death, we are also given the delegated authority and power over the devil and his kingdom just like Jesus modelled in his life and ministry.

With this authority comes responsibility.  According to Peter Wagner, “if we do not pray against our spiritual enemies, they will, indeed, prey upon us.”(1996:121).

Wagner identifies three levels of spiritual warfare, namely: ground level spiritual warfare which is involved in casting out demons from people, occult-level spiritual warfare which centres on warfare against the occult and, strategic-level spiritual warfare which deals with territorial spirits (1992:17-20).

Spiritual warfare is not an end in itself but just as Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8) it is a means towards the end of seeking and saving that which is lost (Luke 19:10).  Just as in any battle, spiritual warfare can lead to casualties.  Although everyone is called to intercede and pray, not everyone is called to do front-line strategic-level spiritual warfare.  Neither is it for the faint hearted and immature.

Warfare, Revival and Evangelism

Prayer and intercession are constant features of revival.  Prayer is the number one weapon of spiritual warfare.  Although not everyone prays for the lost, it has been proven that innovative strategic warfare for the lost has brought revival and societal transformation in many places all over the world.  In fact, revival has never been birthed without prayer and intercession, for God acts on the prayers of the saints.  Spiritual warfare creates the climate over regional areas, paving the way for God’s sovereign movement to come.

What is the relationship of revival and evangelism?  John Dawson says,

Revival is what the church first experiences; evangelism is what she then engages in.   Revival is periodic; evangelism is continuous.  Revival cannot last; evangelism must not stop (cited by Pratney 1994:17).

On the other hand, Roy Fish states that “the requirement for securing revival becomes the requirement for sustaining revival” which is supported by the saying that “what is gained by intercession must be maintained by intercession” (cited by Deiro 1998:27).  In other words, revival can be continuous.

Personally, I believe that revival can become ongoing just like the early church times.  Revival should not really be an exception nor should it be limited to being periodic.  Admittedly, history reveals its periodicity and it is a challenge for the Church to be in continuous revival.  As Vance Havner states, “revival is simply New Testament Christianity, the saints getting back to normal”(cited by Pratney 1994:15).

What is normal?  The New Testament Church says that the disciples turned the world upside down as revival broke out and Christianity spread.  The church was then in continuous revival and outwardly focused.  Today, the 21st century church is being pointed to a new apostolic wineskin of doing church.

Pablo Deiros supports this emerging perspective and states that “authentic spiritual revival cannot be separated from the mission of the Church.”  He considers three things that are instructive for revival movements: the destruction of spiritual strongholds over cities and nations, revival for the common people, and evangelism (1998:53).

In addition, Erickson says that the heart of the ministry is the Gospel.  He goes on to describe the example of the ministry of Jesus and how he was anointed to preach the Gospel.  Moreover, Jesus charged his apostles to continue his ministry and gave them the Great commission (1985:1059-1060; Luke 4: 18; Mark 16:15-18).

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Go therefore, and make disciples of all nations…” (Matthew 28:18-19).  “And he called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons…and he sent them out to preach the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:1-2).

A study of the above scriptures and Luke 10:1-22 shows the relationship between spiritual warfare and evangelism.  Jesus actually trained his disciples to be aggressive in spiritual warfare and evangelism before he gave them the mandate for worldwide evangelism prior to his ascension.

Today, history records a startling convergence, beginning in the 1990’s, of the Church toward worldwide evangelism.  Currently, the 21st Century church is going on strong in fulfilling its Great Commission.  Unity and the love of Christ in the Body of Christ is becoming more visible and the Devil hates it.  He knows his time is short and he is launching his attacks on the Church from all directions especially on those involved in spiritual warfare and worldwide evangelism.  Nevertheless, the victory belongs to the Church and on this promise she will stand until Jesus Christ returns again.

Life and Ministry Application

We much to learn about the ways of God and the ways of humanity, including spiritual warfare, revivals, and evangelism.  We need to engage in spiritual warfare in the army of God.  My past and present ministries include this.

It’s not always easy but obedience is the key.  We need much discernment, wisdom, holiness, purity, humility, godly character and faith.  It is a lifetime process of learning and maturing but we must persevere until the end.  I cannot do it alone.  I have much more to learn from all those who are experts in the field and from the Lord.

In conclusion, the New Testament gives a lot of examples and scriptural basis for spiritual warfare.  Jesus modelled it and the early church lived it.  The disciples practiced all levels of Spiritual warfare, were mindful of the principles involved, and used it as a powerful weapon in bringing the continuous revival and the explosive spread of the Gospel in the early Church times.

Today, the believers still have the same delegated authority and power over the Devil as won by Christ Jesus on Calvary.  We are still called to engage in spiritual warfare which is a means to bring revival, win the lost, and fulfil the Great Commission.

References

Erickson, Millard.  1985.  Christian Theology.  Grand Rapids: Baker Book House.

Pratney, Winkie.  1994.  Revival.  Its principles and personalities.  Lafayette: Huntington House Publishers.

Silvoso, Ed.  1994.  That None Should Perish.  Ventura: Regal Books.

Wagner, C. Peter.  1992.  Warfare Prayer.  Ventura: Regal Books.

Wagner, C. Peter.  1996.  Confronting The Powers.  Ventura: Regal Books.

Wagner, Peter & Deiros, Pablo (editors).  1998.  The Rising Revival.  Ventura: Renew.

See also Learning Together in Ministry

©  Renewal Journal #17: Unity (2001, 2012)  renewaljournal.com
Reproduction is allowed with the copyright included in the text.

Renewal Journals – contents of all issues

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Amazon – all journals and books – Look inside

All Renewal Journal Topics

1 Revival,   2 Church Growth,   3 Community,   4 Healing,   5 Signs & Wonders,
6  Worship,   7  Blessing,   8  Awakening,   9  Mission,   10  Evangelism,
11  Discipleship,   12  Harvest,   13  Ministry,   14  Anointing,   15  Wineskins,
16  Vision,   17  Unity,   18  Servant Leadership,   19  Church,   20 Life
Also: 24/7 Worship & Prayer

Contents:  Renewal Journal 17:  Unity

Snapshots of Glory, by George Otis Jr.

Lessons from Revivals, by Richard Riss

Spiritual Warfare, by Cecilia Estillore Oliver

Unity not Uniformity, by Geoff Waugh

Reviews: Transformations DVDs; Informed Intercession, by George Otis Jr.

Renewal Journal 17: Unity – PDF

Revival Blogs Links:

See also Revivals Index

See also Revival Blogs

See also Blogs Index 1: Revivals

GENERAL BLOGS INDEX 

BLOGS INDEX 1: REVIVALS (BRIEFER THAN REVIVALS INDEX)

BLOGS INDEX 2: MISSION (INTERNATIONAL STORIES)

BLOGS INDEX 3: MIRACLES (SUPERNATURAL EVENTS)

BLOGS INDEX 4: DEVOTIONAL (INCLUDING TESTIMONIES)

BLOGS INDEX 5: CHURCH (CHRISTIANITY IN ACTION)

BLOGS INDEX 6: CHAPTERS (BLOGS FROM BOOKS)

BLOGS INDEX 7: IMAGES (PHOTOS AND ALBUMS)

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Christian ministry, revivals ,

Lessons from Revivals, by  Richard Riss

by Geoff 19 May 2012 2 Comments

Lessons from Revivals

by Richard Riss

Richard & Kathryn Riss

 

 

 

Dr Richard Riss published many books and articles on revival.  Here he summarizes lessons he has learned from his research.

 

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The word ‘revival’ is often used for situations in which God is blessing in unusual and supernatural ways.  During times of revival, the results of ministry are always completely out of proportion to the resources used to accomplish them.  For many of us, it is very easy, especially on an unconscious level, to forget that the fruits of God’s blessing are not at all due to our own gifts and resources.

I remember a number of years ago, during the Charismatic movement of the early 1970s, that people would often say that if you went to a meeting in which the Lord was present, you could go up to the front of a gathering and just say anything and sit down, and the Lord would minister to those who were present.  What they meant by this was that, when the blessing of the Lord was present, his work would be accomplished.  People were brought to repentance and reconciliation, and there would be healing, not because of any formulas that were to be followed, nor because any individual human agent was important, but because God was present to deliver and heal.

The words that were spoken almost seemed incidental.  Fine oratory is no better able to convey God’s healing than broken, ungrammatical English.  Even words that seemed irrelevant or inappropriate could carry power if God chose to bless those words.

T. L. and Daisy Osborne

A number of years ago, I was doing some research on the lives of T. L. and Daisy Osborne.  The more I learned about their ministry, the more I was impressed by the fact that there was absolutely no way, humanly speaking, that they could possibly have accomplished the things that they accomplished.

They began in Oklahoma as evangelists in 1941, pioneered a church in Portland, Oregon, went to India in 1945, and returned to America through ill health.  Then in 1948 they found their way to Jamaica, where there were scores of healings and hundreds of conversions.  But then, after returning to the United States for some highly successful campaigns with other major healing evangelists, they went to Puerto Rico in 1951, where there were over 18,000 conversions within twelve days, and then to Cuba, where thousands more came to Christ.  From then onward, the fruitfulness of their ministry continued the same way, in a manner beyond my ability even to imagine.

As a result of studying their lives, and the lives of many others like them, I concluded that it can only be by the supernatural blessing of God that a ministry of this kind can hope to function.  He is the one who opens doors, he is the one who fills stadiums, and he is the one who heals people and touches the lives of multitudes.

Demos Shakarian

More recently, I read Demos Shakarian’s book, The Happiest People on Earth, which describes in detail how the Full Gospel Businessmen’s Fellowship International came into being.  And once again, the one thing about that book that really stood out for me was that the tremendous blessing that was upon that ministry really had nothing to do with the gifts, abilities, plans, and resources of the people involved in it.

It seems that God was purposefully arranging things in such a way that Demos Shakarian and the other founders of the FGBMFI would recognize beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was not through their own efforts that that ministry was brought about.  During the first year of FGBMFI’s existence it was a disaster, because God had not yet begun to bless it.  Even though it was God who led Demos Shakarian to start it, it was a pitiful organization during its first year.  I believe that God wanted to show Demos and his associates what it would be like without his blessing, so that when his blessing actually did come, there would be no question that its incredible fruitfulness had nothing to do with their own hard work, plans, gifts, or abilities.

The first FGBMFI meeting was held on a Saturday morning of October, 1951, at Clifton’s Cafeteria in downtown Los Angeles.  Oral Roberts had been engaged as the speaker.  Demos Shakarian had many, many friends who were businessmen, many of whom he expected would come.  He thought three or four hundred people would show up, and only eighteen actually came, even with a world-famous evangelist as an inducement.   Because there were so few people, they lacked enthusiasm.

Here’s what Demos said about it:

I looked around at the men who had come, most of them old friends.  Dedicated people, committed Christians, and most of them already up to their eyeballs in committees and service clubs and civic organizations.  The kind of men who will volunteer when a job needs doing – the kind who won’t waste a minute on an outfit that isn’t going anywhere. . . .  I stood up.  I described how the conviction had grown in me that God’s Spirit in the next decade would seek new channels to move in.  [Here and there I saw men looking at their watches.]  No organs.  No stained glass.  Nothing more that men can pigeonhole as ‘religious.’  Just one man telling another about Jesus.  I had never had the ability to put ideas into words, and I sat down knowing that I hadn’t gotten it across.

Oral Roberts then spoke, and he succeeded in sparking a little enthusiasm, but only enough to enable them to drag through about a year of meetings attended by just a handful of people.  Thirty or forty men might attend one week, then fifteen the next.  Most of the time Demos ended up buying all of the breakfasts, and there were never any donations.

By December of 1952, they were ready to close down the whole thing.  One of the five directors said that he felt that the whole concept was a dud, and that their experiment had failed.  Later, Demos’s wife, Rose Shakarian, told him that this director was probably right.  The meeting on Friday, December 26, 1952, was going to be the last meeting of the FGBMFI.  But then, something happened.

The evening before that meeting, Demos Shakarian had a vision.  He wrote,

The air around me suddenly became heavy, overwhelming, forcing me to the floor.  I fell to my knees, then on my face, stretched full length on the patterned red rug.  I could not have stood up. . . .  So I did not try.  I simply relaxed in his irresistible love, feeling his Spirit pulse through the room in endless torrents of power.  Time ceased.  Place disappeared. . . . And suddenly I saw myself as I must have looked to Him these past months: struggling and straining, a very busy ant scurrying here and there, dashing off to Europe to try to get the backing of an ‘official’ group, depending everywhere on my own energy instead of His. . .  .   I had acted as though it were my strength which counted – as though I personally had to start the thousand chapters that Oral [Roberts] had seen.  And of course I hadn’t been able to start a single one.  God said, “I am the One, Demos, who alone can open doors.  I am the One who removes the beam from unseeing eyes.”

From this time forward, everything changed.  That morning, at what was to be the last meeting, the FGBMFI director who thought the experiment had failed, handed a check to Demos Shakarian for a thousand dollars payable to the FGBMFI.  He had heard a voice from God saying, “This work is to go around the world and you’re to donate the first money.”  Then Thomas Nickel said to him that he, also, had received a message from the Lord in the middle of the night, telling him to drive four hundred miles to Los Angeles to offer both his services and his printing press for the work of FGBMFI.

Demos said to his wife that evening, “Last night at this time the Fellowship was finished.  Now we have a thousand-dollar treasury and a magazine.  I can’t wait to see what the Lord will do next!”

Ten months later, by October of 1953, there were nine chapters of FGBMFI and six hundred people showed up for an FGBMFI convention at the Clark Hotel in Los Angeles.  By the mid-1960s, there were 300 chapters with a total membership of 100,000, and by 1988, there were more than three thousand chapters in 87 countries.  But what was even more impressive was the work that the Lord was doing in the lives of the multitudes of people that this organization touched.

The experiences of Demos Shakarian and his associates during that first year go a long way toward emphasizing that, in and of ourselves, we are nothing.  It is only the blessing of God that enables us to be effective in his service.

Watchman Nee

Another individual through whom God chose to bring incalculable blessing was Watchman Nee.  Although he had great natural gifts, the results of his ministry were way out of proportion to what could be accomplished by a human being in his or her own strength.

As a Christian in Red China, he was in prison during the last twenty years of his life, so he probably never knew that his life and writings had much of an influence outside of China, but he has touched multitudes in almost every nation of the world.  This was the case despite that fact that he spent so much of his life in prison.

But Watchman Nee knew and understood very clearly that it is only the blessing of God that gets the job done in the Church, and that where the blessing is present, the results are supernatural, not only in their nature, but in their scope.  It is God’s blessing that changes lives and touches people, and it is also God’s blessing that enlarges the influence of a ministry far and wide, completely beyond anyone’s natural abilities.

It was also in 1951, but on New Year’s Day, that Watchman Nee addressed his church at Nanyang Road hall in Shanghai on this topic in a significant sermon that later gained widespread circulation, especially in China, Hong Kong, the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, South America, the Carribean, Africa, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan, Japan, the Middle East, Korea, Thailand, and New Guinea.

In this address, he indicated that, really, all of God’s work is dependent upon his blessing.  Moreover, where the blessing of the Lord flows freely, it will sweep away everything that could impede it.

We can be very faithful, conscientious and diligent.  We can believe in God’s power and we can pray to Him to show His power, but if the blessing of God is lacking, then all of our conscientiousness, all of our diligence, all of our faith, and all of our prayers, will be in vain.

On the other hand, even if we make mistakes, and even if the situations we face are hopeless, if we have the blessing of God, then the results will be fruitful.

A boy’s lunch

Do you remember the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, described in Mark 6: 35-44?  Did it make any difference how many loaves and fishes they started out with?  Of course not.  What mattered was the blessing that rested upon what was available.  We must recognize that the thing that counts is not the amount of money we have or the number of gifts that we have.  It is the blessing of the Lord, and that alone, from which humanity derives sustenance.  Our own resources, our own power, our own toil, our own faithfulness, in and of themselves, are completely sterile.  Apart from His blessing, we are totally inadequate, no matter who we are or what gifts we might have.

So many of us centre our hopes, not on the blessing of the Lord, but upon the few loaves in our hands.  We have so pitifully little, and yet we keep calculating what we can do with it.  The more we calculate, the harder our work becomes.  Yet, if we let the blessing of the Lord be upon the loaves, they will be multiplied.

If the blessing rests upon a ministry, then thousands are fed.  If it is absent, then even two hundred denarii worth of bread is still not enough.  Once we recognize this, then we can stop asking “How many loaves do we have?”  There would be no need to manipulate, no need to advertise, no need for human wisdom, and no need for flattery.  We would be able just to trust the blessing of God and wait for it.  And we would find that even if we had bungled things, somehow, things would still turn out well.  While we hope that we will be preserved from mistakes and from careless words and acts, we will find that if God’s blessing is upon us, even our serious blunders will not ultimately hinder his purpose.

Very often, we only expect results that are commensurate with our own time and money, or our own gifts and abilities.  But God’s blessing is fruit that is out of all proportion to what we are.  If we plan simply on the basis of what we put into something, then it can be a hindrance to God’s working beyond our plans.  On the other hand, if we set our hearts on the blessing of the Lord, then we will often find things happening that are totally out of keeping with our own capacities, and beyond even our wildest dreams.

Once these truths really grip us, we can discard as worthless all of our clever ways, our specious words, and our scrupulous work.  Then, even if we are not completely conscientious about the work, and even if we make mistakes, the need of the hungry will still be met.

In preaching about God’s blessing, Watchman Nee was, of course, talking about what has been known in our culture as revival.  The lessons that he taught here are some of the same lessons that we must learn in order to understand how God works with respect to revival.

Past and future blessing

One of the things that Nee observed is that “one of the most serious threats to future blessing is past blessing. . . .  If we accept what He has done in the past as the measure of His future working, then His blessing in the past will become a hindrance to future blessing.”

One good illustration of this principle comes, again, from the lives of Demos and Rose Shakarian. Their families had emigrated from Armenia, where there had been a great revival which resulted from a group of on-fire Christians visiting Armenia from Russia, just across the border, in the year 1900.  Many of these Armenians soon emigrated en masse to California as a result of a prophecy of a coming persecution, which was fulfilled in 1914.

But by 1940, things had changed.  It was still ten years before the founding of the FGBMFI, but Demos and Rose Shakarian were already being led of God into transdenominational ministry.  That summer, in accordance with God’s direction, they did a series of outdoor evangelistic meetings near Lincoln Park in Downey, California, their home town.

However, they soon began to experience resistance from the Elders of their church.  As these meetings continued week after week, the older people of their church began to protest.  For the first time in their lives they found themselves in conflict with their parents’ generation.  They tried to get the permission of the Elders, but without success.  It looked to them as though they would have to cancel their plans to hold meetings the following summer.  In the end, Demos’s father was able to get permission from the Elders.

The meetings did carry on the next summer, but it taught Demos a lesson.  Here’s what he wrote:

The wind of Pentecost, which had blown out of Russia into Armenia . . .  had dwindled by now into a denomination as rigid as any other.  It was always this way.  All through history, each fresh outpouring of the Spirit soon became, in human hands, a new orthodoxy.  The great revival on Azusa Street, for example, . . . which started out in freedom and joy and a breaking down of barriers, had solidified by the 1940s into a number of self-contained churches who couldn’t communicate even with each other, let alone with the world as a whole.

This is a principle of revival that is easily observable.  I wrote about it myself in a magazine article more than fifteen years ago, in which I observed that it is probably this phenomenon, more than anything else, that has brought about the formation of new denominations, and before that time, the founding of new monastic orders within the Roman Catholic Church.  Old institutional forms soon become inadequate for the new thing that God begins to do.

So what can we learn from this?

First, to be flexible enough to allow God to do his thing.

And second, to remember that it is God who is doing his work through us, and that apart from him, we can’t accomplish anything.  But with him, we can and will, turn the world upside-down, just as it happened in the days of Peter, Paul, Timothy, John, Barnabas, Ignatius, Polycarp, Irenaeus, and Tertullian.

©  Renewal Journal #17: Unity (2001, 2012)  renewaljournal.com
Reproduction is allowed with the copyright included in the text.

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All Renewal Journal Topics

1 Revival,   2 Church Growth,   3 Community,   4 Healing,   5 Signs & Wonders,
6  Worship,   7  Blessing,   8  Awakening,   9  Mission,   10  Evangelism,
11  Discipleship,   12  Harvest,   13  Ministry,   14  Anointing,   15  Wineskins,
16  Vision,   17  Unity,   18  Servant Leadership,   19  Church,   20 Life
Also: 24/7 Worship & Prayer

Contents:  Renewal Journal 17:  Unity

Snapshots of Glory, by George Otis Jr.

Lessons from Revivals, by Richard Riss

Spiritual Warfare, by Cecilia Estillore Oliver

Unity not Uniformity, by Geoff Waugh

Reviews: Transformations DVDs; Informed Intercession, by George Otis Jr.

Renewal Journal 17: Unity – PDF

Revival Blogs Links:

See also Revivals Index

See also Revival Blogs

See also Blogs Index 1: Revivals

GENERAL BLOGS INDEX 

BLOGS INDEX 1: REVIVALS (BRIEFER THAN REVIVALS INDEX)

BLOGS INDEX 2: MISSION (INTERNATIONAL STORIES)

BLOGS INDEX 3: MIRACLES (SUPERNATURAL EVENTS)

BLOGS INDEX 4: DEVOTIONAL (INCLUDING TESTIMONIES)

BLOGS INDEX 5: CHURCH (CHRISTIANITY IN ACTION)

BLOGS INDEX 6: CHAPTERS (BLOGS FROM BOOKS)

BLOGS INDEX 7: IMAGES (PHOTOS AND ALBUMS)

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Christian ministry, Geoff Waugh, renewal ,

Vision for Ministry, by Geoff Waugh

by Geoff 11 May 2012 1 Comment

Vision for Ministry

by Geoff Waugh

 

Dr Geoff Waugh is the founding editor of the Renewal Journal.  

This article is adapted from his book Body Ministry.

The task Jesus gave us is still the same.
The context of that task keeps changing.

Renewal Journal 16: Vision – PDF

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An article in Renewal Journal 16: Vision:

 

Accelerating change is changing us and the church.  Already the one hour (11 am to noon) hymn-sandwich church service held in a ‘typical’ church building with wooden pews and an organ which stands empty most of the time, is looking like ancient history – and very bad stewardship.  It may not be wrong (and God can use anything), but it’s not in the Bible, and it’s fading into history.

Nearly 2000 years ago Jesus gave us our job: “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth, so go and make people my disciples … and I am with you all the way even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:18-20).

His final promise told us how we would do that: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses … to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

That’s still our job, and we can only do it by the power of the Holy Spirit – as Jesus did.  However, the context and the way of doing the job changes constantly.

There’s nothing there about buildings, pews, spires, bells, organs, clerical garb, status (except witnessing servants.

Change changed

Change has changed.  It is speeding up.  We live in accelerating change.  Change changes our ministry, and us.  We think, feel and act differently from all previous generations.  We perceive each day in new ways now.  We plan and do more.  Cars, phones, microwaves, TV and the internet have changed us.

Church has changed.  Church people walked to the services and socialised together on Sundays for most of history; now millions drive cars, and fill Sunday with many other activities.  Church life for most of history involved time with extended families; now families are widely scattered.

1. Accelerating social change

Alvin Toffler wrote about the Third Wave in sociology.  He could find no word adequate to encompass this current wave we live in, rejecting his own earlier term, ‘super-industrial’, as too narrow.  He wrote:

In attempting so large-scale a synthesis, it has become necessary to simplify, generalise, and compress. . . (so) this book divides civilisation into only three parts – a First Wave agricultural phase, a Second Wave industrial phase, and a Third Wave phase now beginning.

Humanity faces a quantum leap forward.  It faces the deepest social upheaval and creative restructuring of all time.  Without clearly recognising it, we are engaged in building a remarkable new civilisation from the ground up.  This is the meaning of the Third Wave.

Put differently … we are the final generation of an old civilisation and the first generation of a new one … [living] between the dying Second Wave civilisation and the emergent Third Wave civilisation that is thundering in to take its place.[1]

Think of church life during those three waves.

1. Churches for most of 2000 years of the First Wave agricultural phase were the village church with the village priest (taught in a monastery) teaching the Bible to mostly illiterate people, using Latin Bible parchments copied by hand for 1500 years.  Worship involved chants without books or music.  These churches reflected rural life, with feudal lords and peasants.

2. Churches in 500 years of the Second Wave industrial phase (co-existing with the First Wave) became denominational with many different churches in the towns as new denominations emerged.  Generations of families belonged there all their life and read the printed Authorised (1511) version of the Bible.  They have been taught by ministers trained in denominational theological colleges.  Worship has involved organs used with hymns and hymn books.  These churches reflected industrial town life, with bureaucracies such as denominations.

3. Churches in 50 years of the Third Wave technological phase (co-existing with the Second Wave) are becoming networks of independent churches and movements, among which people move freely.  They tend to be led by charismatic, anointed, gifted, ‘apostolic’ servant-leaders, usually trained on the job through local mentoring using part time courses in distance education.  Their people have a wide range of Bible translations and use Bible tools in print, on CDs and on the internet.  Worship involves ministry teams using instruments with overhead projection for songs and choruses.  These churches reflect third wave technological city life.

Some churches, of course, mix these phases, especially now with the second wave receding and the third wave swelling.  For example, some denominational churches, especially those ‘in renewal’, may have a gifted ‘lay’ senior pastor not trained in theological college.  Some independent churches have theologically trained pastors with doctoral degrees in ministry.  Some denominational churches function like independent churches in their leadership and worship styles.

The huge changes we live through now can be compared to a clock face representing the last 3,000 years, since people recorded history, so each minute represents 50 years.  On that scale the printing press came into use about 10 minutes ago.  About three minutes ago, the telegraph, photograph and locomotive arrived.  Two minutes ago the telephone, rotary press, motion pictures, automobile, aeroplane, radio and emerged.  Less than one minute ago television appeared.  Less than half a minute ago the computer and then communication satellites became widely used, and the laser beam seconds ago.[2]

A former General Secretary of the United Nations, U Thant, noted that “it is no longer resources that limit decisions.  It is the decision that makes the resources.”[3]  He saw this as the fundamental revolutionary change, the most revolutionary social change we have ever known.

Other writers focus on the problems involved in accelerating change.

We live through problems never experienced before.  No nation and no aspect of life can escape their pressure.  These include:  the expansion of population, the burst of technology, the discovery of new forms of energy, the extension of knowledge, the rise of new nations, and the world-wide rivalry of ideologies.[4]

Accelerating change produces uprooting which causes rootlessness in society through:

1.  the repeated moves of so many families (e.g. scattered relatives);

2.  the disruption of communities through urban sprawl (e.g. moving to new churches) ;

3.  the increasing anonymity of urban life (e.g. the lonely crowd);

4.  the disruption of shift work (e.g. longer hours); and

5.  the fragmentation of the family (e.g. divorce now common).[5]

We live and minister in this revolutionary ‘post-modern’ era of rootlessness and changing values.  This context gives us increasing opportunities for loving, powerful witness and revival.

2. Accelerating church growth

Not only is the world population exploding.  So is the church.  By 1960 the world population had passed 2.5 billion and in 30 years from then doubled to 5 billion.  By 2000 it passed 6 billion.  However, in most non-Western countries the growth of the church already outstrips the population growth.

About 10% of Africa was Christian in 1900.  By 2000 it was about 50% Christian in Africa south of the Sahara.  In 1900 Korea had few Christians.  Now over 40% of South Korea is Christian.  By 1950 about 1 million in China were committed Christians.  Now estimates range around 100 million.

Every week approximately one thousand new churches are established in Asia and Africa alone.  Places such as Korea, Ethiopia, China, Central America, Indonesia and the Philippines are dramatic flash points of growth.

What kind of church is emerging?  Over 500 million Christians are pentecostal/charismatic.

The movement of the Holy Spirit across the world in the twentieth century has far eclipsed the marvellous beginning of that same movement in the early church.  It continues to spread.  Churches change and grow in power – along with persecution.

Modern developments provide the church with amazing resources.  Already reports of radio ministry into China and Russia tell how God uses this medium powerfully, along with spontaneous expansion of the church through signs and wonders.  Preachers now reach into the homes of people through television.  Millions are being won to Christ through The Jesus Film now translated into over 500 languages.  Similarly, cassettes and video tapes proliferate, much of all this being closely related to dynamic ministry in the power of the Spirit.

Some fundamental principles now change how we function as a church.  These dynamic changes recapture basic biblical principles.  They include:

Divine Headship – from figurehead to functional head.

Servant Leadership – from management to equipping

Church Membership – from institutional to organic

Dynamic Networks – from bureaucracy to relationships

Body Ministry – from some to all

Spiritual Gifts – from few to many

Obedient Mission – from making decisions to making disciples

Power Evangelism – from programs to lifestyle

Kingdom Authority – from words to deeds

Divine Headship – from figurehead to functional Head.

A Catholic prayer group in Texas realised that none of them had ever obeyed Luke 14:12-14.  They had not fed and clothed the poor who could never repay them.  A loving prophetic word from the Lord through a charismatically gifted Sister called them to do that.  They all agreed it was from the Lord.  So they took enough food for 120 people working everyday (including Christmas day) at the city garbage dump just over the river in Mexico, and they all had Christmas dinner together there in the dump where the people were working.  Over 300 people turned up to eat.  The food multiplied.  People brought relatives and everyone ate.  The eight carloads from the prayer group  ate.  They had enough left over to take food to three orphanages.

Now a lively church exists there.  The sick are healed.  Everyone at the dump had TB originally. Within four years no one had it.  Charismatic doctors see people healed through medicine, prayer and miracles.  At regular meetings, not just on Sundays, people have more fun dancing in church than in any dance hall.  Their worship involves everyone in singing, dancing, and praying for one another.[6]

If Jesus is really the functional head of his church, not just the figurehead, how does that work?  Basically we listen to him, and just do what he says, in any group, anywhere.

The disciples found it almost impossible to conceive of the kingdom of God without equating it with the world’s kingdoms.  So do we.  We also find it almost impossible to conceive of the church without equating it with our human societies.

We tend to run the church according to social patterns.  Church structures look like social structures.  The word ‘church’ often refers to some social expression of the church, or to a building, neither of which are biblical.  So we have great difficulty with the apparent lack of interest in the New Testament for institutional models of the church.

The New Testament church grew, rapidly.  It could be counted: 3,000; 5,000; and great multitudes.  This was undoubtedly the church of Jesus Christ, with all its faults.  He lived in the midst of his body.

The written and living word express the Lord’s headship in his church.

1.  The Written Word

All scripture is the inspired word of God; God-breathed (2 Tim.  3:16,17).  Scripture communicates the word of Christ to his church.

The headship of Christ in his church is eroded or denied when scripture loses its authority.  Conservative churches including Charismatic and Pentecostal churches believe the Bible.  They believe in miracles, then and now.  They believe God answers prayers, then and now.  That does not make all they do or say right, but it does preserve what’s right – God’s Word.

Although church structures and traditions vary, the Word of God provides an anchor and an objective measure of faithfulness or aberration.  Jesus was very clear in what he said!

Always there is the unexpected.  God’s purposes may be known, and yet are unknowable.  We continually discover that we have missed large slabs of the total picture.  We have the scriptures, as did the theologians of Jesus’ day, and like them we often fail to see what is there.  It must be divinely revealed and illuminated to be known.

2.  The Living Word

Scripture and prayer provide a means of communication with Christ our head.  Yet, like all means, they are a vehicle of communication, not the communication itself.

Speak to Him thou, for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet –
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.[7]

The body of Christ is a living body, just as the Head is a living head.

Institutional forms and organisational expressions should yield to that.  The living body of the living Christ must give substance to that reality.  Then the inward union with Christ finds expression in the outward dimensions of church life.

Unless we grasp this, we will continue to secularise all we do, including ministry.  A secularised church functions like any other secular society: voting, electing leaders, keeping minutes, and running a bureaucracy.  That can easily bypass the Holy Spirit.

Jesus Christ, the living Head changes all that!

For example, obedience to the Great Commission comes not from mere outward observance of the written word, but naturally from the dynamic life in Christ.

The Living Word transforms the letter into life.  “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life,” said Jesus (John 6:63), and Paul added, “the letter of the law kills, but the spirit gives life” (2 Cor.  3:6).

Then the Bible comes alive, anointed and empowered by the Spirit who inspired it.  Preaching becomes prophetic words from God as we wield the sharp two-edged sword of the Spirit.  Teaching lights fires in minds, hearts and wills.  Serving gives Christ’s love and healing through his responsive body, the church.  Prayer is transformed into intimate communion and sensitive response to the Lord, our Head.  Faith grows bold and strong.  The church grows with unleashed power when Christ is no longer the figurehead or absentee land-lord but sovereign Lord with kingdom authority.

Carl Lawrence gives an outstanding example of this in his book The Coming Influence of China.[8]  A full account is reproduced in Renewal Journal No. 12: Harvest.  Two teenage girls ‘just prayed and obeyed’ as they were led by the Lord.  They established 30 churches in two years on Hainan Island in China.  The smallest had 220 people, and the largest nearly 5,000 people.

That kind of radical obedience to Christ the Head of his church produces a radical biblical kind of leadership in the church.

Servant Leadership – from management to equipping 

Leadership in the body of Christ, as in the kingdom of God, is very different from all other leadership in human society.   Authentic Christian leadership is Spirit-filled, Spirit-led and Spirit-empowered, hidden and charismatic, yet manifested in power and visible institutionally.

Bishop Stephen Neill notes:
There has been a great deal of talk in recent years about the development of leadership …  But is the idea of “leadership” biblical and Christian, and can we make use of it without doing grave injury to the very cause that we wish to serve? .  .  .

How far is the conception of “leadership” really one which we ought to encourage?  It is so hard to use it without being misled by the non-Christian conception of leadership.   It has been truly said that our need is not for leaders, but for saints and servants.  Unless this fact is held steadily in the foreground, the whole idea of leadership training becomes dangerous.[9]

Jesus raised these issues also.   They touch on the fundamental dimensions of servanthood and equipping for ministry.

1.  Servanthood

The radical nature of Jesus’ leadership, what he demanded of his followers, is best expressed in his words:

In Matthew 20:25-28, in response to the request of James and John for leadership or prominence in the coming kingdom and in answer to the other disciples’ reaction to this request, Jesus said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them.  Not so with you.  Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant – and whoever wants to be first must be your slave – just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

Jesus insists that the world’s concept of leadership must not operate in his church:  “Not so with you.”  Leadership is not about position or hierarchy or authority; it is a question of function and of service.  The greatness of a Christian is not in status but in servanthood.

Jesus underscored his revolutionary teaching: greatness comes not through being served, but through serving.   In God’s kingdom the standard of achievement is found not in exercising power over others, but in ministering to them and empowering them.

Jesus dramatically illustrated this teaching by washing his disciples’ feet.  Then he told them to do just what he had done:  “If I, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, so you must also wash one another’s feet” (John 13:14).  That lesson was so important that he gave it to them a final act of love just before he died.

Jesus rejected both political and religious authority.  He established Kingdom authority – serving others.  His rejection of earthly power is so revolutionary that his disciples continually missed it.  So do we.

What pain we could save ‘the church’ and what awful church-split sins we could avoid if we understood and obeyed this basic biblical principle!  Church splits don’t happen where people love, serve, and truly forgive one another.  You may be ‘right’ (in theology or practice) but if you split the church then you are very wrong.

Where would Jesus fit in our traditional church patterns today?  Would he savagely attack the political power plays and status seeking leadership?  Would he call our divisions sin?  Would he denounce in scathing terms the religious pomp and ceremony?  Would he absolutely reject hierarchical positions, titles, and garb.  Once he did.

Even more fundamental to the nature of the kingdom and the ministry of the church are other questions.  Would he disturb the meetings?  Would he cast out demons?  Would he heal?  Would his preaching so provoke his hearers that they would oppose him?  Would he be more at home outside our religious systems than within them?  Would he so threaten our systems that we would denounce, expel or ignore him?

Leaders in many persecuted churches, where the church grows powerfully, face all that now.  That’s where you see servant leadership most clearly!

“Who serves?” is a very different question from “Who leads?”

Does this do away with leadership?  Yes and no.  It does away with the world’s kind of leadership.  It requires the Kingdom’s kind of leadership, which is servant leadership led by the Spirit of God.

Terry Fulham (in Miracle at Darien) demonstrated that kind of Kingdom leadership in an Episcopal church in America.  He accepted ‘leadership’ on the basis that no decision would ever be made by the elders (or board) until they were in total unity in the Spirit.  No vote would ever be needed.  They believed Jesus could lead his church.  So they required unity.  If unity could not be attained, they waited and prayed till it was.

The New Testament regards all Christians as ministers and servants.  Body ministry must be servant ministry.   If leadership is a legitimate term for kingdom life and body ministry, it must be servant leadership.

It is both a radical leadership style among other styles and also the life-style of every Christian.  It is the ministry of every member of Christ’s body.  The great leaders in the Kingdom may be the least obvious – humbly and courageously serving others, unnoticed.

2.  Equipping for Ministry

Some servant leaders are called and anointed to equip others for ministry.

In one sense we are all called and anointed to do that.  Some as parents, raising children.  Some as carers, showing others how to care.  Some as team leaders, serving and inspiring the team and empowering them for service also.

Among spiritual gifts there are different ministries including leadership and administration.   Our problem is that those words carry so much political and hierarchical freight that we can hardly use them without distorting them.

Leadership in Christ’s body means service, ministry, and being least or last, not greatest or first.  The first shall be last, and the last first, Jesus said.  Leadership is a spiritual function of serving and empowering, dependent on spiritual giftedness, not just on human ability.

Jesus Christ, not personality or achievement, makes leaders.  The Ephesians 4 passage is a clear statement of that kind of giftedness.   He appoints some to be apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers in his body to equip (by serving) the members of that body for their ministry.

Michael Harper summarises their function as:

Let my people go      –   the apostolic function of the Church
Let my people hear   –   the prophetic function of the Church
Let my people grow  –   the evangelistic function of the Church
Let my people care   –   the pastoral function of the Church
Let my people know –   the teaching function of the Church

Go to my people
Speak to my people
Reach my people
Care for my people
Teach my people.[10]

Leadership gifts in the body of Christ equip that body for ministry.  Again, using such loaded terms, it needs to be stressed that this is quite different from mere human ability to lead; it is spiritual giftedness.  Like other spiritual gifts, it may find expression in and through natural ability, but it is then natural ability anointed in Spirit-led power.

The amazingly diverse, flexible nature of spiritual leadership needs emphasis.  No one model has it all, even though we all are called to be servant leaders.

Paul’s way of developing leaders was to recognise and encourage the special gift and role of each person, especially elders.  Paul was undoubtedly a leader, a servant leader in the strong sense of the term.  He served with his apostolic gifts.  He equipped the body for ministry.

The term servant leader recaptures essential dimensions of the equipping ministry.   So long as ‘leader’ is understood charismatically as spiritual giftedness, it becomes stronger than ever.  Christ, head of his body, gives that kind of equipping leadership to members of his body.  Enormous authority is vested in that understanding of servant leadership, precisely because those leaders serve others, and equip others for ministry.

This specific equipping ministry in the body applies especially to leadership of large churches.  As a church grows larger, it is vital that the pastor be an equipper.  The ministry will be done by the whole body, not just the ‘leader’.  No one person can do it all.

Body ministry requires leadership which is both humble and powerful, leading by serving.  All spiritual gifts need to function this way, especially leadership gifts.   Powerful leadership grows from humble service.

Church Membership – from institutional to organic

We are members of Christ’s church; that sounds institutional.
We are members of Christ’s body; that sounds organic.
In fact, the two can be one!

The church must find its expression in human society, so it must have institutional characteristics.  They may be as simple as a home group gathering regularly together, or as complex as a multi-million dollar denominational agency.  As the institutional forms grow more complex, their vested interests become more binding and conformity to the world usually increases.

The Holy Spirit cannot be confined by institutionalisation.  He never has been.  He continually breaks free of human limitations and blows where he will.  Christ, by the power of his Spirit is building his church.

Instead of a dictatorship or a democracy, God has chosen to make the Body of Christ an organism with Christ as the head and each member functioning with spiritual gifts.  Understanding spiritual gifts, then is the key to understanding the true organisation of the church.

The charismatic nature of the church as Christ’s body will be expressed through the spiritual gifts of its members.  So both the charismatic dimension and the institutional dimension co-exist in the church; the former being its essence, the latter its cultural or social expression.

1.  The Organism

The body of Christ is an organism, a community, with interpersonal relationships, mutuality and interdependence.  It is flexible and leaves room for a high degree of spontaneity.  The Bible gives us this model for the church: the human body (1 Corinthians 12).

The charismatic dimension in both ministry and organisation does not do away with professional abilities and functions but fills them with the active, powerful presence of Christ by his Spirit and so transforms them from being merely professional to being charismatically gifted as well as professionally competent.

For example, a professional counsellor may be less effective than a non-professional friend who ministers love and care in the power of the Spirit of God.  The dynamic power of charismatic ministry lies in the active presence of God’s Spirit filling that ministry or at least guiding it.  However, a Spirit-filled, Spirit-led professional counsellor draws powerfully on both gifting and training.

Implications for church organisation are enormous.  Although the professional tasks and organisations will probably continue, the ministry of the whole body will require very flexible forms which allow and intentionally foster body ministry.  Counselling, teaching, preaching, social care and evangelism are all transformed by the Holy Spirit guiding and empowering those activities.

Charismatic Anglican David Watson gives an example of this from his own experience.  As the church he pastored in York grew into fuller expressions of charismatic life it needed restructuring to provide adequate pastoral care through elders who were charismatically gifted as pastors not just elected to fill an institutional role of leadership.  They cared for area groups, especially mentoring the group leaders.[11]

Watson emphasises that where Christ is central and head of his body, he will provide charismatic leadership through gifted elders who in turn lead or care for the whole body, especially through pastoring and teaching gifts in the small groups or cells of the body.  An organic model of the church expresses the real headship of Christ in his body and his ministry through the spiritual gifts of his people in body ministry.

Revival in Bogotá (see article in this issue) tells that kind of story dramatically in 2001.

Paul was clear on this.  Within the body of Christ apostles, prophets, evangelists and pastor- teachers equip the body for ministry so that the body members, using their spiritual gifts, can do the work of ministry (Ephesians 4).

Paul’s three main passages on the church as the body of Christ give basic lists of spiritual gifts for charismatic ministry.  Others could be added.  The Ephesians 4:11-12 list refers specifically to charismatic leadership in the church, given by Christ, the risen and ascended conqueror, to equip the members of his body for the work of ministry.  Aspects of that equipment are included in the various lists of spiritual gifts.  Each passage emphasises the importance of ministering in love and unity.

2.  The Organisation

In times of accelerating change and exploding church growth, the institutional model of the church needs to be flexible and responsive to its environment.  Further, if it is to allow a truly charismatic ministry to function with strong spiritual gifts, it must be sensitive and responsive to the Holy Spirit, all the time.

The early church gives a startlingly clear picture of such a flexible institutional model.  They were constantly led and empowered by the Spirit.  They were very human, with typical faults and problems.  The New Testament authors wrote mostly to fix those problems, especially in the epistles.

They met in many house churches, still as the one church in one place, inter-related.  It was extremely flexible, needed everyone’s involvement, and could multiply anywhere.  The church in China today, and in African villages, and in Latin American communities, uses this same organisation.

The institutional model of the church then was a house church model.  That model has been repeated all through history, and in many parts of the world today is the means of flexible rapid church growth.  Most large churches use this model in home groups.

Organisational membership often involves attending the meetings, paying the dues, abiding by the rules, and possibly being elected or appointed to office.  Any society can do that.  Most do.

Organic membership of the body, however, functions by living in Christ and ministering in spiritual gifts.

These two kinds of membership need to be differentiated when discussing church membership.  Usually “church membership” means club membership; it is an institutional expression of the church.  Usually “body membership” means the organic functioning of the members of Christ’s body, and its members being united by the Spirit of God in the one body, the church.

Organisational habits can reverse their meaning over years.  Calvin in Geneva, for example, refused to identify with clerical pomp and wore the poor man’s cloak when preaching, but in time that turned into the Geneva gown, a clerical institution.  Francis of Assisi also wore a poor man’s cloak, which has now become a religious uniform quite unrelated to what the poor now wear.

Those quirks are minor compared with the massive maintenance programs of large religious institutions.  Denominations which came into being for mission, often breaking away from hardened institutional forms, in turn become maintenance-oriented and lose the very vision which gave them birth.

The organisational form of the church needs to be continually responsive to the Head of the church, or it becomes secularised and the Spirit of God is quenched.  Leadership in the church must be especially responsive to the Spirit to avoid this.

Organisational life in the church can remain flexible and responsive to the Head of the church as it keeps its organic life alive in the power of the Spirit.

Dynamic Networks -from bureaucracy to relational groups

Networks of groups increasingly replace bureaucracy.  Short term task groups replace committees.  Networks of independent churches and groups are replacing historic denominations.

Spirit-filled groups or communities give one simple example, now affecting multiplied millions of people.  People relate in home groups, house churches, mission groups, independent churches, and renewal or revival movements everywhere.  So your home group may have people who were Catholic, or Anglican, or Methodist, or Baptist, or Hindu, or New Age.

Second Wave churches, for example, in earlier days could insist on loyalty to the denominational bureaucracy and policy lines.  Now people choose from networks of the ecclesiastical smorgasbord.  Television, mobility and education all shift our consciousness and increase our awareness and choices, including church life.  That is how renewal and revival have been spreading.

A current example is the grassroots spread of charismatic renewal and revival.

In First Wave rural villages with little outside influence, little change occurred – “We’ve always done it this way.”

In Second Wave town churches ‘renewal’ could be kept outside the denomination by being banished to another bureaucracy, and therefore ignored – “Join the pentecostals and don’t rock the boat.”

Third Wave society opens new networks of information and experience.  Our increasing mobility brings us into contact with renewal and revival.  Our extended education opens our minds to these new insights.  Our television portrays the power of God in healing and our worldview begins to shift.  Our friends give us paperbacks to read or cassettes to hear and videos to see, and conviction or hope grows within us.  Our visitors or home group leaders tell of their experiences and we seek what they’ve found.  Our friends pray for us and God releases his Spirit more fully in our lives.  Yet all of this happens outside the denominational bureaucracy; or it may do so.

So Wagner’s “third wave” of renewal is carried on Toffler’s Third Wave of social change into all church structures.  Our friendship networks become ‘the bridges of God’ into our churches and out into the lives of others.  Significantly, no pastor or minister may be involved.  People witness to people.  People now have the Bible tools, education, and friendships to check it out.

Those changes catapult us into new expressions of ministry.

Body Ministry – from some to all.

Body Ministry involves the biblical pattern of ministry in the church, the body of Christ.

Body Ministry is the ministry of the whole body of Christ.  It functions through the use of spiritual gifts in all the members of the body.  The unity of the Spirit of God finds expression in the incredible diversity of spiritual gifts and ministries.

The Reformation rediscovered the authority of the Bible and the wonderful gift of God’s grace in providing salvation by faith in Jesus.  Unfortunately it failed to free the church from the rule of the priest or pastor, so carried that form of leadership into the Protestant church, producing a drastic clergy-laity division.  Spiritual gifts in the whole body of Christ were largely ignored.

Body ministry, then, is not limited to church meetings, although the meetings need to express body life as well. That ministry is total. It finds expression in all of life.

Ray Stedman popularised the term “body life” in his book by that name thirty years ago.  He used body life services in which people could share needs or testimonies.  Bodylife becomes body ministry as people apply their spiritual gifts to those needs in the church and in society in ministry.

Body Life teaching opened the way for a fuller apprehension and use of spiritual gifts in shared life and ministry. That in turn has opened the way for a fuller discovery of the dynamic power of body ministry in Kingdom authority.

Spiritual Gifts – from few to many

Body ministry requires spiritual gifts.  The body of Christ ministers charismatically.  There is no other way it can minister as the living body of the living Christ.  He ministers in and through his body, by the gifts of his Spirit.

Charismatic gifts of the Spirit differ from natural talents.  We can do much through dedicated human talent, but that is not body ministry through spiritual gifts.  Natural talents do need to be committed to God and used for his glory.  They can be channels of spiritual gifts, but may not be.

Spiritual gifts constantly surprise us.  God uses whom he chooses, and chooses whom he will.  Spiritual gifts often show up with great power in unlikely people and in unlikely ways.

A common misunderstanding, for instance, is that those with an effective healing ministry must be especially holy people.  They may not be.  Gifts of the Spirit are given by grace, not earned by consecration.  Young, immature Christians may have powerful spiritual ministries, as they discover and use their spiritual gifts.  Many do.  That is no proof of consecration or maturity, even though to please God we need to offer ourselves to him in full commitment.

Romans Chapter 12 gives a surprising example of this.  The well known first two verses challenge us to offer ourselves fully to God and so discover his will for our lives.  Paul then explains that knowing God’s will involves being realistic about ourselves and our gifts.  If we know and use our God-given gifts, we fulfil God’s will for our lives.

Body ministry, then, depends on the use of spiritual gifts, not just the use of natural talents dedicated to God.  Both are vital for committed Christian living, and both will be present in the church.  However, the church is not built on committed natural talent, even though churches often seem to operate that way.  Body ministry involves the use of spiritual gifts.

For example two people may have the talent of beautiful singing voices.  Both will sing in worship and even on the platform in ministry.  One, however, may be anointed with a prophetic gift in song, and the other may not be.  That gifting will move hearts and wills in the power of God’s Spirit.  Christ gives those gifts – we don’t create them.  Some of these gifts of God’s Spirit, received for ministry, will be blessed in ministry in and through natural talent as well, but the key to body ministry is not the talent.  It is the spiritual gift.

Similarly, spiritual gifts are not Christian roles or tasks.  All Christians witness, but only some are gifted in evangelism.  Every Christian has faith, but some have a gift of faith as well.  All must exercise hospitality, but some are gifted in hospitality.  Prayer is for all of us, but some are gifted in intercession.

Spiritual gifts operate in unity with diversity.

1.  Unity

Paul’s passages on spiritual gifts all emphasise unity expressed in diversity (Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12, Ephesians 4).

Without that unity expressed in love, the diversity destroys the body’s ministry causing chaos, division, sectarianism, and impotence.  This is Paul’s theme in 1 Corinthians 12-14.

The Corinthians did not need teaching on the reality of spiritual gifts nor on their diversity.  They knew that.  In fact, they abused that.  So Paul had to correct the fault by emphasizing the unity of the body, bound together in love.  Gifts are not to be a source of division and strife, but an expression of unity and love.  Unless rooted and grounded in love, the gifts are counter-productive.

Unity in the body of Christ allows that body to function well, not be crippled.  No one has all the gifts.  We all need one another.  No one should be conceited about any gift that God has given.  No one must think his or her gift the most important, and magnify and exalt it at the expense of others.  All gifts must used in humility and service.  We do not compete.  We minister in harmony and co-operation.

Paul’s great theme, “in Christ,” expresses the unity essential for body ministry.  In Christ we are one body.  In Christ we live and serve.  Love lies at the heart of body ministry.  The body is one, bound in love.  The body builds itself up in love (Eph.  4:16).  That is why 1 Corinthians 13 is central to Paul’s passage on spiritual gifts in the body of Christ.  “Make love your aim,” he insists, “and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts” (1 Corinthians 14:1).

Jesus insisted on love.  “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.  By this all mean will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35).

Our unity is not based on doctrine, or methods.  Our unity comes from who we are, the body of Christ.  Paul states this as a fact, not a hope.  We are one in Christ.  We are one in the Spirit.  God has made us one.  That unity is expressed in body ministry.

It shows in our attitude – in humility, kingdom thinking, and love.  It smashes competition and critical spirits, especially between different people and groups with different gifts.

Breathtaking community transformations are now happening around the world where we live this truth in united ministry.  See articles in this issue of this Journal!

2.  Diversity

That unity is expressed in the diversity of gifts.  There is one Spirit; his gifts are incredibly diverse.

The point is developed in all the body passages of Paul.  Diversity is to be celebrated, not squashed; encouraged, not smothered; developed, not ignored.

The church may be two or three, or two or three hundred, or two or three thousand.  Different sizes will have different ministries or functions, such as cell, congregation or celebration, but all are the church.  Christ is present in his body.  So are his gifts.  Again, different gifts will be appropriate for different expressions of that body’s ministry, but it in one body.

Body ministry will use these gifts.  God’s Spirit moves among his people in power to meet needs and minister effectively.  Those gifts need to be identified and used, and in the process, as in Jesus’ ministries, special anointings will come.

Preaching, for example, will often become prophecy as it is anointed by the Spirit of God.  That prophetic ministry may happen unexpectedly in the process of a sermon.  It may also be given in preparation as a word directly from the Lord.

Compassionate service and healing administrations will at times be anointed powerfully by God’s presence in signs and wonders to heal.  Role, gift and anointing then merge into strongly focused spiritual ministry.

So role, spiritual gift, and anointings cannot be clearly divided.  Indeed, as the Spirit of God moves in still greater power among all members of the body of Christ, the ministry of that body will be increasingly anointed.

Then the professional is swallowed up in the spiritual; natural ability is suffused and flooded with supernatural life; the human is filled with the divine.

Jesus lived this way.  No one need envy another’s gifts or ministry.  All are needed.

Obedient Mission –  from making decisions to making disciples

Christ himself, head of his church, clearly stated the church’s mission.  He did so on many occasions between his resurrection and ascension.  The powerful dimension of the Great Commission has often been overlooked.  Jesus himself emphasised our mission couldn’t be done without the power of his Spirit.  That is the point of all the power promises in the Great Commission:

Matthew records it: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me .  .  .  and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Mt.  28:18-20).

Mark records it:  “These signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover” (Mark 16:17-18).

Luke records it:  “I send the promise of my Father upon you; but stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:49).

John records it:  “He breathed on them, and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit …’ (John 20:22).

Acts records it:  “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8).

When empowered and led by the Holy Spirit (who is the Spirit of Jesus and the Spirit of God, Gal.  4:6), mission is powerful.  Then we do not make plans and execute them in human wisdom and strength, but seek divine wisdom and strength.

Empowering by the Spirit of God and being led by the Spirit of God are central to obedient mission.  We cannot claim obedience to the Great Commission when we do God’s work in our strength or our own ways and wisdom.

The Great Commission is not merely an external command to hard to obey.  It is an internal compulsion, ignited in us by the Spirit of God.  The Spirit has been given to the Church because it is her essence and nature to be a witnessing body.

Consequently, a church which is not evangelistic, nor missionary, nor empowered, is an apostate church.  We begin to see the magnitude of our apostasy when we compare our churches with the biblical norm.  We only need an evangelical movement or a missionary movement or a charismatic movement because we have fallen so far.

Body ministry, then, will obey the Head of the body, move in his authority, filled with the power of his Spirit.  The Great Commission begins with the absolute authority of Christ in his church and all the cosmos; it issues in obedient mission, exercised within that authority, and exercising that authority in powerful ministry.

Powerful body ministry flows from obedient disciples, who, individually and as a body, obey their Lord.

The Great Commission calls for this total task of ‘making disciples’ in terms of becoming disciples in the body of Christ and growing in discipleship.  It is one process.  The kind of evangelism required for church growth and stated in the Great Commission is evangelism which makes disciples, not merely gets people to make decisions.  Those decisions may be inadequate and fail to make disciples.

Wholistic evangelism and conversion can be summarised as involving[12]:
Priority One: Commitment to Christ.
Priority Two: Commitment to the body of Christ.
Priority Three: Commitment to the work of Christ in the world.

Jesus would not turn aside from his redemptive mission.  He lived fully in the kingdom realm.  He did only his Father’s will, not his own.  So everything he did was mission.  Within that mission, his evangelism was not meetings or a program.  He saved.  Those he touched were made whole when there was faith.  He said, “Follow me.”  That was his program.  He still calls us to follow him in obedient mission.

Power Evangelism – from programs to lifestyle

Spiritual gifts can release body ministry for effective power evangelism.  The New Testament pattern of evangelism is always Kingdom words combined with Kingdom deeds.

A major shift in evangelism always evident in revivals, and increasingly evident now moves from program evangelism to power evangelism as a lifestyle of all members of the body of Christ, as John Wimber reminded us.

1.  Program Evangelism

Programs of evangelism can be effective.  Crusade evangelism has won thousands to Christ.  Saturation evangelism, especially in Latin America, has reached every home in target communities with the gospel message.  Personal evangelism such as door-to-door programs have reached many people.  Some churches have focused on seeker services or outreach services aimed at reaching the unsaved, and often done so effectively.

All of these programs and many more have been significant means of evangelism.  So, we thank God for so much evangelism which has won thousands to Christ.

However, we must also recognize that thousands and even millions of dollars spent on evangelism programs and all the time and work involved do not always bear abundant fruit.

Wagner, for example, noted that ‘Key 73’ in America touched over 100,000 congregations without any noticeable change in patterns of growth across the board.[13]

Win Arn reported on ‘Here’s Life America’ noting that only 3.3% of those who recorded decisions became active members of any church, and 42% of them came by transfer.  After polling over 4,000 converts Win Arn discovered that 70% – 80% of them came into the church through relatives and friends, whereas less than 1% came as direct result of city-wide evangelism campaigns.[14]

Lyle Schaller similarly discovered that 60 – 90% of people involved in the church were brought by some friend or relative.[15]

Programs are not as effective as body evangelism through the local church.  Body evangelism involves more people in the church than many programs do, is the natural way most people are brought into the church, and can be the focus of church life in a lifestyle of evangelism.

Program evangelism may be useful, but it needs to link strongly with the local church and be a natural expression of that church’s life and witness.  Program evangelism, however, falls short of the biblical model.  It is needed because the church fails to be what the church should be!  Body evangelism calls for more.  It requires the involvement of the whole body of Christ in the power of his Spirit.

2.  Power Evangelism

The biblical model goes beyond program evangelism.  It is depth centred in Jesus’ promise: “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses …” (Acts 1:8).

John Wimber emphasized the importance of power evangelism:

Power Evangelism … transcends the rational.  It happens with the demonstration of God’s power in Signs and Wonders, and introduces the numinous of God.  This presupposes a presentation accompanied with the manifest presence of God.  Power Evangelism is spontaneous and is directed by the Holy Spirit.  The result is often explosive church growth.  …

The issue is not what the church is doing.  The issue is what the church is leaving out! Where is the promised power of Acts 1:8?  Where are the demonstrations of the manifest presence of God that we see illustrated throughout the book of Acts?  Were they only for that day?  Do they occur today?  If so, can we get in on it?  Is it possible for you and me to work the works of Jesus?

Power Evangelism is still God’s way of explosively growing His church.[16]

Examples multiply by the millions now.[17]

(a) David Adney reporting on China says:

In one area where there were 4,000 Christians before the revolution, the number has now increased to 90,000 with a thousand meeting places.  Christians in the region give three reasons for the rapid increase: The faithful witness of Christians in the midst of suffering, the power of God seen in healing the sick, and the influence of Christian radio broadcast from outside.

(b) John Hurston, associated with the world’s largest church, Full Gospel Central Church in Seoul, Korea, where David Yonggi Cho is pastor, attributed the phenomenal growth of that church to “the constant flow of God’s miracle power” from the beginning.

(c) A third example is from Wagner’s observations:

In Latin America I saw God at work.  I saw exploding churches.  I saw preaching so powerful that hardened sinners broke and yielded to Jesus’ love.  I saw miraculous healings.  I met with people who had spoken to God in visions and dreams.  I saw Christians multiplying themselves time and again.  I saw broken families reunited.  I saw poverty and destitution overcome by God’s living Word.  I saw hate turn to love.

Power evangelism fulfils the biblical pattern of body ministry and evangelism.  It goes beyond programs to the mighty acts of God in the midst of his people.  Christ is alive in his church by the power of His Spirit.

The church is true to the kingdom of God when, like Jesus, the signs of the kingdom are manifest in powerful ministry.

The church spontaneously expands through power evangelism.  It is one facet of dynamic body ministry; a natural result of a healthy body, filled with the life of God.  That transformed body will explodes in mission.  It is already in many countries.

The emerging church in the 21st century is increasingly involved in power evangelism under the Kingdom authority of Jesus himself.

Kingdom Authority – from words to deeds

Christ is king.  In Paul’s later writings he emphasises this dimension in relationship to the church as Christ’s body.  He reigns in and through his body, the church.  Yet that rule is also cosmic, of which the church is now a part and therefore directly involved in cosmic principalities and powers.  Kingdom authority is integrally part of the church’s life and mission as the body of Christ.

In Colossians 1, Paul explains that Christ alone is ‘the image of the invisible God’ and is pre-eminent over everything and everyone (v. 15).  This includes being ‘the head the body, the church’ (v. 18).  He is not just another divine being but in him alone ‘all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell’ (v.19).  In his death and resurrection he triumphed not merely over sin and death but over the cosmic powers also (v. 20).

In Ephesians 1, Paul emphasises that Christ is pre-eminent over the cosmic powers.  He is ‘far above all rule and authority and power and dominion’ (v. 21) and ‘head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all’ (vs. 22-23).  Paul then explains how this applies to the church which is his one body, not many different bodies (4:4).  The ascended Head of the church gives spiritual gifts to his church, all of which come from Christ (vs 7-8).  These include spiritually gifted leaders to equip us all ‘for the work of ministry’ and to build up the body of Christ (v. 12).

These passages from Paul lift the concept of the church as the body of Christ way beyond a cosy club of personal support and encouragement.  Support and encouragement must be in the body, but any human society could give that if it’s members care for one another.

The body of Christ is something more.  It is the body of Christ the King.  Like the kingdom of God, Christ’s rule has been established and is yet to be realised fully.  So the ministry of the body of Christ is his powerful ministry.

The ascended, victorious, all powerful Christ, having conquered sin and death and hell now reigns supreme.  He is the head of his body, the church.  He gives gifts to his church, specifically those called under his authority to exercise authority in the church as leaders so that all God’s people may be equipped by him for his ministry in and through us.  That is body ministry.

Signs, wonders and fantastic church growth characterised the early church as normal Kingdom life burst out in the powerful ministry of the body of Christ.  Body ministry demonstrated kingdom authority. As in Jesus’ ministry, the early church ministered in signs and wonders (Acts 2:43), prayed for signs and wonders, and expected more signs and wonders (Acts 4:30; 5:12-16).

Granted, the church is often weak.  Kingdom life often lies untapped.  Christians, and the church, corrupted and weakened by disobedience or faithlessness (the lack of faith which results in sin), may fail to manifest kingdom Life.

However, accelerating church growth in the power of the Spirit of God point to the greatest demonstration of kingdom life and power the world has even known.  Yet, as in the life of Jesus, it can remain hidden from those who, seeing, will not see, and hearing, will not hear (Isa. 6:9-10 Mt. l3:14-15; Mk. 4:12; Lk. 8:10; Jn.12: 40; Acts 28: 26-27).

The kingdom is manifest, yet hidden; revealed, yet concealed. Those who ask, receive it; whose who seek, find it; to those who knock, the door of the kingdom is opened.  And the church has the keys!

The Kingdom of God was the central message of Jesus. That message was in powerful words and deeds.  Christ, the Messianic King, incarnate in his human body, proclaimed the kingdom of God as immanent.  He called for response in repentance and faith Mk.l:15).  His parables described the mysteries of the Kingdom.  His miracles displayed its power and authority (Mt. 12:28).  You cannot separate, in the evangelistic ministry of Jesus, proclamation and demonstration, preaching and acting, saying and doing.

Similarly, Jesus gave that authority and power to his disciples: “preach as you go, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand.  Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons” (Mt. 10: 7,8).

This same message and powerful ministry were normal in the early church.  Throughout the whole of Acts, in almost every chapter a demonstration of the Kingdom accompanies the proclamation of the gospel.

The clash of kingdoms emerges as a strong theme in the epistles also. The church contends against the principalities and the powers, the world rulers of this dark age, the spiritual hosts of wickedness (Eph.6:12).  Each member of Christ’s body, then, has been redeemed from captivity and set free by Christ to serve the King.

The body of Christ must be seen as the agent of the kingdom of God, where Christ rules in power and still proclaims that reality through his church, both in living word and dynamic deed.

The kingdom of God is much more than an evangelical ‘born again’ experience, or a concern for social justice, or a communal interest in loving relationships, or a charismatic quest for personal victory.  It is all these and much more.  It is the cosmic clash of kingdoms.  It is the church smashing the gates of hell to release the captives.  It is the spreading reign of God in Christ upon the earth.  It is the eternal purpose of God being fulfilled in restoring and reconciling all things in the universe to himself.

God reigns. Christ is King. His Spirit endues his church with kingdom life and power.  Jesus himself declared the kingdom charter, quoting from Isaiah 61:1-2:  “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord (Luke 4:18-19).

Body ministry, then is powerful ministry by the body of Christ. It must include the signs of the kingdom as well as the words of the kingdom. Spiritual gifts, imparted by the victorious Christ through his Spirit, empower Christ’s body for authentic mission in the world.

References

[1] Toffler, A. 1980.  The Third Wave.  London: Collins, pp. 20, 25, 28.

[2] Adapted from Postman N. & Weingartner, C. 1969.  Teaching as a Subversive Activity. London: Penguin, pp. 22-23.

[3] Toffler, A. 1970.  Future Shock. London: Pan, p. 23.

[4] Trump J. & Baynham, D. 1961.  Focus on Change. Chicago: Rand McNally, p. 3.

[5] Schaller, L. 1975.  Hey, That’s our Church. Nashville: Abingdon, p. 23.

[6] Laurentin, R. 1986.  Viva Christo Rey!  Waco: Word.

[7] Barclay, W. 1958.  The Mind of St. Paul.  New York: Harper & Row, p. 122.

[8] Lawrence, C.  1996.  The Coming Influence of China.  Gresham: Vision, pp. 186-192.

[9]  Neill, S. 1957.  The Unfinished Task.  London: Edinburgh House, p. 132.

[10] Harper. M. 1977.  Let My People Grow.  Plainfield: Logos, pp. 44-45, adapted.

[11] Watson, D. 1978.  I Believe in the Church.  London: Hodder & Stoughton, pp. 292- 293.

[12] Wagner, C. P.  1976.  Your Church Can Grow.  Glendale: Regal, p. 159, from Ray Ortland.

[13] Wagner, op. cit., p. 141.

[14] McGavran, D. & Hunter, G.  1980.  Church Growth Strategies that Work.  Nashville: Abingdon, p. 34.

[15] McGavran, D.  1980.  Understanding Church Growth. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, p. 225.

[16] Wimber, J.  1983.  Unpublished Class Notes, MC510, Healing Ministry and Church Growth, pp. 1-2.

[17] Examples from Wimber, op. cit. pp. 5, 7, 12.

A Body Ministry 1See also Body Ministry

This article has selections
from Body Ministry

©  Renewal Journal #16: Vision (2000, 2012)  Reproduction is allowed with the copyright included.

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Prison Revival in Argentina, by Ed Silvoso

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Anointing

by Geoff 11 April 2012 3 Comments

Renewal Journal 14: Anointing

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5 Signs & Wonders,   6  Worship,   
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11  Discipleship,   12  Harvest,   
13  Ministry,   14  Anointing,   
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17  Unity,   18  Servant Leadership,  
19  Church,   20 Life

CONTENTS:  Renewal Journal 14:  Anointing

A Greater Anointing, by Benny Hinn

Myths about Jonathan Edwards, by Barry Chant

Revivals into 2000, by Geoff Waugh

Book Reviews:

The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition by Vinson Synan

The God Chasers, by Tommy Tenny

Primary Purpose, by Ted Haggard

See also: Immune to Fear: Anointing, by Reinhard Bonnke

See also: The difference between gifting and anointing, by Suzette Hattingh

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Editorial

Anointed for Ministry

 Jesus explained his ministry in terms of being anointed by the Holy Spirit.  He took his charter text from Isaiah:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me
Because he has anointed me
To preach the gospel to the poor;
He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty those who are oppressed;
To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.
(Luke 4:18-19; Isaiah 61:1-2)

He empowered his followers to do the same, in his name and authority.  Our anointing for ministry stems wholly from who Jesus is – the anointed Christ, the Son of God.  By his death and resurrection, he conquered sin and is both Saviour and Lord.

Our ministry is the ministry of Jesus in and through us by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Just as the Holy Spirit anointed Jesus, so he anoints us.

A quick look at any concordance affirms the significance of that anointing:

God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him (Acts 10:38).

He who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us is God (2 Cor. 1:21).

You have an anointing from the Holy One and you know all things (1 John 2:20).

The anointing which you have received from him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in him (1 John 2:27).

One stupid application of that teaching is that we don’t need teaching because the Holy Spirit teaches us everything.

First, John is not saying we don’t need teaching.  He is teaching in his writing!  The purpose of his letters includes teaching.

Jesus taught.  Often.  He spent three years teaching his followers.

Every preacher teaches.  If all we needed was the Holy Spirit on our own, we should stop preaching and teaching.

A clue to understanding the anointing is to know God.  Knowledge can teach you about God, but you may not know God.  Or you may know God as a distant consultant, available for a crisis.  Or you may know God as a daily point of reference.  Or you may know God intimately.  Or, as is most likely, your knowing God ebbs and flows with the currents of your life.

Often when we feel most overwhelmed or in need, we know God much more deeply, for then we depend on him.  We come to him with deep longing and with the cry he is so quick to answer.  On the other hand, when we are busy and very competent we often know God dimly, not realizing how easily we depend on our own God-given abilities rather than on God himself, and how easily we quench or grieve the Spirit.

Jesus, on the other hand, lived in the full knowledge of God – not just intellectually, but totally and intimately.  He explained his relationship with God,  “The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he sees the Father do …  I can of myself do nothing” (John 5:19, 30).  Then he said the same of our relationship with him, “Abide in me … without me you can do nothing” (John 15:4-5).

The anointing of God on your life is linked with how you abide in your Lord, and he in you.

This issue of the Renewal Journal gives examples of a fresh anointing touching many people now with new intimacy and grace for powerful ministry.  Benny Hinn uses the life of Elisha to highlight principles for a greater anointing.  Barry Chant clears away some myths about Jonathan Edwards whose sharp mind and anointed writing still impact people.  I give an overview of many places and people experiencing deep encounters with God through the nineties.

© Renewal Journal #14: Anointing, renewaljournal.com

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11  Discipleship,   12  Harvest,   13  Ministry,   14  Anointing,   15  Wineskins,
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