Missions at the Margins, by Bob Ekblad

Missions at the Margins

by Bob Ekblad

Bob & Gracie Ekblad

Dr Bob Ekblad wrote as director of Tierra Nueva and The People’s Seminary in Burlington, Washington.  A minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), he holds a ThD in Old Testament and is known internationally for his courses and workshops on reading the Bible.  Website: bobekblad.com.

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An article in Renewal Journal 16: Vision:

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Supernatural Missions

This article is abbreviated from Chapter 12, “Holistic Transformational Missions at the Margins” by Bob Eklad, in the book Supernatural Missions, by Randy Clark (Global Awakening, 2012 (globalawakening.com)

Mission activity has sometimes swung between the two extremes of purely social work and solely evangelistic preaching. God created us as whole persons, however, and wants spirits, souls, and bodies to be brought into wholeness. Practical projects addressing physical needs are not incompatible with supernatural ministry; rather, they are an outlet for God’s love and power to bring transformation to people’s hearts and lives.”

Facilitating Transformation

Many people on the margins of society have images of God that are mostly negative in ways that hold them back from any positive benefit or any spiritual attraction whatsoever. For many “god” has already been defined by core experiences of human father or authority figures who abandoned or rejected them, punished or abused them, was impossible to please and controlling or permissive and negligent. Negative images of God also come through people’s assumptions that calamities, injustice, sickness and other forms of oppression are willed by God or sent as punishments.

When my Honduran peasant colleague Fernando and I first began asking impoverished peasants why their corn and bean harvest were so dismal, I was startled by their near unanimous responses: “It’s God’s will.” We launched our ministry Tierra Nueva by starting a demonstration farm– cultivating steep, eroded mountainsides using contoured terraces, rock or pasture grass barriers to prevent further erosion and soil building strategies like compost and cover crops. We planted corn, beans, vegetables and fruit trees to the curve of the land. We experimented with fish ponds, fuel efficient mud stoves and other appropriate technologies.

Our first year’s harvest was ten times better than people were accustomed to seeing, drawing the attention of peasants from the surrounding area. We helped those interested in attempting our approach establish an experimental plot on their own land, discipling them in these organic-intensive farming methods. When they saw for themselves that protecting and rebuilding soil led to dramatically improved harvests, God was “off the hook,” and no longer to blame— and a space was opened for them to hear about a good God who does not will crop failures and poverty.

My wife Gracie and our Guatemalan colleague Catalina taught vegetable gardening, nutritious recipes, hygiene and other preventative health measures and the people found their health improving. As people learned that amoebas and bacteria could be eradicated through boiling their water, once again God was no longer to blame for the premature death of their children through malnutrition and dysentery. Health education brought a needed corrective to traditional explanations that attributed most common health problems to witchcraft or curses from enemy neighbors. While deliverance continued to be important in combating other kinds of oppression, subsistence farming and health education are also critical for community wellbeing—easing tensions due to false accusations and taking away power from local curanderos (witch doctors).  …

Often my colleagues and I find ourselves sharing spontaneous impressions that people recognize as bringing to light details that only God could know. Recently while praying for a Mexican farm worker in his late thirties a faint picture flashed across my mind of an adult throwing rocks at a young boy who was shepherded animals. I asked him if his father ever lost his temper and threw rocks at him when he was a boy, causing him to run away terrified. He began to cry and grabbed his leg where he had been hit. That day he forgave his father for this offense, which was one of many others that contributed to this man’s fear of displeasing employers and others in authority.

The Apostle Paul writes that the one who prophesies “speaks to people for their strengthening, encouragement, and comfort” (1 Cor 14:3 NIV) and makes God real to a person who do not yet believe when “the secrets of his heart are disclosed” (1 Cor 14:25 ESV).

A close look at Jesus’ prophetic ministry as depicted in the Gospels overturns alienating traditional images of God. Jesus’ revelation to the astounded Samaritan woman that she had had five husbands as he offered her living water in John 4 is one of many examples that subverts contemporary readers assumptions. Jesus’ witness regularly challenges common beliefs that God favors the righteous over sinners, law-abiding people over criminals, the rich over the poor, the beautiful over the ugly, the intelligent over the ignorant, offering flashes of a very different sort of God.

People assume that God is like a rigorous admissions officer at an exclusive University or a demanding, scrupulous employer examining resumes— choosing only the most deserving into his ranks. Especially if they are to be ministry workers or any kind of leader. Yet right from the beginning of the Bible, we see that God pursues the most unlikely candidates.  …

In our weekly jail Bible studies, visits to migrant camps and rural villages in Central America and everywhere we regularly lead Bible studies, we pray for suffering people and witness God’s power to heal. Healing often happens before people come to faith. This undermines the dominant image of God that sees sickness and a sanction for bad behavior and healing or any sort of benefit as a reward for good behaviour.

Once I offered to pray for a man suffering from shoulder and lower back pain after the police had violently pulled his arms behind his back nearly dislocating his shoulders to handcuff him. They had thrown him in the back of the police car and the handcuffs had dug into his back. Before praying for him I asked if he felt he needed to forgive the police for their excessive use of force. “No,” he said. “I was drunk and resisting arrest. I’m a big dude and was pretty out of control. They were just doing their job.”

I prayed that Jesus would undo the damage done by the police and show the man how much He loved him regardless of his violence. I stepped away and asked him if he felt any improvement. He said he felt the pain leave his lower back but said he was sure that if he drew his arms back behind his back the pain would be intolerable. He began to gingerly move his arms behind his back and amazement came over his face. “I’ll grant it to you. I’ll grant it to you. The pain is completely gone,” he said, dropping to his chair and crying with his head in his hands. Like in the Gospel accounts we regularly see God’s healing presence overturn people’s negative expectations as the one full of grace and truth makes himself known concretely.

Healing is one important dimension of an important Greek verb sotzo, which literally means “to save,” but is often used in the Gospels as a synonym for “to heal.” There are two other Greek verbs used in miracles of healing, therapueo ”to cure” and iaomai “to heal,” so Gospel writers seem to be making a special point in using the highly theological sotzo, which is used in Paul’s writings to refer almost exclusively to Jesus’ saving work on the cross for eternal life (see Rom 5:9-10; 8:24; 9:22; 10:9-10,13; 11:14, 26; 1 Cor 1:18, 21; 1 Cor 3:15; 5:5; 7:16; 9:22; 10:33; 15:2; Eph 2:5, 8; 1 Tim 1:15). This meaning of salvation for eternal life is also present in the Gospels (Mat 10:22; 16:25; 24:12-13; 19:16, 25; John 3:17; 5:34; 10:9; 12:47). However there are many occurrences of sotzo that are rendered in English translations as “heal” in miracle stories where people experience physical healing (Matt 9:21, 22; Mk 3:4; 5:23, 28, 34; 6:56; 10:52; Luke 6:9; 8:48, 50; 17:19; 18:42; Acts 4:9; 14:9). In addition, we see many other occurrences of sotzo in the Gospels and Acts that refer to being saved or rescued from danger in the lifetime of the beneficiary (Matt 8:25; 14:30; 27:40, 42; 27:49; Mk 8:35, 35; Lk 9:55-56; 23:35, 37, 39; Acts 27:20, 31). This rich verb and the related noun soteria “salvation” present a holistic notion of saving/salvation that includes salvation for eternal life, supernatural healing and deliverance, but also physical acts of helping, rescuing and liberation. Mission must take into account this rich diversity of actions that communicate God’s love to our hurting world.

Gangs in prison

I travelled to Guatemala in September 2008, to train pastors working with gang members. We visited one of Central America’s most infamous prisons to visit the gang member inmates of perhaps the most notorious street gang in the Western Hemisphere. A week before leaving for Guatemala City I dreamed of a heavily-tattooed man with a hole in his right side. I met this man in the second prison– a big intimidating guy with tattoos and a myriad of scars from stab wounds and bullets all over his body—including a big indentation on his right side from a near-death shootout with the police.

This man, a gang leader serving a 135-year sentence, ended up taking me back into the heart of the prison to find a bathroom, and then inviting me into his cell. I shared with him my dream and he was visibly moved, welcoming my offer to pray for him. He told me about his worries about his son and shared his longing for God’s peace and love in his heart. I prayed for him and anointed him with oil.

He led me back into the yard where we succeeded in gathering many inmates for a Bible study on Jesus’ call of Matthew the tax collector. I described how Matthew was a tax-collector—a member of a notorious class of people that nearly everyone hated.

“Who might fit the description of tax-collectors today?” I asked.

Gangs in Guatemala force businesses in their territories to pay “protection taxes” [from themselves] and taxi drivers to pay “circulation taxes”- and the men smiled and looked at each other, acknowledging that they fit the description.

“So what was Matthew doing when Jesus called him?” I ask.

The men look surprised when they note that he wasn’t following any rules, seeking God or doing anything religious. But he was practicing his despised trade when Jesus showed up on the street and chose him.

“So let’s see if Jesus made Matthew leave his gang to be a Christian,” I suggest, and people look closely at the next verse.

There Jesus is eating at Matthew’s house with other tax-collectors and sinners and the disciples.

“So who followed whom?” I ask, excited to see people’s reaction.

The men could see the Jesus had apparently followed gangster Matthew into his barrio and joined his homies for a meal.

“So what do you think, would you let Jesus join your gang?” I ask, looking directly to the man I’d just prayed for in his cell and the other gang chief.

They were caught off guard by such a question—but there we all were, deep in their turf being welcomed, Bibles, guitar and all– and nobody was resisting. Big smiles lit up both their faces as we looked at Jesus’ reaction to the Pharisees’ distain. “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.”

I ask them if they are at all offended to think of themselves as sick—and they don’t seem to be at all. I’ve got their attention. Jesus’ final word to the religious insiders hit these guys like a spray of spiritual bullets from a drive by:

“Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” Jesus’ firm dismissal of the accusing Pharisees “go and learn” and clear preference for sinners as the “called” drew the circle of gang members irresistibly into Jesus’ company.

I was delighted that the men agreed to let us lay hands on every one of their bare, heavily-tatted backs as my colleague sang worship songs over them, including: “Jesus, friend of sinners, we love you.” I heard from a pastor that the gang leader I had prayed with was amazed at how his “homies” (fellow gang members) were letting us pray for him and whispered: “It’s been a long time since I’ve felt the Presence of the Holy Spirit in my life and seen the homies at peace. I feel really good.”

Two months later on November 22nd, I spent a day in a bleak French prison in Lyon where suicide was rampant. I was there training French prison chaplains and ministering to inmates. That night I took a train back to Paris to learn the horrific news that the Guatemalan gang leader I’d prayed with who had the hole in his side and three others had been taken in the middle of the night by the police and placed into a prison of 900 inmates that were all violently anti-gang. On the morning of November 22, 2008 rioting inmates killed, decapitated and mutilated the bodies of these four men who we’d laid hands on to bless.

While carrying off these men authorities also burned all the 150+ inmates possessions, sheets and makeshift shacks they’d built for conjugal visits in a big bonfire—leaving them beaten up, naked and traumatized. Local gang pastors boldly accompanied the shattered families and inmates in the aftermath of this event. They brought over 25 huge bags of clothes collected from churches, deeply touching the gang inmates who are used to being despised and excluded.

Yet anti-gang sentiment is rising in the country and scapegoating continues in full swing. Recently, authorities invaded the prison again and apprehended the other leader and two others, transporting to another prison. A plot was exposed showing their killings were being arranged for the anniversary of last year’s killing of four. This time high-level advocacy on their behalf before government officials in the USA and Guatemala exposed the plot and led to greater security and visits for these inmates. The gang members inside and outside the prison and their families have been deeply moved by Christian solidarity.

Micro-enterprise and Mission

Gang members, drug-dealers and ex-offenders need opportunities to develop other stills so they can step away from lives of crime and become legally-functioning members of society. Tierra Nueva is working to establish micro-businesses both in Honduras and in the USA to provide skills training, jobs and income to sustain our ministries. We continue to work to help famers improve production and storage of basic grains, bring water to marginal neighborhoods for basic needs and vegetable gardens, increase the quality of coffee and distribution of specialty coffee and establishing a water-purification plant to sell bottled water. We import Honduran coffee to the United States, where we have train and employ gang members and ex-offenders to roast and market specialty coffee through Underground Coffee Project. Tierra Nueva runs an organic farm called Jubilee Farm, producing and selling vegetables and flowers as a site for discipleship and training for farm workers and others on the margins. Micro-businesses are increasingly important to provide alternatives for felons, sites for ministry and income for ministries.

Direct confrontation of false images of God through proclamation and holistic responses to people’s felt needs, fresh readings of Biblical texts, pastoral accompaniment, advocacy, prophetic ministry and healing prayer are some of the ways that prepare people to meet Jesus as the one who saves them from their sins and transforms their lives. The kindness of God leads to repentance—understood as a change of heart (Rom 2:4). So we do everything we can to effectively pluck up, break down, destroy and overthrow the false while also facilitating, ushering in and preparing the way for the revelation of the kind God who has the power to save.

© Supernatural Missions, by Randy Clark (Global Awakening, 2012), excerpted from pages 265-281, used with permission.

©  Renewal Journal #16: Vision (2000, 2012)  renewaljournal.com
Reproduction is allowed with the copyright included in the text.

Renewal Journals – contents of all issues

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

Amazon – Renewal Journal 16: Vision
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 16: Vision

Almolonga, the Miracle City, by Mell Winger

Cali Transformation, by George Otis Jr.

Revival in Bogotá, by Guido Kuwas

Prison Revival in Argentina, by Ed Silvoso

Missions at the Margins, by Bob Ekblad

Vision for Church Growth, by Daryl & Cecily Brenton

Vision for Ministry, by Geoff Waugh

Book Review: Jesus on Leadership by Gene Wilkes

Renewal Journal 16: Vision – 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)

BACK TO MAIN PAGE

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Reviews (16) Vision

Book Reviews

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Jesus on Leadership by Gene Wilkes (Wheaton: Tyndale, 1998)

Review from the Foreword by Calvin Miller.

Gene Wilkes knows the literature of leadership but that is not why this book is the finest of its kind in the marketplace.  There are four major contributors to Gene Wilkes’s greatness as a scholar and teacher.  These same four forces permeate this book and make it a must for all of those who want to become informed and capable leaders.

First, Gene Wilkes loves Jesus.  Please don’t think this a mere saccharine appraisal between friends.  This simplicity provides Gene his passion to serve both God and his congregation.  Further, this love for Christ carries a subtle and pervasive authenticity that makes Gene Wilkes believable.  Whether you read him or hear him lecture, you walk away from the experience knowing that what you’ve heard is the truth – the life-changing truth from a man who lives the truth and loves getting to the bottom of things.  All this I believe derives from his love of Christ.

Second, Gene is a practitioner of servant leadership.  When he encourages you to pick up the basin and towel and wash feet, you may be sure it is not empty theory.  He teaches others what he has learned in the laboratory of his own experience.  Gene is a servant leader, and even as he wrote this book, he directed his very large church through a massive building program.  His church leadership ability, which he exhibited during this writing project, does not surface in this volume, but it undergirds and authenticates it.

Third, Gene Wilkes knows better than anyone else the literature of leadership.  As you read this book, you will quickly feel his command of his subject.  Footnotes will come and go, and behind the thin lines of numbers, ibids, and the like you will feel the force of his understanding.  No one knows the field of both secular and Christian leadership like this man.  So Jesus on Leadership is a mature essay.  It has come from the only man I know with this vast comprehension of the subject.

Finally, Gene Wilkes is a born writer.  It is not often that good oral communicators are good with the pen.  But throughout this book, you will find the paragraphs coming and going so smoothly that you will be hard-pressed to remember you are reading a definitive and scholarly work.  Books that are this critically important should not be so much fun.  Gene Wilkes is to leadership what Barbara Tuchman is to history.  You know it’s good for you and are surprised to be so delighted at taking the strong medicine that makes the world better.

Here are the chapter headings:

Down from the head table:
Jesus’model of servant leadership

Principle 1: Humble your heart
Humility: the living example

Principle 2: First be a follower
Jesus led so that others could be followers

Principle 3: Find greatness in service
Jesus demonstrating greatness

Principle 4: Take risks
Jesus, the great risk taker

Principle 5: Take up the trowel
Jesus’ power – through service

Principle 6: Share responsibility and authority
How did Jesus do it?

Principle 7:  Build a team
The team Jesus built

And some great quotes from page 2:

All true work combines [the] two elements of serving and ruling.  Ruling is what we do; serving is how we do it.  There’s true sovereignty in all good work.  There’s no way to exercise it rightly other than by serving.
Eugene Patterson, Leap over a Wall

Above all, leadership is a position of servanthood.
Max Deere, Leadership Jazz

The principle of service is what separates true leaders from glory seekers.
Laurie Beth Jones, Jesus, CEO

People are supposed to serve.  Life is a mission, not a career.
Stephen R. Covey, The Leader of the Future

Ultimately the choice we make is between service and self-interest.
Peter Block, Stewardship, Choosing Service over Self-Interest

Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.
JESUS, Luke 14:11

Supernatural Missions


Supernatural Missions,
by Randy Clark
(Global Awakening, 2012)

http://globalawakeningstore.com/Supernatural-Missions.html

 

Randy Clark has again blessed and challenged us with his compiled book Supernatural Missions.  It helps to fill a huge gap in mission literature, applying the theory and theology of mission in the Spirit’s power to world mission, including short term missions.   Randy’s accumulated wisdom and experience in doing supernatural mission around the world fills the book with convincing examples.  He demonstrates from many diverse countries how God moves powerfully on people, leaders and nations as we believe, pray and obey.

His book is enriched by similar applied theology from others involved in supernatural mission.   This includes Leif Hetland on reaching unreached people groups supernaturally, Bill Jackson’s survey of the biblical background to powerful mission, Peter Prosser’s overview of church history as mission history, Clifton Clarke’s examination of Spirit-filled and empowered mission, Roland and Heidi Baker on prophetic and loving anointing for awesome mission, Jonathan Bernis on the messianic mission of the Jews, ‘DJ’ a missionary in the Arab world on effective mission to Muslims, Bob Ekblad on holistic transformational mission, anthropologist Lesley-Anne Leighton’s call for incarnational practice in words and deeds, and Howard Foltz on current developments in mission.

You will be informed and inspired.  We have added this book to our mission text books in our degree program.

Here is the Contents of these inspiring articles:

Introduction
Chapter 1 – Why Power Makes a Difference in Missions, by Randy Clark
Chapter 2 – Finishing the Unfinished Task, by Leif Hetland
Chapter 3 – The Biblical Basis for World Missions, Part 1, by Bill Jackson
Chapter 4 – The Biblical Basis for World Missions, Part 2, by Bill Jackson
Chapter 5 – Missions Through Church History, by Peter Prosser
Chapter 6 – ‘Spirit-Filled’ Missions, by Clifton Clarke
Chapter 7 – Prophecy & Missions, by Roland Baker
Chapter 8 – Power & Muslim Missions, by D.J.
Chapter 9 – The Prophetic Destiny of Israel and Jewish People, by Jonathan Bernis
Chapter 10 – Power Evangelism in Short-term Mission Trips, by Randy Clark
Chapter 11 – Primacy of Love in Missions with Power, Heidi Baker
Chapter 12 – Holistic Transformational Missions at the Margins, by Bob Ekblad
Chapter 13 – A Weaving of Anthropological Insights, by Lesley-Anne Leighton
Chapter 14 – Izsues and Trends in Missions, by Howard Folts
Chapter 15 – Development Aid as Power Evangelism: the Mieze Model, by Don Kantel

©  Renewal Journal #16: Vision (2000, 2012)  renewaljournal.com
Reproduction is allowed with the copyright included in the text.

Renewal Journals – contents of all issues

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

Amazon – Renewal Journal 16: Vision
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 16: Vision

Almolonga, the Miracle City, by Mell Winger

Cali Transformation, by George Otis Jr.

Revival in Bogotá, by Guido Kuwas

Prison Revival in Argentina, by Ed Silvoso

Missions at the Margins, by Bob Ekblad

Vision for Church Growth, by Daryl & Cecily Brenton

Vision for Ministry, by Geoff Waugh

Book Review: Jesus on Leadership by Gene Wilkes

Renewal Journal 16: Vision – 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)

BACK TO MAIN PAGE

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Prison Revival in Argentina, by Edgardo Silvoso

Prison Revival in Argentina

by Edgardo Silvoso

 

 

Article by Edgardo Silvoso printed in The Evangelical Beacon.

 

Renewal Journal 16: Vision PDF

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An article in Renewal Journal 16: Vision:

Argentina’s largest prison is located in the town of Los Olmos, less than 100 kilometers south of Buenos Aires, the capital of the country.  It is a maximum security facility that houses nearly 3,000 inmates.  One of the greatest and most dramatic miracles in modern history has taken place inside the walls of that prison.

Until a few years ago, the prison was in total chaos.  Crime was rampant.   Riots, murders, sexual abuse, extortion and male prostitution were commonplace.  The prison was so out of control that by default the authorities turned over the daily running of the place to the mafia and drug dealers serving time there.  These de facto leaders chose to reside on the fourth of five floors, which came to be known as the “elephant’s floor” since all the heavyweights lived there.  Can you imagine what this place became when the worst inmates were given the run of it? Even a Church of Satan was established on the premises and animal sacrifices were offered regularly.  Olmos – as the prison is commonly known – was so impregnable that pastors from the nearby towns had great difficulty getting inside its perimeter.

There is a tunnel that connects the outside world with the prison.  A local pastor reported that as he tried to get inside the prison, halfway through that tunnel he would become ill and had to be carried out.  Some inmates reported being tormented by demons which, according to those reports, literally materialized in their cells.  Satan was in control indeed.  However, it appears that the evil one made a gross miscalculation that eventually did him in.  This had to do with grace.  As you know, grace requires the pre-existence of sin and the greater the sin, the greater the grace available to the repentant sinner.  By those standards, Olmos was more than qualified.  This is how it came about:

Miracle begins: In the nearby town of La Plata, a well-known pastor was caught committing a crime and was sentenced to serve time—at Los Olmos! At first it appeared that Satan had won: his citadel remained impregnable and a church leader had been publicly disgraced.  But the pastor repented and cried out to God for a second chance.  And God is indeed the God of second chances.   God forgave him and filled him with the Holy Spirit.  Now this pastor was determined to see God bring good out of terrible evil.  Incensed with a passion for the lost and overwhelmed with gratitude to God for his grace, he became what I call “a spiritual kamikaze”.  In his attempt to preach the gospel to everyone around, he thrust himself with gusto into the very pit of hell.  He witnessed to the mafia dons, gang leaders, drug dealers and even to the Church of Satan priests! Like a kamikaze pilot, he gave up his life in order to cause the most damage possible to the enemy.

Very soon a small group of believers emerged.  What Satan must have thought as an impregnable place, now hosted an emerging Christian church.  I believe that the anxiety he must have felt about this led to his second miscalculation.  A persecution against the Christians was unleashed.  If persecution can be brutal in the outside world where existing laws, the possibility of help and refuge, and the availability of the media can somehow mitigate it, imagine the persecution inside a maximum security prison run by the ruthless and fearless.  However, God, was in control and the Biblical principle that whatever Satan plans for evil God turns around for good still held.

The persecution gave the Christian inmates legal grounds to request protection in the form of their own cell block — each cell block houses 42 inmates.  The authorities reluctantly agreed and granted the new Christians a cell block of their own on the worst floor.  The church was placed in the midst of his control and command center .  .  .  aware that their lives were at risk, the inmates organized themselves as a church.  The first order of business was a 40 day fast.  They also divided themselves into seven teams of six people each.  Each team was to stand guard every night from 11 pm to 5 am, working in pairs they prayed, read the Bible and moved from bed to bed interceding for each one of their sleeping Christian inmates.  After two hours they rotate tasks.  This approach became highly effective, not only in protecting their own perimeter but also in infiltrating Satan’s perimeter inside the prison.

In answer to those prayers, Juan Zucarelli, a pastor in town, felt led to apply for a job at the prison.  Zucarelli was interviewed by several officials, and all of them said, “We do not want you here, we hate you.  If you get the job, we may even hurt you.  Get lost!’ But Zucarelli persevered and against all odds—except God’s—he got the job.  As he connected with the emerging prison church, things began to happen.  They prayed for and were given one and a half hours a week on the prison radio station, which all inmates hear since the speaker cannot be turned down nor can the station be changed.  Very soon the weekly Gospel message began to make an impact on the prison population.  This, coupled with intense prayer activity in the Christian cell block, produced mass conversions.  Today 44 percent of the inmates are born again.

As soon as 42 new converts are admitted to the church, a cell block is made available for them to move in.  A resident pastor is appointed from among the inmates and the same routine of prayer, fasting and night vigils is instituted.

Since no money is allowed to circulate inside the prison, the inmates tithe from the care packages they receive from relatives.  Last year a town in Central Argentina was devastated by floods and the church in the prison was able to send relief by using the product of their tithes.  They fast twice a week and hold church services every day.

There are 19 cell blocks that occupy the entire fourth floor and 80% of the third floor.  Nearly 1,300 inmates have received Christ.  Recent unconfirmed reports state that the number of guards has been reduced from 300 to 30 as a result of behavior standards of the Christians.  Normally 50% of the inmates find themselves back in prison following their release.  Of the 604 released Christians, only three have returned – less than half of one percent!

During an International Institute which Harvest Evangelism holds in Argentina every fall, we (Army of Intercessors) organized a trip to the prison to meet with the inmates.  The prison chapel is too small to accommodate the growing number of believers, so they have removed all the furniture.  More than 800 inmates stand shoulder to shoulder except when they kneel to pray.  Their vibrant singing is incredibly moving.  One of the inmate pastors said to our group, ‘If you came to see prisoners, you have come to the wrong place.  We are free men, free indeed!’ Even though their bodies are in prison, they roam the heavenly places in prayer and intercession!

©  Renewal Journal #16: Vision (2000, 2012)  renewaljournal.com
Reproduction is allowed with the copyright included in the text.

Renewal Journals – contents of all issues

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

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 16: Vision

Almolonga, the Miracle City, by Mell Winger

Cali Transformation, by George Otis Jr.

Revival in Bogotá, by Guido Kuwas

Prison Revival in Argentina, by Ed Silvoso

Missions at the Margins, by Bob Ekblad

Vision for Church Growth, by Daryl & Cecily Brenton

Vision for Ministry, by Geoff Waugh

Book Review: Jesus on Leadership by Gene Wilkes

Renewal Journal 16: Vision – PDF

See also

Argentina: The amazing transformation at Los Olmos prison

Prison Revival in Argentina

Argentina: Faith flourishes behind bars

Christian missionary tortured in prison led 40 to Christ

Iran: How two women brought hope in Tehran’s brutal Evin Prison

Remember those in prison

Barnabas Fund www.barnabasfund.org
Voice of the Martyrs www.persecution.com.au
The Open Doors www.opendoors.org.au

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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Prison Revival in Argentina, by Ed Silvoso:
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An article in Renewal Journal 16: Vision:
Renewal Journal 16: Vision PDF

 

Revival In Bogotá, Colombia, by Guido Kuwas

Revival In Bogotá, Colombia

by Guido Kuwas

 

 

Guido Kuwas wrote as editor of the website Global Revival News which included information and photos of the Revival in Bogotá, Columbia

Renewal Journal 16: Vision PDF

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An article in Renewal Journal 16: Vision:

Introduction

A few years ago we heard about the church in Bogotá, Colombia and about Cesar Castellanos who was pastoring that church.  There were rumours of incredible growth and revival.  Tens of thousands were members in the church.

The senior pastors of Metro church Sunderland (UK), Ken and Lois Gott, met up with the Colombian pastor in Wales, in circumstances that can only be described as Divine.  The Gotts flew to Bogotá, invited by Pastor Cesar Castellanos.  They were convinced that they had witnessed a church to whom God had given the strategy for church multiplication through cells in the 21st century – the wineskin for revival.

The strategy (also referred to as The Vision) did not come cheap.  The pastors Cesar and Claudia Castellanos paid a very high price.  Several years ago they were attacked and robbed in their house and later nearly shot dead while in their car at a traffic light (with their four young daughters).  They had to be taken to the States to recover.   So it’s worth listening to what they have to say.

Because of the relationship between Pastors Ken and Lois Gott and Pastors Cesar and Claudia Castellanos, our Sunderland church has committed itself to visit Bogotá regularly in order to marinate in the Vision and to catch the anointing of multiplication, brokenness, holiness and spiritual warfare that is so active in the Bogotá Church, called “Mision Carismatica Internacional” or MCI.

I had the privilege to witness the Vision at its source along with Pastor Ken Gott and other members from our church.  What follows is what I saw, heard and experienced during that visit on July 20-30, 2000.

Revival Youth Meeting

After nearly 17 hours travelling we landed in Bogotá and were taken to our hotel.  What struck us immediately was the fact that the church had appointed young men (some of them fluent in English) to look after us.  Every one of them was a leader of cells.  They had obviously learnt to apply Matt 23:11, The greatest among you will be your servant.

We went to the Saturday night youth meeting!  Now, what is our European image of a Saturday night youth meeting?  A handful of youths playing table tennis in a youth club?  In Bogotá they fill a 26,000-seat stadium twice on a Saturday night!

The music consisted of highly charged praise to God with spiritual warfare at its core: loud and aggressive, modern and relevant.  The youth leader’s talent and enthusiasm were like “nothing ever seen or heard” before.  This young man, Freddie, has over 500 cells (approximately involving 5000 youths).  The youth meeting is made attractive for the unsaved.  Any youth will be proud to invite their unsaved friend to come along because they can confidently promise a good Saturday night out!

Only later we understood the amount of prayer and fasting that goes into the preparation for such an event.  Every item on the program has been thoroughly soaked in prayer and fasting.  For instance, dancers were on the stage leading the youths in choreographic warfare dance.  Every one of these dancers is required to lead a holy and righteous life before they can stand on the platform.  They all have to attend the dance school that teaches them (among many things) doctrine, spiritual warfare, dance, prayer, prophecy and holy living.

The youth congregation flock out of their seats into the aisle and right in front of the stage joining in with the stage dancers.  We, as visitors, stood there amazed at the fervour and the sound of these young people and some of us even tried joining in, but I reckon we need more practice.

One of the songs, “Levántate Señor! (Arise Oh Lord! or Rise Up Oh Lord!)” was followed by a session in which the song leader, along with the rest of the congregation, commanded evil spirits to flee: spirits of division, hate, wickedness and other such spirits.  The power and authority among that crowd of youths was unique.

At another Youth Meeting we also witnessed spontaneous Revival Praise when Pastor Cesar stepped to the microphone.  Before he could open his mouth, all the 20,000-odd youth erupted into explosive jubilation with “Ole, Ole Jesus!” and “Satan! Christ has defeated you!” and an impressive demonstration of Mexican Waves.  It was awesome! This lasted nearly 10 minutes non-stop.

The Word that is preached after the songs is also worth noting.  You would expect a heart-rending Gospel message pleading with the youth to come forward for salvation.  Nothing is further from the truth!  At our first Youth meeting a youth pastor Rojas (every time ‘pastor’ is used, remember: this signifies a leader of 500 or more cells!) preached on principles of prayer; a message we all benefited from.  He followed it up with a prayer that we all had to pray: the sinner’s prayer.  Without any hype or emotionalism or even rousing background organ music, he asked the youths which one of them had prayed that prayer for the first time.  Then he invited them to come forward because he wanted to pray specifically for them.

Without further ado nearly 500 youths came forward.  Apparently this happens every Saturday night in both meetings!

I was also amazed at the wisdom that the Lord had given the leaders regarding “keeping the fruit (converts).”  They surrounded the group of people who had come forward with a human fence, formed by those who are called Consolidators.  These trained youth cell leaders look after the new converts.  They start by encouraging those who are at the altar not to go back to their seats.  Basically, they block the way!  Subsequently the people are led away from the altar to a room where they will hear a short talk on salvation and they will pray the sinner’s prayer again, just to make sure they know what they are doing!

Mixed in the crowds are more consolidators who will take the contact details of every new convert and give them a free booklet about their newly found life in Christ.  Within 24-48 hours the consolidator will contact the new believer and arrange a home visit in the same week.  Soon after that the new Christian will be planted into a cell where he/she will be pastored.  This is how they keep nearly 90% of all the new converts.  Considering that approximately only 3% of those who respond at a typical evangelistic crusade in Europe end up being member of a local church, this is certainly worth noting.

Revival Sunday Services

The next day, Sunday morning, there were 3 services at the Coliseum (they meet also in other places to fit in everybody): 7am, 9am and 11am.  We attended the 9am service where Pastor Cesar Castellanos preached.  Again, they were expecting hundreds to get saved but the preaching was not evangelistic.  It was about The Anointing.  And boy, could you feel the Anointing in that place!  During the praise where the youth dancers lead the congregation in dance, all the kids came out to the front to join in with the dancers.  I am referring to little tots from 3 years and older.  It was a beautiful sight to see them join in the praise and spiritual warfare.

When the altar call came, nearly 400 people came forward.  The consolidators kick in to action again.

The Vision

Every cell member is expected to be trained as a leader of cells.  The training and discipling is includes deliverance from demons, breaking of curses and generational bondage, inner healing and baptism in the Holy Spirit.  They are taught how to successfully evangelise, pray and fast, enter into spiritual warfare, how to live a life of brokenness and holiness before God and people.  They are discipled by their cell leader and later when they are producing disciples they are mentored by a Leader of twelve.

This is one of the core values of the Vision: Each leader should pray and ask God for twelve leaders into whom he will pour out his life.  Out of this will come twelve excellent leaders who are able to produce a further 12 excellent leaders.

Instead of trying to pastor thousands of people, the Senior Pastor only has to concentrate on twelve leaders whom the Lord has given him.  Using this strategy he can permeate the whole of the church in Revival with leadership qualities.  It’s all in the Bible (Luke 6:12,13; 2 Tim 2:2) and yet this is the first church in the world that is methodically and successfully applying these biblical leadership principles on such a large scale. 

The wisdom of this is that there is no ceiling to the number of people a church can train using this strategy: ideal for an end-time harvest!  By the third generation of the twelves you are reaching 20,736 and by the 5th generation you are talking about 2,985,984 leaders!

Every member of the church is properly pastored; every one of them is set free from any demonic oppression and healed from any emotional hurts.  This produces an army that can multiply itself healthily!

Another core value of the vision (in a nutshell) is that the Bogotá Church actually believes that they will take their nation for Christ.  They believe in the multiplication anointing that God gave to Abraham.  In Christ we are children of Abraham and have inherited all his blessings (Gal 3:6ff).

Pastors Cesar and Claudia Castellanos have believed God and they are seeing that Word fulfilled before their eyes.  They are now inspiring other nations to go after the same anointing of multiplication: Brazil is taking the country by force using this Vision.  Central and South America are reshaping the destiny of their countries by following in the footsteps of Bogotá.

The Conference

Meanwhile, back to our visit, we had (prior to the actual conference) the privilege of being taught the vision in some detail in special meetings at the Church’s offices.  The speakers were from the Youth Network: young men and women in their late twenties, I guess.  Each one of them had several hundreds of cells.  These sessions were quickly set up for us who had arrived early for the conference.  With us were groups from Venezuela, Brazil, Chile and the US.  The love, self-denial and Christ-likeness of the speakers were not unique – they were typical of the whole church!

At the official conference, delegates from all over the world gathered to hear and celebrate the Vision.  Every speaker, whether male or female (mostly from Pastors Cesar and Claudia’s Twelves) had the same anointing and power as their mentors.  We were encouraged to go for our nations and senior pastors were encouraged to find their twelves.  We were all told to go and multiply like the stars.

When Pastor Claudia held her ladies meeting a couple of weeks ago 3,000 ladies found Christ as their Saviour.  However, she encouraged her ladies to do better next time: they are going for 7,000!

At one of the last meetings, Pastor Claudia released her pastors to go through the congregation of delegates and impart the Lord’s anointing.  We previously had also received an impartation by Pastor Cesar himself.  By faith we have received the multiplication anointing and now we need to apply it in our countries.

Applying the Vision

It was hard to say goodbye to the church in Bogotá.  As our plane took off from Bogotá I was wondering: How will I ever forget the Christ-like people there?  Pastors Cesar and Claudia were such lovely, approachable Christ-like people.  Their leaders were just replicas of them as far as love, commitment and self-denial were concerned.  The stewards who looked after us considered it pure joy and honour to serve us.  How will we forget the sight of hundreds coming to the Lord in every meeting?  How will we ever be content with Christian-orientated self-indulgent meetings?  Somehow amidst all our meetings (mostly geared towards a blessing for the Christian), we seem to have forgotten that the Lord Jesus did say “make disciples of all the nations … and I am with you” (Matthew 28:18-20).

We know now without a shadow of a doubt, that we have witnessed a Church in sustained revival, challenging us to apply the Vision to our “small” churches in Europe.  Cells and Twelves are the wineskins for Revival.  If the Church could diligently apply this Vision, we would see sustained revival in Europe and abroad – not a 3 year revival which peters out at the end.   However, the price is high and it’s not for the faint-hearted.

Colombia is currently best known for its drug-related crimes.  However, it won’t be long before it will be best known for having one of the largest and fastest growing churches not only in the world, but in history.  It is a hot spot where one can catch the Vision!

2001 Update

What’s going on?

More than 20,000 people (primarily youth) are crammed together in an indoor stadium in Bogotá.  Large numbers of coaches drop people off.  Long queues try to get in.  Street vendors sell fruit and snacks all around the outside of the complex.

No, it’s not an international sporting event.  It’s the church in Bogotá, Colombia, getting ready for a revival service.  Actually, it’s only a tenth of the church gathering together.  If all the 200,000 or more people turned up, they would have a problem: not enough seats!  To make things worse, delegates from literally all around the world have turned up to witness the Bogotá phenomenon for themselves.  I was one of them.

The Phenomenon

Our group (nearly 80 people) belonged to Pastors Ken & Lois Gott’s church in Sunderland, UK.  But there were other groups from Kensington Temple in London (Pastors Colin & Amanda Dye) and from Scotland (Pastor Jimmy Dowds).  Then there were various large groups from South American countries, US, Canada, Europe, Asia etc.  3,000 or more delegates from these parts of the world landed in Bogotá for a week’s conference in January 2001, eager to catch the Bogotá anointing and to take it back to
their countries.

What you have to realise is this: The Bogotá anointing is not the kind you can just come and enjoy for yourself, like we all did at Toronto and Pensacola.  We all went to those places to get refreshed and to get right with God and perhaps to take it back to our church.  What God is pouring out in Bogotá is an anointing for multiplication of souls for the Corporate Church – not for individuals – not for conference junkies!

The revival in Bogotá will demand changes in our churches.  The senior pastors and other leaders have the authority and influence to implement changes as God reveals these to them.  Metro Church in Sunderland is very privileged to have their pastors (Ken & Lois Gott) fully behind the Bogotá Vision of multiplication.  They have been able to start implementing the required changes in their churches creating a wineskin for the greatest harvest in history.

We saw a stadium holding 20,000 people that was throbbing with spiritual warfare.  We saw youngsters praising God and engaging in spiritual battle.  We saw spontaneous “Mexican wave” praise offerings going on around the stadium.  We heard victory chants around us (“Satan! Jesus has defeated you!” and “Ole (4X) Jesus, Jesus”) led by no
man, only the Holy Spirit.  We experienced praise and worship in a style that would put any secular concert to shame (dance, smoke machine, lights, professional voices – the full works).  And we saw 3 or 400 people getting saved in one single meeting.

How do they do it? What is their secret?

For a detailed answer to those questions you will have to read the various books written about the Revival in Colombia (see heading ‘More Information’ further below).  However, let us look at the main points of the Revival.

The Strategy

Their senior pastors Cesar and Claudia Castellanos believe that every church member should be trained into a soul winning leader producing leaders after their own kind training them to be leaders who are able to produce more leaders and so on.

They believe that their strongest weapon is what they have labelled as consolidation.  They are aware that after most big crusades only a very low percentage of new converts actually stay rooted in Christ.  So they developed, though prayer, a method to “consolidate” every new believer as soon as they get saved.  They are strategically discipled and rooted in the love and purity of God, filled with the Holy Spirit and delivered from every kind of demons and generational curses.  All this can happen in
matter of weeks after their salvation.  This way they are retaining nearly 80% of the fruit.

The new believer is assigned to a cell and will be looked after and trained by the cell leader.  Through another training module called the School of Leaders the new convert can become a cell leader himself within a year after his conversion.  The new leader will keep meeting with his mentor while he leads his new cell, ready to repeat the process with his new disciples.

The whole church meets in cells throughout the week and comes together at weekends for a celebration meeting.  The emphasis is not on what happens Sunday morning but what happens in the cells.  Everybody is winning souls and building their downline “cells.” A pastor is someone who has 500 cells in his downline.  We had the privilege to meet several of those.  One of the worship leaders has 900 women cells and another one has 2,500 youth cells.

Everyone is taught that one of their main purposes on earth is to win souls and multiply.

The Vision

Pastor Cesar Castellanos received a vision from God in which he understood that (in Christ) the promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:2,3:  “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.  I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (NIV) was still valid today for every Christian.

He believed God and started imparting faith to those around him so that together they would believe for their individual ‘nation’.  The vision turned out to be genuine since no other church has ever seen such rapid growth through multiplication of cells.  Actually, it makes sense: if we believe that the Lord Jesus is coming soon and that there is coming a great harvest, than this must be the wineskin for world evangelisation.  Let’s face it: The way we’ve been doing church is now out-dated!

Another revelation that Pastor Castellanos received was that of the Twelve.  Just as the Father had 12 men for Jesus through whom He multiplied himself, so also God has for every one of us twelve persons who are called to be mentored by us.  Each one of the twelve has twelve who in turn will each have twelve and so on.  You are called to only pour your life into twelve people and teach them to do the same.  Think in 12s: 12, 144, 1728, 20 736, 248 832, 2 985 984, 35 831 808.  In 7 layers of 12s you can pastor 35 million people.  Following this principle you can pastor a multitude as numerous the stars in the sky or the sand on the seashore without getting a nervous breakdown.

The Church has lost her first calling of world evangelisation.  And the few congregations who do exceed a couple of thousands are lulled into stopping there with a feeling of “we’ve arrived!” This vision of Bogotá knows no limits!  They are dreaming of winning the whole city of Bogotá; the whole country of Colombia … and then the world.

That’s why 3,000 delegates attended this conference: to take this revelation back to their countries; to challenge their congregations to dream again – of nations won for Christ.

The Life Style

However, apart from spectacular growth, there is another feature that sets this church apart from many others: Christ-likeness.  All the cell leaders you meet have the same sweetness of Christ on them.  The ushers are powerful cell leaders filled with Christ.  The singers are soul winners and violent warriors in the Spirit.  The senior pastors are full of holiness, humility and brokenness.  The price tag on their achievements in the church: their very lives.

The people are taught holiness as a life style and as a weapon against satan.  Because of the consolidation modules of deliverance and inner healing, the new converts are free to pursue holy living with a passion I’ve never seen before.  I interviewed a young man in his early twenties who has been saved for 3 years.  After one year of discipleship and
training in the School of Leaders he has produced in the last 2 years 9 cells and he is mentoring 6 leaders as part of his Twelve.  “I fast one day every week,” he told me, “and every day I get up at 5am to pray for my disciples and for new souls.  At the end of this year I will have 50 cells and I am believing God for 500 cells in three or four years time.”

During the week and a half we were there he led at least two persons to the Lord.  By the way, he was an usher, a sort of guide looking after the UK visitors.

The reason they see so much success is that they actually live the life.  Satan comes but has nothing on them (John 14:30).  When they engage in spiritual warfare they achieve success because their lives are clean and they have been praying and fasting with diligence.  So, don’t just look at the structure but look at the price tag.

We can’t achieve their success if we are jealous of the other pastor in our city who is so popular, or if we think we always know it better.  We won’t get anywhere in this vision if we can’t submit to leaders and honour them by serving them.  The devil will laugh at us if we pursue this vision but we treat our wives or husbands badly.  We can’t enter into spiritual warfare for our cities if we have open windows for the enemy.  We need to sanctify our lives in order to have the authority to enter into battle for our cities.

Will it Work for Me?

God is getting ready to spread this revelation world-wide because he will harvest the multitudes.  First he gave us the hunger and desire for revival during the Renewal years but now he is showing us how to achieve it.  We have to ask God for faith to believe that he can use “little ol’ me” to win multitudes – not just one or two.  Once you connect with God’s faith you can start dreaming about your ‘nation’.  Then you’ll be burdened to fast and pray for the souls that God has placed on your heart.  And then, well, you’ll be a ‘fisher of men’.

Some will argue trying to find faults with the vision or with the culture or the people or even the theology.  But with all due respect: it is working.  They are winning souls at a rate of nearly 2000 a week.  This rate is due to be multiplied as more and more are getting saved.  They are winning more souls in one church than many Western churches put together!

We should be asking God: “How can I tap into what you are pouring out in our days? Help me to surrender my good ideas for your God ideas.  Help me to recognise your Spirit when He is on the move!”

This anointing is working in South America, England, Scotland, Korea – all around the world it’s beginning to happen.  It is not a Latin American thing.  It is for the church world-wide!

More Information

This has just been an impression from Bogotá but you can visit the Church (Mision Carismatica Internacional – MCI) website at www.mci12.com. Their books and other material are just being released into the English language, but if you can read Spanish you can order the lot!

Stay tuned!

Source: Azusa@aol.com   To Subscribe to the Azusa List, put SUBSCRIBE in the subject box.

©  Renewal Journal #16: Vision (2000, 2012)  renewaljournal.com
Reproduction is allowed with the copyright included in the text.

See also:  Cali Transformation, by George Otis Jr:
https://renewaljournal.com/2012/05/11/cali-trnsformation-bygeorgeotis-jr/

Renewal Journals – contents of all issues

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 16: Vision

Almolonga, the Miracle City, by Mell Winger

Cali Transformation, by George Otis Jr.

Revival in Bogotá, by Guido Kuwas

Prison Revival in Argentina, by Ed Silvoso

Missions at the Margins, by Bob Ekblad

Vision for Church Growth, by Daryl & Cecily Brenton

Vision for Ministry, by Geoff Waugh

Book Review: Jesus on Leadership by Gene Wilkes

Renewal Journal 16: Vision – 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)

BACK TO MAIN PAGE

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Revival In Bogotá, Colombia, by Guido Kuwas:
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An article in Renewal Journal 16: Vision:
Renewal Journal 16: Vision PDF

Cali Transformation, by George Otis Jr

Cali Transformation

by George Otis Jr

George Otis Jr. has produced many Transformations Videos with the Sentinel Group, and written about cities and communities being transformed by the power of God.

Transformation in Cali and the other cities featured in the ‘Transformations’ DVDs, continue to escalate, says George Otis Jr, director of The Sentinel Group. 

Renewal Journal 16: Vision PDF

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An article in Renewal Journal 16: Vision
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Cali, Columbia

For years Colombia has been the world’s biggest exporter of cocaine, sending between 700 hundred and 1,000 tons a year to the United States and Europe alone.  The Cali cartel, which controlled up to 70 percent of this trade, has been called the largest, richest and most well-organized criminal organization in history.  Employing a combination of bribery and threats, it wielded a malignant power that corrupted individuals and institutions alike.

Randy and Marcy MacMillan, copastors of the Communidad Christiana de Fe, have labored in Cali for more than 20 years.  At least 10 of these have been spent in the shadow of the city’s infamous drug lords.

Marcy inherited the family home of her late father, a former Colombian diplomat.  When illicit drug money began pouring into Cali in the 1980s, the Cocaine lords moved into the MacMillan’s upscale neighbourhood, buying up entire blocks of luxurious haciendas.  They modified these properties by installing elaborate underground tunnel systems and huge 30-foot (10-metre) walls to shield them from prying eyes-and stray bullets.  Video cameras encased in Plexiglas bubbles scanned the surrounding area continuously.  There were also regular patrols with guard dogs.

“These people were paranoid,” Randy recalls.  “They were exporting 500 million dollars worth of cocaine a month, and it led to constant worries about sabotage and betrayal.  They had a lot to lose.”

For this reason, the cartel haciendas were appointed like small cities.  Within their walls it was possible to find everything from airstrips and helicopter landing pads to indoor bowling alleys and miniature soccer stadiums.  Many also contained an array of gift boutiques, nightclubs and restaurants.

Whenever the compound gates swung open, it was to disgorge convoys of shiny black Mercedes automobiles.  As they snaked their way through the city’s congested streets, all other traffic would pull to the side of the road.  Drivers who defied this etiquette did so at their own risk.  Many were blocked and summarily shot.  As many as 15 people a day were killed in such a manner.  “You didn’t want to be at the same stoplight with them,” Randy summarized.

Having once been blocked in his own neighbourhood, Randy remembers the terror.  “They drew their weapons and demanded to see our documents.  I watched them type the information into a portable computer.  Thankfully the only thing we lost was some film.  I will always remember the death in their eyes.  These are people that kill for a living and like it.”

Rosevelt Muriel, director of the city’s ministerial alliance, also remembers those days.  “It was terrible.  If you were riding around in a car and there was a confrontation, you were lucky to escape with your life.  I personally saw five people killed in Cali.”

Journalists had a particularly difficult time.  They were either reporting on human camage – car bombs were going off like popcorn – or they were becoming targets themselves.  Television news anchor Adriana Vivas said that many journalists were killed for denouncing what the Mafia was doing in Colombia and Cali.  “Important political decisions were being manipulated by drug money.  It touched everything, absolutely everything.”

By the early 1990s, Cali had become one of the most thoroughly corrupt cities in the world.  Cartel interests controlled virtually every major institution – including banks, businesses,  politicians and law enforcement.

Like everything else in Cali, the church was in disarray.   Evangelicals were few and did not much care for each other.  “In those days,” Rosevelt Muriel recalls sadly, “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.”

When pastor-evangelists Julio and Ruth Ruibal came to Cali in 1978, they were dismayed at the pervasive darkness in the city.   “There was no unity between the churches,” Ruth explained.  Even Julio was put off by his colleagues and pulled out of the already weak ministerial association.

Ruth relates that during a season of fasting the Lord spoke to Julio saying, “You don’t have the right to be offended.  You need to forgive.”  So going back to the pastors, one by one, Julio made things right.  They could not afford to walk in disunity – not when their city faced such overwhelming challenges.

Randy and Marcy MacMillan were among the first to join the Ruibals in intercession.  “We just asked the Lord to show us how to pray,” Marcy remembers.  And He did.  For the next several months they focused on the meagre appetite within the church for prayer, unity and holiness.  Realizing these are the very things that attract the presence of God, they petitioned the Lord to stimulate a renewed spiritual hunger, especially in the city’s ministers.

As their prayers began to take effect, a small group of pastors proposed assembling their congregations for an evening of joint worship and prayer.  The idea was to lease the city’s civic auditorium, the Colisco El Pueblo, and spend the night in prayer and repentance.  They would solicit God’s active participation in their stand against the drug cartels and their unseen spiritual masters.

Roping off most of the seating area, the pastors planned for a few thousand people.  And even this, in the minds of many, was overly optimistic.  “We heard it all,” said Rosevelt Muriel.  “People told us, ‘It can’t be done,’ ‘No one will come,’ ‘Pastors won’t give their support.’  But we decided to move forward and trust God with the results.”

When the event was finally held in May 1995, the nay-sayers and even some of the organizers were dumbfounded.  Instead of the expected modest turnout, more than 25,000 people filed into the civic auditorium – nearly half of the city’s evangelical population at the time!  At one point, Muriel remembers, “The mayor mounted the platform and proclaimed, ‘Cali belongs to Jesus Christ.’  Well, when we heard those words, we were energized.”  Giving themselves to intense prayer, the crowd remained until 6 o’clock the next morning.  The city’s famous all-night prayer vigil – the ‘vigilia’ – had been born.

Forty-eight hours after the event, the daily newspaper, El Pais, headlined, “No Homicides!”  For the first time in as long as anybody in the city could remember, a 24-hour period had passed without a single person being killed.  In a nation cursed with the highest homicide rate in the world, this was a newsworthy development.  Corruption also took a major hit when, over the next four months, 900 cartel-linked officers were fired from the metropolitan police force.

“When we saw these things happening,” Randy MacMillan exulted, “we had a strong sense that the powers of darkness were headed for a significant defeat.”

In the month of June, this sense of anticipation was heightened when several intercessors reported dreams in which angelic forces apprehended leaders of the Cali drug cartel.  Many interpreted this as a prophetic sign that the Holy Spirit was about to respond to the most urgent aspect of the church’s united appeal.  Intercessors were praying, and heaven was listening.  The seemingly invincible drug lords were about to meet their match.

“Within six weeks of this vision,” MacMillan recalls, “the Colombian government declared all-out war against the drug lords.”  Sweeping military operations were launched against cartel assets in several parts of the country.  The 6,500 elite commandos dispatched to Cali arrived with explicit orders to round up seven individuals suspected as the top leaders of the cartel.

“Cali was buzzing with helicopters,” Randy remembers.  “The airport was closed and there were police roadblocks at every entry point into the city.  You couldn’t go anywhere without proving who you were.”

Suspicions that the drug lords were consulting spirit mediums were confirmed when the federalés dragnet picked up Jorge Eliecer Rodriguez at the fortune-telling parlour of Madame Marlene Ballesteros, the famous ‘Pythoness of Cali’.   By August, only three months after God’s word to the intercessors, Colombian authorities had captured all seven targeted cartel leaders – Juan Carlos Arminez, Phanor Arizabalata, Julian Murcillo, Henry Loaiza, Jose Santacruz Londono and founders Gilberto and Miguel Roddguez.

Clearly stung by these assaults on his power base, the enemy lashed out against the city’s intercessors.  At the top of his hit list was Pastor Julio Ceasar Ruibal, a man whose disciplined fasting and unwavering faith was seriously eroding his manoeuvring room.

On December 13, 1995, Julio rode into the city with his daughter Sarah and a driver.  Late for a pastors’ meeting at the Presbyterian Church, he motioned to his driver to pull over.  “He told us to drop him off,” Sarah recounts, “and that was the last time I saw him.”

Outside the church, a hitman was waiting in ambush.  Drawing a concealed handgun, the assassin pumped two bullets into Julio’s brain at point-blank range.

“I was waiting for him to arrive at the meeting,” Rosevelt remembers.  “At two o’clock in the afternoon I received a phone call.  The man said, ‘They just killed Julio.’  I said, ‘What?  How can they kill a pastor?’  I rushed over, thinking that perhaps he had just been hurt.  But when I arrived on the scene, he was motionless.  Julio, the noisy one, the active one, the man who just never sat still, was just lying there like a baby.”

“The first thing I saw was a pool of crimson blood,” Ruth recalls.  “And the verse that came to me was Psalm 116:15:  ‘Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.’  Sitting down next to Julio’s body, I knew I was on holy ground.

“I had to decide how I was going to deal with this circumstance.  One option was to respond in bitterness, not only toward the man that had done this terrible thing, but also toward God.  He had, after all, allowed the early removal of my husband, my daughters’ father and my church’s pastor.  Julio would never see his vision for the city fulfilled.  My other choice was to yield to the redemptive purposes of the Holy Spirit, to give Him a chance to bring something lasting and wonderful out of the situation.   Looking down at Julio I just said, ‘Lord, I don’t understand Your plan, but it is well with my soul.’”

Julio Ruibal was killed on the sixth day of a fast aimed at strengthening the unity of Cali’s fledgling church.  He knew that even though progress had been made in this area, it had not gone far enough.  He knew that unity is a fragile thing.  What he could not have guessed is that the fruit of his fast would be made manifest at his own funeral.

In shock, and struggling to understand God’s purposes in this tragedy, 1,500 people gathered at Julio’s funeral.  They included many pastors that had not spoken to each other in months.  When the memorial concluded these men drew aside and said, “Brothers, let us covenant to walk in unity from this day forward.  Let Julio’s blood be the glue that binds us together in the Holy Spirit.”

It worked!  Today this covenant of unity has been signed by some 200 pastors and serves as the backbone of the city’s high-profile prayer vigils.  With Julio’s example in their hearts, they have subordinated their own agendas to a larger, common vision for the city.

Emboldened by their spiritual momentum, Cali’s church leaders now hold all-night prayer rallies every 90 days.  Enthusiasm is so high that these glorious events have been moved to the largest venue in the city, the 55,000-seat Pascual Guerrero soccer stadium.  Happily (or unhappily as the case may be), the demand for seats continues to exceed supply.

In 1996 God led many churches to join in a collective spiritual mapping campaign.  To gain God’s perspective on their city, they began to gather intelligence on specific political, social and spiritual strongholds in each of Cali’s 22 administrative zones (a scene reminiscent of the 41 Hebrew clans that once rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem).  The results, stitched together like panels on a patchwork quilt, gave the church an unprecedented picture of the powers working in the city.  “With this knowledge,” Randy explained, “our unified intercession became focused.  As we prayed in specific terms, we began to see a dramatic loosening of the enemy’s stranglehold on our neighbourhoods.

“A few weeks later we used our spiritual mapping intelligence to direct large prayer caravans throughout Cali.  Most of the 250 cars established a prayer perimeter around the city, but a few paraded by government offices or the mansions of prominent cartel leaders.  My own church focused on the headquarters of the billionaire drug lord, José Santacruz Londono, who had escaped from Bogota’s La Picota prison in January.  His hacienda was located just four blocks from my home.  The next day we heard that he had been killed in a gunfight with national police in Medellin!”

In partnership with the Holy Spirit, Cali’s Christians had taken effective control of the city.  What made the partnership work are the same things that always attract the presence of the Lord: sanctified hearts, right relationships and fervent intercession.  “God began changing the city,” according to Ruth Ruibal, “because His people finally came together in prayer.”

As the kingdom of God descended upon Cali, a new openness to the gospel could be felt at all levels of society – including the educated and wealthy.  One man, Gustavo Jaramillo, a wealthy businessman and former mayor, told me,  “It is easy to speak to upper-class people about Jesus.  They are respectful and interested.”  Raul Grajales, another successful Cali businessman, adds that the gospel is now seen as practical rather than religious.  As a consequence, he says, “Many high-level people have come to the feet of Jesus.”

During my April 1998 visit to Cali, I had the privilege of meeting several prominent converts, including Mario Jinete, a prominent attorney, media personality and motivational speaker.  After searching for truth in Freemasonry and various New Age systems, he has finally come home to Christ.  Five minutes into our interview Jinete broke down.  His body shaking, this brilliant lawyer who had courageously faced down some of the most dangerous and corrupt figures in Latin America sobbed loudly.  “I’ve lost forty years of my life,” he cried into a handkerchief.  “My desire now is to subordinate my ego, to find my way through the Word of God.  I want to yield to Christ’s plan for me.  I want to serve Him.”

Explosive church growth is one of the visible consequences of the open heavens over Cali.  Ask pastors to define their strategy and they respond, “We don’t have time to plan.  We’re too busy pulling the nets into the boat.”  And the numbers are expanding.   In early 1998, I visited one fellowship, the Christian Centre of Love and Faith, where attendance has risen to nearly 35,000.   What is more, their stratospheric growth rate is being fuelled entirely by new converts.  Despite the facility’s cavernous size (it’s a former Costco warehouse), they are still forced to hold seven Sunday services.  As I watched the huge sanctuary fill up, I blurted the standard Western question: “What is your secret?”  Without hesitating, a church staff member pointed to a 24-hour  prayer room immediately behind the platform.  “That’s our secret,’ he replied.

Many of Cali’s other churches are also experiencing robust growth, and denominational affiliation and location have little to do with it.  The fishing is good for everybody and it’s good all over town.  My driver, Carlos Reynoso (not his real name), himself a former drug dealer, put it this way: “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.”  Even casual street evangelists are reporting multiple daily conversions – nearly all the result of arbitrary encounters.

Although danger still lurks in this city of 1.9 million, God is now viewed as a viable protector.  When Cali police deactivated a large, 174-kilo car bomb in the populous San Nicolis area in November 1996, many noted that the incident came just 24 hours after 55,000 Christians held their third vigilia.  Even El Pais headlined: “Thanks to God, It Didn’t Explode.”

Cali’s prayer warriors were gratified, but far from finished.  The following month church officials, disturbed by the growing debauchery associated with the city’s Feria, a year-end festival accompanied by 10 days of bull fighting and blowout partying, developed plans to hold public worship and evangelism rallies.

“When we approached the city about this,” Marcy recalls, “God gave us great favour.  The city secretary not only granted us rent-free use of the 22,000-seat velodrome (cycling arena), but he also threw in free advertising, security and sound support.  We were stunned!”  The only thing the authorities required was that the churches pray for the mayor, the city and the citizens.

Once underway, the street witnessing and rallies brought in a bounty of souls.  But an even bigger surprise came during the final service which, according to Marcy, emphasized the Holy Spirit “reigning over” and “raining down upon” the city of Cali.   As the crowd sang, it began to sprinkle outside, an exceedingly rare occurrence in the month of December.  “Within moments,” Marcy recalls, “the city was inundated by torrential tropical rain.  It didn’t let up for 24 hours; and for the first time in recent memory, Feria events had to be cancelled!”

On the evening of April 9, 1998, I had the distinct privilege of attending a citywide prayer vigil in Cali’s Pascual Guerrero stadium.  It was no small event, even in the eyes of the secular media.  For days leading up to the vigilia, local newspapers had been filled with stories linking it to the profound changes that had settled over the community.  Evening newscasters looked straight into the camera and urged viewers, whatever their faith, to attend the all-night event.

Arriving at the stadium 90 minutes early, I found it was already a full house.  I could feel my hair stand on end as I walked onto the infield to tape a report for CBN News.  In the stands, 50,000 exuberant worshipers stood ready to catch the Holy Spirit’s fire.  An additional 15,000 ‘latecomers’ were turned away at the coliseum gate.  Undaunted, they formed an impromptu praise march that circled the stadium for hours.

Worship teams from various churches were stationed at 15-metre intervals around the running track.  Dancers dressed in beautiful white and purple outfits interpreted the music with graceful motions accentuated by banners, tambourines and sleeve streamers.  Both they and their city had been delivered of a great burden.  In such circumstances one does not celebrate like a Presbyterian, a Baptist or a Pentecostal; one celebrates like a person who has been liberated!

Judging from the energy circulating in the stands, I was sure the celebrants had no intention of selling their emancipation short.  They were not here to cheer a championship soccer team or to absorb the wit and wisdom of a big-name Christian speaker.  Their sole objective on this particular evening was to offer up heartfelt worship and ask God to continue the marvellous work He had been undertaking in their city for 36 consecutive months.

“What you’re seeing tonight in this stadium is a miracle,” declared visiting Bogota pastor Colin Crawford.  “A few years ago it would have been impossible for Evangelicals to gather like this.”  Indeed, this city that has long carried a reputation as an exporter of death is now looked upon as a model of community transformation.  It has moved into the business of exporting hope.

High up in the stadium press booth somebody grabbed my arm.  Nodding in the direction of a casually dressed man at the broadcast counter he whispered, “That man is the most famous sports announcer in Columbia.  He does all the big soccer championships.”  Securing a quick introduction, I learned that Rafael Araújo Gámez is also a newborn Christian.  As he looked out over the fervent crowd, I asked if he had ever seen anything comparable in this stadium.  Like Mario, he began to weep.  “Never,” he said with a trembling chin.  “Not ever.”

At 2:30 in the morning my cameraman and I headed for the stadium tunnel to catch a ride to the airport.  It was a tentative departure.  At the front gate crowds still trying to get in looked at us like we were crazy.  I could almost read their minds.  Where are you going? Why are you leaving the presence of God?  They were tough questions to answer.

As we prepared to enter our vehicle a roar rose up from the stadium.  Listening closely, we could hear the people chanting, in English, “Lift Jesus up, lift Jesus up.” The words seemed to echo across the entire city.  I had to pinch myself. Wasn’t it just 36 months ago that people were calling this place a violent, corrupt hell-hole?  A city whose ministerial alliance consisted of a box of files that nobody wanted?

In late 1998, Cali’s mayor and city council approached the ministerial alliance, with an offer to manage a citywide campaign to strengthen the family.  The offer, which has subsequently been accepted, gives the Christians full operational freedom and no financial obligation.  The government has agreed to open the soccer stadium, sports arena and velodrome to any seminar or prayer event that will minister to broken families.

Another report

CALI, Colombia:  According to International Revival News (IRN), churches here are putting aside their differences, and this is resulting in great revival.  “Even death threats from Satanists can’t stop the church in Cali,” said missionary and pastor Randy MacMillan.


Cali, Columbia

Following the mysterious deaths of a number of pastors last year, MacMillan, pastor of the city’s 1,500-member Christian Faith Community Church survived several attempts on his life.   One man wanted to kill him during a Sunday service, but came up a few days later to confess that he had been paid by an international group of Satanists to shoot MacMillan.  “Something kept me from doing it,” he said.

The Columbian police consider the reports accurate but don’t think it worth investigating.  MacMillan says the city, previously known as a violent drug trafficking centre, is currently experiencing a Christian revival.  The churches have a common vision, and the effects of the Gospel are visible in government institutions, the drug world and the crime scene.  “All churches are affected, and we all know that we are in a spiritual battle,” says MacMillan.  “There are so many new believers that the church cannot keep pace.  Up to 50,000 people attend prayer rallies in the stadium.

It wasn’t always like that.  For many years, we pastors didn’t see eye to eye—sometimes we couldn’t even agree on where to meet.  In 1993, we decided to put these petty differences behind us and unite.  For example, we have elected 12 ‘spiritual elders’ to deal with city concerns.”

The Lord has been working in these communities in a marvellous way.  The transformation that has been reported is showing no signs of abating at all.  I just received a phone report indicating that the move of God in Cali has now begun to spread to other surrounding cities in the nation of Colombia, which, as you probably know, is presently being wrapped with civil unrest and violence at just a terrible level.

The entire soccer team associated with the City of Cali has now been born again.  This is the equivalent, for us, to the New York Yankees all giving their hearts to the Lord Jesus Christ or the Seattle Mariners all given faith in one fell swoop.  It has really rattled the community down there.

In addition to this, in a recent all-night prayer vigil, they have grown so large now that the football stadium there is now way too small for them.  In town there is this large open area (near the centre of the city) that is a park, kind of a mall.  This is the only place now where they are able to congregate.

There were over eighty thousand of these folks that gathered together for the last all-night prayer vigil.  As you may recall, they have been doing this every ninety days since early 1995.  So this had real staying power.  The mayor was at this particular gathering and once again, reaffirmed, I guess in a very, very emotional way, that the city of Cali, Colombia belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ.

They had just been given permission in the city of Cali to open the first  Christian television station in the nation of Colombia.  Cali used to be the most violent and corrupt city in that nation.  I like that turn-around.

I also learned that the city of Medellin, just a little farther north, was the initial headquarters of the cocaine cartel before they moved to Cali, and also served as a major centre for the production, processing and export of heroin.  Medellin is an extremely dangerous city – a very large city, too.

What has happened in Cali has now spread and has gotten all over Medellin, Colombia.  They just recently held a march through the city of over eighty thousand people proclaiming Jesus as Lord and worshipping.  The city council there now, believe it or not, has banned the observance of Halloween (it’s gone that far) because of its pagan origin.  This just gives you a little bit of an idea of what is continuing to happen.

We have also, now, personally developed a recent list of communities that have been transformed in the last few years.  That number that started with eight when we began our research, now is at more than forty; this is a growing trend.  We are seeing God not only continuing his work in the cities that we have featured, but there are now dozens of additional communities around the world that have recently been transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit.  That’s still only the beginning of what God is doing today.

Just as you and I are getting used to this idea that God can transform an entire city; not just grow a church in a community, but transform an entire city, God is now off to the races doing bigger and better things than that.  This is, of course, in God’s way.  You cannot keep up with him.  As soon as you think you’ve got Him figured, as soon as you think you have measured him, he’s moved beyond measure.

So, what we are seeing him do today is now moving into entire regions, provinces, national homelands.  In one case, I believe we are about ready to see an entire nation on the verge of being transformed.  This is what we have begun to film and will be the theme of the Transformations Two video that we hope to release in 2001.

Source: Joel News, No. 336, 18 September, 2000  www.joelnews.org

See also Renewal Journal #17: Unity: Snapshots of Glory by George Otis Jr.

See also Julio Ruibal’s story in Revival impacted Bolivia by Ruth Ruibal

See also
Revival in Brazil: Transformation through prayer:
https://renewaljournal.com/2014/04/16/revival-in-brazil-transformationthroughprayer/
Alomolonga, The Miracle City, by Mell Winger:
https://renewaljournal.com/2012/05/11/almolonga-the-miracle-city-bymell-winger/

 

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Contents:  Renewal Journal 16: Vision

Almolonga, the Miracle City, by Mell Winger

Cali Transformation, by George Otis Jr.

Revival in Bogotá, by Guido Kuwas

Prison Revival in Argentina, by Ed Silvoso

Missions at the Margins, by Bob Ekblad

Vision for Church Growth, by Daryl & Cecily Brenton

Vision for Ministry, by Geoff Waugh

Book Review: Jesus on Leadership by Gene Wilkes

Renewal Journal 16: Vision – 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)

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Reviews (15) Wineskins

Pentecostalism by Walter Hollenweger  (Hendrickson, 1997)

Pentecostal pastor and then Reformed minister, Dr Walter Hollenweger, retired professor of Missions at Birmingham University in England, pioneered research on Pentecostalism for 40 years.

He published The Pentecostals in 1972, which is still a classic survey of the worldwide Pentecostal movement.  His recent book, Pentecostalism is in many ways a sequel.  Hollenweger assesses the origins of the fastest-growing religious movement in the world.  He describes the theological stories of the pentecostal movement within its Black oral root, Catholic root, evangelical root, critical root, and ecumenical root.

Cecil Robeck of Fuller Theological Seminary says, “I know of no one else who has the breadth of knowledge, the depth of understanding, or the grasp of such a broad base of scholarship to be able to write this book. … This fascinating book is at times playful, at times deadly serious, and at times simply informative.  It will stretch the thinking of all who care to be taught, and challenge the hypocrisy of those who think they know it all.  And it will help us all to understand better than we have before, the roots that have nurtured one of the most vital Christian movements in the twentieth century.”

Harvey Cox of Harvard University and author of another investigation of Pentecostalism, Fire from Heaven, adds, “Pentecostalism is the fastest growing and most vital Christian movement on the globe today.  What great news that the esteemed elder statesman of Pentecostal studies has now given us this comprehensive and absorbing account of how it started and why it is growing.”

Almost 500 pages, it is not light reading, although it is peppered with vivid stories of Pentecostalism.  If you want a light-weight paperback summary, look elsewhere.  If you want a thorough, academic and fire-filled examination of this astounding movement, you have it in this book.

An increasing number of postgraduate and undergraduate students will mine this rich ore for profound insights and quotable quotes.  (GW)

The Transforming Power of Revival edited by Harold Caballeros and Mell Winger (Peniel, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1998).

This collection of 18 articles by 16 authors from five continents gathers insights from the World Congress on Intercession, Spiritual Warfare and Evangelism held in Guatemala City in October 1998.  It provides a global picture of recent developments in Spirit-filled prayer and evangelism.

Chapters include:

It’s worth it to pay the price, by Omar Cabrera.

The purpose of the anointing, by Carlos Annacondia.

The Agreement of Heaven and earth, by Cindy Jacobs.

Soulwinning, by T. L. Osborn.

The New Apostolic Reformation, by C. Peter Wagner.

The Road to Community Transformation, by George Otis Jr.

Almolonga the Miracle City, by Mell Winger.

In the sixties and seventies, renewal was sweeping the churches and independent churches and movements abounded.  By the eighties and nineties, revival movements gained increasing prominence.  Now he vanguard of revival movements is reporting on whole cities and even nations experiencing powerful Spirit-filled awakening and transformation.

This book from Latin America will inform and inspire you with some of those latest current accounts of God’s mighty purposes and actions in the world today.  It is the forerunner of many current books emerging to lead us into city-wide transformation and revivals which are beginning to impact nations.

Videos: 

A few Christian videos grab your attention and expand your horizons.  These do.

Transformations 1 (The Sentinel Group, 1999)

George Otis Jr. takes you on a mind-blowing journey to four cities, two in Latin America, one in Africa, and one in North America.  All of these cities have been radically transformed by united Christian prayer and witness.  Crime has dropped dramatically.  Christians really love one another and God answers their prayers, to the astonishment of the government and civic leaders.  Mayors and police chiefs plead with the Christians to keep praying because it has made so many revolutionary social changes.

One is a community where 92% of the population is born again.  The four city jails have been closed for lack of crime.  Agricultural productivity has reached biblical proportions, and experts from America are now visiting the city to try and learn the secret of such abundant agricultural productivity.

Another is a city where 60,000 jam the municipal soccer stadium for all-night prayer vigils every three months.  There a multi-billion dollar drug cartel has been brought to its knees in answer to united prayer.

Another is a town where local bars have been transformed into churches.  Ancestral shrines have been destroyed.  Entire family clans have come to faith in Christ.

Another is a city where thriving occult centers have been closed, drug abuse has been significantly reduced and a crime wave has subsided as the churches fill.

Transformations 2 (The Sentinel Group, 2001)

Visit modern-day sites of transforming revival in Uganda and Canada’s Arctic provinces.
Re-visit a true historical revival in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides. (75 min)

More stirring stories of whole communities transformed by the presence and power of God.

Available in Australia from Toowoomba City Church, PO Box 2216, Toowoomba, Qld. 4350.  Ph. 07 4638 2399.

© Renewal Journal #15: Wineskins, renewaljournal.com
Reproduction is allowed with the copyright included in the text.

CONTENTS:  Renewal Journal 15: Wineskins

Editorial: New Wineskins for the 21st Century

The God Chasers, by Tommy Tenny

The New Apostolic Reformation, by C. Peter Wagner

The New Believers, by Diana Bagnall (The Bulletin)

Vision and Strategy for Church Growth, by Lawrence Khong

New Wineskins for Pentecostal Studies, by Sam Hey

New Wineskins to Develop Ministry, by Geoff Waugh

Book and DVD Reviews:
Pentecostalism, by Walter Hollenweger
The Transforming Power of Revival, by Harold Caballeros and Mell Winger
Transformations 1 and 2 DVDs (The Sentinel Group)

Renewal Journal 15: Wineskins – PDF

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

Renewal Journals – contents of all issues

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Revival Blogs Links:

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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)

BLOGS INDEX 6: CHAPTERS (BLOGS FROM BOOKS)

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New Wineskins to Develop Ministry, by Geoff Waugh

New Wineskins to Develop Ministry

by Geoff Waugh

 

 

Dr Geoff Waugh co-ordinated Distance Education and the Bachelor of Ministry course at the Brisbane Christian Outreach Centre School of Ministries, a school of Christian Heritage College.

Renewal Journal 15: Wineskins PDF

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An article in Renewal Journal 15: Wineskins

See also: God’s Promise – I will pour out my Spirit
See also: Jesus’ Last Promise – You will receive power
See also: God’s Surprises, by Geoff Waugh
See also: Revival Fires, by Geoff Waugh

Scene 1:  A large pentecostal or charismatic church in any Australian city in 2000

They allocate trained full time and part-time staff with modern resources to run their two year government-accredited pentecostal or charismatic Bible College diploma, bachelor and post-graduate courses.  Austudy and Abstudy cover fees for their full-time student workers.  They train their own leadership on the job and for the future through Spirit-filled study and ministry, especially learning to move in their personal and corporate giftings and anointing.  Many people in the church study subjects there part-time for their own enjoyment and development.

Scene 2: A small pentecostal or charismatic church in any Australian town in 2000

They run small study groups led by volunteeers such as teachers or home group leaders for their people enrolled in accredited distance education courses in ministry.  They have people enrolled in diploma, bachelor and post-graduate courses in pentecostal or charismatic studies.  Austudy and Abstudy cover fees for their full-time student workers.  They train their own leadership on the job and for the future through Spirit-filled study and ministry, especially learning to move in their personal and corporate giftings and anointing.  Many people in the church study subjects part-time for their own enjoyment and development.

In other words, you can now study pentecostal or charismatic courses at diploma, bachelor and post-graduate levels at home, or in a study group in your church, or in your home group.  Individual subjects are available to you right now.

This is new for many Pentecostal and charismatic Christians.  In the past, they were often suspicious of study because it seemed to put out the fire through liberal teachings full of doubt and unbelief.  Now churches and Christians are rediscovering that Spirit-filled study can fan the flame and set people on fire!

Our ministry is the ministry of Jesus Christ in his church and in the world.  He was certainly filled with the fire of the Spirit and has set people on fire for 2000 years.  This is the vital starting point and the most radical.  Jesus ministered in the power of the Spirit of the Lord.  So must we.

Consequently, our ministry is charismatic by definition, nature and function.  The Holy Spirit is given to the church so that we can minister in the power of the Spirit.  The gifts of the Spirit, the charismata, enable that ministry.  Urban Holmes (1971:248) notes:

The heart of the Christian ministry is its charismatic liminal quality.  Without question there is a place for professional capacities in ministry but it is the charismatic character of the church that lends strength to professions such as counselling, teaching, and community organization that they cannot possess otherwise.

Hendrick Kraemer (1958:180) emphasized the issue:

The point we can’t evade is that, true as it may be that for many important historical reasons the Church has become from a charismatic fellowship an institutional Church, she must acknowledge that, as to her nature, she is always charismatic, for she is the working field of the Holy Spirit.  Her being an institution is a human necessity, but not the nature of the Church.

Ministry education gets caught in that institutional bind, even while seeking to respond to the Spirit.  One powerful means of freeing us from that institutional bind is to open education for ministry to everyone.

The challenge facing theological [and ministry] education today is

* to take an open attitude to structures and methods and to design programs that will be open to the whole people of God,

* to take an open attitude toward curriculum design so as to build on the students’ interests and needs and motivation,

* to take an open attitude toward the role of the student and the role of the teacher so that both can become fully involved in determining and developing the learning experiences,

* to take an open attitude toward evaluation and to discover more relevant, more human, more Christian ways to validate our program (Kinsler 1981: 86).

Not only do modern delivery systems provide us with resources to transform our educational task, but the organisational shift from bureaucratic structures towards networking offers new possibilities for effective open education for ministry.

In other words, you can train for any pentecostal or charismatic ministry anywhere now.

1.  Third Wave Megatrends

The emerging social and cultural context in which we now live has been called the Third Wave (by Alvin Toffler) and its major characteristics described as Megatrends (by John Naisbitt).  These are not to be confused with Peter Wagner’s “third wave” of renewal (first the pentecostal wave, second the charismatic wave, and the third wave in all churches).  Those waves of pentecostal renewal in the twentieth century penetrated all the current social/cultural waves of tribal life (as in Africa now), town life (as in country towns now), and technological life (as in huge cities now).

The Industrial Revolution saw a shift from a tribal, agricultural society to the emergence of the town with its mine or factory, printed media and supporting bureaucracies including schools and suburban churches.  Professional ministry gradually shifted from the village priest for all the people to denominational ministers educated in theological schools of the classroom model.

We now experience a radical social restructuring ushered in by the accelerating changes of a technological revolution.  No terms fully describe it.  Alvin Toffler writes of three waves: agricultural, industrial and what he used to call super‑industrial (1970) but changed to “third wave” (1980), arguing that most terms narrow rather than expand our understanding because they focus on a single aspect rather than describe the whole.  “Post-modern” has become the current term used to label these profound changes.

Other phrases describing this emerging era include:

Harvey Cox’s technopolitan society (following tribal and town);

Marshall McLuhan’s electric era and global village;

Daniel Bell’s post‑industrial society; and

John Naisbitt’s information society.

John Naisbitt (1982, 1990) examines megatrends shaping this new era, many of which apply directly to education for ministry.  He describes American cultural changes but these trends also apply to all societies experiencing the global technological revolution.  I comment briefly on five of his first list of megatrends (1982:1) and two from his megatrends 2000 list (1990:276, 248) which seem particularly relevant to education for ministry.

In other words, you can now be involved in a huge range of world-class opportunities for study and ministry right where you are, in your home group, cell group, study group, or mission group or in your own home alone.

1.1. From an Industrial Society to an Information Society:

Although we continue to think we live in an industrial society, we have in fact changed to an economy based on the creation and distribution of information.

Education for ministry now benefits from educational processes and resources common to society including the proliferation of media which liberate education from confinement in classrooms and make it available in ‘schools without walls’.   Britain’s Open University is an example.  External Christian degree studies is another.

Teachers and students can engage in mutually enriching interaction and research at the interface of context and content, facilitated by educational and communications technology.  For example, the computer is replacing the typewriter, the photocopier has overtaken the duplicator, the video is taking over from the audio cassette, the resource centre is assimilating the library and going electronic, the modem connects us with the Internet, and mail is increasingly by fax or e-mail.

An internet copy of this paper is now more useful than a printed copy!  It reaches more people, anywhere in the world.  Anyone can download it and use it.  Quotes can be immediately woven into other tasks, including more articles!  The material can be used and re-used in multi-media, including adapted to OHT for study groups or adapted and printed in Study Guides and Readings.

In other words, you can download this article from the Renewal Journal web page, reproduce it for your home group, study group, church paper, or tertiary study.  You can adapt it, and turn a summary of it into a hand-out or an OHT sheet.  I’ve done all that with this article and many other articles  – often.

1.2. From Centralisation to Decentralisation:

We have rediscovered the ability to act innovatively and achieve results ‑ from the bottom up.

We are familiar with this trend and encourage it in many of our church structures.  It also applies to education for ministry.  We choose resources and studies from a widening range of possibilities.

At the personal level, increasing numbers of people study for theological or ministry degrees, often by open education or distance education.  At the church level, innovative congregations or creative people in churches find ways to enrich the ministry education of their people, and this may include external studies in education for ministry which was once available only to full time college students.  At the college level, many colleges now offer external studies or distance education with decentralised programs related specifically to local contexts and guided by local tutors.

In other words, you are no longer dependent on other people to chart your course or even your beliefs.  You do that, led by the Spirit in fellowship with God’s people.

1.3. From Institutional to Self‑Help:

We are shifting from institutional help to more self‑reliance in all aspects of our lives.

Institutional Christianity is big business, but many traditional churches decline while home groups multiply and house churches proliferate.  Independent churches attract increasing numbers, and some denominational congregations experiencing rapid growth sit rather loosely or uncomfortably within traditional structures, often challenging those structures prophetically.  Large numbers of educated and committed Christians join or form study groups, renewal groups, charismatic congregations or covenant communities.

Continuing theological education is another example of self‑help programs.  Institutional help or direction is often by‑passed in favour of a wide range of personal interests including study for various degrees now increasingly accessible from colleges around the world.  This self-help option is increasingly taken where external study is available.

In other words, you can chart your own course in study and ministry according to your personal calling, gifting and anointing.  That course can fan the flame in you and set you on fire for powerful ministry if you choose your study well.

1.4. From Either/Or to Multiple Options:

From a narrow either/or society with a limited range of personal choices we are exploding into a free‑wheeling multiple‑option society.

Demarcation lines along denominational or doctrinal differences once characterised churches, theological colleges, and even Bible colleges.  These increasingly blur and merge within the unity of the Spirit and in the ecumenical landscape.

Renewed Baptists, for example, may identify more deeply with Catholic Charismatic spirituality than with their own historical distinctives.  ‘Rebaptism’ is a burning pastoral issue as increasing numbers choose to move freely among differing groups.  Multiplying home groups discover authentic unity and raise eucharistic problems.  Traditional understandings of ordination and ministry are increasingly challenged, as with this statement nearly half a century ago:

“The question we are now considering is that of the possible ordination of the ordinary farmer or merchant or lawyer, who is prepared to give freely to the Church the time that he can spare from the ordinary occupation in which most of his time must be spent.

The proposal seems to us strange only because, from the point of view of the Early Church, we have got things thoroughly turned upside down. … It is hardly too much to say that in those days almost anyone could celebrate the Holy Communion, and hardly anyone except the bishop could preach; whereas now almost anyone can preach (or, rather is allowed to preach!) and hardly anyone can celebrate Holy Communion.  Lack of balance in either direction is to be deplored” (Neill 1957:65).

Local churches as well as Bible colleges need to take our multiple option context seriously and offer a wide range of options adapted to people’s calling, giftings, anointings, ministries and learning styles.  An example of this is the learning contract or agreement and the importance of practicum or field education learning and ministry experiences.

In other words, you will probably be ordained to your ministry in your lifetime, if you want to be, whether you are male or female, employee or boss, working in the church or in the world.  Many churches in Australia are already doing this.

1.5. From Hierarchies to Networking:

We are giving up our dependence on hierarchical structures in favour of informal networks.

Naisbitt (1982:197) identifies three fundamental reasons making networks a crucial social form now:

(1) the death of traditional structures,

(2) the din of information overload, and

(3) the past failures of hierarchies.

He adds,

The vertical to horizontal power shift that networks bring about will be enormously liberating for individuals.  Hierarchies promote moving up and getting ahead, producing stress, tension, and anxiety.  Networking empowers the individual, and people in networks tend to nurture one another.

In the network environment, rewards come by empowering others, not by climbing over them (1982:197, 204).

That is crucial.  It fits with Christian commitment to love and serve one another.  And it helps to overcome the flaws of bureaucratic Christianity, such as the Peter Principle: ‘In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence’ (Peter 1969:22).  Where that happens in churches, people now tend to choose a better option, often going elsewhere.

Toffler describes the shift toward networking this way:

We are, in fact, witnessing the arrival of a new organizational system that will increasingly challenge and ultimately supplant bureaucracy.  This is the organisation of the future. …  Shortcuts that by‑pass the hierarchy are increasingly employed.  … The cumulative result of such small changes is a massive shift from vertical to lateral communication systems  (1970:120, 133).

The impact of networking is reflected in our growing use of short term task groups (instead of long term committees) and the supportive, nurturing home group or cell group structures (instead of formal mid-week prayer meetings in pews).

Contextual education for ministry will help to prepare ministry which can function well in a networking environment.  Not only do ministers and leaders need to know how to facilitate task groups, study groups and home fellowships (rather than be threatened by them), but the shape of ministry can be transformed in this context as task group specialists and cell group leaders minister and enable ministry, disciple others and are discipled in mutuality.

Further, Bible Colleges can provide essential resources for use in the learning and ministering networking groups as well as for individuals.

In other words, you will get your rewards and fulfil your ministry “by empowering others, not by climbing over them.” 

1.6. The triumph of the individual

The great unifying theme at the conclusion of the 20th century is the triumph of the individual.

Networking frees people from bureaucratic restrictions.  New relationships emerge in voluntary associations including the church and its activities.   Technology empowers the emerging freedom of the individual.  The motorcar, then the aircraft, dramatically increased individual mobility.  Millions now communicate freely within the electronic village.

The freedom of the individual under God within committed community is an increasing reality of church life and education for ministry.  Individual giftings and callings are openly pursued, encouraged and channelled into effective ministry within the body of Christ.

Gifted ministries emerge in ordinary people, fuelled and trained by the best teachers and leaders in the world through video, casettes, TV programs, internet articles which now include video and audio preaching and teaching.

In other words, you can use any or all of these resources as you serve God in the power of His Spirit, doing what He leads you to do, such as in personal networks, home groups or house churches.

1.7. Religious revival

At the dawn of the third millennium there are unmistakable signs of a worldwide multidenominational religious revival.

Naisbitt notes widespread religious revival including charismatic renewal, such as one-fifth, or 10 million, of America’s 53.5 million Catholics in 1990 were charismatic.  Now one third of practising Christians worldwide are pentecostal/charismatic.  Traditional, doctrinal, cognitive Christianity is increasingly challenged by transforming experience of God.

This has immediate application to education for ministry.  An urgent task for us all is to make our ministry education in renewal as widely available as possible to meet this rapidly expanding revival.

Open education for ministry can flow anywhere through networking Christian ministries to inform and inspire, to liberate and equip leadership and multiply ministry.

In other words, you will be increasingly relating to others in revival – from all kinds of denominations, or none, and with all kinds of theologies (where Jesus is Lord).  That’s one reason why good Spirit-filled study can help you see more clearly and serve more fervently.

2.  Open Education Possibilities

Adult education, continuing education and ministry education now offer wide scope for self-directed learning, which Malcolm Knowles calls andragogy (1980).

Malcolm Knowles developed the concept of andragogy to describe self-directed learning in contrast to pedagogy viewed as mainly teacher-directed learning.

In its broadest meaning, self-directed learning describes a process in which individuals take the initiative, with or without the help of others, in diagnosing their learning needs, formulating learning goals, identifying human and material resources for learning, choosing and implementing appropriate learning strategies, and evaluating learning outcomes … Self-directed learning usually takes place in association with various kinds of helpers, such as teachers, tutors, mentors, resource people, and peers.  There is a lot of mutuality among a group of self-directed learners (Knowles 1975:18).

Many people seek out these possibilities for self-directed education, especially in extension or distance education modes.  Illich’s de-schooling proposals (and similar expressions of schools without walls) describe networking systems which apply to education in general but also to open education for ministry.  Instead of fitting educational resources to the educator’s curricula goals, he proposes four different approaches which enable students to gain access to educational resources which may help to define and achieve their goals (Illich 1971:81).  These are:

2.1. Reference Services to Educational Objects ‑ which facilitate access to things or processes used for formal learning.

Educational objects can include resources found in most churches such as libraries, resource centres, book shops, study notes, CDs, audio and video cassettes, TV (e.g. open university), ands study groups using overhead projectors, whiteboards, and a range of resources.

In other words, you can now offer video nights or seminars for a huge range of training including counselling, worship, evangelism, home group leadership and youth and children’s ministries.  Leaders from around the world come into your home or group by video.

2.2. Skill Exchanges ‑ which permit persons to list their skills, the conditions under which they are willing to serve and the addresses at which they can be reached.

Skill exchanges can include activities such as tutoring or people who can teach or disciple others, musicians, ministry task groups, and educational or service specialists.  Most informal church programs use these skill exchanges – musicians train musicians; home group and study group leaders train other cell or study group leaders.  We call it discipling.

In other words, you can be in a group where someone disciples you (choose well!) and also in a group where you disciple others.  One great way to learn something is to also teach it to others.  Use your gifts and skills, don’t bury them!  Many people use their distance education study materials for study groups, teaching or preaching.

2.3. Peer‑Matching ‑ a communications network which permits persons to describe the learning activity in which they wish to engage, in the hope of finding a partner for the inquiry.

Peer matches can include persons interested in learning skills or forming study groups, including a wide range of ministry education activities.  Some church directories now list areas of interest, and people can easily establish common interest groups.

In other words, you can help people in your home group or church to identify their interests from a list (there are plenty around, or make up your own in the group), and then to match them.  It happens informally anyway – people who like surfing go surfing together; intercessors love to pray together.

2.4. Reference Services to Educators‑at‑Large ‑ who can be listed in a directory giving the addresses and self‑descriptions of professionals, para‑professionals, and freelancers, along with conditions of access to their services.

Educational leaders in churches can assist in exploratory activities and in helping students achieve specific goals.  Practicum and field education studies often link students with mentors and role models in ministry such as in music, youth or children’s work, counselling, evangelism and other significant ministries.

Open education for ministry can explore these networking facilities.  Networks, along with the other megatrends, both require and enable contextually appropriate models of education for ministry, and help to open the theologising process to the whole church in an intentional and integrative way.

In other words, you can mix life and ministry with continuing education such as in distance education, learning with others, or on your own, how to live for God and minister in the power of His Spirit.

3.  Implications and Directions

Open education for ministry can intentionally address these contextual issues of accelerating change and integrate traditional classroom procedures with open education processes.

Significant implications and directions include equipping the church for ministry, contextualising education for ministry, providing resources for the church, and renewing the church.

3.1. Equipping the Church for Ministry.

Open education for ministry not only equips pastors or leaders for ministry but opens that process to the whole church.

Ralph Winter, an extension pioneer through the Presbyterian Seminary in Guatemala, observed that their extension program cost less per student, allowed a smaller faculty to deal with a large number of students (by using seminar tutors), stressed independent study and reflection, attracted more candidates to the ministry, reached more mature students, enabled teaching on several levels more easily, and allowed students to work in the context of their ministry.

He emphasized that extension was not primarily a new method of teaching but that its greatest significance was as a new method of selection and equipping for ministry, since the underlining purpose for working by extension is in fact more important than any of the kaleidoscopic varieties of extension as a method ‑ it is the simple goal of enlisting and equipping for ministry precisely those who are best suited to it (Kinsler 1978:x).

Opening ministry education to the whole church helps to reach the real leaders and equip them.  Missionary Roland Allen severely criticised western styles of education for ministry for failing to do this.  His points include these (Mulholland 1976:16‑18):

(1) The apostles required maturity and experience with Spirit‑filled giftedness for leadership; we ordain young, inexperienced graduates.

(2) The apostles say nothing about full time employment in the church; we require it.

(3) The apostles selected the real leaders; we emphasise a subjective, internal call.

(4) The early church valued spiritual and practical formation in life and ministry; we value academic credentials.

(5) The early church allowed full ministry including the sacraments; we deny this to many groups.

Open education for ministry gives the real leaders access to theology in a ministry context.  These spiritually gifted and pastorally experienced leaders may, or may not, be officially ordained but they function in significant pastoral ministry not only with individuals but also as task group leaders, home group pastors, or worship leaders and preachers.

In other words, you can run your own ministry training centre, as in your home group or study group or ministry group or mission group.

3.2. Contextualising Education for ministry.

Opening ministry education shifts the focus from the classroom to the context of ministry, from preparation for ministry to formation in ministry.

Classrooms will undoubtedly continue to provide an essential means of serious theologising, especially when students’ ministries, gifts and contexts are taken seriously.

Open education for ministry can broaden this approach.  Ross Kinsler emphasised the role of extension in that process:

The full significance of theological education by extension will be perceived when local people discover that they are being invited to become primary agents of both ministry and theology.  For theology itself is the interplay of Christian life/ministry and reflection, of Gospel and context, of God and history. …

Theological education by extension can be treated as a stop gap for those who can’t go to seminary, a partial, pragmatic substitute for the ‘real thing’.  Or it can become a new and powerful attempt to return ministry and theology to the people, where they really belong (Kinsler 1983:3, 21).

Committed Christians often challenge entrenched structures with spiritual sensitivity, prophetic insight, pastoral concern and intellectual integrity.  The prophetic and teaching role of Bible College staff can be increasingly exercised by informed people who may never sit in college classrooms but who now have greater access to theological resources.  This is closer to the New Testament pattern for ministry formation and education.

The principal model for ministerial formation is Jesus himself, who continues to call his followers into his ministry and mission, and the classic text is Mark 10:42‑45, which speaks of service and self‑giving.  One of the enigmas we face is that theological education … leads to privilege and power, whereas ministry is fundamentally concerned with servanthood (Kinsler 1983:6).

Open education for ministry can fulfil a significant servant role in the church by providing ministry education for the whole church, not just the elite few.

In other words, you can minister as Jesus did, serve as Jesus did, disciple others as Jesus did – without desks in a classroom, but in life, in homes, in relationships.

3.3. Providing Resources for the Church.

Open education for ministry provides resources for the whole church which can be used anywhere.  Many churches now make these resources available, and produce their own.  Resource centres in churches supply audio and video cassettes as well as books and magazines including periodicals or journals.

Guest speakers are now recorded on cassettes (audio and video) and copies can be widely distributed.  The same applies to lecturing or teaching.  Distance education uses these facilities extensively.  Resource directories and publicity through church papers provide the church with access to these.

Many resources, simply produced and widely distributed, facilitate group sharing as well as provide significant input.  Taped lectures or sermons, for example, can easily include discussion questions or tasks for discussion and action.

External students value these resources.  Cassettes (easily used with accompanying material) become not only formal study tools, but also provide up‑dated resources for continuing education, for personal enquiry, and for seminar or tutorial groups.

More sophisticated distance education models can be developed also.  University external studies departments offer many examples.

Clive Lawless, a lecturer in Educational Technology at the Open University in London comments on how Britain’s largest university teaches at a distance using a wide range of media including audio and video cassettes available for personal use as well as broadcast through educational radio and television.  Most of their courses involve regular seminars as well as providing personal study resources.

Lawless (1974:8) notes three important implications of the Open University for ministry education:

(1) Open education for ministry methods can be used on a large scale and at the highest educational levels;

(2) Open education for ministry needs personnel and resources to concentrate on it; and

(3) Open education for ministry needs to use a wide range of media and materials.

He says that we need to ask two questions concerning the range of media and materials available: whether all possible media and materials are being used, and whether they are being used in an effectively integrated way.

In other words, you can have world leaders such Billy Graham, Oral Roberts, Benny Hinn, Yonggi Cho and many others in your home or home group via video or cassette, leading to lively discussion and mutual ministry.  Current educational media provide resources for the church and in the process opens the classroom to the whole church.  This in turn helps to further equip the church for its ministry.

3.4. Renewing the Church.

Ministerial formation is committed to renewing the church but often frustrated and bound by entrenched traditions.  Those limiting structures are increasingly by‑passed in the shift to lateral networking fuelled by creative open ministry education resources.

The concern of theological educators in many places is to liberate our institutions and churches from dysfunctional structures in order to respond in new ways to the Spirit of God in our age and in our many diverse contexts.  Theological education by extension is a tremendously versatile and flexible approach to ministerial training; it is also now a spreading, deepening movement for change, subversion and renewal (Kinsler 1981:101).

Rigid or traditional structures may be made more flexible with new developments which emerge out of creative and courageous responses to the Spirit of God.

Renewal ministries in the church function naturally and powerfully along flexible networks of committed groups.  Some of these fit within denominational structures, though uncomfortably at times.  Others emerge as new structures, mixing formerly separated Christians into various expressions of “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace”.  Networks of committed and creative groupings continue to multiply.

Larger congregations also need networks of small groups for personal fellowship, effective ministry and service to others.  These congregations usually provide significant ministry education resources in paperbacks, magazines, audio and video cassettes, and also produce their own resources.

One common example of such resources in ministry education made widely available are external studies units in degree courses.  These often include:

(1) A study guide, including administrative, content, resource and assessment information;

(2) Notes and/or essential text(s);

(3) A reader containing significant articles or book chapters;

(4) Resource materials, such as disks, and audio and/or video cassettes.

These become available not only for individual or tutorial study, but also for use in ministry.

Bible College staff have abundant resources to make their teaching available anywhere as resources for open education for ministry, including overseas.  This includes accredited diploma and degree programs.

Open education for ministry uses these emerging opportunities to creatively involve the church in contextual theological reflection.  It is a significant force to equip the church for its mission in the world.

In other words, you are a theologian (you have significant thoughts about God and are continually learning), a teacher (by example, modelling, dsicipling and serving – both informally and formally), a minister (for to serve is to minister), and a disciple of Jesus who by his Spirit within us ministers through us to others, and through others to us.

References

Illich, Ivan  (1971) Celebration of Awareness.  Penguin.

Kinsler, Ross (1981) The Extension Movement in Theological Education. Pasadena: William Carey Library.

Kinsler, Ross (1983) “Theology by the People.”  Manuscript prepared for Pacific Basin Conference, Fuller Seminary Library.

Kinsler, Ross, ed. (1983)  Ministry by the People.  Orbis.

Knowles, Malcolm (1975)  Self-Directed Learning.  Chicago: Follet

Knowles, Malcolm  (1980)  The Modern Practice of Adult Education (Revised), Chicago: Follet.

Lawless, Clive (1974) “The Open University.”  Theological News Monograph, No. 7, April, Fuller Seminary Library.

Mulholland, Kenneth (1976)  Adventures in Training the Ministry.  Presbyterian and Reformed.

Naisbitt, John  (1982)  Megatrends.  Warner.

Naisbitt, John and Aburdene, Patricia (1990)  Megatrends 2000.  Pan.

Neil, Stephen (1957)  The Unfinished Task.  London: Edinburgh House.

Peter, Lawrence  (1969) The Peter Principle.  Pan.

Toffler, Alvin (1970)  Future Shock.  Pan.

Toffler, Alvin (1980)  The Third Wave.  Collins.

Wagner, C. Peter  (1988)  The Third Wave of the Holy Spirit.  Ann Arbor: Vine.

© Renewal Journal #15: Wineskins, renewaljournal.com
Reproduction is allowed with the copyright included in the text.

Renewal Journals – contents of all issues

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

Amazon – Renewal Journal 15: Wineskins
Amazon – all journals and books – Look inside

Revival Blogs Links:

See also Revivals Index

See also Revival Blogs

See also Blogs Index 1: Revivals

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

CONTENTS:  Renewal Journal 15: Wineskins

The God Chasers, by Tommy Tenny

The New Apostolic Reformation, by C. Peter Wagner

The New Believers, by Diana Bagnall (The Bulletin)

Vision and Strategy for Church Growth, by Lawrence Khong

New Wineskins for Pentecostal Studies, by Sam Hey

New Wineskins to Develop Ministry, by Geoff Waugh

Book and DVD Reviews:
Pentecostalism, by Walter Hollenweger
The Transforming Power of Revival, by Harold Caballeros and Mell Winger
Transformations 1 and 2 DVDs (The Sentinel Group)

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)

BACK TO MAIN PAGE

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Vision and Strategy for Church Growth, by Lawrence Khong

Vision and Strategy for Church Growth

by Lawrence Khong

Dr Lawrence Khong led his Baptist church in Singapore from 350 to a weekly attendance over 8,000, with a strong emphasis on expository preaching and the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit.   This article is reproduced with permission from Chapter 14 of The Transforming Power of Revival edited by Harold Caballeros and Mel Winger.

Renewal Journal 15: Wineskins PDF

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On August 17, 1986, I stood on the platform in a rented auditorium in Singapore to preach in the first worship service of a brand new congregation.  As I approached the pulpit, the Holy Spirit spoke clearly to my heart: “Son, today the new baby is born!”  Then the words of Haggai 2:9 flooded into my mind: “The glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house, … And in this place I will grant peace,’ declares the Lord Almighty” (NIV).

I was too emotionally worn out to be excited about the “greater glory.”  I simply took comfort in the fact that in this new church there will be peace.  I had just emerged from more than a year of leadership struggle in my former church.  I had grown up in this church, a Bible-believing congregation that had been growing consistently.  This had been my spiritual home throughout my teenage years.  The leadership of the church had clearly and lovingly affirmed my calling into the ministry.  They sent me to pursue my theological training in the United States.  I returned to be the pastor of the church.  Within five years, it grew from 350 to 1,600 under my pastoral leadership.

A career-changing experience

During the fifth year of my pastorate, I had an unexpected encounter with the Holy Spirit that opened my heart to the reality of God’s power.  In that encounter, I began speaking in a new tongue.  It was something I had always told my congregation would not and should not ever happen in this day and age.  I clearly taught them that this particular gift, together with other power gifts of the Holy Spirit, had ceased at the end of the apostolic age.  I taught them so well, in fact, that the leadership of the church rejected the validity of my experience and its theological implications immediately.  I realized they were doing the very thing I would have done if I were in their shoes.

I was confused.  My experience completely devastated my neat and tidy theology.  I could not at that point give a clear biblical understanding about what happened.  On the other hand, I could not deny the reality of that experience without compromising the witness of the Holy Spirit in my heart.  Meanwhile, my ministry began failing apart.  Before long, theological differences within the leadership degenerated to attacks on my personal integrity.  After many months of painful struggles, I was finally asked to relinquish my role as the senior pastor of the church.

In the midst of this agonizing process, the Lord gave me a clear word from Scripture: “A woman, when she is in labour, has sorrow because her hour has come; but as soon as she has given birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world” (John 16:21).

The lord told me He was bringing forth a “new baby” in my life that would launch me into a new ministry.  The painful struggles I was going through were the labour pains needed to bring forth this new birth.

The new baby is born

When the Lord said, “Son, today the new baby is born!” on August 17, 1986, Faith Community Baptist Church (FCBC) began.  It brought unspeakable joy to my spirit.  Since then, the promise of God has been true.  The glory of this ministry has far exceeded what I would ask or think.  Indeed, in the last 10 years of our church, there has been peace.

As I am writing this (1998), the baby has grown considerably.  The attendance in our weekly worship services has reached close to 8,000.  In the past 10 years, we have baptized more than 6,400 new believers.  During the same period, some 16,000 persons have made professions of faith for the first time.  Most significantly, in my mind, almost every person who worships with us is also part of a cell group ministry during the week.  In these small groups, we train every member to be a minister of the gospel, calling forth a higher-than-average level of commitment.

As I reflect upon the grace of the lord in Faith Community Baptist Church during the last 10 years, the Lord has impressed me with four major factors that have contributed to the phenomenal growth in this local congregation.   These four factors include

(1) a clear vision and strategy for growth;

(2) a cell  church structure;

(3) a reliance on the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit;  and

(4) one strong and anointed leader.

A clear vision and strategy for growth

During the first 12 months of FCBC, I had the leaders of the church join me in seeking the Lord for a clear vision and strategy for growth.  We were determined not to be another church that religiously maintained traditional programs.  With all our hearts, we sought the Lord for a blueprint that would enable us to take our city for God.  The Lord showed us that to do this, we must move in unity, we must share a common vision and we must agree on the appropriate strategies to fulfil the vision.  As early as 1987, we developed  a three-part vision that has guided our programs ever since.  This three-part  vision has seen refinements through the years.  Today, it stands as follows:

By God’s grace, we will,

(1) establish integrated ministries of  outreach, discipleship and service that encompass the whole of Singapore;

(2)  be a model cell group church that provides quality pastoral training and  equipping resources for transitioning cell group churches in Singapore and around the world; and

(3) establish 50 cell group churches around the world by sending out teams to reach hidden or responsive people groups.

To achieve this vision, we have adopted the following strategies:

1.  Develop an exciting and meaningful celebration every Sunday through music and the pulpit ministry;

2.  Minimize committee meetings by decentralization of operations to full-time staff;

3.  Commit to active staff recruitment to establish a multiple-staff ministry.,

4.  Establish a discipleship network for evangelism, prayer and Bible study;

5.  Provide lay leadership training for all leaders of the church;

6.  Develop and establish specialized ministries of outreach;

7.  Train, equip, send and fully support missionaries from the church to the mission field;    8.  Build a “Touch Centre” consisting of an auditorium seating some 3,000, including other ministry facilities for both the church and the community;

9.  Develop within every member a deep commitment to regular, disciplined and intense warfare prayer for spiritual revival in Singapore and around the world;

10.  Strengthen the family so as to provide a solid base for reaching the unsaved with the love of Christ.

From the beginning, we were filled with a sense of excitement that God was going to fulfill these visions among us.  In FCBC, every one of us is given a corporate challenge to fulfill the vision the Lord has given us.  We believe that “everybody’s job” becomes “nobody’s job.”  Members of FCBC believe that if no one else will do it, we will assume the responsibility of winning our nation to the Lord.  Before long, most of us would begin to realize that we could no longer possess this vision.  Rather, this vision has now totally possessed us with a consuming zeal from the Lord!

Completely structured as a cell group church

In the last five years, FCBC has organized an annual “International Conference on Cell Group Church.”  Thousands from around the world have come to learn the principles and operations of a cell group church.  Every year, I begin the conference by proclaiming a statement that has become a major landmark of my teaching about the cell church. My statement is:

There is a heaven and earth difference; an east and west difference between a CHURCH WITH CELLS and a CELL GROUP CHURCH.

Just about every church in the world has some kind of small groups.  Some of these groups are Bible study groups, fellowship groups, counselling/therapy groups, prayer groups and many others.  However, these are churches with cells and not cell churches.  The major difference between the former and the latter is a structural one.  Hence there is a fundamental, not a superficial, difference between them.

In a church with cells, the cell ministry is only a department within the total ministry of the church.  Members of the church have many options.  They can choose to serve in the missions department or the prayer department or the Christian education department or the fellowship department.  They can choose between the Sunday School or the adult fellowship.  The cell ministry is just another one of the options.

This is not so in a cell group church.  In a cell group church, the cell is the church.  No menu of options is open to every member except that they be in a cell group.  Every department of the church is designed to serve the cell ministry.  Departments do not have any constituency of their own.  All are designed to support the ministry of the cells.

In FCBC, every believer is assimilated into cell groups, similar to military squads.  Each cell is trained to edify one another and to evangelize so that it will multiply within a year to a maximum size of 12 to 15 people.  These cell groups are not independent “house churches,” but basic Christian communities linked together to penetrate every area of our community.

Approximately three to four cell groups cluster to form a sub-zone, and a volunteer zone supervisor pastors the five cells and its cell leaders.  Five sub-zones cluster to create a zone of about 250 people pastored by a full-time zone pastor.  Five or more zones cluster to form a district, and a seasoned district pastor shepherds as many as 1,500 people.

From the start, we created zones that were geographical (north, east, west) and generational (children, youth, military).  Later, we added our music zone for those participating in our choirs, bands, orchestras, drama and dance.  Even these music cells are constantly winning people to Jesus Christ.  Every year, more than 2,500 make first-time decisions for the Lord in the cells.

Foundations for ministry

In the early years, we worked hard to create the foundations for our ministry.  Pastors who had no previous experience with cell church structures were trained and cell leaders were equipped.  Nonexistent equipping materials had to be written.  Soon we had a nickname: “FCBC-Fast Changing Baptist Church”!  Every experimental step helped us learn how to equip and evangelize in the new paradigm.  We were determined to discard anything that did not help us achieve our goals, so we revised our strategy again and again as we gained experience.  Indeed, we are still doing so!

Like other cell churches, our life involves three levels: the cells, the congregations (a cluster of five zones) and the celebration on Sunday.  We quickly had to go to two and then three celebrations of 1,000 people to accommodate the growth in the cell groups.  We presently have one evening service on Saturday and four services on Sunday of two hours duration each.  A completely different congregation of people worships in the Saturday evening service.  We have studiously avoided advertising “seeker-sensitive services,” choosing instead to grow through the ministries of our members in the cells.

Our cells are seeker-sensitive, but our celebration is not.  For us, the celebration is an assembling of the Body of Christ rather than a means of attracting the unconverted.  Nevertheless, many profess faith in Jesus Christ as a result of the intense anointing that comes through worship, as well as my pulpit ministry that focuses on down-to-earth life issues.

The Year of Equipping

What we call “The Year of Equipping” has become an important part of our cell group life.  Each incoming member is visited by the cell leader, who assigns a cell member to be a sponsor for the new person.  A “Journey Guide” is used to acquaint the cell leader and sponsor with the spiritual condition of the person.  Guided by private weekly sessions with the sponsor, this person will complete a journey through the “Arrival Kit” and then be trained to share Christ with both responsive and unresponsive unbelievers.

Another major part of The Year of Equipping consists of three cycles of training for evangelism and harvest meeting in the cells throughout the year.  One such cycle begins in January, where new members of the cell are sent for a weekend of evangelism training.  This is followed by further practices during the cell meetings, leading up to the Good Friday weekend.

In these months, every member of the cell is asked to pray for unsaved people whom they would invite to a special Good Friday evangelistic cell meeting.  On that one Good Friday evening, we will have as many as 4,000 unsaved people in all our cell groups spread throughout the city.  More than 10 percent of them will give their lives to the Lord for the first time.  In that meeting, every member of the cell shares the gospel with unsaved friends.  We do this three times a year.  In this way, equipping for evangelism is an ongoing lifestyle of every cell.  It is my intention that every cell becomes a fit fighting unit in the army of the Lord!

Community service

Because of our strong desire to penetrate the society around us, we have formed the Touch Community Services.  This is the neutral arm of our church designed to relate to the community.  Through this separate corporation, we conduct childcare, legal aid services, after-school clubs, marriage counselling, a workshop to train the handicapped and many other social ministry areas.  This has earned the respect of unbelievers around us and has provided openings for the gospel we would not otherwise experience.  It has established good will for us among the many racial groups that live together in harmony in our nation.

Our community services have found so much favour with government authorities that much of our service ministry is actually funded by the government.  As of now, the juvenile courts make it mandatory for their offenders to seek counselling from our youth counselling services.  The registry of marriage has invited us to conduct premarital counselling for all who are getting married in Singapore!  This is our “root system” into the unconverted world.

Reliance on the supernatural works of the Holy Spirit

The structure of the cell church is nothing but a conduit for the power of the Holy Spirit.  Unless the living water flows, the cells are lifeless.  A major spiritual breakthrough came for us in those early years as we began to recognize the place of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in our midst.  As our cell groups were confronted by the need for spiritual power in caring for people, we saw a gracious outpouring of His presence in our midst.

I shall never forget a certain Sunday when the Lord visited us powerfully.  We were then conducting four worship services in a rented auditorium that seated about 800.  On that particular Sunday, I preached a message about repentance.  Many came forward to repent of their sins.  As I prayed for them from behind the pulpit, the Holy Spirit came into our midst.  Most of them fell under the power of the Spirit.  This was something we had never experienced in our church.  It surprised everyone in the auditorium, especially the people who found themselves lying on the church floor for the first time in their lives, completely unable to move.

The presence of the Lord was so overwhelming that by the beginning of the third service, members who were just walking into the auditorium for worship fell under the power of the Spirit, having no idea what had been happening in the preceding services!

This visitation of the Holy Spirit brought about a six-month period of deep repentance among the members of the church.  The anointing of the Spirit filled every cell meeting.  The sick were being healed.  The demonized were set free.  The church grew rapidly as our cell groups learned to minister in the power of the Spirit.

One strong and anointed leader

At the risk of misunderstanding me as being arrogant, I have always told audiences around the world that one of the main factors that has contributed to the growth of FCBC is the gracious gift of leadership the Lord has entrusted to me.  FCBC has grown rapidly because of my strong and anointed leadership.  In the early years of the church, the leadership team carefully studied a chapter written by Oswald J. Smith in his book Building a   Better World.  He began his chapter with these words:   “Behold, I have given him for a witness to the people, a leader and commander to the people” (Isa. 55:4).

God’s plan is that His flock should be led by a Shepherd, not run by a Board.  Committees are to advise, never to dictate.  The Holy Spirit appoints men.  To Bishops and Elders is given the care of the churches, never to Committees.  They are to be the Overseers, the Shepherds.  Each one has his own flock.  Because men have failed to recognize this, there has been trouble.  When God’s plan is followed, all is well.

The cell group church is vision driven.  It needs a strong leader to rally the people toward a God-given vision.  It is also structured like the military.  It calls for a strong commander to instil a sense of strict spiritual discipline needed to complete the task.  At the inception of the church, my core leaders asked,   “Pastor, what sort of leader will you be?”

My answer was unequivocal, “I believe I will be a strong leader, one who believes what the Lord wants me to do and who pursues it with all my heart.”

Traditionally, the church has been suspicious of strong leadership, especially when it is centred in one person.  As a result, many man-made systems of checks and counterchecks have been built into traditional church polity to ensure that there can be no one-man rule.  Although I agree that there is a need for mutual accountability, these checks have more often become major roadblocks for God’s appointed leaders to lead His people into victorious ministry.  Many lay leaders have expressed great fear of so-called   “dictatorship” behind the pulpit.  After 20 years of ministry, however, I must say that I have seen more “dictators” sitting in the pews than those standing behind pulpits.

What is leadership?

One day I was praying about this issue of leadership and the Lord impressed upon me to write down these words about leadership:

Leadership is not dictatorship

Leadership is rallying people to pursue a vision.  A leader successfully instils in those he is leading a deep desire to fulfil that vision.  He gains the trust of his people by virtue of his character, his integrity, his resourcefulness, his zeal, his good judgment, his people skills and, most importantly, his anointing from God.  As a result, the people grant him the freedom to decide and the authority to supervise and control.   Such leadership can never be provided by a committee or a board.  If, indeed, such leadership is provided by a group, it is because within that group someone can provide such strong leadership first to the group and through that to the rest of the people.

We often talk about New Testament leadership as if it is completely different from Old Testament leadership.  I believe that biblical leadership is consistent throughout the New and Old Testaments.  Whenever God wants to do a work, He chooses a man.  We have leaders such as Moses, Gideon, David, Elijah and others in the Old Testament.  In the New Testament, we have leaders such as Peter for the Jews and Paul for the Gentiles.   In FCBC, I assert my clear leadership in three areas:

Casting the Vision

I lead the people by casting a clear and concrete vision for the church.  In the early years, I spent countless hours sharing, discussing, praying and formulating the vision and strategies of the church.  I realize that a vision is only powerful when it is fully owned by the people.  Our vision and strategies were clearly set by the third year.  Since that time, I have constantly shared and reinforced this for my leaders and members.  I speak to every new member of the church about this vision in our new member orientation called “Spiritual Formation Weekend.”  I challenge every member to consider seriously our vision before joining our church.  If someone is not able to subscribe to the vision, I strongly recommend that the person join another church.

Once the vision and strategies have been forged, I expect every leader in the church to support them.  This is especially so for pastoral staff.  They are selected on the basis that as lay cell leaders and group supervisors they have demonstrated their commitment to the vision of the church.  Today, the church has a paid staff of almost 200.  In the last 10 years, we have had a staff turnover of fewer than 10 persons.  There is a tremendous sense of unity on the team.  The reason for this is that I have clearly provided leadership in casting for the people a clear vision and articulating specific strategies from the Lord.

Creating an environment for Growth

As leader, I am concerned about creating an environment conducive to growth.  We have written a clear mission statement and we have agreed upon specific core values that define the uniqueness of FCBC, both in terms of belief and of practice.  I will reproduce the mission statement here:  We seek to fulfil God’s role for us in bringing the gospel to the world by developing every believer to his full potential in Jesus Christ within a vision & value driven environment and a God-centred community.

Preaching and Teaching from the Pulpit

The main vehicle by which the growth environment is established comes through dynamic teaching and preaching during the celebration.  Some think that the cell church consists of only cells.  This is not true.  Although the cell is the church, the church is more than just cells.  The cells come together in the celebration meeting, absorbing the apostolic teaching that shapes the direction, commitment and spiritual atmosphere for the whole Body.  The church in Acts 2 met in homes, but they came together to listen to the   apostles’ teaching.  I spend some 20 hours every week preparing my sermon.  The sermon each week is more than teaching the Bible.  Every sermon conveys a passion for God and communicates His purposes for His people.

There is no doubt that the growth of FCBC is the result of God’s special grace in and through my life.  As long as I walk humbly before the Lord in intimacy, the Lord will lead us from glory to glory.  I realize that as I promote and support strong apostolic leadership, there is always the danger of abuse.  It is altogether possible for apostles to abuse the authority God has given us as His apostolic leaders.  Nevertheless, this apparently is a risk God is willing to take with us because, in His grace, He has chosen to do just that.  God is more than able to bring down His erring servants just as quickly as He raises them up.  Meanwhile, I believe in affirming God’s appointed leadership over   His people.

Affirmation with humility

I believe that God’s leaders need affirmation and encouragement as they agree to take positions of leadership.  Yet they must have the humility to serve.  Strong leaders have often been misunderstood to be dictatorial and proud.  For my part, though, I would rather affirm them, pray for them and release them to become a blessing to the Body of Christ.

When FCBC started, my heart was completely shattered by the rejection of the leaders of my former church.  The issues that finally brought about the split of the church turned personal.  I was attacked for being controlling, dictatorial and even dangerously influential.  At the inception of FCBC, I had lost my confidence to lead.  Thus I became laid back, relinquishing the leadership to my core leaders who, together with me, started the church.

In the beginning of 1987, a few months after the church had started, we invited Pastor Bill Yaegar from the First Baptist Church of Modesto, California, to speak to us about leadership.  Pastor Yaegar was in his 60s and since then has retired.   In his visit with us, Bill Yaegar noticed how discouraged I was.  I could never forget his parting words to me at the Singapore airport.  He said, “Son, I was praying for you this morning.  The Lord told me He was giving you a new name.  Your name shall be called ‘Ari.’  This is a Jewish name that means ‘lion.’  Lawrence, the Lord tells you that you are the ‘Lion of Singapore.’  You are to stand up and roar.  And whenever others forget that you are the ‘Lion of Singapore,’ stand up and roar again!”

No one had ever previously affirmed me that way.  It was an extremely important moment in my ministry career.  I realized in that instant that through all my years of Christian ministry, people were constantly warning me to go slower, to be more cautious and to be more “humble.”  This was the first time a seasoned servant of God had actually encouraged me to take charge, to lead and to press on.  Something burst forth within the depths of my spirit.  I have been roaring ever since for the glory of God and the advance of His kingdom!

© From Chapter 13, “A Vision and Strategy for Church Growth”, in The Transforming Power of Revival edited by Harold Caballeros and Mel Winger (Peniel, Buenos Aires, 1998), excerpted from The New Apostolic Churches edited by C.   Peter Wagner (Regal 8ooks, Ventura, 1998), used by permission.

© Renewal Journal #15: Wineskins, renewaljournal.com
Reproduction is allowed with the copyright included in the text.

Renewal Journals – contents of all issues

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

Amazon –  Renewal Journal 15: Wineskins
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

CONTENTS:  Renewal Journal 15: Wineskins

The God Chasers, by Tommy Tenny

The New Apostolic Reformation, by C. Peter Wagner

The New Believers, by Diana Bagnall (The Bulletin)

Vision and Strategy for Church Growth, by Lawrence Khong

New Wineskins for Pentecostal Studies, by Sam Hey

New Wineskins to Develop Ministry, by Geoff Waugh

Book and DVD Reviews:
Pentecostalism, by Walter Hollenweger
The Transforming Power of Revival, by Harold Caballeros and Mell Winger
Transformations 1 and 2 DVDs (The Sentinel Group)

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)

BACK TO MAIN PAGE

FREE SUBSCRIPTION: for new Blogs & free offers

 

 

 

 

The God Chasers, by Tommy Tenny

The God Chasers

by Tommy Tenny

 

Evangelist Tommy Tenny describes people and churches who seek the Lord zealously in his book The God Chasers.  This article from his first chapter tells how he witnessed the visitation of God in the 3,000 member Christian Tabernacle Church in Houston, Texas, led by Richard Heard.

 

Renewal Journal 15: Wineskins PDF

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Copy and share this link on your media, eg Facebook, Instagram, Emails:
The God Chasers, by Tommy Tenny:
https://renewaljournal.com/2012/04/12/the-god-chasers-bytommy-tenny/
An article in Renewal Journal 15: Wineskins:
https://renewaljournal.com/2012/04/12/wineskins/

See also: God’s Awesome Presence, by Dr R Heard

 

This body of believers in Houston had two scheduled services on Sundays.  The first morning service started at 8:30, and the second one followed and began at 11.

When I returned for the third weekend, while in the hotel, I sensed a heavy anointing of some kind, a brooding of the Spirit, and I literally wept and trembled.

You could barely breathe

The following morning, we walked into the building for the 8:30 Sunday service expecting to see the usual early morning first service “sleepy” crowd with their low-key worship.  As I walked in to sit down in the front row that morning, the presence of God was already in that place so heavily that the air was “thick.”  You could barely breathe.

The musicians were clearly struggling to continue their ministry; their tears got in the way.  Music became more difficult to play.  Finally, the presence of God hovered so strongly that they couldn’t sing or play any longer.  The worship leader crumpled in sobs behind the keyboard.

If there was one good decision I made in life, it was made that day.  I had never been this close to “catching” God, and I was not going to stop.  So I spoke to my wife, Jeannie. “You should go continue to lead us to Him.”  Jeannie has an anointing to lead people into the presence of God as a worshiper and intercessor.  She quietly moved to the front and continued to facilitate the worship and ministry to the Lord.  It wasn’t anything fancy; it was just simple. That was the only appropriate response in that moment.

The atmosphere reminded me of the passage in Isaiah 6, something I’d read about, and even dared dream I might experience myself.  In this passage the glory of the Lord filled the temple.  I’d never understood what it meant for the glory of the Lord to fill a place.  I had sensed God come in places, I had sensed Him come by, but this time in Houston, even after there was all of God that I thought was available in the building, more of His presence literally packed itself into the room.  It’s like the bridal train of a bride that, after she has personally entered the building, her bridal train continues to enter the building after her.  God was there; of that there was no doubt.  But more of Him kept coming in the place until, as in Isaiah, it literally filled the building.  At times the air was so rarefied that it became almost unbreathable.  Oxygen came in short gasps, seemingly.  Muffled sobs broke through the room.  In the midst of this, the pastor turned to me and asked me a question.

“Tommy, are you ready to take the service?”

“Pastor, I’m just about half-afraid to step up there, because I sense that God is about to do something.”

Tears were streaming down my face when I said that.  I wasn’t afraid that God was going to strike me down, or that something bad was going to happen.  I just didn’t want to interfere and grieve the precious presence that was filling up that room!  For too long we humans have only allowed the Holy Spirit to take control up to a certain point.  Basically, whenever it gets outside of our comfort zone or just a little beyond our control, we pull in the reins (the Bible calls it “quenching the Spirit” in First Thessalonians 5:19).  We stop at the tabernacle veil too many times.

“I feel like I should read Second Chronicles 7:14, and I have a word from the Lord,” my pastor friend said.

With profuse tears I nodded assent and said, “Go, go.”

My friend is not a man given to any kind of outward demonstration; he is essentially a man of “even” emotions.  But when he got up to walk to the platform, he appeared visibly shaky.  At this point I so sensed something was about to happen, that I walked all the way from the front row to the back of the room to stand by the sound booth.  I knew God was going to do something; I just didn’t know where.  I was on the front row, and it could happen behind me or to the side of me.  I was so desperate to catch Him that I got up and publicly walked back to the sound booth as the pastor walked up to the pulpit to speak, so I could see whatever happened.  I wasn’t even sure that it was going to happen on the platform, but I knew something was going to happen. “God, I want to be able to see whatever it is You are about to do.”

My pastor friend stepped up to the clear pulpit in the centre of the platform, opened the Bible, and quietly read the gripping passage from Second Chronicles 7:14:  If My people, which are called by My name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.    

Then he closed his Bible, gripped the edges of the pulpit with trembling hands, and said, “The word of the Lord to us is to stop seeking His benefits and seek Him.  We are not to seek His hands any longer, but seek His face.”

In that instant, I heard what sounded like a thunderclap echo through the building, and the pastor was literally picked up and thrown backward about ten feet, effectively separating him from the pulpit. When he went backward, the pulpit fell forward.  The beautiful flower arrangement positioned in front of it fell to the ground, but by the time the pulpit hit the ground, it was already in two pieces.  It had split into two pieces almost as if lightning had hit it!  At that instant the tangible terror of the presence of God filled that room.

People began to weep and wail

I quickly stepped to the microphone from the back of the room and said, “In case you aren’t aware of it, God has just moved into this place.  The pastor is fine.  [It was two and a half hours before he could even get up, though – and even then the ushers had to carry him.  Only his hand trembled slightly to give proof of life.]  He’s going to be fine.”

While all of this happened, the ushers quickly ran to the front to check on the pastor and to pick up the two pieces of the split pulpit.  No one really paid much attention to the split pulpit; we were too occupied with the torn heavenlies.  The presence of God had hit that place like some kind of bomb.  People began to weep and to wail.  I said, “If you’re not where you need to be, this is a good time to get right with God.”  I’ve never seen such an altar call.  It was pure pandemonium.  People shoved one another out of the way.  They wouldn’t wait for the aisles to clear; they climbed over pews, businessmen tore their ties off, and they were literally stacked on top of one another, in the most horribly harmonious sound of repentance you ever heard.  Just the thought of it still sends chills down my back.  When I gave the altar call then for the 8.30 a.m. service, I had no idea that it would be but the first of seven altar calls that day.

When it was time for the 11 a.m. service to begin, nobody had left the building.  The people were still on their faces and, even though there was hardly any music being played at this point, worship was rampant and uninhibited.  Grown men were ballet dancing; little children were weeping in repentance.  People were on their faces, on their feet, on their knees, but mostly in His presence.  There was so much of the presence and the power of God there that people began to feel an urgent need to be baptized.  I watched people walk through the doors of repentance, and one after another experienced the glory and the presence of God as He came near.  Then they wanted baptism, and I was in a quandary about what to do.  The pastor was still unavailable on the floor.  Prominent people walked up to me and stated, “I’ve got to be baptized.  Somebody tell me what to do.”  They joined with the parade of the unsaved, who were now saved, provoked purely by encountering the presence of God.  There was no sermon and no real song – just His Spirit that day.

Two and a half hours had passed, and since the pastor had only managed to wiggle one finger at that point to call the elders to him, the ushers had carried him to his office. Meanwhile, all these people were asking me (or anyone else they could find) if they could be baptised.  As a visiting minister at the church, I didn’t want to assume the authority to tell anyone to baptize these folks, so I sent people back to the pastor’s office to see if he would authorize the water baptisms.

I gave one altar call after another, and hundreds of people were coming forward.  As more and more people came to me asking about water baptism, I noticed that no one I had sent to the pastor’s office had returned.  Finally I sent a senior assistant pastor back there and told him, “Please find out what Pastor wants to do about the water baptisms -nobody has come back to tell me yet.”  The man stuck his head in the pastor’s office, and to his shock he saw the pastor still lying before the Lord, and everyone I had sent there was sprawled on the floor too, just weeping and repenting before God.  He hurried back to tell me what he had seen and added, “I’ll go ask him, but if I go in that office I may not be back either.”

We baptized people for hours

I shrugged my shoulders and agreed with the associate pastor, “I guess it’s all right to baptize them.”  So we began to baptize people as a physical sign of their repentance before the Lord, and we ended up baptizing people for hours.  More and more people kept pouring in, and since the people from the early service were still there, there were cars parked everywhere outside the church building.  A big open-air ball field next to the building was filled with cars parked every which way.

As people drove onto the parking lot, they sensed the presence of God so strongly that some began to weep uncontrollably.  They just found themselves driving up onto the parking lot or into the grass not knowing what was going on.  Some started to get out of their cars and barely managed to stagger across the parking lot.  Some came inside the building only to fall to the floor just inside the doors.  The hard-pressed ushers had to literally pull the helpless people away from the doors and stack them up along the walls of the hallways to clear the entrance.  Others managed to make it part way down the hallways, and some made it to the foyer before they fell on their faces in repentance.

Some actually made it inside the auditorium, but most of them didn’t bother to find seats.  They just made for the altar.  No matter what they did or how far they made it, it wasn’t long before they began to weep and repent.  As I said, there wasn’t any preaching.  There wasn’t even any music part of the time.  Primarily one thing happened that day: The presence of God showed up.  When that happens, the first thing you do is the same thing Isaiah did when he saw the Lord high and lifted up.  He cried out from the depths of his soul:

Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts (Isaiah 6:5).

You see, the instant Isaiah the prophet, the chosen servant of God, saw the King of glory, what he used to think was clean and holy now looked like filthy rags.  He was thinking, I thought I knew God, but I didn’t know this much of God!  That Sunday we seemed to come so close; we almost caught Him.  Now I know it’s possible.

They came right back for more

People just kept filling the auditorium again and again, beginning with that strange service that started at 8.30 that morning.  I finally went to eat at around 4:00 that afternoon, and then came right back to the church building.  Many never left.  The continuous “Sunday morning service” lasted until 1 a.m. Monday morning.  We didn’t have to announce our plans for Monday evening.  Everybody already knew.  Frankly, there would have been a meeting whether we announced it or not.  The people simply went home to get some sleep or do the things they had to do, and they came right back for more – not for more of men and their programs, but for God and His presence.

Night after night, the pastor and I would come in and say,  “What are we going to do?”

Most of the time our answer to one another was just as predictable: “What do you want to do?”

What we meant was, “I don’t know what to do.  What does He want to do?”

Sometimes we’d go in and start trying to “have church,” but the crying hunger of the people would quickly draw in the presence of God and suddenly God had us!  Listen, my friend, God doesn’t care about your music, your midget steeples, and your flesh-impressive buildings.  Your church carpet doesn’t impress Him – He carpets the fields.  God doesn’t really care about anything you can “do” for Him; He only cares about your answer to one question: “Do you want Me?

Ruin everything that isn’t of You, Lord!

We have programmed our church services so tightly that we really don’t leave room for the Holy Spirit.  Oh, we might let God speak prophetically to us a little, but we get nervous if He tries to break out of our schedules.  We can’t let God out of the box too much because He can ruin everything.  (That has become my prayer: “Break out of our boxes, Lord, and ruin everything that isn’t of You!”)

Let me ask you a question: How long has it been since you came to church and said, “We are going to wait on the Lord”?  I think we are afraid to wait on Him because we’re afraid He won’t show up.  I have a promise for you: “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength” (Isa. 40:31).  Do you want to know why we’ve lived in weakness as Christians and have not had all that God wanted for us?  Do you want to know why we have lived beneath our privilege and have not had the strength to overcome our own carnality?  Maybe it’s because we haven’t waited on Him to show up to empower us, and we’re trying to do too much in the power of our own soulish realm.

God ruined everything in Houston

I am not trying to make you feel bad.  I know most Christians and most of our leaders genuinely mean well, but there is so much more.  You can “catch” God – ask Jacob – and it might ruin the way you’ve always walked!  But you can catch Him.  We’ve talked, preached, and taught about revival until the Church is sick of hearing about it.  That’s what I did for a living: I preached revivals – or so I thought.  Then God broke out of His box and ruined everything when He showed up.  Seven nights a week, for the next four or five weeks straight, hundreds of people a night would stand in line to repent and receive Christ, worship, wait, and pray.  What had happened in history, past and present, was happening again.  Then it dawned on me, “God, You’re wanting to do this everywhere.”  For months His manifest presence hovered.

© Tommy Tenny, 1998, The God Chasers, pages 5-12, reproduced with permission from the publishers, Destiny Image.

©  Renewal Journal #15: Wineskins (2000:1)  www.renewaljournal.com

Richard Heard’s account of that visitation is reproduced in the Renewal Journal, # 10: Evangelism.  He tells of continual evangelism and the whole carpet of the church being tear-stained from people repenting for over a year.
See also: God’s Awesome Presence, by Dr R Heard

© Renewal Journal #15: Wineskins, renewaljournal.com
Reproduction is allowed with the copyright included in the text.

Renewal Journals – contents of all issues

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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

CONTENTS:  Renewal Journal 15: Wineskins

Editorial: New Wineskins for the 21st Century

The God Chasers, by Tommy Tenny

The New Apostolic Reformation, by C. Peter Wagner

The New Believers, by Diana Bagnall (The Bulletin)

Vision and Strategy for Church Growth, by Lawrence Khong

New Wineskins for Pentecostal Studies, by Sam Hey

New Wineskins to Develop Ministry, by Geoff Waugh

Book and DVD Reviews:
Pentecostalism, by Walter Hollenweger
The Transforming Power of Revival, by Harold Caballeros and Mell Winger
Transformations 1 and 2 DVDs (The Sentinel Group)

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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Anointing

Renewal Journal 14: Anointing

Renewal Journal 14: Anointing – PDF

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Renewal Journals Index – 20 issues

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

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

Renewal Journal 14: Anointing – PDF

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

Reproduction is allowed with the copyright included in the text.

Renewal Journals – contents of all issues

Back to Renewal Journals

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

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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