I
f you attend Church today, it may be on fire and God is moving. If we took a look at most of the Churches though we would see Church after Church barren. Churches with no fruit. This is about to change in many places because God is about to bring the hungry together.
When we talk about putting down roots or laying foundations, we often think of staying put in one place. Our God is not a camper.
The tent of meeting in the Old Testament was a simple structure designed to be easily erected and dismantled as His people followed the cloud of His presence.
The more formal structure of the temple was designed to enable people to come to grips with the same phenomena. The presence of God was enshrined in mystery within the Holy of Holies. People waited anxiously for the reemergence of the High Priest on the Day of Atonement.
The smell and spectacle of the sacrifices added to the drama of coming into the very presence of God. People were brought to that place of awe-inspiring worship as they became involved with the ongoing pageantry of the manifest presence of God in their midst.
The supernatural was commonplace. Men and women both spoke with sharpness and clarity in their representation of God.
Words were backed up with power and anointing that saved lives and brought deliverance from occult powers, famines, disasters, and human oppression.
This essence of pure relationship and raw power between God and His people has been the dominating theme of the Scriptures.
Only the form and style have changed throughout the generations—from a handmade stone altar roughly put together with materials on hand by individual men such as Abraham, Jacob, and the prophets, to the designer places of worship expressed in the tabernacle and temple.
At times these places of worship were inspired by a revelation of God’s grace, mercy, and calling, such as when Jacob-in-transition to-Israel finally came to understand the desire that God had for relationship with him.
In other times and places, altars were built upon the sites of intense spiritual warfare and upon battlefields as sacrifices were offered to God on the burning embers of false gods and idol worship.
Mount Carmel and Gideon’s hometown became places of cleansing and purification as the enemy was driven out and the name of the Lord revealed.
Continuity from the Old Covenant to the New was established in the person of Jesus, who became the temple of God wandering amongst a guilty and sin-ridden people.
“Destroy this temple and God will raise it up in three days,” He said, referring to Himself (see Jn. 2:19). Something had happened in the hearts of the people between times.
A creeping institutionalism had given way to form without power, to style without substance, and to a performance mentality that elevated men, not God, in the presence of the people.
People did things to be seen of others; rules of behavior governed the lives of many. Leaders had become blind guides, searching the Scriptures without prophetic insight. Those who most desired the coming of the Messiah missed Him because their interpretation of Scripture was not mingled with worship, the manifest presence of God, and prophetic wisdom.
God walked among them, but they had not been trained to recognize His presence. All their teaching and distilled wisdom down through the years had left them without the faculty for discerning the glory of God.
Even when they saw signs and wonders and Jesus graciously asked them to believe in those signs as part of their journey to a wider, deeper revelation of God’s presence, they could not bring themselves to part from their institutional mindsets.
So the early Church grew up next to a hidebound institution that continued thinking that it alone held the glorious tradition of the truth of God. The old persecuted the new, which in turn eventually came against the newer works, which in time grew to be the oppressors of new moves of God till the present day.
The chronicles of the Church are littered with stories of new moves of God erupting in the earth through orthodox persecution and then settling back into conventional, narrow-minded religiosity.
Only the presence of God can prevent institutional Christianity from reducing truth to a set of rules and worship or to a meaningless time of singing without awe. Only God’s presence can enable believers to confront the enemy and the evils of mankind with a powerful expression of truth combined with supernatural power.
Only God’s presence is the glue that holds us all together through tensions, conflicts, and the violence of being on the front line of the battle against a depraved and intimidating foe.
We have lost the glory, the majesty, and the mystery of all that God is within Himself. The temple gave way to the synagogue and the mystery began to fade. Word stopped leading us to worship, and in time the dynamic revelation of God became a rote to live by as we waited for God to come in final deliverance.
Today’s worship precedes the Word and in many places has become the platform for the teaching and the ministry of people. Our churches have lost the art of ministering to the Lord in worship and discerning the voice of the Lord in our midst (see Acts 13:1-2).
People went to the temple to participate in the mystery and the majesty of God. They went for three main reasons: to worship, to make an offering, and to pray. In the synagogue they went to hear the word of God (i.e., for teaching), to get their needs met, and to have fellowship. In the temple, the instruction and communication of God’s word always led them into an experience with God.
In the synagogue, it often led them into debate and discussion about God. Meetings became man-centered instead of revolving around the presence of God. Even today in many of the newer churches, if the meeting has a lot of content and activity, it is often
the worship that gets squeezed. People go to church for good teaching or fellowship.
Our society has created intense loneliness, and people are hungry for companionship. Accordingly, it is easy to justify making our meetings into a designer-style atmosphere to attract people.
I am not against this in principle. I think all our meetings should be aimed specifically at God’s desire to do particular things and achieve specific objectives. I am against stereotypes that do not bring us into the creative presence of God.
We must regain the capacity to live in the manifest presence of God. The teaching of the Word must lead people into an encounter of God Himself, not just into an experience of the church.
God has always set people within the framework of tabernacle, temple, and church who would act as catalysts to cause breakthrough into the manifest presence of the Lord. When people look at us, they should see Jesus. They should observe His love in the way that we live together.
The entrance of God’s Word should produce hope, faith, life, and health to every part of our being. The presence of God is life to us. When we lose His presence or, even worse, if we have never grown up with the reality of His glory, it is inevitable that we would use the Word to relegate the supernatural to a future time of glory in Heaven rather than glory now.
God sits outside of time. He has never not been full of glory. He is altogether glorious. Everything He touches carries the fragrance and the passion of His manifest presence. He is wonderful, awe-inspiring, and magnificent. Our meetings must reflect the glory of His unchanging nature.
I love to meditate on the nature and character of the Lord. For me, He has come to be the kindest person I have ever known. He is kindhearted, gracious, loving, good-natured, and benevolent. He is generous, cordial, approachable, and thoughtful.
He is slow to anger and swift to bless. He sees the good, acknowledging the treasure and the worth in people. He inspires confidence, renews our self-worth, and puts a smile on our hearts. He is captivating, beautiful, and completely lovely.
He is strong, powerful, a force to be reckoned with, a conqueror and overcomer. He is a paradox—a fierce and mighty warrior dressed as a lamb; the king of glory and a bruised reed; a son, a servant, a prophet, a priest, and a king.
The fear of Him is the beginning of wisdom, yet His laughter makes us wriggle with pleasure. He continually brings us to points of vulnerability and weakness so that His sheer joy in Himself can be our source of strength.
Our meetings very often do not reflect His nature, but ours. They focus on our needs instead of celebrating who He is in our midst. How many of our people take time out during the day to spend just a few minutes in silent worship and awe of God?
Whatever God is, He is—infinitely. It is impossible for God not to be everlasting, endless, and eternal. He is the greatest endless and eternal expression of goodness, kindness, and grace. He is everlastingly kind and merciful, eternally loving. He loves infinitely and without boundaries. There is no end to the kindness of God.
He is also totally perfect. He never does anything partway. He completes everything He starts. “He who has begun a good work in you will complete it [literally, perfect it] until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6). He does everything perfectly. He is infinitely good and perfectly good. He has perfect love and grace. His love is complete, wholesome, and endlessly perfect! He is always loving because He is infinite and perfect.
He is immutable. He never changes. What God was, God is and God will be. There is no shadow of turning within Him. He is unchanging. What a relief! We all have experienced the fluctuating fortunes of human relationships and been both blessed and burned. I love the ongoing continuity of God’s affection for me.
He put me in the one place where I could relate to Him in all of my changeableness. He put me into Christ so that His unchanging, infinite, and perfect love could become a constant to me as I grew up in Him.
He is never indifferent. His silence is just His silence. Never mistake His silence for detachment. He is never aloof and unresponsive. His silence is often a means to draw us into meditation, which becomes the prelude to worship and the entrance of revelation that then brings change to us.
What changes us the most is the unchangeableness of God! Whenever I reflect on the unchangeable nature of God, I want to cry. His constancy and dependability always make me resolve to be like Him.
He brings peace to me by His constancy. I feel my heart settling down into Him in the turbulence of situations and events. In crises and conflicts I find myself wanting harmony and love rather than just resolution.
To agree to disagree and remain loving friends is a sure sign that God is among us and that we are in love with Him.
God is endlessly enthusiastic about people. He has a boundless, unremitting energy.
He never stops working, yet He exudes rest and peace. He rests in and through His work. I am never quite sure where my rest in Him gives way to His rest in me. (Oh, I love Him.) On the seventh day He rested from creating, but He never ceased from maintaining what He had made.
It is typical of God that man’s first day of creation and life should coincide with God’s rest. Our first day began with rest, and a prime part of our relationship with God is to enter His rest. One of my personal goals is to be one of the most restful, peaceful people on the planet.
Since I have discovered rest as a major part of my relationship with the Lord, my output has increased significantly. Rest maintains worship, adoration, and focus. It promotes a God-consciousness by the Holy Spirit that increases productivity without detracting from fellowship.
The more we rest, the more we get done. Time spent resting brings us into a place where God can do in seconds what we could not do in hours under the anointing.
The more we rest, the greater the power to break through. The greater the rest, the more God prepares things around us by His hand. His wisdom increases as we sit and relax in His presence.
To rest in the finished work of Calvary is a wonderful privilege. Lack of the presence of God is a major cause of barrenness.
A New Church
A New Church
Not Church as Usual
Derek Jacobs
A New Church
Copyright © 2014 by Derek Jacobs. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any way by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the author except as provided by USA copyright law.
Published By
Revival Waves of Glory Books & Publishing
PO Box 596
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REL012120 |
RELIGION Christian Life Spiritual Growth |
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REL108010 |
RELIGION Christian Church Growth |
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RELIGION Christian Life Personal Growth |
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I
’m not sure where the Church got off track but overall it sure has. Jesus never intended for Christianity to become a religious sect. He did however want His followers to follow His footsteps in how He lived life, as designed by God, on this earth. Watching what His Father does and hearing what His Father says is what He does. That's how He's obedient to His Father's will. It's not a matter of rules or of even choosing between right and wrong but of just being obedient to His Father. In like manner, the same Father calls us. He wants us, as His children, to each become an obey-er, just like Jesus.
Being church is living Christianity 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And every child of God can do just that because the Holy Spirit is not just here to stay in a believer's life on Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings but every minute of the day, even if one is just sitting down or lying in bed. We are the temple of God, and wherever we go, we stay the same-the church of Jesus Christ.
Being church is neither going to church nor doing church activities. It is not a full-time or part-time Christian, and most of all; it is not a Sunday-going believer. It is not defining worship as attending worship services in church buildings. Also, it is not having a specialized ministry (a person who specializes in specific ministry in the church or someone who is a part of an elite group that does a specific task in the church or outside the church but is overseen by someone higher in authority like a pastor).
Wherever I go, I meet tens if not hundreds of Christians who don't care about going to church anymore. It's not that they have lost their faith, but rather that they have kept it until now. And they're afraid of losing it if they were to join a church! Most of these folks are not just pew sitters but have ministries in their local churches. Amazingly, I've also learned some have backslidden not because they were made to stumble by someone outside church, but by someone inside it!
Millions of Christians around the world are aware of this kind of Christian Modernization. They are not ignorant anymore of the two-faced mask of hypocrisy and its effect on divisions in the body.
Are these people looking for a different kind of Christianity? Are they tired of being religious? Could it be attending church -- Sunday after Sunday, week after week, month after month, and year after year, both now and forever, amen –- doesn't make you a good Christian? Otherwise, you might end up as just another brand of Christianity on the sidewalk.
"There's a lot of interest in early Christian diversity because people who have left church, and some who are still in it, are looking for another way of being a Christian." - Marcus Borg
If you really want to check on Jesus life and ministry in the gospels you will find out Jesus never did the same thing twice in the same way. In other words, He wasn't into techniques but was unpredictable. In our human strength (or perhaps more accurately weaknesses), we try to systematize everything Jesus did. For example, Peter who, after seeing heavenly glory, wanted to build Tabernacles in the mountain where Jesus was transfigured. And not only one, but three!
There's also the time when Jesus spat on the ground and made clay and put it on a blind man's eyes and commanded him to wash it in the pool. May I ask those who have a Healing of the Blind Ministry, did Jesus use a clockwise or a counterclockwise motion? Or maybe I will specialize with a Spitting Ministry. Do you want me to spit on you?
Jesus' life was never structured; He simply obeyed His Father. Singing for 30 minutes may not be worship at all. Worship is obedience to what He called us to be. That is the highest form of worship. It is the expression of our redeemed lives, our way of life. We cannot just put our Lord or His ways into a system.
Churches today are like spiritual machines. Programs are their survival kits. People love to pour their money into the machine to keep it running. But in reality, church life is like a wind: you don't know where it goes. It is a journey, a daily journey. It cannot be sewn up in the intellect; it must be uncovered during the journey.
Have you wondered why we are to be led by and walk in the Spirit? Because a disciple is a follower, a follower of Jesus' footsteps, we are on a journey. No wonder the measurement of our maturity is to be like Christ and the end of it is when we see Him face to face (1 John 3:2). So it's not joining Discipleship Class 101 or working our way through a curriculum but it is a lifelong day-to-day commitment. A "take up your cross daily and follow Me" subject. The fruit of the Spirit are not there as proof of maturity but is part of the progress of your journey toward Christ. It is not the sign of your qualification as a mature person but a quality of the life you live before everybody. It is not the end of your journey; it is your endless journey until you meet met Him.
We are not only not religious, but we're not legalists either. We are not guided by rules, but we are guarded by our freedom in Christ. Paul rightly claimed, "Everything is permissible to me but not everything is beneficial." What a freedom we have in Christ!
Jesus was the most spiritual person on earth and He was also the most natural person on earth. Our religious assumption is that we're trying to separate our natural life from our spiritual life. When we have devotions, we think we are more holy and closer to God. We feel spiritual. But how about afterwards? When we "minister" we feel spiritual. But when we're done ministering what are we?
The only valid answer is: You are religious, not spiritual -- making Sunday a holy day just because you've gone to church, then considering Monday through Saturday unholy because you go to work. You are separating the sacred from the secular. You are not righteous, you are religious! And the danger of being religious is that it prevents you from obtaining the real thing.
The best word we have for this is "hypocrite." One man entered a church on Sunday morning and wondered why the people there ignored and avoided him. "Ah, I see," he realized. "They don't like smoking.Church people don't like smoking." So he threw away his cigarette butts. People started to welcome him, believing he was touched by God's presence in church. After church he went home, opened the cabinet and lit a piece of cigar. Next Sunday members thought he stopped smoking because of a touch from God's presence. No. It was their legalism and their religiosity. What did this man learn? He learned to play the game of hypocrisy. Where? In the church. And often pastors are the biggest hypocrites there.
God in heaven transferred His residence from a temple building to a temple body, which is Christ's church on earth. Even from the beginning, God's original intention was to stay in a Tent, which is mobile, not in a Tabernacle, which is stable. But even then God granted David's desire, but not for long. "God became flesh and dwelt [tabernacled in Greek] among us." He wants to have a movement of people, not a monument of bricks. He wants called out ones, a community, and a nation of priests. And only God can move people into such a movement of ekklesia.
Movement of ekklesia. Who can make a difference? God's only purpose for giving His people the Laws, priests, sacrifices, the Temple and circumcision was for them to be different from all peoples of the earth. But a short time later they intermarried with other nations. The pagans' gods became their gods. They became friends with the world and developed enmity toward God. Is there any difference? Instead of these nations following them, God's people became their followers. The important thing is not that we do church differently. What counts is how we live life differently.
“The Lord simply said, "I will change the understanding and expression of Christianity in one generation.” - Mike Bickle
G
od released a prophetic Word that stated, “I the Lord am going to release Revivals in homes. The reason I am touching homes is because the Church has set a structure blockage of religion. Since the birth of Jesus’ primitive church, people gathering in homes has really been more the norm than the exception in most of the world. For the first three hundred years this was clearly the most accepted modality for the gathering of the people of God. And for centuries to come, in many cultures believers without access to funds, and lacking the drive to build monuments, basically met wherever they could in some of the most convenient places to edify each other, and worship God.
It is basically in the Western World, and the nations we have influenced that house churches have become more or less the weaker option to the “real” church with its own facilities holding services each weekend. In many communities “housechurching” is still labeled as the transitional mode for the gatherings of God’s people until they are finally able to rent, lease, or purchase their own facilities and “go public” as a real church.
In 310 AD when Constantine converted, he actually converted “Daily Christians” into “Sunday Christians” by declaring Sunday a holiday. He built the first Cathedral, and soon a spate of cathedral building took place in Europe which included the domination of a professional priesthood, resulting in some places with the demise of the house church movement.
Still in many denominational arenas the idea of a “smaller” group has a stigma attached to it as being something “less than.” While waiting for the “big,” the “growing” and the “successful church.”
Over a decade ago, back in the last millennium, we began to hear the predictions that even in the Western Church, the mechanics, the mode and the many forms of the church would be changing.
Christian Schwartz, the German church-growth researcher began to suggest that we were fast moving into an era of a third Reformation. His take, was that the first Reformation took place in the sixteenth century when Martin Luther rediscovered the core of the gospel: salvation by faith, the centrality of grace and of Scripture, and would be remembered as a reformation of theology.
That a second Reformation occurred in the eighteenth century when personal intimacy with Christ was rediscovered, and that it was, according to Schwartz, a reformation of spirituality.
He then suggested that an entirely new third Reformation would accompany the third millennium. And that it would be a reformation of structure or how we actually "do" church.
To say that this means solely that we should return to smaller, more intimate home type-meetings is to miss much of this full impact of this reformation. It is most profoundly seen, I believe, as a return to the kind of meeting that potentially releases the priesthood of all believers in a given setting. Notwithstanding that I also believe that that can be best accomplished within the context of “smaller” as opposed to a “bigger” group in terms of the size and dynamics of the gathering.