Adult Christian Education

Despite the anti-intellectual impulses of many Christian groups, education is fundamental to what it means to be a Christian.  When you are born again, you realize that you have been living in a lie for years, and that you essentially have none of the tools to live in the truth.. so you hunger for education.  The real question is what we mean by “education.”   In reality, there are two very different purposes for education, and therefore two different kinds of pursuits:

The first reason to educated is because you want credibility.   The whole idea of getting a degree is that someone on the other end of that degree recognizes this as a valid credential to allow you to work for them (or get further education with them).

The second reason to get education is because you actually want to learn something.   Now granted, often these things can overlap, but in my experience, the most enriching and significant learning experiences are not the ones that those on the outside recognize or will give you credit for.   Therefore, make sure you understand you reason for getting education before you pursue it.

For those who want credibility, it is important to ask yourself  “Who do I want to place faith in my degree?”  This is especially true in theological education.    Most seminaries and colleges are associated with a particular group, and if not a group, then a movement.    Those from that group or movement will respect your education, and those from outside will be suspicious of it.    Some seminaries have broader credibility than others.   Before you choose a seminary, know who will respect it.

Now for those who want education because they want to learn, there are many avenues which have to be recognized as education:  Seminary, Bible College,  Bible “Institutes”, Informal classes/conferences, mentoring, and self-study.

Seminary

Seminary is the time tested way for churches to prepare students for ministry.   It consists of a graduate level education, which is designed as a focused supplement to a broader undergraduate education.  Historically it is considered “professional” education much like a doctor or lawyer.   All liberal and mainline protestant groups such as the Presbyterian Church (USA), United Methodists, Lutherans and others require this kind of education.   Most traditional evangelical groups like the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), Evangelical Free, and Evangelical Covenant, do as well.

Seminary typically is a 3 year experience where a young man is sent away from his church context trained in a number of Biblically related subjects and then hired into a church, often through no relational connection.   Usually you work as an associate or even a youth pastor for a while, and eventually are “called” to be pastor of your own church.   While this method is non-relational, it also means the broadest opportunities based on your degree.  If you have a degree that a particular group recognizes, you will have a variety of opportunities within the group.

Among seminaries that could be termed “evangelical” because of their respect for the authority of the Bible, there are several major sub-types.  These are the groupings I created for the wiki article:  . Reformed, Southern Baptist,  Pentecostal,  Wesleyan heritage, Dispensational heritage, General evangelical.   It is beyond the scope of this article to name all 35 of the schools that I think fit the category “evangelical” so I’m going to stick to highlights for each category.

1.  Reformed Seminaries. These are schools built specifically around Calvinism.  Although you will get a good conservative education,  I would not recommend attending one unless you are a Calvinist or are fairly tolerant of it because Calvinism permeates everything you will do.   If you are a Calvinist, Reformed Theological Seminary is a good choice for distance education,  Covenant is a good choice for community and seminary experience, and Westminster Theological Seminary (East) is a good choice for academics.

2.  Southern Baptist Seminaries.  Since the conservatives have taken over the Southern Baptist Convention, all of the Southern Baptist seminaries provide good options.   I would avoid Southern Seminary because their program is Calvinistic and 4 years long.   Southeastern is one that I would personally look at.

3.  Pentecostal Seminaries.  Being Pentecostal I’m biased here.  I would probably avoid Oral Roberts especially with all of the controversy of late, but the Church of God, Assembly of God and Regent University all provide great option.   Regent is a great program with lots of distance options, but it’s pretty expensive.    Church of God has recently sparked my interest because they are producing some good thought on Pentecostal hermeneutics and are probably more “Pentecostal” and Wesleyan than the AG.

4.  Wesleyan Heritage.   Asbury is the flagship of all Wesleyan/Arminian seminaries.  It is large and has a top-notch faculty.   It’s generally conservative, but has moved a little bit to the left by becoming part of the UMC recently.   I’d look there for academics, but for the more conservative Wesley Biblical is the standout.    They have an all distance M.Div (where you travel a couple of times).    And it’s a shorter (75 hour) program.   This is one of the few places where you can get old school Wesleyan/Arminian education.

5.  Dispensational.   Dallas Theological is the capital of dispensational schools.  Their program is long (4 years) and rigorous.   They are highly cessationist too.   I would not attend any dispensational school by choice.   Dispensationalism, and the corresponding cessationism are very problematic.

6.  General Evangelical.   When the evangelical movement got momentum, the late Harold Ockenga of Park Street Church had the vision to bring some men together and start new seminaries.  Central to his vision was an intellectually vigorous faith.  He started Fuller, but they went liberal very early, and today they are still going that way.   With the help of Billy Graham, he then founded Gordon-Conwell, which is one of the most broadly respected seminaries, thoroughly evangelical, and has a very high quality faculty.    Trinity Evangelical in Chicago, and Talbot/Biola in Los Angeles are two of the other high quality, general evangelical conservative options.

While there are other seminaries out there,  I would only consider paying for a multi-year graduate education like this if it is  accredited by the Association of Theological Schools, which is the most appropriate body of recognition for these kinds of schools and includes a broad base such as Harvard, Princeton and other non-Evangelical seminaries.   As such, common to all of these schools is a general emphasis on the academic elements of Christian learning.    The benefits of completing an M.Div at one of these schools is the broad recognition associated.   Any evangelical will immediately recognize an evangelical education and credentials, although of course different churches and groups within church have specific standards or expectations as well.    Moreover, these programs qualify you for doctoral level work at any of the world’s finest universities.  They are fairly rigorous and comparable to obtaining a Master’s level education in any other subject–except that 3 years is very long for a masters degree.   They are also relatively expensive.

By the same token, the focus of the work is definitely more academic than practical or spiritual.   In many of these schools you will find you learn more about the Bible related topics and backgrounds than you do the Bible itself.    You will also find the spirituality of the students to be very uneven, as this is not an admission criteria.   In general, this is not an environment where I would recommend anyone grow spiritually.   In fact, I would consider this type of education standing on its own to be spiritually dangerous.   It is more likely to produce spiritual pride, promote bad family/life balance, and inordinate attention to details and extra biblical materials, than it is to produce ministers competant to speak to the next generation.   That said, for those who feel called at the highest levels of academics, or for whom credentials may become important for some reason, these are excellent vehicles, when done in conjunction with a functioning church life.

Bible Colleges

Bible Colleges in some ways were a response to the old fashioned Seminary type of education. As many of the Seminaries were hijacked by liberals in the early 20th century, and before the evangelical resurgence in Seminaries, people saw that the Seminary education was actually detrimental to producing ministers, and also did not match their core convictions about education being focused on the Bible and ground in confidence in its inspiration.   Many Bible colleges were founded in this era.     The Assemblies of God has several undergraduate “Bible colleges” which offer a high quality and well respected education.  I’ve talked to several people who have gone to Berean/Global University because of the affordability, but note, it’s not yet regionally accredited.  If you do not have an undergraduate degree and are looking for formal education they are good options, and there are many others.  Regent now has an undergraduate program.    In general, however, I personally would not study theology in undergraduate school.   I would either skip college and do a more practical education, or I would study something else like Political Science, History, Economics, Business, etc and do the theology at Seminary.   This is because Bible College education usually doesn’t directly qualify you for ministry.   People end up wanting or needing to go to Seminary, and then they complain it’s a big repeat and they miss their chance to learn about the rest of the world.

Bible “Institutes”

Charismatics generally do not appreciate formal educational approaches such as those listed above because they tend to focus on the head and not the heart.  But yet, they realize that ministers need education.  Therefore almost every Charismatic group has some kind of less formal training program.   I’m calling anything that is not accredited and/or only offers Bible majors an institute.    The number of these kinds of options stagger the mind.    It’s important to recognize that this kind of education generally does not gain you credibility, except with the very specific group who recommends it to you.   You take this education because you want to grow.  Here are a few Charismatic options.

1.  Christ for the Nations Institute in Dallas.  Almost a college, but not quite.  Founded by the campaign manager for the great prophet William Branham.  This school has produced some awesome worship and generally is one of the strongest schools for training and equiping the whole Christian person.  Residential only.

2.  Christian International Ministry College.  This is a program developed and supervised by Bill Hamon.  It has a nice combination of a Spiritual as well as rational emphasis, although I do not have any direct information from someone who has attended or how rigorous it may actually be.

3.  Portland Bible College.  Founded out of the Latter Rain.  Kevin Conner, perhaps the world’s leading Charismatic Bible teacher was a key part of it’s founding years.

4.  The FIRE School.  Founded out of the Brownsville Revival and led by Dr. Michael Brown.  I don’t know what else you might get there, but you will get some heat .

5. Morningstar School of Ministry. Although I have never been a follower of Rick Joyner per se.  Steve Thompson, director of the School ,is really top notch, and here I know you could certainly get a lot of the Spiritual aspects lacking from other programs.   Pincrest Bible Training Center, founded by one of the fathers of the Morningstar movement, is also of intrest to me.

6.  Forerunner School of Ministry.  Mike Bickle’s training arm.   Get ready to eat drink and sleep prayer.

7.  The Wagner Leadership Institute is another interesting semi-formal program, which in the past had some of the leading Charismatic ministers teaching the courses, but I don’t think it’s gotten off the ground in quite the way that originally seemed promised, and I think it’s very overpriced for what you get.

8.  Institute of Spiritual Development.   This program is under development and it is all about the prophetic and dreams.   John Paul Jackson has done alot to advance the general state of prophetic training, having developed a really cutting edge training in many facets of revelatory training including a number of courses.   I would love to spend some time in these courses.   Recognize, however, this is really just a prophetic school, it’s not a full fledged ministry or Bible training.

Conclusion

This leads to a few concluding remarks.  I really don’t find any one of these avenues particular satisfying in itself.   For those with the discipline, and who already posses a college education, I think it’s best to grow in the Lord as the Spirit directs you through an intentional and formalized process of progressive study.  This allows you to drink at many different wells without becoming narrow or dried up.   Ultimately it’s about having a passion for God and being like Him…. I think pursuing one’s education before the Lord in this way faciliates that well…

Prosperity Problems

Throughout most of Church History the spiritual current, especially of the Catholic and Orthodox churches has been that the most spiritual possible lifestyle is to be poor.  Keying off of Scriptures like “Blessed are the poor..” and “Sell everything you have and come follow me,”  the mindset has been that in order to truly follow Christ you must impoverish yourself.   Now, of course, at any given time only a few are willing to do this at one time, and so they are considered the most Spiritual.   This promotes a general sense of guilt among the middle class and of pride among the self-impoverished.   Moreover, it creates a universal rejection of Earthly wealth for Christians, leaving it to be pursued by either those of other faiths (such as the medieval Jews) or by Christians who do not really believe the Gospel.  This promotes a general place of powerlessness for the church, and of “scraping by” for the average person.   Ironically, which teaching its people to be poor, the church itself held greater riches than most kings, building increidble edifices to promote itself.   The outcome of promoting poverty then, was to have a rich clergy and a poor laity.

In the wake of the great healing revival of the 1940’s and 50’s two things happened.  First, the healing crusaders like Oral Roberts and Jack Coe and others had built huge and very costly ministry empires which required a remarkable amount of money was needed.    Secondly, the anointing waned on many of these men, depriving them of the power which would both draw people to their services and money to feed the ministry empire.   Largely because of these two factors, the doctrine of “Faith” which they had developed with regard to getting people healed began to grow into a doctrine of Wealth.   Slowly the ability to get out of a wheelchair was replaced with the promise to get material goods.   Instead of “if you have faith, you can be made whole”  it was “if you have faith, you can get out of debt.”  Now at the time, I believe the shift was subtle, but a generation later, what had happened became clear — the power of God had been traded for money.     We live under a system of “prosperity” now, where ministers promise that giving (to them) is the way to wealth, and implicitly that if you do so you will become rich like them.   These rich ministers are the ones who had “faith” to get wealth, and by “sowing in” to their ministries you can get the same thing.    The great irony again is that this has not produced a race of billionaire Christians, what it has primarily produced is the same exact thing that the old Catholic “poverty mentality” did — rich ministers and poor laymen.

Does this mean that God does not want his children to prosper?  By no means.  I believe that God desires to give His children great wealth so that we can “make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, and then “they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.” (Luke 16:9)   In other words, we are given the financial resources to advance His Gospel and reach every living creature.   If that is your heart and practice with your wealth,  God wants to give you the increase.    What these “prosperity” preachers are doing is just the opposite, however.   They are taking huge sums of money which otherwise would be putting others into ministry to spread the Gospel and helping those in need and spending it on lives of difficult to imagine luxury.  And they feel no pangs of conscience about it because in their system being rich is a sign of being blessed.

Anyone can get rich by telling you that by giving them money, you will get rich.   That is what they call a “pyramid scheme” and rightly so.  It’s the devil’s method.  Take from the many to enrich the few. Real prosperity, then is the business man who uses his God-given talents to bring wealth into the Kingdom.   God does not tell such a man he must live on nothing.   He tells him that if his heart is in the right place, he’ll want to give greatly to the cause of the Gospel.   If you have a business or hold a job, God wants to give you the increase, but it’s not going to come by giving more money to a “prosperity” preacher.  It’s going to come by your God given talent, the favor of God on your life, and by giving to reach the ends of the Earth with His message.

We’ve come to a place where we think that having a private jet is a sign of the anointing.   It may  be a sign of the anointing, but a sign that the anointing has been misused.   We need to fear the Lord, because he does not take use of positions in His house for personal gain lightly. This is not unlike the sin of Gehazi.  He saw that he could get a couple of talents of silver and some robes from Elisha’s anointing and look where it took him?  He became a leper.  The sons of Eli thought their spiritual inheritance was best used to gain better portions of meat from the people’s sacrifices.  God killed them.  It’s amazing how in every reformation of the church from Jesus, to Luther, to our time, that one of the great issues is the abuse of money.     I believe the Lord has winked at many in our time because they legitimately believed they were helping the people, but a time is soon coming when He is going to reform the church again.

Basic Dream Interpretation and Hermeneutics

For the past three nights, I’ve had dreams that I not only remembered, but were highly symbolic and seemed to have meaning.   In addition, when I awoke from the first dream I felt that I had had a God dream.  I told my wife and I began to give the intepretation.  It was strange because I rarely dream anymore and I have never interpreted a dream before.  But this seemed to just flow off of my tongue, and speak to our situation.

In fact, I believe this may have been triggered by a visit to a Bridge church and listening to a message online that they did on dream interpretation that night.   The Bridge was set up by John Paul Jackson, who is unquestionably the leading Christian dream interpreter today.  He has set up an entire school which centers around revelatory gifts, but what is really unique is the depth of insight into dream interpretation.   Now there are others who have dealt with Christian dream interpretation, but Jackson seems to have been called of the Lord in this hour to release revelation to the body of Christ on this subject.   I have never had the opportunity to take the classes (they are fairly expensive) but even the few tidbits I’ve gotten have made a lot of sense to me and piqued my interest for more.  Mark Virkler is another leading charismatic who has insight into dream interpretation, but I do not believe it is as extensive or deep, however from what I read on his website, I believe it would be largely complementary to Jackson’s material and perspective.

What really fascinates me about dreams is that underneath they deal with the issue of Biblical typology.  They are usually symbolic, encoded messages that must be decoded by use of several keys.   Rather than be something artificial like a dream dictionary these keys are deeply rooted in our understanding of Scripture.

During the past few years the Lord has brought me through a process of opening up the Scriptures without which dream interpretation would have been impossible.  This was because the fundamentalist/dispensationalist hermeneutics that I first came into the Kingdom with were so literal that they gave no importance to the inherent symbology of the Bible, and where they did, they used it very rigidly and usually in reference to the end of the world.  In addition, in Seminary, most of my classes were based on standard evangelical hermeneutics which give more importance to the immediate context, grammar, and background information surrounding a passage, while intentionally downplaying any symbolic aspects.

These left me quite dry and hungry for an alternative.  Fortunately, my two Old Testament classes started a paradigm shift for me as I was exposed to a “Biblical Theology” perspective of doing exegesis.   Biblical Theology looks at the Bible as a whole, and connects all of the dots together, using words, phrases, concepts and echos.  In poetry class, I was taught how what seems to be repetition is actually comparing and contrasting.    Moreover, I got in touch with famous Charismatic Bible interpreter Kevin Conner, and ordered his Bible Interpretation series from Australia.   He reinforced these same principles but with a Spirit filled gifting.

The result of all of this was that I began to recognize that there were Biblical symbols, and that they were not inflexible and monolithic, but that they were flexible — they are used in support of a general theme or themes but not always in exact correspondence.    It’s not that a certain color or animal has to me a very specific thing, but that it is used in a generally contiguous way.   In addition, many such symbols may have a reverse.   Take Blood.   Well Blood could deal with killing, but it could deal with sacrifice, and more specifically sacrifice which cleanses from sin.    That could be personal sacrifice,  God’s sacrifice.   It could be sacrifice in the context of covenant.   On the flip side, the Bible says “the life is in the blood” so blood may deal with life.   So the context in which you put the blood is important to what it signifies.   But notice that all of these meanings are tied around the same concept, even though life and death are clearly opposite.   In addition, see how the Biblical theme is itself based on the very nature of things.    God was not just the author of the Bible, He was (and is) the creator of the universe.   Biblical types then generally play off of the very nature of things.   So the first principle of dream interpretation is to be grounded in a Biblical view of the elements of the universe around us.

Not every dream however is replete with Biblical symbols.   My friend had a dream last night where he was on an aircraft carrier.  You can’t look that up in a dream dictionary.    What you can do, however, is use the principles of heremeneutics I learned in Old Testament to decode it.

1. First, ask what is this fundamentally?   Fundamentally it’s a boat.   What does a boat do?   It takes you places.   Vehicles often deal with ministries or companies — things that are taking you places in life.
2. Now what is it specifically?  He could have seen any boat, but he saw and aircraft carrier.  Why?  What makes this a special kind of boat.  Well it’s a vessel of war.  It’s the largest kind of boat.  It has thousands of people on it.   Any of one of these could be what is significant in the dream.
3. How do you know which is important?  One of the biggest mistakes in dealing with types is to try to make every aspect of something match something else.   You need to ask:  What did you see in the dream?  What was important about it in the dream?   What you saw is the reason for the usage of that image instead of another one.
4. Does it have any specific significance to you?   For example if you are in the Navy an aircraft carrier would signify something quite different than if you are not.

See?  It’s not spooky.  It is an application of the same principles I learned in OT class.   Now some elements of a dream could be quite difficult.   Why the Lord chooses to use such complex symbols to speak to us, we can only guess.   It can be both frustrating and fun, like any puzzle.   For example, in one of my dreams I was in a plane and we were trying to get to runway 50.  Well comparing and contrasting are not going to help figure out what 50 is.  Unless 50 has some personal significance, it’s good to look in the Scripture (or a Biblically based dictionary).   In this case, I was reminded that 50 was the year of Jubilee.   In my case this meaning fit perfectly with our situation.   This is an advantage if you are interpreting your own dreams or the dreams of a friend.    Like puzzle pieces, you can try out different possibilities until they fit.   Now, notice, I’m not saying you can just make anything fit.  If the year of Jubilee didn’t fit my real life I wouldn’t have tried to make it.  I would have just left it a mystery.

And that’s part of it too.  Dreams can be highly detailed, and some of the details may be hard to decode.   If you can get the main and the plain, you may just have to live with some unsolved mysteries.  However, I’ve found with each of my dreams that if I take it before the Lord, it begins to come clear.   He may remind me of what was important about the person in the dream, or he may show me something about image that I was missing.   For example, my grandmother was flying the plane.  Now, the obvious part of this was that my grandmother was not qualified to fly the plane.   But that still left the question of why my grandmother and not just a stranger who wasn’t qualified.   When I brought the image before the Lord, He reminded me of the feeling of family comfort I had with my grandmother in the plane.  And then I began to see that in the context of the dream my grandmother (who is very old and may not live a lot longer) represented time with my family that I might never get again.   When you put the right key into the lock, it turns the door.  It makes sense in the dream, and it makes sense in your life.

Another interesting aspect of dreams is determining when something is literal and when something is symbolic.   My wife has appeared in two of the dreams, and when she did, she did not represent “something I was married to.”  She was actually herself.    However, in the first dream, two of my children appeared, and I believe they represented two ministry associates, not themselves.   It’s easy to see why now that you cannot correctly interpret a dream without the Spirit of the Lord.

This leads to my final point about dreams.    When God sends you a dream, it’s because He loves you.   Reaching out to communicate with you is a significant act of love (the wives all said Amen).   Getting the correct interpretation has to be premised on this fact.   If you think you are being told the thing that you fear most then you probably had a dream from God that the enemy is trying to interpret for you.    Even if the dream has something cautionary in it, if it’s from God it’s there to help you, or help you help someone else.   I know that I have a way of turning a blessing into a warning.  Assume the best instead of the worst.   Jackson’s school of thinking even says that all three kinds of dreams — those from God, those from the devil (nightmares), and those from the flesh — can be used in a Godly way.   Those from the devil reveal a plan he has against you, those from the flesh reveal the true state of your heart.    Now that is redemptive.

The Florida Outpouring

After years of seemingly nothing going on, the attention of the Charismatic world has turned once again to Lakeland, Florida.  For those who remember, Lakeland had the first signs of what became the Toronto and Brownsville movements under the ministry of Rodney Howard-Browne. At that time, the church was pastored by Karl Strader and called the “Carpenter’s Home Church.” Years later, and after some drama, Karl’s son Stephen began pastoring a much smaller revival-oriented church called “Ignited Church” in a refurbished hardware building.

In Toronto and Brownsville, pastors brought in outside evangelists for short conferences which then extended indefinitely after God started doing something special.  In this instance at Lakeland, Stephen Strader brought in the intense Canadian evangelist Todd Bentley for a series of meetings at the beginning of April. For those who are not familiar with Bentley, he was a rough young drug addict who was radically saved at age 18. Not long into his journey, however, it became clear that Bentley was not the average conversion. Reaching out to whomever he could on the streets, he was soon speaking at youth meetings with mass salvations and attracting the attention of a larger constituency. Hungry for more of God, he began to pursue God in an intense season of prayer, which led to significant breakthroughs in healing and the word of knowledge. One of his mentors was Pat Coking, now known as Patricia King. After only a little time however, the power of God on Bentley’s life began to speak for itself and he was soon traveling the world in a crusade style ministry. After several years in that ministry, Bentley went through a “midnight of the soul” where God dealt more thoroughly with unresolved issues from his very difficult childhood. This was a very hard time for Bentley who had to withdraw from ministry, release staff and face some very challenging issues. He even had a heart attack during a crusade in Africa.  Only recently, perhaps in the past year, has he emerged into a new season. Regardless of what one thinks of Bentley’s ministry style or the events in Lakeland, at a fundamental level Bentley should be an inspiration to all Pentecostal Christians because his life demonstrates that not only can God save a man radically, but he empower him for incredible supernatural works of service in a short time. Bentley’s heroes include both Paul Cain and Jack Coe, both of whom he is reminiscent of. Cain because of the power demonstrated in his youth and pursuit for more of God, and Coe because of his relentless, driven, and aggressive ministry style.

Even without being present, it is easy to say that God has been doing something at the first set of meetings in Lakeland. Let’s consider the circumstantial evidence:

1. Bentley himself: An evangelist like Bentley has a very full schedule which he would not break unless there is good reason. Moreover, he is accustomed to the miraculous in his meetings and something significant would have to be happening in order to warrant a schedule change.
2. The pastor and the people. Unless you are in a cult, you cannot get people to keep coming to meetings after about the third day unless God is doing something special. Secondly, given that the Charismatic movement is given to hype, you need more than hype to create an international sensation. God has to do something.
3. Resistance from the devil. I find it no coincidence that just days before the revival, the eyes of the nation were turned toward Lakeland because of a demonically inspired savage beating of a young runaway. Moreover, Hank Hannegraff tends to only make effort to criticize a revival if God is actually doing something

The personal evidence:

1. Watching people testify in the meetings, it is clear that most of these people are normal sincere people who are getting touched by God.
2. I’ve had several friends who have attended the meetings. One who was at Brownsville said of the first Lakeland meetings, “The presence of God is definitely very strong, possibly even more than what we experienced in Pensacola.” Another urged me to go and described them as very powerful. Another sister, younger in the Lord, and never having been in a powerful meeting, came back and said she had never felt the presence of God so strongly.

So I clearly believe God is doing something in Lakeland. I think questions arise when we discuss the specific ministry style in the meetings, and the larger phenomenon of “revival” among Charismatics. Another friend of mine was recently at the meetings and said that while he also felt the presence of God in a strong way, he was glad he had not taken his unbelieving family members because of the style. In Toronto and Brownsville the issue was drawing undue attention to “manifestations.” In Lakeland, I haven’t seen that personally. The concern I have in Lakeland is that the search for a miracle may have taken precedence over the desire to help individuals.

Front and center is the typical problem of expecting people to fall out every time they are prayed for. Now, let me say that people do get slain in the Spirit, and I’ve seen some clearly get hit by God in the Lakeland meetings I’ve been watching.  But my experience tells me that even in a powerful prayer line not everyone falls out. Sometimes the Lord will knock over almost an entire congregation, but that’s fairly rare too. I think a lot of what we see today is a mixture of “courtesy drops” and people getting nudged or outright pushed, because somehow this validates to everyone that God is really doing something great. In reality, anytime we inflate what God is doing, it ultimately has the opposite effect. Skeptics feel confirmed, people who want to believe feel that they have to examine to see when God really did move, and the unquestioning end up believing that things which are not really God moving actually are.

This, and other nuances, like saying “Bam”, cutting people short who clearly need more help, and telling the crowd to do prophetic gestures, I think encourage the wrong atmosphere among the people. So do I think God is doing something in Lakeland? Absolutely. Is it the revival that I desperately want to be a part of? No. But you know what, it could be the first link in chain, like it was the first time around. In both Toronto and Brownsville, people took the initial flavor of the revival and brought it into their own contexts. The original Lakeland revival was very different than Toronto, which was very different than Brownsville, even though they were all from the same fountain at Karl Strader’s church. And as for Todd Bentley in the new Lakeland setting, even given my stylistic considerations, I still think he’s a great man of God who should be commended for going after God in a way that most people only talk about (and getting a hold of Him). I do not put him at all in the same category with men who just want fame, money, and hype. Perhaps it is just that sometimes he wants a miracle too bad.

How to Preach in the Spirit

Definition of Preaching

When you go into a church for the first time, you can never be sure what is going to be offered from behind the pulpit as “the sermon.” There is quite a wide spectrum of what is considered appropriate, depending on the speaker and the context. Often times what it called “preaching” is not really preaching at all. Here are seven different kinds of message you may hear in church:

1. Moralizing – If the speaker is not born again you will get moralizing. Two major messages are “we should be nice to one another” and “God works in mysterious ways”
2. Esoteric Teaching – A speaker with a lot of education or who thinks too highly of himself may talk primarily about Greek, Hebrew Bible Background, or something else very impractical to make an otherwise simple point.
3. Informational Teaching — This is teaching without a lot of specific application, but which really educates the listener. Great study or insight lies behind this message designed to inform the audience.
4. Practical Teaching — Someone with a gift to understand and open the Scripture may share with you practical insight for living.
5. Condemning Preaching – Some speakers, usually itinerants rather than pastors, think that the harder they are on you, the better it is for you, and that they are being bold for being so hard on you. They will push you down and exalt themselves, sometimes with great talent and zeal.
6. Evangelistic Preaching — Someone with an evangelistic gift will always be able to tie the message back to “come to Jesus”
7. Exhortatory Preaching — This is preaching designed to get you motivated to make some kind of decision in your life, or to inspire you about something.

So in some churches, you never hear real “preaching.” What is called preaching is actually some kind of teaching. The ultimate purpose of preaching is not to inform, it is to persuade. If you are not persuading, you are not really preaching. If teaching is what you do on Sunday morning, that’s fine, but do not call it preaching.

Constructing a Message

This leads us into the construction of the sermon. There are various theories. People talk about a “3-point” sermon. Sometimes you will see up to 7 points. Sometimes they are even alliterated. I believe in the “one point” message. Because preaching is persuasion, all points in the sermon should lead up to one main decision point. People will not remember a bullet list of activities, no matter how good it is. Move them to the willingness to change, and then work with them at the altar or in follow-up. This is not to say a good sermon can not be complex, it can, but it has to have one main point that all of the others build up to or support.

Secondly with regard to construction, there are some who believe that all sermons must be “expository.” This word is filled with different meanings by different people, but usually it means that one must work with a single passage, and that the sermon must follow and teach the content of that specific passage. While good sermons can be preached in this way, there are many problems with limiting all preaching to this mode. First, it misunderstands how the Bible is written. The entire Bible is woven together like a tapestry with each text echoing or foreshadowing other texts, so it is mistaken to believe that a single passage must stand alone. In fact, what we see the apostles doing in the New Testament is what we as preachers should do — weave together relevant Scriptures on a topic to meet an occasion. Therefore, I believe the primary mode of teaching should be what expository preaching gurus eschew as “topical” sermons.

That the sermon should match the occasion seems obvious, but in fact, this too is a major departure from much stock wisdom. Some denominations preach from the “lectionary” which tells you which passage to preach from each week. If one were to do expository sermons from the lectionary, then any given week you would know exactly what the sermon would be! Preaching is for the benefit of human beings, not the other way around. The great preacher accurately discerns the situation that he or she is walking into and construct the appropriate message. What is God doing in the congregation at that time? We should speak to the context that we operate in. If you are not the regular preacher, then ask yourself, “What can I uniquely contribute?” How can you supplement the work of the primary preacher in a way that is complementary and not undermining.

Preparing the Message

Once our orientation toward giving a message is correct, we can turn to the process of developing a message. The first and foremost principle of all great preaching is the maxim that “the man is the message.” Do not preach out of your head, preach out of your convictions. Preach out of your identity. If you preach from the head it will inform, but if you preach from your heart it will transform.

Once you have identified the context you are walking into, what you can contribute, and what the people need to hear, you should have some broad area for your message. This broad area should intersect with what God is doing or has done in your own life. As you begin to weigh various topics before the Lord, one will tend to stir your heart more than others. Now do exactly the opposite of what preaching books tell you to do. Find the Scriptural support for your message. This can be a story which demonstrates the principle, or it can be series of Scriptures which build various aspects of the message. My preference is a combination of Scriptural principle, Scriptural example, Personal example, and Historical Example. This marshals every kind of evidence to prove the point you are making. In general this preparation process should be done “before the Lord” and as you study and research, you should be ready to have your message modified by what you are both learning and hearing.

Once you have the message, you need to go to focused prayer. This is not the kind of prayer where you ask God to bless the message, etc. This is the kind of prayer designed to get His heart into your heart. It is designed to fill you with passion and the power of the Holy Spirit. Allow the Lord to bounce parts of the message around in your heart as you seek His face for the people you will be speaking to. When you walk out into their midst, you should come loaded with God. In this way your natural preparation meets your spiritual preparation.

Delivering the Message

The goal of the preparation process is not to develop a word for word text for you to read. If you do read it, you will not be able to flow with the Spirit, if you do not read it, you will get lost in the text. Instead, you should prepare a outline. The outline should lay out a map of how each of the points flows and ultimately supports the main point.

Having the Spirit move in your preaching is all about speaking from the heart and being yielded to God. This very simple principle defines the process: Your audience will be conscious of whatever you are conscious of.   If you are concious of yourself then they will also be conscious of you.  If you are conscious of them, they will be aware of themselves.  However, if you are conscious of God, they will be conscious of God.   The goal then is to move through the sermon being conscious of God and of God’s love toward them, not conscious of how you look or how your presentation is going.    You have to speak from the heart and from reality.   Do not hide your personality while you present, express it.   The more real you are, the more anointed you will be.

As you begin to speak from your heart to the people from what you have prepared, the Lord will carry you along through the message, and you will most likely find that at some point, the Spirit will come and grip your heart with passion.  Move into this and give full expression to the Spirit.  This may be in tears, increased volume, or decreased volume but you have to have the courage to express what the Spirit is doing in your heart as you preach.   As you do this, His power will move out among the people.   Preparation and delivery intersect in power.

An outline helps you be real while moving to the ultimate point.  Each point is there as a kind of way marker.  As you speak from the heart, you reach points of transition, and the outline will help you make the transitions without getting lost.   Each point is something that you share from your identity and preparation, and it may take on some different forms as you present it.

Closing the Message

You have to close the message with and opportunity to respond.  Starting and ending are probably the hardest parts of the message.  When you begin, it can be difficult to find the place to latch on to, which allows all of your preparation to flow out of your heart.   There are crafty ways of priming the pump, but the simple way is to explain the context.  Why are you going to give the message that you are going to give?   That will lead you into the message easily.

On the closing end, it’s easy to ramble on once you have tapped the well, so in preparation work on how what you are saying leads to a specific point of decision, and then have the faith to go with it when you reach it.   Call the people to respond while the iron is still hot, not after you have shared a bunch of additional principles.  I remember one evangelistic meeting I was in, where he really got the Spirit, but the altar call took at least 15 minutes, by which point people were more antsy than anything else.

The Jesus Movement and The Vineyard

A little understood but very important chapter in American Church history is the Jesus Movement. Just as the hippie movement, which the devil staged to undermine American culture was peaking, God started a surprise — he swept tens of thousands of hippies into the Kingdom of God. A young hippie named Lonnie Frisbee was crying out to God in the desert looking for reality, and God showed up. Although God used many people in many ways during the Jesus People, Lonnie was the Pentecostal spark. He was relentlessly evangelistic, transparent and disarming, and very anointed. He’s been written out of history because it later became clear that he struggled with homosexuality. It’s funny how we write the embarrassing out of our history.

At the same time Pentecostal pastor Chuck Smith and his wife had been praying to reach out to the hippies, and Lonnie showed up. A powerful combination of Pastor/Teacher and Prophet/Evangelist was born, and so was the movement. The Calvary Chapel that Chuck pastored exploded rapidly, not just as a church, but soon as an entire church movement. Once the church had grown, however, Smith no longer wanted the moving of gifts of the Holy Spirit in the meetings, and limited it to what they called an “afterglow.” Among other things, this led Frisbee to separate from Smith and see other pastures.

In time, the direction that Smith had taken the Calvary Chapel caused others to be restive as well. Kenn Gulliksen and John Wimber became leaders of small group of churches that wanted more of the Spirit. Eventually, they invited Lonnie Frisbee back from the wilderness he had been in, to work with them. On Mother’s Day 1980, after Frisbee’s talk, he called upon the Holy Spirit to come into the meeting, as he had done in the early days of the Jesus People, before He was put in the “afterglow” meeting. The result was a dramatic outpouring of the Spirit on the youth. This caused consternation among some of the elders, and when Frisbee confronted them, the Spirit hit in a powerful way there too. Frisbee was eventually sidelined due to his struggles with sin, but a wide door had been opened for the Spirit to move in this young group of churches, with Wimber at the forefront.

The Vineyard was an offense to the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement of that day. It rejected the Shepherding doctrine, the Initial evidence doctrine, the prosperity doctrine, and like it’s Jesus People roots, de-emphasized outward holiness. For many Pentecostal/Charismatics it created an offense — God was pouring out his Spirit among a group of people that rejected their distinctive doctrines. For evangelicals, however, the Vineyard was the perfect doorway. A Bible oriented former seminary instructor from a Bible oriented movement was opening up the Spirit that without the other baggage that makes evangelicals cringe.

Around 1989, the Vineyard became aligned with the “Kansas City Prophets,” leading to a dynamic combination that shook the world. Now, inside of the Spirit-filled, yet evangelical vehicle, was a group of extremely gifted prophetic ministers. Not since the 1950’s and William Branham had prophecy had such a major voice and impact on the future of the church. One Anglican Minister named David Pytches was so impacted that he wrote a book called “Some Said it Thundered.” Cessationist seminary professor Jack Deere was swept into the movement and wrote the incredibly powerful “Surprised by the Power of the Spirit” when he met Wimber, and “Surprised by the Voice of God” when he met Paul Cain. At the same time, the old Pentecostal order was crumbling. The Shepherding Movement had been discredited, and the prosperity doctrine had taken a major hit with the fall of Jim Bakker. The eyes of the Charismatic world were on the Vineyard.

Ultimately, Wimber and the Vineyard distanced themselves from the Prophets. The seeds had been sown however for a new expression. God began to pour His Spirit out at the The Toronto Vineyard. The Toronto group was ultimately also disfellowshipped by Wimber as well for the excessive “dog barking” behavior. While I believe Wimber had just cause for both of these splits, the net result was that Apostolic gift of Wimber and the prophetic power were separated, and both suffered. Toronto became increasingly chaotic, and the Vineyard became generally more conservative toward the gifts.

The Toronto Movement was in many ways the culmination of the Jesus Movement of 25 years earlier. Toronto, led to Brownsville, which became a major force for renewal of Pentecostals worldwide, reshaping especially the Assemblies of God but others as well.

When we look back at all of this history, it raised many difficult questions, which ultimately lead many to conclude that none of it was from God. Instead of understanding that the “wheat grows up with the tares” some are quick to label everything Charismatic as not of God because of the problematic aspects. I believe these problematic aspects crop up precisely because we attempt to move more deeply in touch with God. A healthy functioning of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in and out of the church is very damaging to Satan’s Kingdom, so he must either convince us that we can’t move in them, or he must pollute our use of them so that it is not healthy. I for one will never be deterred by the errors and excesses of others from pursuing the real and deep touch of the Holy Spirit which we all need to live. If anything the stories like Frisbee, Toronto, and Paul Cain, show that God can use anyone who is willing.

A Charismatic View of Evangelical History

It’s very difficult for most of us to understand the church context we exist in because we live in a time where boundaries have been blurred. However, our past tells us a lot about who we are and should be, so it’s important that we understand it. This is made more difficult by the fact that, if they do understand it, few Charismatics want to talk about the history that made them who they are because of some excesses that have cropped up. So you have to go on a treasure hunt. After nearly a decade of fellowshipping between various branches of evangelicalism and reviewing our history, I feel like I understand the various pieces which weave into the fabric of the Charismatic movement.

There are many ways to tell the Charismatic story, which could include the Full Gospel Businessmen, the Jesus Movement, The Vineyard, and others, but at the 10,000 foot level what were the seminal moments and movements that make us who we are and distinct from others? Below I’ve drawn a picture.

The first thing to see here is that Pentecostalism and Fundamentalism were once part of the same large evangelical holiness movement, which around the turn of the century was fairly united under the leadership of D.L Moody and his disciple R.A. Torrey. When Azusa Street hit, all of that changed, however. The movement was broken into two parts: those who embraced the tongues and those who didn’t. Those who did not were the original “Fundamentalists.” They fought hard against the liberals for the inerrancy of Scripture and other cardinal doctrines of the faith. They were mostly dispensationalists.

By the 1940’s many within the Fundamentalist movement were dissatisfied with with the spirit of Fundamentalism. It had some very separatist, anti-intellectual, and edgy components. When Billy Graham came along after WWII, a new moment began, and under the leadership of men like H.J. Ockenga, a new brand was born: Evangelicalism. This was to become just the opposite — inclusive, intellectual, and softer. The Evangelicals became the mainstream and launched a host of ministries, seminaries, and ultimately a new moment in America.

At the same time, on the other side of the railroad tracks, the tongue speakers were launching a worldwide movement, so that 100 years later, there are hundreds of millions all over the world. Azusa street was a deep and powerful revival that shook the Earth — some say literally — the great San Francisco earthquake began just days later. Pentecostalism did not keep the fire indefinitely, however, and by the 30’s people were beginning to wonder where the original power had gone.

God answered this question in dramatic fashion through the ministry of William Branham. A man with an incredible Bible-style prophetic gift, he stirred up what ultimately became the Healing Revival of the 50’s and the Latter Rain. It was the Latter Rain which was to distinguish Charismatics from Pentecostals, however. It brought new emphases: a victorious eschatology, laying on of hands for impartation, five-fold ecclesiology, and most of all personal prophecy. The Pentecostals, especially the Assemblies of God, rejected this new move and to this day these idea separate Pentecostals and Charismatics.

Some extreme doctrines began to dominate the Latter Rain, however, and this gave the impetus for a number of cultish movements, which gave the movement such a bad name, that few dare associate with it by name. One stream of the Latter Rain went on to form a second movement known as the “Shepherding Movement.” Responding to the needs presented by the vast numbers of hippies getting saved in the Jesus Movement, 5 leading ministers began teaching on principles of authority. This eventually led to some major abuses, and more cultish groups. Although there was great error and destruction mixed into the movement, I believe God did have an original purpose in it, and it was not just a demonic scheme. What strained out formed the basis of most modern “apostolic” groups.

Part XIII - A Tree and a Tower

In the devil’s first attempt to set up his kingdom on earth, what does he build? A tower. A tower in Babylon (Babel). Now, in modern parlance, a tower is usually thought of as a vertical structure like the Sears Tower, but the ancients did not possess the technology to build tower’s of this kind very high, so if they wanted to build a something tall, they built what we would today call a pyramid. It is not surprise then, that in Egypt, the type of evil in the Old Testament, and of power in the ancient world, they would build massive pyramids. Most likely they were continuing the pattern passed down from their ancestors in the Babel experience. It is no surprise then too that we find this pyramid imagery associated with various demonically inspired groups.

Looking at this “tower” what can we learn about the structure of the devil’s Kingdom? Ever heard the term “pyramid scheme”? In a pyramid scheme, the people at the top benefit from the people at the bottom, in successive layers of financial gain and deception. Such systems are really not businesses, they are wealth transfer systems, where the people at the top take money from the people at the bottom, and the people in the middle get a cut for making it happen. What is remarkable is that every demonic system works just like this. There is only one stone atop the great pyramid (at least originally), yet the base covers 13 acres! As a system, then many many people can be controlled and exploited by a single individual, ultimately, spiritually, the devil. Thus the devil is always trying to set up systems like this.

What do we find God’s Kingdom compared to by Contrast? A close look at Mark 4:30-32 shows that Jesus is not just comparing the Kingdom of God to a mustard seed, but also to the tree or bush that grows from it. In fact throughout the Bible trees, and tree-like images are used when discussing the Kingdom of God. In the beginning, the Tree of Life is the centerpiece of the garden of Eden, and in the end the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations (Rev 22:2). Jesus uses the fig tree as an image in explaining God’s dealings with Israel. In Romans 11, Paul’s extensive discussion of Israel and the church is all based around the metaphor of an olive tree. I believe, then that the tree is the structural foil to the pyramid.

Looking at the elm pictured above it is interesting how a tree is basically the opposite of the pyramid. A massive trunk supports a multitude of small branches and leaves. At the top it is wider than it is at the bottom. In a pyramid, the rulership is expressed from the top down, with each higher stone having only contact with the stones immediately above it, so that only those at the very top have any contact with the capstone. In a tree, however, all are connected. They are connected through the life that is in the tree. This is the spirit of Jesus saying “I am the vine, you are the branches,” (John 15:5). We are all in him, and connected to him, therefore it is possible to organize in a way that is impossible for the dead and dying world. The lifeless stones can only be top down, but because of the life in the tree, it is possible to be all be in agreement and fellowship because of the life (Jesus) in the tree.

Instead of stacked stones, there are dependent branches. A large branch, has many smaller branches which depend on it, and the smaller branches have leaves. Those that are strong support those that are weak, and all are in fellowship, not through fear but through mutual love.

The Shepherding Movement

This is one of the most important and most controversial chapters in the recent history of the church. If you are charismatic, the whether you know it or not, your church and movement were impacted by either accepting or rejecting its teachings. Here is the basic context. At the height of the cultural revolution of the 1960s some hippies started getting saved. Soon through the powerful anointing on Lonnie Frisbee and the organizational skills of Chuck Smith, this became a major movement now known as the Jesus People or Jesus Movement. The Spirit of God literally swept the youth of the nation from coast to coast as the kids who had left their parents for “freedom” found that it wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be.

In this context, a group of older, more experienced charismatic ministers came together to bring a corrective. The occasion of their meeting was a moral failure of a ministry in Fort Lauderdale, FL. Believing themselves to be equally vulnerable to moral failure apart from better accountability they mutually submitted themselves to one another. When this happened, they described themselves as having a supernatural experience binding their ministries together for life. Initially the group was made of Derek Prince, Don Basham, Bob Mumford, and Charles Simpson. Eventually, former Branham campaign manager, Ern Baxter was added to the group, and they became known as “The Fort Lauderdale Five.”

The five very talented men immediately began to teach on authority, submission and discipleship. Although there were a number of important doctrines, the central doctrine, the one that reshaped the church, was that every person must be submitted to another person (Shepherd/Pastor/Discipler), and that all of your major life decisions should be submitted to this person. Effectively, if unintentionally, this put the individual in the position of having two masters– Jesus and a personal shepherd. With time the personal shepherd gains more power, as Jesus gets less. And in time, this creates a system where those who have unquestioning obedience to man are promoted. All kinds of ungodly things came in through these doors. Several books have been written detailing the kinds of abuse suffered as a result. The scary thing about the whole system is that it started out with the intent of promoting accountability, and eventually enslaved people.

When someone says “Who is your covering?” They are asking the basic Shepherding question. Ironically, Jesus was asked this same question by the Pharisees: “By what authority do you do these things?” His ministry was not submitted to them, and they didn’t like that so they tried to shut him down, but the work of the Spirit was the validation of His ministry. Paul deals with the issue more theologically when he says “the head of woman is man, the head of man is Christ, and the head of Christ is God.” The covering for a man of God is Christ himself, and the covering for a (married) woman is her husband.

The second dangerous doctrine had to do with “Covenant” relationships or “Spiritual Family.” If being absolutely submitted to another person was an imprisonment, then the covenant relationship was the iron padlock on the door. The idea here is that when you enter into these discipleship relationships, they are permanent, and more broadly that your association with a specific group of believers was permanent. You were in a “Covenant” and if you left the relationship or the fellowship group, you were breaking a covenant. This quickly becomes a very dangerous situation. No matter how terrible your experience becomes with a group or person, you can not leave, and if you do, you believe that you’ve broken a covenant with God, so to get right with God you’d have to go back to the abuse! You slowly become enmeshed with the other members of the group, and separated from the outside world. Your “spiritual family” becomes more important than your natural family or even other believers you’ve had relationship with. You slowly become more and more isolated and more and more dependent upon the group or leader. At a certain point if leadership does not check the pattern, it becomes a full fledged cult. Normally, however this pattern is held in tension with Biblical expectations so these groups rarely become tue cults, while still exhibiting cult-like features. Scary.

After a couple of years, the fruit of these doctrines became obvious to those outside of the movement such as Jack Hayford, Pat Robertson, Demos Sharkarian and others, and they confronted the “Five” in the infamous “Shootout at the Curtis Hotel,” in 1975. The result was that the Five issued an “apology” which did not really represent repentance on their part. They basically rejected the excesses of some who had followed the teaching to their logical conclusions without accepting that the doctrine they were teaching had been the direct cause and needed to be changed. Their persistence created a split in the Charismatic movement between those who accepted the authority teaching, and those who did not.

This split is still evident today, but under different names. No one dares be associated with the Shepherding movement by name because it was so discredited, but many still believe in the basic principles to some degree or another. The “Prophetic” stream of the church is the branch of the church that did not accept it, and the “Apostolic” branch are those that did. The trajedy is that the basic observations of the Five were correct but their theological solution of hierarchical personal submission was not. Therefore the “prophetic” stream still tends to reflect the lack of authority that the rebellious hippies brought into the church through the Jesus Movement. Chaos in the meeting is welcomed and even praised as spiritual, and generally everyone does their own thing, hears from God totally in isolation, etc. On the other hand, those with the Shepherding heritage value “order” over all else. While they speak in tongues and claim to be Charismatic, often in practice, the gifts of the Spirit, especially prophecy are not welcomed, because order is valued over the moving of the Spirit.

In summary, the Shepherds were right right to raise the issue of authority, but they were wrong about submission to other men.   Christ is Lord of all, and each should be in submission to Him by the conviction of the Holy Spirit. Functionally, we should submit to those who lead ministries over us, just like we would those who lead us at work, but this is far different from owing them allegiance in our personal or spiritual lives. And when we come to the place where following them violates our conscience, it’s time to move on.

Best Worship Albums

Finding powerful worship albums is not that easy.   You need a combination of great songwriting/selection, strong musicianship, hunger and responsiviness to the presence of God.   Some worshipers are strong on one but weak on others.    There are a lot of great worshipers in the Kansas City stream that tune into the presence of God, but it’s so free form that the music suffers a bit.    On other hand, more typical is sacrificing the presence for perfection.  Israel Houghton may be an example of this.    If he would let the Spirit flow just a little more, I think his music would live up to its reputation.    So here are my personal “must own” albums:

Hillsong

Every discussion of worship music must start with Hillsong.  Their music has completely redefined the genre, while everyone else runs to catch up.   They have dozens of albums, most of which are better than almost any album by anyone else, however a few stand out for me:

1.   You are my World — This album flows so well, and leads into some very powerful worship songs like “All of my Days”, “You Are My World”, “Worthy Is The Lamb.”   I actually played this album almost continuously for a year.

2.  Savior King — After several albums that were great, that had amazing moments but didn’t quite hit the same peak as “You Are My World”, Hillsong came out with “Savior King.”   It’s hard to believe how many songs with deep lyrics and poignant moments are on this album.   Some of my favorites are “Hosanna”, “In Your Freedom”, and “Here In My Life.”

CFNI and Friends

A few years ago the Christ for the Nation Institute in Dallas put together a worship team including Rick Pino, Klaus Keuhn, and Kari Jobe and they struck gold.    The two CFNI albums with this team together are very very good, and so are the DVD that come with them.

1.  Glorious — This was the first and maybe better of the two.  My favorite on this album is “Running” especially on DVD.  She’s bringing this deep from the heart and you can feel it.

2.  Overtaken — I love to watch the first song on this DVD, “The Lord Reigns” I get freedom just watching the girl in the back jump for joy in the Lord’s presence.   There is a series of songs at the end that get’s really deep and intimate, and will take you into some very deep worship, including “Alabaster Jar” and “My Romance”

3.  Extraordinary (ORU) — This may be more personal preference, but I really like this album.  It has a number of songs including “Heal Me” and “This is our God” which only appear here, and bring a specific anointing with them.    Kari Jobe appears on this album

In addition to these few, Klaus Keuhn has two major albums, Kari Jobe has a small album, and Rick Pino has two major albums.  Each of these are good in their own right.  Rick’s stuff is very intense so even as intense as I am, I can’t listen to it continously, but when you are ready for intensity it’s some really good stuff.

Kansas City and Friends

There are individual songs I like by various musicians of this stream including Jason Upton ( who really is best live), the Morningstar worship guys, Joann McFatter, and others.  However of the ones I know about, as an album, the one that really stands out:

1.  We Cry Out - Jesus Culture.  This album brings the passion of Kansas City together with structure.   The entire album is really great, but the Kim Walker songs  are off the charts.  They are very intense “Go after God with everything” kind of songs.

Fred Hammond

Not everyone who didn’t grow up in the traditionally black chuch is able to enjoy black gospel, but most people who have some musical breadth can really enjoy Fred Hammond.  He is the Hillsong of black gospel music.  Entirely in a category of his own.  In particular, when he was paired with Radical for Christ (RFC) every album they did was outstanding.  Often very rich lyrics, rich complex music, and the anointing.   It’s really hard to choose some over others but here are my two favorites:

1.   Pages of Life — This Two disc set, especially disc one is really strong.  There are strong, warfare/faith builders as well as deep, comtemplative worship songs.  May be “best of genre”

2.   Spirit of David — This is a great album.  Again, great lyrics with outstanding musicianship.

Black Gospel

Running out of energy, but here are a few more goodies:  Keith Staten did two great Praise&Worship albums.    John P Kee’s, “Strength” is a great album that you can play all the way through.   Winans Phase Two had one album that was outstanding.   Hezekiah walker has a number of albums, but Live In Atlanta is probably best.  Full Gospel Baptist Fellowship Mass Choir second album has a couple of very powerful songs.   Lakewook did two great albums.    The old  Commissioned stuff can be good too.  In it’s day those guys really touched the black church.