Because He Loved Not the Bretheren

One of the truly notable men of faith of the 20th century was Jack Coe. He moved in a realm of miraculous healings that his otherwise impressive peers of the 50s only wished they could. Sadly he died at age 38 of an illness that he had seen many people healed of. Before his death a prophecy was given that he had to correct three areas of his life, or his ministry would be cut short. The first of these was that he “loved not the bretheren.” Unquestionably he loved the lost, but his esteem for other Christians, especially those who could be called peers was low.

In thinking about building a church, on of the things that comes often to my mind is that a certain depth of relationship has to be present for it to look at all like what God has in mind, and especially for it to survive any kind of success. You cannot easily put together more than one man with a definite sense of vision because at some level of granularity everyone disagrees. This is why most church plants are basically done by a single visionary and a few stragglers. He managed to get out from under the big visionary he was serving along with a few castaways and do his own thing. Eventually, the pattern will repeat itself. Doing a church plant with multiple people with a vision is difficult, but I’m convinced that it can be done if we love one another.

Level of commitment is important, but it’s not the solution. Case in point was the astounding teaching pastor who kept a special ring on his finger because he was married to the ministry movement. Needless to say, he’s no longer a part of it. The others have managed to stay together, but it seems because there is a shared personality flaw, not a shared love. If we’re going to have any success in this thing, we’re going to have to get to where we actually love one another more than the inspiring vision each of us is seeing over the hill. This doesn’t mean we are supposed to enter into a “covenant relationship” and have some kind of pastoral matrimony. What it means most specifically is that when there is tension between us or in the vision, we have to work and pray through it, and that this activity must begin by loving the other person more than ourselves. When we enter into the place where we actually love each other, and each others lives more than our own, and we are mutually conscious of that love, then we will enter into a realm of the Spirit that cannot be stopped. Such a realm is by no means easy to enter, but I’m just submitting that if we’re going to plant a church, we need to make this an explicit goal.

Tensions come either from individuality, immaturity, or sin.

1. If they come from individuality, we have to learn to appreciate each others differences. One may value healing more than prophecy, while another prophecy more than healing. Particular kinds of worship, etc. What kind of building is appropriate, what kinds of materials, etc, etc. These and many others are matters of individuality. We have to delineate spheres of responsibility and allow people to express their individuality within their sphere. We must be especially careful of advocating what is clearly a personal preference in a absolutist way. When human personality and God’s will become confused it’s game over.
2. Immaturity happens when we see something through a particular lens because of life experience, and we have not come to the place where we can see all sides of the picture, including as best possible, our own biased perspective. Immaturity can only be fixed with time and experience, but the process can be greatly accelerated by listening to a discerning brother.
3. Sin is the hardest one to deal with. Of course obvious sins cause problems, but the ones that I’m really talking about are hidden sins that destroy ministers, like the lack of love for the brothers did Jack Coe. Such sins are not easily separated from a person because they become enmeshed in our identity and approach to life. It becomes nearly impossible to hear someone else on the matter. The Shepherds tried to solve it by a hierarchy whereby your authority could speak in and correct the sin, and I will say that there is some merit to this, but ultimately it failed because it wasn’t based on love, but on pride, which is the opposite of love. If we get to the place where we know that we are loved by the others more than we love ourselves, then we get to the place where we can hear, and also where we can speak redemptively.

Why have so few people heard of Jack Coe when compared with someone of lesser gift like Oral Roberts? Because Roberts knew how to work with others and because of this he left a legacy. Coe was able to be radical, but not able to break into deeper relationships with others. When you get like this, you’re endanger of becoming like the hard right Fundamentalists who are always excommunicating each other over not being as radical as the next guy.

Paul says that out of humility we should “consider others better than yourself.” I would suggest that this is not about irrationally considering someone who is less gifted or less seasoned than you are as if they were more so, but It is about loving them as if their life and ministry were more important than our own. It is about thinking enough of others to hear them even when we might be more gifted or more seasoned. If we consider ourselves as better in our hearts, then we become deaf, and as soon as we become deaf we’re in danger.

“Unity”

One of the themes of the Latter Rain was “unity.” The idea developed that if you could have everyone in one accord, you would go much deeper in the Spirit, and that discord was deadly to God’s purposes. The analogy was made with the Tower of Babel–because they had perfect unity they could do anything. The Tower of Babel is not a particularly good place to find ideas that please God, but clearly Jesus did pray for his people to be in unity in John.

So I do think there is something powerful when you have a deep Spiritual accord emanating from having the same purposes in God. What I think it wrong however, is when pastors start talking about this as a moral end rather than a byproduct of righteous activity. In other words, you disagree with the pastor about something and he starts talking about the need for “unity”, meaning that you have to agree or else. I’m not sure if pastors who start talking about this get it ultimately from a latter rain ideal or just because it’s an all too convenient response to failed leadership in a certain area. Your people aren’t tithing, so you start talking about how important “unity” is. I’m sorry, but as a member, all this really says is “I need more people around here to think like me.” This is cultish.

If we are to fellowship together we have to “agree to disagree” on some things. Church members should steward their own consciences on the wide array of things that are debatable in the faith, only being careful not to undermine the goal of the church in the way they discuss or advocate these ideas with others. If they can’t do that, then it’s best to find a different church which is more closely aligned with their ideals.

Pastors that try to climb up the big mountain of unity by pushing their people more and more in a certain direction ultimately only do themselves harm, as it will create outward conformity and “yes men” not inward heart unity, which is what we really want. This inward heart unity comes through prayer, humility and honest discussion.

Thoughts on Revival Services

I interviewed an old time Baptist evangelist once. He was 88 at the time, and this was 5 years ago. He was a really great guy, who basically planned to win souls right up until he died. Being that old he had lived through a number of eras in American church history, and one of the most helpful observations he gave was about the effect of Television on meetings. Before TV people were happy to come out night after night to do anything because if you were holding a special service in town, it would be the most interesting thing going. After TV, the entire mode of reaching people had to change because now you were competing with the world’s ready made entertainment.

In the old days, in fact, the way that evangelistic meetings were done was usually several weeks, at least, of nightly services. You would break up the ground for the first bit, and often times not even give an altar call until the second week or later, so that when you did it was like a flood gate breaking. Today, it’s very hard to get people to come out to meetings like that day after day, but some churches try to hold evangelistic or revival campaigns that last for several days in a week. These are normally planned outreach events, and they can sometimes be effective, but it seems that it falls a bit short of the Biblical ideal.

Even at good churches in America, a given meeting is likely to vary between moderately boring, and positively breaking through. I believe that part of the reason for this is that the same person is expected to bring the heat week after week. People like and get accustomed to the same person speaking, but its extremely difficult to keep hitting high notes in the Spirit week after week, and then also every individual has their own personal flavor, which even if you love chocolate, a little vanilla from time to time helps the chocolate seem all the better. So I do believe that one key of going deep and staying deep in God is mixing up your line up of speakers. Some young “back bencher” may be able to bring more heat than the leadership team because he’s been filling up for 5 years listening and is ready to unload.

With all of this said, I’m starting to think that maybe the way that its supposed to work is that you are supposed to wax hot one week over the other. Instead of just a bunch of random events which are tied to a calendar, maybe week over week, you are supposed to press deeper into God until something breaks. Which also makes me wonder about the “revival services.” Basically Toronto and Brownsville knew they had a revival when they had to go to nightly services. I think one way of being responsive to the Spirit that I don’t think I’ve ever seen done is to actually declare a meeting in response to the Spirit’s initiative in a Sunday morning services, as opposed to a man made agenda. If things get heavy on Sunday morning, why not call for a Sunday Night meeting? And if that is even more intense, why not open the doors for Monday night, etc, etc, until we either get a hold of God or lose a hold of him?

That’s of course the flip side of meetings. Meetings without God are the worst part of church. Some churches actually seem to respond to God’s absence by calling more meetings!! This is only going to increase the misery. In the case of Toronto, let’s say. They seem to boast about how many years they had nightly meetings, but maybe at a certain point it’s time to say, hey, no more nightly meetings until God shows up again. We’re not going to call it revival just because 10 people are willing to come on a Thursday.

Home/Cell Groups

One idea that his been floating around the church for about 30 years, but it still amorphous is the “home group” or “cell group.” The two are not synonymous although they may the same thing in a particularly incarnation. A cell church is really a church of churches. This cell idea was popularized by Paul Yonggi Cho’s Korean megachurch, and has been a part of other megachurches especially in the less economically developed areas. In addition there is the idea of the “home church” which is based on the idea that in the NT days all meetings were based in a home, and so we should be too. First of all, I don’t think this was true. Paul always started with a synagogue. Secondly, I personally find large (not huge) meetings to really great places to encounter God. The “home group” is a home based group which is part of a church, but not a fundamental replacement for it. What are we to do with these concepts?

Home groups are often implemented by leaders of large churches as a way to pastor their people, and of giving second tier leadership something to do. People are encouraged to come to a home group as a mark of spirituality, and these second tier leaders are encouraged to start one. I don’t think this fundamentally works. It’s like trying to paste something onto the church. Personally, I’ve never enjoyed a meeting like this, but I recognize that that is partly personal preference. One of the dynamics of a big meeting is that it exposes passionate people to people with bigger anointing and can be a real catalyst for growth.

Sometimes cell groups/home groups are implemented as the way of getting big like Dr. Cho. Let’s not even discuss that, since our goal is not to get big like Dr. Cho. He’s done an amazing work in Korea, but I would be more honored to know that I started a network of 100 churches, than one 100000 member church.

Where I think home groups are needed is as an evangelism vehicle. They should be thought of as a specific outreach vehicle. This is the kind of thing that the Alpha Course has done, and it’s worked very well for them. Getting some believers and non-believers together in some kind of comfortable setting can get people saved. My neighbors will not come to church, but they might come to dinner every week to talk about God. some people, especially from other cultures are so touched that you would invite them to your house, that they are practically ready to get saved on this testimony alone. If you tailor the home group toward reaching a set of friends and acquaintances, things can happen.

In terms of the goal of “pastoring people” I just don’t think the home group is the most efficient or natural way for this to happen. A lot of energy gets sucked up doing something that is essentially navel gazing. I prefer the combination of discipleship and ministry activities. For example, if the leader of a singles group, wants to have weekly meetings in their home as a way of reaching and raising young leaders, then great — but grabbing some random church members and having them just start to hang out with some other church members is a misplaced hope.

A Survey of Church/Family Worldviews

We live in a era when the basic building block society–the family–is breaking down. This family disfunction is invading the church. Different segments of the church have recognized different aspects of the problem and are addressing it in different ways. Here is a brief survey of family approaches I’m familiar with:

1. The Vision Forum/Conservative Calvinist Approach — Some of the best Christian family resources available today are produced by a group called the Vision Forum. Doug Phillips and his team are producing a seemingly endless stream of resources to help rebuild families from the ground up. Their mindset is based on the Calvinist covenantal worldview. This view makes a direct correlation between the Old Testament Israel and the New Testament Church. In Israel, everything was about family. Training your natural children was the future. The weakness of this approach in the New Testament era is that it tends to substitute family expectations for evangelistic expectations. A kind of Amish worldview develops where reaching or touching the outside world is secondary to training your children and your family. With time, the family line becomes more important than the Gospel witness, and you have a new culture (like the Amish) developed out of it, instead of a changed world.
2. The Baptist/AG approach — In the Baptist worldview, everything is about evangelism. Where the calvinist emphasizes the covenant, and therefore often the infant in Baptism, the Baptists emphasize the believer in baptism, and therefore the Kingdom. The Baptists evangelize, including their children. They build schools, because they recognize the humanistic values of culture, and this helps a lot. Where they fall short however, is in the connection between the parents and the children. The idea of discipling their children through lifelong personal connection is weak, just as their idea of discipling believers is weak. The Assemblies of God is somewhat similar, except that they build colleges instead of schools to protect their children, which is also a major help but not a solution.
3. The Prophetic/Charismatic Approach — Charismatics are often comprised of those who most needed a touch from God. Partly because of the isolating nature of this journey, Charismatics have tended to be very individualistic in their approach to life, and because what matters most is an spiritual encounter with God, this is what they seek to give their children. Charismatic churches often have 45 minute+ worship, including all ages followed by a “Kids church” which may include exposing or encouraging the children to move in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. A few things seem to work strongly against Charismatic children though. First, the counter-intuitive way that Charismatics understand God as working can be damaging to children. “God told us” can include a wide variety of things which God may not have said, and when they don’t happen God seems fake, or gets the blame. Second, Charismatics place a lot of emphasis on women leading ministry, but very little on father’s leading homes. Combined with the flakey behavior, this usually means the father is checked out. Third, while exposure to the Spirit for children is very desirable, it is only one part of a comprehensive child raising strategy.
4. The Sheherding/Charismatic Approach — The Sheperding Movement was like an antidote to the prophetic wing, but an antidote that was usually applied in such degree that it acted more like a poison. All Charismatics can be described by finding their place on the continuum between the two. In the Shepherding Movement, discipleship is everything. This includes family. The man runs the family, and it must be properly ordered as a primary qualification for ministry. Because the Shepherds valued authority and discipleship, they eliminated the charismatic problems, but ushered in a different kind of problem — over-involvement and control. Just as they violated the boundary of conscience with their disciples, so they also violate their children’s consciences.

This is only a starting point for a discussion, but a few observations emerge for me.

1. First, a complementarian view of men and women’s roles is essential to the health of the family. Groups that emphasize women’s leadership at the expense of men fundamentally damage the family. Exactly what men’s and women’s roles are is a topic for another post, but I think it’s clear that male leadership is essential to family health.
2. Second, emphasis of family cannot be done at the expense of the Kingdom, but as a part of the Kingdom. The vision forum has much to be admired, but I believe the first priority is reaching souls. We do not sacrifice our families for souls, but we engage them in the work. We cannot return to an Old Testament mindset where the family and the Kingdom are the same thing.
3. Third, total family care involves a lot more than any single program. It is ministry to the parents, schools, youth groups, kids programs, sunday school etc. In fact, it is ministry to singles and young adults, since they are the building blocks of future families.

The Fire and the Altar

I’ve been doing a lot of study of the history of the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement lately. As I look at the current state of the church I feel a real burden to do something about it, and I know God is calling us forward into that, but it hasn’t taken shape yet. It’s in the preparation stages. Part of that preparation for me has been examining what has happened in the past 100 years. How did we get here?

Revival dynamics are often talked about in terms of wine skins. The Holy Spirit moving in the revival is the new wine and the church context in which He moves is the wineskin. When he pours out His power, he inevitably breaks the old wineskin, and forges a new one, so the parabolic understanding goes. In this way both are preserved. The old wineskin (denomination) keeps doing the good work it has been doing, and the new wineskin pioneers a new era of the Church. Now, I’m not ready to discard this paradigm yet, as it does have a scriptural warrant, and has proven itself in history over and over. However, perhaps we need a broader understanding. Is it possible for an established group to “move with the cloud” and stay with the glory of God? I think so. I just think it’s difficult. I think that what ultimately happens is that in order to keep moving with the cloud, you have to keep being willing to being broken. In other words, the inner wine skin of a people can continually be renewed and God keeps pouring out.

I would like to propose another model of revival – that of the fire and the altar. The fire is power. This is the person, people, or outpouring that are providing the power for the revival. The altar is context in which they function-a church or church movement. Many of us have been to churches where there is an altar but no fire. This huge spiritual edifice has been built replete with programs, a fancy building, etc, but there is no passion in the people, and the power in the ministry is limited. This is a portrait of the church in the in between years. People build the altars.

Every so often, however, someone comes along with the fire of God. This fire usually does not fit well in any box. It may be in the form of a person with a gifting that is literally larger than life, such as Lonnie Frisbee, Paul Cain, or William Branham, or it may be in the form of an expression such as holy laughter or speaking in tongues. The fire by itself is powerful but limited in reach. Paul Cain, for example, has done a lot of meetings since he dissociated from the Vineyard, but in those few years where the fire of his gifting were offered on the altar of the worldwide Vineyard ministry, he did more to change the world than in all the years since. It is when the fire is offered on the altar that generation shaping power is released.

Notice the same pattern with the Brownsville Revival. When God showed up at Brownsville, it did more than create a lot of excitement in the small city of Pensacola. Because the Brownsville fire was on the altar of the Assemblies of God, it changed the course of history. Assemblies pastors and young men from around the globe were stirred up because the two were yoked together. Those hundreds of thousands of visitors, where do you think they came from? It was a lot of people visiting from the Assemblies of God (among others).

What am I getting at? Can I propose that the goal is to keep the fire burning on the altar? As I read about revival my heart gets grieved because I can’t stand to look at the end from the beginning. Most people who pursue revival just look at the beginning. It will be awesome, we’ll get a hold of God, miracles, salvations, etc, etc. When God shows up, hold on for the ride of your life. Everything that can be shaken will be shaken, and if the history of revival is any indicator, that’s a lot. Pretty much they don’t have happy endings. The happy ending is that God changes the church and thereby the world. The rest of the story is Judas’ in the camp, the lost friends, and most of all the missed opportunity. I’m not very excited about starting something that is going to end with “What could have been?” I want to be like Paul Yonggi Cho who when asked when the revival which started his church would end could confidently say “It won’t, because a group of men and I have covenanted together to keep the revival fire as long as we’re alive” (paraphrase). I’ve spent 15 years of my life preparing for it, and I don’t intend to lose it in 1. I don’t want to be like the 90+ year old man who survived the welsh revival only to say “I would trade every day from this day to that for one day in the revival.”

That’s the thing about revival. When God shows up it suddenly makes everything else look irrelevant. I want to build a holy altar ( a church ) and offer holy fire ( anointed ministry ) on it. Without a church it’s just a curiosity, without the fire, it’s just a structure, but together, you can reshape the future. If the fire comes in a package that we don’t like, I think it’s better to take it and try to tame it, than to let is pass you by and let the altar get cold.