I JUST WANT MY VOICE HEARD!

 The Clash Of “Mindsets”: Structural Versus Relational

I almost fell for it!  I found on line a “Writer’s Conference”.  Unfortunately it was past registering deadlines and being held as this is published.  I had the urge to go until I asked myself “why?”  I have six, yes, six manuscripts that are book length in folder in my computer and have no idea what to do with them. If I go my questions would be, “What do I do with them?”  I thought the obvious answer is “to get them published.” Why? Bottom line: financial rewards!  Oops, wrong motive.  I love to write for the sake of writing, to get out of my head the thoughts, convictions, ideas, ideals, and images that I put on paper after going to this creative “place”, as my wife calls it!  But every writer wants someone to read his writing, doesn’t he?  All this made me realize the dilemma 21^st Century writers face – do I publish my material structurally or relationally?

“Old School”, like myself thinks structurally; “New School”, those who I label “twenty-teeners”, those who will be in their twenties and early thirties between the years 2013-2019, think relationally and are totally frustrated by “old school” structures.

I am frustrated by the “Publishing Pyramid” who is a business, thus bottom line is “what sells”, not necessarily what is the message. Pyramidal structures provide protective shields of isolation to those at its top from those on its bottom and those outside it.  Try to be a young or new author without a proven marketing record to penetrate the “Publishing Pyramid”.  They don’t take “new authors” yet claim they are searching for them.  You must have an “agent” (another 21^st century pyramid scheme to make money; ask professional athletes) to “get in” at 15% of your profits.  Again bottom line money and marketability.   They claim their staff would be “overwhelmed” by so many would-be authors manuscripts.  A lot of authors want to be heard, but are not finding outlets.  Also the “Publishing Pyramid” is beginning to crumble over the last couple of decades. Publishing house rarely take the financial risk anymore of publishing costs and marketing strategies, placing them on the shoulders of the want-to-be authors.  Self publishing and a self marketing is now the “norm”.  The movie “You Got Mail” portrayed the large Book dealers bullying the small bookstores out of business, yet today the large book houses are crumbling to the ebook industry.  The print industry finds itself fighting for their financial lives when facing the electronic generation boom of emailing, social networking, tweeting, texting, and blogging which the printed industry cannot prevent or block.

The “New Schooler” is in a world where vertical communications with peers is important.  The mindset that has been developed is that data is “free” on the internet (the only thing you should pay for is its connection fee), so old business norms of “publishing for profit” are scrambling for new avenues.  The printed local newspapers, and even personal written letters sent through the United States Postal Service are following the road of the pony express. “New Schoolers”, “twenty-teeners,” just want to be heard.  It doesn’t matter if it is to a Facebook/MySpace “friend” or in a Google+ “huddle” or to the “public”, open for the whole world to see.  It doesn’t have to be the printed word, a picture is worth a thousand words, so they say, so “uploading” photos are even more popular to express an ideal or “tell their story”.  Twittering is all about establishing a large number of followers, a reading base of your material, and/or sharing “voices” among each other that you “like” or wish to share.  It is all about “communicating” “horizontally” without the filters, interference, and censorship that pyramid structures create to protect those at their pinnacle. It is not about financial rewards, but about just being heard, vertically without restraints.

RELATIONSHIPS BUILT ON SERVICE, NOT POSITION

 The Clash Of “Mindsets”: Structural Versus Relational

“Then the mother of Zebedee’s sons came to Jesus with her sons and, kneeling down, asked a favor of him. ‘What is it you want?’ he asked. She said, ‘Grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right and the other at your left in your kingdom.’ ‘You don’t know what you are asking,’ Jesus said to them ‘Can you drink the cup I am going to drink?’ ‘We can,’ they answered. Jesus said to them, ‘You will indeed drink from my cup, but to sit at my right or my left is not for me to grant. These places being to those for whom they have been prepared by my Father.’ When the ten heard about this, they were indignant with the two brothers. Jesus called them together and said, ‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whomever wants to be first must be your slave – just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.’” Matthew 20:17-28

In Matthew Jesus has been trying teaching about the kingdom of God to his disciples when he is faced with with the question, “Is the structure of the kingdom of God like a pyramid or flat lined?”   Kingdoms are lead by kings on top a pyramid structure, so the mother of the Zebedee boys and the disciples would naturally think that the kingdom of God would be run this fashion if Jesus is truly the King. In a pyramid only one can be on top, two below him, three below them, etc., so it would be natural for mamma to request her boys get the #2 & #3 slots. Jesus acknowledges her understanding that position dictates authority in “normal” kingdom structure. Even in the spirit world, the kingdom of darkness is a pyramid with Satan, who thirsts for power and authority by lording it over his demons, but that is not so in the kingdom of light, the kingdom of God.

The kingdom of God is not structurally built like a pyramid, but linear by relationship based on friendship. That is the bottom line premise of “flat world” thinkers.  Jesus is trying to show Mamma Z that “positions” in his kingdom are not based on position, power, or influence.  It is all based on a relationship with Him, Jesus and on serving and being served.  Jesus said, “Just as the Son of man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as ransom for many,” so it is with his believers.  Jesus paid the vertical price of the Cross by dying for us on that Cross, paying the ransom to restore the right “relationship” between God and fallen man (John 3:16); now; He is asking us, vertically, to lay down our lives for each other to restore the “relationship” between man to man, Christian brother to brother (I John 3:16). The horizontal and vertical dissections create the CROSS.

There are no “positions of authority” among the “priesthood of believers”, for you cannot “earn” your way into heaven (it is only through God’s grace) and you can not “earn” a position once in heaven, for, “these places being to those for whom they have been prepared by my Father.”  I do not know, in the natural, what these places look like, but Jesus talks about them in John 14:1-4: “Do not let your heart be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms (places); if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there (to that place) to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”   The way to that place is through Jesus who has and is preparing a place for us, and that place will be an “eternal relationship” with him!  Jesus has prepared that place by fulfilling his mission on earth, coming back for his “priesthood of believers”, and “hanging out” with them for the rest of eternity. That is all relational.  It is about relations, not position!

So the Church, if it truly wants revival or another reformation, must recognize the fact that the kingdom of God is relational and begin to change their mindsets and structures to reflect that.  How to do that is through “service”.  A pyramid church structure causes “church politics”, like with the disciples and their mamma; a flat line church structure produces relationships through service. That is why I am such a proponent of Ephesians 4, not as church “offices” which create a pyramid, but as passions, points of view, mindsets on how to vertically serve others who are different, yet gleaning from their different giftings than yours.  You “serve” them in your distinct passion and point of view, and reciprocally they “serve” back to you through their distinctly different passion and point of view bringing “accountability” through “service”, sealed through a “relationship” with one another. (A theme throughout my blogs)

Mamma “B”achman: Don’t barter with Jesus about positioning your two sons in the kingdom of God, but nurture them relationally with Jesus and the body of Christ, positionally making the CROSS through relationships in their lives through service, then you won’t be like Mamma “Z”!

SHOULD WOMEN BE PASTORS

 The Clash Of “Mindsets”: Structural Versus Relational

If you want your ratings to soar for a television talk show, talk about sex.  If you want your ratings to soar on a Christian blog site, talk about the women’s role in the church and should they be pastors, reverends, rectors, bishops, etc.  What is my opinion? Who cares about my opinion?  It is a question of what “mindset”, what “point of view”, how you see this issue: as one from a church pyramid structure or from a church relational structure.  This class of mindsets is what is occurring in the Church right now.  The question should be reworded to: Is leadership structural or relational? Dominating or serving?

Pyramidal, hierarchal church structures “dictate” what those beneath them should believe and try to enforce their belief system upon them.  If the structure is a male dominated structure, the women underneath them have no chance for leadership as exemplified by the Roman Catholic church, most Protestant churches, well, most of Christendom.  So what message is this structure sending to their women of faith?  I could never figure out the mentality that women could go to some Christian Bible College (I think to find good Christian men to submit to as a future wife [sarcasm]) but not to become pastors or church (hierarchal) leaders. They could become children’s ministers or youth pastors, meaning they could minister to children and youth directly impacting their lives, but not “rule” over them.  It is a question of dominance and power., church politics I call it. Sorry, that is the “skinny” of it!

To the younger generation who is beginning to despise pyramidal thinking especially in the Church, they see the issue as “relational”.  In their “flat” “relational” world there is no distinction on Facebook, MySpace, Google+, tweets, emails, and blogs.  In their communicational relational world all humans are equal.  No one in a “flat world” relationship dictates who can and cannot speak to them unless it is personal, like friending or befriending someone on Facebook.  Males and females speak freely amongst each other. “Ruling”, “reigning”, "dictating" and “dominating” over someone is called “cyber bullying”, a no-no to this younger generation.

Today’s younger generation looks at Jesus relationally.  His walk on earth was all relational, either to his Father in heaven, or to those his peers, mankind.  While his disciples, the “men” around him argued who would “positionally” be on his right or left when he “rules” his kingdom, the “women” around him just kept serving. Jesus broke pyramidal, hierarchal, society norms by talking to a Samaritan women at a well, teaching a parable that made a Samaritan man the “good guy” while the rabbi and his other brethren who passed by as the “bad guys”, and allowing a “woman” to serve him to the point of washing his feet with precious perfume using her hair. On the other hand, Jesus had to “serve” men, his disciple, by washing their feet, not them serving him.  There are so many more examples, but relationally, Jesus just allowed women relationally to serve him and be served, bottom line!

Will heaven be a structured, pyramidal,  or hierarchal place?  What will the seating arrangement be at the “banquet table” when the Groom comes for the Bride, His Church?  A men’s section and women’s section separately?  Will Mother Teresa be allowed sit beside her beloved Pope, or will she be banished from the “male only” table.  Oh, the “women” will be serving the meal, their rightful place [sarcasm]? No, the meal is the sacrificial lamb, the body and blood of Jesus Christ.  It has already been “served” at the cross. Women WITH men will be partaking of it TOGETHER! Positionally, there is no hierarchy in the kingdom of God at a “flat” table of peer equality!  It is not a two-tiered table!

In one of Jesus’ parable he tells of those who wanted prime seating at banquets geting their reward because they are seen; it is the “unseen” ones who have been serving you must watch out for when it comes to the kingdom of God!  There the women have it over the men, at least Biblically.  Women always served, usually quietly, passionately while the men had trouble understanding what service meant. Ask the 12 disciples who only knew how to serve after Jesus died and rose, and the Holy Spirit came to “teach them all things” which included “service”!

I’ve been taught that Christian leadership is based on service.  I am a firm believer that the five fold is created to “equip the saints for the work of service.”  SERVICE is essential to Church leadership because IT IS RELATIONAL!  In a pyramid structure you only serve those above you, the feudal Middle Age, Dark Ages’ mentality.  The kingdom of God is all about serving your peers: mankind (saved or unsaved) and your brothers AND sisters in the Lord.  You don’t “carry” anyone on your shoulders or bow beneath them; you stand beside them.

Relationally, this younger generation reads that Eve, women, came relationally from Adam’s, man’s, side, not his heal or under his foot.  We teach our Christian men and women that they are side by side in marriage, “two shall become one” yet do not practice it in a male dominated marriage teaching that men are the head and women the neck! Sorry, Jesus is still the head, and when a man or a women loses that truth, an immediate pyramidal structured conflict for power begins, leading to divorce where secular courts need to define who and what is over whom structurally.  Relationship has been broken. 

Jesus, the second Adam, too had women “beside” him in ministry all throughout his three years of ministry. They did everything when it came to service while the men had to be “taught”.  Relationally, service comes naturally to women.  Men would rather dominate each other than to serve: ask any king. The king serves nobody. Men, are you the “king” of your castle or a servant to your spouse and children.  If you dominate over them, they rebel.  If you serve them, they respect. According to the Bible, women are commissioned to “respect” their husbands, which comes natural if their husbands are Christ like, like Jesus, a “suffering” servant!

So we have come full circle, and I again ask “Should women be pastors, priests, rectors, bishops, or even a pope?”  That is determined by who is above you in a pyramid structure or who is beside you flat world relational structure.  That is also by who are you serving, the one above you or the one beside you. There lies the answer to your question.

SIMPLE ANSWER TO CLUTTER: REMOVE IT!

The Price: Revaluate It’s Worth, Remove The Clutter, Make It Simple, & Accept “Newness”

 “No to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work in us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations for ever and ever! Amen.” Ephesians 2:20-21

Sitting Among The Clutter Has Made Me Reevaluate It's worth, Remove The Clutter, Make It Simple, And Accept "Newness" In Its PlaceWhile reading this passage, it hit me that this summarizes much that has been percolating in me lately.  Since retiring from public teaching at the beginning of June, this summer has been a time for me just to settle, to rest, to change my lifestyle, my priorities, and control my calendar rather than my calendar controlling me.  I have spent more “quality” time with the Lord, expounded energy on social networking, tweeting, blogging, preparing to redo my fiverevealed.com web site, and spent a great amount of time just “listening” to that small spiritual inner voice that leads, guides, directs, and teaches.  Much of what I hear, I have been blogging, so the price for all this has been exposure, a theme that has been a constant in my life. 

Also, being a creature who has to experience something in order to learn it, I have had to clean an over cluttered basement, forcing myself to shred away years of documents that recorded finances, tossing what I thought were meaningful heirlooms, now monuments of the past, that only clutter my life, reorganizing rooms so things have places with simplicity.  Everything is beginning to find a “place”. When I need something, I will know where to find it! 

Empty Nest & Mother In Law To A Nursing Home's AccumulationI’ve realized that my mother-in-law’s life has been reduced to “staying alive and healthy” in a nursing home while I have accumulated all her “valuables”, alias clutter which has junked up my basement.  It is hard to face the fact that some of my own personal possessions that I thought were “valuable” have become junk, “yard sale fodder.”  Furniture accumulated by children growing up and leaving the nest as adults also clutters my basement.  I think I must store them for the “grandchildren” who are not even in existence yet, but my wife has label the furniture as junk, clutter.  Wrestling with bipolar, she despises “clutter”, for it overwhelms her. In reality, I too am learning to despise “clutter” as it has been my job of sifting through all our “valuable junk.”  Mementos I once cherished as precious are gone when reduced to clutter. Things considered “special” have lost their value over time and lost their use through disuse.

I know God’s greatness, that he “is able to do immeasurably more than we ask or imagine.” What got me as I read the above passage was the participle phrase “according to his power that is at work in us.”  As much as I like to see him work, it is the “that is at work IN US” that strikes me between the eyes, pierces my heart, challenges my soul, for I want to see his power, his grace, and his mercy.  He has chosen to do it through you and me.  His power doesn’t happen in isolated space, but through people, His people, believers in Jesus Christ, the priesthood of believers, you and me! He no longer chooses to inhabit burning bushes but in people with a burning passion for Him. He has “immeasurable” power burning in “me”, so what does he make me do? Clean house, remove clutter, reevaluate worth of material objects, and bring simplicity to my life.

Accumulated Junk!What has been precious about this process?  During the daily grind and drudgery of its tediousness, He has been speaking to me, revealing things to me, and I love revelations.  Unfortunately, his revelations are about my spiritual life, calling me back to finding my place of purpose in Him, so when He needs me, He will know where to find me, just as I need to find my tools when they are needed.  He is calling me back to a life of simplicity when I have majored in complexity throughout my life as an adult.

At Least In The Garage Everything Has Its Place; I Know Where It Is When Needed!He is fusing my love for “old school”, those things in my past that have meaning as historical milestones in my life, but now clutter it, that have become “junk”, and is revealing to me “new school” those same experiences of meaning in a “new” form, a “new” song, a “simple song in a simplistic form. He is fusing the old with the new by removing the clutter, reevaluating “worth”, and causing complexity to yield to simplicity, thus the power of the end of the scriptural passage, “to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations.”  I have experienced revival as a young adult, and hunger so badly for it for this younger generation, my children and grandchildren’s generations, to bridge of understandings between both generations.  The price: remove the clutter, reevaluation of worth, a call for simplicity, and acceptance toward “newness.”

SOCIAL NETWORKING WORLD, WHO ARE YOUR FOLLOWING AND WHO IS FOLLOWING YOU?

Mr. Rodger Is Dead, But His Neighborhood Has Expanded!

You cannot control who “follows” you when you tweet; in fact the more that follow, the greater prestige it holds, the higher level of privileges you earn.  One simple “tweet” can touch as many as has “chosen” to follow you, and the power or retweets can impact thousands instantly.  On the other hand, Facebook and Google+ turn the tables where you choose, you “invite” people as “friends” or in a “huddle”.  You control your relationships to the level you with to communicate: to a one, or a chosen few, or a larger group, or public to the world! 

In my world, I was taught that you are not a “leader” unless you have a following.  Today everyone is a leader because everyone has attracted a “following” no matter how shallow the relationship.  Relationships are what defines this generation.  I have taught 8^th grade for 40 years, so I understand this concept, since relationships with peers and peer acceptance is the cornerstone of 8^th grade social life.  Academics are secondary in the mind of an 8^th grader seeking peer contact and peer acceptance.  Social network is an 8^th grader’s dream come true.  They now “know” how “accessible” they are with the number of “followers” they can attain on Twitter, or how many “friends” they have accepted on Facebook.  They can feel “peer acceptance” through social networking.  I know one student who has “befriended” almost every student in her high school electronically.  Of course, the opposite can be true with “cyber-bullying” where one’s reputation can be ruined or damaged in an instant through the power of instantly communicating a slanderous lie or damaging gossip. 

Technology is moving so fast that public education cannot keep up with it.  I have no idea why parents think schools are responsible for “cyber-bullying” when they have no control over the social networking of their students.  I think that it is because parents do not understand the whole social networking world in which their children are immersed.  Schools are wrestling with the question of IPhones, Smart Phones, that have WiFi capabilities because schools cannot control or block their reception to the internet.  If parents did not put filters on their phones, they have an open world to the good, the bad, and the ugly of the social networking, internet, world wide web world.

So institutions have to face the “flat world” of this younger generation, for the nature of such institutions is control from the top on down, to set policies, to dictate what one can and can not do under their institutional guidelines.  They are not sure how to relate or control this this “horizontal” movement of peer acceptance and accessibility.  The church as an institution is no exception, for the institutions of denominationalism, sectarianism, mega-churchism are being challenged by the horizontal relationships of the “priesthood of believers”.  The institutional church has yet to ask the questions of how it can relate to this new phenomenon which is quickly becoming a world wide movement that are breaking beyond institutional barriers in the name of accessibility and acceptability.

8^th graders want to be “accessible” to their friends.  8^th graders want to be “acceptable” to their friends.  Government, school, churches, etc. will need to address how they can become accessible and acceptable to a growing “world wide” population that thinks relationally, horizontally, opposing vertical or institutional structures.  The younger generation has defined new lines as the way to think globally, socially, economically, and religiously. The next few years, months, weeks, days, should be interesting as we watch this evolution and the clashes it can produce.

THE UPCOMING BATTLE THE CHURCH WILL FACE:

Yeast Forces Relationships To Yield To Religion; While Revival Forces Religion To Yield To Relationships

I remember the emotions, conflicts, and circumstances of the 1970’s when our world was being turned upside down and torn apart. (Look at Sunday, July 17^th’s blog “Church, the Winds of Change Are Blowing)  There was quite an “anti-establishment” movement that swelled on campus during my college days.  Speakers challenging “systems” and “structures”, both politically and religiously, were invited on campus to speak. The “social gospel” of its time was the politically correct gospel of what was happening across American, yet there was an underground group of Christians on campus who clung to their faith in Jesus Christ and forged their relationship with Him and God and other “believing” Christians.  If history repeats itself, I predict we will see this underground revival movement again.

The attitude of questioning everything was the emphasis of my college freshman orientation, but when I questioned the “institution” of the church and church run college, I met opposition.  I was a pacifist because of my beliefs in Jesus, who never showed nor taught violence. Peter, defending what he thought was Jesus’ kingdom, cut off the ear of a guard. To his surprise Jesus immediately replaced and healed the ear. Jesus even taught to “love your enemy; do go to those who despise you.” This view went counter to many students who declared themselves pacifists because of political reasons or moral reasons opposing the War in Viet Nam.  It was not popular to be a “Jesus Freak” at that time.

When I challenged the college’s views on “religion”, I had the opportunity to sit down with the President of the college who told me to “sit back for the next four years, change my ideas, and I will be glad I did.”  In essence he said my view of faith and relationships was all wrong, and his “institution” would instruct me correctly.  At the end of four years I found the religious institution on campus in shambles, spineless, and had its “life” in Jesus Christ diminished. Our campus went from a required chapel format to a volunteer chapel few attended, from a strict dorm code protecting women to 24 hour open house in our dorms promoting “overnight” promiscuity, and from an alcohol prohibition image to full blown drug parties.

My generation became verbal, sometimes even violent for causes that would cause change to our world. Not all changes were good, but we were vocal about what we wanted and demanded.  Today’s younger generation is quiet, receptive, and fears being vocal as “institutions” continue to influence and control their lives.  They accept this as status quo, just the way it is, rather than challenging it.  Thus they accept without questioning health care at an enormous expense to themselves, political bipartisanism that was the “fear” of our founding fathers that stalemates everything politically in their generation, debt from a previous generation, or debt for “college” that no longer promises jobs, an economic CEO pyramidal structures of large, politically and economically powerful corporations that shape their work world, and a world that no longer promises security for when they age.  I predict that will all soon change.

There is a “flat world” mentality among this younger generation, seeing the “world” rather than just local, state, or national through relationships.  They talk, communicate, blog, tweet, text the world.  Those throughout the world have become their “peers” who they “friend” on Facebook, who become an identifiable “huddle” on Google+ according to relationship.  Relationships electronically are beginning to be defined by commitment: family, friends, work, acquaintances, or public. When upset, they speak vertically, relationally. Ask the Egyptians about that!  They do not have to be “verbal” “in your face” as my generation felt they had to be, they can be “verbal” “electronically” from their bedroom, dorm room, den, coffee shop, any business location offering WiFi.  They are a mobile group, and a moving “tweet” on an emotional topic can cause thousands to “repeat” the message to the masses in minutes.   Things can happen at a moment’s notice. Change can come rapidly, sometimes almost instantaneously.

The time is ripe, for that is how the Holy Spirit works during revival: instantaneous at a moment’s notice by the Holy Spirit to the masses.  I do not know how revival will manifest itself to this younger generation, but I guarantee you that when it does, it will happen swiftly and powerfully because they are a “relational” generation! There is an institutional church in China and an underground church.  The institutional church is controlled by structure religiously and secularly; the underground church is fed and led relationally.  The government cannot control relationships in their masses. The Chinese government opposes the freedom of expression and passing information that the Internet allows, yet the Chinese Christians are communicating.  American Christian churches have become institutions, icons of our supposedly religious freedom, who do not practice tolerance and acceptance even among themselves, but there is a “networking” that is not “institutional” among flat-liners, flat-worlders, flat-breaders, of relationships as peers who are about to arise and challenge the institutions of their day.  We are on the edge of revival, the precipice of change, where this generation’s voice will arise verbally through the electronic networking available to them.  They are about to do what my generation dreamed of doing: change their world. 

HOW SPIRITUAL “YEAST” INFECTION WORKS!

If It Is Institutionalized, It Has Plenty Of Time To Rise

“’Be on guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.’ Then they understood that he was not telling them to guard against the yeast used in bread, but against the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”  Matthew 16:11-12

Harvard UniversityYale UniversityCheck out history:  How many times have hospitals, colleges, universities been founded by the Church to propagate the gospel to fulfill the great commission? The YMCA, Young Men’s Christian Association, was founded as a Christian evangelistic tool in England. (See earlier blogs) only to lose the “C” in its name and be memorialized by the Village People as a place where gays can hang out.  Institutions like Harvard, Yale, and the college I attended, Elizabethtown College, all started out as “Bible Colleges”, built on Biblical principles, to promote strong Christian values and prepare men for the Great Commission for Jesus Christ.  Today their Religion Departments embrace every conceivable religion in the name of “religion tolerance” rather than the principle of “the only way to the Father is through the Son”, Jesus.  How did we get from birthing “ministries” to developing institutions that keep their religious heritage only historically?

With time and heat, yeast makes bread rise!  When putting “yeast” into bread dough, one has to “knead” it, work the yeast throughout the dough with their hands, then allow it to “rise”.  Only after the yeast laden dough has risen, do you put it in the oven to bake.  Out comes a fresh loaf of bed with a hard crust with soft warm bread encased in it.  Bread without yeast becomes flat bread.  Communion bread is often flat bread.  Manna was yeast-less flat bread, supernaturally supplied by God as the Israelites were “on the move” through the dessert.

So why does Harvard, Yale, Dickenson, and Etown, institutions of higher education, look so different today to when they were founded when it comes to their faith?  Yeast! Jesus, in Matthews 16:12 defines the yeast as “the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees”, the teaching of which he is so vastly critical. “Woe to you scribes and Pharisees….” he says often.  They are the only group, the religious scholars of his day, which he is strongly judgmental against!  These institutions were founded on a Rhema, living word, application of the Logos Word, the written Word, the Bible.  Over the years the Rhema, or living application of the Logos Word has been diminished to the academic westernized head knowledge view of faith rather than the Jewish Lamad heart knowledge view.  Today, Etown’s “Department of Religious Studies” features multiple courses of various nonChristian courses with its campus minster promoting the “story telling of various faiths” through tolerance to gain understanding.  In fact, the news sources today revealed that Etown’s “Dept. of Religious Studies” has been chosen by President Obama to be part of a White House movement of exposing, tolerating, and accepting of many religious views in America, and being a role model for that cause.

Leffler Hall of Performing Arts at Elizabethtown CollegeRhema Word, living Word, is founded on “relationship” with the Father God vertically and with their body of Christ horizontally.  It is founded on the Logos Word, the Bible.  When the yeast is applied into the mixture, the “teaching of scholars emphasizing academic head knowledge”, the intellect becomes more important than the actual relationship, thus the sucking the life out of and eventually killing the Rhema Word.  I saw the eroding of the Logos Word at Etown in the early ‘70’s when I attended.  I had an Old Testament Survey professor completely tear down the validity of the old testament scriptures to the point it was easier to believe Grimm’s Fairy Tales than to believe the Bible.  Only one professor taught about “faith” and actually used that term in his course, and his course was the hardest to get into while the professor won the award for top professor on campus by the student body in spite of the jealously of his peers.  The rest of the religious professors of the time were into social justice, nonviolence, and peace movements.  The yeast has eroded the curriculum to the point that “Christianity” is looked upon as only “one of the many world religions” taught by the Department.  Now, Jesus and the Church of the Brethren are only looked at historically, not relationally.  By offering many options, Jesus is no longer taught as the “only way”.  The yeast has risen.  With the “baking” of time, a protective “crust” now covers the Department, protecting it from any challenge by the Church.

Revival is the only instrument that can penetrate the crust of “institutional religion”, the bread baked with yeast.  Revival emphasizes the “living Bread”, the Rhema Bread, Jesus, and the evangelistic spirit of the five fold can penetrate the hardened crust of “yeast” raised bread.  Revival demands “flat bread”, “yeast-less” bread because God is on the move.  There is no time for religious dogma, doctrines, exegesis of every passage, or the studying of Greek and Hebrew; it is a time when God speaks to His people, the priesthood of believers in simple but powerful terms that bring life, power, and faith. 

The institutional intellectual religious system will oppose any “revival spirit” through its pyramidal hierarchal structure. In Jesus’ time the Sanhedrin, composed of Jewish intellectual rabbis who opposed this new Jesus movement, could not understand how Jesus’ “uneducated” disciples could speak, teach, and live with such authority.  But the flat lined, flat world, flat bread “relational” newly born Church would rise “without” yeast because it would be a “moving”, “living” organism of relationships.  As long as it moves, does not get stagnant, the yeast can’t rise.  With stagnation, the yeast rises, and the Church experiences “Dark Ages” in its history.  “Yeast” forces relationships to yield to Religion; while “Revival” forces Religion to yield to Relationships.

“YEAST” INFECTIONS ARE NO FUN, SO MY WIFE TELLS ME!

How To Rid The Church Of “Yeast Infections”!

In my previous blog I talked about how the church has no time for “yeast” during revivals, when God is on the move.  “Yeast”, properly “kneaded” takes time to rise before being baked by the heat which produces a loaf of bread with a “protective crust”.  The fleeting movement of Passover did not allow time for the “kneaded” process. The Israelites “needed” to get moving because it was time for freedom, time to display God’s power, time to move through the Red Sea on a quest to the Promise Land.  Even in the dessert there was no time to “knead” bread, thus no “need” for “yeast”, for God was still on the move leading His people by a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.  In the dessert he produced “yeast”-less bread called manna, collected daily or it would rot.  Manna has not use to “stay around”, for God was on the move.

Today, I am embarking on a topic my Christian sisters can blog about better than I can, for I, personally, thank heavens, have never experienced: “yeast infections.”  Being married, I have seen the pain, discomfort, and irritability caused by them through my wife, but just seeing the “fruit of discomfort” caused by them, I, in the imbecilic lack of knowledge on the subject, can only write about the second hand results.  I can safely draw the inclusion that “yeast infections” are not nice, not wanted, and should be banned!

Spiritually, the Bride of Christ, body of Christ, the Church, is experiencing “yeast infections,” and it ain’t pretty!  “Yeast infections” never are!  Jesus warned about the “yeast”, the teachings of the Pharisees and Sadducees of his and our day.  It still scares me that Jesus forgave sinners, the unclean, the down and out of his society, for forbidden ones, yet he severely criticizes the religious leaders of his day: “Woe to you scribes and Pharisees.” Although we Christians will never admit it, there are Pharisees and Sadducees in our midst.  We definitely will not admit it, but defend it, if we are actually ones ourselves! It is painful when one makes that discovery, I know from personal experience, for I am a “recovering Pharisee” in my own right.  “Yeast” naturally rises over time, and being a Christian for 50 years has given it plenty of time to rise in my Christian walk, but when there is revival, there is no time for it to rise.  If I want to see revival, I must clean the “yeast” out of my own life?  How about you? Where do you stand on the “Pharisee” meter if you have been a Christian for any length of time?

“Yeast” is the “teaching” of traditional, structural “truth” over time.  That definition, I am sure, could be highly debated by the Pharisees of our time, but this “yeast’s” fruit has been division in the body of Christ, not unity. I personally believe it is time to 1) recognize the five fold as being the “norm” in a God moving revival and 2) the Church needs to reinstate the apostolic and revive the “apostolic teaching” recorded in the book of Acts.

Why do we need the five fold? To prevent and cure “yeast infections” in the Bride of Christ, the Church.  The fruit of the five fold, as outlined in Ephesians 4:14-16 is “Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. Instead speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament grows and builds itself in love, as each part does its work.”  Through “serving” one another, laying down one life for one another through submission and accountability and following the Holy Spirit, “sectarian teaching” through the teaching gifting in the five fold should be checked by the other four passions and points of view. As the teacher continues to study the Logos Word, the Bible, unity, balance, and truth will prevail through the Rhema revelations through the prophet, the birthing of those revelations through the evangelist, the daily working out of those revelations in practical life experiences through the pastor/shepherd, with correct oversight, the seeing over what the Holy Spirit is doing and teaching while releasing the other giftings to fulfill the big picture by the apostle, all prepares the ground work for the “apostolic teaching” as found in the book of Acts.

The restoration of the “apostolic” passion and point of view into the body of Christ, the priesthood of believers, will usher in the restoration of “apostolic teaching”, a teaching that will bring unity not division, simplicity not complexity, power and life not stagnation, and clarity instead of cloudiness. The tossing “back and forth by the waves”, and the blowing “here and there by every wind of teaching” will be diminished if not eliminated by the apostolic speaking “the truth in love” causing individual Christians and the Church as a whole “in all things” to “grow up into him who is the Head, that is Christ.”  Results: “Every supporting ligament” of the body of Christ “grows and builds itself in love, as each part does its work.”  Unity not sectarianism; One Body of Christ not multiple sects, denominations, groups, mega-churches, etc. all under different banners; and one Head speaking for there will be only one “mouth” to this Head, speaking the same message of truth throughout the “whole” body of Christ.

The gospel is simple, yet we, the Church, have made it complicated over the centuries. The gospel is unifying, yet we, the Church, have brought only division among ourselves. The gospel is truth, yet we, the Church, prorogate the lie that only our sect has the “true” insight into “all things”, not the rest of the body of Christ.  The way to fight the “yeast infection” in the Church today is to embrace the five different passions and points of view as found in Ephesians 4:11, allow the Holy Spirit to design them according to God’s plan for the purpose of unity in the body of Christ and the “growing up”, the maturity, of individual believers as well as the corporate Church into the fullness and image of Jesus Christ through the true restoration of the apostolic and the apostolic teaching to the Church.  The cure to “yeast” infection is Jesus Christ and responding to the constant “moving” of the Holy Spirit. 

“YEAST” DRIVEN BREAD IS “KNEADED”; BUT GOD’S “LIVING BREAD” IS “NEEDED”!

There Ain’t No Pharisees In My Church, Right?

“’Be on guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.’ Then they understood that he was not telling them to guard against the yeast used in bread, but against the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”  Matthew 16:11-12

There were two predominate sects in the Jewish faith at the time of Christ, the Pharisees and the Sadducees.  The Pharisees would be described today and right wing evangelical fundamentalist in the Church today while the Sadducees would be “the others”, or as in the eyes of the Pharisees, anyone who isn’t like “us”. That pharisaical attitude is alive and well, in fact, alive and strong in the Church today, going far beyond the sects of Christianity that I have pictured.  Every Christian sect thinks they have the inside tract on “true” theology.  That is what makes them different from the rest.  The “proper” discernment of “truth” is what sets them apart from the rest of the body of Christ, as if the rest of the body of Christ is in error.  Hmmmm, 99.99% of the body of Christ is in error, but we are not! Does that make sense when looking at the body of Christ as a whole?

Jesus warned about the “teaching” of the present day institutionalized religious leaders.  In the Jewish tradition, the Talmud, which is an accumulation of “interpretations” of what the Torah was said was larger than the Torah itself.  Take a high level graduate course on “Theology” at a seminary, and you will see what I mean.  The simplicity of the gospel is expounded in complexity as theologian upon theologian proposes their interpretation upon scripture, dissecting it historically, grammatically in Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, or whatever, and against other philosophies and interpretations.  The “yeast” is rising. 

When the children of Israel were freed from centuries of slavery, they did not have time to use “yeast” in their bread, because yeast takes time to rise before it is baked.  They didn’t have “time,” for God was on the move.  Once freed, they didn’t bake bread like they did in Egypt because God supplied “manna,” a godly bread substitute, daily.  They still did not have time to bake bread with yeast, for God was still on the move led by a pillar of fire by night and a cloud by day.  He was on the move 24/7.

“Revival” is when “God is on the move”!  When revival hits, the Church doesn’t have time for committee meetings, counsels, position papers, defining dogma and doctrine, and months and years for seminary training.  God is on the move.  There is no time for the “yeast” to rise!  During revival, the Holy Spirit supplies fresh “manna” daily to his people.  There is no need, nor time, for yeast. 

So what is the “yeast”?  According to Matthew 16:12: “the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” During revival the Holy Spirit becomes the teacher, not the doctrinal church hierarchy of its time.  The Holy Spirit teaches simple truths clearly, powerfully, and quickly to the masses in unity.  These simple truths are what I call the “apostolic” teaching that needs to be reinstated into the Church, the truths that transcends the Pharisees’ and Sadducees’ teachings in today’s Church structures. They are the “same” truths for every “sect” or part of the body of Christ, the Church, that do not differ because of the “yeast” of teaching that always brings division and sectarianism in the Church.  They are truths, powerful truths, freeing truths, truths of grace, mercy, and forgiveness, simple truths, easy to understand, easy to apply in one’s everyday life, truths that apply to every believer in Jesus Christ anywhere.  They are truths that unify the body of Christ, not divide, and no one sect or group has the inside scoop on what they are.

As we move toward revival in the Church, these truths will be opposed by the pharisaical “yeast” of our day, the entrenched theology of distinct sects within Christianity.  As we have seen in previous blogs, revival features a “flat world” approach of equality of peers, the priesthood of believers, not a pyramid type clergy/laity structure.  Pyramidal clergy/laity structure produces “yeast” because naturally it has time to “rise”, usually in the form of “traditions”.  Jesus warned of these “traditions of men.”  With time, in a pyramid form of structure, “yeast” will naturally rise.  During revival, there is no time for “yeast”.  The Holy Spirit teaches for that moment in time to his people in that moment of time, the simplicity of the gospel, the good news, to bring freedom from bondage no matter if it is secular or religious.  Religion is leery of revival; the secular unsure of it, but both end up opposing it.  Revival is always on the move!  But once the season of revival is over, with time, the “yeast” sets in to digest, interpret, and theorize the revival, rejecting most of the revival’s universal truths, and implementing some of the truths over the period of several decades when it makes it their norms, although watered down in form and truth. 

Want revival? Beware of the “yeast”!  Prepare to be on the “move” when there is no time for “yeast” for rise.  When in the dessert of daily living, “yeast” bread will bake when heated forming a protective crust, but “manna” bread will bring life, freedom, and must be picked daily.  Old manna rotted. “Yeast” laden bread is “kneaded”, but God’s living bread, daily manna, is really what is “needed” each day because God’s people were on the move. Jesus said, “I am the bread of life.”  Let me tell you, Jesus’ bread is “yeast”-free, pure manna, Godly nutrient!

THE HOLY SPIRIT CAN BE IRRATIONALLY RATIONAL

The Holy Spirit Never Seems To Do It “My Way”

The old crooner Frank Sanatra use to bellow his famous line, “And I Did It My Way.”  Isn’t that the tune almost all of us like to sing, for we love being in control; we love to do the rational, the well thought out, what we consider as “normal” or even “safe”.  We often shy away from allowing the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ to lead our lives because he never seems to do things the way I would like him to do them, rationally.  Most of the time he seems to choose to do it irrationally, not the way I think is “normal” or “safe”.  This is how we often get in the way of revival by stifling the Holy Spirit’s lead.

For example, let’s look at 3 examples of how he has chosen men for leadership:

Old Testament – Moses would have been my choice too to lead the Israelites out of hundreds of years of bondage because he knew the Egyptian hierarchal system.  He knew how to work their politics as an insider. Shoots, he was a C.E.O. at one time!  He knew how to work their economics for he was in charge of overseeing their economical work force, the slaves building Egypt’s phenomenal building program. In my rational thinking as an American, he’s the man to “lobby Pharaoh”.  God chooses to work differently.  He allows Moses to be ostracized from “the Egyptian system” of hierarchal leadership and begins to teach him relational leadership among, of all things, sheep and nomadic sheepherders all leading to a relational confrontation with God himself manifesting himself as a flaming talking bush.  What becomes important for the rest of his life is his relationship to the bush.  He cannot build a relationship with pharaoh nor the Israelite people for they always pose opposition.  Only his continual fellowship with God, going into the Holy of Holies, is the key to his success.  What at first looked like an irrational move now looks very rational to us.  God is irrationally rational.

The Gospels – Rationally, if I am about to start a “kingdom of God” campaign I need a Public Relations Department who will get the word out: audibly through a radio campaign, visually through a television campaign, in print through all the local papers, through the internet with a social networking campaign, etc. As an American I know, advertising is the key to the success of this campaign.  So God is about to launch his “kingdom” on earth, so he sends someone to “prepare the way”.  He does not do an advertising campaign to get the right person; he does not take resumes. He chooses instead the town “hippie”, a man in sheep’s skin that eats a diet of locust and honey.  All he says is, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.”  That alone creates a stir like none other that will eventually, literally, make him his “lose his head.”  People respond and he baptizes them, thus John the Baptist.  He is only the message bearer, for he even sends his disciples to Jesus to ask if Jesus is the messiah, the fulfillment of the message John is proclaiming.  Because of this doubt, Jesus refers to him as “least in the kingdom.”  So God chooses the “least in his kingdom” to proclaim one of the most profound kingdom proclamations in history; how irrational is that?  But in order for Jesus’ influence to move forward, John had to decrease in order for Jesus to increase.  Now the choice seems more rational.  Again God proved that he is irrationally rational.

New Testament – The early Church has a new leadership crisis: one of the 12 is a traitor, has committed suicide, and has tainted the leadership image of this new Church from its very beginning. In one of the early chapters in the book of Acts, the eleven decide they need a twelfth.  Rationally they should announce the vacancy to the existing Church, take resumes, form a committee to conduct interviews, and have the 11 vote on the replacement or maybe meet in the upper room for a “church council”.  Wrong!  The Holy Spirit leads them to “cast a lot”! What! Take two straws, one short, one long, and have one of the candidates pull it. How irrational is that? By the way, Matthias won!  I wish the book of Acts would tell us more about Matthias and what he did after his “lot” was cast! He becomes an “apostle”, now one of the twelve, an equal, to anchor this new Church.  We didn’t know it, but God knew that he was the man of the hour.  It was another irrationally rational decision.

The Old Testament priest use to make godly decisions through the Urrim and Tummin, which today we are not really sure what they were, but basically it was like the method like casting lots to choose Mathias.   We do not understand the Urrim and Tummin, nor the casting of lots to make key decisions, but that is how God works at times, irrationally rational.  We think God thinks like man, rational, but God thinks like God and to us that looks irrational.  Man needs the thinking of God, Godly thinking. The Church calls that righteousness.

But the bottom line is this: Can we trust the irrationally rational thinking of God, for that is how the Holy Spirit works?  Can we trust the Holy Spirit?  The answer to that questions is the key to unlocking true revival for the Church, for the Church, you and I who believe in Jesus Christ, will never see revival if we can not trust the Holy Spirit, nor expect the irrational to ever be rational to our way of thinking.  We need to lay down our misconception and myth that the Holy Spirit will do irrational things to embarrass us if we chose to follow him. Moses, John the Baptist, and the 11 disciples did and look what it did: freed a nation, establish a kingdom, and provided leadership to a new born Church, that’s all.  Is that weird, or is that awesome?  Let’s look toward the awesomeness of the Holy Spirit, that which is irrationally rational and not only believe in him, but trust him!

Two Generations: From “Anti-Establishment” to “Anti-Institution”

President Richard Nixon fighting against the "anti-establishment" movement at a press conference.The Possibility of Bonding Two Attitudes of Two Generations?

Protests against the War In Vietnam, the Civil Rights Movement, the Women’s Liberation Movement, the escalation of the anti-abortion/pro-life debate, the gay community coming out of the closet and protesting in the streets, the epidemic of aides, and the Drug Revolution were all earmarks of the “Baby Boomer” generation as they reached their late teens and early twenties in an effort to turn their world around. That generation coined the term “anti-establishment” in a quest to question the existing institutions of their time.  Today’s “Twenty-Teeners”, those who will be in their twenties between 2013 through 2019 are feeling the strain of now two decades of military endeavors in Iraq and Afghanistan, social profiling against Mexicans and Muslims, the still continuing debate between anti-abortionists and pro-lifers, the possibility of acceptance of civil gay marriages, an overburdening health care system that they can not afford, and a possibility of a severe economy restrains, and a never-ending two party stalemate in government as their earmarks.  Like their predecessors almost 50 years earlier, they too have this anti-establishment mentality toward institutions.  I believe the next social and political revolution in America will be over this “anti-institutional” mentality.  The time is ripe for this to arise.

The “twenty-teeners” have a “flat world” view.  They see everything socially on a horizontal plane based on relationships empowered by the internet and the current trends in “social networking”.  Relationships are of the utmost importance, thus the influence of MySpace, Facebook, Google+, Tweeting, blogging, and texting as “communication tools” in this “relationship” generation.  They are beginning to show their abhorrence towards pyramidal structures or establishments or institutions. They cannot find mutual horizontal relationships in a CEO business climate with those above them, but can social network with their peers while sitting in the cubby-holes at work.  They do not see horizontal relationships in the currently political process where party members have become puppets of their party’s political bosses causing stalemate after stalemate, wishing horizontal relationships would be used to bring bi-partisanship, horizontal relationships to solve problems. They are having trouble understanding a clergy/laity mentality in the Church rather than a horizontal relationship of believers in the body of Christ.  They are turned off by church as an institution while seeking church as something “relational” between them and their God and them and their peers.

The perfect family of the 1050's: "Leave It To Beaver"America was pictured for its greed in the tv program "Dallas"Like their anti-establishment predecessors 50 years ago who fought against the “Leave It To Beaver” pristine 1950’s nuclear family and the moral standards of their generation, this anti-institutional group of “twenty-teeners” is fighting against the “Dallas” image of rich CEO magnets greedily running our economics and politics while hording our financial resources.  I predict that this “horizontal” bond of “relationship” seekers, no matter how strong or how shallow, will mold into an economic, political, and cultural force that will challenge the way the world does business, politics, follows social morals, as well as the way they see, think, and “do” Church on not only a local, state, regional, and national level, but most of all on a “world wide” level.

Economically we are beginning to realize how small countries like “Greece”, “Spain”, and Middle Eastern countries can bring economic woes to entire world markets.  People can “E-Trade” themselves in the Stock Market rather than going through traditional “brokers” anywhere in the world through the internet, thus the Stock Exchange of the United States has investors from all over the world.  The same “world wide” information is now available to everyone throughout the world, not just the socially and politically privileged as in the past.  Information is vast and fast, affecting the scope of they way we have to think about education. The world view and the way we view the world is changing; thus the clash of two different generations, two different mindsets, two different points of view.

In spite of their differences, there may be some commonality between the two generations, for as youth, they both seek to dethrone the political and economic “established” “institutionalized” powers of their times for horizontal freedoms, fluidity of thought and ideas, and a challenge to change their worlds they live in for the good.  It is a shame that the “anti-establishment” generation is now the “institutional” providers, maintainers, and developers, the very thing they opposed in their youth.  Maybe the time is right for both generation to look ahead, as peers, as equals, in a horizontal relationship to move forward as we face the change of the future.

Pyramid Structures Produce Programs; Horizontal Structures Produce Relationships

Approaching Problems From Two Different Points Of View

Hierarchal, pyramidal, institutional structures major in producing programs as solutions to problems.  That’s the problem with education; it has gotten too pyramidal where those at the top dictate to those at the bottom how they are to teach when it has been years since those at the top have even taught a class in the classroom.  The most effective teaching occurs at the grass roots level: teacher/pupil. 

I have always said as a public educator that the most important days of the school year are the first three even though not much “academic” instruction happens.  Those days feature handing out materials, setting before the students yearly expectations, and of course going over the rules.  What happens is boundaries for relationships are established those days.  What will and will not the teacher allow, expect, and actually do.  What relationship will the teacher build with his students and vice verses?  As a teacher you want to build a relationship of open communication, respect, and a desire to reveal your passion as a teacher and the subject you teach, not a relationship as a tyrannical dictator or their “friend”.  8^th graders, 13 year olds, are ruthless to their peers, their so called friends, for peer acceptance heads the top of their list.  They will establish a “friendship” with you, only to abandon it and stab you in the back to establish a “friendship” with someone else who is socially acceptable or popular.  Loyalty, stability, and dedication to most friendships at this age and level is a rarity. I do not want to establish this kind of relationship with my students, for they will dump me when my back is turned to be accepted by their peers.  They want a friendship with a teacher as one who cares for them, listens to them, accepts them for who they are (although they are unsure of what that is), and covers for them to save face with their peers.  Classroom management is all about “relationship management”.  The relationship between the teacher and student is a balancing act that will directly effect the willingness of the student to learn, be accepted, and succeed.

The institution looks at it differently. If there is a bully in your classroom, rather than allowing you to work at the root of the problem as relational, working on how to change the attitude and habits of the person seeking dominance over weaker vessels, the institution develops a “Bullying Program” and tells their teachers how to “implement” it!  If students have low self-esteem, a common malignant 8^th grade problem, rather than dealing with it relationally, the institution introduces a “Self Esteem Program” to reward good behavior and pat every student on the back.  Students go through “Drug & Alcohol” Programs, learning just how to say “No” all through their elementary, middle, and secondary educations, only to strive to go to “partying” colleges and universities who ignore underage drinking making partying the socially accepted practice.  Rather than letting teachers develop what works best with each class, for every class, every student is different, the educational hierarchy will pull teachers out of teaching, instructional time to “teach” them how to “teach” through some new “Educational Program”, or “Inservice Program.” 

The institutional church is no different. Rather than “ministering” relationally, as an institution you establish programs.  There is soon an “Evangelistic Program” and a “Discipleship Program” or a “Supporting Missionary Program”, “Youth Program”, “Children’s Program”, “Senior Citizen’s Program”, “Widows Program”, etc.   The whole church docket has been filled with “programs” who desire is to create relationships.  But because the institution sets the guidelines of how these relationships are to work, they stifle the Holy Spirit’s creativity to move among His people.  If the Church just allowed the Holy Spirit to work relationally with His people on a horizontal level of peer equality and acceptance, then they wouldn’t need all these programs.  People would just “do it” under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  Unfortunately institutions love to regulate, control, set directives, etc. rather than allowing their people be a free flowing.

Although both camps want the same outcome, relationships, we can see that they come from two totally different points of view. The hierarchal group comes from organization perspectives (committees) to “understand” the problem through “education”, then set up programs (directed plans of implementation) to implement the findings of their committees, while the horizontal group just “does it” through relationships built with people under the guidance of the Holy Spirit which produce effective relational results.  No wonder it is hard for the institutional church to understand revival, for during revival the Holy Spirit is in charge and moves without committee meetings, program development, and program implementation.  He just moves through His people, His way, at His time.  Usually His way does not follow the guidelines or directive of church committee meetings nor programs.

New Winds; New Revival: Go With The Flow, Not With The Program

Revivals Instantly Touch Entire Communities; Emergent Movements To The "nth" Power?

Duncan Campbell who witnessed a true revival wrote in his dissertation When God Stepped Down:  Now, you might ask me, "What do you mean by revival"? There are a great many views, held by people today, as to what revival is. So, you hear men say, "Are you going out to the revival meetings?", "We're having a revival crusade", and so on. There's a world of difference, between a crusade, or a special effort in the field of evangelism. My dear people, that is not revival. As I already said from this platform, I thank God for every soul brought to Christ, through our special efforts, and for every season of blessing at our conferences, and at our conventions. We praise God for such movements, but is it not true that such movements do not, (as a general rule) touch the community? The community remains more or less, the same, and the masses go past us to hell, but in revival the community, suddenly becomes conscious of the movings of God; beginning with His own people. So that, in a matter of hours, (not days) in a matter of hours, churches become crowded. No information of any special meeting, but something happening that moves men and women to a house of God, and you'll find within hours, scores of men, and women crying to God for mercy before them that kneel at church. You've read history of revivals, the Jonathan Edward revival in America, that was what happened, and the Welsh revival, that is what happened, and the more recent Lewis revival, that is what happened.

As we, the 21^st Century Church begin to hunger for revival, we need to remember that revival transcends any “program”, any “church structure”, any “preplanning” on our part.  It is a sovereign move of the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ by His will while doing it His way at His time.  In the book of Acts it not only happened at the Temple in what the Church now calls Pentecost, but also at the house of Cornelius, by the chariot of the Ethiopian eunuch, and even before Christ’s ascension to the women at the well.  At the house of Cornelius it would affect the Jewish culture, at the house of Cornelius the gentile culture, by the chariot of the Ethiopian eunuch an entire nation, and at the Temple the entire known civilized world at that time.

Revival changes entire communities, nations, and cultures.  In America The Great Awakening of Jonathan Edward’s time would change the existing American Puritanical church and evangelize an entire scattered frontier.  The Camp Meeting movements under Wesley would grow to over 1,000 of them in one summer.  The drive for righteousness would spur the “prohibition” movement causing alcohol to go underground until the revival fires would die and the church’s complacency would return before it would be repealed.  When revival is in its fruition, it changes the “culture” of cities, states, and entire nations.

The American church is great for programs and networking, trying to create a revival spirit, but usually falling short.  The later part of the 20^th Century saw the ecumenical movement trying to get everyone to “dialogue” in an effort to begin to break down religious walls and barriers.  In the beginning of the 21^st Century the emergent church movement tried to “network” churches and ministries in loose relationships rather than denominational bonds.  Now the social networking culture is forcing the church to think world wide rather than local, regional, or even national, so revival will take on a totally different form than it has in the past, probably in a world wide perspective.  Today’s social networking is in its infancy, also stressing even looser relationships while transcending today’s acceptable church norms.

So what form will revival take to this generation?  Will it be in the wilderness as in Jonathan Edward’s day or in the forests during Camp Meetings in Wesley’s day, on a lonely island as in Duncan’s day, or in farmer’s fields as in Jesus Rallies during the Jesus movement of the 1970’s?  Probably in none of these ways, because when social networking, I discover, at least on this blog, that I get “hits” from 1-4 a.m. in the morning, from the U.K. and Europe as well as from Australia & New Zealand and even Africa.  Our commonality is in the English language, or barriers are only time zones.  Our platform is not the isolated frontier, or the shade of the forests, or on blankets sitting in a farmer’s field, but on the platform of the whole wide world.  With that platform, true revival will not only touch localities and nations, but it could and should touch and affect the entire world. 

The revival Spirit of the 1^st Century touched the “entire known world” of Paul’s day.  The revival Spirit of the 21^st Century will also touch the “entire known world” of our day.  I have studied the great revivals of England and Europe and of America, but know little personally of the revivals in Africa and Asia, but they have also experienced revivals.  In a day when the Muslim religion looks as a threat to the Jewish and Christian religions, there needs to be a movement of God that transcends all of these religions whose heritage is traced to the same man, Abraham, and to the same God, the God of Abraham who went to sacrifice his son on what is today the Temple Mount. At the same geographical locations where the original Pentecost took place stand a Muslim Mosque, the Jewish Wailing Wall, a remnant of Herod’s Temple, and Golgotha, the site of Jesus’ crucifixion as well at the empty tomb at the base of the Mount.  Three religions all fighting for the same geographical square mile, yet holding world wide influence. Why couldn’t or wouldn’t God’s all powerful, all present Spirit transcend all three religions in the greatest revival in history to usher back Jesus’ Second Coming? 

America, quit being self centered, wishing for revival to hit only America.  Who knows what “world wide revival” will look like, nor the scope of its power, but church beware, prepare, and be open to what is about to occur: the greatest revival under the banner of the God of Abraham, through His Son, Jesus Christ, lead by the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ.  It will be in a new form.  You will be forced to accept it or reject it. Two at the millstone; one accepts one rejects. Who will you be?

New Winds; New Revival: Revivals Always Bring Misunderstandings!

To Understand One Another, The Generation Gap Linguistically Will Have To Be Bridged At The Cross

Revival usual occurs at the grass roots of the church out in the open, not behind their closed doors.  When it occurs, it produces tension between the “established” church and its mindsets with the “new movements” and what appears to be new mindsets.  The key for true, effective, powerful revival is to bring the two sides together.  In the 1700’s, Wesley misunderstood Whitehead’s attempts to go “out” to the coal mines to preach to the miners as they left work, criticizing him for not having them come “in” to the church to hear the gospel.  When the misunderstanding was cleared by Wesley not being able to deny the fruits of Whitehead’s endeavors, he embraced the new movement and took the lead in creating the outdoor Camp Meeting movement that revolutionized evangelism in America and help spearhead America’s Great Revival. If the misunderstandings are not cleared up, then the rival brings schism, division, and conflict in the body of Christ.

I recall the enthusiasm many of us in our twenties had when returning from an outdoor Jesus Rally in the mid-1970’s after hearing some inspirational teaching from a speaker who tried to encourage his youthful audience to grow in Jesus toward eventual church leadership.  He quoted the passage from Timothy that “it is good to aspire to become an elder.”  When our local pastor heard of it, he was shocked, offended, and threatened, thinking we were going to try to usurp his power and authority as pastor.  That was his pyramid, hierarchal mindset at the time. That was never our intention since we were only thinking horizontally, relationally, but that “misunderstanding” effected how we were allowed to “minister” at the local level.  

I can see the possibility of this same misunderstanding occurring during this next revival because of the generational gap at how each looks at leadership and accountability in the Church.  The “established” church thinks hierarchal like a business model while the “new thinking” group looks linear, horizontally relational.  Today’s many independent and megachurches have developed high control, low accountability models. The church leadership has tight control of those “under” them with not much of an umbrella, if any, accountability above them, especially if they follow a “strong pastor” format.  This is why my generation has seen so many “spiritual giants” fall from ministry.  This “turns off” many in the new movement who think linear, building relationships with other Christians, not caring about dogma, doctrine, and labels as much as “fellowshipping” with their peers, the living saints, under the banner of Jesus.  The rigid horizontal, pyramid church structure always collides with the vertical, relational, reform structure.  Only if both camps allows the other to intersect it (the horizontal and vertical), then you have THE CROSS.  Only at and through the CROSS of Jesus Christ can love, understanding, acceptance, and unity be found. 

As I have wrestled over the five fold ministry of Ephesians 4 over the last two decades, I always wondered how there could be unity from five completely different passions and points of view which historically always brought division. In my 20^th century church mentality I could not ever see or imagine how that could happen.  The vertical, pyramidal, 20^th century church structure would not permit it since they made each of the five fold ministries “offices”.  Senior Pastors now obtained the title of “apostle” or “prophet”.   How else would the church see it since the pyramid, hierarchal church structure was embedded in the church?  With this new wave of thinking horizontally, stressing relationship, I can see some daylight that there is a possibility for unity in the five fold if they are looked upon as points of view or passions for every believer in the priesthood of believers in Jesus Christ.  If relationships are built so strong in Jesus between members of the body of Christ that they are willing to embrace I John 3:16 of “laying down their life for the brethren”, then the groundwork would be laid. 

In the pyramidal, hierarchal structure that I have lived through, I can truthfully say that I do not know any brother or sister in the Lord who would actually lay down their physical or spiritual life for me, nor I for them.  I would “feel obligated” to do it for my “superiors”, my pastor and staff, but never for each other.  In the linear, vertical structured based on I John 3:16, it would become natural in building a deeper relationship with those in the body of Christ.  Through reciprocal “serving” of one another, trust would be built, and accountability would be established which the vertical, pyramid structure of leadership would not understand nor embrace, thus the conflict, misunderstanding, and division that revival normally produces.

It is my prayer and desire in these blogs to help bridge the gap between the old, 20^th century vertical structure with the new, 21^st century horizontal structure by having them “intersect” making a CROSS.  At that point of intersecting, at that point of allowing the supernatural vertical relationship with God the Father through His Son, Jesus, with the nurturing of the precious Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ, can the miracle of unity be found.  Both different points of view, different mindsets, different understanding can realize and understand that they are saying the same thing in Jesus, only linguistically different, for the kingdom of God principles are the same for both groups or camps.  That is why I think this upcoming revival which we are only feeling the birthing pangs, the beginning contractions, here in America, will be the birth of the Church maturing individually and corporately in Jesus Christ, the fulfillment of Ephesians 4.

New Winds; New Revival: Can The Church “Afford” Professionally Paid “Staffs” In The Future?

The Price of Professionalism

Kent R. Sterner of the churchdoctor.org fame wrote in his ebook “The Future Is Now: How God Is Moving In the 21^st Century Church” in Chapter 15: Church Staff A Dysfunctional Business Plan: “Staffing the church in the 21st century is going to change dramatically. The new economy is changing the way the world works…..  At the risk of sounding non- academic, the traditional approach for training church workers has outlived its sensibility. It is no longer possible for many to leave seminary with an $80,000 debt, take on a $40,000 annual salary, provide for a family of four, pay off bills, live near the poverty level, and function with a clear mind to accomplish adequate ministry…..  It is no longer economically feasible for the system to survive.”

Jesus never founded a Christian University, a Bible College, or even a Rabbinical School of Theology, or a Seminary; he just established a “relationship” with 12 unlikely “pastor/clergy” candidates with no academically  religious background, and invested in their daily lives.  Most of his candidates would rather go “fishing”, collect taxes for revenue, etc. than study!  Sounds like many people I know today! Through Jesus’ relationship with these 12 common men, the foundations of the Church was laid, not through an educational system establishing a hierarchy causing a clergy-laity division. Jesus just prepared 12 men relationally for a ministry that would defy the Sanhedrim of his day, the established pyramidal religious structure of his day, who would marvel at these “untrained men” who spoke and ministered with “authority” while relationally changing the world.

The Church has followed the secular thinking that “education” is what is needed to change social conditions. In a public school setting, I have seen course after course, seminar after seminar, lesson after lesson educating students about bullying as if that would change their conduct and behavior. It hasn’t.  It could change the way you think about bullying, but it can’t change a bully’s heart nor his need for power and domination or attention. Church, you know that only Jesus can change a person’s heart!  With a “change of heart” and building of a “relationship” with the bully personally on equal terms takes away his power. Problem solved. The Church has the answer to social ills, but does not exercise its power or influence spiritually or relationally. That mindset is changing with the “twenty-teeners,” those in their twenties and thirties during 20013-2019 years, who look for relational, horizontal answers instead of hierarchal dictatorial solutions that have failed in the past.

The “Log College” in Carlisle, PA was founded in a log cabin during the 1700’s to train “itinerate” preachers to become circuit riders who would ride their horses anywhere anytime to present the gospel to the frontier in direct opposition to the “established” colleges and seminaries of Princeton and Yale who majored in the academics rather than practical everyday relational experience. These “lowly” trained men with little academia would usher in the great “American Reformation”, the last “great” movement of God in America. according to Kent R. Sterner, to the awe of the established Sanhedrin of their day, the established American church.

Instead of “equipping the ‘saints for the work of service” as commissioned in Ephesians 4, the church has historically opted to “equip” the ‘called’ “saints for the ‘professional’ work of ‘staff development’” in a clergy laden hierarchy church structure.  Jesus never advocated a pyramidal structure of church leadership, rebuking his disciples for fighting over who would sit on his right or his left in the kingdom of god.  “Service”, a theme of Ephesians 4, is the key for kingdom of god development.  Jesus showed this when washing his disciples feet, for while on earth he came “to serve, not to be served,” he told them.  He never “lorded” over the 12 in his relationship with them on earth, but served them, thus the difference between secular thinking of leadership and the kingdom of god experience of leadership.

Instead of building a huge seminary, university, and college campus, in an effort to build a pyramidal, hierarchical church structure, the Church needs to rethink, restructure, and develop a relational horizontal structure of how to train, nurture, develop, care for, equip, release, and send out its believers, its priesthood of believers, to effectively propagate the gospel to all the diversity of cultures throughout this globe.

As “professional” Christians become unemployed Christians, being forced to going back to tent making like Paul in the 1^st century, they will become more in touch with those in the world around them. The distinctive divide between “the saints” and “the world” will become grayer as the Church becomes more influential in the world.  More non-churched people will be relationally socializing with church people instead of church people creating their own protective social bubble that is immune from the “world” as now exists.  My heart goes out for those who have followed today hierarchal church dream of entering the “professional” ministry while incurring tremendous debt while being “trained”.  Something is wrong with that picture.  The Church will have to revamp how it trains its believers (old church calls it discipleship) that will not have huge price tags and debt placed upon it.  Discipleship will be done “relationally”, not academically in the future Church.

Will we see the day when a church building closes because the congregation could not "fill the pulpit" because they could no longer "afford" their pastor or his staff?

New Winds; New Revival: A Challenge To The Roman Catholic Church

 The “Catholic” Church As Horizontal; The Roman “Catholic” Church as Vertical

If you ask any American Roman Catholic when the Charismatic movement, or Holy Spirit movement, was initiated into their church, they will tell you at Duquesne University of the Holy Spirit in Pittsburg, PA at a conference in 1967.  The Holy Spirit fell on a group of Catholics that would forever influence the Roman Catholic Church, even to the heights of its Pope, Pope John Paul II.  Even today, there is a charismatic branch with in the Roman Catholic church. Pope John Paul II embraced the role of the Holy Spirit ‘s influence on the Church, but I am not sure if the next movement of God will be as graciously received by those in authority within the Roman Catholic church structure.

The “twenty-teeners”, as I call the, those in their twenties and thirties during the years of 2013-2019 A.D., are embracing a vertical movement of God, one built on relationships, not hierarchal by position of authority with in the Church.  Through “conversations” in person or through the world wide internet, or telling their faith “stories” (old school church called them testimonies) while conversing with Christians and non-Christians in a social media patform, this generation is developing a system of horizontal networking through relationships now matter how strong or how shallow.  I can see the biggest opposition to this new movement of God coming from those religious systems built on hierarchy, a pyramid of power, affluence, and influence.  Unfortunately that is the backbone of the Roman Catholic Church as well as every Protestant denomination or independent church with strong clergy leadership. 

Recentgly the current Pope just set up his own “Twitter” account so that he can bless all his multitudes of “followers” several times a day.  It appeared to be his attempt at becoming “social networking” literate. I think he is missing the point of the power this technology because it is used by “normal everyday” people communicating on a platform to other “normal everyday” people, their peers, from a position of horizontal acceptance and availability.  There is no “pope” of social networking, no hierarchical structure one must follow when Facebooking, Google+ing, Tweeting, texting, MySpacing, or blogging. It is a horizontal means of peer communications.

I have the same platform as the Pope when social networking.  He may have more “followers”, but my voice is also out there and cannot be stymied unless Corporate Headquarters bans me from using their social networking product.  Taking someone off line will be the hierarchal attempt of controlling the vertical in the future if there is a “power” struggle.  Joe Smuck’s blog or Tweet or social networking message has as much validity as the Pope’s dictum in Latin on his Tweet or blog!  Hierarchically, that is a threat!

This has already been demonstrated when the hierarchical communist Chinese regime tried to ban certain social networking platforms realizing its influence and power among the “masses”.  They are looking at how to control the masses to hear only their political voice which opposes the many social networking voices on a vertical level.  Social networking’s power gives every user the potential to use their voice if anyone is listening and to listen to many other voices. Social networking is a threat to a hierarchal tyrannical political system. The dictatorial Arab leaders of the Middle East are finding out the power of the mass social networking platform through opposition from the “peoples’” movement  who are demanding more freedoms. One of the themes of the “twenty-teener” age is “less control” not more in direct opposition to hierarchal dictatorial structures.

Social networking is an advocate of the “priesthood of believers.”  In the New Testament, you never hear of a single “priest” in the kingdom of god, only a “priesthood” which means “many.” In the kingdom of god so many voices can be heard, but a corporate voice can, will, and must be heard, the voice of the Holy Spirit.  The “catholic” church’s voice, as advocated in the Apostles Creed, the universal Church of all believers, can and will be heard through social networking.  The Church can now hear from any believer anywhere in the world through today’s technology.  The “Word” does not have to come out of Rome or the United States or South Africa or some secluded monastery or cave in the Alps or even China, but from any believer in Jesus Christ who is technologically connected with the “world wide web.” 

That is why the “apostles’ teaching” must be restored to the Church, as mentioned in my previous blogs, for with so many different voices from so many different languages and dialect and with such diversity in the Body of Christ, the Church, a single message of simplicity and unity must be presented and heard.  Not a message from a “doctrinal” decree, but a message of unity from the Body of Christ through the flow of the Holy Spirit.  As you can see from my previous blogs, the purpose of the five fold in Ephesians 4 is to bring maturity in Christ to the individual believer as well as the Church as a whole.  The Holy Spirit will, can, and does speak with that singular voice directed from the throne of God.  The “universal catholic” church of all believers will hear, recognize, and obey that voice of the Holy Spirit in unity, not the dictatorial edicts and decrees from established hierarchal religious structures as the “Roman Catholic” church has practiced through the centuries. This is the new view, the new wind of revival, the new mindset of the 21^st century Church.

New Winds; New Revival: A Look At The Role Of Women

 “Old School” Church Bashing to “New School” Church Acceptance

As in all the congregations of the saints, women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission as the Law says.  If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church. I Corinthians 14:34

Submission in the kingdom of God is by “choice”; submission according to the world’s view is by “force”.  The Church has majored in “forcing” their women into submission for centuries, and the Jewish culture’s perspective even goes back further.  Paul, once Saul, the Pharisee of Pharisees, falls back into his pharisaical past by quoting “as the Law says” to justify his judgment. Paul, what happened to the “grace” of Jesus Christ? The “living” Jesus always extended “grace” rather than “judgment”; ask the woman caught in adultery, the woman at the well, the woman who touched the hem of Jesus’ garment, Mary Magdalene, and so many more recorded in the four gospels… gosh, they were all women who were extended grace.

What happens if the Holy Spirit decides to use “women” in its next movement of God? He has used them in the past!  Acts 2:17-18 records the prophecy found in Joel: “In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. You sons and daughters will prophesy…. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days.”  

Christ’s Time:  It amazes me that we, men, fail to recognize that in Christ’s time it was the women who had faith in the resurrection while the men doubted the resurrection’s validity having to “see it to believe it” (Mark 16:11, Luke 24:10-11);  that women had hearts of a servant while the men argued over authority rather than servanthood (Mark 11:35-37); women were forgiven and free to forgive (Luke 8:1-3) while men judged rather than forgive (Luke 8:36-39).  It was the Sanhedrin’s duty to pressure a women “suspected of unfaithfulness” to confess, then stone her, yet Jesus “forgave” a women “caught in adultery” eliminating every male from throwing stones at her.

Men, why are we still throwing stones at our women when Jesus forbad the practice centuries ago?  “He who is without sin” may throw the first stone.  Jesus, a sinless man, has been the only male to qualify, yet he chose “grace” over “judgment”.  If we are men of God, followers of Jesus Christ, then we should follow his lead and drop our stones and pick up our women in grace and acceptance.

20^th Century: In a country where culturally women are “forbidden” to lead, South Korea, Pastor Cho finds himself in a dilemma for his men are not responding to the Holy Spirit’s call for small group leadership in his local church, but the women do!  They start leading “small home groups” and the church explodes to over 750,000 people attending just one church!  I wonder how many of his peers quoted I Corinthians 14:34 to him then? He became a model for “mega-church” growth!

21st Century: The “twenty-teeners”, as I call them, those who will be active in the Church in their twenties & thirties during the years of 2013-2019, communicate horizontally.  Going through the hierarchical structure of “authority” and “rule” does not impress them, nor influence them. Papers and church rulings over procedural positions passed at church conferences or handed down from men in high church positions is superfluous to them. They see Christianity from a horizontal prospective of relationships (I John 3:16) rather than a vertical prospective of authority by position.  They see that we are not only to be “hearers of the Word”, but “doers” and recognize and follow the “doers”, not the talkers or dictators.  They don’t care the sex, race, social position, or occupation of the “doer”, but they just recognize and respect him/her for “doing”.  This is a different mind set for the establish church.  The “twenty-teeners” look at pyramidal structure as “Egyptian” and relational structure as “kingdom of God”.  If forced to choose, they will choose horizontal relationships.  

"Rivetting Rosie" of the 20th Century is now "Blogging" Betty of the 21st Cnetury!21^st Centuries view of women:  If the “twenty-teeners” look horizontally then “authority” by position becomes a nonentity. Who cares about “positions of authority”?  If women are serving, they are servants. If they have a following horizontally through relationships, then they are leaders because, by definition, a leader is only a leader if someone is following them.  I “follow” several Christian women who “blog”, so by definition, they are leading me, challenging me, prying me, prodding me along through Christian dialogue, sharing their faith journey with mine.  There is no “authority” question in their blogs.  By blogging on the internet, they are no longer in a “church building”, so by I Corinthians 14:34 standards, they don’t have to be quiet and only allow their husbands to blog. Like in Jesus’ time here on earth, they still have faith, still serve, still financially support, and still forgive and tell it through their faith stories, their journals of their faith journeys, their blogs. 

Today: Today’s Christian women “chooses” to “submit”, give of herself, to her husband, her Christian and non-Christian friends with whom she has built a relationship out of her relationship with Jesus Christ, not out of the bondage of authoritative hierarchical dictatorial authority from men cramming I Corinthians 14 down her throat, not as her peer or even friend, but as a power move of authority.  Church, when the winds of revival blow, the “old school” bashings need to stop, stone throwing must cease, and we must yield to grace through our relationship with Jesus Christ. “He who is without sin, throw the first (I Cor. 14:34) stone……” 

Who Is To Teach The Apostolic Teaching!

Probably A Person With An Apostolic Point Of View

So who is called to “teach” this apostolic teaching today?  Self proclaimed apostles who use to be bishops, or prophets who now claimed a “higher calling”, or senior pastors of huge megachurches or networks of independent churches? I am leery of titles in the hierarchal structure in today’s church.  I cringed when on web site there was Apostle Dr. So-in-so and his wife Prophetess Dr. So-in-so.  At the top of their hierarchal local church structure they both boasted higher educational degrees and titles to validate their superiority among their peers. They appeared to be super Christians.

The five fold is for every believer to believe in the supernatural invading and dissecting their natural world.  It is not for super Christians seeking labels and positions.  Even the disciples fought among themselves at who would sit on Jesus left and right in the kingdom, totally missing the whole kingdom of god principles Jesus was teaching them.  When the Holy Spirit came, and they allowed the Holy Spirit to be their teacher, they began to understand and live these principals as apostles, becoming the foundation of the Church.  This foundational teaching is called the “apostles’ teaching.”

An apostle sees “the big picture”, loves to put things in order, and loves to “release” people and their giftings to further the kingdom of god.  His teaching must reflect the big picture, a message that is universal to “the whole body” not just for sects within the body like is in Christianity today.  His teaching must reflect the divine order set forth by Jesus in all its simplicity, his mission in life recorded in the Old and New Testaments, his death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and ruling at the right hand of the Father. His teachings must also reflect a goal of “equipping the saints for works of service” but then “releasing them in their gifting” to further the kingdom. 

I personally do not believe an apostle has to be a paid clergy. An “apostle” is not a profession with a hierarchal job description. It is not a person with the most “seniority” in a local or regional body of believers.  It is a person, a common believer in Jesus Christ, who has the point of view of seeing the whole Church, the body of Christ, and a passion to release people already in that body to further the kingdom of god and set things in order for the return of Jesus Christ to a bride that is without spot or wrinkle.  The five fold are “spot” and “wrinkle” removers under the watchful eye of the apostle who “sees over” what the Holy Spirit is doing and follows that leading. 

So who is called to “teach” this apostolic teaching today? Like the gospel, the answer is simple: the apostle!  An apostle sees the universality of the Church, the power and influence of the Church working out its salvation corporately, being the Bride, preparing itself for its Groom, the return of the Lord Jesus Christ, while “seeing over” what the Holy Spirit is doing individually in the passions of the evangelist, pastor/shepherd, teacher, and prophet to bring corporate unity through the Holy Spirit and the Cross of Jesus Christ.

If there is ever a day the Church needs apostles, it is today, for only through them and their teaching  will we no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is Christ. Eph. 4:14-15

The Need For Apostolic Teaching!

Are You Tired Of Being Tossed To And Fro?

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is Christ. Eph. 4:14-15

In my youth I remember listening to a local religious station that had 15 minute blocks of teachers, constantly all day: preach, preach, preach.  Unless you were a Christian, I have no idea why you would listen to that station.  Almost everyone of them gave the “salvation message” and a call for “financial support from listeners like you.”  After several hours of various “salvation messages”, I remember Jimmy Swiggart’s program as something refreshing because it had to do with Christian growth and something different called the Baptism in the Holy Ghost with the evidence of speaking in tongues.  Well not much teaching could be done in fifteen minutes when five minutes was introduction and another five pleading for financial support, so he had to speak in “series” that may last all month.  As son as he was done, the next radio preacher to come on preached against the Baptism of the Holy Ghost, claiming the gifts died with the apostles, and Swiggart and others were examples of the “beloved” who were to be deceived in the end times as recorded somewhere in the book of Revelations.  This was followed by a Bible Prophecy program teaching from the books of Daniel and Revelation claiming that Henry Kissinger was the anti-Christ because if you studied the numerical Jewish alphabet the numbers from the letters in his name added up to 666.  What a fiasco!  And this was Christian radio!  This is what Christianity in America looked like?

Today, the internet has exposed Christianity as a hodge-podge of theology that divides and polarizes the body of Christ.  I watched a YouTube video of an affluent pastor talking about the different streams of the emergent church movement, pointing out their fallacies.  Although boasting to be more mainline historically, he refuted being a denomination or label, but actually a correct branch of the emergent movement. Are you confused? Of course his interpretation and his sect’s interpretation were the only “correct” interpretation. 

Every branch of Christianity feels they have the “truth” and all of the millions of believers world wide who do not share their views on theology are down right wrong somehow!  We even have Christian Talk hosts who love to pull witch-hunts on famous church leaders for the sake of so called truth by revealing heresies, false doctrine, and false teaching.  There life has become a crusade fighting everyone and anyone in the Church who is not under their theological umbrella.  Of course their views are never in error.

Are you tired of being tossed around and blown here and there by all these so called bible teachers and self proclaimed prophets as defenders of truth?  Whose right?  Are any of them on base? What good is Christianity if there isn’t basic doctrine?  Can’t we go back to the time the book of Acts was recording the “acts of the apostles” who had a simple message.  There was simplicity to the Christian message.  There was power in the Christian message.  There was unity in the Christian message because of what was called “the apostles teaching”.  The apostles taught the same message that Christ in the flesh had taught them and that the Holy Spirit taught them after Jesus’ ascension. 

I have come to realize that the salvation message is the same for those in a denomination church, or evangelical church, or denomination church, or emergent church, etc.: We are sinners in desperate need of a Savior, and Jesus is that Savior. It is that simple!

“Twenty-Teeners” Church Questions

 Drives My Generation of Christians NUTS!

“Where do we get the term ‘saved’ from?”

“Who invented the 4 Spiritual Laws handed out on tracts?”

“Where did the “sinner’s prayer come from?  Jesus never used it?”

“Am I not to tithe unto the Lord?  How is that tied into financing the church as an institution?

How dare the “twenty-teeners” ask such bold questions that seem to be at the essence of the 20^th Century Church’s thrust on evangelism.  Millions have been “saved” using the “sinner’s prayer”.  How dare they question its validity to our church’s cultural tradition.  I do remember when my children were smaller they asked a thousand questions which I thought was a positive experience because they were inquisitive. One of the first inquisitive words they learned was “why”, not to justify what was being done, but to know how things worked, the rationale behind it all.  Why should I be shocked now when they ask such pertinent questions? 

Questioning can be good; it part of the “twenty-teener” make up.  My generation of church leaders have become critical of Rob Bell because of his approach to questioning.  He just wrote a book about heaven and hell, and how his generation is questioning it from the standpoint of the Lord’s prayer of “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  Do we experience a little of heaven and hell already on earth? Rob’s questioning in this generations exploration of finding Biblical truth to their generation as C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce was to my generation.  I think there is a lot of common ground, but we are looking at it from generationally different points of view, thus questions.  It amazes me that Jesus did not use the lecture, alias sermon, approach when teaching as my generation does, but he is forever asking questions and speaking through parables, much of which this new generation is doing.  Could their approach to teaching be more Jesus centered than our way of teaching? Hmmmm…..

As a “church kid” it was hard for me to understand what “saved” meant because I had tried to live a righteous life under the church norms that I was taught by my parent’s generations.  I once wished I had been a junkie, a drug addict, been a pimp of a prostitution ring just so I had a good testimony of being “saved” from something drastic.  I thought being “saved” was turning from an old life through repentance and moving on in a new life, but found many of my friends returning to the altar to get “saved” again, or as they called it, “rededicating” their lives.  I thought to be “saved” meant a new beginning…. Now, through asking questions, I too am beginning to examine of the meaning of terms I just took for granted, instructed  never to question.

I’ve met the man who invented the 4 Spiritual Laws for Campus Crusade for Christ, who has gotten to the point of almost dispising them.  Yes, he found an effective way of evangelistically sharing the gospel to his generation during his time, but “canning” his approach over decades has become redundant and ineffective most times. I still remember seeing a 60 yard long paper trail of tracts thrown on the ground as litter at the York Fair. “But if one was saved, it was all worth it,” was the evangelistic cry of denial of its true effectiveness.

As for the sinner’s prayer, it may be something more of my generation. I had no idea of its origins so I went to the entrusted source Wikipedia which attributes is full thrust to 19^th & 20^th century evangelists like Dwight L. Moody and Billy Graham as well as Campus Crusade while also contributes to its weaknesses as not being Biblically based nor at times said in sincerity. I, personally, never said the sinners prayer to get saved, but knew God was real while sitting in the sunshine in a chair in our living room. My parents, coming from their generational bias, wondered if I had been “saved” because I never went forward in an “evangelistic revival meeting” at their local church.  I later discovered that John Wesley also “found” God as I had.  The “twenty-teener’s” questions about the sinners prayer may be more valid than I want it to be.

My children don’t question the Biblical principle of tithing, but question tithing to “what”. In his ebook The Future is Now: How God Is Moving In The 21^st Century, Kent R. Hunter of Churchdoctor.org fame says, “The flat world reflects the repulsion today’s young adults have for institutions that act institutionally. The key for understanding this is that if a church persists to be hierarchial, it will not attract young adults. This concept is reflected in the teaching of low-control/high-accountability.  Most churches from the modern era have become extreme, with layers of bureaucracy, politics, bylaws, rules and regulations, titles, offices and all the trappings of institutionalism. This does not fit the relation world that now exists.” They want to tithe, to the kingdom of God, but not to an institution with all its entrappings of building, maintenance, management, staffing, programs, etc. They want to be relational, not heirarchial.  Tithing to my generation usually supports a hierarchal system of pyramid professionalism.

So maybe all their inquisitive questioning is valid.  At least it is forcing me to look at it from a different point of view. After a while all the questioning about drives my generation nuts.  Hmmm, maybe they got us where they want us! LOL (as they would text)!