My answer was, “Because I graduated”.

You see I have been struggling for quite a while now. On one hand, I love and was raised by the church, to the point of leading my last church as pastor for sixteen years. On the other hand, I am able to see the inability of the traditional church (staff, property, programs) to meet the needs of sharing the Kingdom with the great big world around us. I have likened it previously to a war strategy. No military would ever plan to go to battle with one strategy – “Everyone stand in a line and shoot”. Instead they would have a front line, rear guard, flank, army, navy, airforce, marines, special forces, etc.  So no one strategy will work for the Kingdom of God either. The traditional church accomplishes what it can, but needs the help of all the other branches and forms of Kingdom expression.

Over the past few years, I have thought on my desire to develop another Kingdom strategy. This past week,  as I mulled over my frustration with trying to help people understand what has happened to me, a statement made by a friend of mine leapt into my mind. I remember Gary Aragon saying, “The problem with ‘church’ is that you never graduate”. So this past week it hit me…

“I don’t attend “church” any longer because I graduated”.

I have left the campus (strangely, that’s what it is popularly called today). I have gone into the field to work among those the Kingdom needs to be taken to.

This fits with what I hear all the time from believers. Just this past week my son said, “Dad I went to church and sat there thinking, ‘I have heard all of this a hundred times’”. It may be time for him to graduate.

As I look at my life now in the field, I do know that I need spiritual community. And I am finding it, but it looks nothing like church. The best word for what I seem to be doing community wise is “networking”. Just recently I have met other Kingdom people who share their need for the same thing. Strangely we just met at Starbucks. Each of us is struggling to find our way, each one missional and spiritual.

And now I feel a bit more able to communicate this strange voyage. I’ll write more the farther I get from shore.

We’ve all been there: you wake on Saturday after sleeping in a bit from a hard week at work. You wake up, grab some coffee, maybe spend some time with Jesus for awhile, and realize you have nothing to do for the day (or you just don’t want to do anything). You sit down on the couch, or in your bed, and turn on the TV–nothing on. So, you go to Netflix and pick out a movie. Then, a bit later, another movie. After that, even, you decide to start watching a TV series and wind up watching half a season at once. By now, it is 5:00 pm and you have accomplished nothing. Immediately you feel panic, shame, and guilt. You realized that you haven’t once done any spiritual activities for the day besides coffee with Jesus. You feel so far away from God, so disconnected. Immediately you begin to think of something to do, or to go, to get connected with Him once again. You find out via your church’s schedule that there is some sort of meeting tonight like for prayer, bible study, discussion, or worship music. You go to church feeling guilty; you do whatever is required in this meeting extra hard. You leave. You feel better once you leave, but by the time an hour or so goes by (or maybe the next day) you feel that guilt again, that disconnect.

If this hasn’t ever happened to you then stop, close your eyes, and think of a similar situation. Maybe you read half of a Harry Potter book in an afternoon, maybe you just hung out with your friends all day (but not discussed anything of a spiritual nature), played video games, or just plain slept and dozed all day. Then comes the above mentioned guilt, shame, and panic.

Now that you have placed yourself in that situation all over again (maybe you’re in it right now!) let’s go over the emotions that were experienced that day. 

Guilt

You feel guilty that you haven’t performed any of your regular spiritual duties for the day: reading the Bible, praying for others, witnessing, meditation, listening to sermons on your iPod, attending any church functions, or spoke with any Christian friends during the day (maybe you even ignored their calls!). In the back of your mind you feel as though God is looking down upon you with that same look your mother used to give you when she caught you doodling instead of doing homework. You move swiftly to “make it up” to Him. But now it’s too late, He is upset and probably won’t draw close to you until sometime tomorrow.

You have been told and taught, either by others or even yourself, that if you aren’t ‘doing’ then you aren’t growing. The goal of the Christian Life is not swelling our heads with theology, Greek or Hebrew, Bible memorizations  or the like. Also, it is not to strive and work for different emotional releases such as trying to ‘summon’ the Spirit for an emotional outpouring, to hop from one worship conference to the next seeking that release you experienced before, nor is it to discover your spiritual gift. (PLEASE READ NEXT PARAGRAPH BEFORE YOU EXIT THE PAGE)

Now please DON’T misunderstand me. I am not saying that any such activities are bad or that God isn’t in them. Often, He is there, but not always. Many seek to somehow gain a new ‘level’ of spirituality with such things (whether they call it that or not, it is indeed that for many), but never seem to obtain them. The latest theological disposition is forgotten, the Greek or Hebrew translation doesn’t offer what you were looking for, the hype and excitement from the worship conference has long faded in a matter of days.

So, the goal isn’t to swell the intellect, or to receive emotional overloads. For a small example on what that goal is, read a past post of mine titled, “Why are We to Bear Fruit? The Answer May Suprise You”

Shame

Shame is that feeling that is quite similar to guilt, but they are not the same. They are close relatives, however. Shame is that thing that causes us to hang our heads low and to dwell on failures for long periods of time. Shame causes us to believe that we are failures at living the Christian life, failures at living up to the standards that we and others place upon us, and makes us believe that we will never ‘get it right’ no matter how hard we try. I would say that guilt leads to anxiety but shame leads to depression. Clinically, these two conditions often coincide with one another when an individual is diagnosed with Depression.

We feel dirty, contaminated, and compromised by our failures and shortcomings. Our outlook on our walk with Christ is dim and fading. Many times, shame leads us to believe that we deserve any bad thing that happens to us.

“My car broke down. Well, that’s what I get for not praying enough.”

“I got laid off from work. God is disciplining me for not being committed enough to His Word all last week.”

“I can’t get through this situation at work right now. I knew I should have studied my memory verses! This is what I get.”

…and on and on it goes, all day, every day. Millions upon millions of your brothers and sisters suffering needlessly! Is that what we think God has in store for us who believe? God is good, right? I find it interesting how we can sing those songs on the radio about how Jesus crucified our sin and bore our shame, almost in tears, but we forget those words in our daily comings and goings. 

He bore, not only your sins, past and future, but also your shame. In that view of things, I pose a question: Did Christ ever intend for us to feel shame after He died and resurrected? When God created Adam and Eve, was it His intention for them to feel shame? Remember, it wasn’t until after the first sin did either of them feel shame due to their nakedness. We would be wise to remember what God did directly afterward, He came looking for them, they were the ones that hid.

Panic

By us attempting to somehow ‘make up for it’ we go into panic mode. We do one or more of the spiritual activities that were mentioned at the beginning of this post. The problem with panic is it really doesn’t take us anywhere. Because we begin to perform certain activities out of panic or fear, our heart is not actually in anything we are doing. We are mechanizing our walk with Jesus by doing, acting, and performing because our ‘checklist’ hasn’t been fully completed for the day. We have turned our lives with Christ into an hourly employee system. We fear being fired, so we try to do the right thing. We hope to reach certain goals for some type of reward. We think more time means more payout. But this isn’t the case.

So What am I Saying?

The guilt, shame, and panic we fall into are completely unwarranted and not from God. I have never seen anywhere in Scripture, especially the New Testament where a fruit of the Spirit is either of these. In my mind, these three are simply subcategories of something larger—fear. I think we all know what the Bible has to say about that.

Also, guilt and shame only come from accusation. God has never been called the ‘Accuser of the Brethren’. You and I are the ones that accuse ourselves, we are the ones that accuse others also. Typically, we accuse those who have similar struggles more than we accuse others. Not only are we the accusers, but the devil himself is! So, he is called the Accuser of the Brethren, but also his name is a direct translation to ‘liar’ or ‘deceiver’. So, if he is a liar and deceiver and at the same time an accuser, then wouldn’t that mean that his accusations are inherently a lie?

My point is this: God isn’t staring down at you recording every mistake you make. He isn’t up there beating His head against a wall at every shortcoming and failure that you walk in. Also, He’s not a Dad that abuses us, accuses us, or puts us down. Remember the words of Jesus and the apostles all throughout their letters, “Love one-another,” “Treat others as you would be treated,” and “Encourage one another, don’t bite and devour each other.” This is what He has to say to us when it comes to treating our fellow man, and especially our fellow brother or sister. This is such an emphasis because this is how God Himself treats us!

Your sins and mine have been crucified by Christ. Not only that, we must not forget that He also bore our shame and guilt on the wooden stake as well. So, He took it, He wore it, and now “it is finished.” We simply need to come more fully into this reality. One more quick word, the more we come into this reality the less likely we are to judge and mistreat others, and we are able to walk in that Love that Paul speaks of in 1 Corinthians 13.

I think a song called Adore by my good friend Blake can conclude this post very well. Take a listen HERE. You can download the entire album HERE.

Amen

-Michael Young, 2013

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The New Testament teaches that the church is like a human body and that each person is a member of the body and needs the other body parts to function.  However, in spite of the Bible’s analogy, church meetings have been traditionally set up where only one body part, called the pastor, priest, preacher, or minister, does all of the functioning.

Back to the human body analogy, this is like a person who is completely paralyzed except for his mouth.  Obviously, that person is severely restricted compared to how he/she is meant to be.  The same with the church.

Church is meant to be God’s symphony, conducted by the Holy Spirit, where many parts play many instruments, not randomly or independently, but as led by the Conductor.  What a tragedy that instead of a glorious symphony, church has been traditionally set up to be the same instrument solo, week after week, year after decade after century.

Perhaps it’s time we break out of the mold and let the church be what the Scriptures teach that it is — the freely functioning body of Christ.  One person starts a song, one gives a testimony, one prays a prayer — we’re all God’s symphony!

If you live in Nashville, you can experience this first hand at The Salvation Army Berry Street, 225 Berry Street, 37207, on Sunday mornings at 10:45.

I deduce that Dr. Seuss had a mind that was loose as a goose and he put it to good use to produce and unloose profuse encouragement to spruce up (and juice up) kids minds and introduce them to creativity. He needed no excuse to cut loose and produce rhymes — putting together such random words as duce, truce, zeus, moose & mousse, recluse, Bruce and caboose, and even overproduce and reintroduce.

“Innovators focus on the verbs. They’re proactive. They’re energetic. Innovators set out to create, to experiment, to inspire, to build on new ideas. Their techniques may at times seem unusual, but the results can be truly extraordinary.” Tom Kelley, The Ten Faces of Innovation.

Experience 21st Century, Christian innovation @ The Salvation Army Berry Street, 225 Berry St., Nashville, Tennessee, 37207 on Sundays @10:45.

Creative, out of the box thinking, has brought tremendous advancements to society.  However one group in society seems stuck in the box of routine and tradition — the Christian church.  Perhaps it is time for the church to believe beyond the bounds of the familiar — to color outside the lines — to be visionary.  God has some novel ideas!

Why not reinvent the Sunday morning church service (while still being faithful to biblical theology)?  We believers could move beyond Sunday morning established procedures and do some Walt Disney style imagineering.

This is happening at The Salvation Army Berry Street in Nashville, Tennessee.  We are believing beyond the box of routine religion and reinventing the Sunday morning church service. If you are in Nashville, come and see for yourself.  Experience Spirit-led, nonconforming, open sharing and testimony, as everyday people eloquently show and tell what God has done — Sundays @ 10:45; 225 Berry St., 37207.

The Fulcrum Declaration

God calls humanity to be faithful stewards of his creation — including those institutions and spheres of human endeavor God has ordained for humanity’s benefit — and bestows individual gifts sufficient to fulfill that mandate in each age and culture.

The challenges of our age are skepticism, relativism and declining virtue arising from post-modern world views. We seek to use the gifts God gives us to meet those challenges by promoting objective, Judeo-Christian standards of truth, goodness and beauty.

To achieve this goal, we affirm that:
1. All human life has intrinsic dignity, worth and meaning because God created us in his likeness and image to be faithful stewards over all aspects of his creation on earth.

2. Our aptitudes, skills, vocations and wealth are part of God’s personal call to ministry, because they are manifestations of the individual gifts that God has bestowed upon us. Our duty is to develop and use those gifts in fulfillment of God’s stewardship mandate.

3. God is the supreme creator, lawgiver and judge over all individuals and nations, and is the supreme provider to those who individually or collectively love, trust and obey him. Despite humanity’s rebellion and the effects of sin, God remains sovereign over our individual lives, nations and history.

4. Although God grants individuals and nations the nominal right to reject his grace and to suffer the consequences of indifference and sin, his ultimate purpose in history — to redeem creation and humanity from the taint of sin — will not be frustrated. Although we may not perceive the efficacy of God’s providence in every particular, our lives have context and meaning as we submit to his grace, enter into intimate and life-giving fellowship with God, conform to his precepts and use our gifts to fulfill his stewardship mandate.

5. The great historic doctrines and creeds of the Church provide the Biblical framework necessary to fulfill God’s stewardship mandate. We therefore have confidence in God’s sovereignty, absolute truth as revealed in Scripture, God’s unmerited and efficacious grace, the essential and uninterrupted role of the multifaceted, multi-gifted Church — as the Body of Christ — in history, the progressive advance of God’s covenantal Kingdom as men and women of good will labor to redeem all aspects of creation through the application of God’s precepts, the concurrent opposition and escalation of evil, and the ultimate triumph of God’s Kingdom at the culmination of history.

6. Consistent with God’s triune nature, we are created for fellowship with God and for community with each other. Society and the five fundamental forms of government – self, civil, voluntary associations, church and family – are part of God’s created order for the benefit of humanity.

7. God, who created all yet transcends all, is the only ultimate and authoritative source of objective truth, goodness and beauty. The qualities of virtue embody those absolutes, because they emanate from the very nature and character of God. They are built into the very fabric of creation, and are foundational for all societies that value liberty.

8. Redeeming our nation, culture and institutions involves more than simply impacting the State, politics and the law; it also entails rebuilding the foundations of virtue by becoming creatively engaged through our individual gifts in the full range of human endeavors — including the arts, the media, the professions, enterprise, charity, education and community service, to name just a few.

9. We do not seek to impose virtue on our society through coercion or totalitarianism, but trust that God in his sovereignty is able to bear fruit as we, in obedience to God’s stewardship mandate, uphold and proclaim virtue. God is covenantal and blesses those people whose hearts are turned to him and righteousness, rather than those who have God and righteousness imposed on them.

10. As beings created in God’s image, we have been given the faculties of reason and creativity. Reason and creativity divorced from revelation, however, lead to the nihilism and despair of post-modernity. Although humanity may dimly perceive objective truth, goodness and beauty as manifestations of God’s handiwork in nature, God in his mercy has brightly revealed in scripture those precepts that are minimally necessary for our well being. Understanding how to apply those precepts to the specific challenges and issues of our age requires wisdom, scholarship and humility.

11. The defining character of post-modernity is relativism, which embraces skepticism because it rejects objective truth, goodness and beauty. Through our laws, courts and other institutions, post-modernity increasingly is leading to tyranny as it seeks to supplant all other world views. As a result, decency is censured and decadence becomes normative.

12. Against the tyranny of post-modernity, true liberty is possible only when the five fundamental forms of government — self, civil, voluntary associations, church and family — stay within their separate jurisdictions as ordained by God. For our society to endure and flourish, each form of government, within its proper limits, must once again practice righteousness, promote virtue and resist vice.

13. It is the particular duty of civil government to defend the virtuous, punish evildoers and protect the separate roles of society’s other forms of government. While the State has no authority to dictate piety or personal belief, and the Church should not exercise State power, it is the proper role of the State to promote virtue. Separation of Church and State does not mean that law must be divorced from virtue or that virtue has no role in civil government.

14. We reject the myth of neutrality. To be cohesive, all law must be rooted in a particular world view to the exclusion of all other world views. Each world view is defined by its presuppositions. Presuppositions are a world view’s most fundamental values and beliefs. There are no neutral presuppositions, and all presuppositions are based on assumptions that must be accepted on faith. It therefore is duplicitous for the State, under the guise of neutrality, to supplant Judeo-Christian presuppositions and values with secular presuppositions and values that are nothing more than a competing, authoritarian belief system.

15. A presupposition of post-modernity is the paradoxical but absolute belief that there are no absolutes. Post-modernity therefore seeks to exclude objective, transcendent standards of truth, goodness and beauty from our culture, institutions and laws. Only a Judeo-Christian world view, in all of history, has been successful in affirming necessary social standards while also protecting, as one of its standards, individual diversity of belief, conscience and piety.

16. Tangible consequences follow from the world view a society chooses, and daily we witness post-modernity’s inevitable bitter fruits of nihilism, despair, moral decay, broken homes and shattered lives.

17. The challenge for the Church today is to raise a prophetic voice against personal and social nihilism, alienation and despair — while concurrently proclaiming God’s grace and the beauty of virtue. The Church must also nurture individual discipleship under the lordship of Christ within a community of faith, and equip Christians to use their gifts in service to God, each other and society.

18. We reject subjective “me-focused” theological fads, dualistic Gnosticisms that limit our faith to “spiritual” matters while neglecting the “secular” and “material” world of our day-to-day existence, and pessimistic eschatologies of retreat, defeat and escape. Such notions may be popular in our age, but rob Christians of our heritage and destiny. They provide no hope for our individual lives or culture, or any basis — beyond evangelism — for Christians to engage the world. As such, they are antithetical to the lordship of Christ and God’s progressive redemption of not only individuals, but also whole cultures and nations.

19. It is imperative that the Church move away from its program-oriented mentality, performance-based worship, podium-focused services and “clergy” dominated ministry. We must recapture the New Testament pattern of: (i) equipping all believers to effectively serve and minister under our full range of unique gifts and callings; (ii) being the church through authentic participatory fellowships where we share the Lord’s supper, minister one to another, and express the joyous, multifaceted life of Christ in us, among us and through us to each other and a watching world; and (iii) regional unity as we cooperate to reach, bless and impact our cities, towns and localities as members of Christ’s diverse Body.

20. As Christians, we are committed to engaging our society in the great debates of our age. While remaining faithful to our own distinctive beliefs, we labor together with all who seek to redeem our nation, culture and institutions by upholding objective standards of truth, goodness and beauty.

Used with permission from Fulcrum Ministries
(http://crossroadjunction.com/fulcrum-ministries)
(c) Copyright 2012 All Rights Reserved.

This is now apart of this blog

Jim Mazzulla  (G-mail: jim@goproclaim.com)

However, when people surrender to and obey God’s promptings, an amazing demonstration of the Presence of the living, resurrected Jesus Christ begins to come together as individuals (led by the Spirit) show and tell what God has done.

When church is a platform-controlled, one-man pulpet show, people become passive spectators. However, when the ordinary people present, as active participants, begin to obey the promptings of the Holy Spirit (like puppets animated by the hand of God), Christ’s power and Presence pervade the place. And it’s awe-producing!

Here’s a quotation from Paul of Tarsus that describes how this worked in the First Century Church:  “If everyone is prophesying, when an unbeliever or an uneducated person comes in he will be convicted and examined by everything that’s happening.  His secret, inner heart will become known, and so he will bow down to the ground and worship God, declaring, ‘God is truly among you!’” –1 Corinthians 14:24-25 (ISV)

This has actually happened several times at a participatory church in Nashville — The Salvation Army Berry Street.  The woman dressed in red, who is being prayed over in this picture, only came to Berry Street one time.  As far as we could tell, no one present knew who she was.  As people various people shared and testified, as led by the Spirit, she began to share secrets from her heart and then let us gather around and pray for her.  The Spirit deeply moved us all.  Many were in tears.  And we all knew that God was among us.

Come experience this for yourself — 225 Berry Street, 37207 — on Sundays at 10:45 am.

Suoer Guru

The Making of a Super Guru

Some gifted men and women of God are unfortunately elevated to super-guru-status in the Body of Christ. Be they world renowned or local favorites, some individuals are treated as though they were a cut above everyone else. Sometimes it’s in part their doing, fueled by how they carry themselves, but it’s always as a result of how they are perceived by those around them. In other words, they are never totally self-made.

I am not saying that men and women of God cannot be greatly used by God and in some cases become world renowned. But, when these individuals are treated with more reverence than everyone else and people dance to their every tune and hang on their every word then they have gone seriously off track. This often appears as a form of honoring, which it may be, but this type of über-honoring is exclusive to them and is not only counter to God’s design, but also cripples the Body of Christ. (For more on this see my post, No Rank, Only Roles in The Body of Christ.)

Those positively affected by the teachings of an individual, or the signs and wonders associated with them, or even by the love they’ve received from them, easily fall prey to follow, and even elevate, a human and not Jesus Himself. People seem to fail to see that when they were touched through these individuals that it was Christ who touched them and that apart from Christ these individuals had nothing.

Sometimes, these gifted men and women are innocent of creating this super status given to them, and it’s simply the carnality of those in the church that helps make super-gurus out of people. The church in Corinth had this problem with some saying,“’I follow Paul,’ or ‘I follow Apollos,’ or ‘I follow Cephas,’” (1Cor.1:12), and Paul spoke strongly against this. Others carry themselves in a way that demands superior treatment and people fall for it. John spoke a certain “Diotrephes, who loves to have the preeminence among them” (3John1:9).

Church created super-gurus can easily fall into the trap of enjoying this status given to them.  And, then, somewhat deluded, these gurus find support and defense for their delusion from their followers. This cult-like following that arises reinforces the sense that the delusion is truth and creates a feeling of security for those caught in it.

Nip it in the Bud

It’s one thing expecting a reasonable man to be accountable to others in the Body of Christ and God’s word, but far harder a deluded one, and then on top of it, supported by a band of deluded followers. Now, I’m not talking about those we generally all think are whacko, but rather the gifted men or women, pastors, teachers, etc. who are pretty much on the straight and narrow with their views. It’s by allowing these individuals to speak and act with an air of superiority and the false notion of God-given preeminence, or by allowing them to be thought of in such an elevated way that we help to create these untouchable personas.

Many a regular pastor, Christian teacher and blogger have been tainted by this to some degree or another, but it becomes easily magnified in the more well known “apostles”, teachers, etc. We are responsible for creating and allowing this problem and we need to nip it in the bud before it begins. Nip it in the bud in your own thinking about gifted people. And, nip it in the bud in the way you carry and think about yourself. Deal with it in your fellowships when you hear people wrongly elevate others.

Personally, I don’t kowtow to hierarchy in the church anymore or to illustrious gurus. I disdain any hierarchy in the Body of Christ and also this guru culture that feeds this problem. These are the ways of the world that we have brought into the church and that causes partiality, the unhealthy dependence on individuals and is the cause of people going astray.

Rob

A few weeks ago there were a number of things that were being stirred within my heart concerning  Jesus and His Church. I felt and still feel an aching pain within. I closed my eyes at evening and laid my head on my pillow and then I saw and felt a vision well up within my heart.  I could see Jesus being baptized in the Jordan and the Spirit of God descending upon Him as a dove, and then I heard the Father speak ‘this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.’   I knew deep within that we are one with Christ.  I saw how the reality of this complete oneness with our Lord in His death, resurrection, and assention to the right hand of the throne leads to the fact that it is impossible to start a church.  It can’t be done, because His church was born in heavenly places, when Jesus sat at the right hand of the Father and just as the Spirit came upon Him as a dove, after baptism, so His Spirit came upon and within the 120 disciples and literally, forever joined us to Him and Him to us. One Body Forever, even as the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are forever One, and throughout all generations even until this present day. You can’t start a church, you can’t plan or draw up a Church model for 1 Corinthians 12:12 states, ‘For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is The Christ, The Messiah.’  He is the expression of the Father, completely one with the Father, shining the radiance of the Father’s glory and exact representation of the Father’s nature, yet He is the Son and not the Father. It is an eternal mystery of reality, so deep, so profound. For even Isaiah, the prophet prophesied and described Yeshua as ‘Eternal Father’. So it is with us, we are Christ, completely one with Him, eternally entwined, shining forth His radiance and His nature even as Paul said, through the Spirit, ‘we are His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all’. This is also a mystery, deeply profound. We are not God, yet the Church is Christ, the fullness of Him, filling all in all. Without us, Christ wouldn’t be complete, just as without the Son, the Father wouldn’t be complete. Christ in us, the Hope of Glory. Him in us and we in Him. It is the eternal oneness of God’s eternal purpose and something that human intellect, even the Christian/Messianic intellect will never understand. It must be seen in the Spirit. It must be seen from the standpoint from before the foundation of the world, the first community, the unity of the Father, the Son and the Spirit beholding each other, loving each other, fellowshipping with each other outside of time and outside of space. For even the concept of time did not yet exist. It is best described as ‘I Am’. ‘I Am that I Am’. And this is our birthright, the day we were saved, delivered from Egypt, and brought into the kingdom of God when the Son came to live in our spirit and we were planted in the Son. This is the reality of the church, universal and local. How can that be started? Impossible. God birthed this reality the day we called upon His name and now the seed of His Life dwells within our spirit. Now it’s a matter of gathering together to call upon our God in united prayer and intercession thus allowing the living God to share His eternal heart with us.  Paul speaks, “Pray without ceasing.” United Prayer is the secret to the heart of God. Also the right environment of freedom in the spirit needs to be cultivated for the Son to shine and the Water to flow, thus allowing Christ to be formed within us as we pick up our cross and enter into the sufferings of our Lord, for He Himself learned obedience through suffering. And all this is preparing us for the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, preparing us for the eternal wedding where we will forever  be married to Jesus!   Jesus speaks, ‘As the Living Father sent me and I live by the Father, so he who eats of me will also live by me.’ This is the way of simplicity and purity in devotion to Him. All other things that take place in her walls will spring forth from this foundation of prayer and fellowship, but we must not stray away from the foundation and get complicated. This is our heart. It’s what God put in our heart.

So, how can church be started? It can’t. ‘Man starts things, but the living God gives birth to them.’ It’s also a matter of praying for hungry hearts to gather together under His Head as His Body, the fullness of Him, and share His Life in a free and living way through each individual member and all the different wonderful personalities, and partake of the Lord’s Table together, the Lord’s Agape Feast that speaks and reveals all these eternal realities.   Family Community Gatherings that are centered around the Lord’s Table. The Lord’s Agape Feast is a family celebration of our joyful anticipation of the Wedding Banquet of the Lamb; Our King calls, “Come and dine at Thine Table of Unity, Come and Dine.” The Bread speaks of The Messiah, our Lord, being broken for us, thus filling us with His Life. As we partake of Him He gets larger in us and through us. His nature becomes our nature and the cup, which speaks of the New Covenant is His blood. His blood now flows through our veins. So, whatever happens to Him happens to us, and whatever happens to us happens to Him. When somebody speaks against Him, they speak against us and when somebody speaks against us, they speak against Him. We have been washed clean from our sins and have been made One with Him. The Church can never be started. This is our heart, the way of simplicity. It is what brings light, life and lightness to our whole being. He says He is the Life and He is our Life. He is All in All. May it really be so in our hearts through brokenness. May this reality grow and may we see Her, The Church, Kehilah, coming forth through death just as an Acorn tree springs forth from the germ of one single acorn whose outer shell has been broken, thus the life within is released, and falling into the ground this little seed becomes a tree.

Yours in our beloved Lord Jesus the Messiah

Rather than being the center of attention and running the church service from the podium; perhaps a church pastor could be like a basketball official:  1) Stay out of the limelight; 2) Keep a close watch on what is going on; and 3) Only take actual control of the church meeting if something disrupts the Spirit’s leadership. 4) Then correct the meeting’s misdirection; 5) Turn the meeting back over to the Holy Spirit; and 6) Fade back into the background.

If you would like to see a basketball-official-style church meeting, visit The Salvation Army Berry Street, 225 Berry St., Nashville, 37207 on Sundays at 10:45.