buildings suck!?

So I am the worst consistent blogger the world has ever seen! Thanks everyone for encouraging comments about this blog though..I intend to get back into it this Jan!

I will get straight to the point of what prompted me to start blogging again today... [on New Years Eve of all days!? and when I should really get packed and showered as I leave to go away in under two hours!]....one of my Form "huddleees"; the amazing Franklin Mason sent me a book today called Pagan Christianity. I am sure that a lot of it I will agree with but the first chapter has made me kinda frustrated and confused.

The whole book is about how most of our Christian practices are not biblical and in fact are more sinisterly influenced by pagain practices and therefore we should not be doing them. The first chapter is all about church buildings and how we should not have church buildings for a number of reasons. The book so far is very weak in convincing me that we should not have church buildings...its main reasonings seem to be the following:

1. The early church did not have buildings. So what? They couldn't have buildings because it was illegal to be a Christian, let alone build a church. Yes we must learn from the principles of the NT church in terms of community and not having a building as the focus of our community but this is niot a strong enough argument to do away with church buildings.

2. Jesus predicted the destroying of the temple and when he cleared the temple it also pointed to his anger at the temple even being there. This is simply a pants argument [sorry frankie!]. The fact that Jesus overturned the tables in the temple argues almost in favour of buldings having at least some level of importance to God. Nowhere in that passage does it infer that Jesus is angry at the building being there. Ridiculous.

3. Buildings were brought in by Constantine for his own gain and building "temples" was a move by Christianity to copy Paganism. To debate about Constantine is a massive area that I cannot really go into but again...so what? Why must our response be "buildings are bad?" As far as Christianity copying paganism - have the writers [Frank Viola and George Barna] read the Old Testament? Whole books [i.e. Numbers] are about the building of the temple and tabernacles...Paganism has hardly had the monopoly on buildings...the Bible is full of them. Obviously with Christ the new overtakes the old and we now have Christ in us and we do not need to go to a particular place to meet God; we have the Spirit. Similarly in John 4 Jesus said to the Samaritan woman that no longer would people need to worship in a particular place but would worship in spirit and in truth.

The issues surrounding the use of church buildings in the church is not going to be argued away by saying that buildings are pagan and therefore we should get rid of them. That to me sounds so religious! God can use and work through anything and everything - including "pagan buildings." The issue for the church today is whether they are going to care more about the buildings than the community inside them AND the people not meeting inside them. In the circles of Christians I generally find myself in I rarely find someone who genuinely thinks they must go to a sacred building to meet with God.

Buildings are not necessary for church but they are necessary for life and as long as they are viewed properly surely they can be a help rather than a hindrance to the kingdom of God. Buildings are where people can be fed and clothed, where people can be rehabilitated; others can be taught and trained so they can go out and plant oragnic churches. Buildings can be a place of prayer, a place to go to get away from the messiness and jobs and computers and TVs we find at home that distract uis form spending time with God.

If we want to see revival in this nation it will most likely come through Organic Churches - because its a multiplication method [read the book Organic Church] not an addition method [like Alpha etc]. However to sustain such an evangelisic method and see continuity in this we need centres for training, for healing, for rehab, for prayer, and for meeting. Being at St Thomas Church Philadelphia is brilliant because the buildings generally are not that nice and are certainly not a focus or an ideal and yet they are used for amazing things...young people can meet there, assylum seekers can come, single mums, children, students. Its only if we cared about the buildings more than these things that we have a theological and biblical problem. Buildings are not pagan - people can be! and they don't need a building to be.

sowing and reaping

I am a big believer in adopting evangelistic and missionary tools that are culturally appropriate, spirit led and I am so grateful to the emerging church and fresh expressions movements for pointing out that we need to Go and adapt to the people rather than make people adapt to our church structures. However I am increasingly challenged about what this actually looks like in my everyday life. We must not stay in a place of reflecting and discussing and grappling with the question of mission at the expense of losing an intentiality in our evangelistic action. We must act, we must step over a line.

How bizzarre the days we are living in...VAT down to 15%. When did that last happen? We are in an opportune season with Christmas coming, a new year not far off and so much in the media to make people think about life and its meaning. After Christmas the buses we have probably all heard about with the humanistic slogan "God probably doesn't exist so stop worrying.." on will be driving about the place. This really is a time to step up, be diligent, devote ourselves to the kingdom, pursue a deeper relationship and be intentional and active in our evangelism. For me at the moment this is potentially swallowing my pride a little and engaging in some more bog standard evangelistic methods but hopefully bringing the edge of the spirit and the mix and creativity of what the emerging church movement encourages us to do. Please pray for an event I am doing called Carols and Cappucino which is an evangelistic carol service for students in a starbucks in town on December 16th.

So sowing and reaping...we have so many strategies and compared to a few years ago we are so much ebtter at sowing into peoples lives thoughts and little tid bits about Jesus. It used to be standard to be afraid to do this. However most of us are kinda getting the hang of this [if you are still working on this side too sorry...go for it!]. However do we have faith to actually reap and see people move much closer to Jesus? Are we expecting this to happen this Christmas for someone?

Grace: Effort and Earning

"Grace is not opposed to effort but it is opposed to earning." I heard this recently in a talk on Galatians 4. A very regular featured discussion within my own thoughts has been how to balance striving and being passionate for God. I have come to realise that the answer is not a balance but whether you are free or not from a religious mindset and if you have embraced the message of grace. If you are caught in the middle you are simply not fully free and need to press in for that freedom. As I write this I am so amazed at how much God has freed me from all legalistic tendencies that I cannot even enter into the mindset I used to have to blog about it! I can't recall what it was like to feel I have to do something in order to be acceptable to God. I know that I know that I know that he loves me just the way I am.

So if grace is not opposed to effort then that means that the other extreme of "oh I am not going to spend time with God coz its all about grace" is also a lesser form of living than God wants for us. I believe we cannot have the mindset that God will spoon feed us or drop everything into our plates because he is "graceful." That is not grace in my view. Jesus came and lived like us to show us what grace can achieve in us if we partner with the Holy Spirit and let God channel through us all of heaven. This requires a transformation of the mind and a dedication and passion to seeking God, being intentional about being alligned with heaven and occupying and receiving all that is legally ours because of the cross. There is no SHORTCUT to this except effort, prayer, stepping out in faith, failing, study and all the other glorious spiritual disciplines. This MUST NOT be confused with striving to earn God's affections.

We must also acknowledge that there is such a warfare against us in this journey. The enemy does not want us to pursue all this. In fact I believe the enemy has probably given us this false view of grace that means we don't pursue God, or put any energy in and as a result we see not near enough kingdom activity as we could do.

How about grace with each other? For me at the moment this is the battle ground. God is pruning the socks off me at the moment in relation to accepting the grace others want to give me and also realising I can't earn the affections of others - well I can but it is a tiring and ungodly way to live. I am letting go.

I have the lovely Sarah Bailey staying at the moment. She is hanging out with Form and soaking up the atmosphere at Philly.

...it's been awhile

Well I really did not want to have a boring blog that is rarely updated so I am ashamed at the way I have not written for nearly a week. It has been a busy week although thats a silly excuse - when do I not have a busy week!?

I had the lovely Rachel Kelly staying last weekend - we had fun doing myers briggs [sorry I am a St Thomas' loser now! but proud of it]. http://www.myersbriggs.org/I have the lovely Sarah Bailey coming for two weeks from Sunday.

The word thankful simply does not express my gratitude or sense of awe towards God at the moment. I am truly humbled at his mercies to me in so many ways. God truly wants us to "have life, and have it to the full." John 10:10. We often quote this verse in relation to how and why we may do evangelism, we may use it in a conversation with a non-churched person. However I seldom have used the verse in relation to me. [You may not have had this same blindspot - it could just be me!]

I am receiving some great mentoring at the moment and something I have been working through and pondering are where am I experiencing counterfeit freedoms? Where am I dealing with something or experiencing something and on one level it seems good and godly, but on another level it is not the highest heavenly level of freedom or expression of life to the full that Jesus wants for me. The enemy will give us some levels of victory, some levels of freedom as long as we "leave it there." We must be tenacious in seeking the life to the full that Jesus has for us in order to truly live how we were meant to live.

It's a cliche but its true that the good is the enemy of the best. I am devoted to seeing revival in this nation and it's going to happen through Christians who are living and walking in the fullness of the freedom of God. Creation is groaning in expectation for the sons of God to be revealed [Romans 8]. This nation needs sons not slaves, revivalists not relatively free born again Christians. God is so good, so good. I am determined to receive all heaven has for me because of the cross; the crack through which all of heaven flows. I am sold out to the king of glory coming into my life in his gorgeously deeper wider longer and higher ways. Bring it on Jesus.

the prophetic process

I went to receive prophetic ministry on Monday at a school of prophecy at Philly [I was a guinea pig basically], and out of a room of 45 students there were 4 men!! Where are the male prophetic ministers?

The prophetic is one of my biggest passions, and yet the potential of the prophetic ministry even within "prophetic people" is rarely released in the fullness of what it could be. We still can be limited in our understanding of what a prophetic word is, the difference between a prophetic word and the revelatory insight that leads to the prophetic word, and in how to deliver the prophetic effectively.

This week I have seen God deliver two people dramatically as a result of what would on the surface look like two fairly 'low level' prophecies. It was amazing to see how the simple declaration of such revelations could shift the demonic in people's lives so effectively - the power indeed lies in the cross being the basis of the prophetic and inner healing ministries. Amazing. I have also on the other side of the coin this week had conversations with some who struggle with the general way we encourage prophecy. It seems to some like a slot machine - like we are demanding a word from God, and the way we speedily can receive words cannot be right. Why though? Seeing the results of the prophetic ministry this week has strengthened my conviction in defending the prophetic and my determination to grow in this ministry. The idea that the flowing thoughts model of the prophetic is disrespectful to God, presumptous or a "slot machine" comes from a slave mindset that thinks that we have to earn a word by waiting or 'sticking it out' to show how serious we are [God may sometimes ask us to wait]. The view that this has to be the case stems from a lack of revelation of the Father's love and intense passion to speak to and free us by any means, if we are doing it through what the cross has made available for us.

So what is the prophetic process? I believe that when we ask God for a word [fresh bread for someone who comes to us in need] he gives us one. "Ask and you WILL receive." However we may miss the revelation if we do not look for it. The revelation may be a thought, a word, a scripture,a memory, a manifestation, a physical or emotional feeling, a picture, a vision or we may notice something about the person. This revelation may lead naturally to a prophetic word but as I have grown in this gift I have found that the more specific words comes through a prophetic process. For me personally a word develops through some stages. We all need to learn our own prophetic process as each will be unique. My process is very much one of an initial revelatory insight [a picture/vision or 'sense' for me usually] followed by a process of flowing thoughts leading to a formulated sentence of 'I feel God is saying to you that....' I rarely now share the initial insight or the process of flowing thoughts. These distract, detract and confuse people as people don't think how I do. That process was between me and God as a prophetic person, the resulting propjhetic word is what he asks me to deliver to the person. I do not need to justify my word by sharing every little thought process that led me to that point.

One simple story of a revelatory insight leading to a prophetic word comes from Robin McMillan at Morningstar Ministries. He shares how he met a lady and instantly had a picture of candy cane. He knew this was a revelatory insight to strengthen, encourage and comfort her in some way so he pursued the Spirit for the prophetic word. Many of us often share what we think are prophetic words and are discouraged because they don't seem to achieve anything, be right or carry any weight. This could be because we are sharing revelatory insights or the beginnings of a prophecy, we have stopped short of the process. Robin did not share with this woman "I have a word from God for you...candy cane." This would have been meaningless. However he went through a prophetic process of flowing thoughts in his mind, led by the Spirit but very much with his mind engaged. The process was one of candy cane...a gift...Christmas...Lord what are you saying through this?... the Lord will give you something sweet this Christmas. He didn't mention candy cane [that was the communication from God to him]. It turned out that this woman was pregnant, due at Christmas time and was bound by incredible fear that the devil was going to take her baby away. This word led to her freedom and belief that God was going to give her this sweet gift this Christmas.

This story also demonstrates that we must not treat prophecies with contempt because of their seeming menial nature. They carry a great power potential. But we must engage our own unique prophetic process. God created our brains, he understands us. We musn't automatically doubt words because of their source - God uses the things we see or have experienced recently to speak to us. But we are then the mouthpiece turning that into the word for the person we are ministering to. We have to translate if you will.

This is not to say that every random thoguht in our mind is from God...we must weigh prophecy, however I believe the responsibility of weighing words lies with the receiver. We need to be more freed up in delivering prophetic words [as long as they are for strengthening, encouragement and comfort!] rather than holding back in false humility or fear of getting stuff wrong.

We must stay humble and childlike of course, but we really need the prophetic in these days.

Growing and living out of your spirit [who you really are]...

http://www.plumblineministries.org has a section called daily blessings...these are prayers and there is a new one each day that you watch..its a mini 5-10 mins teaching and a prayer for your spirit..well worth checking out. The redemptive gift teaching is also brilliant if you have not heard me go on about it already! [most will have!]

comments...

I lead a missional community which is a mid sized group/cluster of around 25 people called become@hallam. Become is the name of the whole student community across Philadelphia and I lead a group of hallam uni students. Last night we met for the first time in a great bar on Ecclesall Road called menzels. http://www.menzels.co.uk/ . It was great to be doing church and sharing life together out in the community in which we are trying to reach. We looked at Mark's account of the calling of the first disciples. I have been wondering about what was it that made Jesus see those fishermen and stop. What did he see in them? Did he know them previously? We know that the disciples acted rather stupidly at times yet Jesus called these guys presumably because there was something about them...I wonder what it was. Also wsa it a spontaneous action by Jesus or had he been praying about it for ages. Perhaps we need to act more spontaneously.

The urgency in the passage also majorly comes through...the time has come... immediately ...without delay... In the same way what was it in the disciples that made them immediately and without hesitation leave everything and follow this thirty year old man? The left their businesses, their family, even their nets were still in the water! I am desparate to be this flexible and ready. I really beleiev that revival is going to come to this country and I am challenged at the readiness of the church and myself as an individual. Wesley [I think said] be ready to preach or die with one minutes notice...if revival comes everyone who currently is in the church would have to become leaders and step up. Will we be ready when this time comes? Are we investing as much as we can in those following us, getting them ready to lead. Jesus chose a right bunch and we are exactly the same.

I am getting loads of comments about my long post on Monday - great to grapple with these things. Particularly the stuff about a sin is causing a stir. I want to reiterate that I am not saying that this is what we should be living in order to be saved, or that we should all strive for this...the whole post was about adoption leading to sanctification, and how this teaching from Paul Mac helped explain some of my wonderings about some of the John Crowder stuff [which I am still processing as it is so out of this world].