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The
Almost Weekly Newsletter of The Parousia Network of House Churches
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Subscribe Every week we send out our "Parousia Weekly E-Letter." These letters are intended to keep you updated regarding our various on-going ministry activities, to provide you with insights for what it means to be a counter-cultural witness to a Post-Christian culture, and articles designed to encourage you to become the Church that meets in your house. To subscribe you can click on the RSS button below, or the one above on the right side of the URL Address. Save the bookmark to your toolbar and each week's e-letter will be listed as the first item in the list.
Our you can type SUBSCRIBE in the subject line of a blank e-mail and send it to newsletter@parousianetwork.org Back Issues Click here to explore back Issues of The Parousia Network Weekly E-Letter Update
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The Parousia Update Letter For the Week of November 5, 2009 In This Issue: Dear Friends, We pray that all is well with you and with the ekklesia which meets in your house. As I prayed over the rough draft of this letter I found myself weeping in deep anguish over the condition of the Church and what God intends to do by way of holiness & fear, repentance and intimacy. The Spirit of God is moving and we need to be listening. Blessings, Maurice & Gale Speaking of Letters, Blogs and Networking House Church, Missions, Antioch And “The Inextinguishable Blaze” When Jonathan Edwards wanted to write a treatise encouraging believers to pray for revival (what is referred to today as the “Concert of Prayer”) he entitled it: “A Humble Attempt to Promote the Agreement and Union of God’s People Throughout the World in Extraordinary Prayer for a Revival of Religion and the Advancement of God’s Kingdom on Earth, According to Scriptural Promises and Prophecies of the Last Time.” Now THAT’S a title! (Not uncommon in the 18th Century). And you thought I was long-winded. I was initially tempted to give this newsletter a similarly descriptive title, but I managed to successfully resist the temptation. So, count your blessings. Our friend Guy Muse (The M Blog) recently featured a brief article by Richard Ross entitled “The Path To A Missions Resurgence”. It’s a good article which uses personal anecdotes to make the point that one of the best ways to get the next generation involved in missions is for parents to take their kids on short-term mission ventures where their lives are irrevocably touched. I can’t argue with his logic or example, as I did the same with my own two children several years ago (there was a method to dad’s madness). The greatest impact was upon my daughter (a junior higher at the time). The trip affected her deeply. She went on a subsequent short term trip a couple of years later with another youth group, a trip to the Urbana missions conference a couple of years later, and a short term student trip to eastern Europe while in college. I trace her “spiritual awakening” to that initial mission trip during her junior high years. But as I reflected on the article I was flooded with a wave of thoughts about both what God has done and what He intends to do, and how it affects the “mission” of the church. Anecdotes Do Not A Movement Make If you’ve ever been part of a genuine movement of God’s Spirit, you’ll understand what I am about to say. If not, don’t worry. Your opportunity is coming . . . trust me. I came to faith during the Jesus Movement of the 1970s. In a word, God found me, redeemed me and set my hair on fire in a way that those of us who experienced it cannot adequately describe. And I wasn’t alone. In college, I was surrounded by radical Christians who had experienced something similar. Most of the guys I hung out with at Chapel Hill (and who had a similar problem with a “flaming coiffeur”)went on to seminary, pastorates and other ministries (one is now a Vice President with Campus Crusade for Christ — our ol’ alma mater). When a man’s hair is on fire with coals fresh from God’s altar, you don’t have to lecture him (or her) about missions, sacrifice, living by faith or any of the traditional “missions motivators”. Like Isaiah in the temple (Isaiah 6:1ff), once your spiritual hair is on fire, all God has to do is ask a simple question, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us.” The response is immediate, unequivocal and, yes, predetermined. You see, the answer to the question in verse 8 was predetermined by the events of verses 1-7. A man who’s hair and heart are on fire for God doesn’t say “no” or “I’ll pray about it” when God calls. He simply begins packing his bags while asking, “By the way, Lord, where exactly am I going?”. And seldom does the Lord respond with, “No where. I just wanted to see if you were listening”. Most mission programs live on anecdotes. An anecdote is a true, personal, but isolated story intended to make a point. My general observation is that programs need anecdotes to motivate people. Movements don’t. In fact, generally speaking, movements generate the anecdotes that programs later use to motivate the troops. But just as there comes a point when a child can no longer live on the faith of his or her parents, there comes a point in the life of every mature believer when it is no longer possible to live vicariously on other people’s stories. An anecdotal faith is like living on sugar. It can’t last. Strategies Do Not A Movement Make According to the 2002 World Christian Statistics (Sorry, I don’t’ have an updated one) there have been 150 identifiable “World Mission Plans” over the 2000 year span of the Church. And, no, I have no idea how they counted those. I’ve even been personally involved in a few of them. Strategies like Here’s Life, America, Key ‘73 (United Methodist), The Agape Movement, Here’s Life, World, The Lausanne Conference on World Evangelization, and others that will go unnamed. Men want to strategize. God loves circumventing our strategies. And the Holy Spirit waits to pour out an awakening and ignite a movement. I wasn’t at Antioch, but have talked with people who were. Therefore, I cannot really comment on what took place. The reports I have heard are both encouraging (read Wolf’s summary) and somewhat disappointing (such silliness as a wedding ceremony to “marry” the apostolic and the prophetic [?!] and dabbling with “biblical numerology” - using “biblical” numbers for government and structure). But at the end of the day (or the 7 days) my question is simply this: Where’s the fire? Without the fire of God’s Presence igniting the coiffeur of a new generation of believers, a 541 page mission strategy is in danger of becoming just another big book. And a strategy, even a well conceived and well written one, is simply no substitute for a fresh move of God’s Spirit. Where Do We Go From Here? (Or the Quest For “The Inextinguishable Blaze”) A couple of weeks ago, our friend Neil Gamble (who was at the Antioch gathering) led a meeting of around 22 HC people at the home of Al & Patti West here in Spokane. I went because I appreciate Neil and Al, and I wanted to see what God was up to in a house church context outside of my own. I didn’t plan to share anything. During the meeting Neil called on me to share what I had been hearing from God. I shared briefly from Isaiah 6 about God’s desire and intention to bring His people back to an Isaiah 6 experience of His fear and holiness. As I shared, a profound hush seized the room as the Presence of God descended and the Holy Spirit began to move powerfully on several people. You could hear a pin drop. It was a VERY good meeting (thanks, Neil & Al) and I walked away with a strong sense that what we had just experienced was only a small down payment on what God intends for His people. As I shared with that group of believers, God wants to do something “to” his Church before He does something “through” His Church. The truth-in-tension is simply this. Men can create strategies to reach the world (150 strategies and counting?). But only God can fill the temple of our lives and our House Churches with His Presence and touch us with fresh coals from His altar. As I reflected on writing this article I was reminded of Charles Wesley, brother of John Wesley, hymn writer and a leader in the Evangelical Awakening in England. Charles Wesley was also a man whose heart had been set ablaze by fresh fire from God’s altar; the kind of fire that ignites and fuels a movement. He expressed that “fire” in a well known hymn: THOU who camest from above There let it for thy glory burn Jesus, confirm my heart's desire Ready for all thy perfect will, According to participants who were there, one of the things which came out of the Antioch gathering was the need for the Church to move from individual hearing to corporate hearing. While I understand the need for biblical unity, I feel compelled to offer a clarification. If what you are hearing corporately is the need to hold mock wedding ceremonies to marry the apostolic and the prophetic, then I think your corporate hearing aid needs a new battery. But if what you are hearing is that God wants to take His Church, both individually and corporately, into an Isaiah 6 experience of His fear and holiness, into a deep and genuine personal repentance, and into a genuine and deeper intimacy with Himself, then I agree and declare with Hosea, "So let us know, let us press on to know the LORD. His going forth is as certain as the dawn; And He will come to us like the rain, Like the spring rain watering the earth." And like “the inextinguishable blaze” of His Presence that multitudes of saints before us have known. Every great revival, and every great missions movement in the history of the Church has been led by individuals whose lives were in the process of being consumed by “the inextinguishable blaze,” that fire which comes only as fresh fire off of God’s altar. And that is where we as a Church (and as a House Church movement) stand today - in need of that touch that only God Himself can give. So, for just a moment, let’s lay aside our mission programs, our anecdotes and our strategies. And for a season let’s pray that God would raise up a generation of men and women who suffer from “the inextinguishable blaze”. Conclusion By now you should be asking yourself what difference all of this makes? It is the difference between the “ordinary” work of the Church (to borrow a term from J. Edwin Orr), and a spiritual awakening of historic proportions. History offers us some perspective. According to revival historian Frank Grenville Beardsley, during the Great Awakening of Colonial America (1740s), “more than 7% of the entire population of (the) colonies would have been gathered into the churches as a direct result of the revival.” Similar figures are reported again by historian Byrnmor P. Jones who writes that during the Welsh Revival of 1904 some 5% of the population of Wales was converted and added to the church. Consider this for just a moment. In America alone a spiritual awakening which resulted in 5-to-7% of the population coming to faith in Christ within a relatively brief period of time (say, 2-to-3 years) would mean between 15 and 21 million new believers, and confronting the Church with such questions as where we would put them, and what would be our strategy for discipling them (at which point strategy DOES become important). On a worldwide basis, it would mean between 300 and 420 million new believers, raising the same questions for the Church, but on a larger scale. And that is if the coming spiritual awakening ONLY achieves past historic proportions. But it all begins with individuals who, like Isaiah, have had a personal, life-altering encounter with God’s holiness and fear, whose lives have been irrevocably changed and their souls unquenchably ignited by “the inextinguishable blaze”. Are you one of them?
© 2009 THE PAROUSIA NETWORK of
House and Cell Churches (www.parousianetwork.org)
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