- Parousia
Weekly Update Letter For The Week of
November
23, 2005
-
- "When
a prophet is accepted and deified, his message is lost. The prophet is
only useful so long as he is stoned as a public nuisance calling us to
repentance, disturbing our comfortable routines, breaking our respectable
idols, shattering our sacred conventions" (A. G. Gardiner as quoted
by Arthur Wallis, "In The Day of Thy Power").
-
- In
This Issue:
-
- Reminder
Regarding The
Spokane
Blessing Network
- 5-Fold
Ministry, Changing Paradigms & The Journey
of the Magi
-
- Please
Note: No Meeting This Friday, the 25th. We’ll see you in two
weeks on December 2.
-
- Dear
Friends,
-
- O.K.,
with this letter I think I am done with talking about the 5-Fold ministry
for a while, but I felt this had to be said. I
pray
that you and your family have a blessed Thanksgiving.
-
- Blessings,
- Maurice
-
- 5-Fold
Ministry, Changing Paradigms & The Journey
of The Magi
-
- "The
Journey of The Magi"
- by
T. S. Eliot
-
- 'A
cold coming we had of it,
- Just
the worst time of the year
- For
a journey, and such a long journey:
- The
ways deep and the weather sharp,
- The
very dead of winter.'
- And
the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
- Lying
down in the melting snow.
- There
were times we regretted
- The
summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
- And
the silken girls bringing sherbet.
-
- Then
the camel men cursing and grumbling
- And
running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
- And
the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
- And
the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
- And
the villages dirty and charging high prices:
- A
hard time we had of it.
- At
the end we preferred to travel all night,
- Sleeping
in snatches,
- With
the voices singing in our ears, saying
- That
this was all folly.
-
- Then
at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
- Wet,
below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
- With
a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
- And
three trees on the low sky,
- And
an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
- Then
we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
- Six
hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
- And
feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
- But
there was no information, and so we continued
- And
arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
- Finding
the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.
-
- All
this was a long time ago, I remember,
- And
I would do it again, but set down
- This
set down
- This:
were we led all that way for
- Birth
or Death?
There was a Birth, certainly,
- We
had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
- But
had thought they were different; this Birth was
- Hard
and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
- We
returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
- But
no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
- With
an alien people clutching their gods.
- I
should be glad of another death.
-
- One
of the seminal literary figures of the 20th century was T. S. Eliot. Born
in 1888 he studied at Harvard and
Oxford
and eventually won the Nobel Prize for Literature early in his career. But
he was an unfulfilled soul who saw the vanity of contemporary life. His
search for meaning led him through Hinduism and Buddhism, and finally to
Christi
anity.
In 1927 he converted to
Christi
anity.
In the same year he penned a poem entitled "The
Journey of the Magi" which came to be regarded as
autobiographical of Eliot himself as he described the search of the Magi
for the Christ child, a search seen and narrated through the eyes of one
of the Magi.
-
- Of
the four stanzas, the last is perhaps the most revealing, as it has much
to say about us today and the transition we (and the larger church) are
currently experiencing. As you read it, try to fully grasp what Eliot is
describing. He is describing the death required of all who want to
experience new birth, or the transition from “the old dispensation” or
“paradigm” to the new. Like the people to whom the Magi returned
following their encounter with Christ, much of the Church today in our
Post
Christi
an
Post Modern culture is still stuck in “the old dispensation,” the old
paradigm of religious things past and days of former glory now gone and
lost beyond recovery (note: I didn’t say beyond revival, just beyond
recovery). The Shekinah glory cloud is moving
on, but many are still clutching the "religious spirits" of a
day now forever gone. It is the time and season for another death. It is
time for the people of God to die to the old wine, to the religious
spirits of former days, and to press on into new wine and new wineskins.
It is time to let the
River
of
God
flow in new power through new channels, through the Church that meets in
your house, free of the religious spirits of the past.
-
- And
this brings me to my closing thoughts on 5-Fold leadership and ministry. A
friend of our house church fellowship recently told me over lunch that he
had heard a radio message by Chuck Smith (Calvary Chapel founding pastor)
in which he preached on the failure of the present-day church leadership
and the need for a return to the 5-Fold model of ministry and leadership.
I would be curious to know what kind of response and feed-back Chuck
received from that message. Naturally, I would be in favor of such a
return to 5-Fold ministry. But, here’s the challenge: “You
can’t get there from here.” The challenge of new wineskins
(as someone once pointed out to me) is that they require NEW WINE, not
re-circulating old wine (or "old WHINE")! We cannot take the old
wine and simply transfer it into the new wineskin! There will be a
temptation during this season of transition and paradigm shift to take
current people in ministry and to simply “re-name” them; the old
paradigm with new names. Old wine in a new wineskin.
Yesterday you were the church staff. Today you are a 5-fold ministry. No
price paid. No death incurred. Easy and painless, like
most of modern
Christi
anity.
Trouble is . . . it won’t work. Nope.
-
- I
am personally convinced that much of the house church movement needs to
experience a new “death,” particularly with respect to our
understanding of leadership and its role. This, I believe, was Paul’s
over-arching point in 1 Corinthians 4 (my notes are posted on our website
on the “School of 5-Fold Ministry” page in PDF format). If you
haven’t “died thoroughly” to yourself, your rise to 5-fold ministry
will quickly become problematic. It will become all about “you and your
gift” as opposed to being all about Christ and His gift. A prophetic
friend in our house church network recently had a clear and vivid vision
as follows: In his vision God showed him the current church leadership of
our community. They were the thorns in a crown of thorns on Christ’s
brow, causing Him great pain. This represents where the church leadership
is today. As the vision progressed the crown of thorns turned to polished
gold. That’s what God wants the church and its leadership to become - a
crown of gold adorning the head of Christ. What’s the difference between
being the thorns of a crown which causes Christ great pain and a gold
crown of glory? I believe part of that difference is spiritual death to
ourselves, that Christ might be all-in-all as He lives in and through us
(Galatians 2:20).
-
- It
is a pivotal spiritual principle in the
Kingdom
of
God
that we must first die (to self, to pride, to the old) in order to truly
live (see John
12:24
).
Without death to ourselves and to all we have known before, to everything
that made up the old dispensation or paradigm, there can be no new life to
God that pleases and blesses Him. No crown of Gold;
only one of thorns. The Church as we have traditionally known it
has entered into a time of tremendous spiritual shaking
when much of what we have previously known, the religious spirits,
traditions and ways of doing things which we have nurtured and cherished,
must die if we are to truly live. It requires death to break a spirit of
religion. It is that simple, and that profound. In the words of the Magi,
applicable to us today as we aspire to 5-fold leadership in God’s new
paradigm:
-
- “We
returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
- But
no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
- With
an alien people clutching their gods.
- I
should be glad of another death.”
-
- “
House
Church
Manifesto” Update - The
Spokane
Blessing Network
-
- Many
of you have already received our initial announcement concerning The
Spokane Blessing Network, but many of you have not. I wanted to
“re-do” the announcement by updating it in response to some questions
and suggestions, so here we go!
-
- Back
in August of this year I wrote a “House Church Manifesto” regarding an
apostolic strategy for planting 10,000 house churches in the greater
Spokane
area. It was born out of a question posed by
Wolfgang
Simson
,
namely, “How
do we prepare for a ‘spiritual wildfire?’”
Many of us have been fasting and
pray
ing
for a genuine outpouring of God’s Spirit in the form of a revival of
historic proportions. But
are we preparing for God to answer our
pray
er?
One of the questions or challenges that the spiritual wildfire of revival
would create could be this: Where could the average person or house church
go for help and resources to solve some of the practical ministry problems
that might result from such a revival (large numbers of new converts who
need counseling, discipleship materials, drug or alcohol rehab help, food
or clothing assistance, etc.). As part of the “
House
Church
Manifesto”
I
talked about the need for a networking resource hub that would link
various ministries together and enable people to easily and quickly access
information about the ministries, the services they provide and how to
contact them.
-
- Well,
over the past couple of weeks God has dropped one of those “burning
coals” He is known for into my pocket and I haven’t been able to put
it out yet. So, in obedience to what I believe God has shown me we are now
launching an
internet-based ministry networking resource hub which I am
calling The
Spokane Blessing Network (in honor of Kristen Grace, a
friend and gifted ministry leader who had the original vision for this,
but who has since graduated to be with the Lord).