Archive for the 'Home Church' Category

Tuesday Outreach Recap

Published
by
carl
on June 14, 2007
in Holy Spirit, Home Church, Missions, Preaching, Prophesy, Revival, Salvation Story, Tongues, ministry, prayer and salvation
. 6 Comments

In line with my decision to blog about all things mundane Acts 19:11, I had a fun time at The Mission, the outreach we are doing on Tuesday nights.

I worte in earlier posts about some young men that got right and are now doing some spirit filled hip hop.  Well I am leading their home group as a missions base.  Each week they try to get as many friends from their former life to come to a group we hold on their back porch.

The group starts at 10 p.m. and I leave around midnight.  In those two hours anything can happen.

Last night we had over 20 folks there with about four who had never steped into a church in their lives.  I preached on sanctification through the power of the Holy Ghost.  Some real Keswick type doctrine (I am pentecostal you know).  Then I had ministry time.  This is when it gets fun.

Last week I cast the vision for the group.  At the end, I said that everyone who was there was going to receive power to reach their lost friends and a burden for the lost.  I told them that I was not going to have an altar call.  The fact that they were there meant that they were in.  If they did not want God to use them to reach the lost for His glory then they would have to leave.  One girl did.  I saw her through the sliding glass door a little later crying.  Appearantly she was trying to get out of the house but she couldn’t.  The Holy Ghost would not let her.

She said, "I kept saying, ‘I gotta get out of here.  I gotta get out of here’ but I couldn’t."  She showed up back on the porch weeping.  She recommitted her life to Jesus, received deliverance and the Baptism in the Holy Ghost.  Needless to say, she showed up back this week.

This week all the lost confessed their need for salvation and many were touched.  To make a long story short, I left at midnight.  I wanted to leave before the police shoed up.  There were a half dozen young men rolling around on patio laughing and yelling under the power of the Holy Ghost.  We could not get then to quiet down.  The mother of the young men came out to try to get them quiet.  Her nine year old son followed.  We prayed for him and he hit the ground praying in tongues for the first time.

As Bill Johnson would say :Good stuff.

Popularity: 55% [?]

Distractions from the Gospel :: Church

Published
by
carl
on December 21, 2006
in Carl's Writings, Christianity, Doctrine, Emergent, Holy Spirit and Home Church
. 1 Comment

If you have been saved more than six months it is more than likely that church is no longer what it is supposed to be.  For far to many saints,church is no longer a place to be equipped for the working of the ministry and is instead the place of always learning and never coming to the knowledge of the truth.

Somehow, church becomes our world.  Sure, we venture out of it from time to time.  We go to work.  We go to the store.  But we rush back into our safe house so we can get away from “them.”  We kneel at the altar and ask God to deliver us from our jobs that have us in to much contact with “them.”  We pray for schools so our kids won’t be influenced by “them.” Some go so far as to arrange church activities on holidays so our Christian festivities won’t be spoiled by “them.”

The big problem is that Jesus sent us to share the Gospel with “them” and that’s hard to do when we have no contact.

I have been here.  When the center of our Christianity is church we surely know that we are missing the mark. As leaders, when we gauge believers by their faithfulness in listening to someone teach we have wandered off course.

Some believe that the problem is the structure of church all together.  Many ascended to leadership in a church and saw major flaws with the leadership.  Their hurts cause them to stay withdrawn because of perceived hypocrisies.  Others have come out of the conventional church because of their belief in a better structure. They believe that the church is not an institution but an organic creature that is to be small and without ordained leaders.  I am ok with that but many often leave the conventional church and don’t join anything else.  As with the hyperchurched, these groups allow their church experiences to distract them from the Gospel as well.

I was once in the place that all of my prayer life was consumed with the horribly dysfunctional church that I was a part of.  It seemed that all of my Christian life had to pass through that church mostly because of a controlling spirit that was channeled by the leaders.  When I broke free, I almost was affected by it enough to quit church all together.

After one week of this my wife declared that this is not who we are.  We are Christians and we go to church.  I got plugged into a fellowship that is preaching the Gospel and reaching and teaching the lost.  As I look around my current fellowship I see people who are both hyperchurched and hypercritical.  The good news is that I am of neither group. 

I refused to be distracted again, and so should you.

Popularity: 25% [?]

Impartation

Published
by
carl
on October 2, 2006
in Christianity, Home Church, Links, Revival, Weather and prayer
. 11 Comments

This post is a little on the long side but it is the most exciting post I have made on this blog. Read and be blessed!

We had a regional youth rally at my church this past Saturday night. It was the goal of the organizers to have a salvation orientated rally and not a revival tent meeting. I tried to be a good boy but the Holy Ghost decided to come to church with me and you know how He likes to get His way!

At the end of service many of the people had left the sanctuary to the food outside. There were about 40 to 50 people left at the altar. I got on the mic and called for those who wanted more to come to the left side of the altar area. Almost the entire crowd moved over. What could I do?

My friend and I began to lay hands on the youth and believe God that He would meet their needs. The anointing began to get think in the room when I came back and laid hands on a certain 15 year old girl for the second time. I had seen her before and had prayed for her in the past but I did not know her. I knew she had a call on her life but had no idea of her spiritual condition or her background.

As I began to pray for her a tremendous anointing came over me. I began to prophesy a healing gift over her life and commanded it to be activated. I kept quoting Matt 10:8 over and over again. she was crying and twitching and jerking all over the place but I could not stop praying for her. I prophesied about her call and the call of the lost, I compelled her to “choose ye this day” and kept calling forth the anointing. As she was crying she kept telling God that He can have complete control of her life. It really was quite awesome. After a while she hit the ground sobbing and I moved on.

After she laid on the ground doing this laughing crying thing for the better part of 20 minutes she started to get up. I had been praying for a hard case right next to where she was so when she stood up I had her lay hands and pray for this other person. As soon as she did it was lights out. I don’t mean the peaceful kind of falling backwards into the gentle arms of Jesus, I mean as soon as she touched this person they utterly collapsed. I called another person and the same thing, “BAM!” Straight down. The budding prophetess was sitting on a pew so I had the girl lay hands on her. Immediately she began to weep. I had her lay hands on someone else and after they hit the ground I had her pray for that person some more.

Just then I noticed a middle aged woman sitting in the middle of the sanctuary and something in my spirit was stirred. I knew we could not let this woman leave. Not knowing if she was saved I walked over to her to ask if I could pray for her. She said I could so I began to bring her to the front of the church.

Now sometimes I am a little slow so I did not immediately see what God was doing. But suddenly it dawned on me so I asked the lady, “Would you happen to need a healing?” In fact she did. She did not want to get specific but she had pain in her female areas. I said, “There is a young woman with a healing gift down here and I am going to have her pray for you.”

Mind you, this girl has not stopped the laughing crying thing since I first laid hands on her a good 45 minutes earlier.

She prayed for the woman, woman hit the ground, I instructed the girl to keep praying (trying to shorten this long post). After about five minutes I have the girl pray for a couple of people and they went lights out.

After a while I had the woman get up. There were about 10 youth still around and I really wanted them to leave having a clear understanding what God did and what He did not do. I talked to her and she said that she has fibroid type tumors on her ovaries and that they were very painful. I asked her to poke around and look for the pain. She said that it felt about 50% better. I told her that means Jesus is in the building and that we would pray some more. (girl prayed, woman fell, girl laugh-cry prayed some more)

A young girl I know walked in the back of the sanctuary. I called her over and had the girl pray for her. When she went to get off the ground five minutes later she did not know how she had gotten there. I am talking lights out!

note: If you have read this far don’t get weary! The best part is still coming!

While the girl was praying for the woman the anointing began to get really thick in the room again and the presence began to get tangible. I was just waiting so see what was going to happen next when the keyboard player from the youth group band walked in. This 15 year-old boy has the sweetest spirit and comes from a family that is red hot for Jesus. I later found out that he was eating with everyone else when he heard that we were praying in the sanctuary and wanted to come play the keyboard in the background while we prayed.

One thing I have not told you about him (and that he had only told one other youth leader) is that he has muscular dystrophy. His sickness was advancing to the point that his muscles were constricting all over his body. He could only walk on his tippy toes because he could not get his heel to the ground. He could not stand up without holding on to things because his balance was so bad. He did not know what had been happening in the sanctuary but the Holy Ghost did and it was this boy’s day for a miracle.

I called him to the front and had the girl pray for him, she cry-laughed, he fell and she continued to pray for him. After a while I gave my first checkup and asked him what he was experiencing. He said that he felt strength entering his body. Here is how MD is described in wikipedia:

The main symptom of Duchenne muscular dystrophy is rapidly progressive muscle weakness associated with muscle wasting with the proximal muscles being first affected, especially the pelvis and calf muscles. Muscle weakness also occurs in the arms, neck, and other areas, but not as severely or as early as in the lower half of the body.

I knew that he had described his condition as a “weakness all over his body” so strength had to be good. Laugh-cry girl continued. A while later I asked him what was happening and he said he felt something happening to his legs. We got him on his feet and he could stand upright without holding onto anything! He was shocked. I had him walk here and there lifting his knees as he did. He walked back, laugh-cry girl prayed and he fell.

Somewhere in the midst of this the woman got up and could not find the pain in her abdomen no matter how hard she pressed.

We did the fall down get up pray fall down thing with the boy about 10 times in a row. On the next walking adventure he was shocked and amazed that his heels were touching the ground!!! He could walk flat footed, heel-toe like the rest of us. The group of kids in the sanctuary had gone to children’s church, and youth group with this boy for years and they had never seen him walk like this. There were tears of joy and amazement all over the place.

At this point I was tired. I had the kids call their parents and I talked to the girl. She did not remember much that had happened but it turns out her father is the pastor of a small Brazilian church. Her parents showed up to get her and I tried to explain what happened because every time she would start to talk about it the laugh cry thing would start again.

The next day at church I saw the boy and he was walking fine. All the symptoms are not gone. He does not have full range of motion and he is still weaker than an average 15 year old but he is walking flatfooted and in fact can lift his foot up so only the heel touches the ground. Remember, he could only get the balls of his feet on the ground in the past. I was overjoyed watching him give his testimony in the Jr. High service.

He told me that when he got home he told him mom who began screaming. His dad and sister came down stairs and he repeated the story and his sister began screaming. This family is so close and loving that it is almost weird so I can believe it. His father quickly said,

“I am the priest and prophet of this home and I will determine if you are healed. Walk across the room!”

Once he did the father declared,

“This is the work of the Lord!”

Maranatha!

Popularity: 32% [?]

ProBlogger pro-Holy Ghost

Published
by
carl
on January 9, 2006
in Home Church and Wordpress
. 0 Comments

While I am trying to figure out Wordpress2, I ran across problogger and found out he is pentecostal.

Mark this as an endorsement.

Popularity: 20% [?]

What I learned in 2005 - Complaints are not Solutions

Published
by
carl
on January 8, 2006
in Carl's Writings, Christianity, Doctrine, Home Church, Revival and The Goofy Church
. 0 Comments

I am going to begin a series of posts detailing what I learned in 2005. They are going to come in no particular order. In my first article I would like to outline some of my problems with the current home church movement.

The biggest challenge I have to much of the home church teaching is that it is a reaction instead of foundational.

The Gospel is unchanging. It does not adapt to popular culture. It is our job to make popular culture adapt to the Gospel. And in fact much of what we see in modern churches is amiss. But the answer is not to change the gospel to address these current short comings. It is to preach the unchanging Gospel. The Gospel has the power, not our arguments.

Much of what I read in the house church movement is so clearly tainted by bitterness and judgment that it must be thoroughly deboned before chewing.

I recently read an interview with an author whose book details what he calls the pagan origin of the local church. The crux of the interview attacked preaching. One point made was,

“It (Preaching) was delivered on special occasions in order to deal with specific problems.”

You would have to surmise that preaching is only associated with problems. (You would also have to surmise that we could get to a place where there are no problems so preaching would not be necessary. Who would defend that any group of humans have gotten tot that point?) This is clearly false. Paul stated that he was ordained a preacher and an Apostle. Jesus told us to “preach the word.” This is not just to correct problems. It is because there is power in the preached Word of God.

“It is temporary. Regular preaching is designed to win the lost or equip the church. Once equipped, the members of the church minister one to another.”

Isn’t this the same argument that cessationists use regarding the gifts?

This is the same elitism that we saw (and still see) in much of the prophetic movement. There are two classes, the super spiritual who “get it” and then the rest of the peons.

The fact is that God is leading people to those greatly dysfunctional churches. People are receiving a call from God to be in leadership in those churches. God is sending people to seminary and bible college. You can debate WHY He is doing it but you cannot debate that He IS doing it. And I can assure you that He is not telling one group that modern church buildings need to all be bulldozed while abiding in many of those same buildings when the people join in fellowship there. Either He hates them or He does not.

Do you feel God is leading you to join or start a house church? God bless you! Go do it. Make disciples. Win the lost. Minister one to another. Be the Church! Attacking other Christians will not accomplish any of that.

The House Church movement has much to offer the Body and its influence will only grow. The message of the priesthood of the believer is a valid, vital one and needs to be preached. But to taint the message with past failures and prejudices only minimizes its effectiveness and delays its embrace.

P.S. Drop the pagan accusations. You sound like a bunch of jehovah’s witnesses.

Popularity: 9% [?]