Archive for the 'The Mission' Category

Should I Move to Lakeland?

Published
by
carl
on April 27, 2008
in Florida Outpouring, Revival and The Mission
. 3 Comments

I have been crying out for revival almost as long as I have been proclaiming that Jesus is Lord. I have traveled near and far in the hopes of carrying the anointing. I have prayed, fasted, and sought the Lord in the hopes of seeing an outpouring.

When the revival broke out in Brownsville, I was too religious to travel the four hour drive to visit. I learned that “if God wanted me to be in revival He knows where to find me.” A few years later I got free and traveled to Toronto (and got more free).

So revival has broken out just over three hours away in Lakeland. I have been twice and will definitely go again. But since I am going to go again, the questions becomes, why leave? If God is moving in Lakeland, why would I stay in Delray Beach?

Todd is laying hands on people every night to receive the anointing and it is the anointing that I desperately want to walk in. It stands to reason that if I can go every night, I can get more anointing. If I live near the meetings, I can sleep in the anointing. It just makes sense.

There is just one problem. I have been called to be a carrier of revival. And revival is what Delray Beach desperately needs. It does not matter how man times Todd Bentley lays hands on me, it will not get one single person in Delray Beach saved. He can spend half the day interceding for me, throw his coat on me to symbolize his mantle, let me wear his shoes to symbolize walking in his footsteps, brush my teeth with his toothbrush to symbolize the words that come out of his mouth but it will not do one thing for my ministry if I don’t leave Lakeland and minister to my city.

I think some people go to see Todd not in the hopes of receiving the anointing, but to receive their ministry. I believe that the anointing is transferable. And I do believe in impartation. But you can’t give me a ministry. You can train me for ministry. You can activate my gifts for ministry. You can prophecy my ministry but I am the one that has to preach the Gospel. I am the one who has to reach the lost. I am the one that has to raise up the future revivalists in south Florida.

Even if Todd hires me to do this with him I have not received my ministry. I am just helping with his. I want mine. It is my inheritance and it is in Delray Beach. No. I won’t be moving anywhere.

So if you go to Lakeland, go hungry. Go prayed up and fasted thoroughly. Get all the prayer you can get and receive everything you can. But if you don’t do something with it, you will have received nothing and wasted your time.

Popularity: 42% [?]

But God

Published
by
carl
on April 14, 2008
in Church Planting, Revival and The Mission
. 2 Comments

I can’t wait to finish the following story with the words, “But God.”

We have our next preview service this Friday.  Thats like, four days from now. . . and I don’t have a location.  I have spent another day not getting anywhere on trying to find a meeting space.  Where we have been sent does not have hotels, conference rooms, civic centers or anything of that sort.  There are a few liquor stores and bars but they are being used on Friday nights.

There are plenty of churches, but they must have a collective voicemail issue because I can’t seem to get a single one to call me back.

Would you please pray that we find our location?  When it happens, I will finish the following sentence.

It seemed like we were down to the wire.  Even though I know I was sent to start a work in downtown Delray Beach I did not have a location four days before the meeting.  I could not even send invitations because I did not have a place to invite people.  But God…

Popularity: 42% [?]

Preview Service #1 Third Lesson Learned

Published
by
carl
on April 4, 2008
in Christianity, Church Planting, Revival and The Mission
. 0 Comments

I have been publishing a series of posts about the “things I learned” at the first preview service of The Mission.

The third important thing I learned at our first preview service can be summed up in one word: Systems.  If your plan for your service is to show up and you will tell everyone what to do, you are in for a rude awakening.

I thought I had a plan for what to get done at the service but was sadly mistaken.  I had not clearly communicated with key people what I wanted them to accomplish and I had not trained and equipped them to figure it out on their own.

Next week I will have a breakfast meeting with my staff and we will have a clear chart of what needs to get done and who is in charge of making that happen.  In a word: systems.

I was in charge of everything because nobody was delegated the authority and responsibility to make sure anything happened.  Lesson learned.  Guarantee it will not happen again.

Popularity: 37% [?]

Preview Service #1 Second Lesson Learned

Published
by
carl
on April 2, 2008
in Church Planting, Revival and The Mission
. 0 Comments

The second lesson I learned at my first preview service was that no matter how hard I pray for gifts to manifest, my people cannot read my mind.

The majority of my gifts are in the revelatory realm.  I kind of pick things up by the Spirit and sometimes assume that everyone around me is getting the same thing I am getting.  I have learned in the past week or so that this is not the case.  If everyone was getting the same thing I was getting I would not be needed.

Near the end of worship I felt like we were on the verge of a breakthrough and i wanted to linger in worship a little longer.  I had given Wes some pretty clear instructions before the service multiple times.  I changed those instructions with a little more than a sentence.  Poor Wes found himself with the microphone in his hand and had no clue where we were going.

I could have easily given him some clearer instructions but I didn’t.  Praise God he pulled though and I doubt anyone noticed.  The anointing just thickened at the end of worship.

But my team wants to serve the vision we have received from God and they can’t do that if i don’t articulate it.  I don’t want my people to think that they are on their own and I don’t want them to think that I don’t care about their part.

I just have to schedule in enough time to educate people on expectations and have a clear enough picture of what we are going to do so that others know exactly what their roles will be.

If your people do not know where you as a group are heading, it is not their lack of discernment, it is your lack of communication.  And we are supposed to be professional communicators.

Popularity: 26% [?]

Epson PowerLite 77c 2200 Lumen Multimedia Projector

Published
by
carl
on April 2, 2008
in Church Planting and The Mission
. 0 Comments

powerlite 77cDoes anyone here know anything about the Epson PowerLite 77c 2200 Lumen Multimedia Projector? We need a projector and the $2k models are like fantasyland for us.

This one has really good reviews and is 2200 lumen.  I know all the cool guys have 4000 lumen but all the cool guys have some sort of financial sponsors.  Watch how they label me a church planting heretic when I make my own screen!

If you know anything about these could you comment or shoot me a message?

Thanks

Popularity: 24% [?]

Preview Service #1 First Lesson Learned

Published
by
carl
on April 1, 2008
in Revival and The Mission
. 4 Comments

Setup at your location will take you much longer than you thought regardless how knowledgeable or experienced you are.

We wanted to mop before we set up. It took almost 15 minutes to find a place to fill a bucket. We could not get the gear set up fast enough to get a sound check going. We realized that we did not pack the speaker stands (a fairly important piece of equipment).

We wanted to start at 7:30p.m. but weren’t able to start a sound check till almost 7. At 7:40 the sound died. We are still not sure why but we think because we tried a new configuration with some equipment that did not want to be configured that way.

If you are setting up the same day as your service for the first time. Give waaaaaay too much time for set up. That should almost be enough.

Stay tuned for more lessons learned.

Popularity: 24% [?]

Preview Service #1 is In the Bag

Published
by
carl
on March 31, 2008
in Revival and The Mission
. 4 Comments

Not sure how to wrap up our first preview service. It felt like I worked feverishly for a couple months and then I found myself in front of a group of people with a mic in my hand. I am so glad I have such great people joined to me.

I have tried to write this a bunch of times. Let me just hit the important stuff.

My team is all young. We are trying to reach young people because that is who God told us to reach. We don’t have CEO’s. We don’t have people with bible degrees. We don’t have any outside financial support (period). A minister gave me a dj setup shortly after we started in our living room and I have had two people give a one time gift. That is it for our outside support. God told me that He would be with us and He has.

Setup took way longer than I thought it would and about 15 minutes after the time we thought we were going to start sound problems jumped and killed all our worship music.

We started a half hour late (which is early for the crowd we are reaching) and about half way through worship I realized that the presence of God was thickening in the room. That makes me really really happy. We were having our service with a launch team of 12 and I thought that if we hit 15 for the service it would be big because we did not invite anyone.

By the end of worship we had about 30 people in attendance. I thought we were going to just try to get through a service but since the Holy Ghost was there, and people were there, we thought we would try to connect the two. We pressed into worship a while longer to give the Spirit time to marinate the visitors.

I don’t know if anyone is doing worship like us. We do 100% original worship music. Sergio creates and loads the tracks onto a digital sequencer and sings with some singers. We don’t have a band. We make the room almost black and begin to worship. The worship leader is wearing shorts taht some think are pants and a shirt  with more X’s than a porn.  I am preaching in an echo shirt and pants.  Sounds corny but the Holy Ghost invades the room.

I had a hard time getting a groove preaching but about half way through the anointing came and I began to preach the baptism in the Holy Ghost.  What else would we preach?  I had an altar call and virtually every visitor came forward for a new beginning.   I prophesied over some and in the end the altar was littered with bodie.

I got back 10 visitor cards.  Six of the cards indicated the person wanted to volunteer.

So all in all I am really pleased with the service. I am going to post some of the things I learned here on the blog but I congratulated my staff for a job well done.

Please keep praying for us!  Revival in Delray Beach!

Popularity: 23% [?]

Akai MPC1000 Ram Upgrade

Published
by
carl
on March 6, 2008
in Holy Hip-Hop, Revival and The Mission
. 0 Comments

This has nothing to do with revival. But if you are making beats for music, this is valuable. The MPC-1000 comes with a pathetic amount of RAM. Watch this video to learn how to upgrade the RAM for an MPC-1000. Buy RAM for MPC-1000 here.


http://tinyurl.com/2retvg

Popularity: 15% [?]

The Mission Needs

Published
by
carl
on February 14, 2008
in The Mission
. 1 Comment

I have been urged by two different people in the last four days to put together a list of items we need to get The Mission off the ground and public. We have had some stuff donated and are scouring eBay for others. If you wish to donate you can contact me at pastor at themissionsouthflorida dot com. Or you can use the contact page on this site.

If you have equipment you would like to donate, I would gladly pay shipping. Please check the list, you might just have what we need.

The Mission Needs (pdf)

Popularity: 25% [?]

The Podcast

Published
by
carl
on January 7, 2008
in Podcast and The Mission
. 4 Comments

the mission podcastHere is a link to The Mission podcast. Each week we are going to post some of the most interesting things going on around The Mission. Last week I talked about how we got to where we are. This week I did an interview with Sergio, our worship leader.

If you don’t use iTunes you can listen/download the files here.

I have other announcements to make but all the cool new ministry people always do a teaser before announcements and since I want to be cool like them I will have to wait.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Guest Preacher

Published
by
carl
on December 23, 2007
in The Mission
. 0 Comments

The Mission is in Bible study mode with our regular Friday night meeting. We currently have about a dozen or so people who show up regularly. This past Friday I had Wes preach. Wes has not been to bible school or seminary but he has answered the call of Jesus, has submitted himself to discipleship and is called to preach.

Pastors, is splitting your church the only way someone in your congregation can get the pulpit? The Bible says that the gift makes room for itself so if there are anointed people in your midst, give them room to operate in their gifting. They are there for a reason.
Wes preached part II of my sermon on faith. My only regret is that we did not get a recording of it.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Blog Stuff

Published
by
carl
on November 28, 2007
in The Mission
. 4 Comments

I have been ministering for years and this blog has kind of been a journal of sorts for the last couple few years.  However I am entering a new season and am weighing starting anew blog for my ministry or keeping it all here.

Not sure RevivalBlog readers are interested in the goings on of a ministry plant.

If you have an opinion let me know.

Popularity: 8% [?]