Power For the Harvest

power is not seed...

A friend of mine who is spiritually sensitive was talking this week about a church he attended a few days ago while out of town. He had heard of the church before and wanted to go and experience it. The day he was there they were having a special joint service involving six different churches from the area... he estimated there were around 500 people in attendance.

The worship was exhilarating... It seemed like every other person was waving a flag... there were dancers everywhere... artists painted in the aisles... the spirit of God was so thick that he said you almost couldn't breathe... one of the most spiritually active and intense places he had ever seen.

In the course of the morning service, however, a very interesting event took place. The speaker asked the crowd, "How many here have accepted Christ within the past month?" There was silence... then he asked again, "in the last three months?"... again, silence. "How about the past year"... there were two hands raised. "last two years?" ... same two hands... "Past five years?"... this time there were twenty or so hands. It was a sobering and almost depressing admission... so much power... so little fruit.

As I've thought about this conversation I have come to a few conclusions.

• Evangelism does not happen by accident. It must be intentional.
• If evangelism isn't everything it usually isn't anything. A church that doesn't see its primary purpose as evangelistic will almost certainly have little or no harvest.
• Power does NOT equal evangelism... power is for harvesting... not sowing
• Sowing requires an intentional decision to accept anyone, show them compassion without restriction, demonstrate the love of Christ and extend his mercy and forgiveness
• A church that sows mercy generously will harvest generously when the power of God is manifest.

I haven't had time to think these things out fully, yet... but I am certain that we will see more fruit by focusing on the unchurched. I don't fully embrace the 'seeker' church model but I do see an awesome opportunity when we receive everyone and make their safety and security (emotional and spiritual safety) a priority and then we receive and demonstrate the presence and power of God to them in a non-hyped way, natural way.

Recognizing the Move of God

We are in the midst of a full blown outpouring of the Spirit of God here in our church. It is beginning to rival the experiences I had in my early Vineyard days as we would go to Costa Rica and Colombia on short term mission trips. I always wondered why God seemed to move so much more dramatically down there and yet here in the home church we would typically see only sporatic demonstrations of power. Here lately, though, we are hearing powerful stories almost daily.

What is different however is that these events are usually done and seen in quiet corners and out in the streets where the members are ministering and therefore are not often very visible. Being one of the pastors allows me to hear the stories as they come in but if you weren't in my position you might not know anything unusual was going on. We talk it up from the pulpit and we hear the stories in the home groups but it still is amazing how often I still hear people say "nothing seems to ever be happening in this church".

I have often marvelled at how the Jews had an entire religious system built around a coming Messiah and yet when he came and went they missed it... and are still looking. And yet we are in danger of doing exactly that... The biggest hindrance to the next move of God is the last move of God... we keep expecting it to look like the last big thing... and it usually doesn't. Or, we have a vision of what the move of God WILL look like and then it comes and goes and we are still looking.

We have to keep our eyes and ears open and receive the move of God as it comes in whatever package it appears through. This move we are experiencing is nameless and faceless... it is not loud or demonstrative... but the power is amazing and the consistency is exciting.

Cool Experience Sunday

This past Sunday during our morning service I had just stepped down from leading worship and the Pastor had just begun his sermon. As I went into the lobby to get a drink a young man followed me out of the sanctuary. He was a big guy, 6'4", around 25 yrs old and he look agitated. A friend of mine began to talk with him and asked me to join the conversation. The fellow was saying how much he hated church... he said, "I just don't get it... how can these people act happy when it is so boring. Some of them even have a 'shine' on them... but I don't understand."

I asked him if he had ever had any kind of experience with God... he answered that he hadn't but occassionally he feels goose bumps on his arms during the music. I told him that it could be the Holy Spirit he is feeling and that it was the spirit of God trying to get inside of him. Then my friend asked him if we could pray for him. He reluctantly said ok.

We took him into my office at the church and I simply said "Come Holy Spirit." The young man looked uncomfortable and had his eyes open, scanning the room when suddenly he convulsed like he was hit in the stomach... "What was that?" he asked. I said I didn't know for sure but lets pursue it... again, "Come Holy Spirit". The guy doubles up in a sustained groan... he asks "What are you doing to me? this is weird"

"nothin', I haven't touched you yet"

again, "Come Lord, reveal yourself"

The man is now holding his stomach and groaning, "This is the weirdest thing I've ever seen" he groans. I then said "I bind the spirit that is resisting God and tell it to leave" Just that quick he lets out a yell and then begins to dry heave... three times he heaves loud, labored responses then its like the air leaves his body and he is limp... the fight is gone out of him and he is relaxed... the permanent scowl that had been there is gone.

"How do you feel?" I ask him. "Floaty!", he says trying not to laugh... "Do you guys have drugs in here or something?" I assured him it was just God at work in him.

I then asked him if he wanted to commit his life to Christ. His response, "I guess I ought to considering what he just did in me"
He then prayed one of the simplest and most sincere prayers to accept Christ I've ever heard.

I encouraged him to go back into the service and see if it seemed different now.

At the conclusion of the service I saw him again in the lobby... he is laughing... hugs me and says "I still can't feel the floor." He staggered out the door with his girlfriend helping him... walking like a drunk man.

What is the role of a church leader?

We have to become thermostats, not thermometers... we have to set and maintain the atmosphere of the church, not just reflect it. So we need to keep 'gossiping the good' by bragging on what God is doing, and what the church is doing well... and we must refuse to entertain negative perceptions. I'm not talking about avoiding real issues here... I'm talking about defusing the doom-and-gloom nay-sayers who always seem to focus on the problems. We aren't blind to the problems... but we don't focus on them... we focus on what is good and what is working.

If we focused on the negatives in our spouses we couldn't stay married long... we learn to focus on the positives and why we love the person and let most of the negatives slide because in light of that love the negatives aren't that important. Likewise, there will always be problems in a church because it involves people... but we can't allow the problems to consume our thoughts because what we think on will affect what we say and do... and nobody wants to hang out with negative people.

The Power of Unity

What eliminated the "6th Row Wall" discussed in the previous blog? There have been some technical improvements to sound and such... and I believe the quality of the song selections has vastly improved... but those I don't believe are the real answer.

Around December of '04 there was a prophecy given in our church... it said "{there is} a transitioning taking place here. There is a move of God taking place. I saw that it was going to come through worship..."

I began to watch the worship... when there was a noticable move of the Spirit I would look to see if it was, indeed, coming through worship. As you might expect there was usually some correlation between an inspired worship time and the manifestations of God's presence and power but it never seemed to me that it had "...come through worship..." in the way I kept watching for. (now I know all of you are thinking, "he thinks way too much")

One day as I pondered this out loud with my worship team one of the members said, "It has already come through worship. Not through what happens on platform on Sunday morning but in what happens in the back rooms in preparation... the group has become a team... united in purpose, uncompetitive... and God's presence comes through unity"

The Grand Worship Experiment

I wrote early last year about the "Grand Worship Experiment". This was where we consolidated teams down to one team and began using a worship strategy team to meet monthly and assemble the next month's sets.

We are coming up on almost a year of using this process and the results are off-the-charts. Our repertoire has expanded and has become very current. We just completed our January planning meeting and I am amazed looking over next month's songs... they are all excellent... not a dog among them. If you aren't into worship and music you might not appreciate that statement... but a year ago our song selections were weak with an occassional winner... today the sets are energetic and passionate from start to finish most weeks. I am so pleased with this turn around.

We have also picked up a couple of people and, with the consistency we've gained by using the same team each week we have seen a few people, particularly vocalists, really step up big as they've gained confidence and experience. Something really happens when you lay your hands on someone (figuratively) and let them know that the role is theirs... we now have a minimum of 3 people carry the vocal lead any given week... and usually 4 or 5 different vocal leads on 6 or 7 songs... and they are all getting more comfortable in the role and any one of them could today lead an entire worship set alone. That was not possible a year ago.

The real goal is to work myself out of a job in the worship team. It currently still needs and depends on my leadership a great deal but it is growing less dependant weekly. This year I have targeted a couple of people to see them step up and lead more letting me begin to disappear. The system in place lets a team determine songs... and the team was trained by me on song selection... so if I leave they still pick using my model and thought process. The System allows multiple leaders. Although there is one leader responsible for the flow the service doesn't have to center on them. This allow me to not sing at all and still guide the feel and direction. Its a little hard to explain but it is happening.

We defined a purpose early on as a team, and the purpose quickly morphed into a model for our sets. It goes something like this:

Raise them to their feet in celebration,
Lay them on their face in adoration,
And Lift them up again a new person

By reminding ourselves of this each week we can easily arrange songs and styles to accomplish this. Our first part of the set is celebratory, moves directly into intimate worship for a song or two and then end with a big vertical anthem. We have virtually eliminated what we used to call "middle songs" that are usually beautiful ballads but are neither celebratory nor intimate and we concluded weren't moving us toward our purpose.

Yes, it can seem a little programmatic and there is always room to move and change with the spirit, but this has revolutionized our worship experience in the church. A year ago we were regularly having serious discussions about the "6th row wall"... it seemed like whatever we were doing on stage was getting about 6 rows back and falling to the floor. The first few rows were fully engaged in praise and worship while everything from there back seemed lifeless. This phenomenon we blamed on sound systems, leadership, styles, demons, whatever we could think of... today its a non issue... the congregation is fully engaged front to back... it would be difficult most weeks to identify a "section" of the sanctuary not full participating in the worship service.

End of Year Catchall

I know I haven't kept up the blog like I should. It's been a busy year... the heck of a year. I don't know how to capture it all in print and do it justice but I'll give some of the highlights.

If you glance back a few entries you see that I changed jobs and began working at the church in January. There have been a few changes since then and, with the departure of the previous Associate Pastor, I have moved into that role. This has also allowed Marie to step into the Administrative Pastor's position providing us the much-needed income boost that far offsets the pay reductions I took in January in order to facilitate ministry.

All in all Marie and I have never been more fulfilled in ministry than we are right now. We are seeing a great deal of impact and growth in the church and leaders around us and can attribute at least a small portion of that to our efforts... that's a great feeling. And the relationship we have with Bruce and Elaine, the Senior Pastors here, is wonderful. They are far more to us than boss, or co-workers... or even mentors... they are our closest friends and, often, surrogate parents.

We still see a great need with much more to do and I feel like we have the infrastructure of leaders beginning to take shape. The next year is going to be about mobilizing leaders to step out and have impact around them. I have some ideas for that which I will write more about soon.