Category Archives: Ministry

Church?

September 26, 2011 By in Church, Community, Faith, Fellowship, Ministry 4 Comments

Crossing The Chasm

Earlier this month I had the privilege of visiting a network of churches in Branson, Missouri, comprised of over a dozen recovery homes where people were ministering one to another in authentic community. In the context of that community of love, grace and fellowship, the Lord was using those whom He had redeemed from sin and addictions to bring healing and reconciliation to other broken people.

During the trip, I innocently made the comment that I was seeing an amazing example among them of what the “church” should be. One of the men I was talking to looked pained at my well-intentioned compliment, and responding by gently but emphatically stating they were NOT a “church”.

Over the next several days, I finally understood where he was coming from.

Continue reading →

Mentoring Entrepreneurs

September 4, 2011 By in Christian, Entrepreneur, Mentor, Ministry 1 Comment

Here’s a TV program that’s been airing in our area about one of the ministries in which I’m involved. I, and others, have been mentoring and working with folks who are gifted with entrepreneurial aptitude. Our focus is helping them start and grow new businesses, based on solid, real-world experience and sound Biblical principles. Often, we work with “alumni” of the local jail.

The host, Liz Charity, starts out interviewing me, then does an on-site interview with one of my protegé’s, Oscar Weeks, who started a road-side pit BBQ business.

Christian Counseling Class

August 29, 2011 By in Christian, Confession, Counseling, Forgiveness, Healing, Ministry, Repentance Leave a comment

I will be teaching a semester-long Christian counseling class beginning next Tuesday, September 6th, through early December. We will be meeting every Tuesday evening at my home just south of Manassas, Virginia, from 7:00 to 9:15 pm.

The course is being offered through Emmanuel Christian Institute, in conjunction with Fulcrum Ministries, for a very modest $200 (this fee goes to ECI for much appreciated administrative support, not me!).

Continue reading →

The Storm

April 28, 2011 By in Grace, Judgment, Mercy, Prophetic, Tyranny 2 Comments

The Storm

There is something in the prophetic personality that loves the thunder, the lightning and the storm.

I get a kick out of standing outside and watching the dark, billowing clouds roll in. We feel God’s majesty in turmoil, and know that He often uproots before He establishes.

I think we feel His mercy more deeply, but also differently. Because our personalities are especially attuned to His power and redemptive judgment, we more fully appreciate His grace.

That’s why we embrace the oppressed and battle tyrants, while relishing the storm.

~ Jim Wright

Understanding the Seven Motivational Gifts

January 2, 2011 By in Church, Community, Faith, Fellowship, Gifts, Grace, Leadership, Mercy, Prophetic, Virtue 1 Comment

This PowerPoint presentation looks at the seven gifts listed in Romans 12, and the motivations and ways that different people use those differing gifts. More significantly, what is the resulting fruit when your church allows those seven gifts to be fully expressed in its structure, ministries, leadership, meetings and day-to-day fellowship?

Continue reading →

A Tale of Two Ministries

December 27, 2010 By in Church, Faith, Gifts, Jail, Ministry Leave a comment

In nature, there’s a word for a place with inflow but no outflow: It’s called a swamp. God’s people are not called to be dead, stagnant swamps, but to offer living water: Cool, fresh, flowing and life giving.

Unfortunately, too many church gatherings are about inflow and not outflow. Churches today are focused on meetings and programs where people receive ministry, rather than places where we can minister one to another — as Scripture commands — according to our differing gifts. Getting people out of the familiar, traditional swamp of going to church to receive ministry, rather than the Biblical mandate to be the church where everyone ministers, is very daunting!

This dichotomy is amply illustrated by two ministries I’m involved with in the local jail. One is a highly structured, thirteen week program that provides intense teaching and scripted study materials to about thirty men who live together in a low-security, faith-based dorm. In that program, some of the strongest pulpit ministries in the county come to teach and minister to the men. With two meetings each weekday, they receive the best preaching and teaching imaginable. It’s like “podium church” on steroids.

Continue reading →

Ekklesia and Diverse Gifts, Part 3: What A Meeting Looks Like

December 21, 2010 By in Fellowship, Gifts, Ministry, Organic Church 5 Comments

So when we get together to be the church based on New Testament imperatives, what should our meetings look like?

To answer that, I’m going to present a composite example of a house church gathering (which was common in the New Testament), using our own local network of simple participatory churches from our own home county spanning the last twenty years.

I’m also approaching it from a common theme in the New Testament, which is using our differing spiritual gifts to edify and build up one another.

As a preliminary matter, this example assumes that there is a commitment by all to actively participate, and that everyone in fact has a vibrant walk with the Lord so that they have something to contribute.

Those are BIG, but indispensable, assumptions (but that’s a topic for another day!).

Continue reading →

Ekklesia and Diverse Gifts, Part 2: The Imperative of Participation

December 20, 2010 By in Church, Fruit, Gifts 2 Comments

When we meet together, 1 Corinthians 12-14, Romans 12 and Ephesians 4 say that we are to each contribute something. In fact, Paul repeatedly uses the imperative – a command – in telling us this.

Time and again Scripture exhorts us to avoid passivity. As such, God intends for our meetings to be incubators where we identify, develop and learn to use our gifts for our mutual growth and edification.

That’s because God’s gifts are not given for purely personal or individualistic purposes. Rather, when we meet we should be ministering to each other, each according to our unique gifts.  Using our gifts within the church, in turn, allows us to become a gift – to each other, the world and, most importantly, to Jesus.

Continue reading →

Ekklesia and Diverse Gifts, Part 1: The Motivational Gifts

December 19, 2010 By in Church, Community, Fellowship, Gifts, Ministry 8 Comments

True church - ekklesia - in the New Testament is ministry one to another, as an expression Christ in us, among us and through us as we use our diverse gifts to encourage and build up each other. Ekklesia and Diverse Gifts, Part 1: The Motivational Gifts

It’s one thing to embrace Paul’s metaphor of being the Body of Christ, where everyone is a different part as we participate and minister one to another according to our unique spiritual gifts.

It’s quite another thing to figure out how to do that in practical terms, especially when we meet together and abstract principles hit cold, hard reality.

Continue reading →

The Church in the New Testament: Its Form, Function and Purpose

October 31, 2010 By in Church, Community, Elder, Faith, Fellowship, Gifts, Great Commission, House Church, Institutional Church, Kingdom of God, Leadership, Ministry, Organic Church, Pastor 2 Comments

Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride! In this PowerPoint presentation, all that you think of as “church” is about to be challenged so God can woo us back to being, once more, the multi-faceted, wonderful, exciting Body of Christ.

Continue reading →

Helping or Enabling?

June 21, 2010 By in Grace, Love, Mentor, Mercy, Ministry, Sin 14 Comments

It’s hard cut lose a man you’ve been ministering to and let him ultimately bear the full consequences of the mess he’s made of his

life – not to hurt him, but to let him finally hit bottom.

I am friends with and minister to men and women who most people, and many churches, shun (except for arms-length “programs”, if even that). Pick a vice – any vice – and I’ve likely come beside and embraced those in bondage to it: former drug addicts, narc dealers, sex offenders, embezzlers, thieves, gender benders, Satanic ritual abusers and even murderers.

Because I’ve been willing to see past the sin and accept the common humanity we all share – not as one who is perfect but as a someone willing to walk with them as we sort out our individual imperfections together under God’s mercy and grace – some of these folk are now following the Lord.

I love such people, because daily I see how God creates beauty out of their ashes.

I am blessed, because I serve a God who, above all, creates. He takes destruction – what has become void and without form, in the words of Genesis 1 – and brings wonder and life and order. . .

. . . and He delights most of all, I’ve found, in redeeming lives that many think are beyond hope.

Continue reading →

Authentic Church

May 3, 2010 By in Church, Faith, Fellowship, Gifts 1 Comment

“So here’s what I want you to do. When you gather for worship, each one of you be prepared with something that will be useful for all: Sing a hymn, teach a lesson, tell a story, lead a prayer, provide an insight… Take your turn, no one person taking over. Then each speaker gets a chance to say something special from God, and you all learn from each other… This goes for all the churches — no exceptions.” The Message, 1 Cor. 14:28-33.

Continue reading →

Reboot

March 15, 2010 By in Church, Community, Culture, Fellowship, Gifts, Institutional Church, Kingdom of God, Leadership, Ministry, New Wine, Pastors, Transcendent 3 Comments

God seems to be laying a foundation for yet another of His periodic, history-changing interventions in the affairs of man. Over the last two thousand years there have been many such paradigm shifts, and it’s naive to think that our current, settled status quo will somehow be exempt from the unsettling but progressive advance of His Kingdom.

Paradigm Shifts

This newest paradigm shift is starting with pioneers who realize that God’s primary goal in history is to change not only individuals but also whole cultures and nations — as per the Great Commission.

Likewise, as with all prior interventions in history, His will is being applied to more and more aspects of His creation here on earth, just as it is in heaven — as per the Lord’s Prayer.

We also are coming to realize that the Kingdom of God — His will being done on earth (including all spheres of human endeavor) as it is in heaven — is bigger than the church. Nonetheless, we are beginning to understand that His Kingdom is not going to advance much further unless the church re-discovers her New Testament roots.

Admittedly, there is comfort in the familiar status quo of “church” as we’ve all come to know it. Some, however, are so hungry for God’s Kingdom — as it continues to progressively advance through history — that they’re willing hit to the reboot button and look afresh at God’ s purposes.

Continue reading →

Whole Health

March 5, 2010 By in Confession, Counseling, Faith, Forgiveness, Healing, Repentance 2 Comments

The more pastoral counseling I do, the more I realize how often people deal with life’s traumas, hurts and disappointments by suppressing either their mind, their heart, or their spirit – and thus some vital aspect of who God created them to be.

integrated_wholeFor example, instead of being healthy, integrated people, they numb out or otherwise retreat exclusively into the realm of their minds – i.e., their analytical logic and reason – to the exclusion of their heart and their spirit.

They are alive, but hardly living – as they deny themselves the catharsis of honest emotions and the wonder of new-found belief.

For others, their heart is the oppressor as they subjugate their mind and spirit to their feelings and sensibilities.

Some even allow their spirit to squelch their minds and hearts by super-spiritualizing everything, and treating reason and emotions as irredeemably corrupt.

I now realize that God created our mind, heart and spirit to be equally vital aspects of the whole, complete individuals He wants us to be.

Continue reading →

True Ministry

February 27, 2010 By in Brokenness, Community, Fellowship, Gifts, Grace, Institutional Church, Ministry, Organic Church 6 Comments

Last night, we had one of our best times of “participatory church” as we seamlessly shared a meal, partook of communion, fellowshipped and ministered one with another — and none of it depended on me!

The last several weeks have been very emotionally and physically exhausting for me. On top of my best friend dying, I’ve been struggling to keep up with my various professional and counseling commitments while concurrently experiencing a particularly bad bout of chronic fatigue from my autoimmune condition.

Continue reading →

Repentance, Forgiveness and the Kingdom of God

February 13, 2010 By in Confession, Counseling, Forgiveness, Healing, Kingdom of God, Ministry, Repentance 2 Comments

Recorded before a group of men in the local jail, this 55 minute audio teaching explains how we find peace and freedom when we allow God, through authentic Biblical confession, repentance and forgiveness, to change what we think, believe and perceive. That, in turn, allows us to know the righteousness, peace and joy that comes from finding and doing His will — which is what the Kingdom of God is all about.

This teaching arises from hundreds of intense pastoral counseling sessions through Fulcrum Ministries. In those sessions, I’ve seen how God uses Biblically authentic confession, repentance and forgiveness to bring quick resolution and lasting freedom from the lies, hurts and deceptions we carry from life’s circumstances — including routine disappointments to extreme situations like sexual abuse, occult ritual practices, childhood abandonment and many other life-crippling situations.

Continue reading →

Improbable Church

January 31, 2010 By in Community, Fellowship, Gifts, Joy, Kingdom of God, Organic Church 7 Comments

The church that meets together at my home each Friday evening to share a meal, encounter God and minister one to another is an improbable assembly of believers and even not-yet believers. We cut across races, cultures, nationalities, social status, and so many other lines – producing a rich tapestry of interwoven lives.

It reminds me of Adullam’s cave, where “every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented” went to flee from Saul. While there, God began the process of forging them into leaders who eventually established and became pillars in David’s kingdom. 1 Sam. 22:2.

Likewise, if you saw us you would laugh and wonder, “what can God do with these people?” Yet, isn’t that God’s way: to establish his Kingdom on earth by transforming lives, cultures, nations and history not with the ordained, but with the ordinary?

Continue reading →

Pimping the Gospel

October 30, 2009 By in Abuse, Fakes, Gifts, Kingdom of God, Manassas, New Covenant Fellowship, Prosperity Gospel, Sovereignty 15 Comments

As I’ve previously ministered in other parts of the world, I’ve been alarmed at the growing influence of the so-called “prosperity gospel”.

Money or Life?

The prosperity message is simply the latest incarnation of the historically persistent “gospel of self” that’s been a blight on the Church since the beginning. Going back to Simon the Samaritan in Acts 8, there’s always been those among us – with gifted personalities and beguiling, mesmerizing spirits of seeming sincerity – who pimp the gospel for personal gain.

Such God pimps – including John Hagee, Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn, Joel Osteen and their minions – are all over the airways peddling their seductive gospel of “self”.

Continue reading →

The Lost Art of Dialogue

October 18, 2009 By in Bible, Church, Faith, Fellowship, Leadership, Ministry, Organic Church, Truth 8 Comments

As last Friday’s church met over a shared meal (nothing fancy — KFC this week!) around a kitchen table, someone asked a question that opened up a great discussion on God’s sovereignty and human will. We must have spent at least an hour in dynamic exchange — with amazing questions, comments and seeking Scripture together as God’s truths opened up for everyone.

Continue reading →

Evangelical Prophets or Martyrs?

October 6, 2009 By in Catholicism, Charismatic, Church, Eastern Orthodox, Eschatology, Evangelical, Gifts, Great Commission, Kingdom of God, Leadership, Pentecostal, Pietism, Sovereignty, Truth, Worldview 6 Comments

I vividly recall leafing through World magazine back in 2006 and reading the unsettling but hardly surprising news that Randall Terry – the firebrand evangelical who formerly headed Operation Rescue and was then financially wiped out following a series of lawsuits by pro-abortionists – had joined the Roman Catholic Church.

“Unsettling,” because it provides further evidence of the growing weariness and disillusionment I’m seeing among spiritual “entrepreneurs” who’ve been laboring within evangelical circles to expand the Kingdom of God in all spheres of life and culture.

“Hardly surprising,” however, as those “on point” for the Kingdom increasingly seek refuge from the prevailing pop-theology (or dare I say lack of theology) and me-focused brand of Christianity that pervades evangelicalism (which includes charismatics and Pentecostals), animates many of our local church and national leaders, and cuts believers off from the great historic doctrines and creeds of our faith.

Continue reading →

The Gift of Mercy

August 4, 2009 By in Abuse, Emergent, Gifts, Grace, Healing, Joy, Leadership, Mercy 9 Comments
The Gift of Mercy

Of the seven spiritual gifts listed in Romans 12, the last – but, I believe, the greatest yet least appreciated and most abused – is mercy.

As I watch and sense what God is doing with an emerging new spiritual generation, I see that their dominant characteristic is mercy. I also have begun to realize that God wants to use “mercies” (those with the primary spiritual gift of mercy) as catalysts to unleash additional gifts in others. That, in turn, will bring this rising generation to new pastures where God wants to dwell among us.

This doesn’t mean everyone in this new spiritual generation has mercy as their dominant individual spiritual gift. But as a whole, they nonetheless seem to collectively exhibit the main motivations of mercy – which are a deep, personal craving for the presence of God and for genuine intimacy with others.

As a result, this rising generation has little interest or patience with the moral and cultural wars of my generation, or with our prevailing hypocrisy as we tried to fix everyone else but failed to exhibit God’s presence in our own lives. Nor can they understand the focus on programs and institutions – with a resulting lack of authentic community – among older Christians.

Continue reading →

Following God’s Presence

August 2, 2009 By in Church, Jail, Ministry, New Wine, Prayer, Tears 14 Comments

Today in the jail, after two hours of powerful ministry between the men one to another, they stopped and said they decided earlier this week to do something for me. They then stood around me, laid hands on me, and prayed the most wonderful, tender prayers of blessing I’ve ever heard.

I cried as I realized what they were doing, because they’ve learned – maybe with some of them for the first time in their lives – to give rather than always take or receive.

After months of mentoring them on “being” the church (see my blog, The Church in D Pod), they heeded God’s gentle call to new pastures. As a result, they now “get” it and wonderful life is flowing between them and from them – even to me!

How many church leaders – who so closely guard the microphone and the prerogatives of their front podium as they try to direct even God himself during their closely scripted and controlled Sunday services – have ever experienced the joy of being just one of many?

Do they realize they have no monopoly on the many spiritual gifts God wants us to give as acts of worship, to Him and in fellowship one with another?

If not, then they are missing the blessing of letting life and ministry flow under the prompting of the Holy Spirit – not simply from them, but to and around them.

Continue reading →