After commenting yesterday on the powerful effect the Holy Spirit had on the Thessalonians, I came across another quote by Roland Allen that confirms the point we are making. “What Christ asks of His disciples is not so much exposition of doctrine about Himself as a witness to His power. Witness to His power can be given by the most illiterate if he has experienced it. It does not require long training for a man to say, “One thing I know, that though I was blind, now I see”” (John 9:25). Questions came to this man from the Pharisees that he could not answer except with “I do not know”. The power for effective witness is not in how much you know, but in who you know. So powerful was the change in Saul’s life that he “immediately…proclaimed Jesus” (Acts 9:20). Let the Holy Spirit do a fresh work in your life that witnesses to the person of Christ so others are drawn to Him! (The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church and the Causes Which Hinder It, Page 32).
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Even though the wounds from being dragged into prison and beaten at Philippi are still visible and sore, Paul and Silas do not deviate from their mission; to preach Jesus Christ where He had not been heard before. Their boldness incited “wicked men of the rabble to form a mob” saying that “these men…have turned the world upside down” (Acts 17:5-6). Now that is a reputation I would love to have! Actually, for those who receive the message of the gospel, their world is given a right side up perspective. What these two men left behind them is what is important. They planted the living gospel of Jesus Christ and those in Thessalonica who received it, “not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction” (1 Thessalonians 1:5). Paul and Silas are “immediately sent…away by night to Berea” (Acts 17:10) because their lives were in danger. What then about these new converts? There was no one left behind to disciple them. Here is where we must learn to trust the Spirit’s work. These new believers were so powerfully taught by Him that they “became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia” (1 Thessalonians 1:8). I am afraid that we limit the Spirit’s work through us because we can’t release what God has done through us to Him! Christian doctrine will take shape in hearts as we put converts in the hands of the Holy Spirit. This works hand-in-hand with discipling. In certain parts of the world the wind of the Holy Spirit is blowing, causing the gospel to penetrate unreached people groups in unique ways. As converts come to know Jesus as their Savior, they have a hunger to know Christ that few of us have ever experienced or seen. Roland Allen reminds us that “these converts seem to have learned by themselves much that we think can only be taught by us. What they have learned is very fundamental and they seem to show a great readiness to learn more. That is not the spirit which breeds heresy. The spirit which breeds heresy is a spirit of pride which is puffed up with an undue sense of its own knowledge and is unwilling to be taught.” (The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church and the Causes Which Hinder It, Page 30). As I mentioned yesterday, I strongly feel we have minimized the role of the Holy Spirit. There is hardly a place in the Early Church where we see His power so manifest than Thessalonica. Come back tomorrow as we examine what took place after Paul and Silas traveled 98 miles (158 km) from Philippi to Thessalonica and Paul “reasoned” (discussed with reasonable discourse) on three consecutive Sabbaths. Meet you here tomorrow. I want to give you a quote from Roland Allen that might be a little shocking, but I trust will create sufficient disturbance that you begin asking some serious questions about most churches today. “The great heresies in the early Church arose, not from the rapid expansion resulting from the work of these unknown teachers; but in those Churches which were the longest established, and where the Christians were not busily engaged in converting the heathen round them. The Church of that day was…quite fearless of any danger that…large numbers of what we should call illiterate converts might lower the standard of Church doctrine. She held the tradition handed down by the Apostles, and expected the new converts to grow up into it, to maintain it and to propagate it. And so in fact they did. The danger to the doctrine lay not in these illiterate converts on the outskirts; but…amongst the more highly educated and philosophically minded Christians. It was against them that she had to maintain the doctrine.” (The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church and the Causes Which Hinder It, page 29). While this statement will not be appreciated by most, it demands our attention. Why are there still so many unreached people groups who have not heard the gospel? Have we placed the emphasis more on doctrine than on the charge of Matthew 28:19-20? Or does this problem stem from a distrust of the Holy Spirit to “lead them into all truth” (John 16:13)? I love our growing family, diapers and all. Everyone has a job to do, using his or her God-given gift, and….. we are multiplying! It is estimated that in the first six years of the Jerusalem church, it grew by 7,000 to 20,000. In that time, “they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42). What are you and your church doing? In the final pages of David Garrison’s book, A Wind in the House of Islam, I came across a very helpful definition of “indigenous”. We often use this term in speaking of our mission through this ministry: “To glorify God by partnering with indigenous key leaders to establish biblical churches that are self-sustaining and reproducing among all people groups.” In the words of David Garrison, “Indigenization literally means “generated from within.” Movements to Christ may begin with outside stimulation, but they become movements only when the new believers own and advance the lordship of Christ themselves. Indigenization takes over where contextualization leaves off: when those we seek to reach are obeying Christ on their own accord. When this occurs, these new believers take discipleship to deeper levels than outsiders can ever anticipate.” After one of the personal examples of how this worked in the Western South Asia Room of Islam, he noted that “when the missionary modeled submission to God’s word rather than offering her own advice, the new believers found a path forward. This requires us to believe Christ’s promise that the power of the Holy Spirit will “lead them into all truth” (John 16:13) and the word of God will render them “fully equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17).” (Pages 244-245). This is a huge step of faith for most western Christians. The old traditions of colonial evangelism do not have a biblical basis and need to be left behind. It is time for us to be obedience ourselves to the Word and trust the power of God in the Holy Spirit to generate within movements to Christ through their own obedience. As I have read David Garrison’s book, A Wind in the House of Islam, I am fascinated by the history of this religion and the movements to Christ that sprang up in different ways in various parts of the world. The variety of methods God has used to spawn these movements is in itself remarkable. At the same time, there are concerns that some individuals in these movements convert for the wrong reason. Could there be “ulterior motives that might have prompted these movements? What role did money have in these movements…what about financial gain (page 231)?” While oppression may have provoked such motives, there is a deeper issue that the church must examine in its desire to present the gospel to the unsaved. When Jesus sent out the twelve to “proclaim the kingdom of God”, “He said to them, “Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money; and do not have two tunics” (Luke 9:3). The power of the gospel was sufficient to draw persons to follow Jesus and needed no other gimmicks to allure people to become disciples. Why do I bring up this point? In our meetings this week, one of the issues that was very important to us was the effectiveness of our ministry in certain areas of the world. We have noted that where the demand for money is the highest, the effectiveness of our work in spreading the Word of God is the lowest. We are forced to ask the same question that David Garrison asked; are there ulterior motives” that in the end prove ineffective. We cannot afford to waste our time where this is the underlying motive. The NFI team has just finished a little over two days of wonderful meetings. These consisted of prayer, planning and seeking the Lord to guide our ministry in the direction He wants it to go. We distinctly felt the Holy Spirit’s power and presence. If you were among those who prayed for us, we give you a heart-felt “thanks” for standing with us. Here are a few points that resulted from our time together:
I have been reading a book by David Garrison (A Wind in the House of Islam) and become fascinated with “movements of God” that most of us never hear about. Most of these movements are effective because they happen apart from any Western influence or presence. One interview in a country I will leave unnamed gave this testimony:
“When Western colonizers withdrew from the region, gospel witness was free to be accepted or rejected on its own merits rather than for any perceived advantage that might be accrued by association with a foreign occupier.” (Page 182). By extension, this same phenomenon is happening today when the gospel is placed in the hands of even one indigenous person who has the Holy Spirit. There is no limit to what movements God will start and spread as we keep to the principles He has shown us at the beginning. If you want your heart to be ignited with joy at what God is doing in our day, this book is a must read. Let’s plant the seed in one fertile heart and then get out of the way. In the last two blogs, I mentioned “movements of God”. Let me define that term as simply as I can. It is a way that God is drawing large numbers of lost people into salvation through Jesus Christ and gathering them as the body of Christ in any culture and community. How God does this is a miracle of His grace and can take countless ways depending on the conditions at the moment.
As I have been praying and deeply burdened that we would see new “movements of God” in our day, I realized that it is going to take a change of heart among God’s people to return to Scripture and the methods used in the Early Church that revolved around the Holy Spirit. How is this ever possible? Can one voice among millions make a change as momentous as this? YES! We are witnessing that when one man in Vietnam saw for the first time the principles God used in the Early Church and their result, and the Holy Spirit lit a fire in his heart and now there is a movement that is flowing beyond the borders of his own country. The same thing is beginning to happen among the younger generation in Myanmar. Similar changes are taking place in Liberia and Ecuador. As I mentor a young man here in the USA through God’s Plan for His Church, he too is catching the same vision. Though well educated, he told me that he has never seen these things before and is hungry to finish the whole manual. Many have started to study this manual but never finished it. Thus they never caught the vision. Would you be one of the few who wants a movement of God in our day and returns to the Scriptures, seeking the Spirit to fill you for this task? For several centuries, mission boards and organizations have tried, with varying degree of success to plan, strategize, partner with other organizations, plead for money, and use the latest technology. In themselves, none of these things are wrong. The question that I am posing here is: if we are going to fulfill the mandate of Matthew 24:14 and 28:19-20, what is going to be the most effective method of fulfilling our charge?
I see the church today facing a major dysfunction in accomplishing Jesus’ command. Every mission board and denomination thinks their method is the best since the Early Church. For just a moment, let’s compare what happened right after the day of Pentecost. The gospel went from Jerusalem to Rome in about 25 years covering 3,100 miles. If you take Paul’s three missionary journeys together over about 11 years, he covered 17,987 miles WITHOUT a motorbike, car, bus, train, power boat or airplanes. He planted churches, returned to strengthen them, equipped them with elder leaders, and from them there were movements of God. How is this possible? After asking this question in Africa, a brother answered, “We don’t have the Holy Spirit like they did.” We have taught ourselves to rely on our own ingenuity rather than the Holy Spirit. I invite you and anyone who is interested in finishing the task Jesus left us, to take seriously our study of the Book of Acts and Paul’s letters. You will see for yourself what will produce a movement of God that will complete our task for the glory of God. |
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