Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome to the Karma Chaj podcast.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: Thank you, guys.
Thank you, Jesus.
Hey, let's stay standing for a moment.
Let's just re enter that place just for a moment.
Just begin to sing to the Lord.
We give you all the glory, Jesus.
We give you all the honor and praise.
We are so delighted, so delighted to be your sons and daughters.
We thank you so much.
Hallelujah.
Hallelujah.
Wow.
Hallelujah. You guys, God is good, and this has been such a rich time together. You can have a seat.
Oh, what an honor it is to be here. I followed this gathering online for the last few years and just been like, oh, wow. Would it ever be possible for us to be here? You know, we've had the privilege of visiting this church a couple times, and every time, literally, we're blown away.
And afterwards, I just brag about you around the nations. What God has done here is so beautiful, and it's so authentic and it's so raw and real.
And as I look around the room just over the last day, you know, just thinking, wow, what a room full of giants. You know, what a room full of men and women who have, you know, paid a price to see God's kingdom not just come, but remain and deepen and empower and just the.
The hope that I sense around the room that we're not done yet, that there's a whole new dynamic that's waiting and just awesome. My wife is here, Diane, and we'll talk a little bit together. She'll come up and hang out with me in a minute. But it was interesting because this morning I had no idea you were going to Preach on Luke 5. But that was the scripture God gave us when we actually planted the vineyard.
But right before you even cracked the book, I felt like the Lord spoke to me something.
He said, the fish are in the sea and the saints are on the land, but the favor of God is on you, because you pitched your tent right by the sea, right where the fish swimming.
And being by the sea can be a messy place. Sometimes it can be. The storms might come, the waves might crash against the house, but because you built your house close to where the fish are, and you've maintained that over this last decade at least. But before even, you know, therefore, the favor of God is upon you, and he's going to give you a house at the sea and a house in the high ground as well. And I just felt like the Lord is just saying that he's going to bless both sides of who you are and what you're doing because you have carried his heart for the lost at a level that very few do.
So many of us get so caught up in doing church that we lose sight sometimes of all the fish.
So I just want to commend you in the name of Jesus. It is an honor to be in your house, and we're so happy to be here.
And I also want to say to Paul and Sue, what a privilege to be with you in this. You know, Paul was my boss for a few years in Global Legacy, and just, it was amazing. You know, we just finished 33 years of pastoral ministry in San Francisco, and we came up to reading a little bit, you know, tired, a little bit in need of, you know, just a refocused time.
And these guys cracked open the door for us and just made a way for us to feel honored, accepted, embraced. And so I just thank you for that. Paul, sue, you guys have been a blessing to Diane and me.
So, anyway, hallelujah.
You know, one of the.
I'm going to have a few books here tomorrow that we might put out if they arrived, but I just want to mention one. Okay. This is a book I wrote with Banning, and Bill Johnson was gracious enough to put a chapter in the book, and it's called Revival Culture.
And the reason I'm bringing it up is because as we talk about church planting and revival, the book opens up with a statement that I think maybe some of you have heard, but maybe it would be new to some of you.
But the statement is, basically, we get so excited about the promise of a billion soul harvest. Amen.
Don't you want to see a billion souls come to Christ? I mean, wouldn't it just warm our hearts and bless us deeply if we could see a billion souls?
But very few of us do the math on a billion souls.
Do you know what the math is on a billion souls? Because the average in the Western world, the average pastor pastors at roughly a one per hundred.
Okay? So if we said, how many new pastors do we need to care for a billion souls?
We're talking about 10 million new pastors.
And we're in an age where most young people don't want to become pastors.
You know, we taught at Bethel school. There was 2,500 students in the school. 150 of them signed up for my course called Church Leaders Leadership and Planting, because people want to be stadium preachers. They want to be, you know, itinerant ministers blowing up churches with words of knowledge. Or they want to be, you know, marketplace ministers. I mean, there's There's a hundred different directions that people want to go right now. But where is the lowly pastor who wants to care for the flock? Who wants to do that? Because we need 10 million of them, and that means 10 million new churches in general.
In other words, if we want to see God do what God does, which is to raise up a generation, if we want to see that times a billion souls, gosh, we need to do the math. I mean, it would take, what is it, a thousand schools of Ministry, graduating 1000 graduates a year for 10 years to raise up a thousand schools with a thousand graduates who are pastor ready.
I mean, come on, you guys.
Our work is cut out for us. It's all hands on deck. I mean, if we really are serious about a billion souls, then that means every single person in this room, you're drafted, you know, you're called upon.
And so, you know, as we have this. I was so excited when I heard the. The theme of this conference, to raise and to release and to. And to send.
You know, just. It was probably about six months ago, a little bit later, nine months ago, Diane and I were in Brazil with our dear friend Bishop Teo Hayashi, where he actually secured five stadiums, had 250,000 young, mostly young people hold up their shoes at the end of a full 12 hours of gathering and say, here am I.
Send me.
How beautiful on the mountain are the feet of those that bring good tidings who declare to Zion your king lives.
Isn't that awesome?
We're really in the early stages of that outpouring that we've been longing for.
The question is, how do we prepare our hearts and how do we get ready?
So with that, I want to just turn to a passage that most of you have probably preached on. But we're going to take it, and we're going to take it from probably some new direction, if you will. Second Timothy, chapter two. And to follow the standard of this house, we're going to stand up as we read this passage. Can you guys stand with me?
And if we can put it up there. Excellent.
Okay, you guys.
Verse 1 of chapter 2 of 2 Timothy. You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and the things which you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who. Who will be able to teach others also.
You, therefore, must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.
No one engaging in warfare entangles himself in the affairs of this life that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier and Also, if anyone competes in athletics, he is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules.
And the hard working farmer must be first partakers of the crop. Can everybody say amen?
Let's all sit. Okay. We are dealing with one of the most incredible moments in the ministry of Paul, where he's speaking, most people believe, from Rome to his dear son in the Lord, who has actually assumed the leadership of a church, that Paul had planted the church in Ephesus. And if you've ever been there, it's just such a glorious area to visit because you know when you stand in the amphitheater and you know that Paul visited that very spot and you know that this was one of the most incredible church plants that has ever existed. Because out of this particular church plants, all the known world was turned upside down.
That the Gospel was preached throughout what some people could estimate 4 million people that were in Asia Minor at the time. What an incredible thing. And also just by virtue of that, they actually did most of this ministry in what was a university.
So I believe there's something about Ephesus and this house that God's going to actually anoint this house as he anointed Ephesus to be a true hub for kingdom activity that just wouldn't stop. It just kept going and going and going and going. Okay, so, but what he's. The first thing I want to talk about is the issue of sonship.
And this is so important and doing church as a family, because Paul is not accidentally using the word son here.
And as we talk about planting churches and we talk about multiplication, as we talk about raising up men and women for ministry, what we're talking about is something akin to fatherhood and sonship, fatherhood and daughtership, motherhood. We're talking about a family model that I believe is the, the most essential model of ministry throughout the scripture. I mean, we have many examples such as good soldiers following their king, or we have, you know, or their commander, we have athletes working out and those analogies are used. And they're wonderful and they're beautiful. But there is a story that exists throughout scripture from the moment of creation about family.
And as we talk about extending the kingdom, as we talk about planting new churches, we're talking in the language of family.
But as I was thinking about family, preparing for this time, I started thinking about my sonship, obviously the vertical sonship. And we'll talk about that towards the end of our time today.
But I was also thinking about my sonship in relationship to the fathers. I've had in the Lord.
And I'm just going to share a little bit about that as we get started because I want you to understand that this goes in both directions. In fact, I don't know if Paul, you'll remember this, but remember, Diane and I made an appointment with you.
It was probably 2007 or 2008. We were still living in San Francisco, we were still pastoring there. And we made an appointment with Paul just to try to get a little bit more input about what we're doing.
And we came into his office and he said, you know what, I hate to tell you this, but I agreed to bring another guy along.
I'm so sorry. Do you remember this? I don't know if you do. And so anyway, Diane and I were like, really disappointed because we thought, oh, wow, we get a one on one with Paul for one hour. This is going to be awesome. And we show up at the restaurant to meet him and he has this other guy with him. And I thought, oh, no. And then I was introduced to the guy and his name was Leif Hetland.
I thought, oh, that's interesting. Here we get to hang out with Paul and Leif Hetland. What a twofer. You know, it's like, wow, this is a blessing. And. But what was so interesting about it was Leif really kind of led the conversation. I don't know if you remember, but he said, he said, I just came back from an amazing encounter with God. And he said, this encounter was interesting because I had been with my father in the Lord, Jack Taylor.
And he said, finally, after all these years of walking with him and working with him, I brought myself into spiritual alignment with him at a much deeper level than I ever had.
And as a result, he said, the next trip I took to Philippines, each of my Filipino pastors that were related to me said, something happened in the Spirit over the last couple of months. And we feel like God is telling us to align ourselves with you.
In other words, Leif's alignment this way produced an alignment this way.
And we took that and we said, okay, wait a minute. There's something going on spiritually that we need to pay attention to. Cause here is Paul talking to his son in the Lord and saying, hey, my son in the Lord.
And he starts to give him certain advice.
There's something that happened in the alignment of Timothy's heart with Paul.
And in this story. It's so interesting because I made a decision, I think Diana and I both made a decision during that weekend, that conference, to align ourselves more fully With Bill, Bill Johnson, we just felt that in the spirit. And then when I got back to my church, our lead elder said, something happened this week.
He said, I felt something release in my heart of a much deeper loyalty. I mean, this guy had been with us 25 years by that time, but he said, the Lord did something in my heart.
See, what we're going to explore as we look at this passage of Scripture is we're going to look at this alignment dynamic that takes place in the church planting process. We're going to see that ultimately you as a planter and you as a potential sender, you have a responsibility to engage one another in a way that produces the alignment, that allows the grace of God to form, flow in a powerful way to bring maximum fruit for the glory of Jesus. Amen. Come on. This is what we're talking about. So what he says here is he says, you, therefore, now what is he talking there for? Because, you know, you have to find out what it's there for. And he's talking about the entire relationship that he's had with Timothy since the start. And then he says in the first book to Timothy, a letter to Timothy, he says, I left you in Ephesus so you would command them not to preach another gospel.
In other words, Paul had raised up this young man, and by this time, he might have been, you know, by this book, he's probably 45, 50 years old, maybe.
There's some estimates that by the time of second Timothy that there could have been as many as 40,000 people in that church.
You know, so it's like this is a serious moment. And obviously he's talking to him about his weaknesses. He's talking to him about his fears. He's talking to him about intimidation, but he's also saying, be strong in the grace I left you there. He was actually part of the original church planting team, but now he's been left there. When I think of my fathers in the Lord, just a little bit of my story might help you to understand who I am.
Like has been said, I was raised in the hippie movement of San Francisco. My parents moved there when I was three years old in 1960.
Okay. And my mom got swept up in the summer of love and she went full on hippie. My parents were separated, and so she ended up actually hooking up with a guy and starting a commune in the city. And we lived and we had draft dodgers and we had political activists and guru followers and, you know, all kinds of people. It was just that, you know, open door of people coming through our house. I never heard the gospel of Jesus until I started hitchhiking around the nation at 15 years old.
And as I was hitchhiking this one particular day, in fact, my first father in the Lord was actually a mother, because I was hitchhiking. I had six rides in a row with believers, and every one of them witnessed to me, okay? And then I got out of this. I got out of the car in this little town called Boonville, which was really out in the boonies, okay? And I got out in Boonville, and a car pulls up, and there's a woman sitting in the back seat whose name was Sabina Ball.
And she said, well, do you want a ride? Turns out she was a German woman who was actually in the aristocracy. She'd been raised as a Nazi youth and went into the wealthy class of that world. She married into with a very wealthy man and divorced him, but came away with a lot of money, bought some land to start a hippie commune. And then the Holy Spirit swept through, and dozens and dozens of these people got saved. And now here she is a few years later, picking me up, hitchhiking and witnessing to me, okay? This was my first experience in Christ. I prayed with them to receive the Lord. I had a vision of Jesus two weeks later. And then my life began to change. I had no discipleship, so it took a while, but I ended up actually going to a big thing called a rainbow gathering up in the Montana. And that was the moment where I actually met these Blackfoot Indians. And they took me in. I mean, it's a crazy story, but. But they took me in. This is my first father. In the Lord was a man named Albert Wells.
He was 76 years old. He was born at the turn of the last century.
He was alcoholic, dying of cirrhosis of the liver. And he went to a bar to drink himself to death. And Jesus appeared in the bar, and everybody saw him. Thirty people started screaming, running out of the bar, diving under tables. And now here he is, you know, 35, 40 years later, and a hippie shows up on his doorstep. And he takes me in because father spoke to him and said, this is my son. Take care of him.
And this man, I lived with him for six months while he instructed me. I sat at his feet, and he just. I saw miracles and healings and amazing things, Heard the audible voice of God. And then at a certain point, he said, I've taken you as far as I can.
I want to release you now to get trained.
So I came back to San Francisco. I didn't know what to do. I began looking at Bible schools, and I heard about a Jesus movement group that was up in Northern California, Lighthouse Ranch, if you ever want to check it out. It was a little different than the Jesus revolution, folks, because these guys were hardcore, intense disciples. In other words, they planted 65 churches with just saved hippies.
I mean, if you could imagine that. They discipled them and sent them out and planted churches all over the world, really.
And so this group, I heard about them, they said, they're planting a church in San Francisco. I gotta go.
So this became my second father in the Lord, a man named Jim Durkin.
And he was an apostolic leader, very gifted, kind of from Assemblies of God backgrounds. And I came into alignment with this guy, and I joined their ministry up at the Lighthouse Ranch. I was part of the team going to San Francisco, and the year was 1977.
And that was our beginning of a church plant. But again, we didn't really know what we were doing. We were just planting churches the best we knew how. We kind of look at the scripture and say, oh, well, it says to do this. So we did this. And.
And we just had a blast. It was fun. We opened up houses, we took in people off the streets. We had a common purse because we wanted to walk out the axe dynamic.
It was around that time that I met some friends and we started an outreach in the city. And that's how I met Diane.
Diane was a ywam girl, and she had gotten saved at Calvary Chapel during the very era of the movie, okay? And so she was baptized in her puka shell bikini at Pirates Cove, just like in the movie. And she came up for this outreach, and we had about, oh, 350, 400 people come for the outreach, and they were all sleeping on church floors. But I saw Diane, and I made sure she got on my team because.
And that night we went out, and we knew we weren't supposed to just preach that night. We were just gonna invite the presence of God. So we had a couple guitars, and we were just worshiping Jesus on.
And we got surrounded by 300 very drunk and angry individuals who didn't like the fact that we were worshiping Jesus there.
And it was at that moment that we were actually. I said, wow, we need to get these people off the streets. And we were waiting for the light to change. I said, diane, would you want to run with me to open up the church?
And it was at that moment that I held her hand.
I mean, I knew her for about six hours. But I figured, hey, you know, poor girl. She's in San Francisco.
So, anyway, we felt like we had to get married right away, you know, so, no, I literally proposed, like, two weeks later. And she said, have you even talked to your pastors about this? I said, wow, good idea. I should probably talk to my pastors about this. Anyway, we were married six months later.
We have seven kids, 11 grandchildren, been married 45 years, and hallelujah. No, seriously, if you knew how challenging it's been, you know, planting a church and raising seven kids on the mission field of San Francisco, you'd give all the glory to God. You know, we just barely made it. And thank you, Jesus. But anyway, my son in the Lord, I've had some amazing fathers. It was around that time, actually, a couple years later, the Lord spoke to us to step out of the ministry that we were part of Gospel outreach. And it was about two months later, I met a man named Lonnie Frisbee.
And Lonnie was traveling with a guy named John Wimber.
And literally, like Wimber, I spent, like, six hours with Lonnie. And Wimber came over and said, hey, you got to go to this conference we're doing called MC510.
This is now a 1984, the first conference. Wimber did, and Wimber became our father in the Lord. We aligned our hearts with him, and God began to move in our lives in a way that we never expected. Signs and wonders, deliverances. Just incredible, amazing words of knowledge and breakthrough and power. And we just said, wow, we're not gonna. We're not gonna really believe this unless it happens in San Francisco.
And so we went back to San Francisco, and the first meeting we were in, a girl fell out of the front seat and just slid her across the floor, screaming. And God, you know, used us. I mean, she got set free immediately.
And we became known as the Ghostbusters. And so that was our name for a while. And everybody brought their demonized friends to us, which is really fun.
But we were with Wimber for 15. Well, 13 years, because he passed away in 1997.
But we got incredible. I remember the second conference I went to. Okay, the first conference was 250. No, 2,500 people. I'm sorry, 2,500 people in a big room right next to Disneyland. Okay. And it was a phenomenal conference. I mean, healings and miracles and incredible stuff happening.
The next conference I went to was on church planting, and it was. I walked into the auditorium, and nobody was there. I thought, oh, no, what's going on? And they said, oh, it's in that side room. I went over to the side room. There's 25 people.
And I spent a week with Wimber talking about church planting. And Wimber was just like, you know, and it was like I just kept going like this because everything we did, we did kind of wrong, you know? In fact, the church that we had planted starting in 77 never grew beyond 70 people.
And it wasn't because we didn't love the Lord. It wasn't because we weren't incredibly committed. We just didn't really understand some of the dynamics.
See, when John Wimber, like I like to say this, he was an expert in the art and the science of church.
And he was able to bring those two things together, the art and the science, the presence and power of God with the vision and mission of the kingdom. And he brought it together in a way that actually produced amazing results.
So we came into alignment with him. In fact, the next conference we went to was called Wimber on Wagner.
And in that Wimber on Wagner conference, the Lord literally dropped it on us that the vineyard was our home.
We knew right away that it was. And we turned to each other, said, did you hear that? Yeah. The Lord said it to both of us simultaneously. We met with one of the leaders. He said, you know what? I said, how do you join? He said, well, you can't.
He said, either you are vineyard or you're not.
I think we're a vineyard anyway. And so he said, go home and fast and pray and see what the Lord does.
And we fasted and prayed. And right at that time, we got a call from another father in the Lord, a man named Paul Pillay.
Paul Pillay had received his doctoral degree.
He was from India. He had been sent over to the U.S. he was in the graduating class with John MacArthur, okay, in 1957.
And he went back into India, and by the time he passed away about seven years ago, he planted more than 7,000 churches.
Amazing, amazing man of God. And he took us under his wing for about 20 years, and he would visit us. And so he called me right in the middle of our fast and said, michael, are you still with that other group, Gospel Outreach? And I said, actually, no. The Lord led us on, and he said, well, wonderful.
I said, why? He said, because God told me on the plane to tell you to plant a church.
And it's supposed to look like this. Exactly what Wimber had told us. And so we started a vineyard church in San Francisco. And Wimber was very specific about it. He said, don't start on Sunday mornings. Whatever you do, start in small groups, because once you go to Sunday mornings, you're in competition with all the other churches. But if you start in small groups, guess what?
You get to do all the kingdom stuff without the pressure.
So we said, hallelujah. And so we started doing that, and our house filled up. And then we started a second group. That house filled up. We started a third group. Unfortunately, that guy thought it was time for him to plant a church.
He didn't tell me. He told the vineyard group, the overseers. He said, hey, you know, God spoke to me to plant a church. And they said, praise God. And when I found out about it, I went to his house and said, what are you doing?
He says, well, who do you think you are?
I said, well, I was guy who's raising you up to plant. And he said, well, any bozo who plays guitar can be a vineyard pastor.
That was his response to me. I thought, okay, thank you very much. Any bozo that plays guitar, you know, Bozo the Clown. It's like any clown that.
Anyway, we made it just under the. Under the bar, you know, because we had our fifth home group by the time we started Sunday mornings in 1985.
And we just celebrated the 40th year anniversary of that church, which is amazing. You know, God blessed it. But anyway, I mean, I could go on and on, but there's been these different fathers. And what I'm getting at is that ultimately, if God's called you to plant, you need to be in alignment.
If God has called you to send, you need to be in alignment, because ultimately the depth of your alignment will determine the grace. That's what he's saying right here. And we'll just move on in the passage. He says, my son, be strong in the grace.
If you've ever planted a church, you need grace.
I remember the first time Banning Liebscher spoke at a church planting conference. I was leading, and he said, yeah, the first thing I believe about church planting is don't run as fast as you can get away.
That's what he said. Because it's a challenge, you guys.
So you need lots of grace. But that's what he says. And here's where the grace plays out, is he says the things which you've heard and from me, among many witnesses, commit to faithful men who will be able to teach others. Also see, there's a generational alignment that is essential in the process. You know, most people don't know this. But before Wimber started the Vineyard, he was the president of the Fuller Institute of Church Growth.
I don't know if you guys know this. He actually interviewed more than 40,000 pastors to find out what works and what doesn't work.
And he came away with this amazing, like, library of information about how to plant churches. And it became the foundation for, like, Willow Creek or Saddleback under Rick Warren. These guys started using those principles, and pretty much every single mega church that was birthed after that used the principles that were pioneered by Donald McGaveran and Peter Wagner and John Wimber in those early days, in the early seventies. Okay?
And so. But Wimber said this after having gone to, you know, 40,000 pastors and interviewed them. He said, you know, basically 80% of the churches that exist are playing basketball without a ball and without a hoop.
That's how Wimber put it.
In other words, they're going through the motions.
Swish. No, it didn't. Yes, it did. In other words, they're going through all the motions week after week. Worship and Word and all the things that we do, and yet they're not really scoring.
And I know that many of us have had that experience. I've had that experience. There's been seasons in my life in leadership where I couldn't seem to get the ball down the court. You guys understand?
And Wimber just said, there's reasons why that happens. There's reasons, there's ways in which to overcome that challenge. I call it Fantasy Church. And I've said this before here, that there's actually three kinds of churches that I look at through this lens. There's Fantasy Factory and Family.
Okay? Fantasy Church is where we basically go through all the motions. We say, wow, God showed up, or something happened in the heavenlies, but we can't tell what happened on Earth.
And so you have churches that have literally been stuck at 50 to 70 people or maybe 200 people. They keep hitting a wall again and again and again, and they can't figure out why, because they've lost their metrics. They've lost a sense of clarity about how they're supposed to proceed and pursue outcome. And I know some of you have struggled with that same thing like I have, and that's a challenge. And we have to learn how to help churches through that challenge to be able to overcome.
But the next one I would call Factory Church. And unfortunately, that's where a lot of churches have ended up now, across the Western world, especially, because what they've done is they've Discovered a few principles like the one that Wimber the ones that Wimbert actually generated. And they've found that if they just institute the principles and the programs, that they can actually, you know, basically create a facsimile of a growing, thriving church.
But is it really?
And so what is a factory church? Well, a factory church is a church that depends on structures and formulas and not on the Holy Spirit and relational realities.
And so factory churches actually can succeed. I mean, there's big movements right now across the earth and in the United States specifically, where it's basically plug and play. You know, you download the plug, you know the. The formula, and you institute it, and you will see real results.
But they only last a certain amount of time. In fact, one of the amazing things. Before Bill Hybels actually had his moral failure, he did an amazing thing. He had become the biggest church in the nation. Like, I think, 28,000 people or something. And he finally went through his church and did a survey of every member in the church and found out that the smallest percentage were actually being discipled.
They were actually not succeeding, even though they had the numbers.
They had learned how to build structures and formulas and programs, but the structures were empty.
They weren't producing the result that Jesus talked about.
So we have family as a third option. Fantasy factory and family.
And family is this interesting thing. Family is the model of heaven. Family is the model in creation. God said, it's not good for a man to be alone. And so he made a woman and they became a family. And he said to them something very powerful that still exists as a mandate for humanity. He said, be fruitful, multiply, Fill the earth, subdue it, and have dominion.
Those five directives that God gave in creation to Adam and Eve are still in force today.
Unfortunately, they were corrupted by sin. But God set in motion a redemptive plan that began with a family.
Abraham and Sarah.
Through your seed, all the nations of the earth will be blessed, he said.
And so God set aside the Hebrew people and he gave them a law, and he gave them prophets. And they began to speak about someone who is to come. Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. And the government shall be upon his shoulders. And his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of peace. We sang about it tonight, that that word that came through Isaiah was then fulfilled when Jesus stood up and said, the spirit of the living God is upon me because he's anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to those that are bound to proclaim the year of God's acceptance.
And then, of course, you know the story. He healed the sick, he cast out demons, he multiplied food, he calmed storms. But his greatest work was done in what looked like his greatest failure, when he went to the cross, when he who knew no sin became sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.
Amen.
What an incredible thing. But that the story doesn't stop there, because he rose again and he appeared to them for 40 days.
And then at the end of that 40 days, he ascended into heaven. And the Scripture tells us when he ascended on high, he gave gifts to man. He gave some apostles and prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. He poured out himself. When I think of the word Chroma, I think of the light of the sun shining through a prism and refracting like it will, into seven colors. But in this case, Jesus, when he ascended on high, he shone into the church and refracted into five colors.
And when we bring those aspects of Christ into unity and to cooperation with one another, collaboration with one another, with, we actually reconstitute Christ in a way that actually just demonstrates him and displays him to the world around us.
And that's what we see happening in this church. It's such a glorious, glorious thing.
And so God wants us to build new churches.
And those churches need to be extensions of family. Think about family, how it works.
My wife and I have seven kids. We have 11 grandchildren. It's like there's a reproductive dynamic that is going on that is very biological. It's very natural to us. I'm attracted to her, she's attracted to me. We enjoy intimacy. We produce conception. That conception grows, and it produces babies. Those babies are born as infants and they're loved.
And then they move into toddlerhood, and then they move into childhood. There's a process of development that we enjoy and walk with together in the church planting process that ultimately will, I believe, if it's healthy, will give fruit to the next plant.
Because ultimately, reproductivity is built into the DNA of who we are.
As we think about this, there are five elements, as you're raising up church planters, as you're working with them. And again, we have a ton of information on this. I taught for seven years, or actually longer, 12 years at Bethel School on church leadership and planting.
One of the most amazing things was that Steve Backlin, who's An amazing man of God was the leader of that whole program and then he gave it over to me.
And so for about six years, seven years, we were able to actually, we changed the whole program. We actually got permission to be able to avoid some of the other extracurricular activity and really start planting churches. So with all of the students within BSSM that were in our track, we were able to actually establish microchurches 15 to 20 every single year.
And they would actually go through the entire curriculum of activity and they would pray a neighborhood and they would hear from God and they would actually find a house of peace and they would build a team and they would establish their vision and then they would start inviting people and they would actually go into what would be essentially a CPM church planting methodology that would actually be walked out in a nine month period and they would actually have a real hands on experience in an early stage church plant. It's awesome.
We did that times, gosh, times about a thousand students, which was amazing over the period of five to seven years.
Here's my point and I need to wrap up and I'd like, Diane, if you could come up for a moment here and stand with me as we wrap this up.
You know, we live in a time where the Father Heart message has been really strong.
You guys understand? Do we have a mic? Actually, for Diane, where we. The Father Heart message has been really big. And so, you know, I coach churches and I go around and I've spent a lot of time with churches and one of the things that happens with pastors, they'll say, well, what are you building?
And they'll say, well, we're building a spiritual family.
I'll say, praise God. How do you define family?
And they'll say something along these lines. Family is a safe place to belong.
I'll say, yeah, if you're six months old.
But if family stays a safe place to belong, you're probably not going to grow up, you're probably not going to mature, you're probably not going to become who God's called you to be. Because ultimately, growth is painful.
Growth is difficult, growth is challenging. And if you're only looking for a safe place, you're probably not gonna grow.
In fact, family is not just a place to belong, it's a place to become.
And becoming is challenging. Amen. How many of you are becoming still?
It's challenging, you guys.
And so what we need to do is we need to understand what growth is all about.
In other words, when I'm holding an infant in my Arms. That's all I need.
And that's all they need. They just need to be loved. They need to be cooed over. They need their diapers changed, they need to be fed. But that's belonging. But then when they get to be about two years old and they're having their two year old birthday party and they get a toy and they say, mine, I need to teach them something else. And then when they're growing up a little bit further, I need to help them clean their room. And as they grow up a little bit further, I need to have them do the dishes. Cause if I don't, I help them to grow in challenging ways. They'll never be able to be the adults that they're supposed to be. Because child rearing is ultimately not about raising a child.
You know, we're using the word raise. How do we raise people?
Well, first of all, you have to set your metrics. What are we raising? We're not raising children, we're raising adults.
And raising an adult is a different practice than raising a child.
You guys understand that?
And so as we are preparing young men and young women to plant new churches, and sometimes older men and older women to plant churches, we need to understand there's five elements that we want to transmit. And then we're going to go into a short ministry time.
But the first element, and you can write these down if you're taking notes, but it's identity.
The second element is community.
The third element, maturity.
The fourth element is responsibility.
And the fifth element is destiny.
That ultimately a healthy family will supply these five elements to every son and daughter that they're raising up.
And the first is identity. Who are you in Christ? Who is Christ in you? What is your relationship to the Father? What other motivations? What other dynamics are happening in your character that need to be let go of?
The second thing is the issue of community. How do I relate to brothers and sisters? How do I walk together in the kingdom with you? How do I resolve conflict? How do I share my toys with you?
The next one is maturity.
Maturity is all about my perspective on life. How do I process pain?
Do I become a victim? Do I become filled with self pity? How do I process pain? How do I process assets? Do I consume them now? Or do I go into debt now to have pleasure now that I should be postponing till a future time?
Maturity is all these things. Maturity ultimately is not being the center of your universe.
It's ultimately. You know, most Christians I know are the sun in their solar system. And Jesus is one of the planets.
Me. I'm talking about me. You guys, we need to.
We call it, you know, is he your Lord? Is he your Savior? Yes. Is he your Lord? Well, that's when he becomes the center of your solar system.
These are all aspects of maturity. Responsibility is service.
It's taking responsibility for others. It's loving people effectively. And your destiny, ultimately, is about you becoming the person that Jesus created you to be.
As it says in Psalm 139, all my days were written out for me, when as yet, there were none. As it says In Ephesians, chapter 2, verse 10, we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God before ordained.
Every effective family teaches those five things, okay, but none of them matter until identity established.
So I want to just have Diane lead us into a little bit of a ministry time.
Many of you know that we just went through a pretty scary battle with cancer, and it came on us suddenly. We'll talk a little bit more about that tomorrow during our second session. But there was a moment of breakthrough that God brought to us. And again, we have been familiar with Father Heart stuff for years, you know, back into the early 80s. But.
But God did something special. So, Diane, would you just share for a few minutes about that? And then we're gonna pray for you guys that God would give you a breakthrough in a similar way.
[00:46:55] Speaker A: Yeah. Hi, family.
So this will be a. This will be a little bit of a bridge jump, but there's a quote that John Wimber said when we were just first part of the ministry, and it was somebody that he had been ministering to, they came up to him and he had a, you know, big, successful church. And he goes, how do I make a church like yours? And he goes, well, what do you mean? He goes, I want a big church. I want. I want to be successful. I want to do that. And John looked at him and he said, well, how many people like you do you want?
And the guy said, well, I don't want people like me.
I. I want a big. I want. I want what I'm seeing out there.
But John Wimber wisely said that because he knew that as pastors, we reproduce who we are, and that's how family is. We reproduce the DNA that's in us, and the DNA within us gets tested through hardship, through. Like when Michael said, Banning said, run. Don't plant a church.
He's a church planter. He loves church planting. It's hard to plant a church. It's hard to start a family. You don't get to sleep a lot. Initially, we know that family has a price, and that identity shapes our family. So like Michael said, a bit over a year ago, I thought I had a toothache.
Surprise. I had metastatic cancer.
Literally thought I had a toothache. I had it in my liver, my lungs, my lymph nodes, my other things.
It was a lot like, they called it a heavy load.
And I was shocked. I wasn't sick. I was completely unaware of it. And Michael and I looked at each other and I said, you know, I can't do this alone. We can't do this alone. And we did two things. We called for the elders of the church.
We all know we read like that.
But Banning literally the next day, called every single elder. And they prayed and prophesied over me and gave me wind in my sails to fight this.
And I also knew that I needed. We have two people that pray inner healing. And I said, I want two different sessions because I want to be aligned with God for this.
And my first response was, when you hear the C word, if you say something like I just said to you, I have this diagnosis. People go, Christians, we go.
Because what do we believe? That's a death sentence. That's what people believe.
And I just thought, God, the spirit of God began to work in me. And I thought, wait a minute, we're Christians.
I've lived through outpourings where I've laid hands on the sick and they've recovered. I've seen miracles. Have I seen people die? Yes. I've also seen people die, but I've seen miracles.
[00:50:08] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:50:09] Speaker A: And Jesus said, I will heal everyone that comes to me.
And I just said, who is this uncircumcised Philistine to defy the armies of the living God?
[00:50:24] Speaker B: Amen.
[00:50:26] Speaker A: Because I knew on the inside of me, I have faith, the grain of a mustard seed, which is about that big. And I have a few smooth stones and a wrist rocket. You know, I've got that much. And I've seen more than that.
But what happened is this.
You know, you go into chemo, you go into.
You hear reports, doctors say things to you, and.
And it's a battle.
And I loved.
Maybe it was Joel said something about believing for big things. It's like, God, I hope you're real.
That happens when they say, oh, you have tumors all over your body. You don't have long to live.
I knew that God was real, but I was like, God, I believe. Help my unbelief.
And he began. So I went into a couple inner healing times.
And this is what I want to share with you. God wants to align us with himself and he wants to get to the deepest, deepest things in us, our deepest insecurities. And what God showed me very supernaturally in two different, like, three hour appointments was that deep within me there was a seed of orphanhood.
I could teach you about the love of God. I could pray for you, and you might even get healed. Like, I knew all the right things, but when it came down to, it's kind of like the firing squads, you know, aiming at me, and I'm up against the wall.
Does God love me enough that he would save me?
And I felt like, wow, I know he's incredibly good. He's good all the time. Do I believe that he's loving his kind, but will he save me?
And I started to realize, wow, a lot of my life have felt like God's a little bit of a dysfunctional father.
He's really powerful and he's good and he's kind. But I better work really hard or he's going to be mad at me.
I better do a really good job.
I'm. I should really work myself until I'm exhausted in the ministry, because that'll make him really happy. Like, things that were lies, I believed them.
And so God got into me and he just showed me, diane, Diane, do you believe that you would get this disease and that I would leave you to let you die?
And I honestly had to say, no, no, of course you would. God, it's okay. It's okay. People die. It's okay. He's like, no, I want you to believe. Do you believe I love you?
Do you believe that I healed everyone that came to you?
And God began to unseat the lies that I had believed about him and. And I confessed them. God, I actually believed that you wouldn't do that. I actually believe that you are kind of a dysfunctional father. That all of these things were enlightened in my mind. And all of us have these things, you guys, it's why we're insecure. It's why oftentimes we're unsuccessful in what God has shown us. God has promised each one of you in this room something.
Many things that haven't come to pass yet.
And God just said, if you agree, if two or more of you agree on anything on earth, it will come to pass.
God wants to move us into alignment, to a place where we believe that. We believe that. We believe that God is love and that he is good and Every time.
And that he wants to heal us, that he wants to save us, that he wants to deliver us.
And oppression would come and I'm almost done. Don't worry.
Oppression would come. I would. I would come into. God loves me. And I would be free and clear of any kind of dread.
I went through chemotherapy. I lost all my hair. I had long blonde hair. Now I have curly hair. Well, go figure. But.
I went through all these hardships, and I could literally say to people, I really believe I'm healed. I didn't have pain.
The medicine made me sick.
Absolute faith. And it wasn't like, I'm healed. Oh, please, I hope I'm healed. I hope I'm healed. No, I knew it in my heart. I'm healed.
And then once in a while, oppression would come. And we call them the vultures because of a passage out of Abraham. When vultures came on his sacrifice would come and torment me. And then we would fight for alignment.
And the spirit of the Lord would displace the lies. And I literally feel like I could run through a troop. I could leap over a wall, just like the scripture said. And by the time I got my last PET scan, which was probably, I don't know, four and a half, five months ago, there's a whole story around that, too, because we had to deal with God about that. But they did a liver biopsy and they said no disease present.
No disease present.
And so the issue with no disease present is if you read the statistics, things can come back.
So it's a constant mental battle, just like it is for each one of us. Each one of us go through a constant mental battle with the Goliaths in our life.
And God wants us to unseat the places that are deceived and sad little orphan children that don't believe that the Father would give them another bite of food, that he wouldn't give you the desires of your heart.
So what I'm thinking. You're thinking of ministry now?
[00:56:55] Speaker B: Well, we just need to close, but. Yeah.
[00:56:57] Speaker A: Yeah, that's what I'm thinking.
[00:56:58] Speaker B: Yeah, have them all stand now.
[00:57:00] Speaker A: We're going for the next three hours. I'm really. I'm just joking, you guys. Anything can happen in this church.
[00:57:08] Speaker B: Any.
[00:57:08] Speaker A: There's, like, open heavens. Okay? So let's close up.
[00:57:12] Speaker B: Yeah, let's all stand together. Yeah, we want to pray for you. Just about that identity issue.
You know what's so interesting? What's so interesting about what we went through was that you can know all the truth about sonship and Daughterhood, you can know who you are and whose you are.
But when life and death was happening, where the urgency was there, all of a sudden it tested our foundations.
And ministry will test your foundations. Church planting will test your foundations.
And so what we want to pray is we want to just pray out of that. And I'm going to have Diane prayer. Pray about the impartation of a identity foundation that goes so deep that it will never be tested at that deepest level.
That's what we're going to ask for right now. So I want you to just prepare your hearts. We're going to say, okay, even if you're not succeeding, or even if souls hadn't come to Christ, or even if disciples weren't being made, or even if leaders weren't being raised up, or even if ministries weren't being started, are you so secure in the love of the Father that those things are just irrelevant to that foundation of identity that you have in Christ?
[00:58:34] Speaker A: Yeah. So each one of us, I just. We're going to ask the Lord what he wants to show you right now. What he wants to show us. If there's fear, anxiety, comparison, so many fruits of just that orphan spirit.
Father, I ask for revelation for each of us. Wisdom and revelation right now.
Show us what we believe. That's not true about you.
Now open your heart.
[00:59:09] Speaker B: Let the Spirit of God.
[00:59:19] Speaker A: Thank you, Lord.
[00:59:23] Speaker B: We come against every lie, every insecurity, every comparison. Oh, God, if you struggle with comparison, just put your hand up right now.
If that's an issue. Let's just. Let's just throw that off right now. There's a number of hands up around the room right now. If you could just lay your hand on somebody right now. And just standing next to you, we just break the power of comparison in Jesus name.
And that spirit of competition that comes into our hearts, that spirit of jealousy or envy, Lord, we just say no to it. In Jesus name, we ask you to amputate that from our hearts right now.
Thank you, Father.
[01:00:05] Speaker A: And the way the root of that goes away is right now. I just want you to line with our Father, with Papa God, and just say, God, do you love me?
Let me know your love.
Let me feel it. Let me believe it. Let me trust it.
[01:00:26] Speaker B: Yes, God, if you're.
[01:00:29] Speaker A: If I'm going to be falling off a wall, is he going to catch me?
[01:00:33] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:00:35] Speaker A: If I'm going to fail at something, is he going to rectify it?
And he is.
God help our unbelief.
We renounce unbelief even when we don't understand it. Right now I just want you to renounce unbelief, unbelief in your character, unbelief in the word of God, unbelief in the bedrock of our we renounce it. We say, though man is a liar every time, you will be found in truth.
[01:01:11] Speaker B: Yes, God.
[01:01:12] Speaker A: Thank you, Lord.
[01:01:15] Speaker B: Father, right now I ask for an alignment to come.
A heavenly alignment. Lord, even as we talked about earthly alignments with spiritual fathers and mothers and sons and daughters, right now I'm asking that you would do a spirit supernatural work of alignment in the spirit with yourself, Lord, that each one of us would know a deeper revelation of the Father's love in our lives of who we are in you, Lord. That. That.
That amazing revelation of sonship and daughterhood, that amazing revelation, O God, God, that we are joint heirs with Christ seated with Jesus in heavenly realms.
Lord, let that revelation just begin to penetrate supernaturally.
[01:02:08] Speaker A: Lord, in Jesus name, Jesus name.
Amen.
[01:02:13] Speaker B: Hallelujah.
[01:02:16] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to the Chroma Charge Podcast. If you enjoyed this message, you can like and subscribe.
You can also join us in person or online every Sunday at Cromer Church. For more information about us, including our ministries, events, worship and how to donate, visit our website at Cromer Church.
