Frank Viola is a best-selling author, blogger, speaker, and consultant to authors and writers. His mission is to help serious followers of Jesus know their Lord more deeply so they can experience real transformation and make a lasting impact. To learn more about Frank and his work, go to 15+ Years of Projects. To invite Frank to speak at your event, go to his Speaking Page. Frank’s assistant moderates comments.
“Much of modern Christian enterprise is ‘Ishmael.’ Born not of God, but of an inordinate desire to do God’s will in our own way – the one thing our Lord never did.” Oswald Chambers
“Divine things have been taken hold of by men carnally, and brought down to an earth level; the direct government of the Holy Spirit has been exchanged for committees and boards and so on. Men have set up the government in Divine things and are running things of God. The way of the New Testament, that in prayer and fasting the mind of the Lord is secured, is hardly known. Well, those who are spiritual, who know, who see, who understand, cannot accept that.” – T. Austin Sparks
The Holy Spirit is simply awesome at personal development. He is both a teacher and facilitator.
He has not come to merely teach us all truth, but to lead us into all truth. He teaches, and then creates a scenario in which we can experience the truth by putting it into practice.
I’m so encouraged by the conversations on this website.
Alan, I appreciated your statement that there is no substitution for experiential preparation and Ruth’s about revelation through experience. The experience of God is difficult to communicate to someone who hasn’t. (at least for me) Most of our walk with the Lord is like long distance phone calls to a loved one. We can hear his/her voice and are able to communicate back but that is no substitution for the hug and kiss we receive(and give) when we are finally able to unite.
I’d like to share a ‘missional’ work that’s been lots
of fun. Some of you might be interested in doing
this also.
I became a sponsor with one of ministries who
go into other countries to help the poor children
with some basic necessities, and share the gospel
when it is accepted. If it isn’t allowed or accepted
there, they simply live love doing the works that
they believe Jesus would have them to do, providing education, certain medical needs, clean
water or some help with food.
I became a sponsor to a child who receives his
moral education in Islam.
He likes to send pictures which he draws and colors. What can we do when we receive something like that from a child? ……When a
child sends a drawing from anything in the creation, it might have a hidden message of God,
for who knows the mind of the Lord and how he
might be ministering through the heart of a child?
Even if there is no message there from the child
maybe God can give a man a message when the
man begins to interact with what is in front of him.
For example, I received a picture of a green alligator, so I wrote back thanking the child for the picture of the alligator and began to talk about alligators….Alligators have a huge mouth
and lots of sharp teeth. They can snap their jaws
shut in no time at all and their bite is very strong.
When they get the prey in their mouth they seldom let it go till they have drown their victim
in the depths of the water. They even will spin it
over and over to try to kill it.
This reminds me of some of the ways of evil men,
and because of their ways and their words that can hurt, we call upon God who is love and therefore he delivers us. I suppose men get
hungry when their belly is not full of the bread from heaven…
By doing this, we can share the good news of God
and encourage a child, letting him know, not by
praising him, but by praising God, that the child’s
artwork does remind his pen pall sponsor of the
good things of God. What the child does can minister good things to adults when he draws anything in the creation of God. The child learns
acceptance and many important lessons of life, (and so does the sponsor)
and it’s a lot of fun for the sponsor.
If a child draws a waterpot, what does it remind
you of? That will likely depend on you and God.
It might remind you of the woman at the well in
John 4, or something else. It might remind you of
the Potter and how he forms the clay.
One day, the child you sponsor might become a
shepherd, a wise man, a fisher of men, a pastor
or a teacher, an evangelist, or a worship leader,
who can tell?
Great conversation. My wife and I are addicted to your blog. We want to thank you for being so available and interacting with those of us who read your books. It means a lot.
We listened to your message on the samaritan woman recently and you had us both crying, that’s not easy to do. keep it coming.
One question: . quite a few believers said, “I’ve been a Christian all my life and have been to many different types of churches and have heard thousands of sermons, how come no one is preaching this? I’ve never heard this before. Why?
My thought:
This deeper life with Christ in what your talking about is nothing new and has been talked about and preached. But what I have learned is we are not listening. I remember sitting in a church building with a friend because she asked me to come to her church.
I was floored that the preacher was reading from Madame Guyon and talking about the depths of God. Talking about the Dark Night of the Soul. In a traditional church environment….But it was obvious these people didn’t get it.
So many times I can look back when certain things were said to me and went right over my head. A big part of this to me goes back to “Revelation” we can preach things till we drop but unless God opens our eyes it is useless.
(by the way it sounds like God opened a lot of eyes at this conference)
It takes us living these things to really come to understand them.
Second question: 1. a number of Christians who are involved in the present missional movement confessed “I thought I had known the Lord, and now I realize I really don’t know Him very well. I want and need to know Him deeply.”
………..Lord this is a ever going on process in our lives. I truly believe until we take our last breathe on this earth we will feel like this with every major turning point of God in our lives. I really don’t think it will ever end.
Haven’t you ever wondered how deep do we really ever get. There are times you feel like it is so deep that it is scary………….then others times I feel like I can’t even scratch the surface.
Now I know you only touched on this:
You mentioned the two trees………and about eating of them……….
My question has always been: “How do you know which tree Frank that your eating of?”
I have pondered this thought. Many times in my life . If someone had told me I was eating of the tree of good and evil……….I would had thought they were nuts. I was living body life…………living in common with my brethren…Living this organic Christianity….doing what I was suppose to be doing……like so many before me that had written about it….but in reality…”I was” eating from the tree of good and evil……….. and how did I learn that?
I Experienced it
Through experience is how it is revealed to us.
But anyway I find that tree a very interesting part of our lives.
One of my questions is: How long does it take for us to know that were not eating of that tree anymore?
I liked what Brittian had to share………one thing about all this Organic Christianity that gets forgotten is how much death is involved.
As we mature in Christ so much has to go and die! Without this process we have much immaturity.
Not only in peoples lives but also in the group dynamics as well.
It is a hard pill to swallow in this Organic life. And the last subject talked about……….but truly one of the most vital to understand.
I think this is what’s truly at the heart of the Two Trees!
I remember one time at a group gathering a young man came up to my husband and told him if we had only had a church planter come and help our group out it would not had died!
My husband looked at this young brother in the Lord and said to him………Has it ever occurred to you that some things are better off just dying?
And if the Lord chooses to resurrect it……….then it should be from his hand.
Well, no of course not…………it is hard for the young to ever consider those things because to most people things should be alive and breathing at all times…….
Anyway…….it is always good to hear that others are wanting the deeper things of God. Even though we are not always for sure what those things are.
Sounds like everyone had a great time!!! I just can’t imagine it not happening when Jesus is being loved on and him getting to love back!
Caleb: You’re speaking of what I would call “Quetist” groups. I’m familiar with them. Though they are shrinking in number. (And I’m not upset about that by the way 🙂 ) The fundamental problem in those groups, as I see it, is that they separate “being” from “doing” and put them at odds with each other. I spent a short time in a “deeper life” movement that did this very thing. There was a lot of talk about “living by Christ” but few of us saw it fleshed out in shoe leather by those who were the most vocal about it.
Learning to LIVE by Christ *in reality* is something quite different, yet it does take time as well as a community that’s centered on pursuing Jesus Christ in all of His aspects.
To my mind, young people in their 20s would be much wiser to learn Jesus Christ in the context of a non-sectarian, non-elitist, and non-exclusive expression of body life instead of being captured by movements that sap their youthful enthusiasm and beat their adrenals to death on doing things for God instead of knowing Him first. The main point of all of this is that there is a growing army of young people who aren’t making the mistakes of the past generation. I continue to meet guys in their 40s, 50s, and even 60s who admit that they’ve been serving the god of serving and they really don’t know Him well. And I continue to meet gifted Christians in their 30s who “burned out” from serving God. Listen, youthful enthusiasm is a beautiful counterfeit for the power of God. All told: I’m on the lookout for those young men and women who’s first priority is KNOWING Him. Thank God I’m finding them more and more. May their tribe increase!
Brittain: Thanks for your comment and for mentioning Thomas’ book. One statement of his that I will never forget, “It takes God to become a man.” (He’s using “man” to mean “human” by the way.) That’s as profound and pregnant as they come. Volumes are locked into that little statement. See also my comment to Caleb as it applies to some of what you wrote as well.
Incidentally, here’s a small piece of my testimony that I’m preparing for a new interview with George Barna. It’s related to the topic at hand, but tells it from my own experience. Interestingly OT priests didn’t begin their ministries until they were 30. And this is true for Jesus Himself regarding His public ministry. It seems to me that our 20s are for spiritual preparation.
“As for serving God, I had many opportunities to serve the Lord (in a public way) in my 20s, but I came to conclusion that I wasn’t ready. I first needed to know Christ deeply and I needed to understand His church experientially. Therefore, I spent my 20s learning those two things: Jesus Christ and the experience of the body of Christ. All of my peers were doing something different. They were going on missions trips, taking leadership positions in parachurch organizations, trying to get the world saved, some became pastors, etc. When we both hit the age of 30, something telling happened. Most of them burned out and few of them are even following the Lord today. When I was 31 years old, the organic church of which I was a part laid hands on me sent me out to begin the work of planting organic churches and I’ve been engaged in it ever since.”
Heather: I’m keenly aware that I’m not the best writer on the planet, but you don’t have to rub it in 🙂
Let me try to wrap this up as time is demanding other things. There are two different issues here, which I think is causing some of the confusion. 1) knowing Christ deeply vs. not knowing Him well at all yet trying to serving Him regardless, and 2) living and serving by His life vs. living and serving by our own life and resources.
I believe the Lord wants us to know Him well, and in knowing Him well we fall in love with Him, and out of that love and “knowing” service flows. There is a doing that comes out of knowing. And there’s a doing that is unrelated to knowing or loving. There is also a doing that is the work of human strength and zeal, and there is a doing that is Christ working. There is a serving out of duty and obligation. And there is a serving out of love and (divine) life. He wants a bride who loves Him, rather than a maid who serves Him with little knowledge of who He is. More than servants, we are His friends and lovers. Beyond all that I’ve said above, I don’t know how to make the point any clearer than this with such a stale and limited medium.
My hope is that this blog post captures the hearts of some who will read it in the future and there cry will be: “I want to know Him” … just as Paul himself said in Philippians 3. I, for one, am glad that I’m hearing that cry more and more. This makes me hopeful for the future.
It’s wonderful to be on this journey together and learn from one another. Thanks for all of your input.
Of course, none of us know how old Timothy was, but Paul did recruit him for some amount of “work”, despite his youth…?
That being said, it seems like in some of your paragraphs you are saying that it’s not a “knowing vs doing” type of thing…while in other paragraphs you seem to elevate those with hunger to know Him over those with a passion “to do…” thus setting up that dichotomy. So maybe you could clarify your message to reduce the confusion this is creating.
I’m just over 30 now, and so maybe it’s ok that my overwhelming hunger “to know” from my teen years and twenties has now given way to a desire to “know Him” while I “do…” At any age, we should never stop hungering to know Him though 🙂 I don’t think I have – it’s just that what that looks like has changed for me. Knowing Him *in his power* knowing Him *in His resurrection* knowing Him *in His sufferings* and being conformed WITH Him to His death…..there are so many aspects of knowing Him and our hunger should take us into the fullness of all that He is.
Frank,
I think we may be speaking past each other a bit, but hopefully I can clarify a little more what I was trying to get across. “AMEN” about it not being an a “BOTH/AND” sort of thing even as it is also not an “EITHER/OR” thing either. I wholeheartedly agree with your point that it is about the “power source” or “engine” that we need to concern ourselves with. The issue I am addressing is the method by which or philosphy behind how we try to move people from drawing from one power source to Another, and the eventual outcomes of these paradigms.
In some types of churches, there is an underlying belief that you “learn how” to access Christ as your power source by being still, meditating, and “spending time at the feet of Jesus as Mary did” by doing no “work” in the Kingdom. In these churches, I have commonly seen this teaching result in rendering the majority of the group spiritually sterile, and the culture of the group often takes on a negativity towards anyone, especially a young person, who is engaging in almost any form of active Kingdom-spreading work.
What I am suggesting, is that while the underlying presupposition that most christians are living out of their own strength instead of the Lord’s is sound, creating paradigms in which people may end up discourage young people or others from serving the Lord can also be detrimental to the development of spiritual maturity and orientation, and inadvertantly still stall the development of a saint’s full stature in Christ.
Learning to draw from a place of “yet not I, but Christ in me” necessitates opportunities to engage with and abide with the Lord in co-laboring with Him, even though it is true that those same opportunites can also present a temptation to labor in the flesh.
(Jessie-Penn Lewis touches on this in some of her works, although I can not think of any specific references at this moment.)
My own experience shows a different hue than the one that’s being brought out here, however I can appreciate what you’re saying. It is though, and I think you would agree, the nature of humanity (and I mean that in the most positive way possible) to burn through and burn out in life. Almost as if in waves or cycles.
You know, as well as I do, the number of deeper Christian lifer’s/indwelling Life of Christ folks who have come to critical junctures and found that they were as exhausted and empty as when they had begun the beautiful journey inward. In fact, statistically speaking I imagine the burn out or wreckage to be comparable, if not worse than “the missional” movement. Puritans in this deeper life camp though might say that they never really had “it” and so losing “it” was a part of their cycle. I’m not convinced.
One only has to look at Hannah Whitehall Smith and her husband Robert who fundamentally sparked the Keswick movement (which was so key to many of Nee’s own understandings of the Indwelling Life of Christ) to see that burnout happens…even to the best of them.
Salvation…sanctification…”the revelation of Christ”…meeting in homes/ “the revelation of the Church”…reaching 40…none of them are proven to be magic.
God is leading us to himself and the roads we walk are the roads of life, spanning years and failures and revelations and realizations. It seems like most often it takes tragedy or suffering to open space to encounter the Divine…where that opportunity comes seems like it is so often different.
I have met and befriended so many people from within all of these streams; myself having swam in them as well… Enough to say that generalizations seem to not apply as easily as we wish they would.
That having been said, another great, and often overlooked book, that I found to be THE best primer for the deeper Christian life message was Major Ian W. Thomas’ “The Indwelling Life of Christ”. Phenomenal book. I still highly recommend it.
Yann: As it relates to the expression of the church, I’ve answered the first question in Pagan Christianity. That’s the artificial fruit. I’ve answered the second in Reimagining Church, that’s the organic item.
On an individual level, anytime you hear “go out and do such and such because Jesus did it” and then you TRY, that’s the human trying to generate the apple. “What would Jesus do”? is along the same lines. The question is not what would Jesus do, but what IS He doing …
Learning to live by Christ is something that a local body of believers discovers togther with some practical instruction (that cannot be put in an email by the way). We Westerners want formulas and fast/quick/easy answers. Living by an indwelling Lord is not add water and stir, microwave on high for 2 minutes, or 3 easy steps. But to use Paul’s words, when it happens, “it’s not I but Christ who lives in me!” Gal. 2:20.
I refer you to Watchman Nee’s book THE NORMAL CHRISTIAN LIFE for more examples and insight on the subject. The whole book is about this discussion. And it’s without peer.
Frank: Thank you for your reply. I understand what you are saying about the apples. However, I am wondering about how that translate in real life: what would be a concrete example of someone *trying* to imitate how He lived? or someone creating an apple in the lab? versus living by Him? Also what are your thoughts on experiencing Him through the life of the body and doing the work as He sends it to us?
Yann: The analogy is about bearing fruit. Let me use a different analogy that may be easier to understand.
Think of apples. An apple = fruit.
Question: We want apples, but how do we get them?
One group says, we will explain what an apple is, we will study what it looks like, then we will go to the lab and create skin, create seeds, paint it red — and presto, we have an apple!
Another group says, nope, that’s an imitation. Plant the seed, watch it grow, then you will have apples. It’s a product of life, not human effort.
The former requires effort, toil, work, grit, gum, and gumption.
The latter is the work of God.
One is artificial; the other organic.
Much of Christian leadership today is trying to create apples in the lab. Milt and I are saying that real apples are the product of LIFE.
Jesus Christ is the LIFE, we bear fruit by living by Him, not by *trying* to imitate how He lived.
Very interesting conversation…
I actually very much like what Caleb said. To me, there seems to be a lot of wisdom to his posting.
Pardon my naivete (I have been meeting in house churches for a couple of years only and I don’t quite understand what exactly is a missional church…), but it seems to me that we can meet organically as a group of brothers and sisters to seek and share the Lord. As we do that, the Lord sends us work to do. We won’t even need to seek work out, He will send it to us and give us the gifts we need to accomplish it. Very much like He was always taking care of things (healing, feeding, etc…) as He was traveling.
Frank, what do you mean when you talk about sewing oranges to the tree?
Angela: Right on. That’s not what we are talking about. We’re talking about the machine. When I was in college, I got involved with a number of parachurch organizations. Some of those guys were teaching bible studies (at 20 years old), leading evangelistic programs, doing world wide missions work. And … they didn’t know beans from peas. They couldn’t give people Christ because they hardly knew him, and what they
were teaching was so shallow that a gnat couln’t drown. Many of these young men and women burned out by the age of 30. I know some of them today. They no longer follow the Lord. Spiritual growth takes time. If we would just go back to the NT narrative, we would see the spiritual principles for the preparation for spiritual service. But you’re right, we’re not talking about the organic desire to share one’s new found faith
with friends in a free, living way. We can only share what we know in experience. And not more. I thank God for those men — some of them expastors — who really want to know Jesus Christ deeply before they “go out” and get involved in ministry. This was the way of the first Christians, and it’s part of God’s way as far as I’m concerned. The carnage bears witness.
Caleb: nothing in the conference was pitched as “either/or.” Neither is the issue about “intimacy vs. doing” … or “being” vs. “doing.” We’ve been taught to think in these terms and then to come back and say it’s both/and. And we wrongly assume we’ve solved the issue. But putting it in those terms is a distraction really. The discussion is about the *engine* of the Christian life. It’s about the *power source* of what lays behind our service. It’s about HOW the fruit *that lasts* is produced. It’s about how the Christian lives and serves. Does he or she live by trying to imitate Jesus or by living by Christ who dwells in the church? Do we sew oranges to a tree, or do we plant the seed and wait until it grows and naturally bears oranges. That’s the issue. And it’s one that has gotten hardly any airplay in evangelicalism. While the theory is there, there’s hardly any practical instruction on HOW that’s done. I’m glad to see more and more missional folks recognize this. I believe over the next 7 years we’re going to see a lot of those who think they serving God in the spirit come to their end. It’s already happening and this is a good thing. The main point here is that living by an indwelling Lord is possible. This is how Jesus lived His life. That’s how He bore fruit and served. But such living and serving is not an individual pursuit and most of us need some instruction on how to begin. The exciting thing is that more and more young people (and even folks in their 40s and 50s) are admitting that they do not know this realm. And they deparately want to. I praise God for that. There are few things beyond this that the church of Jesus Christ needs, for everything else flows from it.
By the way, failure to understand the above is precisely why the first missional movement died and gave way to the seeker sensitive/attractional movement. Today, we have an opportunity not to repeat the same mistakes of the past.
This is why history is so valuable in my opinion. But then again, Hegel did say, “the only thing we learn from history is that men learn nothing from it.” I hope that’s not the case here.
Sam
For further clarification, (I think Frank and Milt would agree with me here) no one is against young people telling all their friends and neighbors about the Lord or enthusiastically participating in whatever is going down in the local organic church. But they are still learning, so shouldn’t be sent out in their ‘own’ ministry or used as fuel for someone’s organization.
I too have experienced trying to minster in my own strength with little experience of the Lord as a young person until being ‘shelved’ by the Lord. So has a close friend who used to be a pastor.
Together we are finally learning the basics and beginning to know the Lord in a deeper way.
Paul himself was ‘called’ at the time of his salvation but not ‘sent out’ until much later.
I think the “either/or” approach is what has damaged many of us – we *either* are taught to burn ourselves to preach a God we barely know, *or* we are discouraged from doing anything at all except to seek intimacy with God.
My life has gone through many seasons – at first I was serving God with zeal and fervor, until I discovered many “deeper life” teachings and quit it all to seek the Lord Himself. Years later, I was actually burned out on “doing nothing.” I had learned to commune deeply with the Lord and yet my experience of Him was still lacking an element that can only be experienced when co-laboring with Him.
So either approach can leave someone lacking in spiritual experience, because some dimensions of knowing the Lord can only be known in stillness, and other dimensions are only known in His motion with Him.
I believe the healthiest approach is to discover (in community) life rhythms of stillness and depth, mixed with passion and action. One will feed the other, and if the rhythm is discovered organically without being overly contrived, it will keep one’s spirit from either being deprived or supressed.
The problem with the missional groups is that mostly they haven’t cultivated depths of worship and prayer needed to give people the opportunities to encounter and experience the Lord’s love and presence in a deep and ongoing way. This is usually based in a fear of spiritual selfishness and emotionality, or simply a zeal for a cause.
The problem with the deeper life groups is that they tend to actively discourage full participation in the life and motion of the Lord and instead instill people with spiritual passivity and eventual deadness of spirit. This is also somewhat fear-based; a fear that one will be striving in their flesh or somehow “missing the Lord.”
But the Lord is not at opposition with Himself – He means for us to grow as we go, and go as we grow – that He might train us dig our roots deeply into Him in every way, and receive glory and praise and honor from every age group and generation of saints.
Lance, in keeping with Frank’s comments on authentic ‘body life’, and your comment of reading from the dead guys, I recommend you and Frank both go to Ray Stedman’s web site and read his book, “Body Life”.
He is a ‘dead man’, and all of his books although out of print are on the Internet for FREE. Would that all those, when their books have gone out of print, would put them on the Internet.
p.s. some have emailed me privately asking if the messages will be released publically. I can’t answer that now as it’s a team decision that will be discussed in the future.
Bswan, some larger conferences and events are being planned for 2009 and 2010.
Go to http://www.ptmin.org/events.htm and fill out the form and you’ll be invited/notified about them. Be sure to type in your email address correctly 🙂
The book “Body Life” was big for it’s time, 1972, but it really didn’t go far enough in unveiling the realities and fullness of church life. Stedman was a jewel of a man, but he was still part of the clergy.
THE “older books” that are must-reads on organic church life would be “The Normal Christian Church Life” by Watchman Nee & “God’s Spiritual House” by T. Austin-Sparks. Those two classics set forth a great foundation and an extraordinary vision, upon which contemporary books like “Reimagining Church” are built on and which apply for our own day and time.
Pal,
Yes, Stedman’s “Body Life” is a good one. In fact it is in my giant stack of reference books for a book that Alan Hirsch and I are currently writing on living a missional life from the Suburbs.
I have friends who attended your conference and they said it was phenomenal. It was a life changing experience for them. Is there anyway that I can get the Cds.
Frank,
Your list of these books reminded me of advice that I read by…I think it was Oswald Sanders in “Spiritual Leadership” (a wonderful book I might add). He said, “For every 2 newer books you read, read 1 old book.” So, I always try to remind guys I work with to, “Make sure you’re reading some dead guys.”
This is a response to Sam. I was saved in my early twenties,during what is now called the Jesus Revolution. My fervor for the Lord was white hot. I was thrust out in my youth into the Lord’s work with very little preparation. Most of what I knew was head knowledge and not born out of deep experience with the Lord and His Church. The Lord saw I was a man after His own heart. He said I want that man. The great potter put me on His wheel. He stretched my clay. He pulled the strings of my heart . He kneaded me like bread until I felt like putty in His hands. But the great trial came when He put me on the shelf(after being active or busy for many years). The vessel was being prepared for His work not what I think His work is. He had to make me one with His purpose. There would be no substitutes no other purpose but His. The man would become the message. The Lord’s passion and dream would now be infused in my being. His life is now my life. It is no longer theory or information but spiritual reality. There is no substitution for experiential preparation not only individually but in the midst of real organic church life.
Sam, there’s much more to this, but first, there’s a huge difference between youthful enthusiasm and spiritual passion born out of a revelation of Jesus Christ and divine encounter.
The former burns out … always. That’s why a significant percentage of all who are serve God in their 20s fall away by the time they hit 30. It’s called the mortality crises. Their adrenals are bled dry. Many parachurch organizations are built on youthful enthusiasm, and the carnage is great.
Later on in life it shows up.
Now this is a vast subject and I may lose some. But I’m working on a book that will go into great detail on all of this.
In short: We can take our cue for the NT. What did young men like Timothy do? First, he got to know Jesus Chirst in the natural habitat of all Christians — a living experience of the body of Christ where Jesus Christ is the functional head. I call it authentic body life. I speak about this kind of church life in my book REIMAGINING CHURCH. It’s what I’ve known since I was 23 years old.
Then, to wait until the church sends them out. To wait on their callling. If they are truly called to God’s work, no mortal can hold them back, and they go out with the support and backing of the church and proper preparation that’s spiritual foremost and experiential, instead of theoretical and abstract.
There’s much more to be said, but our paradigm is so off base today that some of these concepts, which are firmly rooted in the NT, escape us and they are like speaking a different language.
I thank God for the young men and women who have forgotten the clock and are learning Jesus Christ in authentic expressions of church life. Some of them will be giants in the years from now.
Oh man, don’t stop there. I’d love to hear more thoughts on the “going-out” of 20 & 30 somethings. I completely agree that even though young folks are going gung-ho telling others about a God they know little about experientially, does that mean they should stop? (Not insinuating you meant they shouldn’t, just questioning more details of your thoughts.)
When does the “right time” happen that releases them to go out? And by the time that happens, what do we do to reignite that fervent passion?
Frank, I love the fact that you are, in this time of change, focusing on intimacy with God. It is an important aspect of the revival at hand that is not being mentioned much – probably because in the past few major revivals the church focused on the indwelling feeling of the Spirit so much, and on the outworkings of that experience so little. I have found Matt Hyam’s short book, “I Still Have More Questions Than Answers” to be very helpful in this regard. Now that there is revival brewing in the church again, it is almost as if we are too afraid to tap into the individual, personal experiences God has for us, in fear of repeating the past, in which God’s people were filled with the Spirit, but no social justice ensued. I think God not only wants us to revise our ways of living in the Kingdom mentality, but also to fall deeply in love with him in the process, even more than we already have in the past.
Frank, thank you for a powerful weekend. My dh & I were moved in every way you described above. We stopped to pick up our kiddos @ my dad’s house on the way home. He asked us about the conference & I was able to share Christ – the REAL Christ without the strings attached – or the first time in my life! I cannot explain what it is to finally be free, but oh how I want to share it with the world! But even more importantly, I now understand – and more importantly BELIEVE – that the most important thing I can do is know my Lord – the rest will follow. God Bless! Kerri
Frank, I appreciate your thoughts and testimony here. I’m curious to hear more about “the bait and switch gospel” you mention. I have a sneaking suspicion I know what you are talking about here, but don’t want to assume too much. Perhaps you have already blogged about this or plan to.
I’ve only read two of the books on your recommended reading list, but echo your heart about the need to understand certain dimensions of God and his work in our lives no matter what Christian background we have – there are some foundational understandings of God that need to inform all of our thinking, including our thinking and talking about missional.
I think many, many issues within the Body of Christ would alter significantly or even dissipate completely, if believers received and embraced clear teaching on being at rest in Jesus.
Being at rest in Him is the foundation from which godly works inspired by the Holy Spirit spring.
I teach in a public school and have realized a tremendous freedom to teach from my heart, which has had an impact on my students. The impact is there because I make so many decisions based on what I feel the Spirit is doing.
I have not matured in this by any means. Yet, I know learning the inward way is the key to the outward impact which is generally believed and is so often taught as the mark of authentic Christianity.
Steve Simms
We spend so much time and effort trying to do ministry that we often neglect to be the people He wants us to be.
Brian
“Much of modern Christian enterprise is ‘Ishmael.’ Born not of God, but of an inordinate desire to do God’s will in our own way – the one thing our Lord never did.” Oswald Chambers
Brian
“Divine things have been taken hold of by men carnally, and brought down to an earth level; the direct government of the Holy Spirit has been exchanged for committees and boards and so on. Men have set up the government in Divine things and are running things of God. The way of the New Testament, that in prayer and fasting the mind of the Lord is secured, is hardly known. Well, those who are spiritual, who know, who see, who understand, cannot accept that.” – T. Austin Sparks
Charlie
The Holy Spirit is simply awesome at personal development. He is both a teacher and facilitator.
He has not come to merely teach us all truth, but to lead us into all truth. He teaches, and then creates a scenario in which we can experience the truth by putting it into practice.
Lynne
I’m so encouraged by the conversations on this website.
Alan, I appreciated your statement that there is no substitution for experiential preparation and Ruth’s about revelation through experience. The experience of God is difficult to communicate to someone who hasn’t. (at least for me) Most of our walk with the Lord is like long distance phone calls to a loved one. We can hear his/her voice and are able to communicate back but that is no substitution for the hug and kiss we receive(and give) when we are finally able to unite.
Ray Brensike
I’d like to share a ‘missional’ work that’s been lots
of fun. Some of you might be interested in doing
this also.
I became a sponsor with one of ministries who
go into other countries to help the poor children
with some basic necessities, and share the gospel
when it is accepted. If it isn’t allowed or accepted
there, they simply live love doing the works that
they believe Jesus would have them to do, providing education, certain medical needs, clean
water or some help with food.
I became a sponsor to a child who receives his
moral education in Islam.
He likes to send pictures which he draws and colors. What can we do when we receive something like that from a child? ……When a
child sends a drawing from anything in the creation, it might have a hidden message of God,
for who knows the mind of the Lord and how he
might be ministering through the heart of a child?
Even if there is no message there from the child
maybe God can give a man a message when the
man begins to interact with what is in front of him.
For example, I received a picture of a green alligator, so I wrote back thanking the child for the picture of the alligator and began to talk about alligators….Alligators have a huge mouth
and lots of sharp teeth. They can snap their jaws
shut in no time at all and their bite is very strong.
When they get the prey in their mouth they seldom let it go till they have drown their victim
in the depths of the water. They even will spin it
over and over to try to kill it.
This reminds me of some of the ways of evil men,
and because of their ways and their words that can hurt, we call upon God who is love and therefore he delivers us. I suppose men get
hungry when their belly is not full of the bread from heaven…
By doing this, we can share the good news of God
and encourage a child, letting him know, not by
praising him, but by praising God, that the child’s
artwork does remind his pen pall sponsor of the
good things of God. What the child does can minister good things to adults when he draws anything in the creation of God. The child learns
acceptance and many important lessons of life, (and so does the sponsor)
and it’s a lot of fun for the sponsor.
If a child draws a waterpot, what does it remind
you of? That will likely depend on you and God.
It might remind you of the woman at the well in
John 4, or something else. It might remind you of
the Potter and how he forms the clay.
One day, the child you sponsor might become a
shepherd, a wise man, a fisher of men, a pastor
or a teacher, an evangelist, or a worship leader,
who can tell?
Tom
Great conversation. My wife and I are addicted to your blog. We want to thank you for being so available and interacting with those of us who read your books. It means a lot.
We listened to your message on the samaritan woman recently and you had us both crying, that’s not easy to do. keep it coming.
Ruth
Hey Frank,
I read what some of the people said….
One question: . quite a few believers said, “I’ve been a Christian all my life and have been to many different types of churches and have heard thousands of sermons, how come no one is preaching this? I’ve never heard this before. Why?
My thought:
This deeper life with Christ in what your talking about is nothing new and has been talked about and preached. But what I have learned is we are not listening. I remember sitting in a church building with a friend because she asked me to come to her church.
I was floored that the preacher was reading from Madame Guyon and talking about the depths of God. Talking about the Dark Night of the Soul. In a traditional church environment….But it was obvious these people didn’t get it.
So many times I can look back when certain things were said to me and went right over my head. A big part of this to me goes back to “Revelation” we can preach things till we drop but unless God opens our eyes it is useless.
(by the way it sounds like God opened a lot of eyes at this conference)
It takes us living these things to really come to understand them.
Second question: 1. a number of Christians who are involved in the present missional movement confessed “I thought I had known the Lord, and now I realize I really don’t know Him very well. I want and need to know Him deeply.”
………..Lord this is a ever going on process in our lives. I truly believe until we take our last breathe on this earth we will feel like this with every major turning point of God in our lives. I really don’t think it will ever end.
Haven’t you ever wondered how deep do we really ever get. There are times you feel like it is so deep that it is scary………….then others times I feel like I can’t even scratch the surface.
Now I know you only touched on this:
You mentioned the two trees………and about eating of them……….
My question has always been: “How do you know which tree Frank that your eating of?”
I have pondered this thought. Many times in my life . If someone had told me I was eating of the tree of good and evil……….I would had thought they were nuts. I was living body life…………living in common with my brethren…Living this organic Christianity….doing what I was suppose to be doing……like so many before me that had written about it….but in reality…”I was” eating from the tree of good and evil……….. and how did I learn that?
I Experienced it
Through experience is how it is revealed to us.
But anyway I find that tree a very interesting part of our lives.
One of my questions is: How long does it take for us to know that were not eating of that tree anymore?
I liked what Brittian had to share………one thing about all this Organic Christianity that gets forgotten is how much death is involved.
As we mature in Christ so much has to go and die! Without this process we have much immaturity.
Not only in peoples lives but also in the group dynamics as well.
It is a hard pill to swallow in this Organic life. And the last subject talked about……….but truly one of the most vital to understand.
I think this is what’s truly at the heart of the Two Trees!
I remember one time at a group gathering a young man came up to my husband and told him if we had only had a church planter come and help our group out it would not had died!
My husband looked at this young brother in the Lord and said to him………Has it ever occurred to you that some things are better off just dying?
And if the Lord chooses to resurrect it……….then it should be from his hand.
Well, no of course not…………it is hard for the young to ever consider those things because to most people things should be alive and breathing at all times…….
Anyway…….it is always good to hear that others are wanting the deeper things of God. Even though we are not always for sure what those things are.
Sounds like everyone had a great time!!! I just can’t imagine it not happening when Jesus is being loved on and him getting to love back!
Be blessed my brother!!!
frankaviola
Caleb: You’re speaking of what I would call “Quetist” groups. I’m familiar with them. Though they are shrinking in number. (And I’m not upset about that by the way 🙂 ) The fundamental problem in those groups, as I see it, is that they separate “being” from “doing” and put them at odds with each other. I spent a short time in a “deeper life” movement that did this very thing. There was a lot of talk about “living by Christ” but few of us saw it fleshed out in shoe leather by those who were the most vocal about it.
Learning to LIVE by Christ *in reality* is something quite different, yet it does take time as well as a community that’s centered on pursuing Jesus Christ in all of His aspects.
To my mind, young people in their 20s would be much wiser to learn Jesus Christ in the context of a non-sectarian, non-elitist, and non-exclusive expression of body life instead of being captured by movements that sap their youthful enthusiasm and beat their adrenals to death on doing things for God instead of knowing Him first. The main point of all of this is that there is a growing army of young people who aren’t making the mistakes of the past generation. I continue to meet guys in their 40s, 50s, and even 60s who admit that they’ve been serving the god of serving and they really don’t know Him well. And I continue to meet gifted Christians in their 30s who “burned out” from serving God. Listen, youthful enthusiasm is a beautiful counterfeit for the power of God. All told: I’m on the lookout for those young men and women who’s first priority is KNOWING Him. Thank God I’m finding them more and more. May their tribe increase!
Brittain: Thanks for your comment and for mentioning Thomas’ book. One statement of his that I will never forget, “It takes God to become a man.” (He’s using “man” to mean “human” by the way.) That’s as profound and pregnant as they come. Volumes are locked into that little statement. See also my comment to Caleb as it applies to some of what you wrote as well.
Incidentally, here’s a small piece of my testimony that I’m preparing for a new interview with George Barna. It’s related to the topic at hand, but tells it from my own experience. Interestingly OT priests didn’t begin their ministries until they were 30. And this is true for Jesus Himself regarding His public ministry. It seems to me that our 20s are for spiritual preparation.
“As for serving God, I had many opportunities to serve the Lord (in a public way) in my 20s, but I came to conclusion that I wasn’t ready. I first needed to know Christ deeply and I needed to understand His church experientially. Therefore, I spent my 20s learning those two things: Jesus Christ and the experience of the body of Christ. All of my peers were doing something different. They were going on missions trips, taking leadership positions in parachurch organizations, trying to get the world saved, some became pastors, etc. When we both hit the age of 30, something telling happened. Most of them burned out and few of them are even following the Lord today. When I was 31 years old, the organic church of which I was a part laid hands on me sent me out to begin the work of planting organic churches and I’ve been engaged in it ever since.”
frankaviola
Heather: I’m keenly aware that I’m not the best writer on the planet, but you don’t have to rub it in 🙂
Let me try to wrap this up as time is demanding other things. There are two different issues here, which I think is causing some of the confusion. 1) knowing Christ deeply vs. not knowing Him well at all yet trying to serving Him regardless, and 2) living and serving by His life vs. living and serving by our own life and resources.
I believe the Lord wants us to know Him well, and in knowing Him well we fall in love with Him, and out of that love and “knowing” service flows. There is a doing that comes out of knowing. And there’s a doing that is unrelated to knowing or loving. There is also a doing that is the work of human strength and zeal, and there is a doing that is Christ working. There is a serving out of duty and obligation. And there is a serving out of love and (divine) life. He wants a bride who loves Him, rather than a maid who serves Him with little knowledge of who He is. More than servants, we are His friends and lovers. Beyond all that I’ve said above, I don’t know how to make the point any clearer than this with such a stale and limited medium.
My hope is that this blog post captures the hearts of some who will read it in the future and there cry will be: “I want to know Him” … just as Paul himself said in Philippians 3. I, for one, am glad that I’m hearing that cry more and more. This makes me hopeful for the future.
It’s wonderful to be on this journey together and learn from one another. Thanks for all of your input.
Have a great weekend.
Heather
Of course, none of us know how old Timothy was, but Paul did recruit him for some amount of “work”, despite his youth…?
That being said, it seems like in some of your paragraphs you are saying that it’s not a “knowing vs doing” type of thing…while in other paragraphs you seem to elevate those with hunger to know Him over those with a passion “to do…” thus setting up that dichotomy. So maybe you could clarify your message to reduce the confusion this is creating.
I’m just over 30 now, and so maybe it’s ok that my overwhelming hunger “to know” from my teen years and twenties has now given way to a desire to “know Him” while I “do…” At any age, we should never stop hungering to know Him though 🙂 I don’t think I have – it’s just that what that looks like has changed for me. Knowing Him *in his power* knowing Him *in His resurrection* knowing Him *in His sufferings* and being conformed WITH Him to His death…..there are so many aspects of knowing Him and our hunger should take us into the fullness of all that He is.
Caleb
Frank,
I think we may be speaking past each other a bit, but hopefully I can clarify a little more what I was trying to get across. “AMEN” about it not being an a “BOTH/AND” sort of thing even as it is also not an “EITHER/OR” thing either. I wholeheartedly agree with your point that it is about the “power source” or “engine” that we need to concern ourselves with. The issue I am addressing is the method by which or philosphy behind how we try to move people from drawing from one power source to Another, and the eventual outcomes of these paradigms.
In some types of churches, there is an underlying belief that you “learn how” to access Christ as your power source by being still, meditating, and “spending time at the feet of Jesus as Mary did” by doing no “work” in the Kingdom. In these churches, I have commonly seen this teaching result in rendering the majority of the group spiritually sterile, and the culture of the group often takes on a negativity towards anyone, especially a young person, who is engaging in almost any form of active Kingdom-spreading work.
What I am suggesting, is that while the underlying presupposition that most christians are living out of their own strength instead of the Lord’s is sound, creating paradigms in which people may end up discourage young people or others from serving the Lord can also be detrimental to the development of spiritual maturity and orientation, and inadvertantly still stall the development of a saint’s full stature in Christ.
Learning to draw from a place of “yet not I, but Christ in me” necessitates opportunities to engage with and abide with the Lord in co-laboring with Him, even though it is true that those same opportunites can also present a temptation to labor in the flesh.
(Jessie-Penn Lewis touches on this in some of her works, although I can not think of any specific references at this moment.)
Overall, thanks for engaging with this topic.
Brittian Bullock
Frank, interesting words here.
My own experience shows a different hue than the one that’s being brought out here, however I can appreciate what you’re saying. It is though, and I think you would agree, the nature of humanity (and I mean that in the most positive way possible) to burn through and burn out in life. Almost as if in waves or cycles.
You know, as well as I do, the number of deeper Christian lifer’s/indwelling Life of Christ folks who have come to critical junctures and found that they were as exhausted and empty as when they had begun the beautiful journey inward. In fact, statistically speaking I imagine the burn out or wreckage to be comparable, if not worse than “the missional” movement. Puritans in this deeper life camp though might say that they never really had “it” and so losing “it” was a part of their cycle. I’m not convinced.
One only has to look at Hannah Whitehall Smith and her husband Robert who fundamentally sparked the Keswick movement (which was so key to many of Nee’s own understandings of the Indwelling Life of Christ) to see that burnout happens…even to the best of them.
Salvation…sanctification…”the revelation of Christ”…meeting in homes/ “the revelation of the Church”…reaching 40…none of them are proven to be magic.
God is leading us to himself and the roads we walk are the roads of life, spanning years and failures and revelations and realizations. It seems like most often it takes tragedy or suffering to open space to encounter the Divine…where that opportunity comes seems like it is so often different.
I have met and befriended so many people from within all of these streams; myself having swam in them as well… Enough to say that generalizations seem to not apply as easily as we wish they would.
That having been said, another great, and often overlooked book, that I found to be THE best primer for the deeper Christian life message was Major Ian W. Thomas’ “The Indwelling Life of Christ”. Phenomenal book. I still highly recommend it.
Cheers Frank!
Let’s chat sometime.
Yann
Frank: Thank you for your helpful responses.
frankaviola
Yann: As it relates to the expression of the church, I’ve answered the first question in Pagan Christianity. That’s the artificial fruit. I’ve answered the second in Reimagining Church, that’s the organic item.
On an individual level, anytime you hear “go out and do such and such because Jesus did it” and then you TRY, that’s the human trying to generate the apple. “What would Jesus do”? is along the same lines. The question is not what would Jesus do, but what IS He doing …
Learning to live by Christ is something that a local body of believers discovers togther with some practical instruction (that cannot be put in an email by the way). We Westerners want formulas and fast/quick/easy answers. Living by an indwelling Lord is not add water and stir, microwave on high for 2 minutes, or 3 easy steps. But to use Paul’s words, when it happens, “it’s not I but Christ who lives in me!” Gal. 2:20.
I refer you to Watchman Nee’s book THE NORMAL CHRISTIAN LIFE for more examples and insight on the subject. The whole book is about this discussion. And it’s without peer.
Gotta run.
Yann
Frank: Thank you for your reply. I understand what you are saying about the apples. However, I am wondering about how that translate in real life: what would be a concrete example of someone *trying* to imitate how He lived? or someone creating an apple in the lab? versus living by Him? Also what are your thoughts on experiencing Him through the life of the body and doing the work as He sends it to us?
frankaviola
Yann: The analogy is about bearing fruit. Let me use a different analogy that may be easier to understand.
Think of apples. An apple = fruit.
Question: We want apples, but how do we get them?
One group says, we will explain what an apple is, we will study what it looks like, then we will go to the lab and create skin, create seeds, paint it red — and presto, we have an apple!
Another group says, nope, that’s an imitation. Plant the seed, watch it grow, then you will have apples. It’s a product of life, not human effort.
The former requires effort, toil, work, grit, gum, and gumption.
The latter is the work of God.
One is artificial; the other organic.
Much of Christian leadership today is trying to create apples in the lab. Milt and I are saying that real apples are the product of LIFE.
Jesus Christ is the LIFE, we bear fruit by living by Him, not by *trying* to imitate how He lived.
Yann
Very interesting conversation…
I actually very much like what Caleb said. To me, there seems to be a lot of wisdom to his posting.
Pardon my naivete (I have been meeting in house churches for a couple of years only and I don’t quite understand what exactly is a missional church…), but it seems to me that we can meet organically as a group of brothers and sisters to seek and share the Lord. As we do that, the Lord sends us work to do. We won’t even need to seek work out, He will send it to us and give us the gifts we need to accomplish it. Very much like He was always taking care of things (healing, feeding, etc…) as He was traveling.
Frank, what do you mean when you talk about sewing oranges to the tree?
frankaviola
Angela: Right on. That’s not what we are talking about. We’re talking about the machine. When I was in college, I got involved with a number of parachurch organizations. Some of those guys were teaching bible studies (at 20 years old), leading evangelistic programs, doing world wide missions work. And … they didn’t know beans from peas. They couldn’t give people Christ because they hardly knew him, and what they
were teaching was so shallow that a gnat couln’t drown. Many of these young men and women burned out by the age of 30. I know some of them today. They no longer follow the Lord. Spiritual growth takes time. If we would just go back to the NT narrative, we would see the spiritual principles for the preparation for spiritual service. But you’re right, we’re not talking about the organic desire to share one’s new found faith
with friends in a free, living way. We can only share what we know in experience. And not more. I thank God for those men — some of them expastors — who really want to know Jesus Christ deeply before they “go out” and get involved in ministry. This was the way of the first Christians, and it’s part of God’s way as far as I’m concerned. The carnage bears witness.
Caleb: nothing in the conference was pitched as “either/or.” Neither is the issue about “intimacy vs. doing” … or “being” vs. “doing.” We’ve been taught to think in these terms and then to come back and say it’s both/and. And we wrongly assume we’ve solved the issue. But putting it in those terms is a distraction really. The discussion is about the *engine* of the Christian life. It’s about the *power source* of what lays behind our service. It’s about HOW the fruit *that lasts* is produced. It’s about how the Christian lives and serves. Does he or she live by trying to imitate Jesus or by living by Christ who dwells in the church? Do we sew oranges to a tree, or do we plant the seed and wait until it grows and naturally bears oranges. That’s the issue. And it’s one that has gotten hardly any airplay in evangelicalism. While the theory is there, there’s hardly any practical instruction on HOW that’s done. I’m glad to see more and more missional folks recognize this. I believe over the next 7 years we’re going to see a lot of those who think they serving God in the spirit come to their end. It’s already happening and this is a good thing. The main point here is that living by an indwelling Lord is possible. This is how Jesus lived His life. That’s how He bore fruit and served. But such living and serving is not an individual pursuit and most of us need some instruction on how to begin. The exciting thing is that more and more young people (and even folks in their 40s and 50s) are admitting that they do not know this realm. And they deparately want to. I praise God for that. There are few things beyond this that the church of Jesus Christ needs, for everything else flows from it.
By the way, failure to understand the above is precisely why the first missional movement died and gave way to the seeker sensitive/attractional movement. Today, we have an opportunity not to repeat the same mistakes of the past.
This is why history is so valuable in my opinion. But then again, Hegel did say, “the only thing we learn from history is that men learn nothing from it.” I hope that’s not the case here.
Angela
Sam
For further clarification, (I think Frank and Milt would agree with me here) no one is against young people telling all their friends and neighbors about the Lord or enthusiastically participating in whatever is going down in the local organic church. But they are still learning, so shouldn’t be sent out in their ‘own’ ministry or used as fuel for someone’s organization.
I too have experienced trying to minster in my own strength with little experience of the Lord as a young person until being ‘shelved’ by the Lord. So has a close friend who used to be a pastor.
Together we are finally learning the basics and beginning to know the Lord in a deeper way.
Paul himself was ‘called’ at the time of his salvation but not ‘sent out’ until much later.
Caleb
I think the “either/or” approach is what has damaged many of us – we *either* are taught to burn ourselves to preach a God we barely know, *or* we are discouraged from doing anything at all except to seek intimacy with God.
My life has gone through many seasons – at first I was serving God with zeal and fervor, until I discovered many “deeper life” teachings and quit it all to seek the Lord Himself. Years later, I was actually burned out on “doing nothing.” I had learned to commune deeply with the Lord and yet my experience of Him was still lacking an element that can only be experienced when co-laboring with Him.
So either approach can leave someone lacking in spiritual experience, because some dimensions of knowing the Lord can only be known in stillness, and other dimensions are only known in His motion with Him.
I believe the healthiest approach is to discover (in community) life rhythms of stillness and depth, mixed with passion and action. One will feed the other, and if the rhythm is discovered organically without being overly contrived, it will keep one’s spirit from either being deprived or supressed.
The problem with the missional groups is that mostly they haven’t cultivated depths of worship and prayer needed to give people the opportunities to encounter and experience the Lord’s love and presence in a deep and ongoing way. This is usually based in a fear of spiritual selfishness and emotionality, or simply a zeal for a cause.
The problem with the deeper life groups is that they tend to actively discourage full participation in the life and motion of the Lord and instead instill people with spiritual passivity and eventual deadness of spirit. This is also somewhat fear-based; a fear that one will be striving in their flesh or somehow “missing the Lord.”
But the Lord is not at opposition with Himself – He means for us to grow as we go, and go as we grow – that He might train us dig our roots deeply into Him in every way, and receive glory and praise and honor from every age group and generation of saints.
Sam
Thanks for the great responses, Frank and Alan. I look forward to your book on the topic, Frank.
bswan
when is the next conference, and where?
I would love to attend one
Pal Madden
Lance, in keeping with Frank’s comments on authentic ‘body life’, and your comment of reading from the dead guys, I recommend you and Frank both go to Ray Stedman’s web site and read his book, “Body Life”.
He is a ‘dead man’, and all of his books although out of print are on the Internet for FREE. Would that all those, when their books have gone out of print, would put them on the Internet.
frankaviola
p.s. some have emailed me privately asking if the messages will be released publically. I can’t answer that now as it’s a team decision that will be discussed in the future.
Past conference messages that have been selected to be released publically can be obtained at http://www.ptmin.org/messages.htm & http://www.ptmin.org/audiocd.htm
Some are on CD and some are downloadable mp3s. There are also a number of mp3s at http://www.ptmin.org/answers.htm
I’m going to be out of pocket for awhile as I’m way behind. Have a great rest of the week.
frankaviola
Bswan, some larger conferences and events are being planned for 2009 and 2010.
Go to http://www.ptmin.org/events.htm and fill out the form and you’ll be invited/notified about them. Be sure to type in your email address correctly 🙂
The book “Body Life” was big for it’s time, 1972, but it really didn’t go far enough in unveiling the realities and fullness of church life. Stedman was a jewel of a man, but he was still part of the clergy.
THE “older books” that are must-reads on organic church life would be “The Normal Christian Church Life” by Watchman Nee & “God’s Spiritual House” by T. Austin-Sparks. Those two classics set forth a great foundation and an extraordinary vision, upon which contemporary books like “Reimagining Church” are built on and which apply for our own day and time.
Lance Ford
Pal,
Yes, Stedman’s “Body Life” is a good one. In fact it is in my giant stack of reference books for a book that Alan Hirsch and I are currently writing on living a missional life from the Suburbs.
Bill
I have friends who attended your conference and they said it was phenomenal. It was a life changing experience for them. Is there anyway that I can get the Cds.
Lance Ford
Frank,
Your list of these books reminded me of advice that I read by…I think it was Oswald Sanders in “Spiritual Leadership” (a wonderful book I might add). He said, “For every 2 newer books you read, read 1 old book.” So, I always try to remind guys I work with to, “Make sure you’re reading some dead guys.”
Alan Levine
This is a response to Sam. I was saved in my early twenties,during what is now called the Jesus Revolution. My fervor for the Lord was white hot. I was thrust out in my youth into the Lord’s work with very little preparation. Most of what I knew was head knowledge and not born out of deep experience with the Lord and His Church. The Lord saw I was a man after His own heart. He said I want that man. The great potter put me on His wheel. He stretched my clay. He pulled the strings of my heart . He kneaded me like bread until I felt like putty in His hands. But the great trial came when He put me on the shelf(after being active or busy for many years). The vessel was being prepared for His work not what I think His work is. He had to make me one with His purpose. There would be no substitutes no other purpose but His. The man would become the message. The Lord’s passion and dream would now be infused in my being. His life is now my life. It is no longer theory or information but spiritual reality. There is no substitution for experiential preparation not only individually but in the midst of real organic church life.
frankaviola
Sam, there’s much more to this, but first, there’s a huge difference between youthful enthusiasm and spiritual passion born out of a revelation of Jesus Christ and divine encounter.
The former burns out … always. That’s why a significant percentage of all who are serve God in their 20s fall away by the time they hit 30. It’s called the mortality crises. Their adrenals are bled dry. Many parachurch organizations are built on youthful enthusiasm, and the carnage is great.
Later on in life it shows up.
Now this is a vast subject and I may lose some. But I’m working on a book that will go into great detail on all of this.
In short: We can take our cue for the NT. What did young men like Timothy do? First, he got to know Jesus Chirst in the natural habitat of all Christians — a living experience of the body of Christ where Jesus Christ is the functional head. I call it authentic body life. I speak about this kind of church life in my book REIMAGINING CHURCH. It’s what I’ve known since I was 23 years old.
Then, to wait until the church sends them out. To wait on their callling. If they are truly called to God’s work, no mortal can hold them back, and they go out with the support and backing of the church and proper preparation that’s spiritual foremost and experiential, instead of theoretical and abstract.
There’s much more to be said, but our paradigm is so off base today that some of these concepts, which are firmly rooted in the NT, escape us and they are like speaking a different language.
I thank God for the young men and women who have forgotten the clock and are learning Jesus Christ in authentic expressions of church life. Some of them will be giants in the years from now.
Sam
Oh man, don’t stop there. I’d love to hear more thoughts on the “going-out” of 20 & 30 somethings. I completely agree that even though young folks are going gung-ho telling others about a God they know little about experientially, does that mean they should stop? (Not insinuating you meant they shouldn’t, just questioning more details of your thoughts.)
When does the “right time” happen that releases them to go out? And by the time that happens, what do we do to reignite that fervent passion?
eyesofhope
Frank, I love the fact that you are, in this time of change, focusing on intimacy with God. It is an important aspect of the revival at hand that is not being mentioned much – probably because in the past few major revivals the church focused on the indwelling feeling of the Spirit so much, and on the outworkings of that experience so little. I have found Matt Hyam’s short book, “I Still Have More Questions Than Answers” to be very helpful in this regard. Now that there is revival brewing in the church again, it is almost as if we are too afraid to tap into the individual, personal experiences God has for us, in fear of repeating the past, in which God’s people were filled with the Spirit, but no social justice ensued. I think God not only wants us to revise our ways of living in the Kingdom mentality, but also to fall deeply in love with him in the process, even more than we already have in the past.
Kerri
Frank, thank you for a powerful weekend. My dh & I were moved in every way you described above. We stopped to pick up our kiddos @ my dad’s house on the way home. He asked us about the conference & I was able to share Christ – the REAL Christ without the strings attached – or the first time in my life! I cannot explain what it is to finally be free, but oh how I want to share it with the world! But even more importantly, I now understand – and more importantly BELIEVE – that the most important thing I can do is know my Lord – the rest will follow. God Bless! Kerri
Elizabeth Chapin
Frank, I appreciate your thoughts and testimony here. I’m curious to hear more about “the bait and switch gospel” you mention. I have a sneaking suspicion I know what you are talking about here, but don’t want to assume too much. Perhaps you have already blogged about this or plan to.
I’ve only read two of the books on your recommended reading list, but echo your heart about the need to understand certain dimensions of God and his work in our lives no matter what Christian background we have – there are some foundational understandings of God that need to inform all of our thinking, including our thinking and talking about missional.
ded
Thanks for the digest of the conference.
I think many, many issues within the Body of Christ would alter significantly or even dissipate completely, if believers received and embraced clear teaching on being at rest in Jesus.
Being at rest in Him is the foundation from which godly works inspired by the Holy Spirit spring.
I teach in a public school and have realized a tremendous freedom to teach from my heart, which has had an impact on my students. The impact is there because I make so many decisions based on what I feel the Spirit is doing.
I have not matured in this by any means. Yet, I know learning the inward way is the key to the outward impact which is generally believed and is so often taught as the mark of authentic Christianity.