In that dream I was walking through the downtown, urban section of a city. I came across a storefront church.  It was bustling with young, urban attenders that were very much of the hipster variety.  Everything about this church had the buzz of “cool.”

After hanging around for a while with people I didn’t know, I found out that the person I was hanging with invited me to preach but I was totally unaware. The leader of this church had asked me to preach on servanthood, but he was wanting a message on servanthood so that he would have an easier time recruiting people to serve the ministries of this church. He had no interest in servanthood as a value in the Kingdom.

From the front of the building, we walked into the sanctuary with the pastor and his assistant.  The sanctuary was actually a stadium-style ice rink.  The pastor asked me to sit in the highest row, which is where he spoke from, but the worship of the meeting actually took place at the bottom of the stadium out on the ice. As the worship progressed, I began to realize that this church’s worship was a very detailed production/show and that everyone was dressed very formally. There was an orchestra, dancers and because an ice rink was central to this church, they even had ice skaters. Somehow I had ended up in dressed in a suit but had no shoes and was feeling very awkward about it.

Then suddenly towards the end of the “worship time” it became clear that the ice rink was melting.  But it wasn’t just the ice in the rink at the center of the stadium that was melting, but the whole building. Unbeknownst to me the entire building was made of ice and was beginning to melt. The stadium seats, the floors, and even the walls were melting and cracking.  It disrupted the whole service and we could not continue.  I woke up with this phrase on my spirit: “The frozen church is melting.”

Interpretation: I believe that this is a warning to the church, particularly in the West.  The church built on entertainment, cultural relativity, and business values will begin to come undone.  This will be in large part due to “atmospheric change” that the church in the West will find itself in.  I’m unclear about whether this will come from greater hostility toward the church from society in general or a greater intensity brought to bear on the church by the Lord Himself, resulting in more fervency in the body and a rejection of these values.  But one thing is clear: a Christian organization built on man’s organizational values that feeds a consumer mentality in the body of Christ in order to further the success of one or two leaders will be a recipe for a “melting church.”

Hebrews 12:26-27: “At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, ‘Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.’ This phrase, ‘Yet once more,’ indicates the removal of things that are shaken—that is, things that have been made—in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain.”

Application: The call then, based on all of this, is to repent.  We need to repent of those areas where we’ve been working for our fulfillment and notoriety instead of the Lord’s glory and the advancement of the Gospel.  We need to reject human leadership values and church structures based on marketing principles and not God’s word, even if you can vaguely construe Scripture to justify your approach.  Go back and do the things you did at first when Jesus was your first love.  Begin again to follow Jesus, listen to His voice, and look to Him and His word for how you and your church can begin to follow Him based on what He values.

Now: Do you see anything in the interpretation or application of the dream that I missed? If you do, please feel free to leave a comment in the comment section below.

Photo Credit: Flying Through a Crack in the Ice by NASA Goddard Photo and Video

Not just the kind of dreams that are a vision for your future that you want to achieve.  I actually believe the dreams you dream at night are sometimes the communication of Heaven to your life.

That means the dreams you dream are sometimes God talking to you.

Why do I believe that? Well, the book of Job (33:14-18) says this:

For God speaks in one way,

and in two, though man does not perceive it.

In a dream, in a vision of the night,
when deep sleep falls on men,
while they slumber on their beds,
then he opens the ears of men
and terrifies them with warnings,

that he may turn man aside from his deed
and conceal pride from a man;
he keeps back his soul from the pit,
his life from perishing by the sword.

So God uses dreams to get our attention.  He uses them to connect to us when we’ve been so busy we haven’t been attending to His voice.  He uses our sleep to speak to us about our lives, if we’d only hear it.

I also believe in dreams because God has used them so consistently in the past.  He’s used them with Joseph in Egypt, Daniel and the pagan Kings of Babylon, Joseph (Jesus’ father),and others in the Bible.  It’s also a way He promised to speak to us after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

Wolfgang Simson says that the bed may be the most prophetic place on the planet for human beings.  Most of the time, however, we ignore what we see in dreams because we don’t believe they carry messages from Heaven.  They do, if we are willing to seek God out for what those messages are.

In my own life, there have been numerous times Jesus has shifted the direction of my life or spoken into a situation through a dream He’s given to me or a dream He’s given to a friend of mine about me.  Many dreams have cleared up confusion about a situation I’ve found myself in. Some have foretold things to come.  Some have just drawn me closer to Jesus.  The fruit has been healthy and well worth the journey.

I also believe dreams are a reality we’re all called to experience.  I believe you can go to bed tonight and God can begin speaking to you in away you’ve never imagined.  If you’re still reading this, I pray tonight God begins to speak in your dreams and that tomorrow morning you wake up with direction you could have never imagined. Take a notebook with you and write like mad anything you dream about. Then when you wake up, pray about what you remember.

The tricky part comes when we believe in dreams.  Because once we believe that God is communicating to us, we become accountable for the messages God is hand delivering to our nocturnal in-box. We get to live the dream.

If you’ve had a dream that God spoke to you clearly in, leave a message in the comment section below.

Photo Credit: Dreams and Thoughts by Paul-simson.org

One of the sayings of CMA, an organic church planting fellowship I’ve learned a lot from is “we need to lower the bar on what it means to be a church and raise the bar of what it means to be a disciple.”  They believe that if church is simple enough for anyone to participate in it and everyone is a committed disciple, churches will begin to be established quickly and repeatedly.  My question then is, how high should we raise the bar?  The following is my list of seven benchmarks for discipleship:

1. Intimacy with Jesus- Every spiritual reality in the Kingdom of God is born out of a deep and abiding relationship with Jesus.  When a person is truly born into the Kingdom, they are immediately grafted in to a real relationship with a resurrected Lord.  But we never graduate beyond that relationship.  There is no level of spiritual maturity where listening, loving, and abiding becomes something you did when you were young in the Lord.  Cultivating this ongoing relationship with Jesus becomes the basis for every other Kingdom activity we do. (Matthew 22:34-40, John 14:15, John 15:1-10)
2. Ability to Follow the Holy Spirit- Jesus expected the ministry of His Son to be carried on through those who followed Him.  Jesus-style ministry did not stop when He ascended to Heaven.  It continued on in the lives of those who had followed Him and in the lives of those who would come to believe in their testimony.  The Holy Spirit led the expansion of the church, the direction of its mission, and fueled the internal growth of holiness in His people.  It’s not necessary to take a class on following the Holy Spirit, but we all need to grow in understanding how He leads individually and practice obeying His leadership. This will include knowing His voice, following His promptings, and manifesting His gifts. (John 20:21-22, Acts 2:33, Acts 2:38, Acts 9:31, Acts 13:52, Acts 16:6-10)
3. Growing Character- We all come to Christ as enemies of God and it’s the work of God to cause us to surrender to Christ.  This change from a captive of Satan to a citizen of the Kingdom of God will have ramifications on our lifestyle. As we develop intimacy with Jesus and follow the Holy Spirit there will be continual change of character reflected in our lifestyle.  This is fueled not out of religious pressure but the work of God in the soul of man.  Jesus called us to be perfect even as our Heavenly Father is perfect, Paul told us he pressed on to the upward call of Christ but had not reached it.  Our lifestyles are to grow up into the image of the One who saved us.  (Romans 5:8, Colossians 1:13, 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, Galatians 5:22-24, Matthew 5:48, Philippians 3:12-15, Ephesians 4:15-16)
4. Retelling the Gospel with Relevancy- Anyone who has been to a third world country and seen effective ministry being carried out by the illiterate and unlearned will understand that it doesn’t take a seminary degree to be a disciple.  But the ability to grasp the Gospel is essential in coming to Christ.  The ability to retell the Gospel is crucial if we desire to see others come to Christ.  So every believer from the newest to the most mature should be able to retell their story of Christ meeting them (their testimony) and the story of how that was accomplished by Jesus (the death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, otherwise known as the Gospel). (1 Corinthians 1 :26-31, Romans 10:14-15, 1 Corinthians 15:3-4)
5. A Commitment to the Body of Christ- When Jesus saves us, He sets us in spiritual families that corporately represent Christ.  We lose our individuality and gain a corporate family more amazing than anything we have ever participated in.  This family is at the same time a universal brotherhood and a specific and local group to which we belong. We begin to tangibly demonstrate our love for Jesus and our status as disciples as we demonstrate love for other broken humans redeemed by Jesus.  (Psalm 68:5-6, Ephesians 4:4-6, Romans 16:3-5, 1 John 3:14-18, John 13:35, Romans 12:9-21)
6. A Commitment to Care for Orphans and Widows- God found us when we were unwanted orphans (spiritually) and adopted us into His family.  Truly following Him, then, means we take care of the weakest and most broken parts of society, whether they are believers or not.  We demonstrate the reality of our Gospel by caring for widows and orphans. (Romans 8:15, James 1:27, Galatians 6:10)
7. A Commitment to Reproduction- The Gospel and and it’s effects were designed to spread from person to person with little difficulty. Our commission from Jesus is to teach whole nations the realities we’ve learned from Him.  If we miss this element, we cease to be a discipling culture.  Paul wanted Timothy to not just teach other people, but to teach people in a way that they could pass his teaching on to others.  It was this commitment to spreading both the Gospel and it’s associated lifestyle that allowed it to reach most of Europe in a short period of time.  The same will be true today.  (Matthew 28:18-20, 2 Timothy 2:2)

Simply put, we are to be people who know Jesus deeply and follow the Holy Spirit.  This will cause us to grow in character, express the Gospel in word and deed, care for fellow believers and take care of widows and orphans wherever we find them.  When we commit to reproducing this lifestyle in those that are following Jesus around us, we begin to see a discipling culture take root.

One thing to know is that none of these characteristics require extensive schooling or training.  Most of them are just the result of you following Jesus and learning to trust His leadership.  All of this can be taught (and more likely caught) in the context of the body of Christ on mission.  That has deep implications for our current training systems across the body of Christ, but that’s a topic for another post….

Now the question today is this: What would you add?  Let me know in the comment section below.

Photo Credit: Masters Commission DR by AmslerPIX

I have been going to a traditional church all sixty years of my life.  I have been a member of high churches as well as the more casual, contemporary churches.  Presently I am a member of a charismatic church were hundreds of people attend each week.  All those years and all of those churches and it was not until last Sunday that I attended a house church.

What songs we sang, what Bible verses were read or what we prayed really does not matter.  There really was very little difference in how this house church worshipped together than what you could find in organized churches in this area.  The difference was found in the love of these people for each other and for people in need.

I have attended churches where everyone is called brother or sister.  “Brother Dave, how are you doing today?”  “Sister Kathy, you look marvelous in that dress.”  They are very friendly and welcoming people.   They have big smiles and will give you a hug as soon as they see you.  I love those churches.  This house church was different.  They didn’t call each other brother or sister but they treated each other as genuine family.  They laughed and tease one young girl about her new boyfriend.  Laughed with one man who the week before had forgotten that they were going to be singing at a senior care center and was at the place  they meet for Church instead.  They were not putting on a smile to impress anyone, but rather because they enjoyed each others company.

During our time there I got the sense that they had genuine love and caring for each other.  If one of them were to say something out of line, I am sure they would have lovingly set them straight.  If one hurt, they all felt the pain.

Their love did not stop with just those in their group.  Every first and third Sunday they would all go to sing at a senior care center.  They had an outreach to others who were in need of God’s love.  How many people in your church have an outreach outside your church members?  This house church had 100% participation in reaching out to others.

These are simple people joined together in the Love of Christ to help each other to grow and to reach out to their community.  They are not just brothers and sisters in name but in the love of Christ.  That is what makes this house church so good.   Perhaps a better terms would be to call it a Home Church instead, because you feel as if they really are a family who are loving and caring for each other in their home.

David Washburn is a follower of Jesus, a husband, a father, and a grandfather. He is an author of short stories and a blogger. His blog “Searching God’s Heart” focuses on knowing God’s heart and preparing for the revival of the last days.  

Christianity was designed to spread like a virus, moving from person to person, contact point to contact point, quickly changing people and making them an agent of change.  That all came to an end after a sustained period of growth several hundred years after Jesus’ resurrection. The church slowly abandoned it’s commitment to the “epidemic principles” they were founded on and adopted a different method of living.  This is the premise of Ross Rhode’s new book, Viral Jesus.  According to Rhode, though, these “epidemic principles” can be recaptured and a viral Christianity can again become the norm.

I had been eagerly anticipating the release of Viral Jesus ever since Rhode began blogging at Viral Jesus a few years ago.  If you’ve read the blog or enjoy the missional house church/ organic church/ simple church discussion, you will certainly find an enjoyable read in this book.  But this is not just another book about doing house church.  This is a book about spreading the Lordship of Jesus throughout a society, something that house churches become a vehicle for.  This is a radically different approach than most “house church” books take, but it was incredibly helpful.

I want to offer one warning up front before I continue with the review: Do not read this book if you’re looking to transition into a new church fad.  This book is fairly unique and it will not give you step by step instructions for getting new converts.  This book presents Jesus Christ as Lord, both of the world and of the church, and that means you won’t find strategies that work apart from Him.  Rohde takes a lot of necessary time presenting this truth and because of that, someone only wanting change without prayerfully submitting to Jesus would get very frustrated. But if you desire to follow the real Jesus into His harvest field, this book will be both incredibly helpful and challenging, but well worth the read.

Strengths

The first obvious strength of this book is the fact that it presents Jesus as the operating system for life, both inside and outside the church.  This is not a how-to book.  It forces you to acknowledge the ways in which you’ve been dependent on other things besides Jesus, especially in the church.  Rohde significantly develops the idea of “Jesus as Lord” that Hirsch and Frost discuss in books like “The Shaping of Things to Come” and “The Forgotten Ways.” But instead of developing the theology of “Jesus as Lord” Rohde presents very tangible examples from Scripture and experience of “Jesus as Lord” playing out in the life of the church.

One of the things I appreciated in the book was it’s strong endorsement of supernatural phenomenon in the life of Jesus movements.  Most of the current books on church planting and organic church argue for returning to most of the principles of the book of Acts, but spend little or no time discussing the place miracles plays. This is confusing because it is one of the most prominent features of the early church.  I suspect that because Rohde truly believes that the Lordship of Christ is the issue for viral Christianity to be restored, he has no problem presenting the Holy Spirit as active and involved if we submit to Jesus.  I can’t emphasize enough that these two issues need to be stressed over and over in the organic church conversation, and that fact alone makes Rohde’s book an invaluable contribution to the discussion.

Another strength of the book are the multiple stories Rohde tells about the adventures he and his co-workers have in the harvest field.  These stories take place in locations where many people think the Gospel is irrelevant, hardened Western Europe and California, and they make the principles Rohde lays out believable.  I’ve heard plenty of stories about miracles and conversions happening in America and Europe, but Rohde tells the stories in ways that make everyone believe they are capable of doing the same.  He and his friends aren’t the heroes of the stories, Jesus is, and because of that you gain faith you can participate in similar stories yourself.

Finally, Rohde’s chapters on Viral Evangelism and Viral Church Planting are worth the price of the book. Both chapters are a look at how, once submitted to Jesus, a believer is typically led by Him to share the gospel and see churches started.  Rohde makes evangelism and church planting a joy, not a burden, and accessible to everyone.  I’m actually going to list this book in the evangelism section of my Amazon bookstore because it so easily encourages and trains believers in basic principles for sharing their faith and planting churches.

Weaknesses

The one weakness I found in the book is it’s treatment of the historical Jesus movements of the past.  Rohde traces the fall of the early church away from the “epidemic principles” it was originally founded upon.  He then looks at times throughout history most Christians would call revivals and dissects how these revivals missed turning into full-fledged Jesus movements that God had intended.  I think this is the point where most Christians would have problems.  However, I actually agree with Rohde on most of the issues he presents as problems.

Rohde argues that each of these revivals were short-circuited because they didn’t completely abandon the trappings of Christendom that they emerged out of.  Because of that, these revivals eventually died down and became trapped in a dead religious state that they had been awakened out of.  I don’t even disagree with Rohde on this point. However, what was written seemed to imply that even though God moved powerfully many different times, these Jesus movements continually fell back into the Christendom mindsets they emerged out of.  Can a viral Christianity emerge in a country where Christendom is present and operating? I believe it can and I even think Rohde believes it can, but I walked away from the chapter having to truly process these thoughts out.

In the end, I believe that even this was helpful, because these chapters forced me to examine where I’ve compromised with foundational principles of the world in my Christian experience.  But my hope is that even though much of Christianity in the West is still steeped in Christendom, that viral Christianity lived out in front of the rest of the church will actually convince the church of the validity of abandoning many of the Christendom principles it has built itself on.

Should You Read Viral Jesus?

Yes, yes, and yes!  You will be encouraged, stretched, and challenged in ways you cannot imagine.  Rohde is really balanced in a radical, Jesus-following way.  Reading this book will push you in the most healthy direction you’ve been pushed in awhile—closer to Jesus.  If you’ve never been part of an organic church this a great book to get you started.  If you’ve read every book by every guy about church planting movements and house churches, this is still a really helpful and inspiring book.  And this is not a book for leaders, it’s a book for everyone, because viral Christianity is for everyone.

Because of all of this, I want to recommend you pick a copy of this book, take a journal and a Bible with you, and go and wrestle with the issues Rohde presents.  My hope is that it causes Jesus movements to spring up throughout the West and changes Christianity as we know it.

If you are living on a mission from Jesus and fathering others…. you are a Christian.

If you hear God’s voice well enough to declare it to others…. you are a Christian.

If you love to tell lost people about Jesus and have success in making disciples…. you are a Christian.

If you love and care for God’s people on an intimate level…. you are a Christian.

If you know how to teach in a way that gives people understanding of Jesus and His purposes…. (Say it with me everyone!) you are a Christian.

But…

If you are equipping other believers to live on mission and father others….or if you are training other believers to hear God’s voice…or if you are equipping younger believers to reach their friends….or you are giving other believers the skills to care for hurting believers….or you are helping believers teach others….well….you get the idea.

But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift.

Therefore it says,
‘When he ascended on high he led a host of captives,
and he gave gifts to men.’

(In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.) And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers,  to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ… Ephesians 4:7-13

Today, I’m introducing the Pursuing Glory Facebook Group. You can join by clicking the link and liking the page.

Now you may ask yourself, “Why should I join the Facebook Group when I follow the blog?”

That’s a great question. Here’s my take. Blogs are for discussion and interaction around a certain topic. Facebook is designed to build already existing relationships a little bit deeper. My hope is that those of you who come to the blog and really believe in what God is doing in the Earth in this generation would get to know each other a little bit better. Call it an apostolic christianity “green room” if you will.

My other hope is that we can use it as a place to gather like-minded bloggers and possibly coordinate blogging topics. So if you, like me, love writing about the kind of Christianity that embraces the lifestyle of the apostolic church this will be a place to gather and encourage each other.

I’ll leave you with a quote that sums up the reason behind the Facebook Group:

“Turns out that tribes, not money, not factories, can change our world, can change politics, can align large numbers of people.” -Seth Godin.

Come and join the tribe.

Also: Don’t forget, Monday I will post my review of Ross Rohde’s tremendously helpful book, Viral Jesus. Stay tuned.

Photo Credit: J C in Mosaic by Steve Snodgrass

While the participation in the contest wasn’t as large as I had hoped, I think the responses were great. This is a conversation that will be had over and over here in the West, particularly as Christianity becomes more and more marginalized in the United States.

So, in order of submission, here are the entrants in our Viral Jesus giveaway. Please visit the blogs and read them. They are both high quality posts that challenge where we are in order to release a viral Christianity in the West. Here are our entrants:

Viral Jesus Book Givewaway by Bryan Hamilton at Spiritual Slash

When Will We See Christian Growth by David Washburn at Searching God’s Heart

While it was hard for me to choose, our winner for the Viral Jesus giveaway is David Washburn. What I enjoyed about David’s post was how quickly he cut to the heart of the matter. If Viral Christianity is going to start in the West, it must start somewhere. The place it has to start is with us.

So, congratulations, David. Not only did you gain a great son-in-law (me), but you also have one a copy of Viral Jesus by Ross Rohde. We’ll send you out that copy shortly. Thanks again to everyone who participated in the giveaway both by submitting your thoughts and spreading the word.

Stay tuned. Friday I’m going to debut the new Pursuing Glory Facebook group. Next Monday I’m going to review Viral Jesus here on the blog. You won’t want to miss it.

Photo Credit: trophy 1 | the both and | shorts and longs | julie rybarczyk by
Shorts and Longs | The Both And

So to help get the word out about Ross’ book and promote some more discussion about spawning Jesus movements in the West, I’ve decided to give away a free copy of Viral Jesus here on the blog.  Now most blog giveaways I’ve seen require you to subscribe to an email list, follow someone on Twitter, or follow you on your Facebook group.  And while you’re welcome to get involved at a deeper level with what we’re doing here, we’re going to do this a bit differently.

In order to win “Viral Jesus” I want you to answer the question that Ross asks with his book: “What will it take to see a rapidly reproducing movement of Jesus followers take root in the West?” Anyone who writes an answer and posts it online for others to see will be entered into our give away.  You can post it on your blog, your Facebook Notes, your Tumblr account, or your Google+ account.  Really anywhere people can see it will be great.  Then email me, tweet me, message me on Facebook, or leave me a comment in comment field about how to find your response.  I will read the responses and publish the best response here on the blog on March 5th, 2012, along with the links to the other responses.  The winner will receive a free copy of “Viral Jesus.”

I have this other theory that a parable in Luke 14 is one of the forgotten parables of Jesus.

It’s sad to me though, because this parable gives one of the most practical instructions on how to manage yourself with humility in a gathering you’ve been invited to.  (I think it’s important to note that I believe Jesus would teach something very different if He were teaching you how to host a gathering.  Don’t apply Jesus’ lesson on being a guest to the idea of leading or hosting.)  Over and over I see believers not put this wisdom into practice.

Below you’ll find the parable in it’s entirety.  It’s better if you read it and apply it to your own life.  But this time, read the parable as if Jesus meant you to apply this idea in any event you’ve been invited into.  How would it change how you act?

And He began speaking a parable to the invited guests when He noticed how they had been picking out the places of honor at the table, saying to them,

When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for someone more distinguished than you may have been invited by him,

and he who invited you both will come and say to you, ‘Give your place to this man,’ and then in disgrace you proceed to occupy the last place.

But when you are invited, go and recline at the last place, so that when the one who has invited you comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will have honor in the sight of all who are at the table with you.

For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.

Now that you’ve read the parable, where does it apply to your life?  Are there other places (i.e. like when you’re hosting or leading) where this wisdom won’t work?

Photo Credit: Parables Notebooking by jimmiehomeschoolmom