Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Unity in Christ or Unity in Denomination?

As I study this morning I am going over four major views/ denominational views if you will. As I study these views the Holy Spirit is revealing something to me. It is amazing really. God has given me the vision of church unity for the last 3 years. I'm still not sure what he wants me to do with that vision. Anyway, He is showing me that all denominations for the most part are right and yet wrong at the same time! How can this be you say. The main argument for at least the four I am studying are all biblically true. However, they each insist that their way is the only way. How can this be? If each main view is biblical how can only one be right? God never intended for denominations. God intended for a unified Church. Jesus prayed for a unified Church in John 17. The problem comes when we take our view and rest on that view thus taking scripture out of context and not looking at what The Bible is really saying, in turn not allowing Gods Word to work. They all argue with Bible versus, this seems silly to me. If you all use Bible versus, and you say the other is wrong, are you not in essence saying the Bible is wrong? Or are you so egotistical that you actually think that you have the one and only full understanding of Gods Word? Gods word was meant to be used together. Not individual sections used for your own personal belief system that matches the kind of life you want to live or think other should live.
Why don't we take the truths of the Bible and use them how they were meant to be used...together! lets unify as the Church and stop all this petty arguing over what we think and let God speak to us through his Word.
Its not that one denomination is right or wrong. The problem is that each of them use one or two sections in the Bible, often times  one or two verses and base their whole denomination on that! I don't know about you, but to me it seems that if God only wanted us to use part of the Bible he would have only given us the Bible in part.
Unity in Christ as the Church does not mean doing the same thing everyone else does. It means understanding that Christ is the only way to The Father and understanding that church A and Church B may practice things a little different. However, that does not mean they are wrong. Each denomination I am studying has its purpose and that is great! Non of them are leading people away from Christ which is also great! (some of them may be in danger of leading people to Christ without giving them the expectation/commands that God has for followers.)However, non of them are unified as the Church. Can you imagine for one minute, pastors, elders, lay leaders, ministers of the gospel, CHRISTIANS, if we would all come together for the sake of Jesus Christ. If we could all see that  our view may be correct but not exclusive.  That God will use our understanding for one and another understanding for someone else? Yes maintaining a biblical view is important, if there was only one view there would be no need for the Bible to talk about unity as there already would be. There would be no need to talk about the Church being one body but many members doing different things.  It seems denominations think that the Church should be one body with many parts doing the same thing! This just is not possible! Come on Church, Jesus calls for unity so lets unify together to build Gods kingdom and bring other people into His kingdom through Christ.
Now don't get me wrong, I do feel that there are some major flaws in some denominations caused by the lack of understanding context and/or only using one set of scripture for their whole view of sanctification and justification. We should never just assume that all are right.  However, this does not mean that their scriptural content is wrong, just misused.  Their view, although different from ours must match up with the entire nature of God and context in which sanctification and justification come.  It seems that these four denominational views do use scripture, however all four of them seem to  have taken scripture out of context just enough to exclude other views. It would almost seem more appropriate to combine all four denominational views under the correct understanding of each other. The I feel each denomination would see that each view is correct to a degree because they are all based off of scripture, thus causing the Church to unify under the proper understanding and removing what is not biblical. The issue is we have become so pig headed about what we feel is right , that we are not even willing to consider the view point of another. In turn giving the other denomination a good reason to believe that they are right because we are proving their point for them. It is a big circle. Wont you be the one to stop the never ending circle of denominational debate? Won't you stand for what God's word teaches in whole?

This is a huge subject I know. To big to fully dig into here. It is more of book material than anything. This is just the outline of what The Holy Spirit is revealing to me. I know it is not complete and He will show the Churh more.

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Update...

     Good morning. I'm just gonna get right to the point today. I'm gonna be as honest as I can with you all. This is John writing. I have been struggling in some since, for a few reasons. I know, as someone who knows people in the mission field and follows what they do I want to hear about what they are doing. Therefore I want to be able to give you all great feedback on what we are doing here in Puerto Rico. I want to share about all the people being saved, rehabs we are going into, missions we are on and evangelistic outreach events we are part of. However, in all actuality we are doing very little of that. We have our food handout once a month and that is the only regular thing we do concerning physical mission work. To be honest doing very few of those things is driving me nuts. I know what you must be thinking right now, but let me share with you what has been happening.
     God's ways are not my ways. Everything I shared with you above, that I had hoped to be sharing with you, are things that we thought we would be doing. We came down here not part of a church but part of The Church. No church sent us,however Seven Hills Church was our "sending" church, The Lord called us here. We were as some say, "Lone Rangers." To some this was crazy, to others this was amazing. Some thought we were nuts, others were shocked by our faith. The reality is it was a little of both neither of which are bad. Let me tell you a little back story.
     In Michigan I was never, "under" another ministry officially. I had no accountability for what I did. Not that what I was doing was wrong just that I had no one that would step in to tell me if I was doing it wrong, so I guess it could have been.  Most people I did ministry with thought the same way I did and acted in a similar manner as I did. Our church home in Michigan has gone through so many changes in the past 5-6 years that I do not have a strong relationship with any of our pastors, with the exception of the Global Outreach Pastor,Brian.Brian is more of my mentor than pastor.  Just when I thought I had a relationship they got let go or left. So needless to say, our home church had little to do with the ministry God has us working in and I was not held accountable to anyone there or was I under the leadership of any pastor. It may be that they really didn't know what to do with me as I can be rather radical for Jesus and do crazy stuff. Like walk to Washington DC to Pray for Obama and move my entire family to Puerto Rico with no money, no job and faith that God would provide, all because He said so. I was led by The Holy Spirit and I was good with that and still am. My leader is The Holy Spirit and my orders come from God. God has used me and my family in amazing ways because of our willingness to submit to Him and do as he asks. However, there comes a time in ones life where the Lord asks you to learn how to sit under the authority of a Holy Spirit led human pastor. Now, I must say this did not appeal to me at all! I did not want to sit under anyone who would hold me back from what God would have me do.
     Over the past 5 months our family has been through a lot. Trying to fit in, learn a foreign language, find a church, make friends, being apart from family, figuring out what God has us here for specifically, college classes for me, learning home school for the kids and Jennifer learning how to teach, and so on. God has been faithful through it all and we have all grown because of this. Over the last 3-4 months we have been attending The Center Church Puerto Rico. As we have stated before we fell in love the second we walked through the door and God told us that this was our home church her on the island. Through several conversations with pastor Efren and other leaders of the church it was clear that God wanted us to not only attend this church but be part of this church. We were excited! Pastor Efren approached Jennifer and myself to be part of the leadership team, we again were excited! God was giving us work! So after praying about this we accepted and became unpaid staff at CCRP as part of their core leadership team.  This is where I was challenged and growth began.
     As the weeks went by I started to see that CCPR had a vision for their church. A vision God had given them. I loved the vision. The vision was to plant three more campuses on the other three coasts of the island. The focus of these churches would be pockets of English speaking people who do not have a church to go to. There are very few actual English speaking churches on the island. When we were asked to pastor one of these churches or help plant all three we were very humbled. No one had ever asked us to do this before, nor had we ever done it. How would I pastor or plant a church? Little did we know God was about to teach us both a lesson, mainly myself. I started to realize that God had put us in a church with an amazing vision and they were not willing to budge from what the Lord told them. That is a quality many people do not have and I loved it. However, that meant that I had to stay within the vision God gave them! Once I realized this I was frozen. After a conversation with Pastor Efren, I told him that submitting to their vision would be hard for me because I have never needed to do that in the past. I did what God told me to do, not someone else. I was a little confused at what God was doing to say the least. Once I returned home Jennifer and I talked about what Pastor Efren and I had talked about and we both were still very confused and a little discouraged to be honest. How are we do do what God called us to do and continue to do things that God asks us to do if we are under the authority of Pastor Efren and the vision of CCPR? What if God asks us to do something outside of CCPRs vision? I was scared that I was about do move in a direction that would put a halt on the Holy Spirit in my life. ( I think I actually thought my actions could do that. Really John? Really?) With that being said, Jennifer and I prayed about it. God spoke very clearly to both of us at separate times. He told us that He would not ask us to do anything outside of the vision He gave CCPR for the season we are with them. God knows my heart and my willingness to be obedient at a moments notice. This does not men I will be lack in my boldness or passion for Jesus. God knows I will not relinquish my desire to serve him in bold radical ways nor is He asking me to do so. God asked me a question that shocked me to the core, "John, how are you going to lead if you are not willing to be led?"  Furthermore, although we are not doing much physical ministry work, there is a lot of internal work and spiritual growth happening. I wish I could share more amazing stories with you but the reality is God has just not opened those doors and this is not the season for that right now. God has us in a season of growth. I am learning to submit to Holy Spirit through Holy Spirit led leadership, to submit to God through the vision God gave another church and to realize that God uses other people to lead me and the Church. A friend of mine,Pastor Britton, said this to me and it hit home. "Being part of a spiritual family you have to understand that it is no longer you and the Holy Spirit, it is you, the spiritual family and the Holy Spirit and you all have to learn how to hear the Holy Spirit together."
     So this is what God has been doing and in part why we have been so lack on giving updates. I am sorry and ask for your forgiveness in that. We will try to keep you as up to date as possible but know that God is growing us and challenging us to learn how to lead from being led. You should know that when God says jump we will jump. Our orders come from God and not man. If this is ever jeopardized we will not stand for it. Some of you may not understand this, others of you may. However, it is not my job to make you understand but to follow God's voice and do as he instructs. I can only share what The Lord is doing in our lives. The Holy Spirit will guide the understanding. When God says our time is up under CCPR then we will leave. Until then, we are fully committed to the vision God has given them and what God is going to do while we are there and support them 100%.