Bread Blindness

God answers even to our most basic needs, should we be willing to cast our cares onto His shoulders.  The big question, however: is it necessary to SEE His workings in our lives to believe that he is/was there, or… can we trust Him enough to accept the Divine as He performs under the cloak of invisibility?

At the feeding of thousands (John 6), the basic need that day was food.  From the reading, we gather that the logistics and concern of feeding that multitude was felt on the “platform”… not among the “saints”.

The Phillip/Andrew dilemma did not seem to reach the ranks of the congregation… they (so it seems), just TRUSTED IN JESUS… even for the evening meal!

Please notice, however…

God Cannot Pray!

The story has been told numerous times to me, so I guess the legend has some grains of truth:  A well-known preacher, who was legally blind, ate with friends in a restaurant when the waiter accidentally spilt seething coffee down his back.  There was deep silent at the table, no one knowing how the preacher would react within his physical limitations.  Finally, with a grimaced voice he said, for everyone in the room to hear “Would some SINNER in the house say something appropriate for me?!”  You, of course, surely can understand what he was getting at …
Using the above punch line above as introduction, I reaffirm: God cannot pray!  If he could, he would not be God!  We all know that God cannot pray to God and still be God!
The BIG question, however, is: IF GOD COULD PRAY… what would His prayer be?
You see, we are a weapon in God´s hand: a weapon of prayer!  Even so, the activation of this incredible (and powerful) weapon IS BEYOND God´s reach!  We are the sole ACTIVATOR of this weapon!

Spiritual Lab Work – Part 3

The challenge of growing the Church is greater than our very best abilities.  The numbers show worldwide revival to be an impossible task without Holy Ghost intervention.

In reality, while many believe in a worldwide revival (a debatable issue), because of the enormity of the proposal and the little that can be done toward that goal, most just freeze up and do NOTHING leaving all in the hands of God… which is just another copout.

Cutting to the chase:  if the church is not growing, it is dying!

So, how do we “Grow a Church”?

Missionaries, of course, are expected to be experts in this area.  While far from a spectacular conversion rate, real missionaries are truly qualified as spiritual lab researchers in this vital area of Church Growth.  Please allow me to share some things we have learned:

Much like diets and weight-loss programs, just about anything in soul winning efforts will work for a short period of time.  The final result, however, as each effort fades into poor numbers, is to see the saints (the REAL SOUL-WINNERS of the church) become despondent and harder than ever to sign on to the challenge of the next new program.

So, one thing we learned is that contests (which team can bring in more visitors) works only for a short time.  It may  probably be a good way to start the congregation toward a new vision, but does little to the long-term efforts of changing the MINDSET of the church!

So, the biggest challenge is getting visitors to church at a regular rate… not in spurts, but in a flow!

Spiritual Lab Work – Part 2

In the first segment of this series, the focus was on the daughter church concept.  However, the isolated endeavor of planting daughter churches does not, in itself, assure continued Apostolic quality as the web of congregations spread.

That is the reason why, early on, the Apostolic Churches of Brazil changed the concept and definitions of the “Mother Church”. (Again, this is another good reason to support successful missionaries: as they fine-tune new models and ideas, the supporting pastor benefits from the final spiritual results.)

We now understand that the “Mother Church” CANNOT just be a title given to denote the “original” church group… the connection between the mother church and daughter congregations must be MUCH STRONGER than that in order to survive the quality test of time!

In reality, we have learned that the “Mother Church” must truly be the HUB of the WHEEL SPOKES (daughter churches).  After all, the daughter churches are the EXTENSION of the HOME MINISTERIAL VISION.  (Forgive the capital lettered wording throughout this mini-study; however, they denote KEY thoughts that require full understanding in order to successfully implant the mother church/daughter congregation concept.)

Our laboratory work has shown that the Mother Church cannot merely be another one of the connected churches! That is the huge mistake that many pastors make when implanting a mother-church/daughter-congregation project: unwittingly, they allow (foster?) a daughter-congregation mentality inside the mother church.  The vision, the functions and even the structure of services of the mother-church must be completely “REENGINEERED” (spiritually speaking) in order to launch into the new world of citywide (even regional) outreach.

Spiritual Lab Work

One of the interesting things about missionary work is the significant closeness we are to the front lines of spiritual warfare.  We work on the edge of hell, battling demons, sometimes fighting face to face (literally!).

Because of this, we constantly must adjust (and readjust) our battle plans, strategies and even our weaponry to achieve the victory edge over the tricks of guerrilla tactics hatched in hell.

Having said all of that, it becomes obvious that missionaries fulfill a vital part in the Church´s spiritual laboratory: The answers that missionaries apply to current foreign challenges are often the very solution needed for stateside issues.

Why, then, are missionaries so shunned by the so called Pentecostal intellectuals? Oh well…

Case in point:

Five-Fold Faith

The silliest thing my grandmother would do (which embarrassed me to tears) was to hold hands and pray with me when a special prayer request came in.  So silly, I thought as a teenager.  She called it “agreeing”.

Today, years later, tired of facing impossible needs all alone, I have learned the power of AGREEING.  Thanks for the lesson, Nanny.

In Mark 4, the Bible introduces a palsy victim.  He had four friends. That makes five with him!  The Bible also placed an emphatic note about THEIR FAITH (Mark 2:5)!  I call it Five-Fold Faith.

Thus, according to my definition of “THEIR” faith, I can affirm that the palsy victim also had faith.  Would the victim’s faith alone have been enough? Biblically, yes… after all, a small seed of faith is enough to remove mountains.  Even so, his stand-alone faith was probably somewhat wilted and timid after a constant day-to-day battle of dealing with physical limitations (he needed help to do the simplest of tasks!).

The Soulshine Man

It was late afternoon, this last Saturday that I braved out into a drizzle of rain looking for a shoeshine man before going to service.  The city was deserted and the open-air shoeshine booths were all bundled closed.  Except one…

He was not the best looking dude in town, as a matter a fact he was barefooted, huddled under his large “beach” umbrella waiting for his last customer… me.

“Do you want to read the newspaper while I work on your shoes”, he asked as he was caressing the leather of my Sunday shoes.  Shaking my head in negative reply, I watched him work on my soul… ah, sorry, shoes.

He looked up and gave me a serious report about my shoes “the leather is dried out”… I had never noticed! The shoes did not look too bad, what does he mean saying the leather dried out?