And they met round each other's houses by Chris Welch

Facebook Note on Friday, 26 October 2012 at 15:21 ·

Picture: People just "happening"

So, how's church for you? I wanted to share a bit how church, or fellowship or gathering together was for us at the time of the Jesus Movement. This was around my conversion in 1972. You've got to understand the context. Yes, actually, I had in fact joined a mainline Baptist church that had the riproaring Baptism in the Spirit tearing through its members. So, no, I never ever was aligned with the Baptist denomination, what I was aligned with was the experience of the Holy Spirit making Jesus suddenly more real than ever before to a whole mammouth age range from our school revival of mainly 13 to 14 year olds, but also including our head boy and some sixth formers, right through to seventy and eighty year olds in the church.Mostly though it was us teenagers with a ravaging hunger for Jesus. Yes, we had meetings, don't get me wrong. But much more than that we were around each other's houses. Every week we were discovering new things about how this New Life worked, and about what we could now do.To give you an idea, we'd pray for people to come to know the Lord and by the next week the Lord would answer.We learned that we could prophesy. We learned that we could suddenly have great revelations from the Bible. Whole passages would light up to us.We discovered we could pray for each other's needs. We discovered that if one had a need we could cobble up some financial or practical answer.We discovered if someone was really down, we actually had the power and impartation in the Holy Spirit to lift them up. Or may be on some occasions cast out a generational spirit dogging someone their whole life.Jesus was real.He was telling us stuff daily that we couldn't bear not to share with the others as soon as we'd see each other again.We'd go round the houses of people who would have us. Largely, Olive Dover, and later Ron and Pam Knight. But as the Knights had everyone, we'd meet up as I say with 70 and 80 year olds.Think about it!!! Much earlier than this, if you were baptised in the Holy Spirit you identified with one group, and their teachings...the Pentecostals...Elim or Assemblies of God.  From the Jesus people onwards, the Holy Spirit was flooding all denominations, so for our generation onward we nolonger identified with a denomination. This was a first. For us it was, do you know Christ in the Power of His Holy Spirit?  Right, let's share and learn from each other.Do you understand what a dynamic Wild West feel it was? The things we were discovering literally became the foundations for all the current churches which you see all over the world. It's just that we still had daily spontaneous fellowship with the Living Lord. We hadn't plateaued out back into "control".We lived from our hearts. The spontaneous life of God. This was when most of the songs were written...or "came" in meetings which were continually sung until the "grunge" period of Martin Smith and Matt Redman.We are part of Havant Church. If Christine and I turned up at all but a few houses  just to find out what Jesus had been speaking lately to them they would consider that weird. Now, we have to have special gatherings like area meetings. The very phrase area meeting has a pall of death over it.People don't turn up at other people's houses because they love them.Because they want to hear what Jesus has been saying to each other. To gossip Jesus.They only meet together because "leadership" has decided that we are going to do such and such a meeting.I don't know whether Christine and I have ever verbalised this as a pact or something...but we were both involved in very similar setups in completely different parts of Britain. We just don't do  "Table Talks", "House fellowship meetings", "Area Meetings". We live with spontaneous life dating back to a spontaneous inundation in 1972. If you don't do real. If you've got nothing to share other than all the ways you are crashing against the Proverbs 1 wall, because you just haven't been attentive to God's real heart to keep you alive and moving on in Him...no...I'm not sure i am willing to be your sounding board for hours about  your uncle's nephew's dog having ingrowing testicles, and how one of your nostrils is bigger than the other, and how well you are doing climbing Rothschild's  achievement ladder....NO I got saved from all that when I met Jesus.Before I was saved, I was stranded in middle class Britain, condemned forever to a life of middleclassness, middleclass achievements or not, middleclass diseases, middleclass attitudes and goals and opinions.....why in heaven's name would I want to spend an hour with you, if all you have to offer is the thing I've been saved from?   Now if you are hungry for something else. If you have real problems. If you want God to get involved, that's different.About 30 years ago the gear shift changed in the Kingdom. Most haven't paid the slightest notice and have the most boring Christian meetings you can imagine, which combine middleclassness with a tiny bit of God revelation.30 years ago God set in motion a gearchange to start moving His corporate Body from out of the 2nd level, or the pentecostal charismatic level, into a much more full-orbed teaching which is the MATURE CHURCH. This is all by revelation. As Jesus said "If a man's will is to do God's will, He shall know the teaching whether it be from God....."If your heart is to do God's will you are caught up in His heartbeat. You are excited. You know that Psalm 19 is right. Every day the Lord DOES pour forth speech. Every day He adds layer and layer of wisdom and understanding so that we can build from where we are at...into where He is taking us.THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO REASON why Elaine Waterfield has to wait for a meeting to take place at our house in order to visit us. She might not understand all that I am saying, but it doesn't matter because Jesus is alive in her heart and telling her different stuff each day. So if Elaine comes over to visit me and Christine...IT IS A MEETING. We are drinking Jesus from each other.SERIOUSLY SERIOUSLY...if you can't go round each other's houses and have genuine Jesus heart to hearts....you can forget your church. Your church is in a morgue.
It needs resuscitation...or reserrection.
It needs ZOE life. The Life and Resurrection that Jesus is.I see no possible reason why I as a former part of a Jesus Movement have to compromise into some substandard church movement just to please you so you can plug up your lack of connection with Christ and His spontaneity with some alien life form called "Table Talk" or an "Area Meeting"...but if you want to get real...come round to my house straight away and we'll have some Jesus together.

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• Shirley Ho, John T. McIntosh, Cheryl Powers and 13 others like this.
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  Chris Kimmell Love this!!!

  26 October at 15:36 via mobile · Like · 2
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  Chris Welch Yes ...it works...and if you lived nearer this is how it would be!!! In fact people would continually get the two freaky Chris's mixed up.

  26 October at 15:37 · Like · 3
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  Annalize Mouton Yes!!!!

  26 October at 15:46 · Like · 3
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  Tandy Coatney Love the house thing. B

  26 October at 19:23 · Like · 2
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  Chris Welch Shevyn there's a private thread where around 20 of us hang out,Annalize and PeterDavid are there. I've got no idea if it will work for you, it didn't for Andrea and Ole ...but i am aware that you have a very exposed life...and a bit of a hidden encouraging sort of Facebook lounge may work for you.

  26 October at 20:47 · Like
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  Gail Cochrane Thank you for sharing this, Chris. Wish I could meet with you and others!

  26 October at 21:34 · Like
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  Chris Welch who knows Gail...If what Daniel envisions takes form who knows....

  26 October at 22:07 · Like · 1
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  Chris Welch http://080808onnowto.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/daniels-particular-community-vision-i.html

  26 October at 22:13 · Like
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  Chris Welch http://080808onnowto.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/daniels-particular-community-vision-ii.html
  

  
  

  080808 On,Now,To the Third Level: Daniel's Particular Community Vision II

  ‎080808onnowto.blogspot.com

  26 October at 22:13 · Like · Remove Preview
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  Archie Rhines Thx Chris. Good stuff!

  27 October at 02:25 · Like
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  Ray E Horton I can relate. Baptized in the Holy Spirit in 1973 among the Catholic charismatics. But none of remained very Catholic. We did meet from house to house. and our prayer meetings were glorious. We were always experiencing and trading information on new revelation. I have fond memories of those days.

  27 October at 04:46 · Like
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  Barbara Rogerson So blessed to be part of house church here still meeting from the 70's. Several house churches but meeting together once a month or for whatever other activity calls for us to meet in unity. 16 houses in our small street apart from the rest of the neighbourhood. Everyone who visits say they have never seen anything like it.

  27 October at 11:24 · Like
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  Chris Welch That truly is an amazing testimony Barbara. Where else in Britain could you have one street with 16 houses in fellowship and that "after" a complete death and resurrection 40 years on. Absolutely astounding.

  27 October at 14:47 · Like · 1
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  Chris Welch Ray....presumably that was connected to Ann Arbour Michigan no? The one with the great song God and Man at table are sat down...with their orchestra etc. And New Covenant Magazine which must have been the first magazine in the universe to carry the key article that changed the course of my life...which said "There are not two levels of growth, there are three!!!."

  27 October at 14:50 · Like
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  Ray E Horton Actually, I was involved with some smaller prayer groups, then Light of the World Community, similar to Ann Arbor, which brought me to Erie. I'm glad we were solid in our new-found faith. A year after we arrived, Light of the World fell due to immatur...See More

  27 October at 22:45 · Like
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  Mankwe Clement Phukubje Really awesome note Chris,stay blessed.

  28 October at 07:12 via mobile · Like
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  Chris Welch How Jesus managed to spin the plates,Ray,I don't know? Obviously, like in john 6 and 7, it could be awkward...but generally He was doing something of what you describe. I firmly believe we're going to do it. Year on year our articulation grows. That which was hidden...(Buried underneath the word esoteric) is going to be like the noon day sun. The faith message of the Word of faith movement is always the precursor of Christ as me message. Without faith and a good many disappointments like Jacob faithing specked and striped sheep....we don't in utter desperation reach Peniel. The Name change message. I want to be in churches that have the three layers of growth somehow managing side by side....tho how this works I have no idea...since one huge component is false religion....facing it...being kicked in the face by it...and still pressing on to the genuine.

  28 October at 08:00 · Like
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  Shirley Unger Cunningham Amen!

  28 October at 17:29 via mobile · Like
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  Ray E Horton Yes, in spite of it all, we still press on to the genuine. We'll never find the perfect church, but, for me, a church that has praying leadership and the Gospel of Grace through Faith (not works) and the fullness of the Holy Spirit, if seeming to be heading in the right direction, I can overlook some weaknesses and pray as I participate.

  29 October at 01:21 · Like
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  Chris Welch How we receive each other is very related to how we receive a church. Perfection isn't really the question. Where two or three gather together in the Name of Jesus...He is there...in His perfection.If people are open to that realm...the realm where He IS...it doesn't really matter where they are now...because we know they'll be moving onward. So really the crux is....are people's hearts open? And related to that...does everyone there feel received. If you are not received you cannot operate, and this over months and years is intolerable.

If The Grain Offering is....

If the Grain Offering

is our exchanging of life.
our recognition that we neither need or require anymore any sense of "our life", because that was at our spirit centre so enmeshed with Satan's empowering in the Fall, Jesus had to deal with it all at the Cross...
So if the grain offering speaks of a transfer from "just me power" which was really Satan me power, to seeing in Christ the only spirit life I will ever need, which then filters through the lampshade of my soul and body.


If this Grain Offering is, as the writers all over the net are suggesting,

its very own complete power for getting me from where I am now to a position of manifest fulness of Christ Life here on the Earth.

That is by believing on this Life living in me as me, I can trust Jesus to form my days with what I need in my life, and when I need it, to continually add to my faith what is needed to bring me forth fully as a Son.

So the grain is its own perfect DNA with all that is needed within it to produce a great baked product.

Then the Oil Offering 

is both the Raising Agent of the Holy Spirit, and external forms of our Spirit life, which are both womb in one image,

or oven in another image.

Or temporary, flexible wineskins in another image.

The outer forms of "ecclesia" which we grow in, move forward in, then form round our Christ Life for others to be nourished in.They are Spirit forms, Spirit moulds,which have outer form but really only one temporary inner purpose. Even if the outer forms remain afterwards, they are nolonger Spirit forms but empty egg shells which have now burst open and cease to have any real purpose. Our landscapes are littered with previous Spirit forms,that people have no idea that the Holy Spirit has long since vacated. From temporary steps of obedience, like no lipstick  ( for the girls!), through to whole buildings.

We make Jesus Lord. He is Lord anyway. Our lives will obey the laws of cause and effect of this current universe regardless of our choice. But if we make Jesus our Lord, by "seeing Him" increasingly as such, He moves us beyond natural cause and effect.

His Life transplant can, according to the disciples take as little as 3 years, or looking at contemporary believing situations take the best part of 70 years.

Perfect Life? The Life is perfect, because it is the Perfect Life of Jesus that we share. But as we know from later conflicts in Acts, Peter was not moving perfectly in this perfect Life, and had to be reprimanded by someone who hadn't even lived those 3 years with Jesus Himself.  So mature, is not  perfect, but "able and grounded" in our believing in the Life of Christ to be able to freely impart it and share about it to others.

So the Grain is the Life itself, which Satan in the beginning whispered to Adam, just wasn't sufficient, he needed more, and funnily enough Satan could advise him perfectly  what to do to "Get more". Every single one of those statements from Satan are a lie. God's life,just ordinary life, is sufficient of itself in faith connection with the Lover of our souls. We do not "do anything" to add to this life. And there definitely is no question of  some independent mid posture where we can behave like gods in our own right. And this mid-posture is a delusion , because we actually find ourselves enmeshed with Satan's own delusion of being separate, and empowered by him instead. Which is a self-for self existence to the core, as we have all found. If we haven't seen how we are that yet, you will probably have found someone around you that knows that about you.

But to this Grain flour offering are added the Oil Offering.Holy Spirit gifts,empowerings both to us and flowing through us. Holy Spirit raised up temporary booths for us to meet God profoundly in.Further booths for us to impart both aspects of this life to others.

Jesus never ministered His grain Life for 30 years. He experienced no Oil offering for 30 years. With the oil, came the Holy Spirit empowerment to share first His grain offering with 12 people, complete with limited anointing. But after the Cross, acceleration could really occur. He shared not only Word, but like God the Father breathing into an inert Adam spread across the ground, Jesus breathed upon the 12 in the Upper Room after being resurrected.

Then in Acts 2 they were inundated with oil for the most incredible acceleration of the distribution of both GRAIN LIFE and OIL ANOINTING upon 3000 persons in one day.

We enter into the "with God nothing is impossible " Life, which is far above what we can even imagine or think.

Do we make the wineskins ourselves?

My testimony: When Stuart Reid had answered so lukewarmly about the Ern Baxter Thy Kingdom Come Message, it was like one of those Elijah Elisha moments...."What have I done to you ?". We just knew he was not (at that time anyway) the man to be our pastor.He was lukewarm. Having no recognition of what had happened in the Kansas City message. It is linked on this blog.

So we left Old Town Baptist Church, Amersham and sought God. I'd like to say it was all good. It wasn't. But God still hears our hearts. The next thing I know I am in another booth entirely in Emsworth receiving Spirit impartation about the third level from Ed Miller, and from Jorge Pradas the vision and practice of how the Holy Spirit runs a church to push people through in God in months not decades.

So whilst taking practical steps, we pray openheartedly to God that He form stuff, that He send the right people in. It seems ludicrously naive, but this is how He runs church in the Melchizedek Order. When the fields are white unto harvest , God puts the "work of God " at one remove....you dont dash out as independent -me's to try and solve it.....you pray the Father, the Lord of the Harvest, and He will "thrust out" workers.....(think of mature seed popping out of its shell with some kind of popping sound, as it moves like a pellet from out of a catapult....that kind of thrust out)

It's not that He doesnt trust us, but in order to keep His work free from leaven he removes managerial control from people, even Terry Virgo.

He runs church entirely at His own command.

And messes with human Greek organisation by getting everyone to share a gift as by the Holy Spirit's direction, and then only as led,one, two, three, major Words from more mature believers, but even they dont get a lot of say.  None of this:" Joel Osteen on a podium each week. "That's not God, even if the message is God, it's not God's workings.Which is why some of his congregation have sat there for decades similar to Madame Tussauds.But Joel encourages this by covenanting with this human form of church and not with the Bible. Yonghi Cho in South Korea too. Both represent the partial light of the 20th Century before the message about who we are, and the message of the Vision of the Church really got rekindled.
The Bible declares where the real blessing is :
Psalm133 :Behold how good as pleasant it is ,when brothers dwell together in unity....
It is like the oil upon the head
Upon the head of Aaron  (the High Priest and type of Christ running the show)

This is the generation that insists upon the oil and the grain.

The Word and the Spirit.
Even the teaching I have brought from Norman Grubb has this major flaw among all those who have ever had to do with Norman. He didn't know oil.
He didnt know what you do with it.
He didnt know how to run meetings with it, as his very time companions of Ed Miller,  Jorge Pradas,Jean Darnall and Ruth Heflin and so many of his generation were rediscovering.