Showing posts with label Church experience and Church teaching. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Church experience and Church teaching. Show all posts

Sunday, 31 March 2013

Sermon Blues by Chris Welch

in Facebook (Notes) on 28 March 2013 at 11:51 AM


Pastor: I can't get a sermon.....I've been thinking all week.
Jesus : Who says you have to have one?
Pastor: It's my job d'oh. That's what they pay the tithe for. I am employed by them.
Jesus: Who said they had to tithe?
Pastor : Everyone knows Christians have to tithe
Jesus : I said people could give and give generously from a willing heart. I never said about tithing. That whole thing was for a different time, a different people and an old covenant. This is the new covenant in My Blood.
Pastor: Well if I didn't tell them they had to tithe no one would give.
Jesus: Firstly....you'd be surprised how freewill works. Secondly, what's the problem anyway? Go out and get a job.
Pastor: I haven't got time I'm leading a church remember?
Jesus: Who said you are leading the church? I thought I was?
Pastor: I know we say that, but the fact is if I didn't do it then nobody would.
Jesus : Good
Pastor: What do you mean good?
Jesus: When nobody leads, then that gives room for my Spirit to raise some men up in ministry gifts and all the others to give as the Spirit gives them utterance or gives them instruction.
Pastor: But pastors are in charge.
Jesus: Where does it say that? Rabbis are in charge under the Old Covenant. Where does it say that under the New?Jeremiah said "They do not teach each other anymore each one his neighbour for each of you shall know the Lord from the least to the greatest."
Pastor: That all sounds like Quakerism to me. And Quakers now invite Buddhists in, and anybody says anything they like. Completely wrong doctrines as well as right doctrines.
Jesus: Perhaps they are not connected to Me anymore and the Melchizedek Order. For you are all priests now after the Order of Melchizedek. You are a nation of kings and priests.
Pastor: Well I wish that was so, but many people do not even know you.
Jesus: Well perhaps you should be telling them that all can know Me, I included everyone when I stretched my arms open and died.
Pastor: So you are saying I shouldn't be in charge?
Jesus: Nowhere does it say a pastor is in charge. It says I gave many pastors for taking care of the sheep. It also says I gave many ministries for the equipping of the saints. Where are your apostles?
Pastor: We've got one apostle. He visits now and again. But he's far too bossy and I am in charge here.
Jesus:You are not in charge. Neither is that apostle. I don't give one apostle. Paul wrote "Not many are fathers". There are several fathers moving between churches, just as there are many prophets and pastors and teachers all moving in and around a local church.
Pastor: I've never heard of such a thing
Jesus: None of you modern pastors read the Bible much do you?
Pastor: I read the bits I like
Jesus : It says all ministry is given for the equipping of the saints.
Pastor: I don't see that as practical. How can ordinary what you call minstries possibly be adequately trained to run 3 year courses with exams and a certificate? It's just not practical.
Jesus: The equipping of the saints has nothing to do with three year institutional courses with exam certificates.
Pastor: It doesn't? That's how I got mine.
Jesus: I never gave you that certificate. I wouldn't give you any certificate.
Pastor: Now you are being rude.
Jesus: I wouldn't give you a certificate of paper because I have already given everything you need in Me. I write my Living Law right across your being...this is how the New Covenant works. When you are mature in it, you find yourself imparting it, others recognise it, and "a man's gift makes way for itself" Proverbs says.
Pastor: I teach being born again. I teach forgiveness received by faith because of your work on the Cross.
Jesus: You only preach one sacrifice. You only preach the Blood
Pastor : What are you saying now? There is only one Cross.
Jesus: I spelled it out in the Old Testament. One animal was slaughtered for sin. The other was sent away into the wilderness. It's the only way I could represent two things at once back then. It's the Blood and the Body.You were not only forgiven...but you also died in Me. I took your spirit and that of all in Adam in My Body into death. And I raised you all up as living spirits fused in Me. You are all new creations.
Pastor: They never told me that one. I studied for 3 years. I studied all about eschatology and the terrible history of the church. What you are saying is a different gospel.
Jesus: No. This IS MY GOSPEL. Unless you eat of my flesh and drink my blood you do not have any life in yourselves. What YOU are preaching is a different gospel. The gospel you preach leads to the terrible church history and a meaningless eschatology because nothing works.
Pastor: This is all doing my head in. And I still haven't got a sermon.
Jesus: This is all doing My Body in. And perhaps you have no right yet to give a sermon until you let me write My one in you.My Body builds itself up by that which each joint supplies. But nobody can supply anything other than that which I have already supplied. The Holy Spirit is given to make known to you all that which is mine and is now yours.It is not by power, nor by might, but everything is now by My Spirit says the Lord.If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation entirely, the old has simply passed away....the new is already here.
Pastor: You have criticised just about everything I do. I am not sure I and the congregation will ever change.
Jesus: It is as hard for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle .
Pastor: How am I rich?
Jesus: You have status with man, but outside of My Cross, none with me. You have people forcibly paying you a tenth of
their income every week even though this is not in the New Covenant. You want to be in charge of my works, yet do not recognise My Charge and the way I operate. You do not know more of the gospel than an Old Testament rabbi, who also believes in forgiveness by faith in God on the Day of Atonement. You are rich but outside of Me, and in reality you have little or nothing. Yet you will not relearn.
Pastor: Jesus, it's hard for me to ever relearn. I am in my forties. I would look foolish if I ever said my training was insufficient.
Jesus: Do you want emptiness, or do you want Life?
Pastor: I want your life,but I am not prepared to admit to any congregation I am wrong. I would be out of a job, and then who would pay for my living?
Jesus: I am your Supplier. I am all you need.
Pastor: *silence*

Jesus: Then I will send out into the highways and the byways and compel others in, for the sons of the Kingdom have refused the wedding invitation and the celebration WILL BE GREAT in the Honour which the Father has given Me, in the honour of the Holy Spirit's work, and in the honour of the Father who completes every work perfectly and abundantly.
Like · · · Promote ·
  • Rich Novek Amen Chris, a perfect picture of the different gospel in action...thanks!
  • Lydia Joy Shatney AWESOME!!!
  • Gail Cochrane Chris......now THAT is a CONVERSATION!!!! And one that is so needed today!! Thank you, Chris.
  • Tunji Ayoade The Blood and the Body combination action in redemption. . .
  • Cliff Gableman I wonder how many "pastors" could or would receive this message? Thanks Chris.
  • Rich Novek My guess not too many, way too much to lose!
  • Ray E Horton Good message. After being with good churches so long, I forget there are probably pastors out there that need to hear this.
  • Carol Lucas Winkler I do believe there are churches, and pastors, who are like this, but i will say that i had a pastor who had a heart for God, and he truly loved everyone the same. He was a big giver, and he was down to earth. He didn't condemn, or try to squeeze money out of people.He was always giving money away. His love, and joy, and lifestyle are the things that made me want Jesus. Religion can be ugly, and hard, but we can't throw all pastors under the bus. I loved going to that church, for 16 years, until we moved. It was like a family, and the pastor was like our brother. I understand why so many are down on church, and pastors, because i have never found a church like the one i attended for so many years. I was taught about the love of God. I am thankful i had that pastor, and that preacher, when i was young, and knew nothing, at all, about the Lord. There have been pastors, in churches i visited, who were out for money, and fame, and numbers. It is sad...

Wednesday, 26 August 2009

The Tree and The River and www.river-camp.co.uk

The Tree and the River

While I was pausing from this blog earlier this month, I was writing on other's blogs and also commenting on Facebook. Lydia of a Joy to be me wrote this great Norman Grubb statement:
"The usual thing we say when a crisis hits us is, “God permitted it”. That means that God is up there and we are underneath. But God isn’t up there at all! He is within. I never lift my eyes one single time to heaven to try to find Him up there, do you? I don’t waste my breath, my sight, or anything else. Why should I waste my time trying to get a Person to come down when He lives within me? I can see Him where He is, in a common bit of human flesh redeemed in His precious blood, packed full of the Holy Spirit.

This makes my whole attitude to life different. Once I recognize that God is joined as one with me, I no longer try to find him or get him to come and rescue me." ~ Norman Grubb
"Friends, the cross is not the objective. Union is the objective. The cross is the gateway. It’s not the end. The Christ is the end and He is joined to me forever and I joined to Him forever." ~ Norman Grubb


This my reply:

Can I just share my honest feelings here? When I first encountered Norman's group and they were sharing along these lines, I had been in a church (Emsworth) where He had Presenced us in some powerful ways...along the line of some outstanding miraculous occurrences in and amongst worship and prayer together in meetings.So I wasn't going to backtrack on any of this. Rather I wanted to "fill out" what I already knew about approaching God in a corporate setting, with much more revelation of how His life works in in and around us all day long.The fact remains that Norman's group were so much on this side of things that their corporate worship was ...well to say the least....pretty non-existant. A few 1940s timewarp Anglican campstyle songs at best, with great Norman lyrics. As a published songster of the 80s this all seemed pretty naff.While I've been away, I've been ploughing further through Frank Viola's From Eternity to Here and I've got to the bit where he is describing God's need for a home, and comparing the Garden of Eden with Revelation, in particular The Tree of Life and The River of Life.And it was like a light went on again!!! It's like this.In God there is a dry Life and wet Life, side by side. There is a Tree and there is a River.The Tree always was the inworked Life of God. The Cross has become our tree which annhihilates the Old, and but also at the same time gives us access to God's very own imperishable Life.Christ in our form. Him living His Life as us.But there is a wet life as well! And in all our internal wranglings over the true meaning of Romans and what God has done for us, we must not go back on the new things that God has been bringing into His Body again particularly in the last 100 years, which is more akin to the manifestation before people's very eyes of the River of God. When you put believing believer's in a room together, all focussed and moving from and in their Saviour, in love and praise and faith and victory, and declaration.... well things get very wet indeed!As I've said to Lydia and Shawna several times, it seems like up to now you get either Spirit or Word.Either Tree or River. Either Exchanged Life or River Life of the experience of the outpoured Spirit.Well in 1950 something changed. And as well as the healing revival which broke out at this time, there was also this other man- this American missionary in Argentina, who being so discouraged by not making any headway stubbornly refused to do another thing until he had met God. This was Ed Miller (book Thy God Reigneth, see book section in my blog).He was one of the first men, like Norman, to press through in a rendering of the Psalm 24 verse of scripture...to seek the Face of the God of Jacob...this generation who are to seek God's Presence as did Jacob wrestling at Peniel, where he had his name changed.The charismatic Jacob, who could faith in speckled sheep and striped sheep, was finally irreparably damaged...and for the rest of history there has existed an ISRAEL. Which is the final God version 3.0 of Man connecting with His Father. Abraham v1.0, Isaac v2.0 then Jacob,now Israel v3.0!!But what Ed Miller uncovered, and through a kind of quiet backdoor, this has now seeped right through the Body....was a new understanding of WET LIFE...of how the RIVER functions in practice. This is the understanding of how our Key of David meetings work...and to a greater and greater extent since Florida, how our main meetings now work.(See the links in This is Huuuuuge) It is certainly how Rob Rufus seeks to move, especially when he introduces people like Josh Mills. It is also how Rolland and Heidi Baker seek to move in their meetings.The tabernacle is both a picture for us of how spiritual Life manifests...both in Tree format and in River format. In Spirit and in Word. But all in Truth!!There's a brazen altar (dry) and a Laver (wet) there's the shewbread (dry) and the oil and lampstand(wet) and there's the hidden manna inside the Ark of the Covenant (dry) and the real Presence of God overhead between the Cherubim on top of the Ark (very definitely wet).For centuries the devil has divided the wet from the dry, Tree huggers, from the River splashers. And in the same way that a battery does not work if the dry plates are not immersed in the wet acid...we've had a representation of Christ in the earth that is pretty poor and unconvincing. Neither the plates nor the acid were wrong....but they need to be in proximity to work!!!!Norman Grubb needs to be right next to Rolland and Heidi Baker. Rob Rufus needs to be right up against Paul Anderson Walsh!!So do you understand where I am coming from?And we know this stuff is powerful because in the 50s straight after Ed Miller's encounter, evangelist Tommy Hicks stormed into Peron’s office, prayed for his family, and out of that boldness was then given the freedom of every major stadium in Argentina....which were each piled high with crutches of those healed. And in a few short years Argentina went from being mostly Catholic to much nearer 50-50 Protestant and Catholic.But the behind the scenes transactions had been done as Ed sought the face of the Lord and prevailed.
July 26, 2009 10:14 PM


RiverCamp 2009


River Camp 2009 begins this Friday through Monday.Day tickets are still available on the gate I believe. For more details click on the side link section of this blog.

RiverCamp is not beside a literal river. It is on a hilltop at Lenchworth near Evesham.The grounds have been used for decades as a healing centre, though really all they are is farmer's fields. Remember that is where the angels showed up to announce the birth of Jesus. And it was in Harrogate Cow Sheds that God literally birthed the new move in the UK in the Dales Bible Weeks 1976 and after.

Any blogreaders in the UK can come to our caravan and make themselves known. Havant Church are closing down for the weekend and as many as can make it are camping together up there, or the woossy, staying in Evesham bed and breakfasts.

Corporate worship is outstanding. Messages are key, cutting edge stuff, as well as reports about what is going on worldwide. And the general fellowship that happens all round the campsite is , as bloggers have found both in Atlanta and Hong Kong, as key as anything anywhere.Unlike other large conferences, there is really little agenda. That is why we like it. It's a bit like key of David. It's about God. It's about finding the flow about how He wants to relate to His people.

And the children's meetings...far from being also ran "babysitting" meetings...NOPE...some of them are better in activity, and cutting edge God stuff than the main meetings.CDs of the worship and messages are always available after the event.

Becca's quote

I conclude with Becca's quote at the top.You would have thought the Tree Experience and the River Experience would be a given in the Body of Christ as she has written.

Why then is Smith Wiggleworth's (almost parting) 1940s prophecy so significant: that in the last great move of God there would be a twinning together of Spirit and Word. The reason it is so significant is that up until the time of writing this blog in the last one and a half years...and let this blog be a tool towards it...

There is a very real split right through the worldwide manifestBody of Christ over this precise issue. When the Florida Outpouring was ongoing I could sense the first real signs of a marriage between the two just waiting in the wings to appear and this prompted the Parable of the Shekinah Construction Company

As I've written time and again: You get networks that preach who we are in Christ. Faithful Word preaching. But they have no clue how to approach God corporately and experience the manifest outpoured Presence of God. Or you get the most incredible manifestations of gifts and worship, but absolutely no concept that it is not a network that is being built around a group of charismatic men, it's about what Jesus called a "laying of the axe to the root"...and this did not mean Jewish worship and the Old Covenant...the root means : untying the knot where the knot first occurred in Genesis 3. And the full clarity of how Jesus did this has come through faithful servants such as Norman Grubb, that at the time of writing the larger Body of Christ are deaf to.