Discipleship Groups

 People go to a church even a Pentecostal one with set expectations.

There's the head man .

There's the service we pay for .

Any change is disruptive .

Half a century ago we were getting excited about discipleship. In order to do it Juan Carlos Ortiz had to secretly take 12 aside .

Then came the discipleship books .

Then came the home groups.

Jesus Move did the house churches then they grew into self standing visible churches .

But we still have a problem. And mainly it's that there's three stages of growth and charismatics are still in denial about 1 John 2, and the inner work of Romans 6 and 7.

That's what Watchman Nee Normal Christian Life and Sit Walk Stand attempted .

Norman Grubb did a better more accurate version without the black and white dog. Readers will get this .

GH Warnock brought out the ecclesia aspect and moving through the three Feasts in the Spirit .

So that's the real " discipleship dilemma ".

People haven't lived Bible House ...the cheek by jowl learning of the disciples in the gospels.

How much do those running Bible House community houses know Galatians 2.20 and Mark 16 supernatural praying in ministry?

The 12 learned whole of Life living in the Father and ministry in the Spirit from Jesus .

Roffey and Colin Urquart and Bob Gordon attempted both using Kings Buses and ' students ' who were with them to learn .

As soon as you say the student word that comes with Geeek learning baggage.

Kingdom is zöe. It has a whole of Life Galatians 2.20 side ....and it has a priesthood side.

Our generation felt embarrassed by those who said we should be evangelising more.

It does seem to be a window thing .

Moravians prayed 100 years .....I bet they were criticised. Jesusc.....that's God in human form ....the One who co created everything....spent 30 years not evangelising.

This shows how deep was the 4000 year reset after the Fall , for Jesus to be grounded in living in the Father when everybody else was doing Genesis 3 lie living.

But it's also Testimony of the subtlety of Satan's wrath state lie .....if it took God that long in human form .

So we are a royal priesthood.

We are king overcomers in training .

We are trainees in a priestly protocol of bringing in the reign of God.

The rather flippant thing called House groups or cell groups.....a kind of Methodist class meeting updated to charismatic sessions .....it's still nowhere near what ecclesia is .

I don't know what others feel....but evangelists now return to the original gospel of repentance, baptism in water and being filled with the Spirit .

Pastor gifts.....not the one man overlord misuse of the word......are plural and have the gifting to bed people into the Romans truths .

Do pastors have the ability take people in the Spirit from Romans 3 to 5 into Romans 6 and 7?

What we found was the most enormous hidden key areas of lives ....my own included .....would come right to the surface hopefully in a safe environment. Since ....as the circumcised Penis is the Old Covenant logo ....quietly telling us Romans 6 and 7 is a scary area .....because its the raw seat of our desires .....not just sex by the way

Raw desires to dominate

Raw desires to make money at all cost....Judas syndrome

Just put Raw in front of anything you can think of. Its force is frightening. Debilitating in force .

But this is how we learn firsthand what the Genesis 3 lie is . That there's only 2 masters .

The third doesn't exist spiritually. Me in the middle.

That's why , although we have to go through the Holy place realm , the transition realm , the Pentecostal Charismatic realm ....it is still fake .

I don't hear charismatic ministries off the middle man delusion .

When Lyall Peluso was teaching Romans 6 40 years ago it was almost received as a heretic gospel. We had to go to Brighton to hear him .

Third level sounds heretical because our consciousness is 6000 years of conditioning into the independent self powered soul living for Christ .

Nope....there's a whole unnecessary layer in that theology .

The separate me .

There never was a separate me. The Devil me .

Jesus me . But never in 6000 years me me .

There's no me living for Christ . The whole charismatic belief system is a lie .

There's no adding the Holy Spirit to my life lived for Jesus .

People complain....I'm living my life for the Lord but all these things are happening.

We aren't meant to be living our life for the Lord since our funeral. Its scary seeing a ghost live for Jesus .

We are spirit.

We have a soul .

Our former spiritman was sold under sin .

Think of Genesis 3 as a cross between a Freemason oath and a slave sale at an old market .

We can choose a new master , but the sale has been made . Our soul and spirit has an indwelling yukky tyrant spirit . We in Adam signed the agreement in the one forbidden fruit .

Jesus annulled the deal by killing us in His Body and raising us as a rope twined , interlaced Colossians 3.3 being .

We aren't living for Jesus at all . Christ is living co- fused to our spirit man in one of four Matthew Mark Luke John or Meyers Briggs 16 blend flavours. When we pray in tongues our real inner person is praying without the rude butler who claims to be the lord of the manor but he's mere serving staff ....my natural mind .

When Paul says we must set the mind on the Spirit for that is life and peace, it's because that's the real us . Its not just some religious woo woo practice.

To set the mind on the flesh if you put it onto a graph, with a vertical line up the middle which is God's life ......well flesh is either to the left of the line or the right side of the line .....but it's not what God is actually doing.

Religion is the Tree of Good but it's still the delusion of the independent self living for God in various orphan appeasement ways .

The other side is the Evil end of the Tree but that's obvious .

All this is discipleship.

It's related to 1 John 2 child stage young man stage father stage

It's related to the Seal .....the Father knowing , having intimate relation with all of us and with us departing from iniquity . Iniquity is the Deep 6000 year hold on us ....freed in spirit in New Birth but our souls haven't made the adjustments.

It's related to the last 3 stages of MScott Pecks four stages of psychological growth

It's related to Maslows hierarchy of needs....except genuine kinging in the Spirit not just an earthly ability to create pyramid shapes with us at the top.

It's related to psalm 84....

finding our strength in Him

In whose hearts are the highway to Jesus central

Proven track record with places of weeping turned round

Recognised in the spirit in front of God and man .

See what I mean by flippant little groups?

Jesus was building City on a Hill that actually worked .

There is currently no City on a Hill ecclesia holding open heaven over a place .

We can just about arrange a few months of Lakeland or Asbury ....usually outside the City Gates of pyramid infrastructure

Or

5 day conferences which begin to look similar.

But there aren't enough thirdlevellers yet , and even when the Ern Baxters emerge they aren't used to miracles. The 12 apostles were doing the whole stuff because Jesus also had the 30 year background.

Part One of How can you tell a 2nd level church ?- (and how, thankfully the Holy Spirit completely ignores the restrictions) Chris Welch

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from a Facebook note this week....
The Kingdom Comes
In the beginning of the Kingdom there was a lone prophet called John, standing in the wilderness sent to proclaim its coming.
Jesus said of John, of the sons of men there is none greater, but even the least in the Kingdom would be greater.
There was nothing greater about the apostles. They were all ordinary guys. What made them "greater" than John was that this was "the time appointed" for the activation of the Kingdom of God through the "0n" switch that was the manifest life of the second Person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ who grew up in Nazareth.

The three training years with Jesus was a collapsed form of the complete revelation that is
the revelation of God as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Anybody who has anything to do with God as one "willing" and "hungry" will find themselves on a kind of Divine seminary course where God will transplant into you
in different times
in different ways
in different orders
over different lengths of time periods
in different , unique manifestations
the revelation of the God of Abraham - God who is our faith and justification apart from works, and our introduction to the Melchizedek order and the faith life in general
the revelation of the God of Isaac- which is the grace manifestation of supernatural wells of salvation and power - the powers of the age to come - baptism in the Holy Spirit and anointings- some we have seen- many wacky ones still to come
the revelation of the God of Jacob - where God takes you on deeper supernatural roads - but where He deals with the very root of your identity - where like Jacob also - the most profound hunger takes place in you to want to be "of that eternal Company who seeks the face of the God of Jacob AND YOU PREVAIL - having your name, your root identity completely changed by a new revelation of the Cross.

Churches,assemblies,groups of Christians are no different.
The most helpful picture of this is given by Ezekiel when he describes the workings of God, the very atmosphere of his functionings, as WHEELS within WHEELS.

If you are in a church you are somewhere in this route march at a corporate level.
Historically we are somewhere in this arc of revelation too. But this is on a global, much wider fulfilment.

It is hopeless. from a perspective of justification to compare John the Baptist with the Kingdom.
His unique role was to round up the previous order and announce the new.
It is hopeless to look at a 1700s saint, praying for 6 months with fasting, for an inner confirmation of salvation, to draw any firm conclusions about our commitment and his or her commitment. the fact that they were prepared to stand alone - to stick out among their peers- to seek God with desperation at a time when most of London were drunkards and brawlers....is an amazing comment on who they were.

But, that, at least in the living part of today's church, we don't now have to do that, but simply respond to a gospel message, is just a comment on how the faith level for an experience of salvation has risen over the 300 years since.

Church history IS NOT the account of God’s failure.
I wrote to someone the other day that the "apparent" failure of Church history is not failure at all really.
God has a Divine filter system called His Son Jesus. Church history, like a massive Romans 7 sweep, is a record of us trying to "do" Christianity. Largely, it hasn't passed the Jesus filter test. But without the "trying" we would never have found what DIDNT work.

The Divine seed of the gospel of the revelation of Jesus Christ, had after its initial blooming, to fall again into the ground in order to rise again in a completely unhindered form. For as free as the initial churches were, including the penetration by Paul and others into huge swathes of Asia Minor, India,Africa,and Europe, the seeds of the original outward form: Judaism were still present.

In the Old Testament and on into Jesus own life in Judea, we are presented with both:
the pure streams of revelation coming through the main Biblical chracters
as well as the BAD things, even in the heroes such as David, Noah, and Moses.
We see also, later in Israel's history the "mad desire" to have a King,to be like other nations, to succomb again to Pyramid living. "It's not you they have rejected Samuel, it is I the Lord"
We see the structures, the strictures...the complicated adherences to "tithing dill, mint and cumin" while missing altogether simply looking after those around you. All this Jesus railed against.

So, Church history, far from being a foundation Pillar for Dawkins-style atheism, should be seen in the context of Jesus' own parable.
The (good)Farmer sows His seed in the field, then an Enemy comes at night and plants his wicked seed.In this case the seed of "earning your salvation","works religion". Counter-intuitively, both seed types are to be left in the same field to grow up together. Why? Because of the law that "by these fruits shall ye know them". In other words, because of this law of outer manifestation of inward realities,the contrast would be EVEN more stark than if they were in separate fields, and by it, the good seed becomes even more resilient.
This same methodology has been used on Jewish history. The very God-hatred that is centered on the Jew for bearing the Name of God through history, has meant that when they leave their furnaces of affliction - be it pogroms in Russia or Ausschwitz or wherever scattered....normal life is a doddle...so they rise to the cream of the crop in intellectual life, creative media, science,educatiion and government. The very idiocy perpetrated against them as they stand for God's Name and calling in the Earth, actually aids the fulfiment of those same prophecies given millennia ago. This is the Joseph principle we see in his life in Genesis, rising instead of falling, to become 2nd in command in Egypt itself.
Does this mean we should continue persecuting God's natural Israel just so they are more able to fulfil scripture? No way!Have you seen the equally valid prophetic scriptures which describe the end of those who lay a finger on Israel? Look them up.

The Death of the Church Seed
So the revelation of Christ as expressed through "the Vision of the Glorious Church,His Bride" had, itself to go into the ground and die.
Every trace of good idea.

Tradition of man.Way of man.Theory of what Christianity was.Human tendency to go down into Egypt and borrow a set of steeds for going out and doing battle humanly...
had to crash down in failure as it collided with some immutable verses of scripture
"Not by might, nor by power but by my Spirit" says the Lord
"Neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem shall they worship Me, but in time to come people will worship in Spirit and in Truth."
and of the final cry as the capstone is heaved into place with the shouts of "Grace to it, Grace to it".

And in the midst of the middle ages rubble , the very first glimpse of a stalk broke through the surface of the parched spiritual desert. Just as hard as it is to imagine that 2 merged and rapidly dividing cells can ever form themselves into a human being, so it is hard to imagine that from a simple declaration of faith from Martin Luther....that we are justified by faith alone....could be the signal throughout the Earth for a return of the spiritual tide.

And little by little in God's timing dashes of revelation have been coming down out of heaven. With each revelation comes a tearing, a breaking away from the mediaeval atrocity that the church had become.

What is the nature of this revelation? It is the UNENCUMBERED heavenly blue print that is the fulfilment of the Word Jesus prophesied...they shall worship in Spirit and Truth. Because, like Paul's prefiguring writings, the teachings and revelations come pure out of heaven
they don't come by Man
they are not tainted with University degrees
they are not infested with ecclesiastical baggage
and they are above all quite simple, but contain within them the Power of God.
They contain the very means needed to get us from stage A to the next stage B.

How is this described in the book of Hebrews? Paul talks of the "Heavenly Tabernacle".

The heavenly Tabernacle
Christians through lack of revelation, think of the Tabernacle as an old Testament Pattern that Jesus fulfilled and did away with.
When, as recent key of David meetings have been revealing, the heavenly Tabernacle is God's House. It's where He's always dwelt. The earthly Old testament pattern was a rather weak and weedy graphic example of the heavenly original.

I insert this paragraph about David Swan's "Moving Into the Holy of Holies" not because I learned this information through him. I ,like many in our generation have had to learn by gleaning what we could from third level ministries who could squeeze through the filter system of a UK charismatic movement run in the main by clever leftbrain souls who unfortunately came into a leadership vacuum before they had actually progressed far in the Spirit themselves. But better they did, and hold the thing together while we were learning, rather than the even more hidebound denominational systems on the Continent of Europe.I picked this one up off a RiverCamp bookstall last summer. (This year Heidi Baker will be among those speaking) This book is rare in that perhaps even more than the George Warnock material, it captures just about every Bible picture and reference to the three stages of growth. See also this post from the book
If you've asked Jesus into your heart, then today you have to do with the heavenly and first and only real version.....the True Tabernacle not made with hands. Each piece of furniture represents a piece of pure revelation that has been given by the Holy Spirit in His time scale, at the appointed time, to those hungry for the Now Word of Jesus in the Earth.
Martin Luther and others uncovered Faith apart from works: the First and Only way of entering God's House through the work accomplished by Jesus at the Cross.The Brazen Altar.
Next came the Anabaptists who rediscovered Water baptism by immersion for believers only. This is God's pattern for baptism as represented by the Laver...where we are washed clean...both in baptism as the outward sign and inwardly by the "washing of water with the word".

Francois DuToit has been writing a version of the Bible as “mirror”. http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=403954118018&comments
Mirror is the Laver which shows us the Jesus who now lives inside us and as we behold this Jesus that is the mirror of the Eternal Jesus at the right hand of God the Father, so we are changed from one degree of glory to another. See my blogpost here to learn more:
As Terrible as An Army with Banners
Beyond these two pieces which are in the Outer Court, is the second area of the tabernacle: The Holy Place. There is no natural light here. The only light is the candlestand. This whole area marks out the area of the supernatural church.
This was marked in history at the beginning of the 20th century with the birth of the Pentecostal church, then as the ideas began to break into the traditional denominations, what came to be known as the charismatic movement. This later became the new independent churches who explored these areas more thoroughly.

Gradually, as first Pentecostal forerunners like George Warnock found in the 1950s, http://www.georgewarnock.com/
as Gene Edwards was to discover as an evangelist at the same time
http://www.geneedwards.com/autobiography.shtml
then later The Move under Sam Fife,
as Mother Basilea Schlink was discovering in their unique non-charismatic Lutheran community in Darmstadt,
as Ed Miller found as he sought God alone, as a missionary in Argentina,
and as Norman Grubb found as he in turn tried to define in his books what it was that marked out the bible men of history and present day extraordinary Christians in many books culminating with “Yes I am” linked to on my blog…..

THERE WAS A WHOLE UNDISCOVERED THIRD AREA or LEVEL that the present day church knew nothing of corporately…but that individuals had been entering into for generations, and sometimes leaving writings for us, namely Jacob Boehme, Fenelon, Madame Guyon, Brother Lawrence and so on and so on.
What are the shortcomings of the secondlevel church ? Part Two looks into this.
Updated 23 hours ago · Comment ·LikeUnlikeJames N Sally, June Melanson and Cindi Estep like this.
Cindi Estep Ms. Estep is longing for Mr. Welch to enlighten her more as he shares this revelation of Truth....You are One of the reasons that I have come to Know such wonders. You are a Father♥
Yesterday at 13:38 · LikeUnlike · Nancy Gilmore We have all three levels IN us when we have Christ in us.
Yesterday at 14:00 · LikeUnlike · 2 people · Chris Welch Shhhhh Nancy that comes in part Two
Yesterday at 14:00 · LikeUnlike · June Melanson LOL
Yesterday at 14:11 · LikeUnlike · Cindi Estep Nancy, some of us are just now finding such out. I stand in Wonder at it all...Love you Sis♥
Yesterday at 14:20 · LikeUnlike · Nancy Gilmore :))) heeeheehe.... got to watch out for 'that' Chris... LOL! ♥ - 'cause he knows the final revelation IS Christ, all in all! However, it remains to be seen just exactly HOW Christ is the all in all, but nevertheless, He IS.
Yesterday at 14:37 · LikeUnlike · Cindi Estep Amen Nancy my Dear One♥
Yesterday at 14:43 · LikeUnlike · Cendee Crawford Total Higher Conciousness...the Mind of Christ ♥ ♥ GLORY!!! The fullness of the Deity ♥
Yesterday at 14:49 · LikeUnlike · 1 person · Judy Lawrence Trabernacle,yes I have heard this word in my Spirit.
More please.
Yesterday at 15:38 · LikeUnlike · 1 person · Jamie Weeks Passover, Pentecost, Tabernacles. Outer Court, Inner Court, Holy of Holies. David's Tabernacle without walls. The Ark of the Covenant. Are you by chance talking about US, my dear friend? :D
Yesterday at 23:50 · LikeUnlike · 2 people ·

Where I am Now on Discipleship

Also in a note on Facebook
Some were discussing recent Juan Carlos Ortiz material that has been posted, then Megan Anne Fey wrote Chris, do you have any good reading on "true discipleship" (Internet materials), the Lord has commissioned me and I would love to read more about it...
Here is what I initially wrote, followed by a longer reply to her question
Allibris is good for Ortiz books. The original was one of those historical confluences of "mismatches" that God is in like Rahab and the spies. Jamie Buckingham was a pastor out of a job because he had fallen in adultery...so he became a writer to the new fledgling baptized in the Spirit Community.Ortiz being Argentinian, needed someone to work ... See morepatiently with him to get the English right!!! So "Call to discipleship" was born. This was the original Spirit format of what later became the shepherding pyramid still visible today, though softened. In the original format, which is what we'd also been led to in England....which is why the book is in my DNA....we learned that Discipleship comes out of relationship, it comes from Holy Spirit prepared "fathers", male or female, and involves feeding the young with stuff as God gives revelation. It is warm, not sterile. It is dependant on people walking in a living relationship with Jesus and it definitely involves a bit of "going to hell" for the people you are being used to feed. What I mean is...you feed with unconditional love...because "reactions" come up and some of the freshly prepared food is thrown back over you. Then as Ed Miller says, "when you've taken the disciples to the throne, just like any good taxi driver you withdraw.
Discipleship is not about Alpha Courses, though they can be used. It is not about manuals. It is not about study groups on a Tuesday evening. You'll find people don't have problems on Tuesday evenings, it will be Wednesday! It's not about mini Sunday services with preprepared speeches in your home. It is not about discipling people to you, or your ... See morechurch. You know when you've succeeded not when they are in your church, but when they know how to live Jesus as them, in their calling. Discipleship is now a dirty word.But a true discipler, as in any ministry, takes on the same role that Joseph had with Mary. He takes all the flack for a babe born out of wedlock, without being the actual father. I'll spell that out. Unlike seminary trained pastors who feel they have earned their position and now "disciple" people into "their ministry" and "their church", a true discipler realises he is discipling people out of a job, with nothing in it for him, while taking all the flack "for being out of wedlock"....that is true Spirit stuff always looks iffy to carnal bystanders who cannot understand what is going on.
++++++++++++
Here is my fuller reply to Megan about what I am feeling now about Discipleship

We are in a singular time period. Corporately, were we to view the parable of building on the sand and building on the rock....we have discovered that we weren't quite on the rock and people all over the world are still digging down to find it. (Understand here I am talking in terms of building the Kingdom of God,personal salvation we have clear.).Apart from individuals like Norman Grubb, Major Thomas and others....Everything, absolutely everything out there that relates to discipleship has a very naive view of what humans are. I don't yet know of a single book that covers discipleship from the bedrock foundation of reversing Genesis 3 by faith in a Christ who wants to live out Our Life as Us. So herein lies the problem.

Nor is there a book that covers discipleship in a way that faithfully honours some of the ways the Holy Spirit has led a whole generation or 3 of people as they have rediscovered the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Living in any sense at all corporately is doomed to failure without an active relationship with the Holy Spirit. To the extent that any of us have lived continuously together as a worshipping community advancing in the knowledge of God, that, from a human perspective has to be a divine miracle. Sin has disconnected us from God and each other at a very core level. For this reason, one of the spin offs of getting to know Jesus better is loving my brother and sister more. This side of discipleship is behind this series of posts which begins here http://080808onnowto.blogspot.com/2009/04/from-mystery-of-sin-to-mystery-of-syn.html and continues via the ”next button” to the 8th post. There’s “How do we live this stuff ?” http://080808onnowto.blogspot.com/2009/06/i-was-encouraged-to-get-message-from.html

The taxi Driver picture of Ed Miller, and my own revelation on Joseph taking on Mary with child are two key foundations to discipleship. They are the two barricades against “Pyramid” building in the Body of Christ. If people took regard to just these two principles half of the present structures would disappear overnight.

Since these posts I have been seeing more clearly what Romans 1:21 means For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.

We became effectively locked in our left brains, alienated from God’s life which should be bubbling up actively from within, but is clogged up in shame and hurt, and effectively cut off from God.

So you can see how addressing this problem with mere manuals , however good they are like the YWAM Discipleship manual, cannot change the fifth column in our own make-up. Our own mind filters God out by default!!

There are two models of discipleship or Temple building in the Bible. There is the picture of each stone being prepared beforehand in the quarry, then seamlessly fitted together on the Temple site. This is similar to our own individual daily walks preparing us in Ephesians 4 and 5 fashion, for corporate warfare in Ephesians 6.

The second model is the way the disciples lived with Jesus for 3 years . This model was transplanted in the early churches where people hungrily learned as much as they could from living together, sharing together and attending to what the apostles were bringing of the revelation of the life of Christ. A proto type of this was experienced by ourselves in Emsworth thirty years ago as, as many as 30 lived together in one not too large house.

You notice I do not view discipleship too separately from building the House of the Lord.
The vision of the Church is so powerful, and the love being shared abroad in people’s hearts by the Holy Spirit so intoxicating that others are pretty soon drawn in.

But one of my latest revelations concerning discipleship actually comes from the calling of Moses. This also is one of the most important keys to ministry and discipleship that you will ever hear and we will spend our entire lives exploring this. When Moses asked how God would like to be known when he presented his message of calling Israel out of Egypt, God replied…..”You shall say I AM sent you.”

Think about it. As things stand, when we minister to each other we are sharing the latest doctrine, our own agenda, our own stream. What the Key of David meetings are teaching us to do. What Jorge Pradas’s meetings were all about 30 years ago , was spending time with the I AM. What is the I AM up to today. Transplanting this ability to perceive God’s heart in individuals and churches is far more important and dovetails exactly with the revelation of Christ living out His life as you. They are the training ground which is then exported into the rest of people’s lives.