March letter to Havant Church

How Fatburning is related to spiritual leanness

Dear Havant Church
I am fat.

I don't need you to tell me. My body kind of knows it.
Thirty years of tuning and driving between tunings, customers biscuits and

snacking on service station garbage.
I'm not going to get condemned about it. I'm just going to learn the tricks that will help me lose weight.

Apart from the obvious. Put less in and get more active.

I know Cambridge Diet works...but if you ever go to a Cambridge Diet event and study the counsellors

you'll notice that they are yo yo dieters. See, our bodies have this weird emergency state, that tell us

to store as much as possible in case that person decides to diet that drastically again!!!

So, slow sure weightloss is best....AND it has to be enjoyable and it can be.

You justhave to know some tricks. Well it's early days and I'm still learning, but I've shed half a stone

by eating!!! But radically changing what I'm eating....and errrr...when. For example I was skipping

breakfasts...but now I'm not....and I'm losing weight. It's to do with kickstarting your metabolism.
And there are ten to twenty tips like this that are really sneaky, and really work!!

Tonight I was thinking, you know, our spiritual life really is the same.
I want to share some tricks.

I was born again at 13, and when I was baptised in the Spirit I led my grammar School year,

and some above us in revival. It was part of the Jesus move of 71/72, and it was completely

spontaneous. Now, just as in the same way obesity has kind of crept up on us westerners,

the same sort of fat sluggishness has crept up on people of that move. Nobody meant it to happen.

Nobody radically did anything for it to happen. But as we look back we can see signs that it has

to some extent happened. And just as we don't get condemned about our obesity....we just

start learning some better tricks....so it's the same spiritually. Except that this will be a first.

No spiritual generation as far as I can tell has ever woken up again in all of history. But

they have all without question done the same as Israel in the wilderness. DIED OUT.

Leaving it to another generation.

Let's look at some of the main things we had 40 years ago.

Remember, this was an England that had had the Bishops declare that God was dead in the 60s.
And here was God presenting Himself through Billy Graham as alive, that we could be born again,

and by the 70s, that we could be baptised in the Holy Spirit. Revolution didn't cover it!!!

We were gobsmacked. And none more than me. having been raised by two physics teachers

who had taught Kofi Annan in Ghana, and having garnered 11 A's in my twelfth year....to then

realise that this whole system of learning was majorly flawed, because it left no room for the supernatural,

meant that we retraced our steps completely, trying to work out which bits of our reality could be trusted.

No joke. We were round each other's houses like in Acts. We loved each other with great affection. More

than that, we were actually IN LOVE with each other. We didn't want to be apart.  We studied together.

We prayed together. We had new songs which we shared. We prophesied. We shared in the new

supernatural way of running meetings. Small key of David meetings.

When Christine and I joined Havant this is what it was like:

some of the first things we went to because Ben was small, was the children's playgroup.

Was it the two Ruths running it? Is that right? The lady that went to Eastbourne? Anyhow

we just couldn't break into the cliquey nature of it all. Now I know this is no different from any group of mothers,

especially on an Island like Hayling Island. But one thing was for certain, it had nothing to do with the Christianity

I was born again in.

Jesus is the glue.

The Living Jesus.
We all process Him in different ways....and different churches process Him in different ways.

But however we process Jesus it takes a basic spiritual form underneath everything.

It is "hearing His voice" and "doing what He tells us" by faith that it is Him telling us.

And how do we know? because He speaks to our heart.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not rely on your insight.

When Jesus is speaking to our hearts, then when we get together it's fun, because

we are all unpacking fresh manna together in the meetings. And we are reminded

that that's why we love each other so much. because it's Jesus Himself who came

in when we were born again. And it is the same Jesus in me as in everybody else

regardless of age....and that's the incredible thing.

I was prophesying at 13 and 14 into my new church. By 18 I was pastoring.

I knew about as much as Terry Virgo probably knew at the same era, except that

he had lots of Baptist knowledge from his pastoring days.
You see in those days it was simple. You were born again, and you were baptised in the Spirit.

Period. That was more or less it. That's all we knew. The fact that that covers only about the first 24 hours

of Israel's flight from Egypt had somehow escaped us.

That 1 John 2 clearly says there are three stages of growth....well forget it. We just didn't know.

So right there are two tricks:

Trick 1 is make sure you are loving the Lord with all your heart, soul mind and strength, so

that you have a daily walk....you are receiving fresh manna and working with it by faith...oh and sharing it.

Trick 2 is make sure you are geared up for more than what Jesus referred to as a "half built Tower"

which people laugh at....which is to preach the equivalent of spiritual babyhood and spiritual teenage,

but never preach what Fatherlevel Christianity is about. So ofcourse, we in the charismatic movement

have given the world's media carte blanche permission to just laugh at Havant church and all other churches

like it.....why....because we never ever grow up and take over the area, as St Paul would say.

We don't meet because it's the done thing to do. We don't go round each other's houses because

Alan has organised an area meeting. We naturally do all those things even if it's not a Sunday,

because we really love each other and because we are bursting with so much to share.

So what are some of the other "fat-indicators"?
Well , funnily enough....it's the spiritual stuff itself.

Let's look at Jacob.

His spiritual teenage was learning the faith tricks of speckled sheep and striped sheep and how

you could supernaturally work the system so he always ended up wih more. Laban got increasingly

hot under the collar!!  But Jacob was getting fat. he was going through the motions and getting bored.

So he left. He should really have faced up to Laban...but that was still part of his cowardly spiritual

level...so he didn't and fled secretly by night.

Now Peter Stott,Mariette, Paul Butcher,John and Wendy, the worship group, Molly and Lydia

have been at this game for forty years. They know which strings to pull. They know if you put in

so much in personal prayer, and prayer as a church, plus preparation of the worship group, plus

prayer before the meetings out the back and in.....they know they are more or less assured of getting

speckled and striped sheep

of the Presence of the Lord coming down

of meetings being to some extent real

real things happening to folk.

But it's a trick really.

It's knowhow.

It's not relationship.

I have teased the whole church on my blog about their prayer habit: as an OCD condition.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. like forever washing your hands.
Havant even have prayer meetings about prayer meetings about prayer meetings.

It's kinda like tithing mint and cumin and making sure all your bases are covered incase

this angry Genesis 3 God is going to say " Well they've only prayed 9 hours this week

and not made the compulsory weekly total of 9 hours 40 minutes, so I am afraid I cannot

come down this week.

But the first thing is heart relationship. There are not two Jesuses. There is only one.

So if Peter is claiming to have a relationship with Jesus, but it doesn't meld with the Jesus in Kevin and Lois,

or Rohan Barton, or Paul Noble, or Elaine Waterfield, then he's in cuckooland.

There Is Only One Jesus.

If we don't discern the Body Paul says....for this reason some are sick and have died.
We don't need so many hoops if we are actually obeying the Living Christ.

He has told us that the Body is ONLY JOINED by that which each joint supplies
BUT ONLY when that joint is working properly. In other words it has to be Christ

supplying through that joint for the rest of the Body to grow. Only Christ builds

Christ.

Words about Christ, but that don't originate in Christ don't do it.

It's like the game Simon says. It has to be Simon saying it.
Christ lives, reigns and operates in what Hebrews call the Melchizedek order.

This is an order that He established as soon as He came out of Jordan River.
He has made us Kings and Priests of this new order. That's the training

we receive in meetings. To learn to operate in this order.

When someone speaks and it isn't of that Order, it's something else, but it isn't Christ.

If Paul Butcher says today I am talking about stereo speakers, and he gives as his

example some music played in mono, he can talk all he likes, but it isn't stereo so we

all remain clueless.

One time he did the spiritual equivalent. He relayed the entire talk of Mark Stibbe on

Fatherhood I think. But when Mark said it he spoke under an anointing. Paul

killed the whole subject. He probably prevented anyone from ever wanting to learn about it.

But when Paul speaks of something the Lord has shown him personally it comes across a lot better.

These are some of the tricks behind learning to be a spiritually lean church and not just a fat blob

like me. If for no other reason you resolve to be lean spiritually...just think. I do not want to be

like that fat blob Welch.
Chris

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.