Deconstructing " 5 Attributes of a church in decline."

Five Attributes of a Church in decline

Lack of mission and vision clarity

Failure to Define a Concise Strategy to help Newcomers become fully devoted followers of Christ

Complex structure

Inward focused with little connection to the surrounding Community

Weak Leadership especially in the senior pastor role
as supplied by Archie Rhines on Facebook

My Examination of the 5 Attributes
This post is not being written in a vacuum. It is informed by two events this week.

Event 1. Two (IMHO) excellent posts appeared this week from Daniel Yordy and Rich Novek. In response I wrote on Facebook




A lack of inward revelation as to how and exactly why God is so mad on us and His work in us has kept the Bride in something like a "monkey's cage of separation theology"...so instead of hunting the Church down and screaming let me in let me in I want some of that (as we did when we saw Graham Pulkingham and the Fisherfolk in 73) people are screaming with laughter "Looookee, monkeys in the monkeyhouse!!!!"
Lionel Thomas (name changed) replied concerning Portsmouth Family Church's success under Andrew Elmes:
"Could it be that much of the church is still staring at its navel, picking it's nose and scratching underarms. We don't endear people because of silly antics, religious mumbo jumbo and silly behaviours etc.
The research has been done, answers are out there if people want answers. You only got to look at churches like Hillsong, and Abundant life etc... to see that it is only a choice if you want to continue to look and feel like a monkey house.
We are seeing almost double figures (weekly) across our congregations respond to the gospel message, and regular baptisms back this up. It's so exciting! God is on the move! "While honoring Andrew Elmes and the anointing that is on his life, I have to take into consideration that Lionel himself just upped and walked out of his own marriage, leaving his wife to dig herself deep into God and find a completely new life, while her Christian husband breaks the covenant that you both as Christians, assume is a given and completely (save the instructions given by Jesus) inviolable.

Event 2.One of the ex-offender brothers I was writing to in the letter then blogpost this very week saw the man being tried for the ex-offender's abuse get off scot free. John had endured abuse alongside others in a children's home.Something inside him flipped and John poured petrol all over him. With a criminal record John was immediately taken into custody and sentenced to one year in jail. The deep irony being ofcourse-the original offender is now free, and the deeply hurt offended one is in jail.
From a legal point of view, if not enough proof can be come by, a man cannot be sentenced. And if any of us take the law into our own hands, we can be banged up! If it were not so, imagine Belfast this weekend, as largely kids take to the streets in Belfast to clash and hurt police officers. This would spiral out of control and spread much much further than Belfast. Elaine Waterfield's friend Matt Baggott (Head of Northern Ireland police) would have no legal arm left to stand on.
Yet all over northern Ireland, families from both sides are nursing permanent hurts: sons and husbands unnecessarily slaughtered. If everyone exacted revenge, there would be few left in the province.

So let's look at what Archie has posted in some real world situations. What I am asking is are we looking at a systems failure, or if you peer below the foliage in the Spirit is it something else?

Can I first explain my own position and why I am torn on this issue. I was born again in a school revival in 1972 in Dr Challoners Grammar School Amersham Bucks at the end of the Metropolitan Line out of London. When we prayed for somebody, they were often saved the following week. It was wildfire. When I received the baptism in the Spirit I received not just a nicey nicey anointing, but a bellyful of what Bono of U2 describes as "The Unforgettable Fire".
After this, when I preached or talked people got saved. And I was also used to pray for others to receive the baptism in the Spirit. All grace ofcourse!!!

But for the last 30 years or so, my life has taken a different course, all the while finding it abnormal not to have people being born again in my vicinity. The different course has been the researching the subject of this blog. It has been much seeking of God. It has been the simple response to a simple directive:
Seek first the Kingdom of God and
His righteousness
Why? because, get this and
All things shall be added unto you.
So it's been a simple equation for a simple man.

It does not say Bill Johnson and others -Seek first the higher gifts.....so primarily, while still being open to the 2nd Kingdom wind that was prophesied in 1990 (see Peter Stott's Lift Up Your Heads message referring to this) I have NOT being do so.

But as the events of this week have shown:
Just having mission and vision clarity (as do Transformed who evangelise offenders and ex-offenders among prisons and Andrew Elmes who has established church cultures that Go to the lost and bring them to Jesus)
-you still get quite mature Christians walking out on their wives
and
-evangelists pouring petrol on people.

Lionel's phrase"the church is still staring at its navel, picking it's nose and scratching underarms. We don't endear people because of silly antics, religious mumbo jumbo and silly behaviours etc." still has a ring of truth though. It is real. And it is real in this way. If churches are filled with people that DONT know who they are, that wander around in the desert of incomplete revelation and growth, they really will , like the Israelites, live and die their entire life without getting a smidgen's whippet near the Land that has been promised to each and every one THIS SIDE OF ETERNITY.
In fact most Christians lives resemble "the years that the locusts have eaten".

This is my response to The Decline List. Look at Jesus. "Aha," the systems person who drew up the list says "but I did." Well I say look closer. Jesus may have appeared to fulfil these definitions if you really must look at His Life through the specs of the CEO of Toyota, or the CEO of General Electric....but do you mind if we take the specs off and use more Biblical ones?


In Dr Challoners Grammar School we had an atheist English teacher called Mr Hennig. Before I was saved, from an unconverted point of view anyway, we had the unfortunate experience of being subject to not just one, but 2 assemblies given by him. These were not just any assemblies. These were assemblies just after Mr atheist Hennig had just returned form his first visit to the Holy Land. Now this had to be around 1971, still early in modern Israel's history. By far the bulk of his talks referred to the experience he had had at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. Over and over again he tried to convey the impact of what he assumed to be the Presence of God...and the deep irony of the fact that he as an atheist, didn't actually believe what he was experiencing.


The church gathers around the Presence of God. The church , made up of believers and hopefully soon to be believers, are drawn by the Presence of God. In 1972, I saw two films by Billy Graham and responded to the Presence of God on the films. When I was baptised in the Spirit I was inundated by this Presence. This Presence can so easily be almost too much for the human frame. Blessing in Hebrew conveys the meaning of a vessel packed to the brim and then some, filled with absolute packed out fulness. God's not like the devil. You get your money's worth. And some!

Where the continued Presence is, there is growth. You don't need doctrine. You need actual Presence. If it is the True Presence, out of this will come articulation. You will begin to understand the things of God. Many of the things on this blog. But when you subsequently talk about the Holy of Holies, fire comes out of your mouth. People who have read the books only as an intriguing concept, when they talk, nothing comes out of their mouth.

The reason Andy Elmes is successful is that from early on he bumped into people like Vaughan Jarrold, a Londoner in New York State who has a fire anointing, and he was taught to seek and move in the same. And that's what Andy did. He went to New York , learned off Vaughan, and sought God for himself along with other youngsters.

But it's more than the Presence. If it was just some measure of the Presence, all we'd need to do is to hang around Morris Cerullo meetings and Benny Hinn meetings. Those that do, like Andy, get a measure of the touch of God that is undefinable. But you know folks, this is (in an unborn again kinda way) what the disciples experienced in their first few weeks of moving with Jesus.


But the power and distinctiveness of the Word that was coming through Jesus was of a whole other order. It was more like a letter by Rich Novek or Daniel Yordy. The power of this Word was perhaps "more" than we will ever know. Why? Because today we know about being born again and being baptised in the Spirit, and we MOVE ON FROM THERE.


Jesus' Word was so powerful it catapulted the disciples from a pre-born again miracle- experiencing kind of Jewish / Kingdom mix through to being fully breathed on born again, fully baptised in the Spirit, fully Father stage (1John2:12ff) reproducing Kingdom Key openers by the time of Acts 2. IN ONLY 3 YEARS.


Jesus had to believe that His Word was sufficient to carry these non born again 12, from being unable to twig much about His Word in the Upper Room, through His death on the Cross and His resurrection, to collect them the other side and to get them to a point where He could comfortably leave.


If your favorite Bible seminary Director was standing in the Upper room, kind of co-checking out Jesus disciples, in the manner that seminary graduates are assessed today, it wouldn't have looked good for Jesus.


"Ah, so Jesus, you're telling me that you have adequately trained these disciples of yours in the last 3 years in Biblical exegesis, knowledge of Jewish history, and what....you say you have been showing them the Father?......I'm afraid Jesus, your capacity as a future theological professor in my academy is very much in question."


Andy Elmes and John Affleck are leading people to Jesus all the time. But somehow we have to move on as a church to doing the impossible. Even Jesus had a hard time with this. More details on this are here We have to be churches that move simultaneously in the 3 levels of growth. Most ministries are totally unaware that these stages exist. They are not taught these things and anyway, because they are fundamental to our maturation as humans, and our inner seeing as discussed in the April article, people in the first stage can only perceive those in one stage above them. Two stages and you're in trouble! The Catholics burned Madame Guyon. But it is precisely this level we are re-introducing. And not just for a handful of individuals. The Holy Spirit is breathing among this beaten up, battered generation, many without fathers, many totally shattered through addictions, many like Mary Magdelan...having come to the absolute end of themselves...to raise up a generation of people who


KNOW THE PRESENCE OF GOD


KNOW THAT TO LIVE IS CHRIST- not just the previous outside kind of Christ but recognise the nature of Christ within them as expressed through their personalities and their bodies.


KNOW THAT TO TAKE UP OUR CROSS is not a religious term, it's a dynamic of Life whereby we see what Jesus is doing and ONLY DO THAT. Where we understand the completeness of the anihilation of our dead spirit centre at the Cross....where the Body death of Jesus actually means something, when we take communion, and not just the Blood. Just about every church celebrates 50% of the communion each time . Most ofcourse take bread and the wine, but only a small handful understand what it is to take the Bread. Mother Teresa was one....(and in the Protestant arrogant phrase) she was a Catholic!!!!



See, if Andy Elmes was teaching all three levels

-People would more and more ONLY be doing what they saw Jesus doing.(Which by the way IS NOT the same phrase as a WWJD or What would Jesus Do bracelet.)The disciples often grumbled, but Jesus kind of shrugged....I have to be doing what I see my Father doing, and my Father is working still. For us it is "seeing" what Christ is doing through us and around us and flowing in with that.


That doesn't include pouring petrol over people.


And it doesn't include walking out of covenants.

Nigel's Homegoing Celebration

Sometimes, we get to be a witness to something truly extraordinary.Something unexpected occurs in the midst of what is expected.Such was Nigel Waterfield's funeral and celebration. From the point of view of this blog, new readers should understand that it was only God putting the spotlight on Nigel and Elaine Waterfield in the free Anglican magazine "Inspire", and me posting it here, and another reference here that we should ever get to know each other. In many ways they were not being fully recognised in their own area but as the celebration service unfolded, maybe for the first time the full significance of what had been going on was being revealed. The service was held in their main church Holy Trinity Leicester (above picture) , but since the couple got together their greater allegiance has always been to listening to Jesus and obeying Him, and in so doing a whole rainbow coalition of services, organisations and churches were moved into their orbit, recently including Havant Church (Portsdown Community Church) in the south here.
Amazingly, there was a gap of one day when it did not snow here in Britain and I was able to travel up on a clear M1 arriving at the back of the service with a Cybershot digital camera with the flash turned off and zoom on full, but with no real hand support. The pics are what they are...

Nigel Waterfield, we were told by his uncle and godparent, was born into a caring family in 1963. His muscular dystrophy was only diagnosed around age 7 and would only severely disrupt worklife in his very late 30s. Throughout, he had a totally positive outlook towards his condition and never came across with self-pity. He made the best of what he had .Considering what they accomplished together as a team, it is extraordinary that Nigel has only been a born again Christian for four and a half years.Knowing his time was short, and that the muscular restrictions were really beginning to kick in he had resolved to really "go for things" while he still could...and this was the template for his marriage to Elaine.

They met on the internet and Elaine had to tell him to shut up about his condition because she wanted to know about him. Nigel was the quieter one, but people that in the later years could see beyond the condition could perceive his wisdom, his steadying influence on Elaine, and his inner cheerfulness expressed in his warmth towards absolutely anyone, and the thing that nearly everyone remembers and comments on - his smile.

Nigel's uncle was very moved as he shared. John McGinley on the right is the vicar of Holy Trinity who led the service with Pastor Sam , a Gospel DJ and Street Pastor.

Pastor Sam was a DJ who does Strictly Gospel who supported them in many ways including the street parties and was there with Elaine and Dave when Nigel died.

I used the phrase "rainbow coalition" deliberately. Elaine received many many cards with two particular images. Rainbows. Trees or the Tree with leaves for the healing of the Nations.

The rainbow image describes, I feel ,the way they network with a lot of disparate groups that would not normally relate with the other.They refuse to be tied down to human organisation. Humanly this is disparaged, but I feel Nigel's celebration showed the folly of this. This last point is of huge significance in the third level type of christianity we are entering into.If we understand that ALL Christianity is, is changing our operator from the genesis 3 operator of Satan, to being now containers of Christ, in our forms, in our individuality...then you see just how the former mid-stage construction companies become just like temporary scaffolding to the main building programme - which is Christ being built into each one of us.

At the moment in the first two levels, people of like mind and function tend to stick together. But Paul shows us in Corinthians that our natural and supernatural giftings which are sometimes intertwined sometimes not, are for each other. For people who are like us and people who are NOT.

People like Stephanie and Jackie MacEntire, Nigel and Elaine Waterfield,many aspects of those who naturally gravitate to Mother Teresa's organisation, many like Julie Wilcox and Carlos Iggy Shelton, and so many who are networking on Facebook and feeling their exclusion from Institutional structures which do not address their giftings.......

The true vision of the Body of Christ is one where the meetings themselves are only the exclusive "bedroom sessions" with Christ our Lover corporately, the rest is us expressing Christ as individuals and small groupings within our families, communities and work. But for that to be real and not pious denominational rhetoric, people need to know the trick of believing in our new identity on the inside of us...wherever we go and whatever we do. And at some point we need to have made the migration internally from "not born again" to "born again", to knowing that indeed we have passed from "darkness to light".

The Tree with leaves for the healing of the Nations is a direct picture that Elaine had already drawn for me.These leaves take on many manifest forms but they are all a manifestation of Christ's love in practical form.

So having married,Nigel and Elaine pledged themselves to throwing themselves into life.One of the first things was to go to Florida and canoe on the Everglades surrounded by alligators. As you do! Especially with muscular dystrophy!

In the following photos are many expressions of the leaves of healing. All coming via one couple in less than 4 years. They received a call from God to go into a needy estate in Leicester: Dupont Close. They organised 4 street parties with local police invited as well as ex-offenders being invited to give testimonies:ex-offenders such as Steve Cattell
at one point Britain's most prolific burglar, who now takes delight in sharing about Jesus as an evangelist.

Steve Cattell shared how, as he often goes off to share Jesus on his own, was absolutely gobsmacked to be supported on a trip to Bristol Park where he was speaking. Rain was tipping down. "You'll never get that wheelchair over that grass!" But Nigel was already off and away on his powerful chair, proving Steve wrong.
This is Tammy, the one mentioned in the Inspire magazine. It was lovely that she shared a little about the madcap world of knowing Nigel and Elaine..even when Tammy and Nigel might not have had even so long a life....because Elaine had forgotten to put the handbrake on the van a couple of times. Tammy not knowing about handbrakes , had Nigel quickly trying to explain what they look like as the van began to roll down the hill.

Sandra Hastings in the picture then shared about Nigel and Elaine's involvement with her locally in "Restorative Justice". Sandra is one of the main movers and shakers with this idea in our country and I have heard her a couple of times on National Radio. Old wisdom used to be that the perpetrator and the offended never meet, effectively denying both sides a quicker form of closure. Not always successful, but in many cases the effects have been outstanding.

Pastor Doug Lyon is the pastor of Kingsway and they would do a lot of prayer support and came to their street party.

Kirk Roberts with whom Nigel and Elaine and a guy called Jason did a lot of outreach.

One of the main things that alerted locals that this was no ordinary funeral was when Chief Commissioner of police for Northern Ireland Matt Baggott phoned the local Leicester police force to organise a full Police Escort for the funeral. The picture here is of the acting Chief Commissioner of Leicester sharing their involvement with local police and reading out a wonderful condolence letter from Matt Baggott who was the former Chief of police in Leicester and had it not been for the events in Northern Ireland this week, would have felt freer to travel for Nigel's event.

Since Nigel and Elaine's involvement in the Dupont Close area, a documentable drop in crime had occurred.








Alison Adams shared about Nigel and Elaine's work in Glen Parva, Leicester's youth offender's prison.This has been notorious for suicide. The Waterfields had been regularly leading Alpha and Freedom in Christ courses in weekly evening sessions as well as regular attenders and sharers in their Sunday morning chapel services. A young ex-offender read out a moving response to the loss of Nigel which had been compiled from about 16 people all brainstorming the things Nigel meant to them. Again it was his warmth , his smile. His patience and interest in them as people.

Nigel and Elaine travelled regularly to Transformed Southampton, Transformed Leicester, Transformed Brighton. These are Christian initiatives to provide support and infrastructure for people who want to turn around in their lives and get re-established after prison life.

Can I just make a comment here as an aside, that many initiatives have been either born or nurtured out of what was formerly Southampton Community Church. My friend Mike Thom made the comment that from a handful of ragtag students, who becoming converted in the 70s heyday of the rediscovery of spiritual gifts, and community church life, stayed on in the city to see the birth of a large City Church. This church, in the space of just 30 years, by people with very limited life experience went on to spawn a leading Church school, to host many evangelistic events, to nurture and really help kickstart the 24/7Prayer movement worldwide and finally to establish the Transformed infrastructure. People need to know of the real world effects that occur after real revival . It is true to say that next to nothing is either known or reported of the longterm results of a whole generation like myself who en masse found themselves caught up in a rediscovery of the baptism in the Spirit experience as pioneered 100 years ago initially among the Pentecostal groups of believers.

Simon Sharma and David Starkey need to spend some time at least discovering that the identical experience of New Birth in Christ and baptism in the Spirit which spearheaded different expressions of church growth through history...be it the 2 burned Lollards at Amersham, or later pioneers of social reawakening such as General William Booth...or political stirrings in the wake of Luther...or the abolition of the slave trade.....or the pioneering intercessory work across the nation of Poland before the Fall of Communism. Although a secularist is always going to take a new idea such as water baptism, or the Presbyterian idea of leadership plurality as coming out of an evolutionary process of thought progressing from century to century, the spiritual reality has been more like a rediscovery of an unfolding heavenly pattern slowly revealed and uncovered as mankind has related to his Saviour. But to even admit to such things would ofcourse prejudice a view that history must align itself to a Darwinian process. For me this is the test of a historian. Will he or she bend historical events to their own world view, or own up to simple things such as:

possibly the only reason that bloody revolution did not come to Britain during the 18th century was the incredible revival stirred by the preaching of Wesley and Whitfield.
One of the most powerful tipping points leading to the American Civil War was the result of a praying AfroAmerican mother who by revelation was inspired to write a book, often only by night. This book Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe is recognised as being one of the straws that broke the camel's back.

In this same spirit of wanting to see the cross outworked as a Tree for the healing of the nations both Nigel and Elaine followed the efforts

of the Christian Police organisation.

Matt Baggott was really shocked to see that Nigel and Elaine had travelled down from Leicester to their Ashburnham conference camping out in the van en route. They learned about the "Adopt a Cop" initiative. Originally a means of Christians taking a supportive role to Christian police as they faced tough roles and decisions, Nigel and Elaine didn't get the Christian bit so just turned up on the police doorstep in leicester and asked who wanted to be adopted. In actual fact the Leicester cops were up for it anyway, and a supporting relationship ensued. So for this reason, a whole police convoy turned up in Dupont Close.

I spent much of this event with moist eyes. I find like many others, any reference to people turning round,

ex-prisoners making a go of things,

police coming together with community problems to find a way through,

a person such as Nigel, in Nigel's condition making an internal decision to make himself available to city estate life, instead of retreating to a suburb to quietly live out his days or Nigel and Elaine going off to preach at Notting Hill carnival, and many more street operations around Leicester....well it really speaks.

Nigel and Elaine have been a total inspiration in just being willing. Many times on the full receiving end of flack, from people who just did not understand what they were doing, they continued to pour themselves out.

This all shows so clearly we do not have to understand everything before we head off following the Lord. We do not need to know fully how we are going to proceed. We just take the next step. And each step is not linear. What actually happens is one fruit multiplies up into several, and each in turn beget a similar amount of fruit. Such that after only 4 years you can have an event occur such as last Tuesday.

God is good.