A Milestone in Our Work...

The work of the ministry continues. Our small but faithful team here in Woodstock continues to go into neighborhoods, apartment complexes, hospitals and on the streets preaching the gospel, healing the sick, casting out demons and planting churches! Just last week, we received a report from a young man that we had prayed for in a primarily Hispanic neighborhood, less than 2 miles from the church. He showed up at our Sunday morning meeting and breathlessly told me how his ENTIRE FAMILY had been healed when we had prayed for them a few days before. They had conditions like arthritis, asthma, depression, Fibromyalgia, night terrors, anxiety and panic attacks and more. Within four days of praying for their household and preaching the Gospel, they ALL were healed. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved, and your household. Acts 16:31

When we began this odyssey in outreach, we had a first year goal to have 10 house churches in Woodstock. I am happy to say that we just did a survey and realized that we now have groups of believers (house churches) in 11 neighborhoods! The next goal on the horizon is to have 50 house churches here in Woodstock. We believe that when we are in 50 neighborhoods here in Woodstock, we will have invaded virtually every major location and hotbed of darkness. Not everyone may be authentically saved by then, but most everyone will be confronted with the truth and the strongholds of Religion and Mammon will begin to crumble!

OUR STRATEGY
Our strategy is simple: go into the neighborhoods in our community, start with the poor, preach the Gospel of the Kingdom with signs and wonders following, win souls to Jesus and make disciples. The best and most fruitful way that we determined to make disciples is in house churches, or groups of believers that meet from house to house. It’s in these house churches that we preach and teach the milk of the Word, worship Jesus together and equip the saints for the work of ministry.

Early on last year, we decided that the Sunday morning gatherings at our church would not be the best place for new believers to get involved. On Sundays, we don’t preach the lowest common denominator stuff that new believers need. Our Sunday meetings are believers meetings geared towards equipping and encouraging more mature believers to get up, get out of your seat and bring the Kingdom of God wherever you are. So we decided that each neighborhood (or apartment complex, duplex, trailer park, etc.) that we are in, needed to have access to true Kingdom Christianity in the form of a house church.

Sure, lots of folks go to church, but the vast majority of believers have never had exposure to the Kingdom of God, which is not just a pretty sermon, but power to save, heal and deliver. Just imagine everyone in a city not even having to leave their own neighborhood to get saved, to get healed or to get delivered! That’s what we see and that’s what we are pursuing. These little house churches start small but the Gospel light begins to penetrate the darkness of each neighborhood, ushering in the Kingdom of God.

AN ANGELIC MESSENGER
Let me change gears here and relate an experience that I had a couple of months ago. I have been chewing on it for a while now and feel that now is the time to talk about it. A couple months ago, my wife and I had put the kids down for a nap and decided to lie down and take a rest ourselves. While I lay down, I was praying about equipping believers for Kingdom ministry and became aware of an angelic presence in the room. I looked up and standing between my living room and my kitchen was an angel. I was shocked and surprised but remembered something a prophetic friend of mine had told me some time ago. I was telling her how I had seen an angel appear in a meeting. She asked what the angel was there to do and I just looked at her and said, “I never asked him”. “Well, he wasn’t there to decorate the place, that’s for sure!” she said. “Next time, ask them what they are there to do.”

The Bible says that angels are sent to minister to those who will inherit salvation (Hebrews 1:14) so if they show up, they have a job to do! I asked the angel that was standing in my living room what his job was and he told me that he was a “Mobilizing” angel. He told me that all I had to do was extend an invitation and he would gather those that needed to come. Instinctively, I knew that this was about equipping the saints for the work of ministry. You see, several years ago, the Lord spoke to us and told us that we would have a ministry training school that was very different from other Bible schools or seminaries. He told us the school would be more “Show You” than “Tell You”. Most places are “Tell You” and you can walk away from many training schools without any real experience in spiritual things. Sure, you can quote scriptures, but can you heal the sick, cast out devils or raise the dead?

Now, we have done several mini training schools and activated a bunch of believers in their spiritual gifts and ministries. And over the last year or so, several folks have spent time with us just to see what we’re doing. But what’s coming and what this angel was speaking about was a ministry training school where you could come not for theories and concepts, but for a living, breathing example of what the Kingdom of God is all about. You wouldn’t just learn about healing the sick, you would heal the sick. You wouldn’t just learn about winning souls, you would win souls. And more than that, we believe that you shouldn’t have to quit your job and career to function in this kind of ministry. Actually, most everyone on our street team that is doing the ministry has a full time job, family and other obligations.

I am telling you because in the near future, we will be extending the invitation to “Come and See” what the Lord is doing. Kind of like an intern program on steroids and Viagra. We want to train the army of God that is not content any longer to warm a pew or fund a building program but is ready to roll up their sleeves, lay down their life and bear fruit for the King!

Am I Talking About You?