Success Stories

The Job of a Church is to bring God down into every Church meeting. When God is in a meeting, the whole meeting becomes like heaven. Almost everyone senses it. Overactive children become quiet, as they, and everyone drink in the atmosphere. The atmosphere is one of love, and order, and power. It is exciting. Leaders of a meeting can forget to bring God down into the meeting if they are over confident of themselves, or if they want to promote themselves. Promoting themselves (ourselves) is an easy trap to fall into. We might be over-stressed, or even over-tired.

The Holy Spirit moves wherever He wants to go. It is our job to follow Him.

I belong to a church that is increasing in size at the rate of over 20% per year, which, for Britain, is very good, even scary. The Church relies heavily on very good and lively music. Some of the musicians are very gifted, but also mature enough to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit.

(1) The leaders of the Church are reliant upon the leading of the Holy Spirit. (2) They, (usually), do not promote themselves. (3) The leaders of the Church have no known sin. These three things seem to be the most important things in a successful Church. Preachers, (and even musicians), sometimes, can promote themselves, even in the smallest ways, and, as soon as they do, the Holy Spirit, very quickly, becomes less powerful. The leaders of my church are trying to promote and train the members of the church, which, for the members, is refreshing. I am sure that the leaders would like to promote themselves, particularly when they are down in spirit, but they know that every time they do that they will not get God to move.

Jesus did not come to be served......He came to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.
We have not come to be served........We have come to serve, and to give our life as a living sacrifice, for many....Haven't we.

A lot of churches have house-groups, (sometimes called Cells), and it is usually very successful. Each Church divides the members up into house-groups. One evening a week about five to fifteen people meet in different people’s homes and as they sing, discuss the Bible and share their life. God comes down and they have a wonderful evening. Some Cells, or house-groups are not as successful as that, often because the couple who are leading the Cell have to mature in God, but this is the way to push them into it, and they usually respond to the challenge, and the people who come to the house-group enjoy the evening much more.

A successful format for a house-group would be to divide the evening up into WELCOME, WORSHIP and WORD, each person taking it in turns to do one of these every week. The WELCOME can be a game to get to know each other. The worship is usually, but not necessarily, singing. The WORD is often an explanation of a Bible passage that the person, who is doing the WORD for that week, explains.

Other successful churches in the area use good guitar music a lot, and confine the sermons to 10 minutes maximum, having several mini sermons instead of one large one. They try to make it as entertaining as possible. Where this is done with a sensitivity to the leading of the Holy Spirit, it is successful. Older people may get fears that the congregation is not maturing into better ways, but these fears are unfounded when they talk to the young people in the Church, who are surprisingly mature in God, for their age.

There has to be many, many opportunities for repentance and commitment to God. This is very, very important. Everyone needs an opportunity to repent from time to time. ‘Alter Calls’ and times to come to the front of the meeting for various reasons are a MUST if God is going to really move. The person does not have to tell another. It is between God and themselves, but they (we) do need to come to the front of a meeting. If a person does not repent from time to time, then they will shrivel and die. Repentance is our friend, not our enemy. It does not lessen our standing among our friends, it increases it.

God seems to be moving amongst children. Children of under 15 years old, even under 10s are starting to surprise us with their sincerity, and how much God is using them. They have a simplicity that is not immature. Get ready for this move of God in your own Church. In Brazil there are 12 year old children leading house-groups. In Brazil, one church has about 125,000 house-groups and they have lost count of the number of people in their church.

Bill Wilson, in New york, has a children's campaign which is very successful. It reaches over 20,000 children. Several Churches have copied the style with amazing effect. FRONTLINE in Liverpool (a church of about 500) reaches 800 to 1000 children and teenagers every week, copied from the style of Bill Wilson's Children's Campaign. See the site at Bill Wilson in New York

Where there is a great move of God there is usually persecution.

God is making one Church which includes Roman Catholic and all other Protestant Churches. While keeping their own identity, God is stopping the mistrust amongst the churches. (Read ‘John Wesley’s letter to a Roman Catholic’ on this web-site john-wesleys-letter-to-a-roman-catholic.htm). God is gathering the people from all Christian Churches together into one heart, while keeping their own identity. People are finding the Church that suits them best, and using it to come closer to God, and the other Churches are respecting that, and are not threatened by losing a member to another Christian Church. In Liverpool there is a move amongst the Churches called ‘Together for the Harvest’ (http://tfth.merseyside.org/) , where all the Christian Churches are getting together to organise each church to evangelise the people in its area. Together for the Harvest. Is working because God is in it.

If ever there was a time to be gentle with the MUSLIM it is now. Muslims react to fear from the West, and from fear in Christians by giving fear back. The exchange in fear is what they have had for hundreds of years. If you think that they are from the devil then you will get no-where with them. GOD does not want you to think that they are from the devil. If you have something to offer them then that thing will have to be greater than the thing they have already got. After September 11th some people from our church went to a mosque, and stood outside and offered a flower with a text to all the Muslims going in. (The Text was not specifically evangelical). Two of the Muslims swore at the Christians, but most of them accepted the flower and the text. After a while some of the people from the mosque came out, apologised for the two who swore, and invited the Christians in. There was not a service, but they spent the time wrapping presents, the men in one room and the women in another. It was a wonderful time. There was one missionary who knew their language. God was very definitely in the whole thing. It was done with a warm, friendly heart. Copy this and see it for yourselves. It is what our God wants. It really is.

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