Kingdom Shaped Not Market Shaped

By Wolf

Moving from a traditional church base into the Kingdom, the domain of God’s uncontested rule, will change the church from being ‘market shaped‘ to becoming ‘Kingdom shaped‘. The opposite of God is not the devil; its Mammon (No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money Mt 6:24). In the same way, the opposite of the Kingdom of God is not the “domain of Satan” (as you can see, the Bible does not even call it a kingdom…), it is the market.

A market shaped church is essentially trying to package and sell a God-experience that religious customers would buy (by attending and financing the system). Make no mistake, we are not called to ignore what’s happening on the market, what people talk about. But we must be very careful not to be swept away by the powerful market dynamics of buying and selling. Otherwise the church is no longer driven by God into a prophetic and apostolic future, but by the ever changing gusto of religious consumers and ever present religious salespeople who give the market what the market wants. And then we end up with buffet Christianity, where everyone is free to chose a little bit of this, thank you, no, nothing of that, and maybe a harmless taste of this.

If we want to change the world, we have to chase the world out of ourselves and our church’s systems, yield to Jesus who is not only a Saviour, but a King who wishes to rule, and start shaping our lives, families, financial and political behaviors accordingly. Then our churches would stop to be our churches any longer; and yes, become His’ again. Why not?

Reformed, Americanized, Simplified, Monarchized

By Wolf

If, in AD 1516, some one would have asked “Christian leaders” in the Roman Catholic Church: ‘Do we need a new reformation?’, they would have laughed them out of their world. Who, we may ask, would laugh hardest today, if we ask the same question? Right, the Reformed world.

However, during the last 500 years, we have experienced not one, but four reformations (whereby the church significantly changes its forms and functions). The Reformation of Luther brought Bible, grace and faith to prominence again. The church became reformed.

Around AD 1900, various Holiness movements and the Pentecostal movement, fueled by the general entrepreneurship and the finances of our American brothers and sisters started to be felt worldwide: the church was americanized.

After 1950, another huge shift appeared: forced underground by Mao and his cultural revolution, the “lay people” of the Chinese church took matters into their own hands. The church became simplified and de-organized, beginning the huge wave of the organic movement that currently sweeps the globe.

However, the greatest shift and reformation is in the making right now, as God calls us all to move away from man-made church systems all together and enter the Kingdom as our framework. The church is de-democratized; monarchized, if you will. And de-democratized means that my and your opinion about this is not really invited. How about that?!

Who needs revival – when you can have the Kingdom?

Here is a short comment on the prayer day that we were privileged to be part of on the 28 of February 2009.

It is clear that when a nation’s values become corrupted God has to “uproot and tear down, destroy and overthrow,” before he can “build-up and plant” (Jeremiah 1.10). That is what is happening in Britain and the whole of western society today.

It was a significant prophetic event that now desperately needs an apostolic implementation. The various prophetic words that were given there now need a place for gestation.

As usual and unavoidable the direct competitors of this emerging apostolic age are the cry for more old-fashioned religious and evangelistic activism, more and even more prayer activity to serve the ‘church-as-we-know-it’ based vision of revivalism. Who needs, however, revival, if we can have the Kingdom? God’s plans are far, far greater than a return to revivalistic patterns; it is the modeling of the Kingdom in the area of a kingdom shaped church, and from there towards revolutionizing family, education, culture, business and politics to reestablish a model nation, a city on the hill. Only that will be able to build an authentic platform to re-engage and thus re-evangelize Britain with the Gospel of the Kingdom.

A kingdom revolution is at hand. Who willingly will shoulder this?

Who of those within existing structures are ready to realign towards Kingdom accuracy?

We need both revolutionists and reformers who will readily put aside their own self-agendas to see “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven“.

Dream of In Flight Total Engine Failure

Sometimes what God does while we slept is more important than what we did while we were awake…

Here is a dream that John Pilcher, an Australian passenger flight pilot, had on the 12th of December 2008. You may notice the similarities of this dream with the actual double engine failure event departing from New York and ditching in the Hudson River a few weeks ago.

On the 12/12/2008, I had a dream that I was flying at night from New York across what directionally seemed like the Pacific Ocean. I was temporarily out of my seat as Captain just chatting with the senior First Officer when my attention was drawn to the right engine which was showing some vibrations. As I continued to monitor the situation I spoke to the cruise First Officer as to whether he had noticed this before, and he indicated that he had not. However he may have overlooked it as he was feeling quite unwell and needed to rest. As we exchanged seats to my disbelief I saw both engines now at idle power and the aircraft loosing altitude. I checked the fuel tanks and noticed they were empty and immediately asked the cruise First Officer’s as to why he hadn’t noticed any fuel leak or monitored the fuel situation whilst I was away from the flight deck. There was no reply but just stunned silence as how this could be and what to do.

Every person who flies a passenger flight cares only about himself. They go about their businesses, visit families, friends, have their own schedules, their own plans and goals. The travelers of a passenger aircraft do not have a common purpose, they do not talk to each other, they do not have unity about anything at all. They idly sit there and wait until the plane lands so that they can go about their own ways again. They basically use the aircraft for their own good. They have no desire to even get to know the person who sits next to them in those long journeys.

Very similar to the churches that we are very much aware of. This kind of churches are departing New York, a place where everything that one can possibly imagine, can be consumed for one’s own self. And God is taking them over the Pacific. No lights, no shows, no happenings, somewhere between heaven and waters, no land, nothing solid to hold on to, just dark and silent.

And before any of us had realized, not only the pastors have been burning out but also the fuel has been leaking since long ago but we have been busy, flying. The church didn’t bother to question how we fly but that we fly. The church has put all of its energy, effort, resources (both people and finances) to raise itself up in the sky by giving every importance to programs, projects, social and ‘mercy’ mission work etc, without checking whether this is what would make it to fly! The church has been blind, unable to notice the real power source, the fuel, to leak out of its tank. And now flies empty, with stunned silence it is dangerously dropping down.

I gave the emergency call to the Cabin Manger and then also a May Day call and the shock of preparing myself for the intensity of preparing the aircraft and occupants for a very likely ditching was enough to wake me up.

One must be really deaf not to hear the wake up call all over the world in the churches. There are warnings and trumpet sounds to get ready, to be prepared. But what do we do when we are caught up between heaven and earth? What do we do when we are floating between the spiritual world and the patterns of this world? What do we do when we long for God to reign in our lives but we are totally tied up to Mammon and its rule? What do we do? We go helplessly further crashing down hoping that God will do something, because we have tried every program, we have copied every models of church, we are loosing altitude.

Perhaps now Jesus will have his rightful place that we have been occupying for so long to build his church. “I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”

I then went back into a semi sleep state and sense the gravity of what I had dreamed that this could be something from God. I next had a sense that I was back in the dream with the aircraft emergency help from another military type aircraft flying at much lower altitude. I had the impression or vision of coordinating the descent of this other aircraft with ours so that eventually we were able to descend like a soft landing onto the back of the other aircraft which could reduce our descent rate so that we could make it to an island airport not far away. There would be some damage to the other aircraft but it was a worthwhile risk that could work, so that at about 20 nm miles to run it could pull away at a steep descent rate and lets us glide in to the runway.

God is also known as “Lord of Hosts”, “Lord of the armies”. There is a military aspect of God that the church has ignored for a long time. Jesus has been preaching about the Kingdom of God being near, at hand, flying so low. He has explained the Kingdom of God to his disciples and the hearers in many different ways, with many different examples. When you land on his kingdom, your rights cease to exist, they no longer apply, it is his government by decree. And you will align yourself to it in order to land safe. If you are proud and disobedient then you actually rebel against the governance of God. The church is right now at the cross roads to make the decision to either enter the Kingdom of God or continue to journey with the empty gas tank. This is a matter of life and death.

Not everyone who says to me Lord, Lord, will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my father” (Mt 7:21). Those who do not enter his Kingdom, that means respect, align, obey and submit to God to rule as King, will end in a fatal crash. When you choose the Kingdom, you will not have the freedom to live life as you did before but your life has to align to the rule of Jesus the King, the captain. The churches have failed to bring the people from A to B by ignoring the greater authority and rulership, therefore God is flying his Kingdom aircraft now.

Those churches that have ignored the royal rule of God, father’s will, will land crashed.

I didn’t see the end result of this idea for this emergency situation but sensed it was highly feasible and knew there was an element of trust in seeing such a miracle pulled off, in such a dramatic and embarrassing drama.

John sees in this dream, how our individualism and humanism has brought us to the current economic crisis.

John Pilcher’s revelation

Who is the leader of the free world?

By Wolf

In a recent TIME Magazine article (Nov 2008) it said: “More than 3,200 Secret Service members stand ready to sacrifice their lives for the safety of the leader of the free world”. Meaning: the President of the United States.

The term free world originated from the Cold War, when it was used to distinguish between democracies, specifically the United States and Western European countries (the Free), and the communist Soviet Union and its allies (the Un-Free). As the United States led the war against communism, the President of the United States came to be known as the “leader of the free world.” Much of the power of this revolves around the president’s role as commander-in-chief of the military. The US army currently has over 1.4 million personnel on active duty, plus 850,000 in reserve, and spends around $ 1 trillion per year for military/defense related expenses. This image is deceiving. The truth is, that Jesus Christ is the real Leader of the Free world. The Land of the Free is called “The Kingdom”, the political realm of God’s uncontested rule, occupied by law abiding Kingdom citizens freed from the bondage of sin, religious sin management and egocentric protest. The enemy of materialism may be communism, but evidence shows that materialism is simply another form of bondage.

I wonder how many members of the Secret Service of Jesus stand ready today to give their lives for the one who gave his life for them. Are you one of them? And what would happen if $1 trillion would be invested into those Kingdom citizens, that did not pledge away their lives to nations, patriotism, ideologies, the religion of a Middle Class life or the pursuit of fun?