The Journey to Transformation - Beginner's Course

Things have been like crazy hectic around here lately and I have known I needed to update this blog for some time. So today is the day. And I would like to talk personally about this thing called a "Journey to Transformation" and the "Beginner's Course."


When I first encountered the "Transformations" videos, I was the director of a prayer ministry in Minneapolis, Minnesota. As I watched the documentaries of transformed cities, I stood at the end and shared with the pastors that were  gathered there, "THIS is something I can give my life for." The thought of God's presence coming in such manifest presence to change the very fabric of society. It was something that, at that time, I had only heard and read about, now seen. I was changed forever.

In the years since, I have come to realize both personally and professionally, that very very few in the U.S. and western cultures really have a grasp of what that looks like. We have never had that first hand experience that shapes our expectations and definitions. So two things happen. One, we content ourselves to living vicariously through these stories and videos and although wanting what we see, inside we are not really sure it can ever really happen "here." Or, secondly, we settle for a lower standard of meetings, initiatives, and short-lived encounters on Sunday mornings, or conferences and leave to a life that is still far from that higher ideal.

I have been around enough to have been witness and participant in a lot of really good things. Great initiatives that have been powerful times, but never got us to that place of true transforming revival. I have been in meetings where the plans were made to make such and such place an "igniter" city, and then the plans were laid out. And to be honest with you, I've done enough of that, and seen enough to know that they are great things, they touch people, but if what we have been doing for the past 15+ years could get us where we wanted to go, we would have been there a long time ago!!

So what is different about this "Journey to Transformation" and the "Beginner's Course?"  I'm not here to "sell" anything, please understand that. But... I am not satisfied with what I have seen so far. After thirteen years of research and observation, there are things that are repeated principles of the way God interacts and responds to a hungry desperate people. The Journey to Transformation (JTT) is a setting forth of those Biblical, historical principles, particularly for our Western mindsets.

The "Beginner's Course," is 12 hours designed to prepare hearts to understand the "What, Why, and How" of presence-based transformation. It is as thorough a teaching on transforming revival as you will find anywhere. Not a program, not an initiative to go do, it is meant to inform and teach so that when a community comes to the end of this time, they will be confronted with the question, "now that we know what it is, are we ready to pay the price and give ourselves to this?"

I will be posting more on my observations as we move along here (hopefully with much better frequency).  I am looking for a people who really have the desperation and hunger for Him to come, and are truly ready to set aside agendas, pride, division, business, and preconceived ideas and pursue God until He come.

I wonder where those communities are?

Hindrances to Transformation - Mindset

A long time friend of mine recently presented the topic of "Presence-based Transformation" to a national group. The Lord, as He loves to do when we are walking in alignment with Him, gave her some wonderful interaction with individuals, but her heart was broken with the realization that the idea of God's manifest presence had no place in their mindsets of reaching their cities.

It is an issue that is not often addressed. How is it that we can desire to function as the "Body of Christ" and yet have no concept of the fact of His manifest presence that actually brings the breakthroughs and the transformation in lives, churches and cities? We live in a day when we are very enamored with our plans, methodologies, and initiatives, but we seldom come to the reality that if these things in themselves could bring what we are looking for, we would have had it a long time ago! Now, understand, please, I am not saying that these initiatives and programs do not do good things. They certainly help to relieve suffering, spruce up neighborhoods, feed and clothe  the needy, but that they are a far cry from the powerful transformation that we talk about when we define presence-based transformation.

We invest ourselves into conference after conference sharing ideas and strategies and become content at the incremental changes that we see. Some tell us that this is the churches "finest hour," yet if that were the case should we not be hearing the world saying, as they did in the New Testament, that we are turning the world upside down?

And we have pastors and church leaders who spend more time on "strategies" than they do in seeking the Lord's presence in our cities. The testimony of Scripture, of the history of revivals and of contemporary experiences tell us that transformation does not come through all our programs, but He comes and brings His divine adjustments to a people who are totally sold out, and desperate for His presence above every other desire in life.

Want to pray for transformation in your city? Pray that mindsets of self-effort and strategies be broken, hearts would be broken, and God's people would cry out in total abandoned desperation for His presence. And not give up until He comes.

If we do...He will

The Least of these

"An Appalachian Dawn" is the latest Transformations DVD produced by The Sentinel Group. It tells the compelling story of the people of Manchester, Kentucky and Clay County. I have had the privilege of touring in a number of cities with Pastor Doug and Linda Abner from Manchester. They have lived out this transforming work of God. The have many times repeated their belief that God did this work there in spite, or maybe because they are just simple folks.

There is something very powerful about this truth. Last week the Abners and I were privileged to meet with some of the people in Concrete, Washington. As we drove up to the church where we were to be meeting, Doug and Linda continuously remarked how much Concrete and the surrounding area looked like Eastern Kentucky. When we got to the church and began our meeting, the presence of God was just overwhelming. Doug and I have done this dozens of times, but never was it like this. All three of us had such a sense of God's love for and favor upon this people! We could hardly keep ourselves composed. The Father was telling them that he saw them, He loved them, and He wanted to come to them. Here were a simple folk that God obviously had His eye upon, and His heart toward. It was an amazing time for all in attendance.

This truth is often lost on many of us. We get so entangled with ourselves and our stuff. I had a fellow email me how he and his sister had walked out on one showing because they were offended at the graphic scenes depicting what the characters in the DVD were going through in Manchester/ Clay County.  I have to admit, I was a bit taken aback... so we want the needs and issues of sin to be "sanitized" to be more palatable for us? Oh my goodness! It is actually the reality of the effects of sin in our culture that should make us desperate for Him!

God is attracted to those who are of a broken and contrite heart... in fact in Isaiah 66:1-2, God says, This is what the Lord says: 'Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. Where is the house you will build for me? Where will my resting place be? Has not my hand made all these things, and so they came into begin?' Declares the Lord. 'This is the one I esteem; he who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word.'

It's worth taking a look deep in our own hearts. God is a heart-reader and so we really need to ask Him to show us our hearts as HE sees us. We are the worst judge of the condition of our own hearts.

Lord, show us the true condition of our hearts, and increase in us a capacity for, and a hunger for the things that attract YOUR presence. In Jesus Name. AMEN

Elements of Transformation - Busyness makes us blind and deaf

One of the most pervasive characteristics of our culture is the way we elevate our busyness. It is not uncommon in conversations with those from other companies or churches or ministries to throw in a few "humble brags" about how busy we are...I find myself falling to not that trap... oh, I'm "trying to keep up." Our culture puts an unusual premium on busyness and we elevate in our esteem, those who we perceive to be the busier ones among us.

Now certainly there is no virtue in laziness.Paul instructs Timothy, "But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever."   and certainly we put great stock in teaching that we must work with all our energy for the things of the Kingdom. However, it is not difficult to make the case that the noise and adrenalin of our busyness has made us addicted to the point that we are in danger of becoming blind and deaf.  Blind and deaf because we become insulated against anything from the outside that does not fit into the grid or our busyness.

This happens at many levels, but I speak especially of what happens in good Christian ministry. Our busyness becomes a machine, and we find ourselves continually maintaining the "machine" of our ministry, or our ideology, and we can no longer understand how God could do something other than the way WE are doing it. If something comes along that "may" truly be of God, we may listen for a while, but we are soon drawn back to maintaining the machine. It is unthinkable to us to turn off the machine and contemplate some other direction, some other "methodology," some other concept other than what we have clung to in order to keep our machine running.

I believe that is why we see so little of what I would call true "Presence Based Transformation" in the West, and in our country especially. For over a decade, God has been giving us example after example of what He is doing when people forsake all to pursue Him, but we don't see how it can fit into our machine, so it remains a nice, maybe even challenging example, but our mindset is, it can't work here, because it does not fit into our "machinery." 

 It is so hard to break free of the ways that we have always done things. It is hard for us to STOP and take time to listen until we really hear. I look around, and there are places of hope... but the vast majority of us are too busy and too occupied to hear when He whispers, or when He quietly slips in the door, waits for us to respond, and then moves on because we are just too busy.

Transformation will not come until we let go of those things, and learn to listen for His instructions, His voice, His presence.

Elements of Transformation - Desperation

There are a number of characteristics or "Core Principles" of transformation that can be observed in those communities where true transformation is taking place. Fiji, Almolonga, Guatemala, Brazil, and now here in Manchester, Kentucky. Of all of those (these "Core Principles are articulated in the DVD, "The Quickening") prinicples, perhaps the most elusive for those of us in the West is "desperation."

In the DVD, "An Appalachian Dawn" the testimony of Pastor Doug Abner and other is, that they had not where else to go, they were just desperate. My own sense is that for the vast majority of our "ministry" population, we do not really understand what desperation truly is.

The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines desperation as: "loss of hope and surrender to despair." Now, we might at first reject that definition by saying that we as believers should never lose hope or give in to despair. And, of course, there is truth to that in the sense that the Lord is our hope, but that is exactly the point! As I observe the Christian landscape, I see a great deal of activity. A great amount of energy is being expended doing this conference and going here and there, talking about this destiny, or that program. It seems to me that having conferences or such is just another evidence that we have not "lost hope" in our own abilities to somehow "make" something happen. Desperation that leads to transformation is when we as a people of God come to the absolute place  of despair  and loss of hope that anything we produce would lead us to revival or transformation. 

This kind of desperation is evidenced by persistent prayer that has come to the realization that unless God intervenes in this situation, there IS NOT HOPE! I honestly see very little of that kind of desperation in the Church today in the West. I hear very little of repentance, and turning to the Lord. There are calls for prayer, but those periods are short-lived and we are soon back to our familiar patterns of program and activity.

 And, the reality is that this kind of desperation cannot be "manufactured" by our frenetic activities. It would seem that we are still in the "we can work our way out of this jam" mentality. The promise of God is sure to those who will give up trying to lean on self made activities. His promise is, that if we align ourselves with Him, His heart, and His ways, He will come to us as surely as the sun rises (Hosea 6:1-3).  We already know there is nothing we can do to "make" the sun rise in the East. God calls for that same acknowledgment when it comes to revival and transformation. He waits for us to truly get desperate.

Reflections on our "Pilgrimage" to Brazil

It is perhaps fitting that I am finally getting to put this down here on the blog, six months after the fact. Gives us time to reflect from more of a "distance."

 Again, since it has been so long... there was a lot that went into this at the beginning of the year.
Some of those thoughts were:

• Ever since being in Brazil in 2008, I had always felt my heart drawn back to spend more concentrated time in seeking God in a couple of particular places where His presence was so real to me, and I wanted to take Marilou with me so she could experience those same things.
• We wanted, as a couple, to spend an extended amount of time praying and seeking God's face, and this was a place we knew we would encounter Him.
• In the 36 years of our ministry/marriage, we had never had that kind of extended time together seeking Him.
• Even though we could not afford it financially, we felt like... "what the heck, we are not getting any younger! Why not? What better way to use our time and finances than seeking the face and the voice of our God?"

Observations:

1. Obedience is sometimes it's own reward - For us, one of the primary rewards of the trip was the fact that we did what we felt God was telling us to do. Looking back now, we both remember the ways God touched us and drew us together toward Him in that time.... and it is like a lode stone that draws us over and over again to Him and one another
2. Our God is a lover... He showed us His love in many different ways, but most often it was through His people. The variety of expressions of God's love is really as infinitely varied as the number of people who He calls His own. There is never a point in God's economy for us to compare ourselves to anyone else. He is able to express Himself through us in a very unique way.
3. God is BIG! It was great to see the ways in which God expressed His greatness to us, whether it was in a quiet moment on top of the hillside seeking Him, or among the people of God as they worship Him. We should never get "used to" the greatness, the "bigness" of our mighty God.
4. Finding Him is satisfying and at the same time... it makes us hungry for more! What a paradox, but it is true. 
5. Something happened in our hearts that makes this that benchmark for us, and we both want Him more and more because of what He called us to do in this "pilgrimage."

Well, that will do for now....neither of us will ever regret making this trip. It brought us closer to Him, to one another, and to those we connected with there. It was a "win-win" deal all the way.

Long Time Returning!

It has been quite a while since the last post. So much has happened and the schedule has been really, really busy.

Marilou and I did spend a wonderful month in July in Brazil,

Bags packed and ready to go to Brazil, July 2010

and I will post more about that in the future (really I'll try to be more regular). And as soon as we returned, I was eyeball deep in making preparations for The Sentinel Group for the Hope For America Tours, launching the Premieres of An Appalachian Dawn, the newest Transformation DVD. August and most of September I was consumed with setting up nearly 50 cities and 5 tours across the USA  to tell this amazing story of hope. As I write, there is a Sentinel team doing the Hope For America Tour in Texas. It has really been a whirlwind Fall season.

 If you have not seen the preview trailers of An Appalachian Dawn, you can go to The Sentinel Group's website at, www.glowtorch.org and learn much more about this DVD and the story behind it. Go to The Sentinel Group's webstore to order the DVD at, www.revivalworks.com.

The response to An Appalachian Dawn has been amazing and you can read some of the comments on the website. Personally, I was in Georgia, Florida, Alabama and New York leading those tours.

What a joy to travel with Doug and Linda Abner from Manchester, Kentucky, and work with my dear friend, Jacquie Tyre from Atlanta, GA.

It was a great blessing to observe how God has hungry people in every place.

The greatest challenge for us in America is to recognize our need to be truly desperate for Him, and to realize that His Presence is the key to the true transformation of our communities. That is the lesson in every transformed community including Manchester, KY.  Now we are back at thinking somehow this election is going to do it. Well folks, the reality is we've been here before, and we ought to learn our lessons.  A desperate, praying, united, seeking Church is what is going to turn the tide of this country. The story of Manchester, Kentucky is a great domestic example of this.

Next time - Observations from our Pilgrimage to Brazil.