In order to move the Body into a reset of its foundations, reclaiming apostolic and prophetic foundations, we may have been guilty of “dumbing down” certain aspects of these kingdom leadership functions. Coming out of a season of in which our definition of “church” was “the accumulation of believers,” we have approached this reset in terms of “the accumulation of apostles and prophets.” That is, we focused a bit too much upon identifying leaders who functioned as apostles and prophets, accumulating them to prove the exist.
We may have encouraged people to value these functions as titles, and we may have dumbed down the definitions in order to prove our point: “apostles and prophets still exist.”
Then, we may have compounded this error, through the resurgence of spiritual gifts and the reality of miracles, signs, and wonders, by dumbing down the operations of gifts in order to prove that “we can do the stuff!”
To some extent the fruit has been “we are the church” instead of “we go to church” to an extreme; that is, the fruit of accumulating believers and accumulating believers who do the stuff still hasn’t reset the Ecclesia upon its proper kingdom leadership foundations.
Immature Function Looks False
Many things that are labeled “false” are really immature. Having made the goal the accumulation of people who can do the stuff, dumbing down the leadership functions to accumulate apostles and prophets, we ended with a definition of “church” that fails to answer to the original design and definition of Jesus.
We have “take it to streets” to the extent that we relish this role of the ministry of Jesus at the expense of the strength of the Ecclesia to influence and impact the culture. We need both an empowered outreach and a maturing inreach, not one or the other. We need a unified and coordinated order of march and individuals in their properly prepared and positioned place in that march, not one or the other.
Beware the concept that the Ecclesia can be healthy without assembly when the Ecclesia, by definition, assembles. The Ecclesia assembles to fulfill assignments. The assignments are revealed to and through blueprint leaders, apostles and prophets. Thus, no individual believer can “do the stuff” in a vacuum without missing some foundational and fundamental aspect of “doing the stuff” in the first place.
We can be guilty of hit and run evangelism, healing, prophecy, warfare, and preaching.
Thus, when people activated in operation of spiritual gifts lack the proper Ecclesia context in which to function and through which to be sent, a kind of spiritual Woodstock occurs, and the operations appear false because they are so immature.
In the process of prophecy, for example, communication follows revelation, and interpretation, application and implementation follows communication. While people can be activated in receiving revelation, immature communication of pure and valid revelation still looks like “false prophecy.” In this way, good revelation communicated without a proper context of kingdom leadership and Ecclesia order and structure gets trampled more than reaches triumph.
Many people activated in receiving revelation, the easy part by far of the process, lack basic kingdom submission, become a law unto themselves, and bounce off of things and people throwing God’s secrets around like punch at a party. They erroneously assume they are proving that God still does the stuff when “doing the stuff” was designed as part of a larger kingdom strategy. Thus, their efforts accomplish little in terms of influence and impact upon the culture, and the real and valid outcomes produced are measurably less than what they were design to build into the greater assignment of the kingdom.
VIsions and Visits
While it is possible to travel around activating people in vision and visitations, what should be the outcome of personal transformational discipling becomes an end within itself. We end up giving automatic weapons to children; they spray live ammo around to prove that they aren’t playing with toys. In the end, they protect little territory and take little back from the enemy.
The sense of the apostolic and prophetic foundations would be that we are building something together using God’s blueprints for a standing, fully operational Ecclesia that can disciple the culture.
Simply proving that people can visit heaven or have visions misses the point if the people having them lack a proper preparation and positioning to function with in the Body. Only through this function of kingdom leadership can the Body achieve the fullness of the measure of the stature of Christ, supply itself through joints connected, and build itself up in love. A dangling hand doing miracles or a shouting mouth speaking revelation is bit weird when isolated from the Body.
God could share revelation, do miracles, heal the sick in better ways if these outcomes were not part of the complete picture He paints with the Ecclesia. Jesus designed a leadership strategy in which and through which these outcomes would occur because they are part of something bigger.
It is possible to do the right thing for the wrong reason. It is possible to prophesy, do miracles, see visions and have visits while not accomplishing the will of the Father, says Jesus. That is, all these things must be part of a blueprint through which the Ecclesia gets God what He wants or it is fatally dysfunctional.
Beware the immature exaggeration and over-correction of “church-anity” that says, “We are going to church anymore.” While the kingdom functions in our lives and through our lives and “we are the church” 24/7, it is simply unBiblical, disobedient, and immature to not assemble where we are assigned. We are each and all part of a greater assignment, an assignment that makes our assignment what Father intended because it is part of a greater blueprinted construction project.
