What Makes Church? 6 - leadership, authority, ministry, giftings, etc.

Just a short one today, with a few links to some useful articles regarding church.

Two are by Rick Joyner, who believes that one of the priorities that churches generally fail in is equipping the believers for ministry. Usually, only 2% of church members take any part in ministry. At Morningstar Fellowship, at the time he wrote the articles below, 15 to 20 % are involved, and he feels they have a long way to go. The two articles are:

Megatrends in the New Millennium (on Next Reformation website)

Shepherd's Astray (from Morningstar website)

Another one who has a lot to say is Andrew Strom, who believes that the next revival will be a street revival. Even calling it "house church" would be incorrect, as it will be on the streets. His website is called, Revival School. He has written an e-book called The Nine Lies of Today’s Church, available in PDF format from the adotadonai.net website. He comes on very strong, and many won't agree with everything he says. However, the last chapter qualifies the overall message by saying that to expect a church to immediately adopt all of his points (ie. selling their church building, changing the pastor's roll, trashing all programs, etc) may be impossible, and perhaps unwise to attempt. To be honest, there's nothing in it that I can say I disagree with -- though I may not come on as strongly as he -- but I would agree that the church described as the antithesis to the "9 lies" may be impossible in most places (at least in the free world) until after a major shaking has happened to Western society. We may discuss some of his points at another time in this blog.

There are also many other websites and blogs, some of which you'll find in the sidebar, that are good resources for doing church the organic or emergent way. Some of them simply offer a window into various local fellowiships. Others also offer valuable resources, as well as links to yet more.