A couple of weeks ago I entered a post called “Countdown to the Call”. In it I made some statements about how important this gather in Nashville on 7.7.07 is going to be. YEAH! TURN THE VOLUME UP ON THAT! Please check this thing out at the call’s web site or at fastandpray.com. I can tend to be dramatic at times, but I hate hype. Still, this may be the most important day/ season of a generation.

I really believe this could be a day of “biblical proportions”. I have been reading Psalm 50 this week. In verse 5 God says “gather all my saints to me who have made a covenant of sacrifice”. He is calling heaven and earth to recognize who he is and worship Him. God is jealous over His creation, and is longing for His people to really belong to Him.

God is ordering things right now. He is bringing up issues in my life and inviting me, pleading with me to deal with these issues. He wants us to walk away from other gods that we have given a place to, and enter into a monogamous marriage with Him. Twice the word “order is used at the end of Psalm 50. First, God says that He is going to set things in order, but in the last verse, He says that He will show “the salvation of God” to those who “order their conduct aright”.

This is not a time to “do what we feel”. Now is a time to recognize the truth of God and to respond to Him with a whole heart. Don’t think you’re e ready for that yet? Just move towards the Father’s Call as much as you can. Let His strength meet you and draw you further into His presence and purpose than you ever thought imaginable. Your destiny depends on it.

So, I don’t know what you are doing next weekend, but change your plans and go to Nashville. God is gathering a nation to Himself. I really believe that future generations will look back at this day as a watershed moment in history. Don’t sit on the sidelines. Be there. Be a history maker.

(The following is part of an email that I am hoping to have ready to send to some of our friends that are connected to college campuses. It is not done, so you won’t get the full picture, but I wanted to go ahead and post this part now. It tells a little of why we are interested in building relationships with students and a sliver of where we are going. As you read this, know that we don’t pretend to know exactly how things are going to unfold in the fall. We are also not planning to start a new organization to do campus ministry. We are looking to invest into the lives of student leaders. I hope to have the email completed by the weekend and when I finish it, I will re-post it here. Thanks.)

I just wanted to throw out a bit about something that has been out on the horizon. When we move to Western PA, it was to be and do church for people that didn’t do church. When I was asking God “Why Western PA?” I really sensed that He was inviting me to check out how many colleges were in the area.

I knew there were a lot, but I was blown away at the number of campuses within a hour and a half of our home. There are over 250,000 students and scores of campuses. I really believe that students are the prime resource of our region.

When we moved in 2002, I tried to make campus ministry work. I failed. But little by little we began building relationships with students, and while we never launched an official college ministry, we began to notice that many of our most life-giving relationships were with students.

Over the past several years, I began to get a bit more intentional about these relationships. We now have good relationships with student leaders on about 10 campuses in the Pittsburgh/ Youngstown region. While we still don’t now exactly how things are going to unfold, we sense that we are entering into a season that will see this be a prime focus for our life.

I am writing this to introduce some of what we know so far, and to find out if there is any interest out there in building some deeper, more focused relationships. So… If you know any students who are in love with Jesus, please refer them to this post. (Especially those who live or go to school in Eastern Ohio or Western PA)

A little of what we are thinking…

A new approach to campus ministry. – We are not so much interested in starting a new “campus ministry”, but we are very interested in seeing students and campuses transformed by the love, presence and power of God.

I see campuses as apostolic training centers. Don’t get freaked out by the word “apostolic”. When I use that word, I am speaking about a people that live with a real understanding that we are called to be a “sent people”. Jesus told His disciples, “Just like the “Father has sent me, I am sending you.” I believe that there are certain people that specifically operate in the function of an apostle, but I also believe that we as followers of Jesus are called to live an apostolic lifestyle.

By Brad McKoy
A few days before Christmas, I was meeting with one of my mentors. I was asking his advice concerning some challenges that we as a ministry team were facing. I am not sure what kind of council I was expecting, but my heart was very encouraged by what he said.

He looked across the table at me and said, “Now is not the time to give up.  This is the year that the vision works.”  He went on to explain that what he had been hearing from people who have really been pressing into the Lord about 2007 was that this was the year that vision would be fulfilled…

I am sure that I know what some of you are thinking.  Doesn’t someone say that every year is “the year”?  Yes, I am sure that you can always find someone who will tell you that today is the day, or that this is the season for breakthrough.  But as I heard the content that flowed from the mouth of this spiritual father, my heart was quickened (a good King James word that means “made alive”) that now is no time to give up.

I will be honest with you.  In some ways, it seems like there are certain parts of the vision that we are pursuing as a mission team that are not working.  What are we going to do?  We could evaluate all that we are doing and try to do things better.  We could come up with a long list of reasons why things aren’t working and then try to figure out how to deal with these obstacles.  We could ask ourselves, “Did we miss it?  Were we even supposed to be doing…?”  We could examine issues such as timing, and follow through.  There is nothing wrong with any of these things, and in fact I am/ we are in the process of doing several of these things right now, but what we must first do is seek the Lord with confidence and faith.  We need to know his heart in the matter.

One of my favorite times of the week is what we call “Breakfast All-Stars”.  Several of us get together on Wednesday mornings at a local diner and share a meal and coffee.  There is no agenda or format other than eating together and sharing what is going on in our lives.  Sometimes we study the Word, sometimes we pray for each other, but mostly we just talk and listen to each other.  Sometimes it’s about what is happening in our families.  Sometimes is swapping semi-humorous jokes.  Often we update each other on our own journeys.  What have we learned?  Where have we struggled and/ or celebrated?  It is just real people being together without a script.  I love it.  I said all of that to say this.  Last week, one of my friends (I have this weird urge to use a British accent and call him “one of me best mates”, but since I can use an accent on-line…) was talking to me about walking through adversity.  In a strong anointing that usually comes after four cups of coffee, he exhorted (another King James word that means “encourage with an attitude”.  SYNONYMS include “challenge” and “urge”) me to do whatever I did in faith.  When he first said that, I thought “that me be the most generic exhort I have ever received.”  But then my friend, Sam, took it further.  He told me, “Whether you choose “A” or “B”, do it in faith.  Do it in confidence.”

We have been talking about the ways of royalty.  As God’s kids, we really need to walk in the confidence of knowing who we are and who our Father is.  So what does this all have to do with how we handle apparent failure?  First of all, when we walk by faith and not by sight, we are not forced to evaluate our “failure” based exclusively on external indicators.  Let me be clear that I am not saying that we ignore signs of trouble, but if we are really going to walk in the faith realm, that must come from a place of supreme confidence in the Lord.

How many of our favorite Sunday School stories deal with scenarios of minimal struggle and easy odds.  If smooth sailing where the criteria for the move of God, that would mean that we count out Daniel and his three friends.  David going up against the giant fails the easy test, as does the stories of Esther, Gideon, Joshua and almost every other story of God’s greatness.

Our ability to connect vision (the invisible possibilities shared between our hearts and God’s heart) and mission (the manifestation of the vision being carried out) must be anchored in a faith that is bigger and more sure than the circumstances that we face.  Trusting in Him is of primary importance, and can only be authentically produced through intimacy in action.  Hear the call from the heart of God.

“Come in to the secret place.  Be transformed in my presence.  From, glory to glory, as you gaze on me, I will change you.”

We learn to love and trust Him more and more as we become like Him in the intimate place.  But this is no place to stop, for there is another cry from His heart to ours.

“Go.  Re-present me to mankind and make disciples of all the nations.  Be the expression of heaven in the earth today.  Call in my bride, manifest my wisdom.  Fill the earth with my glory.”

We exercise that love and trust by carrying out what God has been imparting in us… (more to come, I promise to try to up the loose ends real soon.)

I have been doing an awful lot of thinking lately about the importance of living in the right kind of culture. It has been a “theme” on the desktop of my mind for a little over a year, but over the past few weeks the file has been expanding and the whole issue has become more important to me.

So, what is “culture“? I looked it up, ( I will get into more detail later) and the first thing that stood out to me was that the first definition for “culture” was the word word “cultivate”. In order then to get a better understanding of culture, let’s check out the top two definitions for cultivate from Websters On-line Dictionary:

1 : to prepare or prepare and use for the raising of crops; also : to loosen or break up the soil about (growing plants)
2 a : to foster the growth of

Interesting to say the least. I am a visual thinker, and the picture I get from both of these definitions reminds me of farm life and crops. A farmer who wants to have a successful farm must take time to prepare the fields for fruitfulness. He needs to consider the commitment that it will take to nurture and tend to the crops to bring about the return on his investment. (The SEED)

A farmer cannot simply buy good seed and then throw it to the wind and expect to get the maximum yeild from his field. He must first consider his field, and make preparations for the seed to go into the ground. THE KEY TO MAKING HIS FARM WOR, IS CREATING A CULTURE FOR LONG TERM FRUITFULLNESS. I am not a farmer, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. (Sorry, it’s late and my mind just went there.)

Consider the parable of the sower, or I think a more accurate title, the parable of the soils. (Matt. 13 amongst others) What was the key to determining fruitfulness? There was after all, quite a difference in the amount of fruit. The range was from nothing to 100 times the amount of seed sown. So was the difference in what method was used in sowing the seed. Were there different sowers? Maybe there was something special about the 100 fold seed? It seems from what we read, that difference was in the condition of the soil.

Jesus was talking in this particular passage about the condition of the heart of man, and how there are differences in the way that hearts receive the seed. While my thoughts about the importance of cultivating culture are broader than what was directly talked about in this passage, I think that the truth from this scripture illustrates the importance of having the right kind of conditions for growth.

Let’s jump over to my life in 2007. In the missional community that I am a part of, there is always something going on. And most of the time, I can honestly say that we are seeing lives impacted for Jesus in some way or another. I do not say this to brag in any way, in fact seeing lives impacted does not fulfill the calling on my life, or on the life of the team that I lead. I have spent many years watching God be God. He is amazing and His Gospel is really good seed. I have grown weary of seeing inconsistent results. I am not talking about how big a church grows, I am talking about how deeply a life is transformed.

Our current ministry is aimed at being and doing church for those who won’t go into church. We deal with a lot of “ungodly” people. It is so refreshing to be able to share life with these beautiful people who don’t have a need to impress with religious chat or Bible trivia. They just let all there stuff, for better or worse, hang out. I don’t want to paint a overly dramatic picture, but the truth is: MOST OF THESE PEOPLE ARE MORE DESPERATE FOR THE REAL JESUS THAN AN OVERWHELMING MAJORITY OF BORN AGAIN BELIEVERS. It is not that they get it right away, in fact most of them struggle for some time before giving their heart to the Lord. It is just that they realize their life is not working out so well.

We have been blessed to see many of these people give their heart to Jesus, and as a part of seeing the great commission fulfilled, our community is committed to try to disciple them. Again, we have seen some success on our journey, but when you know that there is 100 fold possibilities, settling for less is disheartening.

So how do we make the jump from tending a average garden, to reaping 100 fold fruit on a consistent basis? It would be very dishonest for me to even pretend to have all of the answer, but my heart has been provoked to cultivate the field.

I am hoping to do a series of posts around this topic. I would like to invite you to get involved in the discussion and consider the cost and benefits of living in a community that is willing to take the time to cultivate a culture that will embrace, foster and advance the move of God. What will it take? How can we get started? There is so much to explore, but I believe the world is waiting to see the manifestation of these types of communities.

Contending for Culture. It won’t be easy. We may have to walk as pioneers to lands where we have never been. We may have to prepare fields for planting that won’t yield fruit for years, but it will be worth it. Last thought. Consider the life of John Chapman (Johnny Appleseed). Here was a simple man who spent a great portion of his life clearing out weeds, preparing soil, and planting seeds that would take years to mature into fruit bearing trees. In many cases, he planted in the “wilderness”, but his planting help prepare for future generations that would come after him. There is no way of accurately knowing how many acres of brush were cleared, or how many seeds were planted. One thing that we do know is that there has been an exponential harvest that continues to this day.