2018 Prayer and Fasting Crusade

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Ralph Bishop
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1 DAY 24 07/11/ Prayer and Fasting Crusade Message of 7th November 2018 THEODORE ANDOSEH KOUME

2 Let ten, ten people come and thank the Lord, if you are number eleven, sit down. Five more desperate people. alleluia! Who has a testimony? CHURCH PLANTING In the establishing of young churches, the first step is to plant the church very well. If you don't built a house very well and you paint it very well, the paint will not support the house. We must plant our churches well. What is church planting? What is involved in church planting? When can we say a church has been planted. Church planting is simple, as everything natural is simple. But simplicity does not mean that it is easy. Life is simple. Look at the corn, you plant it and it grows upward, that simple action of growing upward. In the laws of physics, it has overcome gravity; the growing upwards is actually moving against very heavy gravitational pool. But every plant overcomes is gravity. With one match, you can cut it down.to the life is so fragile and the life is so powerful, so powerful that it can overcome the law of gravity and so powerful that it can overcome the law of gravity. All life is like that. The life in a baby, technology has not yet created a baby, but you can kill that like in a second, so fragile, so precious, so powerful. Life is like that. The church is not something organisational, it is organic, that is, it carries life. The church is something alive, it has life, spiritual life. That life can manifest but that life cannot be seen in anything tangible. It has life. The life manifests, but it is not something you can touch here and there. It is not meeting, because the "bamoun" people has their meetings. So, the church is not meetings, the church is not building, the church is something alive. In the planting of a church, we must understand what is the church, what we are doing, so that we may know what to look for. There are five stages in church planting, very simple steps. The five steps can be seen in the five names given to believers, in the first eleven chapters of the books of Acts. 1. The word "church" occurred for the first time in the book of Acts in chapter 8. acts start with calling those who have believed "believers". The first step in church planting is to produce believers. How do we produce believers? By bringing unsaved men into a living relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ 1

3 through the preaching of the gospel that meets a response of faith. So, church planting is a matter of establishing basic spiritual relationships. When we produce the relationship with Jesus, they have become believers. In Acts2:44 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. Why does she not say 'the church'? Because that living thing call church had not yet been produced. Even in acts 4: 32 When they call them believers, they are describing a relation between the individuals and Jesus. 2. Then the second name is sued to call the believers: Brethren. In acts 1, the company that had been around Jesus were called brothers, when Peters stands up, he calls them "brothers" (Acts 1: 15) they were brothers but when they started the planting of the church, those who believed, the title used among them was not brothers, it was not an accident, by faith, through the gospel, we develop a living relationship with Jesus and we become believers. After becoming believers, through faith, something happens, we are baptised. Baptism is more than just a personal spiritual experience, we are baptised into the name, it is a marriage ceremony, so that we can carry the Name, the Name of God the father, God the son, god the Holy Spirit, and it is the Name that gathers. So, the title "brothers" come from the name we carry, and we are initiated int eh name by baptism. Baptism is to inherit the Name and it is that name that gathers. "where two or three gathers, there I am with them". So, there is no church without baptism, because the unbaptised do not carry the Name. The name gathers, the same Name makes us brothers. Just like in the natural. After we become believers, through faith and a living relationship with Jesus, by believing the gospel, we inherit the name, e share in the Name and that Name links us to others wo carry the name. Halleluiah - that is the second step in church planting: relating believers to each other's. So, the meeting that we organise, it is to bring those who carry the Name together and give them a chance to become brothers, to live out their brother hood. That is the second step in church planting. Even if you are titillated by the theology, we are talking very practical dynamics. The church planer, if he disappears after leading people to Christ, the church will not form, he must continue to go and minister to them, until he becomes the first person around whom they gather. The brother, the missionary, the person who goes to plant churches must, through his ministry offer the young believers, who come to receive his ministry, the possibility of developing their brotherhood, without which thee will be no church; the second step in the planting of the church is this bonding of 2

4 believers. Forget the doctrine, in the planting of a church, the believers must become brothers, and a critical cardinal human presence must assemble the believers. Somebody who is not hyper sensitive, that is why church planters were apostles because there were people in whose lives the cross has worked to allow people attach to them, because the man who has not allowed the cross to work in his life cannot relate. It takes a mature presence in order that those who start as believers can become brothers, starting by relating to him. By relating to him and by him relating to them. It is critical for people to understand that in crystallisation, there is one crystal around which the others cluster. That is why the person who goes to plan church is that cluster, that is why we have organisations, but we don't have churches. The people who goes to plan church cannot be wounded, and any person who avoid to be wounded cannot allow people around him, and there cannot be a church. When you preach the gospel, people open their lives to you, when you go away so fast, you think that they will open their lives to the person? The one who plants the church must be around long enough, to give those who gather, who have believed the time to begin to relate to each other. 3. The third word used to describe believers int eh early chapter of Acts and that appears for the first time in chapter six is Disciples. Acts 2: 1-2, 7 In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Grecian Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. 2 So the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, "It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables. 7 So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith. The believers have not been called disciples in acts before chapter 6. why were they now being called disciples, they have sufficiently been taught, so that they understood God's way and they were not obeying, and they now have a history of obedience, because you cannot be called disciples without a study and obedience. Believers who have been taught and who know the way of the Lord, who are following the Lord, become disciples. So, the word disciples do not mean a member of the church of CMFI. Believers who have been taught and who have obeyed become disciples. They are following the Lord, it is believing with an addition of knowledge, wo that you can follow. The church is a company of disciples and that world describes their way of life. Believers, they have entered into a living relation with the Lord Jesus Brothers: they have embraced the Name by which they are called and they have begun to relate to the other believers as family But disciples, talks about a way of life, they have accepted a way of life, it is a commitment to the teachings of Jesus and to obedience to Jesus. When that commitment has started and people are living according to that commitment, they 3

5 have become disciples. From acts chapter six, the believers are called disciples till the end. That is the third stage in church planting. A way of life is taught to which people commit; the believers have become disciples because a way of life has been taught to which they are committed. And that way of life is very simple: it is living to please God and it is living as Christ did. It does not mean that they are perfect, because the first time the name disciples is used in acts, it shows them quarrelling. They were disciples. That is the third step in church planting. We cannot say that we have planted a church unless we have given to the young believers a clear way of life to follow, through our example and through teachings. 4. The fourth word used for the believers is "church". Acts 8: 1,3 1 And Saul was there, giving approval to his death. On that day a great persecution broke out against the church at Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. 3 But Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off men and women and put them in prison. Now the believers are called the church. What has changed, they have a separate identity. They have developed a distinct social identity that is different form the milieu in which they are, that is the church. It is not their meetings, it is their identity as a people apart, so that others can hate them, because they have embraced a commune identity. So, the church emerges as an identity unit through its distinctive witness. Dans chaque communauté, quand les croyants ont développé au travers de leur témoignage une identité sociale à part, l'église s'est formée. Donc, si à Bertoua on ne peut pas distinguer les croyants à cause de notre manière de vivre, il n'y a pas d'église. The church is formed when the believers, living as disciples, through their testimony and witness, have developed a very distinct social identity, then the church has started. It is witness, it is living out their witness, a way of life, that distinguishes the Body of believers into an assembly, a people apart. The church has formed. 5. The fifth step in the formation of a church is in Acts 11, when the lives of the believers are so clearly superior that umbellifers can realties that these people resemble Jesus, when the lives of believers have been transformed so that others see Jesus in them, their lives is shining, they are a city set on a hill, a light that has been light in a room and people see the Jesus in them, that these people are like Jesus, that is the last name given to believers, they are called Christians. It is the name given by those outside, these ones are like Jesus. Then the church has many "Jesus" in the locality, believers have been transformed, they are Christians. That is where church planting ends. 4

6 It has a community identity. We produced believers through the gospel, we are brothers through the Name, we are disciples through our obedience, we are church by our identity, and we are Christians by our lives. Those are the five initial designations that reveals the stages in the planting of the church. Some people to pray that our church planters will go and study this subject deeper. All that I am asking for is that we should at least do the work of church planting intelligently, that after gathering believers, that we don't just abandon them, let us enable them to become brothers, let us enable them becoming disciples, let them start working together until they have a common identity in the milieu where they live. Let's do the work and let's not produce church abortions. I would like a few people to pray. 5

Acts 6:1-8 King James Version August 6, 2017 International Bible Lesson Sunday August 6, 2017 Acts 6:1-8

Acts 6:1-8 King James Version August 6, 2017 The International Bible Lesson (Uniform Sunday School Lessons Series) for Sunday, August 6, 2017, is from Acts 6:1-8. Questions for Discussion and Thinking