Ministry
All believers in Jesus Christ are ministers. [Ephesians 4] That means you, too.
What's Your Ministry?
Often someone is told what their ministry is or what its limitations are. The Bible does not limit you to the next greatest church training program. From the standpoint of people who tell you what your ministry could be, should be or what the scope is, often you are preached to about your limitations or herded through some system or inventory about your gifts. The Bible does not really tell you your limitations, but it leaves your choices wide open for you to be yourself. Often your ministry and gifts bring joy to you and benefit other people in the process. In order to motivate or activate people, some groups pressure their members along certain pathways of activity. But ministry, your real ministry, doesn't mean you have to go standing on a street corner, handing out leaflets or doing the next marketing program for God, or flying to Africa next week... unless that's your thing. What does ministry mean for you?.
That depends upon your interests, talents and what makes your heart sing.
Ministry Training Programs - Have you been told you are not you?
Ministry -- your ministry -- is not limited to the latest fad in canned teachings that tell you if you have gift x or y or any number of 12 types of gifting or personality. Maybe you have had the same experience as George:
George's passion was cooking. He loved to go out to different ethnic restaurants whenever he traveled on business to a new town. He'd try to guess the spices and special flavor profiles and then come home and try to duplicate or improve on them. At home, he did all the cooking and shopping. His wife was great with figures and numbers and accounting, and George was not. She worked as a local bookkeeper and was completing her accounting degree and about to sit for her license. Whenever a church event asked for volunteers, all the women were asked to bring baked goods or help cook the meal. Anita was great at the microwave, but her interest in cooking ended there. George was one of the best amateur chefs in his town, but the social pressure to divide labor into set roles, made it a woman's place to be in the home and the kitchen specifically. Since Anita was great with kids, her accounting expertise was invisible and not discouraged. George often catered events at the high school and for other secular groups. At church, George was encouraged to usher or help with parking, but his efforts to minister with his great gift were discouraged because the church to which he belonged had social limitations on what men were "supposed" to be doing, or in his case, not doing. It is a typical scenario where treasures in people that could benefit many, lie dormant waiting for release.
Part of exploration of your identity, is identity in Christ and in the world for your unique contribution.
Be careful if someone or a group to which you belong puts a box around who you are and what you can do that does not fit with your own experience. Don't let go of your dreams just because a group you are a part of does not support or encourage you in those dreams. Have you been encouraged to pursue and explore your dreams?
Exploring Your Own Ministry
You may have more to explore in terms of what ministry is and what type of ministry or contribution you can and want to do. When we met as a house church, even those who were new would come and do ministry. How? With loving encouragement of others doing ministry giving support to those who were newer.
Many people's confidence has been shaken by years of not being encouraged to be all that God created them to be, in terms of being equally valuable, not just as individual Christians, but as ministers.
There's a model of "church" in the protestant world that is extremely totalistic and authoritarian -- not life-giving --and has encouraged many people to be passive, abandon critical thinking. Hierarchical, top-down, totalitarianism or even "partial" totalitarianism can think it is wonderful because of some type of military precision model. But not every Christian is a subordinate to be submitted or a resource to be controlled or a soldier to be made battle ready in areas where there was no battle. Though if you try to make people into who they are not to serve your own purposes, some groups get caught up in the battle to make people fit their mold. Have you been caught in the cross fire?
It makes many people give up on their dreams, and eventually just come to fill a pew, get a weekly inspirational message, make a financial contribution and fulfill a role that is set out for them by other people playing their roles.
You have to think that Christ, in His simplicity and love, intended more for humanity than what many groups have been reduced to, however inspirational the message or charismatic the leader. You don't have to give up you to be loved by Christ and others, at least not if the others are healthy.
Take time to explore what energizes you and others. What do you love doing? What have you always wanted to do? Where do you spend the most time and thought? What do you collect, buy, save, think about? If you traveled or took a class, what would you want to do? Explore and take time to enjoy some of these things, and you may find something that is life giving to you and others, and that very well could be your ministry or part of your ministry.
Life Giving
Christianity is and was meant to be life-giving and health producing and good, not just for a small number of believers but for everyone. There are not two classes of Christians, one called leadership and the other called sheep or followers. Church is not just passive listening to an inspirational talk on periodic basis.
Church should not be a hierarchical pecking order system which encourages financial contribution on the one hand, and passivity on the other or the subservience of one group of believers to a smaller elite group of believers. There is much room for being lovingly submitted, one to another, without coercive control and subservience. You can serve and be responsive AND still be yourself in a healthy church that is life-giving.
That being said, the condition of many in God's Church today is that many people's hearts are broken from living in a fallen world where they have been sinned against -- hurt, wounded, abused and suffered "life's hurts" common to man -- and have had difficulty responding in a godly way. By "responding in a godly way," we mean that those experiences, what happened to us, and how we adapted to them can sometimes interfere with living life in God's commandment to love God with all our heart, and love our neighbor as ourselves. That "love our neighbor as ourselves" means we have kindness, goodness, gentleness and the other attributes of God's "love" towards ourselves as well.
Part of ministry, your ministry, is what contributes life and health to others and yourself. Some things tend to the way of depression, and are not health producing. Others tend the way to life. What moves toward life in what you think or do? What moves the other way? Noticing this will help you in your journey to evaluating activities and habits in others and yourself. Recovery from woundedness often includes examining what is life giving and what is death producing and distinguishing between the two. On that journey you may need to move past the rhetoric learned through groups that "told" you what was life and health and defined for you what was not. Others' definitions don't always match reality, and it takes time to observe what really has moved toward life and health.
What do you have in who God made you to be, in your interests and talents and gifts, that is life-giving to others?
Cookie Cutter Christianity
On the one hand, many churches, ministers and believers, attempting to help or teach on healing, have chosen a narrow method of dealing with trauma or hurt or recovery from the same, often wounding or hurting those who come for help. Many groups choose a "canned" explanation in biblical terminology that is made to sound reasonable but is way too "cookie cutter" and does not fit the needs of those who come for help. They have subordinated themselves to a "method" or "program" of healing. It serves to feed a false belief system of added "weights to grievous to bear" for those subject to them.
Love is responsive, helpful, kind and still has boundaries of right and wrong.
It could be a skill, an art, a way of writing, a service, a kindness - there are so many ways you can minister inside and outside of the church. You may know what this is for you, or you may not know yet, and you may need to experiment and try different things.
We encourage that.
Your fingerprints are unique, and even snowflakes are not the same, why should you be put in a box or two-week program of gifts and ministry training and then be defined by it?
Rest and Recovery
Be released in freedom to explore who God made you to be and what you love and what you contribute that is life giving. Maybe you have been part of the wounded, broken-hearted we mentioned before and all you want and need right now is rest. That is good, too. Take time to rest if you need, but don't get stuck hibernating and closing yourself off from the world. Put a foot back in the water of life and start exploring your ministry gifts at a pace comfortable for you.
Healing Hurts And Trusting Yourself
Fallout from hurts, traumas, betrayals, neglect, abuse and deception has left many 'walking wounded' in the Church, and others never wanting to set their feet inside a church again....and that includes believers who are apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, evangelists, elders, deacons, volunteers, worship team members, and more. Many people get wounded in groups called churches or ministries, because they present themselves as having "the" solution. We can go far astray if we don't stay humble and teachable.
Teachable does not mean that we cave to manipulative and abusive believers who control or exert undue influence, but it means we keep an open mind to evaluate and keep aware if the information which we have available to us for evaluation may be limited. We attempt to yield arrogance of having been "puffed up with knowledge" or education, to a heart and spirit that is open to look at new information. A mind that is made up under pressure has not had the freedom to breathe and evaluate. Be sure to give yourself the freedom and time to take a second or third look if your gut tells you there is something to re-evaluate.
Many ministers and ministries teach you that your "gut" feelings are opposite to God's will, and that can cause you to doubt yourself and evidence you may need to heed. Part of healing is recovering the trust in who God made you to be and your own ability to think, evaluate, and trust yourself and know your true limitations as opposed to unlearned helplessness often taught to make people more docile and able to be steered in the way a controlling leader or group might want them to go.
Trusting yourself is the opposite of what many churches teach, and yet let me give you a context in which this is permissible. God created you good, very good, and he gave you that gut, those instincts, those feelings. Although your feelins and thoughts can be influenced, they are not without merit, and should not be ignored or opposed as a matter of course. He loves you so very much, and you are of great value to God. Think of the intricacy of the human body, much more the soul and spirit... the spirit of who you are. God values and loves you, so you should be loved as well. Now this is not an encouragement to narcissism, but common decency and respect that you should heed your thougths and feelings and insights and give them good consideration, not just cast them down as if every thought is some kind of imagination to be cast down. Sometimes churches go overboard teaching self-abandonment and self-neglect. A group of self-neglected, unloved people is ripe for undue influence and control. That is something God never meant to happen, but every time you read about Pharisees, it is described in the Bible. A Pharisee system puts others down to exalt itself. It is okay to return to trusting yourself if you have long neglected your own value.
Jesus's healing of your broken heart was prophesied in Isaiah 61, and fulfilled in Luke 4. Now it's time you appropriate what Jesus came to do for you, but God does not do your part in receiving what He sent His Son to give you.
You may need some help for your heart if you have never had someone care for your spiritual heart and help you apply godly principles in becoming whole and free, and knowing and 'feeling' the love of God, understanding with your heart and not just your intellect. We invite you to come participate in the teaching, ministry and training at Engrafted Word. God loves you and He has meant for you to partake in all He's promised His beloved, such as you are!
What's Your Ministry?
Often someone is told what their ministry is or what its limitations are. The Bible does not limit you to the next greatest church training program. From the standpoint of people who tell you what your ministry could be, should be or what the scope is, often you are preached to about your limitations or herded through some system or inventory about your gifts. The Bible does not really tell you your limitations, but it leaves your choices wide open for you to be yourself. Often your ministry and gifts bring joy to you and benefit other people in the process. In order to motivate or activate people, some groups pressure their members along certain pathways of activity. But ministry, your real ministry, doesn't mean you have to go standing on a street corner, handing out leaflets or doing the next marketing program for God, or flying to Africa next week... unless that's your thing. What does ministry mean for you?.
That depends upon your interests, talents and what makes your heart sing.
Ministry Training Programs - Have you been told you are not you?
Ministry -- your ministry -- is not limited to the latest fad in canned teachings that tell you if you have gift x or y or any number of 12 types of gifting or personality. Maybe you have had the same experience as George:
George's passion was cooking. He loved to go out to different ethnic restaurants whenever he traveled on business to a new town. He'd try to guess the spices and special flavor profiles and then come home and try to duplicate or improve on them. At home, he did all the cooking and shopping. His wife was great with figures and numbers and accounting, and George was not. She worked as a local bookkeeper and was completing her accounting degree and about to sit for her license. Whenever a church event asked for volunteers, all the women were asked to bring baked goods or help cook the meal. Anita was great at the microwave, but her interest in cooking ended there. George was one of the best amateur chefs in his town, but the social pressure to divide labor into set roles, made it a woman's place to be in the home and the kitchen specifically. Since Anita was great with kids, her accounting expertise was invisible and not discouraged. George often catered events at the high school and for other secular groups. At church, George was encouraged to usher or help with parking, but his efforts to minister with his great gift were discouraged because the church to which he belonged had social limitations on what men were "supposed" to be doing, or in his case, not doing. It is a typical scenario where treasures in people that could benefit many, lie dormant waiting for release.
Part of exploration of your identity, is identity in Christ and in the world for your unique contribution.
Be careful if someone or a group to which you belong puts a box around who you are and what you can do that does not fit with your own experience. Don't let go of your dreams just because a group you are a part of does not support or encourage you in those dreams. Have you been encouraged to pursue and explore your dreams?
Exploring Your Own Ministry
You may have more to explore in terms of what ministry is and what type of ministry or contribution you can and want to do. When we met as a house church, even those who were new would come and do ministry. How? With loving encouragement of others doing ministry giving support to those who were newer.
Many people's confidence has been shaken by years of not being encouraged to be all that God created them to be, in terms of being equally valuable, not just as individual Christians, but as ministers.
There's a model of "church" in the protestant world that is extremely totalistic and authoritarian -- not life-giving --and has encouraged many people to be passive, abandon critical thinking. Hierarchical, top-down, totalitarianism or even "partial" totalitarianism can think it is wonderful because of some type of military precision model. But not every Christian is a subordinate to be submitted or a resource to be controlled or a soldier to be made battle ready in areas where there was no battle. Though if you try to make people into who they are not to serve your own purposes, some groups get caught up in the battle to make people fit their mold. Have you been caught in the cross fire?
It makes many people give up on their dreams, and eventually just come to fill a pew, get a weekly inspirational message, make a financial contribution and fulfill a role that is set out for them by other people playing their roles.
You have to think that Christ, in His simplicity and love, intended more for humanity than what many groups have been reduced to, however inspirational the message or charismatic the leader. You don't have to give up you to be loved by Christ and others, at least not if the others are healthy.
Take time to explore what energizes you and others. What do you love doing? What have you always wanted to do? Where do you spend the most time and thought? What do you collect, buy, save, think about? If you traveled or took a class, what would you want to do? Explore and take time to enjoy some of these things, and you may find something that is life giving to you and others, and that very well could be your ministry or part of your ministry.
Life Giving
Christianity is and was meant to be life-giving and health producing and good, not just for a small number of believers but for everyone. There are not two classes of Christians, one called leadership and the other called sheep or followers. Church is not just passive listening to an inspirational talk on periodic basis.
Church should not be a hierarchical pecking order system which encourages financial contribution on the one hand, and passivity on the other or the subservience of one group of believers to a smaller elite group of believers. There is much room for being lovingly submitted, one to another, without coercive control and subservience. You can serve and be responsive AND still be yourself in a healthy church that is life-giving.
That being said, the condition of many in God's Church today is that many people's hearts are broken from living in a fallen world where they have been sinned against -- hurt, wounded, abused and suffered "life's hurts" common to man -- and have had difficulty responding in a godly way. By "responding in a godly way," we mean that those experiences, what happened to us, and how we adapted to them can sometimes interfere with living life in God's commandment to love God with all our heart, and love our neighbor as ourselves. That "love our neighbor as ourselves" means we have kindness, goodness, gentleness and the other attributes of God's "love" towards ourselves as well.
Part of ministry, your ministry, is what contributes life and health to others and yourself. Some things tend to the way of depression, and are not health producing. Others tend the way to life. What moves toward life in what you think or do? What moves the other way? Noticing this will help you in your journey to evaluating activities and habits in others and yourself. Recovery from woundedness often includes examining what is life giving and what is death producing and distinguishing between the two. On that journey you may need to move past the rhetoric learned through groups that "told" you what was life and health and defined for you what was not. Others' definitions don't always match reality, and it takes time to observe what really has moved toward life and health.
What do you have in who God made you to be, in your interests and talents and gifts, that is life-giving to others?
Cookie Cutter Christianity
On the one hand, many churches, ministers and believers, attempting to help or teach on healing, have chosen a narrow method of dealing with trauma or hurt or recovery from the same, often wounding or hurting those who come for help. Many groups choose a "canned" explanation in biblical terminology that is made to sound reasonable but is way too "cookie cutter" and does not fit the needs of those who come for help. They have subordinated themselves to a "method" or "program" of healing. It serves to feed a false belief system of added "weights to grievous to bear" for those subject to them.
Love is responsive, helpful, kind and still has boundaries of right and wrong.
It could be a skill, an art, a way of writing, a service, a kindness - there are so many ways you can minister inside and outside of the church. You may know what this is for you, or you may not know yet, and you may need to experiment and try different things.
We encourage that.
Your fingerprints are unique, and even snowflakes are not the same, why should you be put in a box or two-week program of gifts and ministry training and then be defined by it?
Rest and Recovery
Be released in freedom to explore who God made you to be and what you love and what you contribute that is life giving. Maybe you have been part of the wounded, broken-hearted we mentioned before and all you want and need right now is rest. That is good, too. Take time to rest if you need, but don't get stuck hibernating and closing yourself off from the world. Put a foot back in the water of life and start exploring your ministry gifts at a pace comfortable for you.
Healing Hurts And Trusting Yourself
Fallout from hurts, traumas, betrayals, neglect, abuse and deception has left many 'walking wounded' in the Church, and others never wanting to set their feet inside a church again....and that includes believers who are apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, evangelists, elders, deacons, volunteers, worship team members, and more. Many people get wounded in groups called churches or ministries, because they present themselves as having "the" solution. We can go far astray if we don't stay humble and teachable.
Teachable does not mean that we cave to manipulative and abusive believers who control or exert undue influence, but it means we keep an open mind to evaluate and keep aware if the information which we have available to us for evaluation may be limited. We attempt to yield arrogance of having been "puffed up with knowledge" or education, to a heart and spirit that is open to look at new information. A mind that is made up under pressure has not had the freedom to breathe and evaluate. Be sure to give yourself the freedom and time to take a second or third look if your gut tells you there is something to re-evaluate.
Many ministers and ministries teach you that your "gut" feelings are opposite to God's will, and that can cause you to doubt yourself and evidence you may need to heed. Part of healing is recovering the trust in who God made you to be and your own ability to think, evaluate, and trust yourself and know your true limitations as opposed to unlearned helplessness often taught to make people more docile and able to be steered in the way a controlling leader or group might want them to go.
Trusting yourself is the opposite of what many churches teach, and yet let me give you a context in which this is permissible. God created you good, very good, and he gave you that gut, those instincts, those feelings. Although your feelins and thoughts can be influenced, they are not without merit, and should not be ignored or opposed as a matter of course. He loves you so very much, and you are of great value to God. Think of the intricacy of the human body, much more the soul and spirit... the spirit of who you are. God values and loves you, so you should be loved as well. Now this is not an encouragement to narcissism, but common decency and respect that you should heed your thougths and feelings and insights and give them good consideration, not just cast them down as if every thought is some kind of imagination to be cast down. Sometimes churches go overboard teaching self-abandonment and self-neglect. A group of self-neglected, unloved people is ripe for undue influence and control. That is something God never meant to happen, but every time you read about Pharisees, it is described in the Bible. A Pharisee system puts others down to exalt itself. It is okay to return to trusting yourself if you have long neglected your own value.
Jesus's healing of your broken heart was prophesied in Isaiah 61, and fulfilled in Luke 4. Now it's time you appropriate what Jesus came to do for you, but God does not do your part in receiving what He sent His Son to give you.
You may need some help for your heart if you have never had someone care for your spiritual heart and help you apply godly principles in becoming whole and free, and knowing and 'feeling' the love of God, understanding with your heart and not just your intellect. We invite you to come participate in the teaching, ministry and training at Engrafted Word. God loves you and He has meant for you to partake in all He's promised His beloved, such as you are!
PERSONAL MINISTRY
We do personal ministry, but emphasize that you are equals with us and co-ministers as well. We are interested in you, and interested in encouraging you to overcome the things which are interfering with - and possibly preventing - you from doing the things God's called you to do. Why? Because we believe every believer is a minister. Over time our style and method of ministry has changed as we have seen how programs of ministry often put someone in a situation where the person ministered to is one-down or ends up performing for the minister or to the ministry programs' expectations.
Ministry has to do with your spirit and your soul and your body. It is dealing directly with the issues of life with respect to God's plan and design for you to live in His love, and flourish in your gifts and callings. Personal ministry is a more personal version of what we teach openly here, but often group ministry is as effective, since you get more time in the Word and understanding how it applies to issues of life, and you can listen to the teaching at your own pace.
We are also not afraid of change here. If we find that we are barking up the wrong tree or not doing work that builds you up and gives life, then we are open to learning and growing.
What we are teaching today may be elementary, as we, too, are growing up in God and in maturity and hopefully, in love.
Partake of the resources available at Engrafted Word and other ministries and churches where God directs and leads you. Feel free to dialogue with us.
You also get comprehensive ministry with others if you come to the live church teaching. Listening to other people's questions on the conference calls, helps you, since there is nothing new under the sun.
Group prayer and ministry is extremely effective when you cooperate with God and your heart is in doing things His way. So you have a desire to apply God's Word in perspective and context, and in His love. We do not present ourselves as the only teaching or ministry that is helpful, there are many other caring ministries that have different ways of teaching and ministering. Imperfect people in a challenging world.
You can begin now by taking time to ask God to help orchestrate your life so that you are provided with the opportunities to grow and flourish in his design for you and to show you how to remove what is stopping the flow of His love and blessing. Feel free to contact us and ask questions. It is our hope that everything we do in personal ministry will be eventually be available on this site for self study at your own pace. We don't need you dependent upon us.
LIVE CHURCH MINISTRY
Come join us for Live Church on the first or second Monday of every month. We are on a hiatus until the Fall of 2019 while we update current resources, produce new ones and transition our print resources and some of our media.
We sometimes schedule this on the second (or third) monday of the month, so it is best to check the home page and the Live Church page for details the week before the next scheduled Church session. The phone numbers and access codes are given to those who are on the newsletter subscription list, and we recently just started publishing them directly on the site. If you click the Live Church menu, you will find out how to access church via telephone. Please also subscribe to our newsletter which comes out once or twice a month. In the newsletter you will get news of what is up, helpful articles on scripture and practical applications, and invitations to attend ministry sessions, training and other church events including when we have guest speakers. Most church conferences include group deliverance and prayer for healing. Others encourage you in your ministry. We believe ministers are leaders who serve others in love, preach the gospel and encourage you to do the same. We believe in love, not control, but that also means we're sometimes direct, and we sometimes say no, and we sometimes do not agree with everything said by everyone. Our hearts desire is that you are shepherded by God's love. As we said, live church takes place on the first monday of every month, but sometimes there is a schedule change, so please check each month to be sure of the date.
HEALING FOR TODAY
Although we have been ministering healing and prayer since 1993, and doing personal ministrysince the late 1990's, we did not begin teaching online until 2006. Since 2006, we've conducted one or two 13-22 week series of Healing Today per year, transitioning to once a year in late 2015. You actually are already a minister. It's our heart to encourage you as you figure out how that works practically. Each year it seems there is so much we want to get across in a few 'short' weeks, and are looking into making the teaching more accessible 24x7 online.
The curriculum series has always had a 'personal' touch to it, since each year's series is geared to the attendees. In 2016 and 2017 we made part of the teaching more openly accessible on Mondays through live church, which anyone can attend, anywhere via live conference call. We've had large groups, and also many smaller ones over the years. The smaller groups allow individual attention and teaching specific to the issues of the lives of those who attend. What's covered in a 22 week series is equivalent to a year or more of personal ministry. The Saturday portion of the teaching and ministry sometimes requires advance registration. Participants are encouraged, but not required, to attend all sessions. 2019 will see some welcome changes. Be blessed and stay tuned.
We do personal ministry, but emphasize that you are equals with us and co-ministers as well. We are interested in you, and interested in encouraging you to overcome the things which are interfering with - and possibly preventing - you from doing the things God's called you to do. Why? Because we believe every believer is a minister. Over time our style and method of ministry has changed as we have seen how programs of ministry often put someone in a situation where the person ministered to is one-down or ends up performing for the minister or to the ministry programs' expectations.
Ministry has to do with your spirit and your soul and your body. It is dealing directly with the issues of life with respect to God's plan and design for you to live in His love, and flourish in your gifts and callings. Personal ministry is a more personal version of what we teach openly here, but often group ministry is as effective, since you get more time in the Word and understanding how it applies to issues of life, and you can listen to the teaching at your own pace.
We are also not afraid of change here. If we find that we are barking up the wrong tree or not doing work that builds you up and gives life, then we are open to learning and growing.
What we are teaching today may be elementary, as we, too, are growing up in God and in maturity and hopefully, in love.
Partake of the resources available at Engrafted Word and other ministries and churches where God directs and leads you. Feel free to dialogue with us.
You also get comprehensive ministry with others if you come to the live church teaching. Listening to other people's questions on the conference calls, helps you, since there is nothing new under the sun.
Group prayer and ministry is extremely effective when you cooperate with God and your heart is in doing things His way. So you have a desire to apply God's Word in perspective and context, and in His love. We do not present ourselves as the only teaching or ministry that is helpful, there are many other caring ministries that have different ways of teaching and ministering. Imperfect people in a challenging world.
You can begin now by taking time to ask God to help orchestrate your life so that you are provided with the opportunities to grow and flourish in his design for you and to show you how to remove what is stopping the flow of His love and blessing. Feel free to contact us and ask questions. It is our hope that everything we do in personal ministry will be eventually be available on this site for self study at your own pace. We don't need you dependent upon us.
LIVE CHURCH MINISTRY
Come join us for Live Church on the first or second Monday of every month. We are on a hiatus until the Fall of 2019 while we update current resources, produce new ones and transition our print resources and some of our media.
We sometimes schedule this on the second (or third) monday of the month, so it is best to check the home page and the Live Church page for details the week before the next scheduled Church session. The phone numbers and access codes are given to those who are on the newsletter subscription list, and we recently just started publishing them directly on the site. If you click the Live Church menu, you will find out how to access church via telephone. Please also subscribe to our newsletter which comes out once or twice a month. In the newsletter you will get news of what is up, helpful articles on scripture and practical applications, and invitations to attend ministry sessions, training and other church events including when we have guest speakers. Most church conferences include group deliverance and prayer for healing. Others encourage you in your ministry. We believe ministers are leaders who serve others in love, preach the gospel and encourage you to do the same. We believe in love, not control, but that also means we're sometimes direct, and we sometimes say no, and we sometimes do not agree with everything said by everyone. Our hearts desire is that you are shepherded by God's love. As we said, live church takes place on the first monday of every month, but sometimes there is a schedule change, so please check each month to be sure of the date.
HEALING FOR TODAY
Although we have been ministering healing and prayer since 1993, and doing personal ministrysince the late 1990's, we did not begin teaching online until 2006. Since 2006, we've conducted one or two 13-22 week series of Healing Today per year, transitioning to once a year in late 2015. You actually are already a minister. It's our heart to encourage you as you figure out how that works practically. Each year it seems there is so much we want to get across in a few 'short' weeks, and are looking into making the teaching more accessible 24x7 online.
The curriculum series has always had a 'personal' touch to it, since each year's series is geared to the attendees. In 2016 and 2017 we made part of the teaching more openly accessible on Mondays through live church, which anyone can attend, anywhere via live conference call. We've had large groups, and also many smaller ones over the years. The smaller groups allow individual attention and teaching specific to the issues of the lives of those who attend. What's covered in a 22 week series is equivalent to a year or more of personal ministry. The Saturday portion of the teaching and ministry sometimes requires advance registration. Participants are encouraged, but not required, to attend all sessions. 2019 will see some welcome changes. Be blessed and stay tuned.