PRAYERS THAT WILL ASSASSINATE THE ENEMY
• I confess that I am a child of God.
• I declare that I’m born again by the finished work of the cross of Jesus Christ.
• I am the head and not the tail, in the name of Jesus.
• Devil, today and tomorrow and forever I’m reigning with Christ, seated in the heavenly places.
• Satan, listen to me. My body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, in the name of Jesus.
• Today my life is hidden in Christ that I should live and not die. I will declare the works of the Lord forever, in Jesus’ mighty name.
• Today I will see the goodness of the Lord upon my life, my family, my ministry, my purpose, and my destiny in the land of the living.
• My authority and my identity live in Christ Jesus, my Lord and my Savior.
• I confess I have been made to overcome, triumph, and win every fight, every battle, and every war in Christ Jesus, my King, my Lord, and my Savior. Amen.
• Yesterday, today, and tomorrow no weapon formed against me will prosper. Every demonic war, battle, and fight, and every tongue that speaks against my purpose, my destiny, and my season will be burned by the fire of the Holy Spirit, in Jesus’ unmatchable name. Amen.

• Bishops are simply guardians (episkopoi), not high-church officials.
• Pastors are caretakers (poimen), not professional pulpiteers.
• Ministers are busboys (diakonos), not clergymen.
• Elders are wise old men (presbuteros), not ecclesiastical officers.

The Institutional Paradigm thrusts “ordinary” Christians out of the “Holy of Holies” and chains them to a pew.

Recovering the organic expression of the church and the practical headship of Jesus Christ necessitates that we forsake our ecclesiastical patches and Band-Aids.

In a word, the denominational system has fragmented the one body of Christ by religious partisanship. It has alienated the family of God into separate tribes. It has disintegrated the fabric of our spiritual brotherhood and sisterhood into an endless morass of religious parties. It has fractured the fellowship of God’s people. It has slashed the body of Christ into pieces. It has carved the church into splintered fragments. It has spawned thousands of warring clans out of the one family of Christ. (Shockingly, there are more than thirty-three thousand Christian denominations on the planet today.) In a word, the contemporary denominational morass has polluted the Christian landscape.

The sin of heresy [Greek: hairesis] is the act of choosing to follow one’s own tenets. So a person can be a heretic with the truth if he uses it to fracture the body of Christ. A person can be technically “orthodox” and yet be a “heretic” by using an orthodox belief to divide Christians from one another.

Every church born within the first seventeen years of Pentecost was spawned from the Jerusalem church. But these new churches had neither a formal nor a subservient relationship to the church in Jerusalem. In this regard, the New Testament always envisions autonomous (independent), but fraternally related, churches. The early churches made their decisions apart from external control. It is for this reason that Paul admonishes the assemblies he worked with to take charge of their own internal problems.

To be more specific, all the Christians in a local assembly are called to
• be devoted to one another (Rom. 12:10)
• honor one another (Rom. 12:10)
• live in harmony with one another (Rom. 12:16; 1 Peter 3:8)
• love one another (Rom. 13:8; 1 Thess. 4:9; 1 Peter 1:22; 1 John 3:11)
• edify one another (Rom. 14:19; 1 Thess. 5:11b)
• accept one another (Rom. 15:7)
• instruct one another (Rom. 15:14)
• greet one another (Rom. 16:16)
• agree with one another (1 Cor. 1:10)
• discipline fallen members (1 Cor. 5:3–5; 6:1–6)
• organize the church’s affairs (1 Cor. 11:33–34; 14:39–40; 16:2–3)
• care for one another (1 Cor. 12:25)
• prophesy one by one (1 Cor. 14:31)
• abound in the work of the Lord (1 Cor. 15:58)
• serve one another (Gal. 5:13)
• bear one another’s burdens (Gal. 6:2)
• bear with one another (Eph. 4:2)
• be kind and compassionate to one another (Eph. 4:32)
• speak to one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs (Eph. 5:19)
• submit to one another (Eph. 5:21)
• forgive one another (Col. 3:13)
• teach one another (Col. 3:16)
• admonish one another (Col. 3:16)
• encourage one another (1 Thess. 5:11)
• warn the unruly (1 Thess. 5:14)
• comfort the feeble (1 Thess. 5:14)
• support the weak (1 Thess. 5:14)
• exhort one another (Heb. 3:13; 10:25)
• incite one another to love and good works (Heb. 10:24)
• pray for one another (James 5:16)
• confess sins to one another (James 5:16)
• offer hospitality to one another (1 Peter 4:9)
• be humble toward one another (1 Peter 5:5)
• fellowship with one another (1 John 1:7)

Paul told the elders in Ephesus to follow his example. That example was not to take money from God’s people, but instead, to work for a living and give to their needs.

In short, the Bible unshakably demonstrates that a plurality of elders oversaw the activity of the early churches. No church in the first century had a single leader. Consequently, the commonly accepted notion of sola pastora (single pastor) is at odds with the New Testament. The Bible knows nothing of a person who stands at the helm of a local church, directs its affairs, preaches to it every Sunday, conducts its baptisms, represents it in the world, officiates its Communion (or Lord’s Supper), blesses civic events, marries the living, and buries the dead. No such person exists in the entire New Testament.

In short, the modern clergy system is far removed from the thought of God. It puts the living, breathing organism of the church into an Old Testament straightjacket. Many are benevolent dictators. Some are spiritual tyrants with a Machiavellian quest for power who imprison and freeze the life of their congregations.

From the viewpoint of God’s eternal purpose, the church exists to be
• the incarnation and manifestation of the ultimate passion of God
• the organic expression and physical extension of the Trinitarian Community
• the corporate image-bearer of the Lord Jesus Christ on the earth
• the family of God
• the divine building whereby every living stone is being transformed, reshaped, and fitted together to form the Lord’s temple
• the colonial outpost of the coming kingdom
• the masterpiece of God
• the spiritual “Bethany” where Jesus of Nazareth is received, obeyed, and adored in the midst of a rejecting world
• the vessel in which the power of Christ’s resurrection life is visibly displayed
• the object of God’s supreme affection and delight
• the willing vehicle for Christ’s manifested presence
• the torchbearer of the testimony of Jesus
• the “one new man”—the new species—the “third race”
• the fiancée of Jesus Christ—His very body, His very bride
• the new humanity marked out in the Son of God before time and brought into existence by His cross
• the Christian’s native habitat
• the spiritual environment where face-to-face encounters between the bride and Bridegroom take place
• the living witness to the fullness and headship of God’s Son
• the colony from heaven that bears the image of its Ruler

“Christ did not die just to save us from sins, but to bring us together into community. After coming to Christ, our next step is to be involved in community. A church that does not experience community is a parody, a sham.” - Gilbert Bilezikian

A Woman. There is also a woman in Genesis 1. But she is hidden. She doesn’t make her appearance until Genesis 2. Where is the woman hidden? She is hidden inside the man. In Genesis 2, God puts Adam into a deep sleep and takes a woman out of him.

I can imagine all the Christians who specialized in perfect doctrine passing out after they discover who made it into the kingdom. Angels will be running around all over the place with smelling salts to wake them up!

When the church is functioning according to its nature, it offers
• interdependence instead of independence
• wholeness instead of fragmentation
• participation instead of spectatorship
• connectedness instead of isolation
• solidarity instead of individualism
• spontaneity instead of institutionalization
• relationship instead of programs
• servitude instead of dominance
• enrichment instead of insecurity
• freedom instead of bondage
• community instead of corporation
• bonding instead of detachment.

The church often bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the dysfunctional family. There is the authoritarian presence of the minister—the professional who knows all of the answers and calls most of the shots—whom few ever challenge either because they don’t dare to or because they feel it would do no good if they did. There is the outward camaraderie and inward loneliness of the congregation. There are the unspoken rules and hidden agendas, the doubts and disagreements that for propriety’s sake are kept more or less under cover. There are people with all sorts of enthusiasms and creativities which are not often enough made use of or even recognized because the tendency is not to rock the boat but to keep on doing things the way they have always been done. -Frederick Buechner

For far too long, historians have accepted the claim that the conversion of the Emperor Constantine (ca. 285–337) caused the triumph of Christianity. To the contrary, he destroyed its most attractive and dynamic aspects, turning a high-intensity, grassroots movement into an arrogant institution controlled by an elite who often managed to be both brutal and lax.… Constantine’s “favor” was his decision to divert to the Christians the massive state funding on which the pagan temples had always depended. Overnight, Christianity became “the most-favoured recipient of the near limitless resources of imperial favors.” A faith that had been meeting in humble structures was suddenly housed in magnificent public buildings—the new church of Saint Peter in Rome was modeled on the basilican form used for imperial throne halls.

In Numbers 11, we have the first appearance of clericalism in the Bible. Two servants of the Lord, Eldad and Medad, received God’s Spirit and began to prophesy (vv. 26–27). In hasty response, a young zealot urged Moses to “restrain them” (v. 28 NASB). Moses reproved the young suppressor, saying that all God’s people should receive the Spirit and prophesy.

First, the notion that a clergyman has the authority to “allow” or “forbid” his fellow brethren to function in a gathering of God’s people is built on a skewed understanding of authority.
Second, the assumption that chaos would ensue if clerical control were removed betrays a lack of confidence in the Holy Spirit.
Third, the idea that the church meeting would turn into a tumultuous free-for-all is simply not true.

Note that the only way that Christ can be properly expressed is if every member of a church freely supplies that aspect of the Lord that he or she has received. Make no mistake about it: The Lord Jesus cannot be fully disclosed through only one member. He is far too rich for that (Eph. 3:8).

The New Testament church meeting depended entirely upon the headship of Jesus Christ. Christ was fully preeminent. He was its center and its circumference. He set the agenda and directed what took place. Although His leading was invisible to the naked eye, He was clearly the guiding agent.