 John Wimber - "Today's Carnal Church." | [ ] | 6312 Kb | 200 Downloads |
John Wimber, founder of the Vineyard movement, is a bit of a hero of mine. In fact, the more I think of it, the more I realize that at my core I'm a Vinyardian. John was a may who truly paid the price to walk intimately with his Lord. Evident in his preaching and teaching was a depth of humility that comes from someone who has truly encountered the living God. There was no pretense with John; he was real.
While I was staffing with YWAM in Brisbane I stumbled across an old cassette of John. On fist glance it seemed quite unremarkable: a plain cassette from some random pastors conference on an seemingly obscure topic. I'm surprised I even picked it up. Yet, I ended up listening to that tape probably 20-30 times. Seeing as it was so influential for me I'm going to post a few quotes over the next while that have stuck with me through the years. And if you're interested, I've uploaded the original message so you can hear it for yourself.
From "Today's Carnal Church."
Wan Carlos Autees said something once... “We had a church of 200 that didn't love each other. And then it grew, and then we had a church of 400 that didn't love each other. And when it got to 800 that didn't love each other I figured out there was something wrong”.
Are you hearing me? Wan was being invited to speak in his group everywhere at that time because he had a church of 800 that didn't love each other. So numbers became the focus. And what I find often as I'm dialoging with men today is I find a lot of profession about how much they love God and how earnest they are in seeking the Lord and how sincere they are in their commitment to Him and how focused they on doing the Lord's work, and just a lot of talk about it. And it may even be true in some cases, but I don't think very often it’s the fact.
What I've found out is that when a man runs into God, he gets quiet. He's so conscious of the unclean lips, the insincere heart, the eye that's wandered, the hands that are bloodied, that he doesn't have a lot to say. And I don't know if that’s a permanent state or not because I haven't into very many of those men, but it’s certainly been characteristic of what’s happened to us in our church. We used to talk a lot about how much we love the Lord. I think we love the Lord more now that we're not talking about it.
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