by Chris Welch on Monday, 24 January 2011 at 15:22
1 And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying , 2 Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel, prophesy , and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD unto the shepherds ; Woe be to the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves! should not the shepherds feed the flocks?
This is a bit Steve McVey. Nothing wrong in that though.
I think we are clear that the outer context of this passage has changed. It has changed since I was a Christian in a Baptist Church too. But the demon spirit lives on, and operates in current situations.
Let's specify the obvious sort of things Watchman Nee, followed by Norman Grubb would have said.
The Christian Life is about my death and resurrection in Christ, 2000 years ago. The New Covenant is not a set of even more stringent laws for those who found the Old Covenant Laws boring. The New Covenant is about our total inability to keep those laws, and in our despair to realise that God has thought of all this ahead of time, and
plunged us into His death, then bound us up with Himself in a resurrection exactly like unto His. If we call upon the Name of the Lord we will be saved. But this "savedness" is nothing like you hear preached in most churches. It's HUUUUUGE. It has connected you with the centre of everything big time...GOD HIMSELF and the central plans for this Earth.It is now nolonger you that live, but Christ who lives within you.
The ministry gifts are placed into the Body of Christ to implant this message into you. You may say, well, I've just read it. But God's words are Spirit and Life, and when transmitted either directly to you from Himself, or via Holy Spirit gifted servants, they will change your life completely from the inside out. Jesus said in John 4, from now on it is about worship in Spirit and Truth. if it's not true and real for you yet, you need just to hang around the Body of Christ a bit.
I feel challenged about this whole pastor/shepherd area.
There are naturally caring people around. They are nurturers.It is natural for them to gather people around them, make sure they are OK. This is not the Holy Spirit gifting of pastor. It may use some of these aspects. But any ministry in the Spirit does the above work: getting people to see WHO they are in Christ....that it is Christ in them as them, and how the faith life operates.
When I see sheep wandering.....I don't care if they are supposedly in a particular church, under this mythical delusion of a pastor pyramid....I just "see" the wandering and like Jesus looking over Jerusalem, grieve.
verse 6 My sheep wandered through all the mountains, and upon every high hill: yea, my flock was scattered upon all the face of the earth, and none did search or seek after them.
So Ezekiel 34 in our current context is sheep wandering around lost, uncared for, whether "outwardly" they are in a great stadium church, or here in a good church like Havant.
People who have had Christ implanted in them properly do not wander. They have definition. Purpose. Strength. God's vision. They are properly knit into the Spirit-built Body of Christ......and not necessarily, as the Apostolic Network Pyramids used to preach....knit into some outward structure that everyone can stand back and marvel at , saying "Wow, this Terry Virgo fella builds great networks....or this Gerald Coates geeza sure makes trendy housechurches with disco lights an' all!." Outwardly, a lot of times it could be a mess. Like Jesus' operation during the Cross weekend. Or the first church at Jerusalem, when the Jews blasted it to smithereens. Now in the Spirit, this was always bang on cue. This is the genuine church being formed in different outward manifestations.
Makes no sense to someone who thinks in bricks and mortar and Pastor pyramids.
A shepherd gets Christ into folk, then moves on to fresh folk....or whatever else Christ is doing through him or her.
Verse 2 above is disturbing and the demon spirit lives on.
This is an "office " of shepherd. Paid. Actually paid well. You can't take the analogy too far, because I don't think any shepherds are actually doing a Hannibal Lecter, and eating the people.
The abuses of the Anglican church were so clear, that the1800s Brethren denomination reacted totally and forbade paid ministry. Everyone held down a job. It was making law, what St Paul did voluntarily to give him complete freedom to work unfunded in new areas.
Are we there again?
Paid ministry , like the unscriptural positioning of ONE pastor over a Body of people is self-perpetuating, in the same way that we all employ people in Brussels to frame new laws, then complain at the amount of laws.
Like that's what we paid them to do, dummies!!!! So they don't shirk their work and frame laws!!!!
Pastors have to think what they do next to justify being paid. They also cannot allow for any other ministries alongside, because some Pyramid apostle has installed them at the head of a local pyramid, and to do anything else would be disrespectful!!!!
You have not so learned Christ!
True pastors
There are pastors all over the place in the Body of Christ.
Most of them shut out from operating. Thankfully the Spirit of the Lord is now speaking Ezekiel 34 all over the Earth, getting us to wait upon Him for the wineskins of the church. A church, every church, raised up in the Spirit has loads of pastors, who pastor naturally. UK history is littered with abuse of power according to this scripture.
For example let's name a place. The King's Church High Wycombe shut down Mr Cain, who in turn was more or less forced to set up the independant church Shalom. Shame on you King's Church.
The King's Church High Wycombe shut down a beautiful house group of quite a size under Mr Ron Knight. Many were so bruised they never attended church again. If any of you know me, then you know Ron. Ron never built around himself, he built us into Jesus. If any of you consider me to know anything in Jesus, know that I was privileged to be squeezed into Ron's life during my teenage. And it was he, 40 years ago that was teaching us about Christ in me. Everyone else was teaching about "things that you do" to grow. He was teaching WHO we believe , in order to grow. So once agin King's Church, shame on you. And as I have never been connected with you, I say quite impartially, I hope this goes into all the world about you. Now deal with God about it.
True pastors have the Spirit blueprint of the building - in their heart
Psalm 85:
5 How blessed is the man whose (H)strength is in You,
In whose heart are the (I)highways to Zion!
6Passing through the valley of [a]Baca they make it a spring;
The (J)early rain also covers it with blessings.
Compare verse 6 above with Ezekiel 34: 26 And I will make them and the places round about my hill a blessing; and I will cause the shower to come down in his season; there shall be showers of blessing. 27 And the tree of the field shall yield her fruit, and the earth shall yield her increase, and they shall be safe in their land, and shall know that I am the LORD, when I have broken the bands of their yoke, and delivered them out of the hand of those that served themselves of them.
Ezekiel 34 :4 says ......neither have ye sought that which was lost ; but with force and with cruelty have ye ruled them.
The situation i recently found myself in where leaders tried to step in to correct a rift was handled so badly it caused me to really listen to the Spirit to see what was going on.
While it was going on the leaders did not contact us, keep us in the picture. The friend who still gets depression quite badly could have topped herself....we just did not know. You can read my findings here:
http://080808onnowto.blogspot.com/2010/11/ocd-church-believing-yourself-into.html
So in this situation it wasn't that NOTHING was being done
it was that a person's life was being addressed by committee
without direct heart contact in it all.
This then opened my eys to the whole operation.
Shepherds are shepherds from the heart. But not just compassion for people. That's just a common human trait, strongest in the caring folk among us. Shepherds have an internal map of the Kingdom in their heart.
They don't preach the New Testament as if its just a fresh lawbook....something grittier to get your teeth into. The WORD they impart, which is the New Covenant Word of Christ living His life as us is so powerful
that over time we see a Romans 8 kind of result....a bit of "all creation waiting until the sons come into their own" and we see a small part of creation turn around.
The Fake law gospel doesn't turn any keys in the lock. There is no outside mirror effect. When the Word happens, when true shepherds flow, the end result is showers of blessing....trees of fruitfulness.All these centuries Israel has not blossomed. When the Jews returned, there was a turnabout naturally. I know this is only a start.
When the community at Darmstadt showed me around, I gazed at some redeemed features. This is only a start.
We can't fake that bit.
Also we can't fake when sheep are meandering all over the place in depression and sickness....this cannot be covered over, or explained away.....this is the result of Ezekiel 34 poor shepherding. The demon spirit of torment lives on.
It's time to be defined church. Accept no lower standards.
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Cheryl Lowry, Paula MakeSparkles Chambers, Cindi Estep and 2 others like this..
André van der Merwe Loved this Chris, thanks for tagging me!
24 January at 15:36 · LikeUnlike.Chris Welch thx...it's so great to get feedback....and so fast
24 January at 15:37 · LikeUnlike.André van der Merwe Like me, I could sense you'd also been hurt and lied to by religion in your life.
Your words ring true and clear in my heat!
24 January at 15:40 · LikeUnlike.Nancy Gilmore ... a voice crying in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord.
24 January at 16:24 · LikeUnlike.Chris Welch Probably the big thing capital T is to sell all you have for the 70s move of God only to learn it was only the "young man"stage.Hopefully more the hurt somethong positive is co£ming thru .Another book alerted me to the fact that Song of Sol...omon could have 3 people in it.Jesus,the Shulammite and organisational religion.It seems Galations shows we have to be hurt to learn Spirit maturity. Abraham had to go thru the Hagar incident to be fully clear on the child of promise.Other Christians have wanted to pray for my" hurt", but I think it's just the pain of learning the True from the false.It offends other believers....but I think this mountain bounding hind life of Christ is offensive.....it's so bloomin free it shouldn't be allowed in a world system of devil control!!!! Hey.....they say..you're not in chains...something must be wrong!See more
24 January at 16:32 · LikeUnlike.Nancy Gilmore I remember the beginnings of the father's outworking in me, as me, and I heard the Lord saying very clearly; "You hate my plan for your life, but not a sparrow falls that I didn't will it."
24 January at 18:25 · LikeUnlike · 1 personLoading....Cathy Rheeder Shoo thanx chris,Nancy,andre,i identify with u all,greatful for sharing,been there.
24 January at 20:19 · LikeUnlike · 1 personLoading....Chris Welch Nancy...great input today.Cathy thanks,you know I have trouble with Kobus....could be he has too many peeps....or hjis securitu settings are set to fortress!!!
24 January at 21:19 · LikeUnlike · 1 personLoading....Allison Choice Good morning Merrill, thanks for the mornimg bread Thy good and faithful Shepard.
25 January at 13:45 · LikeUnlike.Julie Willcox Yey!
25 January at 21:42 · LikeUnlike.Chris Welch hi Allison and Hi Julie
Shepherding-Three Spirit definitions
.by Chris Welch on Saturday, 29 January 2011 at 12:32.In a comment to Paul Anderson Walsh who is looking into shepherding as we see it now:
The three principles laid into me on shepherding are:
1. it's some sort of supernatural outworking of this scripture in Isaiah32:1-2.Behold, a (A)king (Jesus and not some sort of network pyramid apostle or pope) will reign righteously
...And princes will rule justly.2 Each will be like a (B)refuge from the wind And a shelter from the storm,......
And it ain't someone dividing a church into lists of 12 names and calling them housegroups!!!!
2. It's Joseph,the surrogate Dad of Jesus,who takes all the flack but it never is HIS Son
3.Jesus Words some are born eunuchs, some become eunuchs,some make themselves eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom of God. Again a eunuch takes care of the Bride....but there's no question of "false reproduction en route." A denomination is where there is "false reproduction en route" Something other than just Christ is reproducing at the same time like a virus, that clings to the work of God to make it impotent.
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Brian Mirte Longridge wow, love this, thank you Chris, especially the part "refuge from the wind and a shelter from the storm" in the midst of such chaos and brokenness, a place where people should want to flock to where they do not feel used, abused, manipulated and can learn to trust again and truly live.......
29 January at 15:02 · LikeUnlike.Chris Welch Brian this was the vision of the Fisherfolk Community.If you have not already read Martha Keys poem and some accompanying music off my CD then turn up this post
http://080808onnowto.blogspot.com/2009/05/from-mystery-of-sin-to-mystery-of-syn...-v.htmlSee more
29 January at 15:06 · LikeUnlike.Brian Mirte Longridge sure thanks Chris will do that now....
29 January at 15:10 · LikeUnlike.
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