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Dr. Brad Long (DMin, Union Theological Seminary) is the Executive Director of Presbyterian Reformed Ministries International (PRMI). In 2000 he founded the Dunamis Fellowship International - a prayer community and seminary designed for equipping believers. Zeb has three children and lives in Black Mountain, North Carolina.

Paul Keith Stokes (MA, Cambridge University) is a minister in the United Reformed Church in the UK serving two churches since 1992. Paul became involved with the PRMI Dunamis Project in November 2001, and served as track director in 2003. Two years later he was appointed as one of three national Directors for the newly-formed Dunamis Fellowship in Britain and Ireland. Paul has two children and lives in Plymouth Devon, England.

De la contraportada

Is something crucial missing from your congregation's programs?Beneath the surface of churches' programs and activities lies the more fundamental question of how leaders and churches can be enabled to discern and obediently cooperate with the guidance and empowering of the Holy Spirit. Since the Kingdom of God is an active expression of His reign on earth, it is extended and realized as individuals and churches seek and submit to His will and purposes. Growing the Church in the Power of the Holy Spirit offers a practical guide for nurturing with churches the dynamic cooperative process, drawing on a breadth of experience from around the world.Many leaders overlook the necessary precondition of discerning and cooperating with the empowering will of the Holy Spirit before putting their plans into action. But how is this to be accomplished? Seven dynamics facilitate this process.These factors, advanced by the church leadership and brought into being by the Holy Spirit, help congregations undertake such crucial tasks as preaching/teaching, worship, healing, governance, making disciples of converts, and evangelism. As believers actively cooperate with the Holy Spirit, the church is strengthened in its role of being a foretaste of the Kingdom of God.

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Growing the Church in the Power of the Holy Spirit

Zondervan

Contents

1. The Holy Spirit Growing the Church.............................................................112. The Divine-Human Dance of Cooperation..........................................................193. Leaders Embodying the Kingdom of God...........................................................374. Jesus' Four Requirements for Growing Leaders Who Will Grow the Church..........................475. Receiving the Empowerment of the Holy Spirit...................................................656. Growing Congregations That Embody the Kingdom of God...........................................797. Gateways for Congregations.....................................................................918. Steps in the Dance of Divine-Human Cooperation.................................................1079. Dynamic 1: Divine Love Drawing Us into Participation...........................................11910. Dynamic 2: Intercessory Prayer: Inviting God's Engagement.....................................12911. Dynamic 3: Faith Clothed in Obedience: Opening the Door to God's Activity.....................14712. Dynamic 4: Receiving Divine Guidance for Cooperating with the Holy Spirit.....................15913. Dynamic 5: Spiritual Discernment: Making Listening and Obedience Safe.........................17314. Dynamic 6: Welcoming the Gifts and Manifestations of the Holy Spirit..........................18715. Dynamic 7: Seeing and Responding to Kairos Moments............................................20316. Obstacles to the Dance........................................................................21517. The Synergy of the Dance......................................................................229

Chapter One

Early in 2008 I (Paul) returned home from attending one of the largest annual Christian festivals in Europe, conscious again that we make assumptions about Christian leaders. One of the seminar streams was specifically for those involved with church leadership, and as we considered crucial questions about teamwork and change, we received several reminders of the need to pray and seek the Lord's guidance and wisdom in our decision making-to keep in step with the Spirit. We heard examples of how such guidance had proved vital in particular situations, and yet something was still missing. Nobody addressed the practicalities of "how." We were urged and encouraged but not equipped or enabled. Hidden beneath the words lay the unspoken assumption that we all knew how to discern and then cooperate with the Spirit's guidance.

This book is born out of our belief that this assumption is wrong. From our personal experience in a variety of leadership settings, we believe there is a real need for the leaders of Jesus' church to discover more about how we may obey the Bible's instruction to "keep in step with the Spirit" (Gal. 5:25). Our purpose in writing is to help you explore the steps that we can take in that great "dance" of cooperation with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Through this dynamic of cooperation, the Holy Spirit grows the church and expresses the reality of the kingdom of God on earth.

When you became a disciple of Jesus Christ, which took place because of the working of the Holy Spirit, you entered into the new reality of the kingdom of God. You are no longer fully of this earth; you are the beginnings of a new heaven and a new earth. In this new reality, each one of us is called and is given a role and a commission. We are called and enabled to become Jesus' friends and cocreators with God. Our effectiveness in this task depends on us understanding the dance of cooperation with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Led by the Holy Spirit

In the dark of the night, a light came on. After speculatively feeling their way forward through uncertain territory, groping to find the right route, the way ahead was brilliantly illuminated. At last they could see where they were going!

The small party of travelers had been journeying westward across Galatia and Phrygia, eagerly seeking fresh opportunities to tell people about Jesus. They had looked toward the virgin mission field of Asia, but the route had been clearly blocked off, frustrating their efforts. Persistent in their endeavors, they had turned northward toward Bithynia but again had met with the same "closed door" experience. Shortly afterward a doorway was flung open, the way ahead became clear, and they embarked on a two-day voyage across the Aegean to plant the first church on European soil, in the Roman colony of Philippi.

As Luke recounts this episode, he makes it abundantly clear that the entire venture was overseen and directed by the Holy Spirit. These disciples were first "kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia.... [Then] they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to.... [Finally] during the night Paul had a vision...." Luke writes that the following morning, in faith-filled response to this, "after Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them" (Acts 16:6-10). Their evangelistic travel arrangements were being organized by the Holy Spirit!

Revelation and Cooperation

In the book of Acts, having set the scene with a description of the events of Pentecost, Luke paints a vivid portrayal of the church of Jesus living in dynamic cooperation with the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Similarly, when Paul teaches that Christ "is the head of the body, the church" (Col. 1:18), he is speaking of a reality experienced in his own life, one in which the members (or limbs) of the body receive revelation and instruction from the head and then act in obedient cooperation. These are fundamental principles underlying the activities of the church, and they are the same principles that Jesus himself employed. In his own words: "I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does" (John 5:19-20). These two principles-revelation and cooperation-are critical components of the reign (or the kingdom) of God. They are made possible by the working of the Holy Spirit.

Henry Blackaby defines the role of leaders in one concise statement: "Spiritual leadership is moving people on to God's agenda." He adds that "only the Holy Spirit can ultimately accomplish the task." In Luke's description of the early church, this is precisely what we see happening. The disciples discern God's agenda as revealed through the Holy Spirit, and then in cooperation with the Spirit, they pour their energies into the task.

Bill Hybels explores these core principles in the arena of personal evangelism as he encourages Christians to "just walk across the room" without depending on a formula or script but simply relying instead on the leading of the Holy Spirit. This is revelation plus cooperation, expressed in the life of an individual. It also needs to be expressed in the context of congregational life and leadership.

All of us who are involved in the leadership of Jesus' church want to see it growing and fulfilling its mission in the world. To achieve this it is often tempting simply to look at some new plan or program, a method that we can apply in the hope that it will enable the church to become vital and growing. Such plans, programs, and initiatives do indeed have a valuable place and have been used greatly by God to accomplish his purposes. Their success, however, rests not in the programs themselves, but in the dynamic of cooperating with the Holy Spirit that happens both in selecting the program initially and then in implementing it. The Holy Spirit is the one who grows the fruit of disciples of Jesus Christ.

In the worldwide church, spanning the centuries and embracing an extraordinary diversity of cultural settings, the dynamics of revelation and cooperation have taken on an astonishing variety of forms and expressions. A persecuted band of Christians gathered as an underground house church in China appears very different from a traditional Anglican congregation in England, a crowded megachurch in Texas, or a rural congregation in Africa. But if each of these is truly Jesus' church, then we can look beyond all the different activities and outward forms and observe some common threads that make each one of these diverse expressions part of the same spiritual reality-the "body of Jesus Christ" on earth.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Growing the Church in the Power of the Holy Spiritby Brad Long Paul Stokes Cindy Strickler Copyright © 2009 by Zeb Bradford Long, Paul Stokes, and Cindy Strickler. Excerpted by permission.
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