Having been a pastor for some years and then working with pastors and leaders for the last 8 years I have come to realize just how far off of Biblical Christianity most of our approaches to doing church really is. I am writing these excerpts on church in the region to help those under my care understand the importance and imminence of how the body of Christ will be transitioning toward a more Biblical model of doing church in the future.
This is the first of many excerpts that I will be writing on the subject of church in the region within this blog. Please look for new additions in the future.
Church in the region is a new concept of how to do church within a given region in a more Biblically accurate way. The Regional Church model focuses to redefine and realign the body of Christ so that the people of God can develop Christian community regionally leading to a more corporate thrust which can result in a more transformational reality within a given region.
I will be referring to this as regional church as we move forward.
In the standard way of building a church leaders look for a place to plant a church and then they do so by making converts and then discipline them and for the most part shepherding them by keeping them happy and helping them become spiritually mature. Spiritually mature in most circles means that you have gained victory over many sins and know a lot about the Bible. I will refer to this kind of church building as primarily pastoral. In most churches that are built like this they typically have three of the five fold ministry gifts in operation within them such as teacher, pastor and evangelist. In our day and time some churches do receive the ministry gifts of apostles and prophets however they seldom align with those gifts to do anything other than to hear them preach or teach. As we will come to see in these articles, preaching and teaching is not the highest function of an apostle or prophet.
In a Regional Church model the focus is to bring apostles and prophets back into their rightful place regionally. In the book of acts apostolic teams of leaders worked hand in hand with regional elders to bring the Kingdom of God to bear in the regions which they were assigned to by God. You see these teams again and again within the New Testament working as leadership teams within regions. Their purpose was to raise up and set in regional elders and assist the body of Christ to grow and mature in its ability to bring a full manifestation of the Kingdom into their occupied region. The region of Antioch was led by the apostolic team of Paul and Barnabas. The region of Thessalonica was led by the apostolic team of Paul, Timothy and Silas and so on. These teams and others are listed many times in the scripture and the descriptions of how they operate within regions, is laid out over and over. In present Christendom it seems we have failed to grasp the reason why we need these teams working together with regional elders to make a true transformational difference within the regions in which we live.
As a result of not having these teams working within our regions we have been left with a very fragmented and non relational Kingdom model to accomplish our mission. Typically we have regional elders or I should say, pastors, teachers and evangelist working to build their ministries and churches all competing with one another for preeminence and sadly many times the same sheep. The idea is that if a leader can build the best church on the block then all the sheep will eventually find a way to their pasture and hopefully graze for eternity. This dog eat dog capitalistic approach to church is going to be challenged greatly in the days ahead as the body of Christ matures into the beautiful bride that she is destined to become. It is for these reasons that many apostles and prophets within the earth are beginning to engage regions. They are finding great difficulty working with and in the present structures that exist so many of them are creating new regional structures. Great change is coming. It is unfortunate that the structures that we have today in many ways do not make way for the gifts which will bring them into their fullness but it is true. In Corinthians the Bible says that the foundation of the church is built upon the ministry gifts of apostles and prophets. It seems that within our regions and likewise within our churches many times we have built on everything but the leadership gifts of apostles and prophets.
Regional church is a new model of doing church regionally which is springing up right beside the existing models. It is a model which places the ministry gifts of apostles and prophets at the foundation of our regional connectivity. It is a model which seeks to connect every part of the body to the ministry gifts of apostles and prophets for the purpose of relational synergy and coordination. As the body of Christ learns to align regionally and for the right reasons, this shift will become a catalyst for true transformation within regions to take place. Get ready for the church to arise and be adorned in way that she has never been seen before. The Earth will rejoice at her beauty. The core drive of regional church is getting every saint prepared, equipped and sent into their field of ministry within the region with the set purpose of bringing God's full Kingdom manifestation into the earth realm. So we pray this way
"Thy Kingdom come Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven"