Randy Clark Coming to Redeemer in 2011

Our Green Lake conference is over. What a wonderful week it has been for all of us!

Both Lee Spitzer and Randy Clark combine experieincing God and academic-biblical excellence, whic I greatly value. God has personally touched me deeply, and I'll be pondering these things in the weeks to come.

One unexpected blessing is this. Randy Clark approached Josh Bentley and myself and told us he had open dates in Jan. 2011, and would like to bring his 4-day School of Healing and Impartation to Redeemer in Monroe.  So Josh, Joe Atkinson, Joe LaRoy, Neil McLeod, and myself all have agreed to this. I am excited about this! I love Randy's style and humble way of presenting the great truths of God. The dates are (I believe!) Jan 12-15, 2011. Josh is working with Randy's Global Awakening people to facilitate this (thank you Josh - you do such an excellent job putting together these conferences!). This will be an opportunity for more of you to get in on the teaching and wisdom God imparts through Randy. (To see what Randy's School of Healing and Impartation looks like go here.)

(Another Day) With Randy Clark in Green Lake, Wisconsin

Yesterday (Monday) at Green Lake Lee Spitzer spoike at our morning session.

We had a special 1:30 session with Randy Clark - Holly, Linda, and I led worship. I love that Randy is simply who he is, and is not trying to be like anyone else. He's soft, gentle, very caring and pastoral, + he has a good mind and is a good scholar. He also was an American Baptist pastor for a decade, and shared that with us. He also shared that the spark that, for him, set off the moving of the Holy Spirit in his life began in a small American Baptist church in southern Illinois. Randy gave an altar call - the same kind he gave many years ago in that small Illinois Baptist church - and many came forward for impartation of the Spirit. This was cool for me since I just read, yesterday morning, Romans 1:11, where Paul writes: "I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong." So we see that Paul believed that spiritual gifts can be imparted through people, by the Spirit. If you want to read about the theology of impartation Randy's book There Is More is simpl;y excellent.

Last night Randy showed a video of miraculous healings at a service he was at in Brazil. We had a long, gentle and powerful time of healing prayer.

Randy will speak this morning and evening. We're all doing very well. God is moving here, as he is also moving among our Redeemer family in Monroe!

With Randy Clark in Green Lake, Wisconsin

Linda and I are with many Redeemer people andn hundreds of others from around the nation and world at Green Lake, Wisconsin, about to begin day 2 at our Holy Spirit Renewal Conference. Yesterday morning Ed Owens talked with us about wanting more of the Holy Spirit. Then Clay Ford gave his understnading of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. I've traveled on speaking engagments with Clay before and have heard his excellent presenation many times. He does a great job talking about Spirit baptism and gifting!


Last evening Annie Dieselberg shared about NightLight Bangkok. Then Messianic Jew Lee Spitzer gave a bveautiful presentation of how he became a "completed Jew," who has even come to embrace all the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Holly Benner is leading worship, along with me, Linda, Luke Jaskowiak, and Trevor Robinson. Josh bentley and a team of Redeemer young adults is leading the many youth who are at this conference.


This morning we hear Lee Spitzer teach once again. Then we're having a session from 1:30-3 with Randy Clark. Tonight at 6:30 Holly will again lead worship, and Randy will speak and minister to us. Our week has begun!.

The things God does in us this week will also bless our wonderful church family!

Holly Benner's "Created to Worship" CD is Available!

We got our copy of Holly Benner's "Created to Worship" live cd yesterday and have been listening to it all day. If you have a heart for worship I think you will be greatly blessed with this production. Holly's songs are unique, and very, very good!

You can purchase and download it here. It should be on Itunes soon.

It will sell for $15 next week at our conference with Randy Clark.

Redeemer people who have prepurchased it can pick up their copies this Sunday.

(Holly is Redeemer's worship leader and teaches in Redeemer Ministry School.)

Danger Signs for the Not Yet Married

1. A general uneasy feeling about the relationship.
2. Frequent arguments.
3. No arguments.
4. Avoiding discussing sensitive subjects because you're afraid of hurting your partner's feelings or starting an argument.
5. If you find yourself always doing what your partner wants you to do.
6. If you detect serious emotional disturbances.
7. If you feel you are staying in the relationship through fear.
8. If your partner is constantly complaining about unreal aches or pains,a nd going from doctor to doctor.
9. If your partner constantly makes excuses for not finding a job.
10. If your partner talks like they are a victim.
11. If your partner is overly suspicious, jealous, questions your work all the time, and feels that everyone is against him or her.
12. If your partner is a perfectionist and is constantly critical.
13. If your partner puts you down, and uses a lot of sarcasm.
14. If your parents and other significant people are trongly against your marriage.
15. If there is a lack of spiritual harmony.
16. If you have few areas of common interest.
17. The inability to accept constructive criticism.
18. Your partner cannot live without you and would consider taking their life should you break up with them.

Candy Brown's Coming Book on Divine Healing

It's been my privilege to have communicated a bit over the past few years with Dr. Candy Brown of Indiana University re. her work on divine healing.

Her new book is scheduled to be published in January 2011.

Here's from the Oxford U. Press website:

*****
Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Healing


Candy Gunther Brown

Paperback, 416 pages

Also available: Hardback

Jan 2011,

Not Yet Published Price:$29.95 (01)

Description

Divine healing is the essential marker of the global phenomenon of Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity. But although we know that healing is central in these movements, we know surprisingly little about how divine healing beliefs and practices reflect the interplay of local and global patterns of cultural development. The essays in this collection seek to discover what is the same and what is different about such beliefs and practices in diverse contexts, trace formal and informal lines of cultural influence across geographic and national boundaries, and ask how healing both reflects and contributes to larger processes of globalization. The collection will not only flesh out a picture of how and why spiritual healing is practiced in diverse cultural contexts and how healing practices reflect and shape the transnational spread of Christianity; it will also provide insight into the nature of globalization. The authors will attend to a wide range of issues, including the theological rationales for divine healing; the symbolic objects and ritual enactments employed; the cultural controversies surrounding these practices; the relationship between Christian healing and local or indigenous healing traditions; whether an emphasis on financial prosperity is always present; and the extent to which Pentecostal and charismatic churches are networked and the role of healing in such networks. All the essays are new to this volume.

Features

- offers important theoretical insights about the interrelatedness of globalization, pentecostalism, and healing

- first edited volume that brings together essays focused on divine healing as it is practiced by Pentecostal and charismatic Christians in diverse cultural and geographic contexts

About the Author

Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Indiana University

***

Table of Contents


Contributors

Foreword, by Harvey Cox

Introduction: Pentecostalism and the Globalization of Illness and Healing, by Candy Gunther Brown

Part I. Europe and North America

1. The Global Character of Nineteenth-Century Divine Healing, by Heather D. Curtis

2. Why Health and Wealth?: Dimensions of Prosperity among Swedish Charismatics, by Simon Coleman

3. Material Salvation: Healing, Deliverance, and nullBreakthroughnull in African Migrant Churches in Germany, by Claudia Wahrisch-Oblau

4. Blessed Bodies: Healing within the African American Faith Movement, by Catherine Bowler

5. Jesus as the nullGreat Physiciannull: Pentecostal Native North Americans within the Assemblies of God and New Understandings of Pentecostal Healing, by Angela Tarango

Part II. Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Borderlands

6. Latino Pentecostal Healing in the North American Borderlands, by Gaston Espinosa

7. Santidad, Salvacion, Sanidad, Liberacion: The Word of Faith Movement among Twenty-First Century Latin@ Pentecostals, by Arlene Sanchez Walsh

8. Exorcising the Demons of Deprivation: Divine Healing and Conversion in Brazilian Pentecostalism, by R. Andrew Chesnut

9. The Salve of Divine Healing: Essential Rituals for Survival among Working-Class Pentecostals in Bogota, Colombia, by Rebecca Pierce Bomann

10. Learning from the Master: Carlos Annacondia and the Standardization of Pentecostal Practices in and beyond Argentina, by Matthew Marostica

Part III. Africa and Asia

11. New Wine in an Old Wine Bottle?: Charismatic Healing in the Mainline Churches in Ghana, by Cephas N. Omenyo

12. Healing in African Pentecostalism: The nullVictorious Livingnull of David Oyedepo, by Paul Gifford

13. Re-enchanted: Divine Healing in Korean Protestantism, by Sean C. Kim

14. Miracle Healing and Exorcism in South Indian Pentecostalism, by Michael Bergunder

15. Divine Healing and the Growth of Practical Christianity in China, by Gotthard Oblau

Part IV. Global Crossings

16. Catholic Charismatic Healing in Global Perspective: The Cases of India, Brazil, and Nigeria, by Thomas J. Csordas

17. Global Awakenings: Divine Healing Networks and Global Community in North America, Brazil, Mozambique, and Beyond, by Candy Gunther Brown

Afterword, by Candy Gunther Brown

With Randy Clark Next Week

Beginning this Sunday Linda and I. Josh & Beth, Holly & our worship team, and many Redeemer people will be with Randy Clark at our HSRM conference in Green Lake, Wisconsin.

Randy will speak Mon afternoon & evening, Tues morning and evening, Wed morning and evening, Thursday morning, and I'll speak Thursday evening.

I love what God is doing through our HSRM movement - it's going to be a great, God-filled week of spiritual impartation and blessing!

Our New Bike Trail From My House to Lake Erie

On Monday I rode my bike on the new "River Raisin Trail" to the Lake Erie shoreline. It's 5-6 miles one way.

The new trail ends with a 1.5 mile ride through woods, past ponds, to the lake. It's beautiful. And, yes, we have a number of bald eagles nesting in those woods.

The trail will eventually and officially extend to Munson Park (we live across the street from it), the the Navarre-Anderson Trading Post and the oldest house in the state of Michigan, and then to Monroe County Community College.

There's a nice article on this project in today's Toledo Blade.

Toy Story 3

Linda, Josh, and I went to see Toy Story 3 tonight. The Pixar people are amazingly creative. In TS3 can be found:

• great attention to detail
• strong, consistent characters that we care about
• the incredible voices of Tom Hanks and Tim Allen
• actual wit and humor
• and a story line that has messages of: 1) sacrificial rescue and redemption; 2) the terror of abandonment; 3) the need to be wanted; 4) issues of death and everlasting life; 5) and the idea that going forward in life always entails leaving beloved things behind. I had tears in my eyes at the movie's end, and wanted to go into my attic and rescue our old toys.

It's a great movie! There's even a baby that will, I think, give some kids nightmares.

When Words Translate Into Deeds

(Our Bangkok work crew, Nov. 2009)

Our lives will always speak louder than our words. James 2:18 says: "But someone will say, "You have faith; I have deeds." Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do." Intentions minus actions = nothing. (Thank you J.H. for that.)

Make a promise and not fulfill it, mutatis mutandis, and you are a hypocrite, a mask-wearer.

Paul wrote that "The kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power." (1 Corinthians 4:20; οὐ γὰρ ἐν λόγῳ ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ ἀλλ' ἐν δυνάμει.) That last work, dunamei, is all about action. Where there is dunamei, stuff happens ("dynamic"). Talk without power is im-potent, non-dynanic.

Following after Jesus means taking up the cross, not theorizing about what it would be like to take up the cross. Here is where faith become reality, in the moment where the words of Jesus empower to action. The words "empower to action" are redundant, tautological, since there is no real empowering without action. When the words of Jesus move a person things are set in motion. That motion is always redemptive. Spirit-powered redemptive activity is impressive; words without redemptive activity are not only are worthless but turn people off to Jesus. The famous words "For God so loved the world" do not conclude with "that he sat in his heavenly place and had thoughts and feelings of love for us." Were that true it would mean nothing to us.

The person who only thinks and talks and "dreams" about engaging in redemptive activity without actually doing it in faith is all about their own self. It makes them look good to others without benefitting others. The love of God is an active, for-others love, and never gets perverted into something like: "Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his friends for his life."

When the real God-thing of redemptive love hits words translate into deeds. Things shake and move and demons tremble and prison doors unlock.