To Little To Late! The Contemporary Church Movement Will Eventually Fail

Mike Berry

I have often thought about Jesus' words concerning the city of Jerusalem found in Luke 19. "For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation." The phrase, "you did not know the time of your visitation" has often spoke to me about "missed" opportunities.

Over the years, I have ministered in more than 23 nations and 166 cities. I have won thousands to Christ, led thousands into the Baptism Of the Holy Spirit, seen thousands healed and set free. Many leaders invited me to speak in their churches and conferences because they wanted their congregations to experience great encounters of the Holy Spirit but little paid attention to the "truths" and "nature of" true apostolic ministry I proclaimed. The time and necessity of Apostles and Prophets for the church to our time and generation has come. (See Eph. 2:20)

Instead, too many church leaders read and brought in Wall Street business ideas as though they came from the Bible and presented them as a corporate business model for the church. As a result, hugh churches emerged, leaders became rich in cash, assets, and corporate resources... and the Holy Spirit was religated to small home groups because it might disrupt these corporate models. In one of his last exhortations to me, Frank Houston (founder of the Hillsong movement) said to me, "Mike, These contemporary churches are pushing the Holy Spirit out the door." It's True. 

Yesterday's radicals have become today's conservatives. Traditional evangelicalism has gripped its hold on the activity of many churches creating attractional model churches that are propositional and colonial in nature. The Apostolic model is not popular because its missional, relational, and incarnational. True Apostolic ministry is not motivated by buildings, numbers or assets. Today's corporate church models are like home depots, super wallmarts, or genetically modified Masanto seeds. This model will be completely disrupted one day by one terrorist act. Just as Jesus predicted the fall of the Temple in Jerusalem, one act of terrorism in 70AD by the Romans brought down the house!

Have you ever thought what might happen if a young Jihadist walked into a large mega church, (whether in the Phillipines, Sydney, or in Southern California) and blew it up while thousands were attending services. Think about it. There are no security measures being taken to protect a mega church from one act of terrorism. Mega churches have no TSA screeners going through bags, pocket books, having people removing their shoes, taking off belts, or emptying their pockets before they enter in these large arenas of worship. Just one shooter in a theatre could lead to major deaths- so why arent these contemporary ministries thinking about this future problem. I certainly am not a doomsday prophet nor am I eager to see the demise of major ministries who have been great friends of mine over the years. However, if this should ever happen, mega churches will be gone overnight, lawsuits ensued, and people would opt out for smaller is better.

God is not in these "Starbucked" model churches and it wouldn't surprize me that just as Jesus predicted the "Sacred" temple of Jerusalem's demise... God is going to bring down the current models of church in order to accomplish his plan... a true apostlic church. Today's arenas will become tommorows white elephants because these ministries are built on the wrong emphasis. The New Testament church was built on the full-five fold ministry as outlined in Ephesians 4:11-17. Unfortunately many of the current leaders will be removed due to their inability to see their way through the coming changes that will renew God's purposes and plan for His church. I once questioned a leader about why his church choose to push the Holy Spirit out of the services and he replied, "well just look at our success." What a sad moment... even though this leader was a part of a great movement and witnessed great moves of the Holy Spirit, crowds, cash and assets were his measure of success. A new movement of God's spirit is coming to shift and change the church significantly from what the contemporary church looks like today.

This is the church that I see... will be organic, body-centered, and egalitarian in nature. It will not be built on personality cults but on the ministry of every member (See I Cor. 12)

Just as people in Jesus' day missed their day of opportunity when he prophesied that their buildings would be torn down, their assets were taken away, and their world left in a heap of rubble.... 30 years after this prophecy of Jesus, the Roman's tore down the temple and it has remained unbuilt to this day. Why? Because they missed the day of their visitation. (Isa 43:18-19) Jesus warned that "traditions" make the word of God of none effect. God is innovative, commtted to change and progress... His plan is for a New Testament Community in the 21st century which will not be stopped. I've only been preaching this for 35 years now. If our current leaders (my collegues) are not discerning or willing to risk breaking out of the status quo, their ministries will end up where others have gone in the past. It's only a matter of time.

Through The Lattice

By Michael Barrett

Song of Songs 2:9 "My beloved is like a roe or a young hart: behold, he standeth behind our wall, he looketh forth at the windows, showing himself through the lattice."

Recently the Lord has been speaking to me through the above passage. The lover of the Song of Songs here is representative of the Lord Jesus. The maid, of course, is a picture of the Bride of Christ, the called out people of God. I want to focus on two particular aspects of the referenced verse. The two areas I wish to review are: 1) "he standeth behind our wall" and 2) "showing himself through the lattice."

"He standeth behind our wall." What an interesting phrase. Thinking again about this being an allegory wherein the lover represents the Lord Jesus, this verse says He (Jesus) is "standing behind our wall." A wall is obviously part of a structure-a house. Our lives, I believe, are this house. The walls of "our house", our life, are put in place in order to protect us from that which is potentially dangerous or harmful. The walls keep out all that isn't supposed to get in. However, the walls also keep out the good as well as the bad. The walls of our lives are built of such a wide variety of materials that we could not possibly think to list them all. Think about the material of the walls as the experiences of our entire life. Also, the material in the walls will include the experiences of our parents, teachers, mentors, leaders, etc.

In the natural, houses are built out of a wide variety of materials. The materials vary for many different reasons. For instance, in North America, brick, stucco, concrete, wood and metal are the most common building materials used to build a wall, or a house. In other parts of the world, however, the materials used could be clay, straw, ice, tree bark, and on and on we could continue to list the variety of materials. In many cases, the material used is what ever happens to be the most common to that particular area. We could say, also, that custom often dictates the materials used in the building. Just as we observe the variety of materials used in a natural building, the same is true often in the building of our lives. Geography, custom, ethnicity, and many other reasons often dictate the way our lives are put together. Many times the background of life that we bring into the Kingdom of God only serves to skew or distort how we are able to see the Lord.

The scripture goes on to say, "showing himself through the lattice." Through the lattice is equally as interesting a phrase as "he standeth behind our wall." These two phrases are basically saying the same thing. A lattice is a piece of material made up of many small strips or slats, which are criss-crossed to form the entire piece. Again, the analogy here is that Jesus is revealing himself to us through the lattice of our cumulative experiences. It has been said, "we don't see the world as it is, but we see the world as we are." This idea of the Lord being revealed to us through the lattice of our history, our experiences, is indeed thought provoking. The lattice of our life is comprised of experiences, good and bad. For the believer, it is also comprised of doctrine, theology and religious tradition, again, good or bad, accurate or inaccurate.

Suffering The Loss Of All Things

In Philippians 3:8, Paul states that He voluntarily suffered the loss of all things in order to win Christ. Now it is important to understand that coming up to this statement about suffering the loss of all things, that Paul gives a comprehensive review of his life in the flesh. Paul then goes on to say that his goal was to be "found in" Jesus, to know Him, to experience a daily power which comes through resurrection power and to ultimately experience the resurrection of the dead.

One of the keys to knowing the Lord in reality is to be willing to suffer to loss of anything and everything that stands in the way of truly knowing Him. Paul had so much tradition that had to go. He had so much theology that had to go. He had so much history that had to go. All of this, good and bad, had to go in order for Paul to continue into more and accurate revelation of the Lord. The initial encounter of Acts 9 on the Damascus road was just the hook that positioned Paul for God's grace and the wonderful revelation of Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah. However, after the initial revelation, there was so much more revelation for Paul. In order for Paul to receive the more that the Lord had for him, it was necessary for him to suffer the loss of all things.

Paul had to give up the wall and the lattice that stood between him and more clear revelation of the Lord Jesus. Paul's history, his theology, his religious tradition had to go before he would be able to see the Lord in a clear way.

The Kingdom Of God Is At Hand

The same truth that opened more revelation of the Lord for Paul is true for us today. The wall and the lattice must go! I believe that the invitation of the Father in this is, "Let go of what you have, and I will give you what I want you to have." Let go of the history, let go of the tradition, let go of the theology. Let go of all that obscures and distorts a true and accurate revelation of the Lord and His Kingdom. Ask the Lord right now to teach you His ways! Let go of the wall and the lattice and watch as the Lord gives you more revelation than you have ever seen before. The Kingdom of God is as close as your hand. Jesus wants to reveal Himself to us in an unprecedented way. Aren't you tired of having old bread and stale wine? It's time for fresh bread and new wine from the Lord. Give up what you have had and the Father will fill you with fresh vision, purpose and joy. You will be filled with more revelation than you ever dreamed possible. May the Lord make His face shine upon you in Jesus' name.