The problem in our church world is that we’re so fixated on pastors and pulpits. The vast majority of people in the Christian world will never see a pulpit. If we don’t get unimpressed with the pulpit and pastors, then we’ll never see the reformation and harvest we all want. Whatever you affirm, you empower. Not afirming the ministry that goes on through the saints in their daily life, work, family, the mundane but necessary things, etc., has caused the repetitive strongholds that don’t get a breakthrough. We wonder why we don’t see a breakthrough in our churches, so we try harder and harder to preach better sermons and have better speakers because we hope that it’s the way to bring transformation. In this reformation, God is moving the pulpit from center stage to the back corner. The pulpit will still have a role. But our view of the pulpit will drastically change, and preaching in a church building behind the pulpit will become a smaller part of the transformation needed in the church, not the largest part. Now don’t get me wrong, most of my world is built around the pulpit. I love to preach and spend a lot of time preaching, teaching and training. But God is up to something different.
Witness
John Wimber
God has arranged it so that we are the only Bible that some people will ever hear. If we proclaim the message of the Cross in the power of the Spirit, Jesus will do the rest. Paul wrote, “You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tables of human hearts” (2 Cor. 3:3). spiritual growth is important not only for our own benefit, but for the benefit of others who will be changed through the message we carry.
Andrew Sullivan
George Hodges
He is a Christian who follows Christ, who measures all things by the standard of His approbation [official approval], who would not willingly say a word which he would not like to have Christ hear, nor do an act which he would not like to have Christ see. He is a Christian who tries to be the kind of neighbour Christ would be, and the kind of citizen Christ would be, and who asks himself in all the alternatives of his business life, and his social life, and his personal life, what would the Master do in this case? The best Christian is he who most reminds the people with whom he lives of the Lord Jesus Christ. He who never reminds anybody of the Lord Jesus Christ is not a Christian at all.
Keenan Clark
T. J. Green
Blaise Pascal
There is nothing that we can see on earth which does not either show the wretchedness of man or the mercy of God. One either sees the powerlessness of man without God, or the strength of man with God.
Graham Cooke
The highest call of God on your life is to be a laid down lover of Jesus, full stop. From that place flows the joy and grace to love others. The Jesus in you is bright, full of hope, and captivating. By loving the Lord wholeheartedly, people will be softened by the purity of your heart and inspired by your hope and passion. Living fully redeemed and lovesick is the greatest invitation of our generation and the pathway to true revival.