Originally written 20 years ago, a pioneer’s message on our need for the Holy Spirit’s power is just as relevant–and prophetic–today.

Dennis Bennett was a priest in the Episcopal Church who became known as the father of the modern charismatic movement after he proclaimed from his pulpit on April 3, 1960, that he had been baptized in the Holy Spirit. Within weeks he was asked to resign his pastorate at thriving St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Van Nuys, California. He continued his ministry, moving into the pastorate at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Seattle, where he stayed until 1981. In 1968 he founded Christian Renewal Association with his wife, Rita, who is its president today. Dennis died on November 1, 1991, a year after he wrote this article, which is adapted with permission from Mission & Ministry, then the magazine of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania. It is a reminder that, in any era, the foundation for ministering to the world isn’t us alone, but the Holy Spirit, who works through us to change people’s lives. 

I had a vivid experience of receiving the Lord Jesus as my Savior when I was 11 years old. I found He was alive and wonderful beyond belief but afterward spent much time looking for what came next. I tried to find that first, careless rapture of my conversion over again. At times I would sense that the Lord was still very much with me, but my awareness of Him was limited, although my intellectual belief was strong.

You who have been brought up in this age of awareness of the Holy Spirit cannot imagine how blank we were on this topic back in the 1940s and 1950s and even later. Kenneth Scott Latourette in his masterful two-volume history of the Christian church, which covers church history up to 1976, does not even mention the Pentecostal revival! Yet without question the growth of the Pentecostal movement is a most striking phenomenon of modern church history.

In my personal Pentecost, the joy and glory of God broke in upon me in 1960. I recognized it as the same kind of experience I had when I accepted Jesus, only much more vivid and constant.

It didn’t seem to matter whether I was awake or asleep—or what was going on—the new awareness of God stayed with me. It was an incredible new dimension in my spiritual life. I had been trying hard to become more aware of God; now, all of a sudden, He was with me without my having to seek Him.

I had no precedent for this experience. It was not the fulfillment of any expectations that had been implanted in my mind. I had never attended a Pentecostal church and had no notion what they taught or believed. Moreover, I did not receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit in a church setting, but in a private home, praying with two Episcopal laypeople.

True, I had done a good deal of research over several months while I was looking into it all, but the friends who witnessed to me simply told me faithfully what had happened to them and then prayed with me. After that I didn’t have a great deal of further contact with them.

It concerns me that so many Christians nowadays seem not to grasp, or perhaps have not even had a chance to grasp, what happened back there 2,000 years ago and can continue to happen today as people receive the same Pentecostal experience. I believe the baptism in the Holy Spirit to be the drivetrain by which the power of the Spirit travels from the engine to the wheels.

Evangelism starts the engine, but without the drivetrain the people of God do not move very far, and soon begin to wonder when Jesus is going to come and take them away from a world they obviously are unequipped to cope with!

Acts 8:14-17 clearly tells how Peter and John prayed with the Samaritans to receive the Holy Spirit after their conversion and baptism with water through Philip the evangelist. Jesus made receiving the baptism in the Spirit mandatory—and for a very good reason, since it is what makes the power of God available through the individual believer to the needy world.

In those early days in Van Nuys we experienced what it was like to be “early Christians,” both from the excitement of discovering how real it all was and from finding out how quickly one could become unpopular! We found out for ourselves why people in the first century were willing to risk their lives to belong to the fellowship of Jesus of Nazareth.

None of us may have literally risked our lives, but we did risk our reputations, our jobs, our friends. I saw the amazing fellowship and love with which people were drawn together after they had been set free in the Spirit, and to me it was worth the challenges.

I soon found, though, that there was much in me that could quench my new awareness of the Holy Spirit. He never leaves us, but I would lose my awareness of Him if I did not follow His leading.

During these last 30 years I have been learning how to continue to respond to the Holy Spirit in me, so His joy and power and freedom can continue to flow in and from me. I have certainly failed far more often than I have succeeded, but the Lord is patient. The main desire of my life is still to enjoy more of what I knew at the first.

So, in retrospect, my concern is still to keep that first fire burning—not to lose my first love. Yet I have learned that He doesn’t forsake me. It is always I who forsake Him, or at least make my environment distasteful and untenable for Him, so that He has to retire into the depths of my spirit, where my soul is not aware of Him for a time.

It has been a difficult three decades, but I would not go back to the time before I was baptized in the Holy Spirit for anything in heaven or earth. There is no nightmare I can imagine that would be more devastating than to lose this awareness of the reality of God.

Now what about the look ahead? I hear today that the charismatic movement is dying down. Some say the Pentecostal and charismatic movements have both passed their prime and are to be replaced by a “third wave” of the Spirit that, however, denies there is any experience of a baptism in the Holy Spirit after salvation and claims it all happens when we accept Jesus. It also maintains that it is not necessary to speak in tongues to be baptized in the Spirit.

Either of these lines of thought show that the purveyors thereof have not grasped what this Pentecostal or charismatic renewal was and is all about. This is mainly and usually because people have not themselves received the baptism in the Holy Spirit, and therefore are sympathetic and well-meaning brothers and sisters commenting on something they have not entered into.

Many have the impression that the charismatic renewal is simply one among several programs for strengthening the church. But the charismatic renewal isn’t one choice among several. It is the renewal of the experience of Pentecost as people respond to Jesus Christ’s instructions to all His followers that they are to be empowered before they go out to the world with the good news.

The charismatic renewal is not an evangelical revival; although more than anything else it has fueled the current interest in evangelism. It is highly important that we see the difference between revivals—which are occasional and short-lived upsurges of response to God—and this global renewal of the experience of Pentecost, which has been going on with increasing momentum for nearly a hundred years.

This is the breaking forth of the Holy Spirit from the religious prison in which He has been confined through much of Christian history, so He can begin to make Christians what they are supposed to be: centers of power and joy for the refreshing and healing of the world.

Evangelism is the initial offering and proclamation of forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ, and the receiving of new birth in the Holy Spirit. After this has happened Jesus commands us to receive the freedom and power of the Spirit, to release the Holy Spirit who has come to live in us, so that He can bless us and work through us (see Acts 1:4-5).

We can be so near to seeing this truth and yet so dangerously far away. The Holy Spirit comes to live in us when we receive Jesus as Savior, that is absolutely true; but we do not necessarily receive Him, that is, allow Him to rule in our lives.

Through the baptism in the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God is allowed to extend His influence over our outward lives—our will, intellect, emotions and bodies. Not surprisingly He begins with our speech, and begins to tame the unruly member, to make it usable by our Lord so He can give us words to adequately express our praise and love to God in “words which are not in our power to say” (Rom. 8:26, Basic English Version).

Thus we can pray and intercede for ourselves and others in words that precisely express God’s will. This taming of the tongue also makes it possible for God to speak through us to His people, in prophetic utterances and also in gifts of tongues, which are then understood through the companion gift of interpretation.

I haven’t changed my essential convictions about all this. I’m still saying the same things I did 30 years ago, although, I hope, with much more understanding of what it all means.

What is happening to people today when they receive the freedom of the Spirit is just the same as at the first, except that now we understand much more about it. The church is not primarily a preaching or teaching institution. It must be charismatic. It must manifest the gifts and fruit of the Spirit, for they are the continuing signs that Jesus is alive and ready to bless people now.

People are weary of talk about religion, whether by semi-believing intellectuals or arrogant fundamentalists, and they are especially weary of ill-natured Christians who condemn everything and everyone, including one another. (This includes the so-called liberals who use social concerns to bring people under condemnation.)

But if people see the glory of the indwelling Spirit in their friends and neighbors and experience His fruit and gifts pouring out of God’s people to heal body, mind and spirit, they will be drawn to the love of Jesus, and they will indeed receive His complete healing. Jesus did good works, healings and deliverances, and these are what showed people the kingdom of God was “at hand”—that is, right here and now.

He tells us to do the same. It isn’t any different today. If people see Jesus doing these things through His followers, how can they refuse to accept Him?

Evangelism brings people to receive Jesus, and then the Holy Spirit can come and live in them. The baptism in the Holy Spirit is letting the power of the Spirit flow out to bless, first of all, the individual and then the world around.

When Peter was challenged by the other apostles and brethren because he had ministered to the Roman centurion, Cornelius, and his household, Peter responded: “As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them as upon us at the beginning. Then I remembered the word of the Lord, how He said, ‘John indeed baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If therefore God gave them the same gift as He gave us when we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could withstand God?” (Acts 11:15-17, NKJV).

This is what Jesus promised at the first. Let us not be found with those who withstand God but with those who will stand with God so that this great response to His love and grace in the Holy Spirit can continue unhindered in our day. 

THE STORY CONTINUES

Read our May 1980 cover story detailing Dennis Bennett’s extraordinary life at Bennett.charismamag.com.

You might think you're smart when you get out of college, but I suggest that the real education is only just the beginning.

In an Amish kitchen in Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania, in the heart of Dutch country, I saw a sign I’ll never forget: “Too soon old, too late smart.” When I saw it, I thought it was memorable but hardly meaningful. I was 21. Now the words are meaningful, but I can barely remember the farmhouse. I am 62.

Sometimes I have the fantasy that I will sit up on my deathbed and cry out, “Oh, I get it,” and lie down again and die. The Amish have it right.

Recently a friend said he wished he were 21 again. The thought held little interest for me, but he made an intriguing counteroffer: What if you could be 21 and know what you know now?

That held more allure, but it begged a question: What, if anything, do I now know that I wish I had known at 21?

I came up with 10 things, none of which I think I would have placed on my priority list at age 21.

1. Inner healing is greater than outward success. It is probably impossible to arrive at 21, let alone 62, without wounds in the inner person—deep wounds that need God’s healing grace. The more I see of inner healing and the more I face up to my own inner wounds, the more I wish I had let Messiah touch my deepest hurts earlier in life. That childhood hurt, that hidden outrage, that long-suppressed horrific memory can lurk like a monster in the basement waiting for years, even decades, to rise and wreak havoc.

Hiding the monster, denying that it’s down there, is a dangerous game. The temptation is to create an alternative reality where success and accomplishment and appearances seem so very real and the monster but a mirage. If I were 21 again I would bore down into the inner world of me and find Christ’s healing touch in the darkness under the floorboards.

2. Mercy is greater than justice. I have found that many in the church want the wayward to “get what’s coming to them.” Too often, there is a shortage of mercy among the followers of Christ, who blessed the merciful in His most famous message, the Sermon on the Mount. Were I 21 again, I would learn and practice mercy, knowing that later I would need it.

Churches, boards, denominations and individual believers who hanker for justice when a colleague stumbles may be planting for a bitter harvest. They gloat over the sins of others, humiliate the fallen and demand their administrative pound of flesh.

Competitiveness and legalism are the death of mercy. Mercy makes love real, acceptance and understanding a practice, and tenderness a way of life.

3. Kindness is better than being right. Just before my friend Jamie Buckingham died, I asked him for a word of wisdom. He said, “It is better to be kind than to be right.”

At 21, I advocated my positions too aggressively. I argued with an eye toward winning, unconcerned about the heart of my “adversary,” who may not have been adversarial at all. I made debate a contact sport. In preaching I let the bad dog off the chain, to the applause of the gallery.

Should time travel be mine and were I to be back in the land of 21, I would be kinder and less concerned with being right. Too many young adults give little thought to kindness.

They Twitter hurtful words like poisonous birds. Their humor is mocking, acidic and unkind. And they are more concerned with being thought clever than with being kind. The value of gentleness has declined on the world market; if I were 21 again I would wish to know the worth of a kind word.

4. Serving is better than being served. Encircled by their entourages, the “success” merchants of modern Christianity place high dividends on being catered to. When I was a pastor, the church I led invited a singing group to come minister. Their list of special demands, including a particular type of orange cut into equal fourths (I kid you not), was five pages long. We canceled.

I wish I had known at 21 how hollow is all that outward stuff. I wish I had known that caring, not being cared for, is what Christ had in mind.

I wish I had changed more diapers instead of leaving that to my wife. I wish I had served more meals, carried more bags, held more doors and lightened more burdens.

5. Brokenness is the doorway to wholeness. This mysterious paradox was hidden from me at 21. I feared brokenness. I ran from it, and when it got too close fought it off with all my might.

If I had but known brokenness was the key to my healing, it would have lifted such fear from me. I thought it would maim me at least and maybe even kill me. Now I know that there is very little real wholeness that does not emerge from real brokenness.

6. Truth is liberating and devastating. Jesus said, “You shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” My friend Jamie tacked on, “But first it will make you miserable.”

How true. There is a phrase popular among many young adults that I quite like despite my usual distaste for pop jingoes. It is, “Keep it real.” I am not sure of all that is meant by it, but I know what I mean by it.

I wish I had known not to fear the truth about myself. I wish I had known that the temporary misery of the truth was worth going through to find the freedom that it brings.

7. Learning is greater than education. I am a university president, and Oral Roberts University (ORU) is a great university. I am not saying that higher education is unimportant. What I am saying is, I hated getting educated.

At 21, I was a miserable college senior. I was a miserable student from the first grade right through high school and on through three degrees. I was miserable because I did not understand the connection between education and learning.

If I were 21 again, I would still go to college. But this time I would go to learn not just to graduate. I would unleash my curiosity, embrace the process, worry less about my grades and enjoy learning.

How strange that I love to learn at the age I am now. I read voraciously—any subject. I want to know, to understand, to go deeper. If I were 21 again I would take that to college.

8. Giving is sweeter than gaining. I believe in the laws of the harvest. If there is any place in the world that understands “seed faith” it is ORU. Seed faith is not a new idea to me. I believed it at 21. I practiced it and am blessed today because it is real.

Yet I wish that at 21 I had known the sheer joy of giving. I know God will bless us when we give, and sometimes we have made this merely a method to gain. I wish I had realized the joy of generosity. I would have given more and delighted more in the good that giving does and less in the returns it provides.

9. Forgiveness doesn’t fix everything. Not the happiest truth I wish I had known, but it’s among the most sobering. Had I known this I might have been less callous, less reckless and more mindful of the cost.

There are things, relationships and hearts that once broken cannot be fully “fixed” by forgiveness. The wound, the uncaring and insensitive word—they may be forgiven, but the damage from them may never quite be right again.

When I was 21 I just wanted to be forgiven. I wish I had known to do less damage.

10. Prayer is more powerful than persuasion. In all of life, at every age, conflict is an inescapable reality. I wish I had known younger that in conflict and crisis talking to God works better than talking to people. At 21, due perhaps to youthful arrogance, I thought that I could talk my way through everything.

Self-sufficiency, a dangerous habit, breeds prayerlessness. The older I get I find that crisis drives me faster to my knees and more slowly to the phone.

I have seen God turn hearts around, change organizations and melt opposition by prayer alone—when no persuasive speech could have made a difference. If I were 21 again, I would spend more time talking with God and less (far less) persuading others to do what I want.

I wish I had known more than I did at 21. I might have considered one or two of these truths, but I doubt I would have fully appreciated their value.

I do not think I want to be 21 again. But if I had to, if some evil genie made me go back and live it all over, then these are the things I would want to know and the things I would want to believe. 

Mark Rutland is the president of Oral Roberts University and author of 13 books. He also leads a missions and church-planting organization, Global Servants.

YOUR TURN

To share what you wish you had known at age 21, go to 10things.charismamag.com.

In an age of Twitter and Facebook, churches too are breaking new ground in evangelism, humanitarian aid and community development.

1. Expecting Miracles in Las Vegas

Every other week, Scott Linklater, 32, and teams of sidewalk evangelists make their rounds on the notorious Las Vegas Strip, where they distribute gospel tracts that resemble huge $100 bills. They see the 40 million tourists who visit the Strip annually as their mission field, and in the last year have shared the gospel with more than 120,000 people.

Out of the outreach effort grew the Expectation Church Network—a group of “simple churches,” or house churches, affiliated with the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel. “In order to share the gospel, we can’t spend our time and resources on the stuff that other people spend their time and resources on,” Linklater says, referring to the overhead and administrative costs associated with church buildings. “Necessity is the mother of invention.”

Expectation Church currently links eight simple churches, and Linklater hopes that together they will share the gospel with 200,000 people on the Strip this year. In time, he wants to reach more than 1 million Vegas tourists annually. “We can justifiably say we can do that as we build up more and more workers,” he says.

2. Reaching Unchurched Millennials in Minnesota

When Peter Haas and his wife, Carolyn, moved to Minnesota to plant a church, they hoped to launch an arts-focused ministry that attracted the unchurched. Five years later, what they’ve built is Substance Church, a 2,000-member congregation in St. Paul where 70 percent of the members are part of the Millennial generation, or under age 30, and most were previously unchurched.

A former rave disc jockey, Haas, 34, says he always hoped to build a church for people like himself—“who are very open to God but can’t relate to what we perceive to be the organized church.” Known for its ultra-contemporary worship, Substance Church meets in three locations, but Haas says the ministry’s style is not the real draw. He says research shows that most unchurched people are multiethnic and under age 30, and they feel disenfranchised in churches where the average age of the platform leaders is over 40. “We felt we’ve got to make sure we’re representing people they can relate to on our platform,” Haas says.

But a bigger key, Haas believes, is fostering Christian community by helping members find a core group of friends who will support them in their Christian walk. “We’ve lost that communal element to Christianity,” Haas says. “Our whole philosophy hinges on getting every single person in a small-group community in as short a period of time as we can and getting them into ministry. That’s the driving force.”

3. Redeeming the City in Milwaukee

Holy Redeemer Institutional Church of God in Christ in Milwaukee, burned its mortgage in 1987, a year after it was established. Since then the 5,000-member congregation has been moving aggressively to empower the residents in its city. 

Led by Bishop Sedgwick Daniels, the church established a credit union; K-12 school; housing complex for senior citizens; $15 million youth center that houses a Boys & Girls Club, theater, and social service agency; and a free health clinic. The next project, Bishop’s Creek, will include more than 120 three-bedroom townhomes, a hotel, shops, water park, and a dormitory for children that are displaced. Funded through church giving as well as grants and business partnerships, phases one and two of the $70 million project will open this year, with the hotel and water park scheduled to open in 2011.

“The vision of the church is to win souls for Christ,” Daniels says, “but ... we have a divine mandate that says we are to be mission-minded. We’re to feed those that are hungry, clothe those that are naked, preach the Word or make it accessible. In order to do that, you must first give a hungry man food, as did Christ ... and they can readily receive the Word. So you provide services, and you provide a holistic environment where that Word can be embraced with love because it’s demonstrated through care.”

4. A ‘Servolution’ in Louisiana

Dino Rizzo has a clear ministry goal: to start a revolution of service in churches worldwide. He’s starting in Louisiana, where he and his wife, DeLynn, are meeting the needs of the poor and hurting through The Healing Place Church in Baton Rouge. 

The 7,000-member church has 10 campuses, including two Dream Centers that provide food, clothing and other needs in some of the poorest areas of their city. Church members also regularly mow lawns, help neighbors move and give away water on the local college campus as part of an outreach initiative influenced by pastor Steve Sjogren’s book Conspiracy of Kindness. When temperatures dipped below freezing last January, Healing Place gave away dozens of space heaters. 

“We were not serving to grow a church,” says Rizzo, who released his book, Servolution, last year. “We were serving because of the cause of Christ in our hearts. We felt like that was the best tool to reach people who Jesus died for in our community. As it caught fire and people got a hold of that, it just began to blossom and take off.” 

Rizzo’s vision to see a “servolution” comes closer to reality each year. The ministry has two campuses in Africa, and in March it hosted Servolution 2010, when churches worldwide led 10 days of community outreach in the run-up to Easter.  

5. Reaching the World From North Carolina

During a missions trip in the 1980s, pastor Michael Fletcher of Manna Church in Fayetteville, North Carolina, had what effectively amounts to an awakening. “Sometimes when you’re in your own culture, you’re blind to the lostness of people,” he says. “When you go somewhere that’s not your own culture, you see things as they are. ... And I just said, ‘We’ve got to reach people, we’ve got to go.’” 

Today he nudges the members of his 5,000-member church to engage people outside the church walls through dozens of outreach efforts Manna Church leads. “We have a global strategy—if there are unsaved people in your home, it goes from the head next to you on the pillow at night right around the globe,” Fletcher says.

That passion to reach the lost also influences Grace Churches International, a ministry network that has grown from 27 congregations when Fletcher took over in 2001 to more than 400 in 69 nations today. “When we talk about ministry partners, it isn’t just send money, it’s hands-on, be involved in what they’re doing,” he says. 

The goal is to build the kingdom, not one congregation, Fletcher adds. “Selfishness has hijacked the church in the West,” he says. “That’s a fact. We think about ourselves, meet my needs. That’s not Christianity. Christianity is giving. It’s giving the gospel of Christ to [the world].”

6. Rescuing the Homeless in Atlanta

Like most other U.S. churches, Rescue Atlanta Church led by pastors Mel and Teresa Rolls has services twice a week, on Sundays and at midweek. But that’s where the similarities end. 

Roughly 70 percent of Rescue Atlanta’s members are homeless and another 25 percent are from troubled inner-city neighborhoods. A hot breakfast is served before Sunday services and a warm lunch before midweek Bible study. In addition to a food pantry, the church has laundry and shower facilities, as well as a clothes closet and medical clinic. 

“I really believe the success of what we’ve done in the 21 years we’ve been doing this is that we get into their lives to where we earn the right to speak into their lives,” says Mel Rolls, an Assemblies of God minister. “They see we’re their friends. We’re not trying to herd them into church. We want them to trust us, then trust the message, then they follow.” 

Despite the unique makeup of Rescue Atlanta, the Rollses encourage church members to serve others. They support missionaries worldwide and members have been sponsoring children in Haiti since long before the January earthquake. After flooding wreaked havoc in Georgia last September, teams of homeless men from Rescue Atlanta helped families who had lost everything. “The congregation is amazing,” Rolls says. “They give. We receive an offering every time we have a service. No one feels like they have to give, but they do give.”

7. A Florida Church That Left the Building—Literally

In 2003, pastor Byron Bledsoe was leading a growing Southern Baptist church in Orlando, Florida, that was drawing 1,500 people each week. Its denomination had even recognized the ministry as a top evangelistic congregation. 

But instead of being excited by the commendation, Bledsoe was troubled. He knew that only about 10 percent of the people the church reached each year had been previously unchurched. “If we didn’t exist anymore, nobody in the community would even care,” Bledsoe says. 

That nagging discontent led him on a two-year journey that culminated in some radical moves. He phased out the choir for a worship band and transitioned the Sunday school into home-based cell groups. But the biggest change came in 2007, when the church sold its campus and started holding services in a movie theater, losing 1,400 of its 1,500 members in the process. 

 Now known as C3 Church, the ministry spends “every extra dime” on outreach projects such as feeding needy families and providing backpacks for students. Bledsoe says the strategy, though painful, has yielded some unexpected fruit. Most of the 600 people who attend services each week were previously unchurched. And the congregation has become ethnically diverse, just like the city. 

Adrienne S. Gaines is the news editor for Charisma magazine.

 SEE THEM IN ACTION

See some of these innovative churches in action at trendsetters.charismamag.com. Also tell us about churches in your city that are finding creative ways to reach the lost.

By Jack Hayford

I’m often asked, “What is the one thing above all others that is a leader’s priority?” My answer has little to do with personal gifts or professional skill. But it is the thing that will become the foremost reason people will trust and follow you and the reason God will put His seal of approval on you. The one thing is integrity of heart.

Leaders with integrity of heart listen to the Holy Spirit’s whispers, yield to His slightest “pings” of conscience and submit to His goads of correction or direction. It is found and sustained by daily choices of a conscience that yields to, and a conscientiousness that abides in, this sobering and inescapable truth: Every moment, I am naked and exposed in front of Jesus (see Heb. 4:13).

That I should live my life “in front of Jesus” is the counsel my mother engraved upon my heart as a child. It was never used to condemn, but spoken to teach me to live self-confronted by that reality. It has never produced perfection in me, but it has provided life-long protection from self-will, presumptuous indulgence or presumed self-righteousness. To live your life in front of Jesus will keep you on the sure course unto life, the pure path of love and in the securing fold of truth.

Jack Hayford is founding pastor of The Church on the Way in Van Nuys, California, and former president of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel.

2. Be God’s Answer for a Hurting World

By Lisa Bevere

God created the woman as the answer to Earth’s first problem: that man not be alone. Today there continue to be problems that only God’s daughters can answer. Our world is heartsick and in need of intimate, safe connections. The problems loom so large, the needs are so vast, that our response must at once be intimate and enormous.

Lovely ones, I want you to rise up in strength, so you can enlarge the lives of others and hear the cry of the broken and captive. Any gift, ability or talent you have was given in order for you to improve the lives of others. There is something within you that this world desperately needs.

Together women of all ages are writing this chapter in the history of God’s daughters. He is relating the mothers, daughters, sisters and grandmothers for their personal strength and spiritual growth, and for His kingdom purposes. Together we are stronger than any of us are standing alone.

Women are God’s answer to hurting relationships, an impotent church and a dying world desperate for healing. You are a voice for those who’ve been silenced. You are beauty amid desolation. You, daughter, are God’s answer.

Lisa Bevere is an international Bible teacher and the author of numerous books, including Fight Like a Girl.

3. Embrace the ‘One Thing’

By David Shibley

A truly successful life is measured not by its duration but by its direction; not by its parties but by its purpose; not by what was amassed but by what was dispersed; not by the embracing of things but by embracing the one thing—to love Jesus supremely and to make Him loved by people everywhere.

To be effective in ministry, you must pursue God daily through prayer and Bible study, and guard your integrity. If you lose trust, it’s game over. Stay true to Scripture—believe God and His Word—and keep evangelism and discipleship central.

Give high priority to cultivating relationships with God, your spouse, your family, and a few trusted friends, and always protect your “base,” which is your marriage and family. Allow yourself to grow from opposition—we can all learn from our critics—and let disappointments work for you. Steer clear of bitterness.

Discover and develop your dominant spiritual gifts and expect miracles. Pour into others, and do what it takes—count the cost, pay the price—to be faithful to your calling. You are the beneficiary of a century of the Spirit’s outpouring. Live in such a way “that all will honor the Son” (see John 5:23). Inspire your generation to fulfill Christ’s Great Commission.

David Shibley is the founder of Global Advance, a ministry that equips church and marketplace leaders to help fulfill the Great Commission.

4. Cultivate a Relationship With Jesus

By Mike Bickle

When looking back over 35 years of ministry, the single most important truth that I can pass on to younger leaders is the absolute necessity of taking the time to cultivate a vibrant relationship with Jesus. The pressure to grow a ministry can be overwhelming. It comes with many hidden traps that can kill our spiritual lives. Many leaders today confess to living spiritually dry, disillusioned and burned-out lives. This is the inevitable result of pursuing ministry without a vibrant relationship with Jesus.

Jesus corrected the church in Ephesus for working hard in ministry without maintaining a fresh love and devotion to Him. He exhorted them: “You have persevered and have patience, and have labored for My name’s sake and have not become weary. Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love” (Rev. 2:3-4, NKJV). Growth in ministry is good, but it can never replace your relationship with Jesus. Ministry service without the foundation of intimacy with Jesus inevitably leads to burnout and, thus, to far less ministry in the long haul.

Satan’s strategy is to distract from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Jesus (see 2 Cor. 11:3). He knows that if we lose this, we will be much more vulnerable to disillusionment. We must intentionally cultivate a responsive heart of love to Jesus. It does not happen automatically. It is something that we must set our hearts to do all the days of our lives.

Mike Bickle is founder of the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, Missouri.

5. Seek the Kingdom

By Bishop George McKinney

My first word of counsel to every leader is drawn from biblical wisdom—“seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you” (Matt. 6:33). When a person’s priorities are out of order, his life will be filled with confusion and God’s given purpose will not be fulfilled.

Confirm your status as a citizen of the kingdom of God by acknowledging His authority over your time, talents, opportunities and treasures. When seeking the kingdom of God and His righteousness is top priority, you will be able to experience faithfulness as a steward of God’s blessings.

Second, “trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths” (Prov. 3:5-6). It is essential for servant leaders in the kingdom to maintain an ongoing, intimate relationship of trust and obedience to God. Challenging situations tempt us to lean upon our own understanding. Always remember that God has promised to be with us at all times and that He delights in our acknowledging and trusting in Him. The kingdom is His kingdom, and we belong to Him; we are God’s responsibility.

God’s call to ministry is a call to preparation. It is not a call to success, but a call to faithfulness.

Bishop George McKinney is pastor of St. Stephen’s Cathedral Church of God in Christ in San Diego and a member of the denomination’s 12-member General Board.

6. Don’t Be Offended

By Bob Mumford

Years ago, people built traps in order to catch birds. They would balance a box on a stick tied to a rope and birdseed or other food would be placed under the box. When a bird came to eat the seed, the stick would trip, and the box would fall on the unsuspecting bird.

In Greek, that stick is called the skandalizo, translated “to offend.” When skandalizo becomes your portion—and it will—and you find yourself in a spiritually or emotionally dark box, it is often difficult to recover because you can feel like you’re fighting a tar baby. Every move is the wrong one. Every prayer sounds like a poorly verbalized whimper. All counsel seems petty or counterproductive.

Being scandalized or offended is one of the most binding traps into which a believer can fall. In many ways, it goes far beyond simply being hurt, deceived or ensnared by carnal sin; it has the capacity to totally undermine and destroy our walk with the Lord. When we have been scandalized, we really do not care what anyone thinks. We feel the early signs of deep-seated anger, and if we are not careful we can rapidly be sucked into the vacuum of rage and depression.

Jesus warned us about not being offended. We must allow God to do things that we would never expect. Maturity involves guarding against stumbling, falling into sin, or giving up our faith because our expectations were unmet.

Bob Mumford is a veteran charismatic Bible teacher and founder of Lifechangers ministry.

7. Lead By Example

By Nola Warren

During our years of ministry in Mexico, my husband and I have had the joy of mentoring hundreds of young men and women as they prepared for their God-given ministries. We always used the apostle Paul’s admonition in 1 Corinthians 11:1 as our guide: “Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ.” We have always believed that is the best mentoring system of all, and it was one of the many truths we taught our own five children.

Always remember: Lead by example. As we are instructed to follow the example of Christ, we should remember the example He left. Jesus was love. He was sacrificial. He humbled Himself. He came to serve, not to be served. We need to love those who come to us for mentoring, sacrificing for them and never expecting them to serve us, but rather serving them ourselves.

And parents, don’t forget about the little leaders of tomorrow living under your own roof. They also need to be loved and trained in the ways of our Lord.

Nola Warren is a Bible teacher and longtime missionary to Mexico.

MORE MENTORING

Find out what advice other ministry veterans have for the next generation of church leaders at mentors.charismamag.com.