When I was in community 30 years ago, we would lay a decision on the dining room table and tell everyone to go off and pray for guidance. They would come back in about ten minutes and we would poll the community, starting with the youngest Christian on up so no one would change their answer based upon awe for an older Christian. We always came up unanimous.

It was a sad day when God told us to close out the community. We weren’t expecting it, but it was unanimous.

Today I would first have us pray a deliverance prayer for us before doing it, to eliminate any possible demonic influence.

I accept various forms of divine guidance: An inner voice from the Holy Spirit, spiritual video clips & snapshots, a heart sense and an inner spiritual knowing.

BTW, Francis MacNutt wrote “The Nearly Perfect Crime” which was on a similar topic as “Pagan Christianity.” It reads differently, so I think he researched & wrote his book with no knowledge of your book. As an ex-priest & seminary professor in the Roman Catholic Church, it must have been very painful for him to write. His fellow Roman Catholics leaned upon him until he gave the book a less damning title, “The Healing Reawakening.”

The term “born again” is not mentioned and is seldom used. You would never hear the parable of the goats and the sheep or the great net severing the wicked from the just in the organized church that I inhabit from time to time.

I have gone to home meetings for years and years and when you invite someone who is not a Christian, there is no where to hide from the Lord! The people in the meeting intimately love the Lord and someone that sees it wants to learn more about him! (I’ve seen it!)

Thanks for the book – Frank!
(Read the book – The God or Abraham, Isaac, and Ishmael by Watchman Nee – WOW!)

Permission to send this out to our list?
Steve

The most basic, primal (early) level is the limbic brain that almost solely deals with our base functions like breathing/heartbeat and primal response to either flee danger or face and fight it – our ‘Doing’ brain if you will.

The middle brain is that which surrounds the limbic ‘core’ and is responsible for all emotions and associated endocrinal functions – our ‘Feeling’ Brain.

And the Third and most complex outer layers, such as the neo-cortex, deal with the higher intellect and thought functions – our ‘Thinking’ Brain.

i like the harmony/reciprocity of your divison of God’s word with the latest scientific, secular thinking concerning how man is divided in his primary processing centre.

Just coincidence??

The Aussie educator is a gentleman by the name of Glenn Capelli who runs the True Learning Centre In Perth.

He also says that most humans tend towards one particular way of learning (there are 5 distinct forms of information procesing we learn ‘best’ through and we tend to mainly resort to one, or perhaps a combination of two of them to learn something ‘new’. He believes we all could increase our ability to learn and retain information by developing our brain’s ability’s to function more in all 5 areas and in utilising interconnections between all three regions of the triune brain.

Mozart wrote some of his music that specifically helped harmonise three way interactions within our brains also. (left/right hemisphere connection, feeling/thinking connection and temporal front lobe/rear lobe interaction)

I found your post most enlightening and intend delving deeper.

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Frank, I copied your piece on organic church to show to a pastor/friend of mine since you are more articulate on this subject than I. Before I even pulled out the paper, he started telling me about this book he just started reading…Pagan Christianity… At first glance, he’s excited about it…totally unexpected! I’m looking forward to his evaluation and sent him this page hoping that he will join the discussions.

I’m a bit suspicious that our “temperment” in this regard may be as much a function of the spiritual environment in which we find ourselves versus an innate temperment. How Christ is presented to us is what we reflect – did we first encounter Him through people that were thinkers? Feelers? Doers?

In the thinker churches, there are always those who “feel” the things that are being thought about. There are always those scurrying around doing things to enable the thinkers to have more time to think.

In the feeler churches, there are always those giving careful thought to how people feel. There are doers making sure that the the other feelers feel good. (and have lots of coffee and donuts and interesting music.)

In the doer churches, there are …wait….doer churches only seem to ever have doers. So much for that theory ;P

By your definition of a prophet, then what I have been doing, interestingly, is prophesying. My role in the ministry I am involved in is shepherd/teacher. But what I have been doing is prophesying. That’s very interesting, and actually a little unsettling.

It seems that Torah must come first, and indeed it does in real life, in the Bible. It seems that as we are conformed to Torah, particularly in our inward being, then prophecy is borne out — has to be, as the Lord draws us closer to Himself and shares more of His thoughts with us. It seems wisdom would come last, as it can only be borne out of experience, and experience takes time.

After reading your book “Re-Imagining Church” (I read “Pagan Christianity” first. Then “Re-Imagining Church.” Then “Straight Talk To Pastors,” which I recommended to my own pastor, and he is still speaking to me, so that’s good. Then I read some other smaller books, like “Who Is Your Covering.” I have your book that aligns the epistles to their proper chrono setting with Acts, but am saving it for the summer, for my summer study) I decided to call our worship services “apostolic meetings” in my mind and have found contentment with that arrangement.

The ministry I am involved in seeks to teach the Bible to everyone who will come. Torah first. We encourage our studiers to ask God how they can apply what they are learning from Him in their real lives. Wisdom. What we are weak in is a way to help our studiers speak out the word of God as He gives them His thoughts, though we do train in this area as well — just not as strong as the other two.

Am eagerly awaiting the organic church conferences scheduled for next srping — I along with about a dozen others.

“loam: soil composed of sand, silt, clay, and organic matter in evenly mixed particles of various sizes. More fertile than sandy soils, loam is not stiff and tenacious like clay soils. Its porosity allows high moisture retention and air circulation.”

I could not help but draw a parallel to your thoughts about the combination of law, prophecy and wisdom to properly understand God’s will. Jesus often used agriculture in his parables: seeds, soil, trees, vines, fruit, etc. I would say that the organic church would grow best in loamy soil like you have described.