I’m reading an ebook called Houses That Change the World, by Wolfgang Simson. It’s available as a free download from www.openheaven.com. It’s about the house church movement and its potential to change the face of Christianity, with an emphasis on the example of the burgeoning church in China.

The translation grammar is a bit fractured, but there’s a lot of thoughtful stuff in the book, and hopefully I’ll review it more thoroughly later. But for now I wanted to get out this powerful excerpt on the role of the Apostle, especially with reference to the broken state of the church. I can assure you, the  implications of this excerpt are all too real.

If we ever do get our act together, we are going to see a move of God that will be unprecedented in scope and power. The world is ripe for harvest, but it is looking for something real and permanent. I believe it is going to happen, because it has to happen.

Be blessed,
p.

The predominant role of apostles and prophets for church planting

As important a role spiritual hospitals have to play, they cannot replace what apostles and prophets are uniquely gifted for: to build a supernatural base and foundation for a multiplying church movement, to accept nothing as impossible, to respond strategically to visions and supernatural revelations, to be prophetic talent-spotters.

They are not so human-centered and felt-need-oriented ”tenders” like good Pastors, Teachers and Evangelists, but God-centered: they have the God-given ability to see beyond things, beyond human needs and problems, and take hold of the tasks and visions of God. They do not want to just build ”a church”, they want the whole city or nation! They live very much in the future, for the future, from the future, going constantly pregnant with future developments, and can therefore pull and lead the church into the future, and prevent it from becoming a traditional institution only celebrating the past, or a fossilized monument of history long gone. The church is ”built on the foundation of apostles and prophets, with Jesus Christ himself as the chief cornerstone” (Eph.2:20), writes Paul. Jesus writes to the church in Smyrna ”that you have tried those who call themselves apostles” (Rev. 2:1-7) after almost all of ”The Twelve” had died. This suggest simply the continuation of apostles even after the ”age of apostles”, says Watchman Nee in his book ”The Orthodoxy of the Church”. Like with a foundation for a house, much of the work of apostles and prophets is not always seen but felt. That is why they are called ”first of all” (1 Cor. 12:28), because they are also ”called in” first of all to do the foundational work for ”founding churches”, the site spotting, earth moving, excavating, foundation laying, so that others like carpenter and plumbers and electricians can build on that foundation. Would you like to live in a house where the foundations are laid by a carpenter? I admire carpenters, but I would not like to live in a house where the carpenter has laid the foundation. That is simply out of his brief.

Instead of pastoral, evangelistic and teaching-models of church, apostles and prophets build prophetic and apostolic churches. The apostle, mentioned first in all the biblical lists of ministries, is one ”sent to attempt to solve the unsolvable for the purpose of facilitating the increase of the Church of Jesus Christ in quality as well as quantity”, says Barney Coombs in his excellent book ”Apostles Today”….

How God works

“God’s method is a man. Are you that man?”…

Healing the church trauma

Many apostles and prophets today are not in church at all, because they have not much room in traditional churches. They have been pushed to the side, they are often feared because they seem so strong, radical and different, and many have not only been marginalized, but truly rejected, and as a result have given up on church almost completely, maybe with a last flicker and a spark of hope still burning in them. Many of them are in business today, or have become medical doctors. More and more of them know deep down that they are made for more than just earning 10.000 dollars a month or operating ulcers, avoiding the church that hurt them, spiritually surviving by TV and Radio, and attending an occasional conference or a Christian businessmen’ ”Chapter”.

Those rejected, undiscovered or underemployed apostles and prophets suffer from what I call the ”church trauma”, a very deep and tricky wound inflicted to them by the very institution of healing, the church, which did not live up to it’s own calling and, an almost devilish scheme, has badly hurt those whose ministries it needed most. Many of those Christian businessmen therefore heavily support anything but the church, invest into parachurch ministries and missions, as long as they can stay clear of the church which have hurt them so much. The tragic of this is, that the church is God’s mission. Someone needs to find them, go to them, apologize to them profoundly, heal the ”church trauma”, speak to that glowing spark and fan it into a flame, and then recruit them, helping them to see how God sees them, and release them into their apostolic and prophetic potential for the building up of the church.

Share This: