pat loughery

I’m behind on my posting from ELI weekend.. sorry about that! Yesterday was Shannon’s birthday so I took the day off to play with her and Kailiegh, so I have been trying to load up before and after yesterday to get my work done. No luck there.

Here’s a synopsis of what we learned and did. It’s a bit long for a regular blog entry.

First, what is ELI:

Can you imagine a church filled with emerging leaders who know who they really are, what they are really called to do, and accept how God “wired” them to accomplish the task?

Not only is our culture a foundation of shifting sand at best, but our best and brightest leaders of tomorrow… the one’s that Jesus intends to change the world through… oftentimes battle with significant insecurity, cynicism and a disconnect with the purposes and behaviors of the church as they know it. If in fact the world is to be redeemed on our watch, then these issues will need to be forcefully hit head-on. Welcome to part of our solution: ELI.

The Church of today is uniquely positioned to boldly take the Gospel of redemption into a dying world. But who in the church is gonna do it?

ELI exists to serve NW Vineyard churches in building a strong leadership and church planting base!

ELI exists to assist Vineyard churches in the identification, training, and releasing of new, primarily younger (18-30 something’s) leaders.

ELI exists to facilitate relationship building between emerging leaders around the Northwest.

ELI exists to promote the free exchange of entrepreneurial ideas between leaders, facilitate ongoing dialogue within regions, and encourage the mentoring relationship with local pastors.

Click through for more..

The theme for ELI last weekend was “Doin’ the Stuff”, a term we’ve carried in the Vineyard since early in the Wimber days – basically it’s just the idea that the stuff that Jesus did is stuff that we get to do as well – heal the sick, seek the outcast, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons, raise the dead. You know, normal, everyday life occurrences. Maybe for you, not usually for me. I want to see it happen, it just doesn’t happen all that much.

This ELI gathering focused on equipping young leaders in the church for that work. Kingdom ministry, power encounters, missional activity – whatever you want to call it. A team of people from various UK churches came to teach, and what they taught was classic 101 materials. What’s the Kingdom? What are the spiritual gifts? How can we pursue and demonstrate them? Why do they exist?

Frankly at this point I can’t remember what our topics were. Friday night we talked some about the Kingdom, but more than that we were challenged to truly pursue discipleship to Christ. Saturday morning the topic was supposed to be prophetic ministry, but the woman who spoke told her story – extraordinarily gifted, but not rooted in relationship with her Lord – and the fall from ministry that happened as a result. And then she called us to repentance in a very firm and very sweet way. I spent quite a while trying to decide if the heat I felt in my chest was conviction or if it was empowerment to ministry, and decided I’d better just keep repenting for whatever the Lord was bringing up. Small stuff mostly, but sinful stuff nonetheless. The power of God was strong in this place. More than half the church was on the floor sitting, kneeling, laying. God worked wonders among us, restoring many to life and hope.

We took a lunch break and came back to hear more about healing and revelatory gifts (words of knowledge, primarily). We were warned, however, that we’d have clinic time instead of a lot of talking. That proved to be the case. We didn’t really get a “healing 101” training, but more of a “Hey, Jesus healed, he calls you to follow him, he didn’t train so much as send his first disciples. Stop talking and go do it”. And, “don’t worry about memorizing some silly tract, or the 4 spiritual flaws or whatever, just go see what God’s doing and participate”.

The nervous energy was palpable. If I hadn’t done this before – and felt led for 2 years to lead a church for whom this is everyday life, not just a seminar exercise – I probably would have chickened out and found the nearest Thai restaurant and read a book. But.

We broke up into three groups: A small team going across the street to the coffee shope, then a large team going to the elderly-and-disabled housing behind the building we were meeting in and another team who was supposed to fan out through the area. Our assignment was to hang out, ask people if we could pray for any needs they had, and when God showed us more information about the person or situation, to be bold and go for it.

I went with the group going to the elderly-and-disabled housing, and took one person from my church and an 11-year-old girl whose parents I have met a couple of times. We quickly found that the housing unit was secured and we couldn’t get in to go door-to-door, knocking. After some discussion with the group, we just decided to go door-to-door in the neighborhood behind.

My group of three started out cold. The first 4 doors, nobody answered our knock. The fifth door, as we said, “Hey, this might sound weird, but it is for us too. We’re Christians, and we’d like to know if you have any needs we can pray with you about?”. The resident yelled “No!”, shut the door quickly, and we backed away slowly. My team morale wasn’t great.

We kept going, and soon met Dorothy. She was probably in her early 60s, and she – amazingly – let us pray for her. She had diabetes and high blood pressure, and 17 years ago and 9 years ago she’d been diagnosed with cancer. I started the prayer. Our 11-year-old friend continued, and Dorothy beamed. Our other teammate – who is terrified to pray out loud – hung in there, quietly. We finished quickly, chatted for quite a while, and then left.

Next door we met a man whose name I’ve now forgotten. Early 70s, hard of hearing. He asked us to pray for his wife, who recently had a stroke and is housebound. He didn’t want us to come inside and pray directly with her, so we prayed for her and then for him on his doorstep, in the rain.

At the next home, with us now buoyed by hope, we met a Christian couple. They didn’t need prayer, but they did offer to give us tickets to the musical theatre production that their church is doing for Christmas.

We went to several other homes, nothing amazing or spectacular happed as a result of our prayers that we saw. Except that it got easier simply to try to love people, in the face of rejection and confusion. Our 11-year-old was strong and brave. My other team member got warmed up. We had fun.

We stopped as it turned dark, walked back to our car and went to have great pizza, and laughed about what had happened.

When we came back together again for the evening session, we heard a lot of similar stories. Nobody’s MS was healed, nobody in a wheelchair walked, nobody who was blind could now see. But there was faith and integrity in the room. People experienced being missional , being church, being the missional church. People risked asking God to speak, and some heard well, some missed the mark. It was awesome.

Then Saturday night we did some more teaching and practice in prophetic gifts. This was fantastic. I’ll blog on that one later as I have to stop soon.

Here’s the main thing I learned, which I guess I never really thought about before. Spiritual gifts and their use – they’re for mission. They’re not for inside the walls of the church; we just practice them inside the church so that they’re polished and we’re experienced for whan God gives them at Starbucks or Safeway or the dance recital or whatever. The reason, in one of our teacher’s opinion, that gifts get such a bad rap is that they’re not usually used as weapons of spiritual warfare, but rather as points of pride, or showing off, or ijust out of balance with their intention as signs of the Kingdom among those who need to see that God’s actually not just a theory in a book. In fact, looking at the Gospels and Acts – only on two specific occasions can we find the use of spiritual gifts or kingdom encounters occurring outside the context of mission: First, when Paul bored his listeners so much that Eutychus fell out of a window and died, and Paul resurrected him. Second, when Peter’s mother-in-law had a fever which was healed. Every other time was for the purpose of demonstrating and explaining th Kingdom to those who didn’t yet connect with it. And if that’s the case (and I have to do a bit more study before I buy this, but I can’t think of counter-examples still), then the large majority of our use of spiritual gifts out to be outside the context of church gatherings as well. NOT by shutting down their use inside the church, but by giving the Lord permission to send us on missions daily, and equipping us by means of his Spirit for those tasks.

So there’s a quick synopsis of the weekend. I really enjoyed it, I had a blast practicing, I was blessed (especially in the prophetic practice session), and I got to see God continue to remind us that we are here – the church exists – for those who are not in the church. That the church only exists for those who are outside it; that we’re not family for the sake of being inclusive, but for hte sake of being strengthened and taught and renewed and challenged to go out and share the great news, that God actually exists and loves and honors and protects and heals.

More to come. On spiritual gifts in the church, and on prophetic ministry, among other stuff I’m sure.