The offense of revival : Teaching minimized? Or, just different?

From the book The Power to Change the World by Rick Joyner regarding the Welsh Revival:

William T. Stead: …if you are afraid of strong emotions, you’d better give the revival a wide berth.

Interviewer: But, is it all emotion?  Is there no teaching?

William T. Stead: Precious little.  Do you think teaching is what people want in revival?   These people, all the people in a land like ours are taught to death, preached to insensibility.  They all know the essential truths.  They know they are not living as they ought to live, and no amount of teaching will add anything to that conviction.

Regarding the place of prayer and teaching in our churches:

To those who critiqued the Lakeland revival by saying there was insufficient teaching, it could be much easier to critique most churches by saying there is insufficient prayer.  Which is the greater offense?  Should we be more concerned about not knowing more about God or by not deeply knowing God?

Here’s a 10 minute video on this topic you can watch as you read the rest:

One of the primary criticisms of the Lakeland Outpouring was the seeming lack of teaching (though there was amazing teaching when I was there… in fact, the teaching session was lengthier than you’d find in most churches today).  I have found this to be quite interesting as it reveals, at least to a degree, an incorrect understanding of teaching’s role in the church.

Now, allow me to clarify on the front end of this discussion—I am a teacher, I love to teach, and I zealously affirm that teaching is a critical hinge in ministry.  We must have biblical, Holy Spirit driven teaching—and much more of it than we have now.  That being said, we have to get ready for a different structural facilitation of the role of teaching in our churches.

Here’s the question I have for those who are critical of moves of God due to a seeming lack of teaching during the meetings: Why do you presume the meetings are to be teaching centric?

For example, if one were to call a prayer meeting that erupted into a move of God, should the prayer be shut down in favor of teaching?

Or, what about an regional pastor’s meeting in a city somewhere?  Should there be a call for salvation?

Or, on the flip side, does there have to be an hour of worship prior to a teaching service?

The point is, there are often different venues for different functions of ministry, and while often they overlap during a single meeting or event, they don’t always have to.

Now, of course, on the whole, it’s important that we receive solid teaching, we grow in prayer and we worship with passion.  The various elements of our  spiritual lives should complete the bigger picture together.

When I was pastoring in Manitou Springs, the call to deeper prayer was severe.  God was challenging us to respond to the call to intimacy as a body.  It became clear to me that we, and most every church in the nation, have taught hours and hours and hours while prayer and power encounters were at a minimum.  Additionally, we live in a day where we could listen to teachings on CD or online, we could read book after book and we could read the Bible without stopping.  We would need many lifetimes to take in all of the teaching that’s available to us.  The point?  There is nearly unlimited teaching available to every believer in the nation.  I would often tell people to arrive to the service on Sunday ‘full’ so they could pray and intercede and worship and pour out.  It was a simply yet challenging call to maturity. Study, watch sermons on TV, read books and take responsibility for increasing their study themselves.  Don’t rely on a nugget of teaching for an hour a week on a Sunday morning.

I made the call to focus on prayer as a primary activity during most of our services for a season—and there was a religious spirit that rose up quite radically.  It was shocking to me.  I suppose it shouldn’t have been.  The reality is that prayer requires a level of sacrifice that most aren’t willing to offer.  I watched a video yesterday online and the point was made that probably less than 5% of people in the church have heard God.  It reminded me of the time I asked the question when teaching at a conference in Colorado, “Who here has never heard God?”  About 90% of the people raised their hand.

If we are zealously devoted to being intimately with God in the place of wild prayer, we can’t help but to hear God! It just happens!

Way too many people are taught about God without knowing God intimately, without hearing his voice.  This is a serious issue!  We’re talking a salvation level issue here!  We must introduce people to Truth, the person and not truth, the information!  Truth is imparted through intimate encounters in the place of Word-based prayer.

I don’t believe we can presume to teach with power, unction and wild passion without spending ridiculous hours in prayer.  We’re kidding ourselves if we think we can impart Truth without intimately knowing Truth in the place of night and day prayer.

Here’s a portion from a book by Rick Joyner titled The Power to Change the World. This portion is an interview with William T. Stead, a man who many believed to be the most powerful in England after he visited the Welsh revival:

William T. Stead:  You have read ghost stories and can imagine what you would feel if you were alone at midnight in the haunted chamber of some old castle and you heard the slow and stealthy step stealing along the corridor where the visitor from another world was said to walk.  If you go to South Wales and watch the revival, you will feel pretty much just like that.  There is something there from the other world.  You cannot say whence it came or whither it is going, but it moves and lives and reaches for you all the time.  You see men and women go down in sobbing agony be
fore your eyes as the invisible Hand clutches at their heart and you shudder.  It is pretty grim I tell you, if you are afraid of strong emotions, you’d better give the revival a wide berth.

Interviewer: But, is it all emotion?  Is there no teaching?

William T. Stead: Precious little.  Do you think teaching is what people want in revival?   These people, all the people in a land like ours are taught to death, preached to insensibility.  They all know the essential truths.  They know they are not living as they ought to live, and no amount of teaching will add anything to that conviction.

To those who critiqued the Lakeland revival by saying there was insufficient teaching, it could be much easier to critique most churches by saying there is insufficient prayer.  Which is the greater offense?  Should we be more concerned about not knowing more about God or by not deeply knowing God?

Now, as I said previously, teaching has a significant place in the church, but Acts chapter 2 style preaching is much different than what we are used to today.  Here’s two chapters on the topic of teaching from my book 20 Elements of Revival:

Element Seven

Acts 2:11 “Cretans and Arabs–we hear them speaking in our own tongues the wonderful works of God.”

Element Seven- A declaration of God’s works

You’ll notice that up until this point in the establishment of the first Church that there has been no mention of the ministries that we identify with the local Church experience. No teaching, no evangelism, no Sunday School, no small groups. It hasn’t been time for them. It has been premature. Remember, the development of a Church must be established on the presence of the Holy Spirit, prayer and an intensely prophetic focus. Everyone must be filled, endowed with power and boldness and ready to move out. Here in verse eleven, which is really attached to verse six and the previous element, we see those who have received power begin to move out into society. They had something wonderful to give- and it wasn’t knowledge, a formula for success or wonderful fellowship. It was entirely experience driven- yet it was undeniably God.

Those in the upper room experienced a new move of the Holy Spirit and they were simply spilling out everywhere they went! Note that it was a corporate outpouring and the result was a corporate ministry. I can imagine based on the next element that they were so full of the power and life of the Holy Spirit that they were stumbling and groaning and stuttering and crying out as mad men and women! It wasn’t a teaching environment at this stage, but it was a time of declaration! We can only imagine how wonderfully they shouted the experience they were having to the multitudes. They were zealots! Fanatics! Revolutionaries! They were communicating the substance of an invisible God through a life-changing experience with Him! It’s something you can’t put into words, but I am certain of this- the words that were used, coupled with the zeal and body language and boldness that was all over these people, shook that great city to its core.

I contend that we better not move into large scale strategic ministry until we have what they had! We need to see into an unnerving invisible realm where God is stirring so we can effectively transmit that to others. It was once said by an unknown person, People of vision see the invisible, hear the inaudible, believe the incredible, think the unthinkable and do the impossible! If we are to introduce the amazing yet invisible realities of God to a lost and spiritually numb society, we better be highly sensitive and very well acquainted with that realm. When we peer into that realm, we simply cannot maintain our emotionless and dignified position of status-quo!

2 Samuel 6:22 “And I will be even more undignified than this, and will be humble in my own sight. But as for the maidservants of whom you have spoken, by them I will be held in honor.”

I heard someone say recently that we need Phd’s in the pulpits again so we can learn the deep truths of scripture. As long as those people are deeply in a place of intimate and wild prayer every day of their lives, then bring on the doctors! But, if they are not, I’d rather listen to someone who is one day old in the Lord. A person who just came through the fire of the Holy Spirit has much more to say than any theologian who bases his ministry on knowledge alone.

Allow me to make an important point here. This is the very reason why we don’t want to prematurely launch a public ministry. We don’t want to introduce people into a logical or even emotional lifestyle of religious activity. The salvation experience must be one of just that- Holy Spirit driven experience in the furnace of prayer. The job of the evangelist is not to cause people to repeat a prayer and come to Church. His job is to introduce people to God Himself.

That’s why evangelists must be people of deep prayer. Their goal is to take the lost by the hand and lead them right into the prayer room where the Living God is burning through them! These people will crave to pray without ceasing! We can grow churches through good programs, good teaching and other attempts. But, the coming reformation that is being mapped out in this book will shake all of that down to a place of raw hunger, prayer and experiential encounters with God day after day after day. When we find ourselves on our faces in tears and without words to effectively share what just happened after being caught up and emblazoned by the power of Almighty God we’ll know we have something well worth communicating.

Element Nine

Acts 2:15-16 For these are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day. But this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:

Many desire to launch their ministry here- proclaiming to the masses the wonderful works of Jesus in the hopes that they get saved and ‘come to Church’. There are several problems with this mind-set. Of course, there is nothing wrong with being zealous to complete our mission, but we must use wisdom. There is a process. In this element, Peter wasn’t simply giving a Bible lesson. What was he doing, then?

Element Nine- Preaching & explaining the move of the Holy Spirit

To attempt to start a ministry at this point doesn’t make sense when we understand what Peter was doing. He was using the unique move of God that exploded out of the upper room as an opportunity to explain it and the Kingdom of God to everybody who witnessed it. So, when ‘revival’ has broken out, and God is showing up in an unusual way, we will have the opportunity to teach and explain all that is happening to those who are listening. Of course, the chance to build upon and expand into other scriptural elements will present itself in a powerful way.

At Revolution, we have two perspectives when it comes to teaching:

Pre-revival- teach everything we can to advance the idea of revival. A sermon that I am teaching now is, “The Lifestyle of a Forerunner”. The basic idea is that if we want revival later, we must model revival now. What will we be doing when revival breaks out? Practically and spiritually? Do that now.

During revival- Boundless opportunities will exist to explain everything from manifestations of God’s presence to evangelism to pas
sion to tithing. Such teachings will take root easily in a revival atmosphere.

So, the basic idea is this- the high majority of teaching before revival breaks out is on topics that directly lead to the experience of revival. This is why it is so important that your ‘upper room team’ is entirely focused on the goal. If you have people in the mix that desire other things (other good things, but things that are outside of the current strategic focus), you will find disunity start to arise. Then, when revival breaks out, the people and the teaching atmosphere is very ready for a great expanse of the scope of impartation. A Holy Spirit driven atmosphere causes the wide range of biblical topics that need to be addressed to be infused with great staying power.

1 John 2:27 But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in Him.

It’s in a Holy Spirit driven atmosphere where the teaching anointing exists. In this environment the Holy Spirit will be imparting revelation to the masses through any number of experiential manifestations- and then, the teacher will simply declare and explain what the Holy Spirit has already initiated.

This is why in most Churches today we will experience a musical worship set prior to the teaching of the Word. There is an innate understanding of the need for the Holy Spirit to be invited, stirred and heeded in order for teaching to be of any effect. Of course, this simple structure is far from what God has planned for those who seek revival. The entire experience from beginning to end will be that of extreme worship, prayer and the fire of teaching.

An easy way to say it is that the experiential much more easily translates into information than the other way around.

Knowledge, or information, that starts in the mind has a very difficult time making it into our spirits. To be scorched by the Holy Spirit in a place of lengthy prayer will result in some amazing truths being experienced. It’s in this place of prayer where we will ‘know’ God instead of simply know about Him. I often ask people, if they were on the moon, would they rather learn about oxygen or experience oxygen? Both are good. Both are important. But which is most important? As we experience the Rhema revelation of God, we will be able to support it easily with a myriad of powerful scriptures. Our personal and undeniable experience coupled with the Living Word of God (the Logos) will result in a deeply penetrating and life altering teaching.

Romans 10:17 So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

The word ‘word’ in this passage derives from the Greek word, “Rhema”. It’s the experiential revelation that causes people to believe, not an intellectual or even emotional understanding of the written Word. It’s in the place of experiential prayer where both the Rhema and the Logos explode into people.

This is the goal of this element- to experience God in a powerful way and then impart that to others. We’re developing an intern program at RHOP as I write this. I am training my leaders to get ready to impart what they have experienced with God into these new interns. Support it with Scripture, with testimonies and with other powerful mediums. But, don’t ‘freak out’ at the thought of ‘teaching’. Simply pour out what has been poured into you. That’s New Testament style teaching!

Matthew 7:28-29 And so it was, when Jesus had ended these sayings, that the people were astonished at His teaching, for He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.

You can order my book at www.praytherevolution.com/resources.

I’d love to hear what you think about this.  What do you believe will happen when revival (biblical normalcy) arrives on the soil of our nation?

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