Leader Shift 

If we are to experience church in the way Christ always intended Church to be experienced, then we must realize things have to change. We must never forget that He will bring about this change, if we allow Him. The church is God’s building and His project. All we need to do is seek out the things He wants us to do and how He wants us to do them. When we do this we are guaranteed success. God always blesses His own projects!

Change always implies leaving the old familiar ways behind and stepping out into new, uncharted waters. It definitely does not feel comfortable and does not sound safe. The Christ like life is a life of growth, growth means constant change. This growth and change continually stretches and expands our individual and corporate wine skins, which in turn leads to complete restoration.

SOME OF THE CHANGES WE MUST PURSUE:

Cleansing of the house of God: We do this by refusing to compromise and by upholding God’s righteous standards, both individually and corporately. We must always desire to reach up to His level, rather than attempt coercing God to stoop to our level.

The church becoming the dwelling place of God:  A church where God is the pre-eminent centre and focus of all activity and all things. A place He feels welcome and comfortable. This may mean we feel less comfortable, but as we continue to crucify our flesh, He who lives in us will certainly respond by ensuring our feeling of security, peace and joy bring a greater level of comfort than we can now imagine.

The church becoming God’s house of prayer: Prayer must take priority over all activities and must be the underpinning of all ministry.

The church becoming the Community of believers: The church is often a gathering of lonely isolated individuals. This must change! In order to facilitate this change we must transition our thinking from events to relationships.

A leadership shift; from ministers to equippers:  Leaders must be committed to place the ministry in the hands of every believer. Gods mandate is to make disciples. We need to allow Him to bring us to levels of maturity that would equip us to become spiritual fathers and mothers to the next generation of leaders.

A shift from our vision to His vision:  Jesus said, “I have given them (every true believer) the glory that you gave me, that they (the church) may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me”. (John 17:22-23). This scripture is the very embodiment of the vision of Jesus for His church:

The very real danger we face is that our wine skins will not be flexible enough to receive the change God desires. We know when Jesus heralded change and brought with Him the new wine, many of the Jewish wine skins were incapable of receiving this wine of the new covenant. As a result they were unable to recognize Christ Jesus as the fulfillment of the messianic promise, even though the scriptures clearly identified Jesus as their longed for Saviour.

W. Joe Ingram