I was a reporter for a radio station during my four years of Bible College. Every day I gathered facts, wrote stories, and edited interviews for an hourly broadcast leading up to NBC news. I still put too many commas in my writing, automatically breaking sentences up into short statements, enabling them to be read aloud. I’ve found my reporter’s training suited my calling.

    As I view the world, I write headlines about events, albeit now from a perspective as a minister of the gospel. I can see our world with prophetic insight by the light of the Bible’s storyline. As God’s people living at the end of the age with its many terrible troubles, we can “discern the times.” Turmoil brings fear but Jesus wants us to have his faith — even while we watch the world and the church being rapidly changed, often against our wishes.

    Is change a bad thing? Yes and no. I am glad for more education, better health care, safer food, and ease of travel. The good old days had little of that. But I am sad for the breakdown of parental roles, the loss of respect in many youngsters, and the usurpation of human rights and responsibilities by governments. Too often we Christians fight skirmishes over side issues. I’ve done it. By being distracted we may neglect the real battle. Satan is capturing human souls. What is God’s mandate to Christians?

    In the church world, few of us realize how rapidly change has occurred. Nor do we realize how desperately we need to embrace good transformation. If we keep doing the same thing, we will get the same results, right? If you look at our American society and its deteriorating values, we need to ask ourselves: how has the old system been working? We make a few converts, we make even fewer genuine disciples, and we keep using methods that barely get us by. What really works?

    Fortunately, God has a plan to fix what is wrong. It involves renewed thinking, reforming our ways, and re-igniting our original mandate from the Lord. It affects our individual lives plus the church’s way of doing ministry. This is liberating people groups around the world. It requires the whole team of Jesus: the restoration of apostles, prophets, and evangelists. Pastors and teachers can’t finish the work alone. This will alter our churches so we can spontaneously grow. New wine is filling the wineskins! The glory of God is appearing in God’s temple. But, where is this real temple?

    The temple of God is not a building; it is a body … made up of people in whom God dwells. This aspect of being (not just doing) is the basis for the greatest influx of new disciples for Christ ever before seen in history. The Bible tells of the rapid growth of the early church. Why don’t we see it? Could it be that our old methods, based on models developed centuries ago before the Spirit’s renewal, are actually working against our success? Where’s the fruit?

    Once in a while I see something that’s profoundly worthy of sharing. Whether it was Bob Null at First Assembly articulating what it meant to be a Spirit-filled minister, or Jack Giles celebrating Jesus as his healer, or Clay Nash in Southaven doing an apostle’s reforming work, I am quick to say “amen” when that person hits the right note of truth for God.

    Just such a word is in The Elijah Newsletter. It is entitled “Yet Now Be Strong, Return and Rebuild,” by Faith Marie Baczko. I don’t know her but I liked her article. I would add this truth – the temple receiving glory is the Body of Christ, the people of God. So, let’s equip people for their ministry! That’s the essence of what’s burning in my heart.

    The last great revival on earth will not be led by superstars on stage but ordinary saints anointed by the Spirit to take the gospel’s original full power to friends and neighbors. The Church, awakened from slumber, is called to play its greatest role in Christ’s coming kingdom: a matured church reaping a ripened harvest.

    Ron Wood is as minister and writer. He and his wife live in NW Arkansas with a retired Jack Russell Terrier, near their kids and grandkids. Write to him with any questions or comments at: wood.stone.ron@gmail.com.