My friend, Andrew Fountain, is live-blogging from the Newfrontiers Together on a Mission leadership conference being held in Brighton. His reports will be uploaded to his site, in Christ: Andrew Fountain’s blog. As he is able to gain Internet access, he will upload his impressions.
Andrew reports, “So far we have had sessions from Stephen van Rhyn, Rob Rufus, and Terry Virgo. All three of them were excellent . . .”
His first report (M03) is on Terry Virgo’s session, taken from Joshua 1:1-9. Terry recounts how he was drawn to this passage as he prepared:
- He feels God is turning a new page for Newfrontiers.
- He uses many ways of communicating this to us, some of them quite unusual.
- God loves our new initiatives, but when HE does something new, it is altogether different.
It Requires Fresh Faith
- Joshua is going to have to start this new era by doing a miracle.
- Our God is fundamentally a supernatural God. If we are going to work with him we have to be part of this.
- God says “Behold I have given you Jericho” — but they have not taken the city yet!
- Our training programs often focus on providing information, but it is more important to provide a call to faith.
UPDATE
Andrew has now uploaded two more sessions from day 1 of the conference. Here is a brief introduction:
Report on S02 — Rob Rufus: The Spirit of Faith
- The Joy of the Lord is our strength. Why will the trees of the field clap their hands? The whole of creation is waiting for the sons of God to come into their joy, and that is when they clap their hands—they are waiting for us to “get it”!
- Joy always brings noise!
- But all of us have had faith failures. We measure ourselves by some unfair standard when we read the history books about the great men of faith.
- Religious traditions are blockages that hinder our faith.
Report on TT2-1: Terry Virgo — The Holy Spirit and your Church: Baptism in the Spirit
- Presence of the Spirit is of massive importance.
- The manifestation of his presence, not just singing good songs.
Acts 1:8 — They would receive power when the Holy Spirit came
- When we are helping people to enter into the Baptism of the Spirit, it is very important that they be theological comfortable with it.
- There is no point in praying for people who don’t believe in it!
- Never just pray for them. Even if they are blessed at the time, they may experience a backlash of doubt afterwards.
- The more you are assured from Scripture, the better.
- When Jesus said “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you” they had an O.T. background for understanding this.
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