The Journey Continues...

We’ve been reflecting back over our journey and it is amazing how God has brought us to this position in the Body of Christ. Every week, we meet in a very unique facility where we are able to share a couple of hours worshipping the Lord, enjoying one another’s fellowship, and engaging the Word of God.

The Lord put in on our hearts to record these special moments and release video clips over the internet so that we could stay connected with our church family throughout the week. We had no idea that people, who find themselves “in between churches”, would discover these video clips.

Little did we know that people from all over the world would begin to access the videos and begin to daily explore our website. Our website analytics report reads like a United Nations roll call.

For some reason, God is making this ministry extremely effective on the internet. For seven years we have agonized over the low physical attendance, while marveling at the incredible internet influence.

What an amazing journey. Now we look forward to someday being able to take it to the next level by going live with our Sunday gathering. That’s going to be very exciting.

In the meantime, we continue on this journey. We promised our church family from the beginning, that this would be an adventure that we would take on together.

The past few months, we’ve been slowly walking through our Fruitful Lifestyle Development series. This series has caused us to traverse through some highly controversial issues. As soon as we took on the task of teaching about the Assurance and Security of our Salvation, we knew we were moving into some lonely waters in this community.

Since then, we’ve taught key principles to encourage the dream that God has encoded within every human being. Then we started going through the Lifestyle of Victorious Believers which includes having a word-filled life, a spirit-filled life, and a lifestyle of prayer, praise and worship.

When you look back over those weeks of teaching, you can see that the Lord has been guiding us in a wonderful path of understanding His ways.

Along with those teaching sessions, we took a couple of months to engage in the Lifetree Conversation Café. Those special Sunday sessions featured video clips of real people and their real stories. This provided us the opportunity to really get to know one another through personal conversation and dialogue. Since then, we have shifted the conversations to Wednesday evenings where we continue to learn more about one another and the ways of God. The Lifetree Conversations will conclude in September, but they have been a wonderful addition to our ministry.

 

Moving Forward

After spending almost a week in St. Louis, Missouri with our family and friends, we returned for a much needed time of fellowship, food and fun with the Urban Life family. We send a huge THANK YOU to Sylvester and Wanida Whitlock, who hosted our Family and Friends Day in their home last Sunday.

They displayed a tremendous gift of hospitality by preparing all of the food for this special church activity. They even had a portable pool and some toys ready for all of the children. It is a great blessing to have people who step forward in their gifting like they have done. We praise God for them.

The gathering also gave us the opportunity to show a video from our home church’s 25th anniversary celebration. Finally, we were able to give you guys a brief glimpse of where we come from and what we have always desired to establish in Harrisburg.

Now as we move forward and the season changes from summer to autumn, we are preparing the ministry for change as well. Our Midweek Gathering is coming to an end for this year. We’ll host the Lifetree Conversations throughout the month of September and conclude them on Wednesday, October 3rd. After that date, we won’t host any more Midweek Gatherings throughout the remainder of the fall and winter months.

In the meantime, we are preparing for some awesome teaching and discussions in our Sunday Gatherings. We will conclude our teaching on Financial Contributions in the local church by talking about the Principles, Practice and Purpose of Tithes and offerings. After three weeks of discussing the historical perspective and controversies surrounding money tithes, we can finally get into the Benefits of Tithes and Offerings.

Many people thought we were denouncing the money tithe, even though we repeatedly said we were not. We simply needed to lay out the documented history and the doctrinal conflicts about tithing money so that you would know that we are not using coercion and compulsion when we teach about the tithing principle and its benefits.

After that teaching, we will jump into a timely discussion titled “Church Hurts” so that we can walk everyone through another level of healing in their hearts and in their families.

We're On Prayer Watch

In talking to many people around the country, it seems we are all experiencing an incredible phenomenon. We are all being awakened somewhere within the 3:00am to 5:00am hours of the morning, every single night. We know that this is not a coincidence.

So we are encouraging our church family to join with us in prayer.

Our prayer link is: http://urbanlife-church.org/prayer.html

Anyone can also access several prayer video clips at http://www.urbanlife-church.org/urban/On_Line_Prayer.htm

As we get closer to the national election, we can sense that something very evil is rising and we are being called to pray.

At the end of next month, there will be a National Call to Prayer in Philadelphia. You may recall that back in 2009 several pastors in this community started an annual PA Awake prayer call.

Now that prayer call has been picked up by several national church leaders who have also come to recognize the significance of Pennsylvania’s role in the founding of the United States of America.

Back in 2006, my job afforded me the opportunity to actually see, hold and photograph the original text books that were used to write the constitution and build the curriculum for most of the first colleges and universities in this country. These were the books that Franklin, Jefferson and many others poured over as they were trying to write the Constitution. I couldn’t believe the history I was holding.

I shared these photos with Bishop Raphael Green.  I can’t describe how awed and humbled I was to be chosen for an assignment that would place me in this position. Even though all eyes are always on Philadelphia because of The Liberty Bell Center and the National Archives Museum in Washington D.C. where you can see the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence, the books from which these documents were forged are housed right here in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

We are so closely connected to what's really going on that we believe that a daily prayer call is already upon us. God is waking us up every morning to pray. So let's roll with that calling.

We’re going to ask everyone to pray for us as we continue to deliver this message of freedom and deliverance in our worship. We realize our ministry style may not work in most of the United States, but for this community, with all of its deep seeded abuse, God has given us a Word and a strategy.

Most people, outside of Pennsylvania, will never really understand that the incident at Penn State, regarding the child abuse by one of the assistant football coaches, is merely the tip of the iceberg. It’s more like the tip of the tip of the tip of the iceberg.

Abuse is so commonplace in homes, schools, businesses and churches that all of these institutions are a joke to most people here. The rural communities are rampant with abuse.

Since we’ve been here, God has stripped us of all the strategies and plans that we brought from St. Louis. The way to reach the people of this community is so completely different that it appears (to those on the outside) that we are preaching heresy to reach them.

But we are simply doing what Jesus did. He released a woman caught in adultery. He went to the house of a tax collector who was cheating people. He let a woman perform a sensual act of washing his feet with her hair. He hung out with the rowdy folks. Nearly everything he did was considered close to heresy.

Now here in the 21st century, He leads us to tell the people who attend our weekly gatherings, we’re not going to force them to attend church or give money. We’re going to let God heal them. We’re just going to let God speak to them.

To people outside of this community, this looks like we’re compromising the Word of God. But when you’re dealing with severely abused and damaged people, we must minister to them in exactly the way God gives it to us.

This message and this method was not our plan. Our church family knows that there’s no way we could have known to teach and minister in this way.

Many of them have told us that the methods and messages that God gives us, always happen to be exactly what they needed and in the ONLY WAY they could have received it or heard it at that time in their life. God used THIS method and message to get past their hurt, so that they could see GOD. Every single person that has joined our church has come to us with stories of abuse in their homes, in their schools, on their jobs, and most tragically, in their churches.

We’ve heard horror stories of sexual abuse by pastors and emotional abuse by parents. It seems, by the time a person finds Urban Life, they are just about done with the church.

Yet, in most cases, they are still seeking God. For this, we are thankful.

So, here’s a short three minute clip to carry you into next Sunday.

Leaving it to the Holy Spirit to Speak: https://vimeo.com/48341494  

We are overcomers, watching and praying!

Free to Worship

 

The last couple of weeks have been the most controversial of all. We have been talking about Disconnecting Church Contributions from Corruption, Compulsion and Curses. This teaching has been very hard for us to present because it has the potential to alienate us from so many people who have known us for many, many years.

Already, several people, in America, have dropped off our email and Daily Lifeline lists. But that's the price we must pay for touching the "sacred cows" in a person's belief system. We truly understand because we wrestled with this for several months.

We only wish that more people would simply respond like the Bereans in Acts 17, who would search the scriptures for themselves to see if the things they were being told were true. Unfortunately we know that most will simply dismiss it and drop us.

Like them, I have always thought that giving 10% of my income was the bare minimum that was required of me. I have believed it and taught it. But when we moved to Harrisburg and began studying about tithes personally, I made some astounding discoveries. The first one was that God requires 100%, not just 10%. I also discovered that the tithe was a voluntary offering before the law. It was required under the law, and it is expected, though still voluntary, under grace today.

I was then faced with a choice. I could bury what I discovered and continue to teach the same thing I always taught or I could take the risk of losing all by proclaiming what I had discovered. For the first time I understood how the apostles must have felt by proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God. How many relationships, friendships, and connections did it cost them to associate themselves with The Way instead of staying with Judaism?

I learned that in Genesis 28, God promised Jacob, through a dream, that HE would give him the land that he was sleeping on, and that he would multiply his descendants. When Jacob woke up from the encounter, he made a vow that he would give God 10% of the land’s increase. He said, “…and of all that You give me I will surely give a tenth to You.” He was speaking of the land because that's what God had just promised to give to him.

Well, Jacob was never able to fulfill that vow before he died. There was no priest or priesthood for him to give any increase to. However, God still held up His promise and gave Jacob's descendants that Land of Promise. GOD then required Jacob’s descendants to honor their forefather’s vow by establishing in His law that they give 10% of the increase from that promised land.

Let me repeat: God established a law that Jacob’s descendants must tithe from the land in order to hold them to the vow that Jacob had made. That’s why I have been declaring that the tithe is a voluntary offering. It was a voluntary vow that Jacob made and God established it as a law in order to hold Jacob’s descendants to the vow.

From what I observed, tithing was never meant to be a practice passed on to all of mankind, for all time. God was simply holding Jacob’s descendants accountable to a voluntary vow made by their forefather Jacob.

Please hear me closely. I didn’t start this research to refute tithing. I started the research to reinforce my beliefs, but instead I was faced with this startling reality. I had been teaching in ignorance and error regarding mandatory tithing.

So today, we encourage the people of God to be generous. Actually, in the New Covenant, we owe God 100%, not just a tithe. The goal now is to do whatever HE says, whenever HE says, because our entire life, including ALL of our wealth and possessions, belong to HIM.

Just for the record: Two years ago, when we started teaching voluntary tithing at Urban Life, the giving increased and the tithing increased. Our church family became free to worship God with the fruit of their labor without compulsion or fear of curses.

I think back to when I was growing up and how I was always exploring things in minute detail. That’s why I did so well in Biology and Chemistry in high school. Little did I know that the Lord would show me little details in the scriptures that we often overlook in order to hold on to our doctrinal positions.

All I can say is that we didn’t ask to come into this knowledge and revelation. We’re not striving to be controversial, special or cutting edge. We just want to be faithful to God and to His people. The same holds true with this teaching.

We welcome any correction that would come, if we are way off with this, but the mounting evidence has shown that all of the offerings of worship, including money, were meant to be voluntary expressions from our hearts, not commanded or connected to a curse.

Every Bible scholar will tell you that at the cross, ALL of the mandatory sacrifices and the money offerings associated with them, were wiped away. All that remained were the voluntary offerings of personal dedication, devotion, thanksgiving and fellowship. However, these offering are still expected to be presented to God.

We do all that we do, simply because we love GOD.

He who the son sets free, is free indeed!

Simply Because We Love Him

We’ve been teaching and preaching about issues that have been controversial in the church for hundreds of years: ranging from the assurance of our salvation, to the motivation of our giving. These things have been in our hearts and in our private conversation for many years, but we have held them inside for fear of the loss of relationships with dear and precious people in Harrisburg and around this country.

But the season has arrived in which we must speak forth what we truly believe, and utter those things that will show where we really stand on some very key issues in our walk with the Lord.

By taking this stance, we are not saying that we are right and everyone else is wrong. As we have taught you, many of these issues have been debated for hundreds of years by the most brilliant historians and theologians of all time. Our little perspective is not going to tip the scales on these matters in any way. However, we still must be fair to our church family and true to God and ourselves to declare where we stand.

In our eight years of living in Harrisburg (seven as senior pastors), we have come across a steady stream of abused and misused Christian Believers. Many have attended churches and sat under ministers who assaulted them weekly with gross misinterpretation of scripture, along with their personal preferences and pet peeves.

By the time many of these people visited Urban Life, they were so beaten down and broken, that our simple acts of love and kindness were viewed as just another ploy to take advantage of them.

Some people had created pastoral expectations in their minds that were so high that it was impossible for anyone to meet them. So they left us as soon as we failed to meet their unrealistic expectations.

We went through many changes trying to adjust to these dynamics. One of those dynamics was our failure to clearly teach all of what we truly believed and understood the scriptures to mean.

Over the past three years, we were finally able to establish a steady diet of sound teaching and a consistent flow of the Word of God for individual and family healing. Week after week, we have striven to teach and instruct the people of God, providing the guidance and counsel of His heart.

We’re pretty sure that some of our members have wondered why we haven’t hammered them over the head about church attendance by yelling, “Don’t forsake the assembling of yourselves!”

Others may have wondered why we haven’t passed the offering plate and screamed, “Will a man rob God?” to motivate them to tithe.  The reason is simple. We are trying to lead them into a loving relationship with God.

My wife wrote a song over 12 years ago called Guided In Life By Your Eye. This songs comes from Psalm 32:8 which reads: I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will guide you with My eye. This Psalm describes a relationship with God that is so intimate that a mere look or facial expression can communicate His heart.

So many churches and ministries in America have been built by fear and intimidation that many of today’s pastors cannot imagine standing before a congregation and telling them, “I ask you to assemble together this week for fellowship and the Word simply because we love God.” He doesn't have to offer special activities and events.

Or can you imagine a pastor telling a congregation, “I ask you to financially support this church, not because you have to; not because you’re afraid God will curse you, but simply because you love Him.”

Most ministers would expect that building to be empty every week and eventually close down because no one attended or gave money any more since they weren’t being forced or enticed to do it.

We are persuaded of better things about the Urban Life family. We might be totally out-of-our-minds crazy in this matter, but we refuse to build a congregation that has to be forced, manipulated, intimidated and dominated into submission to God. We’re not like that in our marriage relationship with one another or in our parenting with our sons, so we will not try to be that way towards the people of God.

What we are trying to say to the Urban Life family is, “Let’s worship, serve, assemble and give, simply because we love Him.”

Urban Life Church is becoming a place where we no longer need a crisis to MAKE us pray. We are becoming a place where it doesn’t take a personal financial dilemma to FORCE us to give. We are becoming a place where a worship leader doesn’t have to TELL us what to do. We are becoming a place where a personal benefit is not attached to our pursuit of God and His presence.

Let’s be practical for a minute. I want my wife to WANT to love me and WANT to be with me, not just because we recited the wedding vows, so now she has to. I want my sons to come to me, not only when there’s a problem, but sometimes simply because they WANT to talk to their dad.

These past three years of healing messages and healing encounters, like John and Kerry Shuey’s Breaking Free Weekend, were all designed to bring us to the place where we are healed and free to BE who God created us to BE. This level of relationship shows WHO Urban Life Church has become; people who are guided by the eye of God.

Over the next few weeks, our teaching is going to become very radical. It will be rooted and grounded in the Word of God. However, it will be radical because we are going to identify what we have been told and taught, that did not come from the Word of God. Many things came from the traditions of men and the principles of the world.

But no matter how radical it seems, and no matter how much it will challenge us, we just want it to be clear: Everything that we are teaching and everything that we living, is to lead our church family to a place where everything we say and everything we do is simply because we love God.