Sid Roth

Sid: I love it when God decides to pour His Spirit out and this is almost a little down payment of about what’s about ready to happen on planet earth because God is going to have mercy on planet earth before the Messiah returns. There is going to be the greatest harvest the world has ever seen, and I have a couple here Tim and Katie Mather.  They are from Portal, Georgia, they are spokes people for Mega Shift Ministries.  I believe that for new wine, according to the New Covenant, and according to the words of Yeshua, Jesus the Messiah you need a new wineskin, and the current wineskin God will continue to use but there is going to be such an outpouring of God’s Spirit we need a new wineskin for a new outpouring of God’s Spirit.  And Mega Shift is right in line with what the Spirit of God is saying to believers all over the world, because the average congregation will not be able to handle a thousand new babies that come pouring in.  You know Tim and Katie on yesterday’s broadcast I raised an issue that I’m very concerned about. I’ve been a believer now in the Messiah for 30 years. As a believer in the Messiah I have had such a hunger for God I used to… if there were 8 meetings a week I would go to 8 meetings a week.  I mean I could not get enough of meetings where they’re either teaching the Word, of worshiping, or church services, or anything.  But in these meetings the Body was equipped to be spectators to be fed; and then when we didn’t get fed we began to grumble at the pastor, then the pastor he would go into panic and think “I’m going to resign, I’m not going to be a pastor anymore.”  And it’s a whole viscous cycle and circle but there’s a whole generation of us that have been trained to sit and be fed and there’s something wrong with this picture.  So when you have this new system the open church, the home church, and you have a congregation maybe you like those words but you have a group of people that have been programed and I guess that’s the proper word, to be passive, to just have their mouth open to receive but not to speak out anything because in the current system if it’s a large congregation you can’t do it even if you want to do it. So what do you do with this group of people?  How do you get them from being passive to change their fossilized thinking?

Tim: When we get in contact with a group or we form a new house church what we do first is we don’t do anything remotely religious.  That is we get together and we eat.  In Luke 10 when they sent out the 72 what they told them to do and they used the word twice in that section.  When they sent out the 72 they said “When you enter into the home eat and then later on they repeated it, eat.  

Sid: Well, it actually makes a lot of sense because they’re a bunch of Jewish people and we Jewish people like to eat.

Tim:  Well, I’m a Gentile and I like to eat as well so…

Sid: So it must be a human problem.

Tim:  Well evidently I’ve been adopted in, I think that’s probably the case and so..

Sid: Wait, no no I have to figure this out. Now tell me you see what happened in the year 70 AD the temple was destroyed and all of the genealogical records were destroyed you may or may not be aware of that.  So today there is only one positive way to know whether someone is physically Jewish and that is do you like Chinese Food?  That is the only… I’m just teasing Mispochah don’t write me, don’t call your congressman. Okay go ahead.

Tim:  (Laughing)

Katie: I think what we’re finding in the home church for those who are finding their place in that family that it’s creating relationship and eating is basically what families do together.

Tim: Your right.

Katie: And we’re building relationship as we’re eating something about it just reduces the amount of institution in us, and causes us or enables us to create relationship.

Tim: It’s based on… Jesus was asked “What’s the greatest commandment?  And He said “Love the Lord Your God with all your heart soul, mind and strength and your neighbor as yourself.”  All the law and the prophets are gathered up in those two things.  And I think that a definition of Christianity to pursue God and create relationship with Him and pursue relationship with one another.  The thing is the institutional church is very vertical for 2 hours on Sunday morning, or 4 hours, or an hour, or whatever the case you’re looking at the back of someone’s head.  Whereas in a house church everybody’s sitting around on a couches or on the floor and you actually have to interact and develop that horizontal relationship one with another.  And Christian people we have discovered that Christian people are very lax in that area in the ability to create relationship.  And so that’s what we do for the first part we just create relationship and out of that grows the ability for ministry.

Sid: But someone that has never opened their mouth in church never ever, ever it’s scary, you’ve been programed that only the professionals can do it.  How can you change your mindset?  I like the idea of the eating and friendly and becoming a family a Mispochah but how do you get them to open their mouth the first time even?

Tim: Because people will open their mouth when they’re talking about their life around the table.  And so we wean them off of sitting and being a spectator, we wean off that just be talking, talking about everyday things, and then conversations began to move towards spiritual things.  After a while we find even the most shy people and everyone in between but even the most shy people who will in my living room, or in their living room be able to say “Listen may I just pray for you I really feel like I should pray.”  And it becomes very powerful, even the young ones because as we were talking before even the young kids.  When we were first coming out we had a young fellow named Jacob Kent, and at that time he was about 12 or 13 years old. Whenever I needed word from the Lord I was just “Lord You’ve got to tell me something.” I had a lot of prophetic people around me powerful, I knew a lot of powerful prophets, but in this one house group Jake was there and I went to Jake and I said “Do you have a word from the Lord for me?”  And he’s 12 he doesn’t have an agenda for me, he doesn’t see me as the high and mighty pastor anymore it’s just me and he one day gave me the best word I ever got.  He said “Tim I think the Lord saying that He loves you,” and at that moment it just broke me but he minister it and it was powerful prophetic ministry that he gave. And everybody, everybody is able to do that.

Sid: You know a thought is coming to me, I went to a congregation for a number of years that was a congregation of looking at the other person’s back of their head like most congregations and a few of the people just decided “I want to do something.”  So when we found out that Jewish people were really open to the gospel in the former Soviet Union.  These people that did nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing year after year, after year after year in their local church went out there.  Today they’re apostles they started so many congregations.  The truth of the matter is, the average American Christian that has been in a church for a few years knows enough to be an apostle in another country. And the tragedy is a few, a few, went out and did it. They all could have done it.

Tim:  Right, right.

Katie: Right I think the illusion in the church is that to spread the gospel and do the work of ministry is difficult and it’s not it’s very easy even Jesus went out and the disciples after He equipped them.  He didn’t equip them with very much because His philosophy Jesus, He did it and then He taught them.  So He did it by demonstration He just sent them out and then they came back and shared what they were learning as they were going along. That’s really our philosophy of teaching is teaching people to do it as they’re learning.

Tim: The structure that the tensions in the structure between what we’re talking about and the house church and the institutional church.  The tension between the two is the pastor says mobilize, mobilize I used to say “What’s a matter with you people why don’t you go out and do something I’ve been teaching you for years you’ve got enough stuff you’ve got a PhD in this. Why don’t you go and do?”  But the problem is the structure is that it’s restrictive it’s controlling, it is subtle people, don’t see it that way but if you have a call from God you basically have three avenues.  You can be a pastor, you can be an evangelist or you can be a missionary, and there are three little boxes and if you don’t fit in those boxes then you don’t have any place to go maybe you can be an usher.

Sid: You know the sad thing?  I have seen so many people that are pastors because that’s the only opening for them because they have such a heart to serve God but they really don’t have the heart, the gifting to be the pastor they have gifting in other areas but there is no other doors open.

Tim: And the opposite is also true, I pastured for 20 years without the gift of pastor.  I was an administrator, I did the things that my basic gifting is in the area of the prophetic and in those kinds of areas. I pastured and so I gathered pastoral people around me from the congregation and learned how to do that even in the institutional church.

Sid: Many pastors are good teachers, or good administrators, but very few want to get down with the sheep and really and truly take care of their wounds.

Katie:  And what I see to is a tragedy is the limitation of those who have the teaching gifts, the apostolic gifts who are limited to one fellowship and what they have to share needs to be shared to many churches, many home fellowships rather than to be limited to just one fellowship.