"Look not to your own interests . . ." (Phil. 2:4)

Belonging to Christ is the work of the Holy Spirit, the third Member of the Trinity. He seeks and saves those who are lost. The formal name for His activity of drawing men to the cross is "Prevenient (before life) Grace." Those who are "called out" (ecclesia) are then sealed by Him and instantly baptized (immersed) into the body of Christ. There are no "lone ranger" Christians. God delivers us from an independent spirit of "I have no need of you!" We enter a new Kingdom at salvation's portal, where it is impossible to exist apart from a communal lifestyle. The church exists to be the corporate expression of Christ wherever He is represented. The church cannot be represented by less than two, because the ecclesia is a body. Or, to use the thought that it is like a building, one brick never makes a temple.

For this reason, we must understand life in Christ is life in community. That is what Paul writes in Philippians 2. Now, connect this thought to 1 Cor. 14:24-25 where ALL are to prophesy. Note in 14:3: "the one who prophesies builds up the ecclesia."

On the right side of this blog I have two teachings about oikodomeo and oikonomos. They explain in depth why in a Christ Basic Body it is mandatory that we focus on becoming agents of Christ, building up one another.

The pathetic "small group" movement in churches dances all around the true purpose of our meeting together. Edification takes place when Christ uses me to minister life to you. When it is authentic, the one who is used to convey the spiritual gift is humbled by the experience.

What say you?

LIFE BASIC TRAINING

On the right column you will find a new link to LIFE BASIC TRAINING. Please follow it to a series of videos that are now available for small groups of five persons to view together. The INTRODUCTION explains the process, which includes one small group session for 11 weeks and five days of Daily Growth Guides.

This content is very powerful and many core values have been changed through its application. Built around the understanding that it "takes six to stick," there is a careful transition through the weeks, divided by Week 5. Up to that time the participant is being challenged to rethink core values. The challenge is then laid down: "do you want to change, or not?"

Some drop out at this point, often with anger that the content is too threatening. These are like the rich young ruler who found the price too great to pay. But those who remain for the balance of the course have made the choice to adopt new core values. Thus, the remaining weeks reinforce this choice.

Often those who complete the 11 weeks are ready to enter into the new lifestyle and become an authentic Christ Body, living in the spirit of 1 Cor. 14:24-25.

If you want to form a group of five or any sets of five and use the videos and the workbooks, I am prepared to send you the workbooks FOR THE PRICE OF THE POSTAGE AND HANDLING!

Contact me personally so I can coach you as you use the content. My email is ralph@touchusa.org.

Now, go to the set of videos by clicking on the right column: LIFE BASIC TRAINING.

Any comments? Post them here...

Great Bible Survey Course - FREE!

Twelve years ago I began to be concerned about the demise of Sunday School. Shabby as most classes were in teaching the Bible, people were exposed to the inspired scripture. Particularly was I concerned about cell churches where the focus of the cells would be on equipping, edification, evangelism.

So I invested about $30,000 and hired eight different people to help me. I wrote a complete text in five minute segments that would cover the Bible from cover to cover. I then created a 488 page paperback book with all the pages that appear on the computer screen. The first presentation was made by creating four CD's, one CD for each quarter of the content.

In five minute segments, the entire Bible is surveyed with graphics and sound on video clips. I eventually exported the entire series so it can be viewed on line anywhere there is a computer in the whole world.

It is the equivalent of a Bible College Survey of the Bible.

I added to the studies a monthly "Ask Your Questions" meeting for all cell members attending the church I served in Singapore. These were stimulating nights where I would answer any and all questions about the Bible for those taking the course.

Please use it, and encourage all new believers and illiterate Christians to go to the site. When they register, the site keeps a record of how far they have progressed and lets them take as many 5 minute segments as desired in one sitting.

The textbook pages appear on the 488 panels of the online course and can be secured in paperback as well. (Click here)

To check out the site, click on the title of this blog. It will take you straight to the login site.

"Jine de chuch neah ya home!"

Back in 1955, I heard a Panhandle Florida pastor preach the Annual Message at the Pensacola Baptist Association. With typical Southern Florida twang, he made an impassioned plea that everyone should join the church nearest to your home.

At that time I was in seminary, commuting weekly to pastor the now defunct Southside Baptist Church. Peter Lord pastored a few blocks away. In that low income area, we had two churches that were equidistant from the population. The membership in both churches was equal but attendance vacillated between them. When either church had something "special," the other would see attendance drain like water in a bathtub when you pulled the plug.

We solved the problem by merging the two congregations and becoming co-pastors. The first Sunday, Peter preached in the morning and that night I preached. At the close of the service, I resigned using the excuse that Peter was graduating from seminary and I was going to take my doctorate.

I then accepted the pulpit of the Hayne Boulevard Baptist Church in New Orleans. This 40 member church had been "pastored" by 13 seminary students in 12 years! I broke all records by staying 3 years and six months and building a new auditorium for them, growing to 250 members. I found the motto "Join the church near your home" suited me perfectly: we were the single church on Hayne Boulevard for miles. I used it on my calling card.

Next came several years in Pennsylvania, planting all the original churches in the Keystone Baptist Association and then planting more in the Delaware Valley Baptist Association. About 18 altogether. The motto served me well; building membership was the name of that game.

Moving to Texas with the Baptist Convention placed me in charge of personal evangelism. After five years, I finally began to realize the slogan "join the church near your home" was a slogan based on an unbiblical definition of ecclesia. At the age of 34, it finally dawned on me that all these "church plants" were based on a consumer view of church life. These years were profitable in bringing some to Christ but added to the Big Lie that a building was "church" and joining one of the building centered organizations was a man-made decision, based on getting personal needs met. My motto was reinforcing a heresy!

There the truth was, staring me in the face all those years; my filters blocked it as though someone had cut it out of my Bible with scissors:

WE DO NOT CHOOSE TO JOIN THE AUTHENTIC CHURCH;

WE ARE CHOSEN AND JOINED TO IT BY THE SPIRIT OF GOD.

The true "church" is not the building nearest to your residence. It is the body of Christ we are joined to by the choice of the Holy Spirit: 1 Corinthians 12:13. It is a supernatural invasion of the reign of God over a group of people formed as arms, legs and inward parts to be inhabited by the Son of God, the Christ. Through that body He will reveal His presence: 1 Corinthians 14:24-25. (See my latest book for more on this!)

Consumer Christianity is killing the authentic work of Christ. I planted wood, hay and stubble for most of my ministry. Most of those building centered churches have never grown larger than they were after 6 years of existence--now a half century later!

Post your thoughts below...

Visit a "Normal" Cell Church: Abidjan trip

At the Cell Symposium, Jim Lassiter talked about the many years he has traveled as an interpreter for Dion Robert, pastor of the 185,000 member cell church in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. (View his presentation here).

He shared that when he first started to travel with Dion, the detective-turned-pastor would frequently comment when they visited an American church, "This is not normal!" Jim could not understand what he meant until he finally realized Dion was seeing what he could not see - the dismal "downstairs" lifestyle American Christians live, contrasted to the "upstairs" Kingdom of God lifestyle experienced by the members of the Abidjan congregation.

A Chinese proverb says, "Never ask a goldfish what water is like." We swim around in the consumerism goldfish bowl of American church life. For us it is "normal." On one occasion, Dion walked through the multimillion dollar sanctuary of a Megachurch in Texas and said, "Child of Satan!" Such opulence for use a couple of hours a week offended his spirit.

We have come to accept our lifestyles as "normal" when we are far from it. We are subnormal. (Watchman Nee focused on this in The Normal Christian Life.)

I am convinced from my own experiences in ministering around the world, that when American Christiana are lifted out of their fishbowl, they must make radical changes in how they will live.

I will never forget the time I was preparing to preach for Dion to 40,000 people in a soccer stadium. He leaned over and said, "Would you like to see the demon possessed who are here?" I said, "How can I do that?" He went to the microphone and asked all the cell members present to come down from the stands and "dance before the Lord." With a shout of joy, thousands poured onto the field and formed a serpentine line 50 people across. As they wound around the field, they would point a hand toward heaven and sing in French, "Jesus is Higher!", followed by pointing to the ground singing, "Satan is under!" The stands, nearly empty, contained scores of demon possessed people. In their culture, a virgin will go to a witch doctor to get a demon assigned to help her get pregnant and then that baby is taught to worship that demon.

To my amazement, people all over the stands began to fall writhing and screaming to the ground. The demons could not stand the power of Christ being exalted. From behind the stands, teams of 5-6 would come to pick up one person and make a human stretcher to carry them in their pain back to the tents prepared for deliverance.

Dion knows what pastors in America for the most part do not know: that the power of Satan is real and he has his captives imprisoned in every culture. In our culture we treat addiction by offering counseling instead of dealing with the demonic forces that inspire this habit. What is spiritual we treat as emotional.

I promise you that if you need spiritual surgery from consumer religion that must be extracted from your lifestyle, this trip is more valuable by twenty times the cost of the plane ticket.

I am not making a red cent on putting this trip together. I abhor having a second source of supply. I will pay my way like everyone else. When we get there, Dion's church will provide transportation, hotels, two meals a day-free. You see, consumerism is not in their or my vocabulary!

I would urge you to consider this once-in-a-lifetime venture into a slum of the world, the Ivory Coast of Africa. They don't have tourism there - no game parks, etc. Just poverty. And the power of Christ, manifested in profound ways that will transform you and make you want to be "normal," no matter what the cost!

Click on this link to sign up.

Cell Symposium Videos Are Now Available

The Cell Symposium in June brought together seven key men who all are participants in global movements. Their panel discussions are historic! Here is one sample for you to view. If you want to browse the whole collection, click on the Title of this article and go to my video download page. In a few weeks we will transpose the site http://www.cellsymposium.com/ to a new version and all these video will stream there. They are not sorted out for the collection you will see: that must be done for their permanent Symposium home.

I spoke into the situation of the third generation of the cell movement with an impassioned plea for us to stop "throwing Christ under the bus" and allowing man-made cells to operate. You can get right to it by selecting "Ralph Neighbour." Another bombshell is to view "Jim Lassiter."

If you want ipod downloads, they are in a separate folder in my collection. Don't try to play the ipod files: they do not stream. Just download them to your iTunes. A trick Apple taught me: when you have them in iTunes and the image of your iPod or iPhone is showing to the left, click and drag the file into "Movies." I think it's the only way to get them into your handheld.

I really need to get feedback from you! Post it here.

How Cell Groups Mature

If a cell grows rapidly, the question it has to answer is, “How long does it take for true intimacy to happen to allow the deeper issues in our lives to surface?”

Typically, if a group is starting from scratch, the pattern will be:

FORMING: (4-6 weeks) We have “impressions” about the others in the group because they “remind” us of similar people we have known before. E.G., “He reminds me of my angry old uncle Fred. I am not sure about him,” or, “He is just like my wonderful uncle Fred who was so kind and gentle! I like him!”

The ice breakers should be structured to reveal true identities. I have recently started in forming a new cell group in my home and for the fourth time we are devoting a whole evening to hearing in depth the life history of one person at a time. I am impressed with how much faster we bond by doing this. We let the structure of the cell meeting be welcome, worship, report of one person’s life, prayer, outreach planning….

STORMING: (4 weeks typically) After about 4-6 weeks in most cases, this FORMING image wears off. The “real” personalities surface and now, I as a cell member, have to decide if I want to be transparent around this person or whether I do not trust him. Conflict inevitably will take place and the cell leader must watch for verbal and nonverbal signals that this is taking place.

The ice breakers should be structured to bring up the way each person is wired and soldered to behave in a conflict situation. I have material to use:

Ask - Answer,
Suggest - Agree
Demand - Give in
Fight - Flight

During storming, there will not be much transparent confession going on. I have dozens of examples of how cells work through this bumpy air with seat belts fastened. It is absolutely necessary to go through it. If a cell leader is fearful of dealing with conflict and tries to pour oil over the growing tension, the cell often will disintegrate as people drop out. It is more painful in some groups than in others. I recently had a man come into my cell in my home and picked a FIGHT with one of the younger men, a son of India who was very unstable as he dealt drugs to others and did not have a lot of polish. Unfortunately, there was nothing I could do because it happened too fast and we lost both of them.

EDIFYING: (Several months) Once the cell has truly bonded, I see this really as the time when I think a cell moves from being mostly “man made” to “God Made.” There is a stickyness to the members, they are hanging out between the group meetings, praying together, sharing burdens for lost people in their oikoses—and most of all, totally confessional! Layer by layer, the secret sins and bitternesses, etc., are exposed for the body to deal with. Oikodomeo and Oikonomos empowerment flows within the group and healing takes place.

THIS IS THE TIME FOR THE GROUP TO ENTER . . .

EVANGELIZING: Over the months they have been relating to oikos unbelievers and searching “type A” friends. These can now be invited to attend the cell group (see 1 Cor. 14:24-25). The presence of these observers will temper a little of the intensity of the confessional nature of the cell, but not as much as you might think! The unspoken love and communion that will take place will cause the unbeliever to fall on his knees and cry out, “God is among you, and I want to be a part of this community!”

PREPARATION FOR MULTIPLICATION: It is these new converts who come who grow the size of the cell to the bursting point. It is time to multiply! But how should this be done? It is very natural: each one of these new converts came in through one of the cell members. They were/are bonded in a special way. So, the cell does not SPLIT or DIVIDE: it BIRTHS a Daughter Cell that is naturally made up of the original cell members and the “little children” attached to them, who have by this time been in the cell for several weeks.

One dear pastor nearby my home has a cell church with LIFE groups (cells). Nearly every Sunday now he is large enough that he has a special time in the Sunday service where the entire group comes to the front. He sets apart the Daughter Cell with prayer, they hug those in the “Mother” cell with tears and begin to meet on their own the next week.

When you get into the third and fourth generation of your cells, there is not much of the original FORMING STORMING taking place but it can usually have some modifications of it in every new cell.

COMMENTS?