After removing shoes and going to their knees, NWI participants challenged to follow faith, not fear
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, July 20, 2006
TULSA — The second New Wineskins Convocation opened Wednesday night – literally on its knees and shoes removed — to hear Michael Card lead soulful worship music and Jim Logan declare that God’s destiny will overcome the failures and the disappointments experienced in of the Presbyterian Church (USA).
“We must mourn the death, the dreams we leave behind,” Card sang. “By faith, we hold better dreams inside our hearts.”
Logan echoed a similar theme. Describing the collapse of his congregation in Charlotte, N.C., the New Wineskins board member urged participants in the convocation to become part of a global Christian movement with its intensity and commitment to a Biblical faith.
His theme was “Confessing Biblical Truth,” which “means acknowledging when it’s time to pursue new wine. New wine is not just new wine. New wine is also new wineskins. Some of us are so in love with being Presbyterian that God might be on good footing to ask if you’re in love with him.”
“There’s no secret why we’re here tonight,” Logan told about 400 Presbyterians attending the convocation’s opening session. “We’re here out of a sense of crisis. Crisis carries the implication of the moment to decide.”
He spoke moments after participants were asked to take off their shoes — akin to Moses removing his sandals when he stood on holy ground to hear the Word of God — and go to their knees in prayer.
Logan, one of the premier evangelical preachers in the denomination, described the fear he felt after his congregation collapsed, he ran into trouble with the Presbytery of Charlotte, N.C., and became bitter.
Card sang: “If you are wounded, and if you’re alone. If your heart is cold. If you have fallen. If you are weak, then come find the worth of God. Come make your sacrifice of all your shame. There in your wilderness, he is waiting for you to worship him with your wounds, for he’s wounded too.”
“Ultimately, we have come into this place to discern what it is that God would have us do,” Logan said. “It’s not really a comfortable place for many of us, particularly those of us who pride ourselves on being good Presbyterians.”
He urged that the New Wineskins movement be anchored in Biblical truth. “But the truth of the matter is that the branch of Zion called Presbyterians is fairly illiterate in the Bible. We have lost out on a genuine understanding of the Word of God. My job is to preach to you about confessing Biblical truth.”
He defined what he meant by Biblical truth. “The first thing confessing Biblical truth is is to declare your faith in the fact of the Word of God,” Logan said, and not to cede to those who say “there’s truth in the story” even though they believe the facts are wrong.
“You have to believe in the fact of the Word of God,” he added, “and not only believe it, but declare it. I am thankful for the Word of God. I find liberty, freedom, power, healing, deliverance in the Word of God. Sometimes all it takes is one word, and I am delivered or I’m healed or in some other way dramatically blessed.”
Speaking from Ephesians 4:16, Logan described his experience in Charlotte. “Two years ago, after 19 years, my ministry came dramatically to a close.
This church I had nurtured and brought up suddenly came to a close.” He said he realized he had placed his faith “in what I had developed” and acknowledged that a Christian can become “comfortable even in a bad situation. I was really dealing with fear. I was afraid of losing it all. God was limited by 10.5 acres, a two-year-old building and a salary.”
Logan then said, “Most of us have not truly learned to live and walk by faith. We have learned to apply our own ability.”
He talked about the intensity of Christian worship in Africa. “I remember watching these saints of God pray. They looked physically like they were in a boxing match. It was a loud sound as if everybody was praying at one time. The difficulty the leadership had was getting the people to stop praying.”
The women, he said, came to worship in their finest, freshly cleaned dresses — yet when they prayed, they fell to the ground and rolled in the dust in the faith that their intense prayers would be heard. They reminded him of what it means to live by faith.
“Nobody knows what tomorrow holds,” he said. “Nobody knows how things are going to end up. But we know the One who holds every promise. We have to learn to live by faith. Some of us are waiting until we can see our way. We want to be shown. I have to have Mapquest. I have to know how long it is going to take.”
But God doesn’t always make it easy, he added. “I’ve been guilty long enough of walking in fear. I’m beginning to reclaim some things my church has left behind. I’m reclaiming things like anointing … God has a calling even greater than I know and God has a calling on your life that is even greater than you know. Confessing Biblical truth involves faith, not fear.”
He said confessing Biblical truth is demonstrated in unity. “We have one Lord, one faith, one Baptism, one God and Father who is above all, through all and in all.”
But unity in the Presbyterian Church (USA) is broken because “we have begun to cater to people’s unwillingness to walk in obedience. We have begun to create a system of easy believism.”
Furthermore, “We have hamstrung those who are in the office of pastor, so that they cannot hear from God.” It is fear, not faith, that causes a pastor to worry about offending his best giver. “Somewhere along the line, we [pastors] need to take an introspective look at ourselves. Sometimes God has to come along and mess up our dreams so that we can be taken into his dreams.”
“Our unity is Christ,” Logan said. “The fact that we are Presbyterian is not our unity.” Unity is a condition of people having the same spirit. “You can fellowship only with those with whom you have the same spirit.” One of the problems of large congregations is that like-spirited people gravitate toward their own: “The complainers find other complainers; people who are laboring in sexual dysfunction find others who are laboring in sexual dysfunction.”
“You have a spirit that can no longer identify with the prevailing spirit,” he told the convocation’s participants. “It’s not enough for somebody to say to me, we’re Presbyterians. I’m sorry, but when you get to heaven, you will find there’s not a Presbyterian section.”
Logan said the Holy Spirit will develop “intolerances: You can’t tolerate a mess at your home or in your church.”
“When you set yourself to flow in the new thing God is doing, how dare we define it for God. The reason we want to define it is that we don’t want to be uncomfortable. Somebody has to look and say what’s happening around the world in Christendom.”
He contrasted the intensity of Christian evangelism and miracles in emerging nations with American Protestantism, where, “instead of praying for people to be healed, we pray, ‘If it be your will, make them comfortable.'”
Concluding, Logan said, “People are no longer loyal to denominations. God is bigger than that. If we’re trying to do something new, my God, let it be new. I don’t care what you call it. You can call it the Church of What’s Happening Yesterday, as long as it’s in line with God’s truth.”
“God will be your source. You can’t be afraid to lose every good gift. For everyone you lose, God will send four in their place. God is faithful. We can confess what the world says, or we can confess what the Word of God says. I have already drawn my line in the sand. I have already taken my stand.”