Bethany - Resurrection Church

Bethany –

resurrected church

Richard Spencer and Adam Threlfall

© 2014 Richard Spencer, Adam Threlfall

ISBN 978-1-326-02577-9

Holy Trinity Church

Belle Vue Road, Shrewsbury, SY3 7LL, UK

Email: [email protected]

Unless indicated otherwise, Bible passages are taken from the New International Version © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society.  Published in Great Britain by Hodder and Stoughton Ltd.

Front cover illustration by Bożena Spencer

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Contents

Endorsement

Introduction

Acknowledgements

Courtship

Water flowing through the church

See what I can do!

Jesus wants to lead his church directly

Manifestation, not representation

Apostolic Team

Live depending on continuous revelation

Bread from heaven vision and Living together in the presence of God

Train vision

Chris Overstreet’s prophecy

The Three Signs of Revival

Hosea 6:2

John 2:1

Luke 7:8

Seasonal Fruit

The ‘Christ in us – Us in Christ’ Diagram

Some Questions

1. When are we placed in Christ, and when does he come to live in us?

2. Why, even though the Bible assures us we are in Christ and he is in us, do we find it difficult to believe this?

3. How can we open ourselves up more to Christ working through us?

4. How does all of this relate to the baptism of the Holy Spirit?

Stingless Bees

Proposal

‘One thing’

The First Church

Fellowship and eating together

Teaching

Worship

Evangelism

The Children of the Father, the Bride of the Son

The Alabaster Jar

Old Covenant worship

True Worship

The Perfume

Our real life is hidden in Christ

And where are we?

How to worship?

It’s more blessed to give than receive

‘Lazarus, come forth!’

Other Postcards from Bethany

The Fig Tree – Mark 11:13-14; Mark 11:20-21

The Palm Sunday Donkey – Mark 11:1-7

Resting Place in Passion Week – Mark 11:11

The Ascension – Luke 24:50

Blessing

Marriage

The Resurrected, Organic Church

Setting Jesus Free

The New Testament Model for Local Church Leadership

Two Kinds of Leadership

Apostles

Elders

From Apostle to Apostolic Team

Mutual Edification

Burn for Jesus

An Organic Church in an Institution

Oversight and Accountability

Continuity with the Past

Jesus wants to lead his church directly

Conclusion

Bibliography

Seminal Works

Other Books

Endnotes

Endorsement

‘Bethany - resurrected church’ is the story of one particular church's journey to strive to become a unique dwelling place for the Lord. The spiritual meaning of ‘Bethany’ is dear to my own heart, so I was encouraged to see how one community of believers has been seeking to flesh it out in their local setting.

Frank Viola, author of God's Favorite Place on Earth and Jesus Now. frankviola.org

Introduction

This book is a record of a conversation between Jesus and part of his bride – one local church: Holy Trinity Church, Belle Vue  (HTBV), Shrewsbury, in the county of Shropshire. We will follow this conversation over a number of years, as he revealed more and more of his vision for his church. He said to the man who would be the first among the first apostles, I will build my church, and we will follow how he has been building us into a worshiping fellowship that we hope more faithfully re-presents him to the world.

Let’s start in the most obvious place in thinking about the church: Ephesians 5:21-32.  Paul tells us that ‘the church submits to Christ’ (v24) as a wife to her husband. It would be a strange marriage if, after the wedding day, the husband put a book of rules on the table, told his wife to obey them, and never spoke to her again. If Jesus loves the church in the way that this passage asserts, then if we do not hear him speaking, something is badly wrong.

If this book were the history of an earthly relationship, you would not expect every conversation between the parties to be recorded, just those that had a significant impact on their life together. Therefore, although we believe we have heard the voice of our Lord many times over these last few years, in these pages, you will find those revelations that led us to take major steps in our response to his love. Virtually all of the prophetic words recorded here were accompanied by some kind of confirmation, either through another believer, or through the pages of the Bible, or through circumstances, or a combination of these.  Our previous books included testimonies of many remarkable healings and other miracles that we have experienced, but here we focus on revelation.

This book is arranged in three parts: Courtship, Proposal, Marriage.  The name change to Bethany comes in the Proposal section; but one event that happened in Bethany in Judea needs to be mentioned at the outset.  We believe that the raising of Lazarus is a real picture of what we have gone through in the last few years. Lazarus died of what was wrong with him because no-one healed him. Churches that conform to ‘the pattern of this age’ (Romans 12:2) are inherently unhealthy; Holy Trinity Church has effectively died and been raised to new life. We were given a prophetic word (which was amazingly confirmed): ‘This is why Jesus delays, he is not here to fix up the church, but to resurrect it’ (see page 63). To use the terminology of Frank Viola[1], an institutional church has died and an organic church has risen in its place.  This is its story.

[1] See for example: Viola, Frank. Finding Organic Church: A Comprehensive Guide to Starting and Sustaining Authentic Christian Communities, see Bibliography.

Acknowledgements

Our grateful thanks must go to everyone mentioned in this book, but there are many more who have spoken out revelations, who have moved decisively in response to a prophetic word, who have remained faithful in fellowship, who have ministered or received healing, who have brought others into the kingdom, who have abandoned themselves in worship, who have revealed more of the Christ who is living in them.  We are profoundly grateful to every one of them.  A special thanks to Elizabeth Pike, Paul Kelly and others for their editorial efforts; but the remaining errors, typos, bad grammar, etc. are completely our responsibility. 

Courtship

Water flowing through the church

In the summer of 2006 we had our last stab at what you might call conventional evangelism. We hired a powerful professional evangelist to speak at a week of events (treasure hunts, quizzes, etc.) which we put on to attract members of our community. Although we worked our socks off and over 400 people heard our speaker, the week seemed fruitless; except that, in the weeks beforehand, we got together every Sunday evening to pray and worship in preparation for what we hoped would a great time of outreach. On one of those evenings I was sitting at the piano on the platform in church when I suddenly saw a sheet of water moving across the platform and down the central aisle. I asked Verity Lowe, who was standing at the lectern, if she knew where in the Book of Ezekiel, the account of the water flowing out of the Temple could be found. She looked down at the Bible in front of her and it was open to Ezekiel 47.

This passage could have been written about our building, which has its