December 29, 2023
I am deeply impressed to finally write something about the long-hid scandal now coming to light out of the Kansas City International House of Prayer (IHOP-KC). I hope this is not too soon as I know more will unfold. But I sense to now have a first level of releasable perception from the Lord to offer the larger body. Please weigh this against whatever else you may believe the Lord has shown you.The lessons impressed on me these last weeks center on discerning between the actual nature of Spirit-ministry and the heart nature of one through whom Spirit-ministry passes. There is a mystery here poorly understood, ignorance of which is responsible for the inflamed controversy arising every time a moral failing is unearthed in a prominent minister of Christ.
The simplest way to begin is to say this: “A ministry is not a man, and a man is not a ministry.” One would think this to be obvious on its face, but in the heat of scandal, it is not. Let’s elaborate on this piece by piece and then put the whole together.
A Ministry Is Not a ManA ministry of God is neither a work of man nor the essence of a man. It is a work of the Spirit that manifests His essence. All genuine divine ministry is an unction of the Holy Spirit merely operating by way of sovereignly-gifted entrustment to, upon and through men. It is not a work man can perform or possess. Nor is it tied to or qualified by the heart nature of one on whom it alights. The man may have a pure and uncompromised heart, or be impure and compromised. He may be mature and wise, or adolescent and foolish.
Spirit-ministry falls on “all flesh,” anointing whom He will when He will. Thus the quality of one’s own personal spirituality does not determine whether the Spirit will entrust a ministry, small or great, to be exercised by and through him. One does not “earn the right” by good behavior to “receive a ministry”—all because a ministry is not a man or about a man.
A Man is not a MinistryA man is who he is according to who he has internally become (or failed to become) by the spiritual seed of the heavenly Father, i.e. by the implanting of Christ within by the Holy Spirit. That implanting now defines his being, and is thus his only source of spiritual identity. The implanting of Christ goes on to develop a man’s inner character in alignment with Christ indwelling Him, causing him to bear “the image of Christ.”
A man has either been born of God or he has not. A man either bears forth the character qualities (aka the “fruit”) of Christ’s nature or he does not. A man is what the truth about his inward parts says about him. Does that truth say he is honest, or dishonest; honorable or dishonorable? Is he a child of God, or a covetous idolater? Is he a son of God or a lustful adulterer? Does he bear the image of Christ, or is he a lying hypocrite—that is, a performer, actor and man-pleaser adept at cloaking his true inner nature as either one failing to overcome besetting sin or one not even truly born again?
Notice please: nothing I have just asked above has anything to do with ministry. This is because ministry does not define a man’s spiritual essence. Indeed, it cannot. Functional Spirit-ministry operates on a frequency distinct from that of Spirit-identity birth and growth impartation.
However—and here is where the meat in this article starts—it is very possible for an otherwise true Spirit-born man to be seduced into unlawfully finding his identity in Spirit-ministry; and it is moreover possible for an inwardly untrue Spirit-man (born again or not) to misuse an otherwise genuinely, sovereignly imparted Spirit-ministry in order to assist covering-up who he really is within.
The “Minister” is not “the Man”These deceptions are possible only because of the mass erroneous belief that equates one’s spiritual essence with his ministry. Natural perception beholds the apparent power or greatness of a ministry, and automatically concludes that the man at the core of it must be extremely upright, holy and mature—otherwise God would never accomplish such things through him. In reality, apparent ministerial greatness actually says nothing about the man within.
The term minister especially lies at the heart of this deadly conflation of a man and the Spirit’s ministry through him. This is because the word minister is a term of function pertaining to a man, not a term of essence describing one’s actual nature—yet by its direct association with the man, the word is universally misapplied to refer to a man’s essence.
This misapplication of minister to the man is what then triggers the extreme consternation over moral failure revealed in one who functions in a ministerial capacity. When the man fails, the ignorant doubt or mock the ministry when, in fact, the ministry may be quite of the Spirit. Conversely, the visible greatness and glory attending some ministries creates the opposite delusion that the minister must be a man of internal spiritual greatness, when he may really be ensconced in hidden sin, or not even know the Lord at all.
Ministerial PersonaWhen the Holy Spirit ministers through a man, especially in context of a large crowd, that ministry often alters the way a man normally conveys his voice. This is true of all fivefold office holders, but especially of apostles, prophets, and evangelists. The voice of those in ministry takes on tones of drama and urgency they would only rarely express in every day conversation. This applies to hand gestures and body language also. That is not a fault, just a fact. It is seen in the ministries of the apostles, the Old Covenant prophets, and even on occasion in Jesus Himself (“Woe to you Pharisees…!!!”).
However, the human heart being frail, anyone functioning in ministry can self- manipulate the personality-altering effects of the Spirit’s anointing to craft what we will call a ministerial persona. The Latin word persona originally meant a mask. It is a false face. That is, it presents a face to the public that in no way reveals the true inner man to the audience. (In fact, Bible schools and seminaries dedicatedly teach their students how to craft such personas.)
Most large venue church ministry suffers from ministry persona syndrome. Bible-schooled or not, it is a shift that naturally occurs as churches outgrow small groups and the leaders gain in notoriety. “Ministers” self-learn to artfully present faces and voices now made for TV, radio, theater and social media. Few continue to project transparent reality allowing hearers to anymore know the true man behind the performance.
Ministry persona thus builds false public perception of one’s real personality. The act, performance and oratory are extremely convincing of inner spiritual character—the prayers, the singing, the revelatory power. The truth however is that ministerial persona serves perfectly as the grist for identity seduction away from Christ alone, and as a mask for hidden character-fail issues that manifest only behind certain closed doors—and otherwise when God lastly exposes them for discipline and/or judgment.
The Great God “Ministry”The carnal power of ministerial persona has converted much Spirit-empowered public ministry into its own object of corporate worship, wherein the ministry itself becomes the real “God” of the church. It is no longer really about Jesus Christ. Rather, “exalting the name of Jesus” is subtly flipped to sponsor self-promotional worship of a ministry image—worship ministries—prophetic ministries—prayer ministries—all brandishing unique “hip” names, titles, logos and catch-phrases where it’s now all about “lights, camera, action” and blazing websites for public consumption.
In all this, God’s people are taken up—again, not really with Jesus, but with “the ministry” of Jesus, running lives ragged under clouds of corporate energy mistaken as “the Presence of God,” devoted to projecting ministerial personas that plaster every public medium available. (This is the source reality of what Robert Burnell described as “Christian City” in his epic allegory, “Escape from Christendom.”)
True, it is said, “Look at what God is doing.” But the energy behind it has utterly divorced us from our secret places in the Lord and obscured our transparency with one another. Thus it really is not about what “Jesus is doing.” It is about what the god of our own corporate energy (which is flesh) is accomplishing aided by the Spirit’s gifting.None of this is new of course. It has been ubiquitous for decades. What is new perhaps is that God seems to have started His most prominent judgment of this “ministry worship” at the house which has most held itself forth in promoting His true 24/7 worship throughout the world. That is to really say, the scandal at IHOP-KC is not only or ultimately about Mike Bickle. It is about stripping away and purging out the worship of ministerial persona from an entire global ministry movement. Much more still to come on this….
The Fleetingness of MinistryAs empowered as any ministry of the Holy Spirit may be, the fact is that all ministry eventually ceases. No ministry through mortals lasts forever. The Spirit’s mortal ministry is not the essence of eternal life, which again is found only through the indwelling impartation of the seed of the Father. Even Jesus recognized this limitation on His own ministry when He said, “Walk in the light while you have the light” and “Me you will not have always.”
As I keep aging, I take special note of cemeteries whenever I pass by them. I ask myself, “These all had their time here already, but where are they now? It’s possible I may be joining them. Did any of them know the Lord? Were any of them ministers?”
The ministers end up in the same place as everyone else—in the ground. Their ministries cease with them. And their movements, however “great,” if they indeed led any, begin to fade as soon as they are gone, eventually to blandly blend into the religious cultural landscape. So it has been with every “move” or “revival” of the Spirit on mortal men.
I now have over a half century’s engagement with ministry. I remember my zeal in following one or another major ministry or movement. In each season, I was earnestly convinced of the “critical nation-changing” or “kingdom impacting” importance of what I was engaging or who I was following. Yet later, or increasingly sooner, I would find that its air would dissipate, and not infrequently in dishonor.
“Where are they now?” I ask myself. “…teachers, healers, faith-miracle workers, prophets, apostles who were household and even national names…Were some of them even really born again?” Even now the most prominent of my youthful generation descend into the dust—Charles Stanley, Pat Robertson, Jack Hayford, Loren Cunningham—just this year (2023).
This truth of ministry’s ephemerality should force us to self-check our unqualified engagement with, devotion to and expectation from it. Yet it’s from this lifelong vantage I now observe this ministerial obsession among the next generation and even still among some of the elderly who should have learned better by now. Yes, the Spirit is still quite at work, but not in the way imagined when it comes to ministry through clay. His is most truly a work of internal preparation. But our engrossment with ministry actually nullifies our readiness for the eternal—competing with and even prohibiting our entrance into the real immortal kingdom at hand.
The “Uselessness” of MinistryJesus was extremely aware of the power of ministry to establish itself as our source of identity and pride in place of Him. He was wary of the potential negative effects that the Spirit’s anointing could have on His disciples in course of entrusting them with it. To that end He said to them,
“So you too, when you do all the things which were commanded you, say, ‘We are unworthy slaves; we have done only that which we ought to have done.’” Lk. 17:10
The Greek word translated here as “unworthy” (or as “unprofitable” in other translations) at its root means “useless” as in the sense of “not needed.” That is to say, Jesus was not commenting on the worth of the disciples’ inner being, but rather on their utilitarian necessity to what they were doing under His empowering authority. He was in effect telling them to say, “We are not necessary to what we have done. He could have done this without us.”
That is the truth about our relationship to the ministerial power of the Holy Spirit. The fact that He ministers through us is immaterial. He doesn’t need us. He could do it Himself or through anyone else. Therefore we are not to think of ourselves as particularly “special” or “indispensable” as ministerial vessels of His power nor therefore to make ourselves the face of His ministry as a result. We aren’t needed. We aren’t “vital” or “critical” to any “movement” or “revival” or any work of God.
In a similar statement elsewhere, Jesus said, “Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are recorded in heaven.” (Lk. 10:20). Here, Jesus is specifically telling the disciples not to take their identity from any ministry of the Spirit through them. In other words, “Do not develop a ministerial persona as a result of facilitating My power!”In these two passages, Jesus provides in advance the antidote to developing ministerial persona. It is the preemptive answer to the disciples falsely taking identity from their ministry, imparting their identity to the ministry or measuring self-worth or importance by their participation in the ministry. This instruction was designed to prevent the inevitable mask that develops to hide our transparent personality when ministering prominently to the public over the long haul.
[Continued in Part 2]
Chris Anderson
First Love Ministry
- a ministry of Anglemar Fellowship
http://www.firstloveministry.org12/23
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