What If and Why Not?  “Open mic” fellowship ===An Authentic Movement Seeder like Asbury revival.

Abraham Lincoln once said, “When I find a church that has as its only creed, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all your heart, soul and mind”, that church will I join.” He never joined a church. 

Institutional church dropouts are exiting denominations and religion in droves. People want less religion and more authentic, meaningful relationships. They reject the delivery system, not God.

Imagine followers of Christ and honest seekers meeting weekly any day, evening or at lunch hour in the marketplace or their neighborhoods around the simple purpose of what it means to get to know and love God and what it means to love one another---just learning to listen to God’s Word, each other and the Holy Spirit? Christ's claim was to be Truth, the Way and the Life. Since we are made for the personal, would anything less satisfy the human heart?

What if there were inviting gatherings with an “open mic” for spontaneous expression in whatever is read, shared, sung to only honor God and His Word?  The spontaneity of God’s Spirit leading believers and curious honest seekers to see authentic evidence of God’s love and transforming work is attractive and compelling. The Church is people, not institutions/buildings.

The question is, can we trust God’s Spirit to lead us to collective blessing and discovery of more of what it means to love him and each other without all the finite order, trappings and edifices?

"Open mic" gatherings make room for the Holy Spirit to instruct, lead and guide us into applications of God’s Truth as revealed in Christ and his Word of Truth. Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty. To speak the truth in love blesses and refreshes the mind, heart and soul.

Our finiteness binds us to a self-made and self-serving order. His infiniteness unlocks our freedom found in Him to empower us with His Spirit in a liberating way even in a world that is all about control.   

What if we learned as God’s Word instructs, “You must lose your life (institutional finite order) to find it.”  Any new paradigm requires seeing the new picture in the old and seeing how much better it can be in new-found faith and freedom to trust God for what we cannot do.   Otherwise, what do we need Him for?   Most of what goes on in the name of the Lord could very well go on without Him from the perspective of both the critics as well as those enlightened within the Church.

Maybe that is why we should not expect “new wine to work in old mammon order wineskins”. Why not break out new “wineskins for a movement that flows from the heart of God through his people, his Word to be found in the simple but profound application of the First Command? What do we have to lose to trust His Spirit to do what we cannot? “Open mics” opens hearts and minds to provide God’s Spirit the opportunity to teach, equip and bless us and others and revive our dying world. “Open mic” fellowship has no boundaries, creeds, offerings and rules other than God’s Word. Any believer can "seed" this movement. Let it begin with you and me. Why not?  It is biblical, timeless and fills the vacuum and longing of the human heart. 

 This is a publication of Infinite Stewardship Services P.O. Box 993544 Redding CA 96099 

Email: Robert Lincoln Hancock at [email protected] Infinite blessings! 

Robert Lincoln "Bud" Hancock is author of Designed for a Purpose. Education: Bachelor of Science from California State University and Masters Degree from University of California. Past service includes White House Reagan Administration appointment to Senior Exec Service. ProvidenceInternational.org