Some Thoughts about Leadership in the Church

I’ve studied the subject of leadership for decades. It’s a fascinating study. There are many people, many studies, that can tell you what makes someone a good leader instead of a poor one, and why these leadership techniques work better than those techniques.

One of the more interesting subjects is the study of what makes a person a natural leader. Some say that it requires an outgoing personality, except that there are people who are not the least bit outgoing who are incredible leaders, and there are outgoing individuals - some of whom aspire to leadership - who are really poor leaders (many of these live in Hollywood or Washington DC).

Some say that the defining hallmark of a natural leader is the willingness to give useful directions to others. Well, in some people, that is a sign of a leader, but in others, it’s a sign of an insecure control freak whom nobody willingly follows. They have no followers.

Followers: that’s the only real sign of a leader that scholars have settled on: a leader is someone whom people follow. They may be charismatic or withdrawn, they may be good communicators or not, they may be organized or overwhelmed by the details of their life. They may or may not have education or position of power, but they have influence. There are some people whom folks follow naturally, and there are others that have to work to be effective at leading, but true leaders have people following them.

John MacArthur says that if you think you’re leading, but nobody is following, then you’re really only out taking a walk.

In the book of Romans, Paul describes a gift of leadership. I have noticed that some senior pastors have that gift of leadership and others do not. Some pastors have people crowding around them, trying to find helpful ways to follow them, while others find recruiting volunteers is like pulling teeth: people are not following them, no matter whether they hold a leadership position or not.

A brief digression in the interest of a balanced story: if God has withheld the leadership gift, then He has given others: teaching or pastoring are often given in its place. And it seems apparent that there are some senior pastors who are not actually called by God to that position, and therefore may not be gifted to do the work that He has not assigned.

I’ve known men and women who seem to be called to leadership in the church, but who struggle in that responsibility. Have you ever gone for a walk with a cat: they’re like that cat: always watching you to see which way you’re going to go, and then scurrying to get in front of you, no matter which way you go. These “leaders” always watching the church to see where they’re going, then they declare, “We’re going to go this way,” as they see the church already going this way. They don’t have a real voice, only an echo.

The challenge comes in that some of these folks have a large gathering of followers. The sad part is not that they have followers, but that they don't know where to lead those followers.

By contrast, others seem to have no difficulty staying out in front. They seem to know what’s coming around the corner before others, and are preparing those who follow them for God’s next move.

I’ve been reflecting on that question: what makes leadership work in the Church for these people. Is there something about those who seem to know the path instinctively that’s markedly different than those who struggle to find their direction?

I think there is: those who lead naturally and comfortably usually have developed the lifestyle of feeding themselves spiritually, and those who seem to be called to leadership but have difficulty leading pretty consistently depend on others to feed their spirits.

Since this vocabulary is not real common to the church today, let me illustrate it. In 1 Corinthians 3:2, Paul says, “I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it.” Paul had to feed the believers in Corinth; more than that, he had to feed them baby food. They needed Paul to feed them because they could not feed themselves.

What did he feed them? I’m glad you asked that.

A few chapters later, Paul declares: “I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you…” Paul was able to draw nourishment directly from God – whether from the Word or from his prayer, or from experiences like the one where he “was caught up into Paradise and heard inexpressible words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.” In one way or another, Paul was able to draw revelation from the heart of God, to digest it, and to nourish not only his own spirit, but to nourish the many churches that he fathered. Heck, half of the books in the New Testament came from Paul drawing nourishment from the presence of God!

From the nourishment we draw from Father, we can feed those whom we lead. We will have the wisdom and strength to shepherd the flock of God; we’ll know the direction that God is heading so we will have both opportunity and resources to equip the flock to go there with Him; we’ll have confidence we’re living and moving in His will because we’ll know it from Him. We’ll be strong and fresh and confident in proportion to our ability to nourish ourselves directly from Him. This is the nourishment we draw from Him.

There is certainly nothing wrong with benefiting from the revelation of others. We are even instructed to “encourage one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” We must both encourage and be encouraged by, instruct and be instructed by others in the Body.

But if we aspire to be effective leaders in among the Body of Christ, then we must draw near the Head of the Body. Unless we are able to feed ourselves, we will never be able to feed those whom we are leading, pastoring and teaching. Unless we are well connected to the Head, we will not be able to lead the Body.

Mercy out of Control

Today we’re talking about a politically incorrect subject: mercy out of control.

It will be easy to miscommunicate on this subject, so let me state my premise, and then we’ll go to work on the subject: It’s my observation that most of the gifts of mercy that operate in our culture – both secular and spiritual – are messed up – out of control – and as a result, our mercy often does more harm than good. There are people who have what the Bible describes as a gift of mercy, and they’re real gifts. But too often, the gift is used inappropriately.

Let’s contrast this a couple of ways: First, there are others, who don’t have that gift, for whom it is less instinctive to respond with mercy; we’re not going to discuss these people today. Second, it’s possible to use this gift out of impure or inadequate motivation as it is for any other gift, and here is where there are some interesting lessons.

Jim Jones had a real gift (though it was clearly not a gift of mercy!). His gift was drawing people together and leading them toward a common goal, and he did that well, but he did not use it for God’s glory: rather it ended up with a bowl of strange Kool-Aid and an entire community dead because of his abused gift. Jim Bakker had a real gift as he started Heritage USA; he drew a lot of people and a lot of investment, and then things went haywire and his wife Tammy Faye divorced him when Heritage USA fell down around his ears. We see pastoral gifts, evangelistic gifts, perhaps even apostolic gifts used without the direction of the Holy Spirit, used for self-serving motivation (the media loves to report those errors!); why then do we assume that the gift of mercy is immune from such error?

The other day I saw a mother and child in a grocery store; you’ve seen them too. The child is acting out in selfishness or in rebellion, and instead of disciplining the child, mom capitulates and the child gets her candy and is appeased for the moment. (We see the opposite often enough as well: a parent in the grocery store who disciplines the child to the point of abuse, but that’s not the point of this article.)

A friend of mine (we’ll call him “Bob”) has several teenage kids. One of his daughters (“Suzy”) had moved out of his home and in with her boyfriend the drug dealer. She became addicted to a variety of drugs, and predictably fell on hard times, and wanted to come home. Both mom and dad are mercy-driven people and invited Suzy to come back home, but she came back with the drug habit and with the boyfriend. Over the next several months, some of the other kids also began experimenting with drugs.

Bob’s mercy was out of control.

The goal here is not to accuse or judge the addicted daughter, though doubtless she made her share of mistakes. The bigger error here may have been mom and dad not tempering their mercy with wisdom. Their choice was not between mercy and judgment (that one’s over: the Book is clear that “mercy triumphs over judgment”), but rather between the mercy of emotions and the mercy that is built on wisdom.

Yes, Bob felt bad for his daughter, and because of his daughter, and he wanted to rescue her. Maybe he saw some street people, and imagined Suzy begging for handouts on the street and sleeping under a bridge. He saw the options of judgment (“You made your choice, now live with it!”) and mercy (“You poor thing! Here, let me fix it for you!”) and chose the latter. That was a mistake that we make all too often in the church: we exercise mercy from our flesh.

I understand Bob feeling bad for his daughter! But his mercy – being untempered by wisdom – endangered his other kids and left Suzy’s sin free to control her. His error was in the analysis: the choice was not between judgment and mercy; it was between foolish mercy and wise mercy.

I tell these stories to illustrate my premise: most of the mercy gifts in the church today are out of control. First, we make the same mistake that Bob did: we mistakenly think that we can only choose between judgment and mercy. Since we begin with a lie, we can’t expect to discover the truth easily.

The second mistake we make is that we let the world tell us how we should express mercy, rather than letting God instruct us, and the world is not well informed in the wisdom of God. So the world says, “Do something, for pity’s sake!” and that may be part of the problem: pity is not the answer.

We see people making poor choices, and we want to make those choices for them. We see people hurting, and we want to ease the pain. But in reality, if we make their choices, then they never learn wisdom; if we ease their pain, then they never learn the lessons that discomfort can bring.

Just like Jim Jones’s gift of leadership desperately needed God’s wisdom, so Bob’s gift of mercy needed God’s wisdom. In fact, I’m not convinced that any of God’s gifts are going to function properly without God’s wisdom, but we tend to overlook the need for wisdom with mercy.

So rather than just jumping in to “rescue” and “fix it” and “save them”, I am proposing that we the church actually look to our Head for wisdom: “How would You like to meet this need, Lord?” Because none of us can claim to be more merciful than God, and certainly none of us can claim more wisdom than He. And because we’re damaging people by rescuing them unwisely.

So when we see people hurting, let’s stop and pray. Let's respond with the wisdom of God, not react out of our flesh.

It’s the Voice

I’m finding myself more and more convinced I’ve spent most of my Christian life backwards.

I grew up in a mainline denominational church, where they taught me Bible stories both as a child and as an adult. Next to the stories, the priority was on knowing the traditions of the church. I was taught to interpret the Word of God through the filter of my denomination’s doctrine: the doctrine was right, and what I read in the Word was right if it agreed with the doctrine.

Then I spent a couple of decades in the evangelical church, where I learned to study the Word: learn the principles that the Word teaches, and sit under those principles. My doctrine is to come from the Word, and my life is to be conformed to the principles that the Word teaches me and I judge the events around me by those principles.

The first can be described as deductive learning (I relate to the Word as it supports my previously deduced beliefs) and the second as inductive (I sit under the Word, and it instructs me both in doctrine and in behavior).

I’ve come to the conclusion that both of those methods have some value, but are ultimately woefully inadequate. Their value comes with the fact that there’s something outside of myself that’s an ultimate standard, rather than my experience being the standard by which everything is judged (which is the value structure taught in public schools and popular culture today: truth is personal: what’s true for you may not be true for anybody else). Knowing doctrine or knowing the Word, and treating either as a standard, has value.

On the other hand, both are fundamentally knowledge, and there’s trouble with that. “Knowledge puffs up” teaches the New Testament (1 Corinthians 8:1). It doesn’t say “knowledge of non-spiritual things puffs up,” or “knowledge of things not true puffs up.” It says, “knowledge puffs up,” and my inductive study shows me that the Greek vocabulary use here (fusio/w: fusioi) means “to make arrogant or haughty.” So knowledge of doctrine and knowledge of the Word of God work towards making me arrogant or haughty. How many times have we run into websites from people who have their doctrine down, but who are characterized by arrogance? The Word itself teaches that this is the inevitable result of growing in knowledge of the Word.

The other issue is that building my life on principles has serious limitations. Principles, like laws, are fairly immutable standards to which we must conform human lives. Interestingly, disparate principles can be drawn from the Word (and we already know how much variety there is in Christian doctrine).

When I watch some of my favorite heroes of the Bible, particularly in the maturity they develop in their later years, I observe them in a completely different model. In Acts 27, I see Paul talking to the ship’s crew based on what an angel has said to him. In the gospel of John, I hear Jesus declaring repeatedly that He’s doing and saying what God says and does. In fact, while the gospels do announce His fulfillment of prophecy I’m not aware of a single place where the Son of God describes the scriptures as the standard by which He determines either His actions or His teaching. Yes, He obeys them (very well!), but He doesn’t present them as His standard to obey.

Now lest some think that I disparage the Bible, let me hasten to say: the Word is supremely precious, and it is the standard by which all else is measured. Jesus never acted or taught anything contrary to the Word (though He re-interpreted it often enough), and I aspire to the same: that everything I teach is grounded in the Word. I note that when He was tested in the wilderness, Jesus wielded the word against the enemy with great effectiveness! I love that model!

But ultimately, I don’t want to be led by my doctrine. And I’m ready to be done with being led by principles, as valuable as they are. I want to be led by the voice of God; I want my life to be built on relationship with my Daddy more than on the book He left behind.

Certainly – since He is immutable – anything I hear Him saying now must be judged by what He has already said: if I hear something that contradicts the Word, I’ve heard wrong, and I need to hear again. On the other hand, if I hear something that contradicts popular interpretation or application of the Word, then I may have heard correctly: I’ll certainly want to be careful.

It’s been said that following the Book without following the voice of His Spirit qualifies me to be a Pharisee, and following His voice without the Book is flakiness. There are a thousand caveats, disclaimers and principles I can add here which would doubtless be of some benefit, if only to calm the fears of those who have built their lives on knowledge, or those whom they have taught. But I really only want to communicate a single point today: following the voice of God is more valuable than even following the Book of God.

The Thomas Syndrome

I’m really glad that I’m not the one responsible for the statement, “I will build my church.” That’s a monstrously large task, and I’m not always convinced that we His Church are all that willing to be built. Nevertheless, I’m convinced that He’s doing His job and doing it well.

One subject that I am watching Him addressing in His Church is what I call The Thomas Syndrome. You remember Thomas? He’s the guy that will forever be famous for the line, “Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.”

The central is along the eyes of “I trust my own eyes and my own experience. Yours isn’t good enough for me to trust.” We don’t say it that bluntly because we’re too polite, but that’s the essence of what we say to each other so often.

What we actually say is something like, “I’ll pray about it” or “I’m sure God will show me if I need to deal with that.” Or “No, God’s not telling me to repent of that sin right now.” Or “I’m glad that works for you.” Or “I just don’t see it that way.” I recently heard someone actually say “I don’t need any prophets to listen to, I have the Word.”

It all means the same thing: “I will not believe your experience. I must have my own experience before I will believe what you’re telling me.”

We were taught that in third grade science class: only trust empirical data (though when you come right down to it, that’s not practiced very well by those who preach it loudest).

Jesus corrected that perspective: “Because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” We usually teach this as “Hooray for all the people who are Christians, but have not seen Jesus for themselves. They’ve believed the testimony of other people who haven’t seen him, and that’s good.” That’s probably a fine thing, but I don’t believe it’s what Jesus was talking about here.

The context supports this interpretation: “When someone tells you what they’ve experienced in Me, you need to believe them.”

Consider His response when the twelve didn’t believe the boys from Emmaus: “He rebuked their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they did not believe those who had seen Him after He had risen.” In other words: two of them had an experience – a strange and unprecedented experience – with Jesus and He expected the rest to believe them. He rebuked them – that’s a strong word – for not believing them. He required the apostolic leaders of the church to believe the two kids – not leaders, not even important enough to name – who had experienced Jesus in a new and different way.

For the record, they eventually got it right later on. When God bypassed the leadership and poured out His spirit on (shiver!) gentiles, they grilled Peter for even preaching to the gentiles, but when they heard about what they experienced, they changed both their response and their theology: “Then God has also granted to the Gentiles repentance to life.”

Does that mean that we believe every strange and spurious story that comes along? No? Then how do I know to believe the kids from Emmaus, and not the guy next to him that's just looking for attention? How do I judge what is God and what is not?

Here’s my point: The One who builds His church does not build it the way that you and I would. He sometimes shows Himself to no-name kids on the road to some country village, and He expects that the Apostles of the Church to believe their testimony and to change their expectations of God (their theology) because of it.

Here’s how that can work: until that time, almost nobody had the Holy Spirit resident in them. Now, we all do, though we don’t all listen to Him all that well. That’s probably why He sometimes disguises His voice: sometimes teenagers in Emmaus, sometimes as a friend’s encouragement, a secular movie, a weird dream, whatever. We’re not listening for what we understand. We’re listening for His voice. As He did with Elijah, He still speaks into a distraction in a still small voice.

He’s expecting us to hear it. And when we hear, He’s expecting us to believe.

Doctrinal Integrity

I’m becoming more and more aware of a confusing situation – a problem – in the church. It’s hard to talk about head on, so I’m going to approach it from the back side, through a story.

One day some years ago, my family and I were out driving on a sunny Sunday afternoon, talking about our need to replace the vehicle we were riding in. We happened upon a small car lot, so we drove through, looking to see what they had that was interesting.

Within seconds, we were greeted by a salesman with slicked back hair, a polyester tie and big toothed smile: the quintessential used-car salesman. He proceeded to tell us why it was in our best interests to trade in the vehicle we were driving for a similar car of the same make and mileage for “only a few thousand dollars more,” and we could make payments at “only 12% interest.” I imagined him licking his chops, as he looked on us in our tired station wagon.

It was clearly not in our best interests to do business with this gentleman. My daughter called him a shark.

I came away from that experience with a new principle for my life: “Never ask a car salesman if I should buy a car.” The reason is obvious: some car salesmen have difficulty separating what’s good for their commission check from what’s good for my household, and their recommendation – their “expertise” – is self-serving.

Another illustration: imagine a judge presiding over a trial in which his brother-in-law is the defense attorney. The reason judges recuse themselves from cases like that is because the public cannot trust their impartiality: they have a conflict of interest: do I serve justice, or do I help out my family?

I see this happening in the church with alarming frequency: I see self-serving principles taught from the pulpit without any acknowledgement of the conflict of interest. I hear doctrines taught as truth, which clearly benefit those teaching them, and which sometimes do not benefit those being taught. And nobody questions either the doctrine or the motive.

What am I talking about? I’ll state these doctrines more bluntly than they’re taught from the pulpit, but this is the content being taught. I’ll state them very directly in the interest of clarity:

* You must tithe in this church where I get my paycheck or else you’re stealing from God,”

* If you’re not in this building every Sunday morning you’re in town, the devil’s gonna getcha!”

* If you don’t teach in Sunday School, our children are all going to hell!” or

* Give $1000 to my ministry and God will give you [fill in the blank]!”

Let me digress long enough to clarify what I am not saying: I am not saying that the doctrine of tithing is incorrect. I am not saying that the doctrine of covering is heretical, or that there’s something wrong with teaching Sunday School. I believe in tithing and I believe in raising our children as a community.

I’m also not saying that we should reject any teaching that could possibly be construed to the benefit of those teaching. I’m also not saying that the people who teach these things are necessarily teaching them out of self-serving motives. An ethical used car salesman can give me good advise about cars; an honest judge can judge fairly even when his family is involved; a televangelist truly can speak about money without greed in his heart. A true pastor or can invite people to join his church without thought of personal gain – financial or otherwise. It can happen, but it’s hard to have confidence it’s actually happening.

I am saying that it’s kind of awkward that the only people teaching the doctrine that individual believers must belong to an organized Sunday-morning church are the leaders of organized Sunday-morning churches. I’m saying that it’s confusing that the only people teaching that the Old Testament laws about tithing apply to New Testament believers (and who also teach that the rest of the Old Testament laws don’t apply to New Testament believers) are generally the same people whose paycheck comes out of that offering basket they want me to fill up: they may be teaching the truth, but it sure appears that they’re going to benefit more than I am from that teaching.

I’m not convinced that the system is corrupt, or that just because a pastor benefits from our obedience to his teaching, that he is necessarily teaching from a self-serving heart. I know a lot of pastors, and frankly, the vast majority of them are men and women of integrity. I have watched one or two of them struggle with the very issues I’m writing about here. But I’ve watched many others – particularly in small churches, where the size of Sunday’s offering determines whether they get a paycheck this month or not – where the line between their doctrine and their need becomes seriously blurred.

Obviously, a response is appropriate on the part of leaders and teachers who teach doctrine from a motive of self-enrichment, and that response starts with repentance for trusting something other that God as their provider. It may or may not be appropriate to acknowledge the conflict of interest publicly: the real response of a right heart must be towards God first, and only then towards man. As leaders, we must guard our teaching, our counseling, our hearts from mixed motivation.

Interestingly, as believers, our response to this dilemma is old news: after we forgive them, we as the Body of Christ in the pews need to examine the Word for ourselves, not just live off of what is fed to us by others. I’m not advocating an abandonment of all that is taught by paid pastors; I’m advocating that we test the things taught us, that we “search the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so.

A Warning About Declarations to a Prophetic Community

We’ve been hearing for several years now: our words have substantial power, not just in the lives of those we speak to, but they change realities; they release spiritual power. Before I go any further, I want to affirm some of the basic truths held there:

· One of the ways that I’m created like my creator is that, like Him, my words carry power and create or change the reality of the world around me.

· This is one of the reasons that the Word commands those working in the prophetic realm to speak “comfort edification and encouragement.”

· We can exercise this authority intentionally (perhaps as declarations) or unintentionally.

OK. Now on to the meat of this article. Jeremiah 28 contains a warning about making specific declarations that are not within the will of God. But first an overview of declarations.

There are at least three categories of Declarations:

1. Those things that God has already said to us specifically. We can declare these boldly, knowing with certainty that we’re working within the purposes of God.

2. Those things that fall within the parameters of God’s blank checks: “Ask whatever you want,” He said, “and you shall have it.” There were conditions, of course: primarily that we be well and truly “in Him.” (See Matthew 21, Mark 11, John 14, John 15, John 16 as examples.)

3. Those that are our will, for our own benefit, but are not part of God’s plan This includes those things that we already know are contrary to God’s will.

And this is where Hananiah and Jeremiah 28 come in; I recommend you read it again now. Please. God had declared one thing (70 years under Nebuchadnezzar’s yoke), and Hananiah declared something completely contrary (only 2 years in captivity). Some thoughts:

1. As a prophet, Hananiah was aware that he was directly contradicting Jeremiah’s word; he broke Jerry’s wooden yoke. It was a prophetic challenge, and he knew it.

2. The scriptures don’t identify Hananiah’s prophetic mantle any differently than Jeremiah’s: he was not a “false prophet.”

3. Hananiah was certainly declaring something far more comfortable than that which the true word of the Lord had declared. If I were going into captivity, I would prefer 2 years to seventy. And certainly it’s easy to understand why someone would want to be seen as a prophet who stood up to the judgment that was facing them.

4. God (through Jeremiah) declares he has not sent Hananiah with this message, and that the message he is speaking consists of lies, and that he was teaching the people “rebellion against the Lord.” Surely a prophet and the son of a prophet would know that he was not sent by God.

In verse 11, Hananiah prophesies the breaking of Nebuchadnezzar’s yoke, and he does it from his own will, contrary to God’s will. Yet in verses 13 & 14, God tells Jeremiah that things are different now because of Hananiah’s word. In other words, even though Hananiah was prophesying “lies”, even though his declarations were self-motivated, they had effect.

God backs up Hananiah’s prophetic word, even though it was in error. But it wasn’t a stamp of approval of his ministry. It cost Hananiah his life:

“Hear now, Hananiah, the LORD has not sent you, but you make this people trust in a lie. 16 Therefore thus says the LORD: ‘Behold, I will cast you from the face of the earth. This year you shall die, because you have taught rebellion against the LORD.’”(Jeremiah 28:15&16)

Now, this is Old Testament, but it seems that God honored the rebellious prophet’s word, knowing that it was a rebellious word, but he mitigated the effects of that word in two ways:

1. He removed the prophet from the scene. Hananiah actually died 2 months later.

2. He does an end around to accomplish His purposes in spite of Hananiah’s fulfilled word: “You have broken the yokes of wood, but you have made in their place yokes of iron.” (v13,14)

Hananiah’s word intended to reduce the yoke that Jeremiah had prophesied (from 70 years to 2 years), but instead, it increased the severity of the yoke (from a relatively comfortable wooden yoke to an immovable iron one).

The lesson in this: as a prophetic people created in the Creator’s image, our words have power, even in rebellion. But we must guard our words so that we speak what we really want to see created. Yes, God will mitigate the effects of our unwise words, but who among us wants to find himself opposed by the Almighty?

Let’s guard our hearts and our words. Obviously we must run from Hananiah’s example of defying the word of the Lord for his own good. But if we are to be judged for every idle word (and we are), then we must guard our casual speech as well.

We will be a prophetic people if we follow in the footsteps of our Father. Let’s speak “comfort edification and encouragement,” as far as possible, but whatever we speak, let it be His words, not ours.

The Wind of God

In this week’s posting, I want to look at something that God did in Canada a few years ago. This is the kind of plunder I want to see! May it happen in my community. And in yours!

This happened on Feb. 28th, 1999 at the Anglican church, in a special Sunday afternoon youth service in Pond Inlet. Pond Inlet is a small, predominantly Inuit community in the Qikiqtaaluk Region of Nunavut, Canada and is located at the top of Baffin Island. As of the 2006 census the population was 1,315. The people were disturbed at reports of drug use amongst the teens in their community, and they came together to seek the Lord.

The Lord visited them that day with His miracle power, which was manifested in a very loud sound. They were recording a cassette tape of the meeting, and the sound of the Lord's wind and mighty fire was recorded. Here are some excerpts from the video on You Tube, where you can hear the recording and testimonies of that day:

"An invitation was offered for Youth who felt they wanted to come closer to God." The worship leader, Louee Arieak, was praying over the youth at the altar, "I felt so close to God... He kept giving me this verse that says, 'Blessed are the Pure in Heart, for they shall see God.' "

"Something started to happen, that was beyond our control."

"Fire went right through me!"

"It sounded like a jet, but I started to think, there are no jets in Pond Inlet".

"It was so loud, that everything started to shake, All the people started to shake."

"Fire !!!! Fire !!!! Hallelujah!!!!!! OHHHHHHH!!!!!"

When the sound first started, Pastor Moses Kayak tried to stop the sound by first adjusting, and then even turning off the sound board. But still the sound, and the recording, continued. "It shouldn't have been recorded. It's only by the miracle of God."

The pastor recounts the story. He was "... completely humbled, to the point where he wanted to continually come before God, kneel... and ask for cleansing of the heart - to become pure before Him."

"My name is John Tugak. I played the guitar that nite there at the service. The sound started just barely noticable like a tv with no signal. Then it built up louder like as if a big plane flew over but the noise was there longer than usual. Saw the pastor trying to adjust and fix the noise with the sound system but it continued. I even saw him turn off the system but it didnt help. Then I realize, and I believe the sound is from the presence of the almighty God. I still believe, and have never experience anything like it! If the sound was from the sound system, it would break as it was too loud for the speakers to handle it. The speakers cannot make that kind of sound and shake the building. The sound was amazing!"

Here's the story of what happened:


And this is a report from a few years later:

Please tell me what you think.