Welcome to From the Pulpit.
Each week we bring you a different message
from some of history's greatest speakers in the
Christian faith and powerful sermons from modern preachers
too.
This week we have Tony Dale with his
message, Simple Church.
I understand I was introduced in my absence.
I hope they said nice things.
It's kind of like saying grace before a
meal and you have no idea what's going
to be served.
It's really good to be here with you
folks.
I was thrilled to bits to hear those
stories.
Here's some of the good things that God's
doing.
It actually is a very specific introduction to
some of the stuff that I'm going to
be talking about over the next couple of
days.
I want to read you a verse of
scripture maybe as a justification for why I'll
also tell lots of stories because I think
that's a biblical way of trying to explain
some of the things of God.
And this comes in Romans chapter 15.
Romans chapter 15 and verse 17 says this,
Therefore I glory in Christ Jesus in my
service to God.
I will not venture to speak of anything
except what Christ has accomplished through me in
leading the Gentiles to obey God by what
I have said and done, by the power
of signs and miracles, through the power of
the Spirit, so that from Jerusalem all around
to Illyricum I have fully proclaimed the gospel
of Christ.
It has always been my ambition to preach
the gospel where Christ was not known so
that I would not be building on someone
else's foundation.
I want to sort of start tonight by
introducing ourselves to you a little bit because
we're strangers really and I find it very
difficult to speak to strangers.
In fact the whole sort of arrangement here
is designed to make us feel like strangers,
isn't it?
I mean when I was in medical school
back in London I loved the opportunity to
try and teach something or to get into
the words.
And we used to go out and do
a lot of preaching in little churches and
the like around London.
And after one of these occasions a girl
called Anne, who was a very close friend
of Felicity's, she presented me with a picture.
Now I don't know if you've seen sort
of the classic English type of old style
church, but it would have not really a
pulpit like this but it would have a
spiral staircase to a pulpit over here on
one side.
Because in the Anglican church there'd be the
altar and that sort of stuff in the
middle.
And so the pulpit's over here and you
climb up the spiral staircase into the pulpit.
And often behind it there'd be a big
stone column because that's how the church was
built.
So she drew this picture of me standing
in this pulpit with a chain attaching me
to the stone column behind and me like
this in front of everybody.
But that's the old style of communication isn't
it?
One of the things we've learned is that
actually it doesn't matter a scrap how good
a teacher anybody is.
Now full apologies to the real teachers over
here, you can tell I'm an amateur.
But you know from our perspective as we've
been involved in church planting we find that
it honestly doesn't matter how good a teacher
you are.
What matters is whether or not people are
learning anything.
And in fact in our experience people learn
a whole lot more the less teaching there
is.
Now I'm probably treading on toes already, I
apologize.
I'm kind of like that.
But we find that the more people participate
the more they remember.
Now I am going to get you participating
immediately.
Does that sound good?
Great!
Then we need to get a whole lot
closer to the front because unless I didn't
put deodorant on this morning I cannot understand
why like in a traditional church we filled
up all the back rows and the poor
guys at the front are left totally lonely.
So why don't we come up and fill
up as best we can.
Anyway there's a saying isn't there that the
mind will only, the mind can only cope
with what the seed endures.
So we'll give everybody a chance to get
a bit more comfortable at the front.
This is what Christian gatherings are like.
There are people talking and hugging each other
and so glad to see each other.
And the whole idea that we have to
somehow you know pretend that it's more important
to listen to the guy at the front
than it is to give a hug to
a friend you haven't seen in a year.
You know that's kind of a joke so
I don't mind at all that you're taking
an opportunity to make yourself comfortable.
Now I said that I was going to
try and introduce myself and my lovely wife
over here and our son Jonathan who's got
down here to the front.
Let me ask a question because I don't
want to bore you with the same stuff
that you've already perhaps read or seen.
How many of you read on any sort
of a regular basis house-to-house magazine?
Oh God help you.
We are in serious trouble here.
Okay well then you've already heard all of
our stories and if you've read from the
first issue you've probably even read Where I
Was Born and all those sort of terrible
things.
My parents were missionaries in Taiwan and I
tell people you can tell I'm made in
Taiwan because I'm a cheap imitation.
I don't even look Chinese.
So quite what you're going to get over
these next couple of days I'm not 100
% sure.
But it's an incredibly rich heritage that I
had in the Lord.
Mom and dad were medical missionaries in Taiwan.
Dad's parents before him were medical missionaries in
China and then in Africa.
And something is built into your life over
a period of generations.
Things that we don't know and understand.
But I remember sort of recognizing somewhere in
my university years that I knew the scriptures
more than most of the preachers I was
listening to.
And I'd never been to Bible school or
anything like that at that point.
But you know that there's the heritage of
what is put into you by godly parents.
And part of that heritage was a great
hunger that we'd see something real.
I guess being a missionary kid I hated
pretense right from the beginning because I saw
so much of it to be honest.
Anyone else here sort of either a preacher
kid or a missionary kid?
Am I the only one?
Did any of you see any pretense or
was it all totally real where you were?
The laughs tell me the truth.
Okay.
And there was something about this facade that
called itself Christian but which bore so little
relationship to what I read in the Bible
that you know I went through really significant
struggles trying to figure out if Jesus was
for real.
I knew he was for real for my
parents but I didn't know if he was
for real for me.
I remember one thing.
It's funny how these silly little things shape
your life.
And I hope you don't mind me introducing
myself like this but it'll give you some
idea of where I'm coming from and then
maybe some of the things as we get
into the scriptures will make a bit more
sense.
I went to a boarding school down in
the middle of the island in Taichung and
mom and dad ran a clinic up in
Taipei which is in the north.
So I didn't get home that often.
Maybe one weekend every six or eight weeks
something like that during school time.
I remember this particular weekend actually we'd gone
up to Taipei to play Taipei American school
soccer as you call it or football as
we do.
Now you've probably already gathered I'm English.
Okay I may come from Texas and you
know the Texans think they're proud people.
You know they have stickers on their cars
saying I wasn't born here but I got
here as fast as I could.
Now you know do they do that in
South Carolina?
I don't know.
You know the Texans have all sorts of
idiosyncrasies and I'm still trying to figure them
out.
One of them is that they're absolutely obsessed
about this game that they call football where
they don't even use their feet to work
with the ball.
I don't understand it.
The rest of the world of course is
watching real football tonight and the Americans are
getting even more confused because this morning they
saw their team lose only to discover that
that advances them to the next round.
So you know it does get kind of
confusing at times but this isn't an opportunity
for us to talk about soccer much as
I love the sport.
But I remember a time I was about
14 years old.
We'd gone up back up to Taipei to
play Taipei American school and that meant that
the Saturday was completely blocked out with sports
activities.
Now I don't know a lot about you
so I'm sorry I'm giving away some stories
about myself but in the sort of family
I was brought up in there were certain
things that we were not allowed to do
on a Sunday.
And one of those things was that we
were not allowed to go to a movie
on a Sunday.
Now I still haven't completely figured it out
but maybe that's because I'm kind of slow
but I was allowed to go on other
days of the week but not on a
Sunday.
But there was a movie I really really
wanted to see.
Now you're probably not like this but you
know if I find if I do anything
naughty I remember every little detail of it.
Yeah anyone else like that?
You know it just sort of is trapped
there in your mind.
Anyway it comes to Sunday we go to
church in the morning you know with mom
and dad and after church we have lunch
and I tell my parents that I'm going
to go up to the Grand Hotel to
go swimming.
Now I was allowed to go swimming but
I wasn't allowed to go to movies.
Okay I still don't understand that but those
were the rules in my house.
And it's hot in Taiwan so you need
to swim.
And so I get out my swimsuit and
I put it on the back of my
bike and I cycle off in the direction
of the Grand Hotel.
But as soon as I'm out of sight
of the house I sort of change direction.
I head off downtown and I go to
see this movie.
It's a really wicked movie.
It's called The Parent Trap.
If you haven't seen it I strongly recommend
it.
If some of you have seen it you
know these two twins and you know this
is the original version back sort of you
know in the 1910s or however old I
was then.
And I can still hear the music that
was on in the movie theater when I
walked in on that Sunday afternoon.
They were playing for those of you who
are musical they were playing a baby elephant
walk and I remember going and man did
I enjoy this movie.
Now of course I was kind of shrewd
because I told them I was going swimming
so I'd actually brought the swimsuit into the
theater with me.
And at the end of the movie I
went into the bathroom and I soaked my
swimsuit and splashed water on my towel and
then cycled home and I hung up my
swimsuit on the line to dry.
Now I really deserved an Oscar.
It was a fantastic performance but there was
a problem.
You see I hadn't reckoned on what the
Holy Spirit might do.
Now that night I was in my bedroom
and this is how sort of schizophrenic you
can be.
You know I might even have been reading
my Bible.
I have no idea.
You know I was a good kid basically.
And so I'm in my room and my
mom comes in and she has the sort
of look that only mothers can have.
You guys are young enough to sort of
picture what I mean.
And she looks at me and she says
she says Tony this is going to sound
really strange but this afternoon when you went
out to go swimming she said I went
to visit a friend and she described the
part of town.
And she said I drove through downtown and
when she said downtown my heart's starting to
go pitter patter.
And she said I drove past this and
she named the movie theater I was in
and now my heart is really going.
And she said I don't know what to
make of this but I felt when I
drove past that building the Holy Spirit say
to me that you were in there.
Whoa what do you do?
I mean everybody needs a mother like that.
So I mean what can you do when
you're you're caught red-handed.
So you know I had to confess and
put it right and you know all this
sort of stuff.
But do you know what it told me?
It told me there was a God who
noticed when 14-year-old Tony snuck out
and went to movies on a Sunday afternoon.
I don't think the issue had anything to
do about sneaking out and going to movies.
It had everything to do with respect and
obedience to parents and all of that type
of thing.
But it said to me that God knew
who I was.
It was maybe a year or two later
I was coming up to the beginning of
my junior year at high school and I
fell seriously ill with hepatitis.
Now over here hepatitis is not usually a
desperately serious condition at least hepatitis A.
But in Taiwan it's probably the leading cause
of death.
Certainly it leads very frequently to cancer of
the liver and that is the primary form
of cancer that you see out in the
far east.
And I knew that people we'd actually just
had a missionary friend who had been recuperating
in our house who'd been ill for over
a year.
And so when my dad came in that
day and told me I had hepatitis you
know my little 11th grade world fell fell
apart.
I was going to be captain of the
soccer team.
You know I was planning to be elected
you know president of our class.
All the things that are so important to
you at that age.
And all of a sudden it all crumbled
because this was just two weeks before school
and I knew I wasn't going to get
back to school.
And over the next few days I really
did become seriously ill.
Deeply jaundiced.
I was much more of a sort of
skin and bones in those days than I
am now.
But what little weight I had was falling
off me dangerously fast.
Dad was worried about me.
The hospitals weren't very good in Taiwan in
those days.
So he began feeding me intravenously at home.
Set up the intravenous drip and all that
sort of stuff so that they were getting
some nourishment into me.
And you know the sort of five or
six days there as I fell ill with
hepatitis are pretty much a blur in my
mind.
I just remember all the time vomiting vomiting
and just feeling terrible.
It all began on a Saturday afternoon.
By the Wednesday everything I've described to you
had happened.
I was losing weight dangerously quickly.
They had begun feeding me.
I really was sort of semi in and
out of fever and delirium all the time.
I remember on Wednesday night mom and actually
that same friend that she was going to
visit that afternoon of the previous incident.
This lady's name was Pearl.
I remember mom and Pearl coming in to
the bedroom.
Actually I'd taken over their bedroom because there
was more space there and they'd put me
in there.
And I remember her coming in and pulling
out the Bible and saying that she and
Pearl had been at a prayer meeting and
that there were people all over town that
night who were praying for me.
And they opened their Bible to Mark chapter
16 and they read to me these signs
will follow those who believe.
And one of the signs that they read
was that they'll lay hands on the sick
and they'll recover.
And they asked me if they could pray
for me.
Well to be honest I felt so sick
I didn't mind what they did.
So there was absolutely nothing of me that
was involved in anything that might have happened.
But they prayed for me just very simply
asking Jesus to touch me and heal me.
I don't remember feeling anything except that I
did go almost immediately to sleep and I
slept right through that night.
And when I woke up in the morning
the jaundice was completely gone and I was
ravenously hungry.
God had healed me.
Again it was just another indication that God
notices individual people that he cared about Tony.
Now I'd never really planned to do anything
except become a doctor when I grew up.
That was you know I didn't want to
be an airline pilot or you know president
of the United...
well certainly not president of the United States.
But you know any of these other things
that people get excited about.
You know the only thing I'd ever really
wanted to do was to be a doctor
like my dad.
And so it wasn't an issue that I
particularly thought about or prayed about.
In fact sometimes there in the back of
my mind you know I'd realize that Christians
are supposed to ask God what he wants.
And so I justify what I was planning
to do by saying well Lord you know
I'm becoming a doctor that's sort of non
-negotiable but if I have to I'll be
a medical missionary.
And that was about as far as my
seeking...
you know my seeking the Lord about what
he wanted me to do had gone at
that stage in my life.
And so a couple of years you know
after the incidents I've told you about I
was on my way back to England to
start medical school.
But I didn't know that God was in
the process of beginning to grab hold of
us and begin to transform our lives.
I remember it was right at the beginning
of my second year of medical school that
I met Felicity.
It was...
I won't confuse you with how the British
system works but although it was her first
year she came into the same classes that
I came into at the beginning of my
second year.
That basically tells you how dumb I am
doesn't it?
Okay so you know she had already caught
up and she hadn't even been there.
Anyway on her first day at school the
first class that we had was a histology
class.
Now I don't know if you know what
histology is.
That's looking at things under a microscope and
you might think of it as pathology.
It's where you're looking at the tissues of
the body under a microscope trying to figure
out what's gone wrong with them.
And it really helps if you're kind of
artistically inclined because then you have some idea
what you're looking at.
But I look through these microscopes and I
don't see anything.
I mean nothing.
I see blobs and I have no idea
what they represent.
So I'm very rapidly getting bored and I
turn around.
There is this gorgeous apparition behind me.
The apparition's name was Felicity.
What was even better was that she came
up to me immediately following the class and
said, are you Tony Dale?
And I said yes.
And she said well someone told me that
you were one of the few Christians here
at the medical school and I wanted to
get to know you.
Well needless to say we got to know
each other pretty well over the following years
and you'll get to know her a little
bit and some of you will be in
the seminar that she'll be doing.
She's the real brains of the family.
If you want to hear anything of you
know the real depth type stuff talk to
her.
If you're happy with the simple explanations then
you can put up with me.
I wish I was joking but that's the
truth.
You know it's really intimidating when your wife's
winning all these scholarships and you're just hoping
you'll pass but you know that's the way
sometimes it is in life.
So we began a spiritual adventure because she
had just begun to learn and explore something
of what God was beginning to unfold in
England back in those days.
This was in 1968.
Sorry for those of you who weren't even
born then.
I apologize you know talking about things sort
of before Christ but you know I'm trying
to put this into a historical perspective because
it's going to make some difference on some
of the stuff we're going to look at
in a moment and as we began to
explore just how God was working into our
generation.
God began challenging me in all sorts of
ways.
I'd already tasted for example in the story
I told you of how he healed me
but I hadn't even begun to think about
what implications that might have about what I
do and the fact that I was going
into medicine.
I'd gone to visit a church.
I guess it was a Pentecostal church.
I'm not really sure.
They actually met in an accountant's office and
God was doing some good stuff there.
I knew the presence of God was there
in a very very real way and I
heard that one of the guys who was
taking a lead was doing a meeting down
in the west end of London and I
was going to be free that night so
I went down and while there at the
meeting again I watched God healing people and
my skeptical eyes were trying to understand but
I knew what I was seeing.
Now the guy who was speaking at the
front he didn't mean this seriously.
He literally meant it as a joke but
he's sort of laughing.
He says I guess if there are any
doctors here tonight they'll be looking for a
new job but you know sometimes God just
hits you with something and I heard it
and it was like the Holy Spirit said
to me Tony you never asked me about
going to medical school and something began really
troubling me in my heart and I went
home that night.
In fact I went home.
I'd gone to this meeting with a friend.
We went home by our by our party
that some of the were throwing and we
began telling all the nurses and others who
were there about what we'd seen God doing
at this meeting.
It completely destroyed the party but we had
a great time.
It ended up with a great sort of
prayer time and all sorts of good things
going on but I went to bed that
night with this deep unsettledness inside.
Lord I know I've never asked and yet
this is the only thing I've ever really
wanted to do.
In the morning I got up and I
just you know opened my Bible to the
regular place for my quiet time.
It was in the book of Micah chapter
2 and I must have read the first
few verses but I don't remember you know
today I couldn't tell you what the first
nine verses are about but when I got
to verse 10 again God just hit me.
It says arise and go for this is
no place for you to rest because of
unweariness that will destroy the soul and I
just knew he was telling me I had
to leave medical school and and you know
all over again the way the Holy Spirit
begins to shape any of us in our
character.
God was working on my life to see
if I was willing to be obedient.
I'd love to tell you that you know
I got up that day and said thank
you Lord and you know left the medical
school.
I didn't.
I struggled really deeply over that question for
the next almost nine months for the rest
of that academic year but finally I knew
that I had to obey the Lord and
I had to leave.
Now it's a completely different story to tell
you why I happen now to be a
doctor and we'll get to that okay but
that was probably the most difficult thing I've
ever had to do in my life.
I remember when I went in to see
the Dean and I told the Dean I
tried to explain to him what I felt
that you know God was saying to me
that I had to leave the medical school.
Now where we went at Barnes Hospital was
a very snobby sort of place.
Do you use the word snobby?
You know sort of nose up in the
air you know whatever it is and I
mean just to give you a perspective on
history I think you guys became a country
in 1776.
Is that right?
Am I getting that right?
There is a rebellious streak in this room.
Is that true?
No I take it all back you know.
Well the hospital that we trained at was
founded in 1123 by monks on their way
providing a resting place for people who are
on their way to the crusades and so
you know this is the sort of place
steeped in history I've never heard from that
day or to this of anyone who quit
in the middle that they ever let go
back.
So when I quit I knew it was
keeps and went down to Bible school spent
a couple of years you know getting more
training in the word and just the Lord
shaping me getting involved.
I supported myself through school by working in
a pharmacy washing bottles and you have no
idea how it hurts every day to be
in a hospital when you were training at
you know one of the most prestigious medical
schools in the country and here are all
the doctors wandering around in their white coats
and you're the nobody who works in the
back of the hospital pharmacy washing bottles.
But God uses that.
God shapes you.
Something begins to seep into your life.
It's like the verses I was reading there
in Romans 15 where Paul says I can
only share with you basically what I've experienced
myself because if we're going to earth in
reality some of the things we're going to
think of and some of the things we're
going to talk about over the next two
to three days are going to be huge
in their suite.
We believe that God is doing something in
this generation in this country that would the
scriptural way be that when people hear about
it it's going to make their ears tingle.
You know that the potential of what is
going on the possibility of really seeing Bible
-believing Christians all over this country having their
paradigm of what church is about totally transformed
within a generation.
I believe that can happen and you're going
to hear some of why we believe it
can happen because of things we've seen God
do and so if God's preparing people for
something then just like a diamond in the
rough he's got to form them under the
pressure and the pressures of the way God
works is that he deals with all those
things that are priorities before him until he
can bring us to a place where we're
honestly saying not just grudgingly but longingly out
of our hearts that you know the only
thing we can do is to seek first
the kingdom of God and his righteousness.
I've been down at this Bible college I
guess you'd call it Bible college we we
met in a home it was a very
nice home it was the home of Sir
Tom and Lady Faith Lees.
They got swept up in the good things
the Lord was doing in England in the
60s and they opened up their home to
become a center for young people to be
trained.
I was one of nine people who turned
up on the first day of this new
Bible school and God did wonderful things I'd
love to tell you stories of those years
but but there isn't time if we're going
to get into anything with any meat you
know because this is just sort of travelogue
at the moment but I I hope it's
not boring you you know looking at other
people's slides I mean doesn't it drive you
nuts so I you know if this if
you feel that way about this you have
my full permission to walk out but if
you do I'm going to catch your name
I've done that okay so I was about
18 months maybe more maybe 21 months into
this two-year Bible school course and really
seriously beginning to say to the Lord Lord
what should I be doing next now I
don't know how you understand the Lord speaking
to you I I don't know if I've
ever really heard the Lord's voice but if
I've ever heard it it was on this
occasion I I was washing bottles in that
hospital pharmacy and just sort of thinking about
what happens next knowing that it was only
about three months until I'd graduate and really
needed to know what the Lord had for
me and just as plain as day I
heard you're to go back to medical school
I sort of like uh-uh now that's
me you know Lord I'm so I'm so
sorry Lord I repent you know I I'm
sorry that that's still inside me you know
Lord I've been trying to deal with this
stuff and but there was nothing I could
do to shake it I knew I'd heard
something I didn't know for sure it was
God but I knew I'd heard something and
so I said a couple of things that
I thought would be impossible the leader of
the Bible school was just a very sort
of fiery a totally committed person who I
knew would be very very opposed to any
idea of me going back and doing something
that tied up with the world if I
can put it in those ways and so
I said well Lord Lord if this is
really you then you've got to get Elmer
he was his first name the the president
of the Bible school you've got to get
Elmer when I speak to him to say
that that he would be willing to endorse
that this might be what the Lord wanted
for me now I said Lord if that
happens I'm going to speak to the medical
school and they've not only got to let
me come back but they've got to let
me come back with my scholarships because my
parents can't afford the money and they've got
to let me come back without having to
do any of the work again well I
went to see Elmer and he said I've
been waiting for you to come he said
I've known for months that God was going
to take you back to medical school I'm
so glad that finally you've heard him I'm
thinking like wow you know and there's part
of me hoping that this is really true
because you know it's still sort of in
there however much you've dealt with it it's
still in there some of these desires because
sometimes they're God-given desires it was something
that he had birthed into me okay but
I wanted to make quite sure that I
wasn't missing his guidance and so I made
an arrangement to go back and see the
dean it was the same guy that I'd
seen to explain that God had told me
to left so I was trying to figure
out how to tell him that God had
changed his mind you know it sort of
leaves you with a bit of a dilemma
theologically doesn't it and I get in there
and you know he looks very stern and
everybody's in three-piece suits including me you
know in those days I mean we're so
casual now we had to wear suits and
ties in the anatomy dissecting lab can you
believe that out of respect for the dead
that's what they told us as far as
I could see the only thing it did
was mean your tie always stunk of formalin
but anyway that's life I apologize those of
you squeamish you know just forget these stories
okay now I'm sitting there with the dean
and and he looks at me and he
he looked and he says well Dale he
said uh I I can see you did
pretty well but you've been away for two
years uh he said you know in two
years you've forgotten a lot of this but
he said your your dad was here and
your and his father before him they were
all here at this medical school he said
we'd like to take you back but he
said I'm gonna have to ask you to
do the last year again and I'm thinking
but lord my condition was that if they
accept me I don't have to do anything
again so I sort of gulp and I
I look at him and I uh I
say well sir uh do you remember your
summer vacation between first year and second year
uh second mb which is a type of
exam and and he looked at me and
he said yeah and he's sort of smiling
uh and I said well sir did you
forget most of what you learned in first
year first mb in that summer and he
laughed and he said yeah I did and
he said and I said to him well
look I'll study real hard for the next
three months before I come back but I've
got to start exactly where I left off
and he said okay that's a deal now
that was god doing something you know god
opens doors I I had no idea in
those days what god was going to want
to help me I have no idea that
one day we'd be working with doctors and
nurses all over the world and helping them
learn how to move in the power of
the holy spirit in their daily professional lives
how to pray for your patients how to
cast out demons in the medical office how
to have the expectation that many would be
coming to christ right within the professional context
okay because we don't see the end from
the beginning but what god asks of us
is a willingness to be obedient with each
step that he's asking us to take now
you probably notice I don't wear a watch
that's because in my experience all preachers preach
too long would you agree with me yeah
I see a lot of people nodding their
heads and some of them are even preachers
so you know this is like tonight is
obviously honesty night man I don't know if
I can cope I haven't stood behind a
pulpit in I mean it's almost ungodly okay
look how do you do this you hold
your notes you hold your glasses you hold
your bible I I really can't cope with
it I if it doesn't work I'll go
back there but we're family together we're going
to look at some thoughts and ideas together
we're going to be exploring what would it
take for god to transform his bride and
I'm not talking about oh that's perfect but
I'm not going to burst into song thank
you so much that's wonderful what would it
take to turn the church around in this
country now we don't have time to argue
all sorts of points of theology over the
next couple of days so you're going to
just have to take me the way I
am you don't have to agree with me
and you'll probably be right in fact people
sometimes ask me what I think about a
subject and I tell them well I can
tell you what I think right now but
you know by this time next year I
may have changed my mind all over again
so I'm afraid I'm not of the sort
who's very dogmatic but I'll try and explain
things about our journey that lead us to
believe that god can dramatically transform his people
two years ago in February of the year
2000 we began seeing reports on the news
of the floods that were happening in Mozambique
I don't know if any of you remember
that Mozambique's down in southern Africa and was
hit by terrible terrible floods they had three
sort of hurricanes or typhoons whatever you might
call them in a row and all this
water from South Africa and from Zimbabwe and
that hit their own land it all tunnels
through a few rivers through Zimbabwe and just
over a very very short period of time
almost 50 percent of the country was underwater
and some friends of ours a couple called
Roland and Heidi Baker run an orphanage out
there in the just outside the capital city
of Maputo and we got an email just
describing the desperate plight of the nation and
of their orphans they look after about a
thousand orphans one of their orphanages had been
totally buried underwater the other one was waterlogged
but functioning functioning everywhere they're all over the
country there there were people in imminent danger
of starvation and an email went out as
a cry for help and I looked at
it and I thought well I am a
doctor I could do something and so over
a period of a couple of weeks we
just completely cleared the decks and I went
out there to see what I could do
to help and you know the United Nations
was taking any and all of the help
it could get they they would fly us
into remote villages and you know we'd fly
out for a day we would treat as
many patients as we could we'd dump as
much food as we could we'd come back
and over the course of those days we
began to see God doing incredible things we'd
go into a village where these people have
nothing I mean nothing you'd have to know
a little about Mozambique it's had 20 years
of civil war when it got its independence
from Portugal I think it was back in
about 1974 something like that it came under
communist leadership they were even worse than the
Portuguese were they totally raped the country and
destroyed it in all sorts of ways civil
war broke out that devastated the country so
by the time 1995-96 came along that
was the poorest nation on earth they had
nothing and then you have these floods and
we'd go in I take a team of
people with me from the orphanage and we
do medical work and then perhaps during the
lunchtime we'd share the gospel and the people
you know were gathered anywhere where high ground
was so there were large concentrations of people
and you know during the breaks that we
were taking for the medical workers we'd share
the gospel we'd explain that we were there
because Jesus loved them and in very simple
ways try and communicate the Christian faith and
then we'd ask is there anybody who hearing
about this feels that they understand enough that
they're ready to surrender their life to this
God to Jesus who's the Son of the
Living God and everybody would put their hand
up and so I'd say you know obviously
through an interpreter no no you don't understand
and I'd explain again that that this means
a complete break from your old life that
you have to give up the witch doctors
you have to give up the worship of
spirits and trees you you have to give
up all of these old things and that
you completely turn around and give your life
to this this God that you're only just
beginning to understand about who's going to ask
you to follow him whatever the cost and
I'd say now if you understand clearly what
I'm saying are you ready to give your
life to Jesus and again everybody would put
their hand up and this would happen in
village after village after village and you could
be in a place maybe 48 hours and
you could leave and there'd be a hundred
maybe 60 maybe 150 people who at some
measure at least have begun to respond to
the word of God I remember those evenings
sitting under the usually in the center of
the village there'd be a big tree and
you'd have church under the tree oh and
the presence of God and the way the
Africans sing and dance is just so amazing
and you would know that God was birthing
churches in days and your heart begins to
cry out Lord couldn't it happen here Roland
and Heidi in the last email that they
sent us said that over the last three
years now as best they can count and
they have no idea whether this is accurate
or not but by their definition of a
church which they define I'm not saying this
is biblical or whatever I'm just telling you
what they use they define a church as
when 50 believers are gathered together but by
the best estimates they have there are now
over 3,000 churches that they're involved with
in Mozambique that's God now that's God that's
God's time for a nation here's a nation
that has hit rock bottom where the spirit
of God is sweeping across it in such
incredible ways it'd be fun to tell you
more stories but but I'm just trying to
begin to to raise our concept of what
can happen and then we're going to look
in a little bit of depth at what
did happen in a country and we're going
to try and draw some principles before tomorrow
we're going to start looking into the scriptures
and ask whether we really have a biblical
foundation for daring to ask God to do
something dramatic in our generation a few months
after that first incident Felicity and I went
back out there this time with two of
the kids and we just saw the same
thing again day by day the the power
of God moving a people so hungry we'd
go into a place maybe for 24 hours
maybe for 48 72 hours by the time
we leave there's church there Roland and Heidi
would follow up with people who are going
through their bible school to to help out
but something could be established every day that
you went somewhere can that only happen in
a devastated country like Mozambique it was later
that year it was the October of that
year that we first went out to India
so it was lovely hearing you share a
in the center of the country and we
began seeing something quite extraordinary they'd invited us
to go out there to to teach about
home church you know I hope this isn't
a problem to anyone I actually struggle with
the term home church now maybe that that
sounds weird coming from you know the supposed
editor of house to house let me confess
they just put that there because I got
doctor after my name you know the real
guys who do the work of people like
my son and my wife and I can
barely spell I mean thank God for a
spell check on the computer so you know
if you want to know who really edits
it just talk to us privately and we'll
we'll help you figure that out but I
struggle sometimes with the term house church struggle
even more with the term biblical house church
because it kind of implies that everything else
is unbiblical and I'm very very cautious about
us saying that about other people in the
body of Christ because you see in Mozambique
we had under the tree church in India
we had mainly in small hut church I've
been in amazing huge catholic cathedral church and
seen God touching people by their hundreds and
we need hearts that that so love the
bride of Christ that we're never gonna bash
her we need the sort of spirit that
while we long for something more authentic more
biblical is going to be very very cautious
before implying that what other people do with
the light they have is somehow of lesser
value than what we do the body of
Christ doesn't need to be tearing itself apart
it needs to be building itself up if
you're a prophet then live within 1 corinthians
14 verse 3 which says that when you
prophesy you edify you exhort and you encourage
leave the tearing down to the jeremiah's God
will raise some of them up we need
them but in the normal course of events
our job is to build up so anyway
in India where we're there and we're supposedly
teaching about house church you know it's scary
being asked to teach about stuff do you
have any idea what it's like being considered
an expert on something on which you know
nothing you know i i used to experience
that all the time in my medical office
now you might think oh that's that's scary
no it's better to know what you don't
know right i i had a whole bunch
of books on the shelf behind me and
i knew where to find stuff and i
was always saying to my patients man do
you think anybody could know everything in here
and they'd say no way i'd say you're
right and that's why i'm gonna pull this
book off the shelf let's try and figure
out what's going on here in fact what
i did even more than that in the
drawer of the desk i kept my bible
and very often i'd point at all these
books and i'd say oh you know there's
so much i've learned in these books but
then i'd pull out the drawer but i'd
say oh you know in this book i
found more wisdom than in all of those
put together and we'd start talking about what's
going on in their lives and it's just
so precious seeing how God will touch people
anyway i'm digressing we're in india aren't we
i'm i'm hopeless i apologize but okay we're
in india and we're teaching about house church
and it's really disturbing because people are believing
what we're telling them and by the time
we're getting a week down the road we're
hearing stories of people back at where the
first seminars were held who are going out
to neighboring villages and are starting churches they
invited us to talk about rapid church growth
we had experienced at that point really rapid
growth in austin we'd grown from one to
three in a period of about two years
okay i mean you know like this is
impressive within a month of getting back from
india we'd had emails or messages one way
or another from people telling us about 40
different churches i think we we counted up
that had been started we were beginning to
hear stories from other sources many of you
may have read a little booklet called church
planting movement put out by the southern baptists
and there were stories in there of ordinary
housewife starting 50 churches in a year and
i'm thinking lord you know if i could
even count 50 people i'd be grateful but
50 churches i mean this is incredible we
you know we heard about someone who in
the first year following his conversion was involved
in starting 42 churches and something in our
hearts is saying lord lord is this only
over there wherever over there is you know
i think it's in deuteronomy maybe it's chapter
eight or wherever it comes but it says
the word of faith it's not so far
away over a mountain or the other side
of the sea that you have to say
i have to go over there to get
it no the word of faith is near
you even in your heart and in your
mouth and it's quoted again in romans 10
isn't it you see god is trying to
to stir us up to dare to believe
that he could begin to do something of
significance over here and i want to explain
what i mean by significant i know it's
significant when your friend comes to jesus but
it does not transform your community or your
city and it leaves this country lost and
going further and further downhill and i think
we need to raise our sights up in
such a way that no more we we
content with the idea that that somehow what
we have is it's so good praise god
the presence of the holy spirit in our
times is so real our sharing is so
precious the fellowship is so deep you know
the ministry of the word is so excellent
that somehow we can be satisfied with that
while we still have basically zero impact upon
the nation in which god has put us
and for which we share responsibility i don't
know if any of you ever look at
george barnard's website he's a christian researcher in
this country uh his website www.barnard.org
b-a-r-n-a.org but he
puts all sorts of statistical stuff up there
i am told i can't verify this but
my understanding is that he has on there
that there is not one county in the
whole of the united states where the body
of christ is experiencing positive numerical growth that
there is not one county you say what
about this mega church basically growing by the
other christians going over there from other places
are there some places that are seeing hundreds
come to christ yes but it's a drop
in the bucket of the need and yet
we read a poll we're going to look
at this tomorrow but when he had spent
some time and so all asia was reached
with the gospel we've become we've become content
we've been squeezed into our box over the
last particularly over the last generation particularly because
of the increasing sort of decadence and lack
of relevance of the church at large including
our churches okay don't start thinking everybody else
start thinking us the the basic irrelevance of
what we do to society in such a
way that we get conditioned to thinking that
as long as we have a good praise
and worship time or get into the word
or occasionally someone gets saved that that we're
somehow fulfilling our calling in god and yet
you could go back as far as uh
excuse me exodus chapter 19 just before the
giving of the 10 commandments where where god
speaking through moses to the people says don't
you understand that you were called to be
a kingdom of priests unto god a holy
nation god's intention way back then was that
his priestly people would somehow display the glory
of god to the world and you know
at least in this country what we're doing
isn't cutting it at the moment and i
think god god maybe wants to challenge us
and that's part of the burden that's on
my heart for over these uh next three
sessions that we're going to look at together
now you've all traveled a long way it's
quarter to nine i started on the road
myself this morning at 5 30 and with
various delays for accidents and whatever that we
seem to encounter in uh where did we
land i'd say austin it was atlanta wasn't
it uh we didn't get here like most
of you until what five or ten past
seven or something so how much strength do
you have can you listen to a little
bit more you can well that's good because
you're gonna have to okay we're gonna think
a little bit about the experience we had
in england through the 60s and 70s and
80s because that's something that i can give
you some first-hand experience of now i'm
going to give you my version and then
you can get the real version from beresford
but you know we all look at things
from slightly different perspectives in 1968 when uh
well 67 i started 68 plus he did
at bart's hospital things were beginning to stir
in britain in a way that is somewhat
analogous to where i believe things are here
in the united states at the moment uh
the church was in serious decline in britain
i mean very very serious here you still
have the veneer of spirituality uh churches are
full there are lots of churches you know
this type of thing uh but if you
ask anyone statistically the numbers are dropping again
barnard says that 52 000 people a week
am i correct am i getting the numbers
right you can correct me if i'm wrong
i think it is 52 000 a week
are leaving the church in north america never
to return the church is in serious decline
that includes europe okay so uh north america
and europe i mean these are huge numbers
uh in the part of london we were
in at that point maybe one percent of
people would have called themselves christians and maybe
half that number one half of one percent
would have understood what a christian was okay
that's a post-christian culture in spite of
the veneer of christianity over here i would
suggest even here in the south you're already
into a post-christian culture statistically there is
no difference when you look at the major
social indices the amount of divorce the amount
of illegitimate pregnancy the amount of looking at
pornography on the internet all these sort of
measurements of character there is no significant difference
between christian and non-christian in this country
what a tragedy that what we call the
gospel has such a minimal impact upon people's
lives in this land and so we're already
into a post-christian culture in this country
okay that's where we were in britain in
the late 60s and god began to stir
and pretty much spontaneously all over the place
little things began to happen for example at
the medical school where we were we're a
bunch of 17 18 19 year olds okay
we begin reading books like watchman needs the
normal christian life or watchman needs the normal
christian church life or books like roland allens
the spontaneous expansion of the church and the
causes that hinder it or missionary methods st
paul's around what prompts 17 and 18 year
olds in medical schools to pick up books
like this and read them the spirit of
god okay i don't remember anybody recommending those
books to us but the same sort of
thing was happening all over the country now
where we were in the medical school that
there was a christian group in england we
call the christian group in a university the
christian union and in those days we didn't
have an intervarsity group and a campus crusade
and a nav group or you know a
baptist group and a methodist group all the
christians just clumped together as a christian union
and we were exploring these things and we
saw that what god was doing among us
was church and so we began calling ourselves
church and we began taking just simple things
like 1 corinthians 14 26 actually has a
pattern for when god's people get together when
we started calling ourselves church that caused an
absolute uproar in the evangelical community in britain
because a christian group in a university can't
call itself a church oh it can be
parachurch you know almost church or something like
church or nothing like church in fact the
truth is the nothing like churches are much
more like church than the churches are and
we began to experience that in terms of
what we were living i remember that that
summer just after we had got married when
a girl worked her whole summer three months
and at the end of that summer came
and laid the whole sum of money she
had earned at our feet so that we
could have a car because she felt that
it was more important that we were able
to get around with the work we were
doing with all the christians in the university
than that she have her summer's work i
mean that's people sharing their lives i remember
that church sending us out into the east
end of london uh we were sent into
bethnal green you know you've heard of cockneys
haven't you they're people who are born within
the sound of bow bells well you have
a true cockney here jonathan okay in fact
all of our kids were born within the
sound of bow bells they're true eastenders now
you're probably too spiritual here to watch the
eastenders program aren't you but you know one
night when you're not feeling so spiritual have
a look at eastenders and you'll know where
we were working and it was amazing what
god began to do and patients began getting
saved i remember a six-week period where
every day for six weeks one of my
patients gave their lives to jesus over a
period of a few years it got to
the place where on 17 contiguous you know
adjacent streets whatever the correct word would be
we had a house church formed it got
to the place where virtually any patient who
came to me when they had a problem
or a need and i would share something
very simple like you know have you ever
thought about praying about this and very often
they'd say yes but they had no idea
if god was there they had no idea
if god could hear them uh and i'd
say look we don't have a lot of
time to talk about it now but would
you like me to arrange someone to talk
with you and they'd say yes i could
find someone in their street wherever they were
within my patch of london who'd come and
talk with them about jesus and hopefully lead
them to the lord i mean god was
doing something and it was so precious when
people would walk back from mile end tube
station the opposite the tube station entrance was
about 200 yards from our home they'd come
out of the tube station they'd come up
aloe road they would pass a christian home
in aloe road we were a t a
t to aloe road there was our home
in street okay then they would kitty corner
across the road uh into the next section
of road there was a christian home there
then the next i mean these are all
just a few hundred yards from each other
and there was another christian home there in
litchfield road and and this was god was
doing something in an area that really hadn't
seen any type of church growth of a
meaningful sort in god was doing something we
were sharing out we never had any idea
for years on end how many people we
were preparing stuff before you've been listening to
from the pulpit this week you heard tony
dale with his message simple church tune in
next week for another powerful message from god's
word on from the pulpit