 The Louisiana pastor is mobilizing American church leaders for a new movement of holiness and integrity.
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Louisiana pastor Larry Stockstill had a disturbing dream last week. He saw military trucks and armored vehicles getting in formation for a surprise strike on an American city. Stockstill felt alarmed, but when he tried to warn a pastor in his dream, the man ignored him.
“I knew in my dream that a siege was going to happen the next day,” Stockstill says. “The enemy was being positioned. But no one would listen to me.”
Stockstill, pastor of the 10,000-member Bethany World Prayer Center in Baton Rouge, believes his dream was a prophetic warning about the spiritual condition of our nation. While America teeters near an economic and political precipice, many American church leaders are going on with their business as usual—without realizing that the church is in a state of serious moral crisis.
“Unless the pastors wake up to avert judgment, there will be judgment on America. If we don’t respond we are going to lose this nation.”—Larry Stockstill
“I believe we are facing a window of opportunity for repentance,” Stockstill says. “Unless the pastors wake up to avert judgment, there will be judgment on America. If we don’t respond we are going to lose this nation.”
Stockstill became alarmed about the anemic condition of American churches in 2006, when he had to step in and help bring discipline to Ted Haggard, the Colorado pastor who was removed as senior leader of New Life Church because of a moral failure. Stockstill offered correction and oversight to Haggard and his family and helped the leaders of New Life pick up the pieces after the scandal. Many observers praised Stockstill for his level-headed leadership and compassionate but strict adherence to biblical principles during the crisis.
What Stockstill learned during that painful process became the basis of a new book, The Remnant: Restoring Integrity to American Ministry. He hopes the message will trigger a movement of holiness and integrity in the American church, which has suffered a long string of embarrassing sexual and financial failures since Haggard’s fall 15 months ago.
“We look like a sleaze bucket in the eyes of the nation,” says the 54-year-old pastor, who has avoided the national spotlight during most of his 33 years in ministry. Once a missionary in Africa, Stockstill has focused most of his ministry on church planting and missions. Bethany has helped start more than 17,000 churches worldwide since 2000.
Stockstill says the level of dysfunction among American ministers concerns him because their unhealthiness is then passed down to their congregations. He sees five types of common dysfunction among ministers today, especially in the independent charismatic movement:
- Lack of fathering (no affirmation, encouragement or spiritual covering)
- Lack of correction (no accountability, resulting in pride and moral failure)
- Lack of fruitfulness (no training in evangelism and discipleship, preventing churches from multiplying as they should)
- Lack of healing (many pastors suffer silently because of sins and addictions)
- Lack of teaching (many in ministry today are untaught, resulting in biblically illiterate churches).
At a conference Stockstill is hosting in Baton Rouge from March 4-6, he hopes to blast his trumpet and rally hundreds of pastors to address this crisis while there is still time. “We really have to relay the foundations of ministry in this country,” he says. “Many pastors have not been fathered, so they become ‘posers’—they are just looking to impress people.’”
Pride, Stockstill says, is a primary reason why so many leaders in the American church have fallen in recent years—including mature spiritual fathers who had years of successful ministry behind them but stumbled in their later years. “You look at leaders in the Bible like Solomon, or like Samson, and you find that years of success can lead a person into pride. And when pride comes, it brings a lack of accountability,” he explains.
At his Remnant conference, which will feature messages from Arizona pastor Tommy Barnett and Texas broadcaster James Robison, Stockstill hopes hundreds of pastors will seize the moment and launch a movement to reclaim kingdom values including humility, purity and honesty—as well as passion for missions and church planting.
“We don’t have a lot of time,” Stockstill says, recalling again his dream about impending danger. “We need a quick work of the Holy Spirit.”
J. Lee Grady is editor of Charisma. Reprinted with permission from Charisma & Christian Life, February 29, 2008. Copyright Strang Communications Co., USA. All rights reserved. www.charismamag.com
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