I have been reporting on Sean Feucht’s worship services that he has been holding outdoors around the US. His latest meeting in Colorado is again suggesting that the Holy Spirit seems to be moving during these difficult times.
But, God is moving differently than we would expect. While churches in several states are taking to the courts in order to return to indoor services, Feucht is orchestrating outdoor services and God is moving.
Instead of formal baptismal tanks, people are being baptized in cow troughs.
In his latest service held in City Park in Fort Collins, Colorado, Feucht reported on Instagram “thousands going wild for Jesus!” and “Unending baptisms in cow troughs was the literal best!! THE JOY IS CONTAGIOUS!!”
When he was in Minnesota, Feucht said, “Thousands gathered from every race and tribe across in a K-Mart parking lot! Hundreds gave their lives to Jesus! Now there is an endless line for baptisms tonight!! God is bringing hope back to this city He loves!”
Part of the problem is that Christians get religious, and we want to keep doing things the way it’s always been done. But perhaps through the COVID lockdown and crisis, the Holy Spirit is encouraging us to try something different. God wants to do church a differently.
In his parables, Jesus repeatedly compared His ministry to new wine explaining that His ministry and death was going to change how God would build his kingdom. And this new wine would require a new wine skin, a new container and a new way of doing things, because the new wine continues its fermentation process it would burst the old wine skins.
(37) And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; or else the new wine will burst the wineskins and be spilled, and the wineskins will be ruined. (38) But new wine must be put into new wineskins, and both are preserved. (39) And no one, having drunk old wine, immediately desires new; for he says, “The old is better.”” (Luke 5:37-39 NIV)
Jesus brought big changes.
For centuries, Judaism had been built around the temple, but the temple in Jesus’ day was missing the presence of God, because it did not contain the Ark of the Covenant that had disappeared about 600 years earlier.
The Temple was also a problem because it was stuck at one location in Jerusalem.
Jesus’ new wine would change all that as His body, the Church and the people of God, would become God’s Temple as they contained God’s very Presence (1 Corinthians 3:16; Ephesian 2:20-22; John 2:20-21).
And because of this new wine skin, God’s Temple could literally travel the world.
But change is hard as Jesus noted “And no one having drunk old wine, immediately desires the new; for he says, ‘The old is better” (Luke 5:39 NIV)
People don’t like change.
Change is uncomfortable and initially the old way may even seem better because change is complicated, difficult, messy and often riddled with mistakes.
Notice how Jesus said that people do not “immediately desire the new.” This suggests that eventually they will, but not before an initial period of resistance.
But once that process is completed look out.
So maybe God is trying to shake things up during these COVID times.
By blessing Feucht’s ministry, maybe the Holy Spirit is pointing to a new wine skin as we take the church to the people rather than requiring people to come to the church.
And though every church in America has seen attendance fall, one church actually recorded a 30% increase by changing to house churches. Cincinnati’s The Summit Church had 12,000 people meeting at 12 different locations before the pandemic and transitioned to 2,400 house churches, with many meeting on Sunday morning, and saw attendance grow to 15,000 after.
The key difference being that these house churches were not an additional meeting during the week, they were the church’s main meeting.
Times are changing and maybe God is pointing to new wine skins?
READ: ‘Thousands Going Wild for Jesus! Unending Baptisms in Cow Troughs’: Revival Reaches Huge Crowds in the Heartland AND Still closed by pandemic, some churches are shifting to Biblical home Church: ‘God’s doing a new thing’
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