By nature, labor produces a violent change from the old to the new, and it has left some churches broken and bewildered.

We must discern between the work of the enemy and the work of the Holy Spirit. In essence, transition forms the rite of passage from one dimension of the Spirit to another. This book details the elements of that changing process.



Back to All Books Index

In the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah, a work of 'rebuilding' took place that radically affected not only individuals, but also society. The 'builders' of the day (Ezra, Nehemiah, and Zerubbabel) were encouraged by the help that the prophets brought to them. Ezra 5:2 states, '…and the prophets of God were with them, helping them.' In this book, Graham helpfully stands with the 'builders' in today's Church, bringing encouragement, challenge, and revelation. His prophetic insights shed light on the Church that is yet to emerge.

I joyfully recommend this book to any church desiring to enter fully into the next move of God. With practical wisdom and insight, Graham Cooke speaks of the glorious dimension of the move of God and does not draw back from the sometimes painful process needed to allow God to do His complete work. He puts a specific emphasis on how to develop strong relationships. He then outlines practical ways for equipping warriors in the battle for the Lord Jesus! This book will impart encouragement and hope to a weary Church.

Someone once said, 'Constant change is here to stay.' In a time of profound transition for the Church throughout the world, this book will comfort as well as challenge, heal as well as hurt, and equip as well as expose so we can 'keep step with the Spirit' in these historic days. Great job, Graham!

With prophetic insight and apostolic strategy Graham navigates the course of transition in the Church. Pioneering the way, he clearly marks the trail for us to follow. Local churches and individual Christians would benefit from the practical experience and fresh revelation in this book. It is a must read for any individual or church going through the difficult and rewarding process of transition. Graham Cooke is one of the most perceptive individuals I have met in my travels around the world in understanding the context of the Church in today's world and how to take a church through the difficult times of transition.

Graham Cooke's much needed book is filled with wisdom-so much so that I marked it up with my highlighter, only to discover that didn't help because I found myself underlining whole pages! Graham's discussion of how the gifts and offices should be viewed and how they should work together in the Church are ex- tremely valuable. That part of the book alone should be prerequisite reading for every office holder in every church, of whatever denomination-and the remainder is just as valuable.

Enjoy the Paradox

I must apologize if my words in this book are not what you are used to. I really do not know any better. I am a pragmatist at heart. I am interested in what works and what is beautiful. I want to marry them together. The Church is a paradox. It is not what the world thinks it is. It is contrary to received conventional opinion. Sadly, that also may be true for large sections of the Church.

The Church is a house and a city, an army and a bride, a building and a body. Each of these concepts is designed to shake us and stretch our thinking and practice beyond our current capacity. Most of the ways that God operates are paradoxical. His ways are not ours and His thoughts are radically different from our own (see Is. 55:8-9). Everything He does is to display His glory and majesty. He is not seeking a powerful people to represent Him. Rather He looks for all those who are weak, foolish, despised, and written off; and He inhabits them with His own strength. He has not come to give strength but to be strength to us as we relate to Him in weakness. He fills everything with Himself. He is our joy, our righteousness, and the power of salvation.

That means we must understand the difference between vulnerability and insecurity. All God's dealings with us are to create maximum dependence upon Him. He calls us to do the impossible. He demands that we see what is invisible. He thrusts us into situations that would overwhelm us. It could be rescuing more than a million people from bondage to the most cruel, occult, and oppressive regime of the day. (Moses managed to do it.) Or it could be building a huge boat when there is no body of water large enough to float it, then populating it with every species of life imaginable. (No wonder it took Noah more than a hundred years!)

How would we feel about taking the most fortified city in our world by ordering a week of silence followed by a single shout?! (Joshua did it.) Would we cheerfully stand by as God reduces our army to one percent of the original number because He liked the way those guys drank their water? (Gideon had to!) This effectively raised the odds from 4:1 to 400:1 in favor of the enemy, making vulnerability and dependency a very real issue!

Insecurity produces unbelief. A paralysis occurs where there needs to be movement and faith in action. People see their own smallness rather than the majesty of God. (The Israelites in Numbers 13:33 said, 'We were like grasshoppers in our own sight.') Such people are prevented from achieving breakthrough because they cannot translate their weakness into power.

Vulnerability is knowing that God is happy to send us out as lambs amongst wolves because He is hugely confident in His own ability to watch over us and work through our weaknesses. When we are vulnerable, we see our inadequacies in the light of God's sovereignty and power, and we discover hope and faith. Like Paul, we rejoice in our weaknesses that the power of Christ may rest upon us (see 2 Cor. 12:9-10). The whole point of vulnerability is to bring us to a place of restful dependence in a powerful and overcoming God.

Vulnerability is given by God to release His presence, which builds self-esteem and confidence in God's sovereignty. Insecurity occurs when the enemy twists our soul to reduce our self-esteem and cause us to focus on our shortcomings.

What Are We Giving Birth To?

God looks for a catalyst among His people-someone who will enter into a purposeful relationship with Him and who is capable of suspending disbelief as he discovers the majesty of God. The Lord is always on a treasure hunt, finding something precious in the unlikeliest of places! We look at the earthen vessel; God sees the treasure. We are more concerned with the rubbish it is buried in than the innate value of the real find itself. We see the rough edges; He sees the cut and polished jewel. Thank God for Jesus!

I love the way that God esteems us in Christ…the way He cherishes the bride in us…the value that He places on our lives because of His Son. He always sees the treasure within and then works to extract the precious from the worthless. Humans do the opposite. We take the worthless away from what is precious. Therefore our focus is on rubbish removal and not on the glory of the Christ-life that is present though hidden in every believer.

God always speaks to our potential while simultaneously showing us Himself. I AM is with you! Gideon was a frightened, inadequate, resentful, questioning, and angry young man with severe low self-esteem. God looked beyond all that and spoke to the latent capacity that was hidden within the man. He said, 'The Lord is with you, mighty warrior' (see Judg. 6). In the face of Gideon's initial alarm, He would only restate: 'I will be with you!'

God did not deal with Gideon's inadequacies. The Lord established the warrior in him by showing Gideon His own nature and sovereignty. Whatever we speak to in people will rise up, for good or for bad. Speak to the flesh and it will bite you. Speak to the Christ-life and it will bless you. Always speak to what is noble in people and nobility will emerge. The Holy Spirit is present in people, so if we speak to the fruit of His character and not to our misgivings or suspicion about them, we will save both ourselves and others from bitter confusion and possible rejection.

God will inhabit only what is compatible with His purpose. He comes to tell us that there is a new way of looking, being, walking, and doing. The Lord is not coming to do what we want but to fulfill His desire to become our Bridegroom. It is vital that we be ready to pursue God's desire.

The Lord lives only with what is pure, holy, and consecrated. He cohabits with the virgins who have jars of oil. We are in a season of grace where God is covering us to give us time to repent. How will God come to you? In mercy because of your desire for Him? Or in judgment because of His desire for you?

We want to be a dwelling place of God by the Spirit and therefore compatible to the image of God. He is compatible with humility and brokenness. He gives grace to the humble. Grace is His empowering presence flowing out from the crucible of brokenness and humility. We are a people seeking identification with God through crucifixion, humility, servanthood, obedience, and suffering; having the same mind in us that Jesus had in His compatibility.

How desperate are we to be a dwelling place of God in our lifestyles? People must have a goal for sanctification. Sanctification is not necessarily coming to a place where we never sin but to a place where the practice of sin is not normal. Sanctification precedes revival. We need teachers and prophets combining together in the process of sanctification, acting as midwives to deliver a purity that will bless the Lord. Many charismatics do not know the difference between legalism and self-discipline. Real accountability is provoked from below and promotes self-control, a fruit of the Spirit. Imposed accountability is dealt from above and can produce shame, fear, and inertia as well as controlling, domineering leadership.

Who Are the Midwives?

What kind of house are we building and what type of wineskin do we want? Who are the external catalysts and builders who can shape our design and destiny? Who are the internal movers and shakers who will respond to what the Spirit is saying to the churches? Who are the people who can be positive agents for change just by the quality of their life in the Lord?

The womb represents a place of growth and stretching as the life within takes shape. Every church has a womb. Some churches are capable of giving birth to multiple life forms; others are able to deliver a single aspect of vision. Some churches cannot conceive while others cannot produce. Every church needs a midwife who can deliver the vision into a specific form capable of interacting with God and humanity.

In Scripture, the midwives are the fivefold ministries mentioned in Ephesians 4. They are given as gifts to train, equip, empower, and release the Body of Christ into ministry. There is a greater depth of spiritual reality that emerges in the combined company of apostles and prophets. New foundations have to be laid if we are restructuring the building for a different use or a more dynamic purpose. Apostles and prophets are the only ministries that can release the dynamic of the presence of God that turns a church from an organization to an organism. The church must become cloud-sensitive, not crowd-sensitive. The new wineskin must be defined prophetically. The new structure of the church requires apostolic strategy. Many churches have become a memorial to what God did. Raising up and renewing the prophetic in our midst will enable us to preserve the revelation that will rebuild the house and keep the wineskin soft. We can pass on our church style or we can release prophetic successors. To do the latter, we need the Father's touch as a wise master-builder.

Good leadership releases the fruit of the Holy Spirit in the lives of people by continually encouraging the flock back into the arms of Jesus. Apostles are the Eliezers of the church sent out to prepare a Bride for the Son (see Gen. 24). We must distinguish between leadership of the church and management. Leaders are proficient in the art of going somewhere and taking people with them. Managers maintain what they have. Leaders go out to get something more. They know they have to give something to gain something more.

Shipbuilders will tell you that a vessel is built to take the roughest waters. They are built with the surrounding seas in mind-to be unsinkable in the foulest weather and highest waves. Many churches are not built for the battleground. If we are truly walking with Jesus, then we will partake of all the warfare that He provokes (see Lk. 22:28). We must be ready for the storm that is to come. The anointing of the fivefold ministries is to add layer upon layer to the revelation and release of a warrior bride.

Fivefold Ministries Are Consultant Gifts

It is not my intention to produce anything more than an overview of the role of all the fivefold giftings in these next few pages. To do anything more would completely unbalance the nature and purpose of this book.

I need to be brief and succinct. The premise I want to operate from is this: The fivefold ministries are consultants sent by the Lord not necessarily to do the job, but specifically to train and equip the Body of Christ to fulfill God's purposes through grassroots body ministry. So I am going to put their ministry into a pragmatic context of apostolic practice. (I am using the word apostolic as an umbrella term to denote the function of all the fivefold ministries operating together in the life of a church.)

Apostolic ministry operates according to the measure of the grace gift given by Christ. Some of the main ingredients of apostolic ministry are for…

• Perfecting and maturing the saints.
• Edifying and building up the Body of Christ.
• Producing saints for the effective work of the ministry.
• Bringing the saints into a unity of the faith.
• Creating knowledge of the Son of God to produce a perfect man.
• Attaining the measure of the stature of Christ's fullness.
• Raising spiritual children to adulthood.

Apostles

Apostles are father figures who produce quality leaders who, in turn, nurture and strengthen the flock. They are wise master-builders who lay the correct spiritual foundations. They will ensure that the Church is built on the sure foundation of Jesus Christ (see 1 Cor. 3:9-16). The Church is built upon the apostles and prophets relating to Jesus as the Chief Cornerstone.

In bringing change that confirms the new vision and direction the apostle may, where necessary, give input to the restructuring of the leadership. New foundations may need to be re-laid to enable us to overcome the roots of our history. New beginnings are a powerful motivator to a church going through a profound season of change.

There is a dynamic in the corporate life of a church that simply does not exist in one's personal life. We must ensure that our leaders can cope effectively with the corporate stress of a company of people engaged in active service.

It is not the title that people give to themselves that defines who they are; it is the fruit of what they produce. Apostles have a concern for the house of God, particularly in relation to people being fitted and framed together. Relational church is vital.

As the work grows, apostles set in place a leadership that will represent the oversight and that will effectively produce the quality people required for the coming days. They develop the partnerships that are required to run the local church and the wider vision of the corporate Body of Christ in the area. Apostles are Kingdom people concerned with the whole Church in the region, not just their particular network's representative.

Apostles provide the ethos and the atmosphere of the church by the way they relate to leaders and by the way those leaders are trained to relate to the church. Apostles are facilitators enabling good communication and the growing of the vision from the ground up, not the top down. They are sending ministries, releasing others into specific times of building and blessing within the local church. Everyone who is sent in with the next building block is a representative figure of that apostolic character and strategy.

There is a school of thought that says every church has embryonic apostolic potential. I don't believe this.

Prophets

The chief role of a prophet is not to prophesy. It is to teach everyone how to hear the voice of God for themselves. 'My sheep know My voice,' Jesus said (see Jn. 10). We want everyone to be trained effectively in hearing the voice of the Lord and in distinguishing between that, their own opinions, and the disrupting influence of the enemy.

The setting of protocol as a framework for moving in revelatory prophecy in the church is extremely vital. There is a huge difference between the simple inspirational prophecy that exhorts, edifies, and comforts (see 1 Cor. 14:1-5) and the more revelatory words that can carry overtones of new direction, correction, warning, or judgment. The former can be given a fairly free hand because it is highly unlikely anyone will be damaged or upset by inspirational prophecy. At its heart is a desire to bless, encourage, support, and build up the people around us. The worst that may happen is that we get a blessing in an area of our lives that does not exactly need one!

The latter, however, may be incredibly damaging and hurtful if we do not set appropriate guidelines. Revelatory prophecy may lead us across governmental boundaries in church life that are inappropriate and unscriptural. Whatever we hear from the Lord that is of a revelatory nature must be shared with the leadership first. There is a governmental principle at stake. The operation of certain spiritual gifts often requires defined cooperation and relationship with the leadership of the work. Prophets promote such partnerships. They also help to create a framework for ongoing development of prophetic people. We want leaders willing and able to pastor the prophetic, not merely police the ministry.

Ongoing training in the gift, the ministry, and the office of a prophet can be laid down over a period of many years. It takes between 10 and 15 years to make a prophet, depending on his access to a good prophet/teacher who can model and mentor him effectively. Without that key person in place, many people will never make it or will take twice the time.

Finally, a prophet will prophesy and model how the gift should be correctly used. There are too many blessing prophets and not enough of the building type in today's Church. Blessing prophets do a good job in one-off or onetime situations by preaching and ministering prophetically to people. They do not, how-ever, leave a deposit in terms of raising up a local team of prophetic people who can be trained and discipled in the gift and ministry. They do it for you rather than teaching you how to do it!

Teachers

Anyone who can stand up and speak with a reasonable degree of motivation, encouragement, and exhortation skills is called a preacher. Anyone who can stand up and speak consecutively on an issue or provide some in-depth explanation from Scripture is called a teacher. However, just because we can speak for 60 minutes on the 'eschatological significance of the frog in Leviticus' does not make us a teacher. Teachers are builders also. They put flesh, sinew, and muscle onto the bones of our experience of God. They want to build a mature man who by training, modeling, and equipping (all the role of the teacher) can grow up into all things in the Lord. Teachers are a solid part of apostolic strategy in building the church. Scripture has a vital part to play in building an effective church model.

It is always theology before practicality. Most leaders focus on the behavior of people. They look at what they are doing and how they are living in order to try and bring change. This may have some effect in the short term, but eventually people will go back to their old habits or just drive them underground with secrecy.

Teachers want to establish people's lives based on what they believe, not on how they behave. Our behavior is based on what we believe about God, ourselves, or the church. Our lifestyle, how we tackle problems and setbacks, is the by-product of a solid belief system-whether positive or negative.

We need a firm grip on theology before we can experience any success at practical Christianity. Part of the problem is the failure to marry teaching to discipleship and the way that Scripture is used in the church. People base their spiritual growth and maturity on the practical sections of Scripture without internalizing the doctrinal elements. The apostle Paul's letters are in halves: one-half doctrinal and one-half practical.

For example, Romans chapters 1-8, Ephesians chapters 1-3, and Colossians chapters 1-2 reveal what we need to know doctrin- ally about God, ourselves, sin, and salvation. The central theme is 'in Christ.' They teach us regarding our position and inheritance in the Lord Jesus. The practical sections of Romans chapters 12-15, Ephesians chapters 4-6, and Colossians chapters 3-4 describe what we need to do to live out our faith in daily experience.

Leaders try to correct people's behavior by jumping to the practical sections of the Bible. We get speakers to come, who may be mainly preachers with a blessing ministry, to minister to the church. We want a 'quick fix,' or we are looking for something to happen. We want some instructions or an event to use like sticking plaster to cover the cracks and make things better.

We don't have time for theology and thought. We want a practical solution and we want it now! But if people do not understand the doctrinal truths regarding our position in Christ and are not taught to enter in and experience them, they will have no grounds for success in the practical arena of life in God. It is actually this attitude that leads churches to abuse prophetic ministry in particular. By not understanding the role of teachers, we also make life harder for the prophets. Churches invite prophets to come to bless, motivate, and encourage the very people who have never learned to stand on the revealed word of God in Scripture.

I have heard many leaders over the years denigrate prophetic ministry. The usual comment is that they were good, the meetings were exciting, but there was little lasting fruit. The other main criticism is that some of the prophetic words never come to pass.

All personal prophecy is conditional. If we obey the Lord and live in the truth of Scripture, then God's word-prophetic or otherwise-will come to pass. The truth will set us free-if we live in it and depend on God. If we do not, if we sin, then the truth cannot set us free.

I have sat in many leaders' groups and heard their horror stories about prophetic ministry. I have acted as a troubleshooter between the prophetic and other ministries. I have campaigned for the prophetic ministry to get its house in order. I have unraveled problems with prophetic people for more than two decades.

I have also sat with prophets and heard their horror stories of being treated like magicians, being put into situations and expected to pull rabbits out of hats. People think that prophets can cure years of bad leadership, abuse of power, lack of vision, and lack of development with a few meetings and some choice prophetic words. I have been to the cross so many times personally over this kind of treatment, I may as well have a house built on Golgotha.

The best way to ensure a person's failure in God would be to make sure that…

• We did not insist on biblical foundations in doctrine and practice.
• We failed to marry training with discipleship.
• We never created opportunities to serve.
• We impose vision and accountability onto people rather than inspire its growth from below.
• We never give loving, effective feedback to people.
• Our leaders are not mentored into becoming fathers and facilitators.
• The majesty and sovereignty of God is not magnified in the hearts of key people (we model what we move in).

Practical: 'Stand firm against the enemy' (see Eph. 6:11). This is a wonderful injunction! But how can we practice this if we do not understand the doctrinal truth of…

Doctrine: 'Seated with Christ in heavenly places' (see Eph. 2:6).

Pastors

Pastors are part of the apostolic strategy to build the church. Taking this ascension gift ministry out of its apostolic context and putting it into local leadership has devalued the role and the gift enormously. Using the term pastor out of context has meant in many cases that the other fivefold ministries have been pushed out of local church leadership involvement. This has resulted in an almost exclusively pastoral maintenance emphasis in the lives of church members. We have produced a lopsided, safe church leadership that often lacks a cutting edge and the ability to evangelize effectively. Most of our ministry is spent on the church, producing a dependency culture of introspective and powerless believers who live from week to week. We have spawned an industry within the church that has had a direct impact on evangelism, social action, and church planting.

Pastors are concerned with people development. Firstly, they teach the whole church to care for one another. The Body of Christ must befriend itself and practice the 'one anothers' of the New Testament family. Secondly, pastors help to build a relational body of believers by helping us learn how to handle tension, conflicts, and disputes. Thirdly, their goal is to develop specialist ministries in counseling, marriage guidance, parenting, and family in order to produce a healing, deliverance community. Fourthly, they work with evangelists to survey the region and develop practical goals to help the poor and bring the community into the grace and experience of God.

TEXT TRUNCATED DUE TO WEB PAGE LIMITATIONS...