How a Pennsylvania pastor led a four-man team into the quake zone in Port-au-Prince to save a handful of orphans.
Psalm 27 was posted on the orphanage wall.
At the Rescue Children Orphanage in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, a small sign was hanging on one of the building's concrete walls on Jan. 12, the day the city was leveled by a devastating earthquake. It was a verse from Psalm 27, written in English and Creole: "When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take care of me."
Those words have rich meaning today, not only to the 11 children in that orphanage who survived the quake but to Randy Landis, a charismatic pastor from Allentown, Pa., who helped lead a dangerous search-and-rescue mission when he learned about the calamity. He knew the children had survived the quake, but when phones went dead he had no idea if they had food, water or protection from falling debris. So Landis and a small team of men from Lifechurch of Allentown sprang into action.
Oral Roberts was not a sophisticated guy. Men of faith rarely are. He was born in poverty, and his early years in ministry were not glamorous. One Pentecostal Holiness preacher who was alive in the 1930s says he remembers when Oral and Evelyn Roberts tied everything they owned to the back of their car and moved from Georgia to Oklahoma. They modeled the kind of pioneering faith that requires sacrifice and humility.
It’s intriguing that Oral Roberts died just as we were about to enter a new decade. His death on December 15 represents the passing of an era. The pioneers of the charismatic movement are leaving us. And it causes me to wonder, with some concern, whether we are equipped with the kind of faith we need in this hour.
Roberts was the quintessential faith preacher. But during his lifetime, “faith preacher” took on a negative connotation because of various scandals and excesses in the faith movement. I loved much of the early faith teaching, but I was turned off when some of the flashier pulpiteers began to focus so much on financial prosperity that they became materialistic and manipulative when taking offerings.
Also, I didn’t buy the so-called “name it and claim it” philosophy because I don’t believe I should reduce my relationship with God to a formula. And I was also grieved when proponents of the faith message started suggesting that we can’t admit when we’re sick. That is not faith; that’s denial.
Like Kenneth Hagin Sr., Roberts was a faith preacher who also was troubled by the way the faith movement morphed into something else during the 1980s and 1990s. I’m sure he longed for the days when faith was more about conversions and healings and less about private jets and Rolex watches.
Today’s generation is weary of hype. We crave genuine faith. Paul told Timothy: “The goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith” (1 Tim. 1:5, NASB, emphasis added). That word “sincere” is translated “unfeigned” in the King James Version. It means real, pure and undisguised. It’s not pretend. And it’s not mixed with carnality.
Some of what we called faith in the past was mixed with greed and selfishness. One slick prosperity preacher encourages his followers to wear a T-shirt that says: “I WANT MY STUFF.” That immature attitude is a sick substitute for biblical faith. Real faith is focused on the kingdom of God, not ourselves. It grows steadily inside us as we hear the promises of God’s Word and then build our lives on spiritual reality—while embracing godly character.
I want to be a man of faith, yet too often doubts and anxieties plague me. So when 2010 began I started studying the life of Abraham. I’ve been reading and re-reading passages in Genesis, Romans, Hebrews and Galatians that describe the journey of the man we call “the father of our faith.” Abraham proved that if we want to please God we must believe Him—even when the promises seem impossible.
Oral Roberts used to tell his listeners: “Expect a miracle!” I believe that’s still sound advice for us today. I know Roberts was not perfect, and he had some regrets about his ministry. Yet he pioneered Christian broadcasting in the 1950s, built a successful university and challenged the church to believe in divine healing. That inspires me to pray big prayers and reach for big goals.
I encourage you to write down every promise God has given you from Scripture. Whatever challenge you face, grab hold of His specific word to you. Meditate on it and declare it. Let your faith grow stronger as you spend intimate time in prayer and worship.
Perhaps you need a better job, an open door for ministry or a spiritual turnaround in your church. Or you may be asking God to restore a broken relationship or bring a prodigal child back to Him. Don’t let the ravenous birds of doubt and discouragement steal your promise.
You can expect a miracle. Let a holy anticipation arise in your heart. We are crossing over into a significant new era of spiritual renewal. A land of promise awaits us—and we can claim it if we will simply believe.
Lee Grady is editor of Charisma. You can find him on Twitter at leegrady
We've faked the power of Pentecost long enough. Let's set aside the imitations and reclaim the real deal.
Shortly after Elijah was carried to heaven in his fiery chariot, a group of young prophets asked Elisha to go with them to build new living quarters near the Jordan River. While one of the young men was cutting down a tree, the blade of his axe fell in the water and sank into the murky depths of the riverbed (see 2 Kings 6:1-7).
The construction project came to an abrupt stop. This was before the days of flashlights and sonar devices. These guys were in trouble.
When the earthquake struck last week, a brave American woman found supernatural strength to praise the Lord—and to help deliver two babies.
My friend Linda Graham believes in miracles, but her faith was stretched beyond her wildest imagination last week when she arrived in Haiti with three other women from Durham, N. C. They were on a routine mission to deliver blankets, clothing and medical supplies to an orphanage in the town of Carrefour.
They had no idea they were walking right into one of the worst natural disasters in modern history.
There's too much awkward silence when it comes to old and young. It's time to start a conversation.
One of my core passions is training younger Christians. Whether I'm doing an online Bible study with a friend overseas or taking a couple of guys with me on a mission trip, relational discipleship has become a priority now that I'm older. Young leaders need more than stuffy talking heads who just preach at them from acrylic pulpits; they want approachable mothers and fathers who will share a meal, listen, ask questions and invite co-equal participation.
Shyju Matthew is a young leader I met last year in India. Based in Bangalore, he serves on the staff at Bethel Assembly of God Church. He's only 24, but Shyju conducts evangelistic events around the globe. He has exceptional maturity and spiritual anointing. Yet he recognizes his need for input from the older generation. In fact, he seeks it out.
The late Oral Roberts used to say, "Expect a miracle." That's good advice as we enter this new season.
When Pentecostal healing evangelist Oral Roberts died a few weeks ago I was shocked that some Christians pounced on his legacy so quickly. They didn't even wait a few days for friends and family members to mourn. While Billy Graham—a true Christian gentleman—was offering kind remarks about Roberts, the heresy hunters were denouncing him as a charlatan.
Besides being incredibly rude, these harsh judgments were unfair. While I am sure Roberts made plenty of mistakes in his six decades of ministry, I'm grateful that he dared to believe God for the impossible. He pioneered the use of television to reach millions for Christ in the 1960s. He built a successful Christian university. And, in spite of the naysayers, he challenged a doubting church to believe in divine healing.
I despise airplane turbulence. Even though I enjoy high-speed roller coasters, there is something about hurling through stormy skies in a commercial jetliner at 37,000 feet that turns my knuckles white. This is why I always ask for a window seat. Whenever we hit rough air and the seat belt sign flashes on, I feel safer if I can look outside.
But that didn’t help me recently when I was flying into Canada. I was not aware that rough weather was raging below and that parts of Vancouver were flooding. All I knew was that our journey though Canadian airspace reminded me of Doctor Doom’s Fearfall—a theme-park ride I’ve enjoyed many times with my daughters.
That ride lasts only a few seconds, and it is firmly bolted to the ground. The turbulence over British Columbia lasted half an hour.
It was 11 p.m., and I couldn’t see anything outside my window except horizontal rain. I kept reminding myself that the pilot was using radar and other high-tech instruments to avoid crashing into the side of a mountain. But my knuckles did not believe this. I clutched the armrest, prayed and—for a few seconds—wondered how my wife would plan my funeral.
Of course the plane did not break apart in mid-air. When we descended below the cloud cover and the lights of the city became visible, all my color returned. I breathed a prayer of thanksgiving when I heard the familiar sound of wheels touching the runway.
You may not share my fear of turbulence, but all of us have walked though scary times in life when we couldn’t see the path in front of us. Many people I know are going through such times right now because of the economic downturn. Some are facing job loss, financial hardships, foreclosures or unusual spiritual challenges.
Churches, too, are finding it hard to navigate change. More people than ever are in a season of transition because old business models don’t work, and ministry paradigms are shifting. Some of us find ourselves digging our fingernails into the armrest while the plane is bouncing all over the stormy sky. And when we look out the window we see nothing but darkness.
I have found comfort in the words David penned after he escaped from Saul’s pursuits. He wrote in Psalm 18:4-6: “The cords of death encompassed me, and the torrents of ungodliness terrified me. ... In my distress I called upon the Lord, and cried to my God for help; He heard my voice out of His temple, and my cry for help came into His ears” (NASB).
In describing God’s just-in-the-nick-of-time rescue, David borrowed vivid imagery from the day when God opened the Red Sea to deliver His children from Egypt. “The Lord also thundered in the heavens, and the Most High uttered His voice. ...Then the channels of water appeared, and the foundations of the world were laid bare. ...He sent from on high, He took me; He drew me out of many waters. ... He brought me forth also into a broad place; He rescued me, because He delighted in me” (vv. 13-19).
David’s transition wasn’t easy. In the most difficult moment he noted that God had “made darkness His hiding place” (v. 11). We must remember that darkness is not a sign that God has abandoned us. It became stormy just before the Red Sea split open. Yet God was working behind the scenes, even when the clouds were black and the wind was violent.
If you are in the midst of a transition, hold tightly to His promise as you enter this new year of 2010. You can trust Him. Better things are still to come. In yet a little while He will intervene.
Don’t focus on your job crisis, the bad economic news, your lack of options or the bumpiness of the ride. Call upon the Lord. When His lightning flashes, He will split the obstacles in front of you and make a dry roadbed in the midst of the sea. He can make a way where there is no way.
Ask the Lord to transport you. Eventually you will hear the sound of wheels touching down on the wet runway. You are helpless to make this transition on your own, but your Deliverer will safely carry you from your present crisis into a broad place of future fruitfulness.
J. Lee Grady is editor of Charisma. You can find him on Twitter at leegrady.
The last 10 years weren't just about terrorism and recession. Amid the storm clouds, God was working in profound ways.
We didn't know what to call it—was it the '00s?—yet we've just passed through quite a decade. We had natural disasters (the 2004 Asian tsunami, Hurricane Katrina in 2005), financial meltdowns (bank failures and 10 percent unemployment) and global conflict (9/11 and the war on terror). It brought doom and gloom on one hand and technological breakthroughs on the other. What a ride it has been.
How has God been working during this tumultuous season? Here's my list of seven megatrends that marked these last 10 years:
1. Third-World Christianity kept growing. There are now about 600 million Christians in Africa. Protestant Christianity grew 600 percent in Vietnam in the last decade. In China, where a 50,000-member megachurch was raided in Shanxi province a few weeks ago, there are now an estimated 130 million churchgoers.
The poll results are counted. Charisma readers chimed in on their favorite and least favorite holiday songs.
Long before the advent of iTunes and political correctness, Christmas music was about, well ... Christmas. People actually sat around fireplaces or gathered in churches and sang carols that made overt references to the birth of Jesus.
Nowadays, however, some radio stations play holiday music 24 hours a day that rarely mentions the reason for the season. We hear lyrics about snow and winter weather (even though Christmas is hot in most parts of the world), overcoats, shopping, sleighs, Santa Claus, reindeer, toys, holly, elves, bells and chipmunks.
I could sense heaven's ecstatic joy last weekend when I visited a multiethnic church in Montgomery, Ala.—birthplace of the civil rights movement.
There were two very separate worlds in Montgomery, Ala., when I lived there as a child. I lived in the white world, on the east side of town in the Dalraida area. Everybody at Dalraida Baptist Church was white. All the kids at Dalraida Elementary School were white. The only black people I saw in my neighborhood on Green Forest Drive were the maids who arrived each day to clean houses.
I was oblivious to what was happening in Montgomery in 1964 when I started school. No one told me about Martin Luther King Jr., who fueled the civil rights movement from his pulpit at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church downtown. I didn't know about the bus boycotts, the lunch-counter sit-ins or the 1963 bombing of a church in Birmingham that killed four black girls.
I gave away my second daughter last weekend, and it wasn't any easier this time around.
I've never met George Banks. That would be impossible, since he is the fictional dad played by Steve Martin in the 1991 film Father of the Bride. But I feel I know George because I've watched this sappy comedy so many times. I watched it again last week just before my second daughter's wedding.
I guess the film provides a mild form of therapy. It helps me deal with my loss. Despite what they all say ("You're not losing a daughter! You're gaining a son!") I started to feel an uncomfortable lump in my throat at least 72 hours before the ceremony.
I tell my friends in Latin America that my Spanish is peligroso—dangerous. Here's why.
I took three semesters of Spanish in college and spent hours practicing conversation with a Nicaraguan immigrant a few years ago. But when I travel in Latin America these days, my mantra is: Mi español es muy peligroso. My Spanish is very dangerous.
On my first visit to Guatemala, for example, I discovered its most popular fast-food restaurant, Pollo Campero. It means "country chicken," and (with apologies to KFC) it is the moistest, tastiest, most delectable fried chicken on the planet. You will smell it on flights from Guatemala to Miami because people like to take boxes of it to relatives.
In this stormy economic season, trust the Lord to transport you to the other side.
I despise airplane turbulence. Even though I enjoy high-speed roller coasters, there is something about hurling through stormy skies in a commercial jetliner at 37,000 feet that turns my knuckles white. This is why I always ask for a window seat. Whenever we hit rough air and the seat belt sign flashes on, I feel safer if I can look outside.
But that didn't help me last week when I was flying into Canada. I was not aware that rough weather was raging below and that parts of Vancouver were flooding. All I knew was that our journey through Canadian airspace reminded me of Doctor Doom's Fearfall—a theme park ride I have enjoyed many times with my daughters. (That ride lasts only a few seconds, and it is firmly bolted to the ground. The turbulence over British Columbia lasted half an hour.)
In a tiny village on a mountain in Guatemala, I gained a better understanding of how Jesus paved the way for us to know the Father.
Like so many other poor communities in Guatemala, the village of Saspán is way off the beaten path. To get there you first must travel on a two-lane highway from Chiquimula, then turn onto a one-lane dirt road that winds precariously for two miles up a mountain. The scenery is spectacular, but if you look too long you might drive right off the side of a cliff. It's best to wait until you arrive at the top to enjoy the view.
I went to Saspán last Monday with my friend Oto, a pastor who was born in this village, and Roque, a Puerto Rican minister who leads a church in Pennsylvania. We came to preach at Iglesia Cristiana Nueva Visión (Christian Church of New Vision), one of two growing evangelical churches in this town of 1,000 families. The church's pastor is Oto's sister, Gisela, an energetic young woman who has a particular concern for the children in this isolated community, many of whom lack education and proper nutrition.
Here are six ways to identify an unhealthy leadership style in a church or ministry.
My world was shaken 20 years ago this week. On Nov. 10, 1989, one day after German protesters tore down the Berlin Wall, a Christian ministry I had been a part of for 11 years also fell apart.
Maranatha Campus Ministries was a vibrant outreach to college campuses. It was founded in Kentucky during the Jesus movement by a passionate charismatic couple, Bob and Rose Weiner, who eventually started churches on more than 50 American universities. In its heyday in the Reagan era, students from Maranatha took the gospel around the world.
Getting "drunk in the Holy Spirit" has been a popular concept in some churches. But is it biblical?
A few years ago a traveling charismatic minister from the West coast passed through Florida to conduct a series of renewal meetings. I'd never heard of the guy, but the rumor was that he carried a "special" anointing. It was unique, that's for sure-especially when he took the microphone, slurred his words as if intoxicated and leaned to the left of the pulpit as if he were about to fall over. Then, in between some bizarre spasms, he would shout what sounded like "Walla walla bing bang!"
His message didn't make sense. But if he had just said "Ding Dong Bell" or "Yabba Dabba Doo" over and over, some people in his meetings would have run to the front of the room and swooned, even though he never opened his Bible during his message. They wanted what this man claimed to possess—an anointing to become "drunk in the Spirit."
Last month God used a poor pastor from Malawi to challenge my suburban American priorities.
When I arrived in Nairobi, Kenya, last month to conduct a women's conference, my host, a journalist named Gideon, mentioned that my "pastor friend from Malawi" was waiting to see me. I was surprised to hear this, since I wasn't aware that I had a pastor friend from Malawi. I've never been to that country and I didn't remember talking to anyone from there.
"He says you've been e-mailing each other," Gideon said. "And he arrived today to see you."
In Uganda and Kenya, where polygamy is common, Christians are defending the Bible while we disdain it.
Two weeks ago when I was speaking in a women's conference in Kampala, Uganda, I asked the women to raise their hands if they grew up in a polygamous home. A majority of the hands went up. Then I asked how many wives lived in their father's home.
"How many had two wives living in the house?" I asked. A majority of the hands went up.
We can learn an important lesson from the East African Revival, which transformed a region 80 years ago.
The people of Uganda call it Balokole. In the Luganda language it means "the saved ones," but the word became synonymous with the East African Revival—one of the most significant Christian movements in modern history.
This revival had humble beginnings in September 1929, just before America's Great Depression. Historians trace it to a prayer meeting on Namirembe Hill in Kampala, Uganda, where a missionary to Rwanda, Joe Church, prayed and read the Bible for two days with his friend Simeoni Nsibambi. They felt God had showed them that the African church was powerless because of a lack of personal holiness.
St. Kakumba Chapel in Uganda has grown from 500 to 5,000 members since Pastor Medad Birungi replaced stale traditions with Pentecostal vibrancy.
Pastor Medad Birungi was the least likely man to engineer a spiritual rebirth in the tradition-bound Church of Uganda. Raised in a polygamous home (his alcoholic father had six wives and 32 children), Birungi suffered horrible trauma, rejection and poverty. But he had a dramatic encounter with the Holy Spirit while he was a college student, and his moment of renewal is still having ripple effects throughout Uganda and the world.
Birungi was a religious Anglican before this experience. He despised Pentecostals and viewed them as sheep-stealers and misguided pretenders. But while he was performing with a choir on a conference stage near Kampala in 1987, he felt strangely compelled to run outside to pray. He was then literally arrested by the power of God. He fell to the ground and spoke in tongues for three hours.
