34testimony march /april 2014

FROM OUR GENERAL SUPERINTENDENTDavid Wells

2020: The Story Behind the Numbers

W hat do the numbers one, 350,000, and 1,500 have in common?

�ese are �gures I’ve been pondering ever since our General Executive met last Novem-ber. �e women and men on our General Ex-ecutive are dedicated leaders who are strong-ly motivated to see us ful�l our mission: “To glorify God by making disciples everywhere by proclaiming and practising the gospel of Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.” In those meetings we discussed the spiritual, theological and missional vitality of our fam-ily of churches and ministries.

From that prayerful conversation emerged a vision and a shared initiative that we are trusting in God for as we move toward the year 2020. �e General Executive minute reads: With a shared vision for church revi-talization and multiplication we are believ-ing God for 350,000 Christ followers (1% of Canadians) within our Canadian churches in the year 2020. We are also calling all of our healthy churches to reproduce themselves within Canada in the next seven years by planting, partnering and/or providing for a new disciple-making community so that we will have 1,500 disciple-making communi-ties in 2020. 

�is 2020 initiative of one per cent of the Canadian population (350,000 people) and 1,500 churches is rooted in two things. First, our conversation during those meetings led to a healthy dissatisfaction with the current overall state of our Fellowship’s discipleship and church/ministry planting e�orts. Sec-ond, it stirred a deep appreciation for the missional passion we see in many of our in-dividual churches and people.

Our General Executive reviewed research from the years 2008 through 2012 docu-menting that 81 churches had closed, merged or disa�liated over that period. In that same time period there were 104 new church plants, satellites or other missional initiatives. Overall that le� us with a slight decline in a�liated assemblies but an incre-mental increase in our churches, satellites, ministry campuses and missional initiatives.

In light of these facts and in recognition of the missional passion evident in many of our churches, our national leadership was �rm in its desire to see a renewed season of church revitalization and multiplication. �ink of it—one per cent of Canadians (350,000 people) serving Christ within 1,500 Pente-costal disciple-making communities in 2020.

What does that require of us?

Our discussion led us to recognize that spir-itual and theological vitality are essential in order to be e�ective in our mission, whether here in Canada or globally. We need leaders and congregational members who are inti-mate with God through prayer and Scripture engagement; men and women empowered by the Spirit who lead generous, just lives and who share Jesus every day in word and deed.

General Conference 2014 will be held April 28-May 1 in one of Canada’s most vibrant cities, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Our theme will be “Every Day, in Every Way.” �rough-out the conference we will explore this theme in a practical manner by looking at topics such as:

- Leaders and churches who are intimate with God.

- Scriptural and theological engagement for e�ective discipleship.

- Practices and attitudes that create a culture of generosity.

- Leaders and churches who share Jesus in word and deed.

Our keynote speakers will be Ken Shige-matsu, Gary and Marilyn Skinner, Alton Garrison and Wilfredo De Jesús. �ey will be speaking on the following topics: “God in My Everything”; “Transforming Lives & A Nation”; “Spirit-empowered Discipleship Today”; “Impacting Your Community”; and “Living a Sacri�cial Life.” We will experi-ence the Spirit’s work in our lives through worship and will close our conference with a regional worship celebration led by musical guests Leeland and Unhindered.

When we leave Saskatoon, we will be on a shared path toward ful�lling our mission through “Initiative 2020.” To follow up, we will be hosting two complementary tracks of conversations across Canada with pastors and congregational leaders. �e �rst one, in the fall of 2014, will focus on “Spiritual and �eological Vitality.” �e second one, in the spring of 2015, will focus on “Missional Vi-tality: locally, nationally and internationally.”

�e spiritual/theological conversation will be guided by our 2014 leadership gi� book on “Principle-based Leadership” and will ad-dress the spiritual well-being of those leading our churches and ministries. Together we will consider the New Testament teaching on law and grace, spiritual formation and Spirit empowerment. We want to theologi-cally engage our PAOC Statement of Funda-mental and Essential Truths in a fresh way.

�e missional conversation will focus on a whole new season of church revitaliza-tion and multiplication—locally, nationally and internationally. A cross-Canada church multiplication network will be presented to stimulate co-operation and funding for new disciple-making communities. We are asking the Lord for wisdom and insight so that, to-gether, we may see one per cent of all Cana-dians (350,000) serving Christ within 1,500 Pentecostal disciple-making communities in 2020. We also believe God for an ever-ex-panding harvest internationally as well and will discuss how to see that accomplished together.

Every day in every way, we are committed to pray, read, give and share. We want Jesus to be seen in us so that thousands of Canadians will be transformed by His good news and join us in an “every day” relationship with God and His family.

Our Heavenly Father, thank You for giving us ears to hear what the Spirit is saying to the Pentecostal family in Canada. He is calling us into a fresh intimacy with You and Your Word so that, as Jesus promised, life will �ow from us to many others in Canada and around the world. We will not settle for less. For your glory we pray. Amen.

34testimony may / june 2014

FROM OUR GENERAL SUPERINTENDENTDavid Wells

Relationally Based Mission

I n my last article, I described our PAOC Initiative 2020, which calls us to believe that in the year 2020,

one per cent of the Canadian population (350,000 people) will �nd their spiritual home in one of 1,500 PAOC churches across the country. Currently, we have ap-proximately 235,000 Canadians in 1,120 disciple-making communities. In addition, we are trusting God for a similar increase in our expressions of international mission.

Six years ago I wrote a book entitled What I See. In it, I invited our Fellowship to con-sider what it would look like for us to be a “relationally based mission family.” I remain absolutely convinced that to be e�ective missionally, we must be e�ective relation-ally, whether here in Canada or around the world. It is my conviction that the missional goals of Initiative 2020 are achievable only if we live out the values of a family that is relationally healthy.

What does that require of us now, in 2014, as we move toward 2020 and beyond?

In May and June we honour our mothers and fathers, recognizing the vital role they play in shaping a home and the lives within that home. A healthy family stems from the wholeness of its parenting. Welcoming new “children” into our church families will re-quire spiritual parents who give sacri�cially of themselves to see people come to faith and grow. �ree hundred and ��y thou-sand people by 2020 is a pipe dream unless we multiply the number of “moms” and “pops” who will genuinely open their lives to share the good news in word and deed. Like physical parenting, spiritual parenting requires persistence and sacri�ce. �e goal is to see mature followers of Jesus emerge from the maze of pre-Jesus confusion.

A relationally healthy family also knows how to communicate well. Open, honest and respectful communication leads to a deepening of relationship. It’s how we com-municate truth, correct error, and express emotion and life. In the family of God, this means that truth is spoken with love, that we avoid deceit, �attery or destructive

speech, and that we value the ability to af-�rm, correct and instruct one another.

In a PhD level survey of our credentialed leadership, the value that surfaced foremost was that we are a family-based, versus an institutionally based, Fellowship. Included in that value was opportunity for “authen-tic” conversations. A family that is strongly linked comes to the table. Open, honest, re-spectful interaction around the family table allows issues to be addressed and values to be reinforced. It also allows for moments of storytelling, tears and laughter that togeth-er create a family history.

As a church family, we must keep coming to the table. Part of Initiative 2020 is a com-mitment to hold “family gatherings” where authentic conversations can take place. At the table we will talk about what principle-based spiritual leadership looks like in Can-ada today. We will explore ways of creating truth-based, disciple-making church fami-lies. �rough open dialogue we will address both lifestyle and theological issues as we consider our absolutes, our family convic-tions, and our personal persuasions.

As I wrote in What I See, issues that face the family of God need to be addressed with scriptural attitudes. �ese would include:

“I remain absolutely convinced that to be effective missionally, we must be

effective relationally …”

not making it di�cult for those turning to God (Acts 15:19); speaking the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15); not judging or con-demning (Luke 6:37); not being a stum-bling block (Romans 14:13; 1 Corinthians 8:9); and knowing that everything may be permissible, but that not everything is ben-e�cial (1 Corinthians 10:23). My personal conviction, as indicated in the New Testa-ment, is that the standards of those called to be leaders in God’s family generally exceed those established for the corporate body.

My prayer is that in everything we would grow to be more like our Lord. We must become a Pentecostal family that is strong in love, grace, unity and truth. �en, rooted in relationally based unity and empowered by the Spirit, we can share the good news in word and deed with great credibility. Initiative 2020—our vision for spiritual, theological and missional vitality—is com-pletely dependent on our being that type of people.

Pentecostal families, strongly rooted in ma-ture leadership, with the ability to communi-cate Your Word in a life-giving way—Lord, grant this to us so we may see the transforma-tion we long for in our lives and in the lives of those around us. Amen.

30testimony july / august 2014

FROM OUR GENERAL SUPERINTENDENTDavid Wells

Truth-Based Mission

T he PAOC’s Initiative 2020 calls for us to believe that in the year 2020, one per cent of the Ca-

nadian population (350,000 people) will belong to one of 1,500 PAOC churches across the country. This initiative depends entirely on an integrated vision of spiri-tual, theological and missional vitality.

Theological vitality, a growing knowledge of God and His Word in the life of each Christ follower, is essential if we are to see Initiative 2020’s goal realized. We are not sharing a gospel rooted in our own mus-ings and experiences. It is God’s truth, as revealed in Jesus, that will set people free to experience His purposes in their lives. This is why the findings in the recently re-leased Canadian Bible Engagement Study (CBES)1 carry disturbing news. We will be sharing this study’s conclusions in vari-ous contexts in the days ahead, but some of the key observations include the following facts:

• Fifty-five per cent of Canadians have not read the Bible.

• Only four per cent of Canadians who self-describe as Christians read the Bi-ble daily.

• Since 1996, Bible reading has declined by more than 60 per cent.

The study contains some sobering state-ments such as: “… large swaths of the church lack confidence in the Bible and rarely par-ticipate in conversations about the Bible …” and “… most Canadians know very little of the content of the Bible and even when they have access to a Bible, they are [more] likely … to read in the meaning they assume lies under [the text rather than engaging the text itself ]. This suggests that the Bible is not directly shaping much of the church in Canada.”

With this lack of Scripture engagement by Canadians, both inside and outside of the church, it’s not surprising that more and more people have a self-determined view of truth. As my friend, Bob Kilpatrick, put it in his song “Mirror in the Sky”: “We put

a “Mirror in the Sky”: We look up and see ourselves magnified / Our god looks just like you and I / We put a mirror in the sky.”

Spiritual fusion is the reality of our Canadian culture. This is a “made in Canada” blend of post-secular, postmodern, multifaith, glob-ally influenced spirituality that produces tailor-made “truth.” When a large number of Canadians have a belief system that af-firms diametrically opposed religious views and fuses together Jesus, the multiple gods of Hinduism, Western individualism and mate-rialism, and the non-deistic understandings of Buddhism, we know we have a challenge on our hands. 2

It is a huge obstacle to truth-based mission when many of the persons who should be transformed by God’s Word and communi-cating its truth in word and deed are neglect-ing regular interaction with the Scriptures and are themselves practitioners of spiritual fusion. The pragmatic reality is that a life detached from the Word leads to a loss of confidence in the truth of God’s Word. The result is a highly questionable interpretation of truth which then leads to an erratic appli-cation of that “truth” to lifestyle.

But I have hope. I believe that many of us are being driven back to engaging the Scriptures by a truth-based thirst for God. A mishmash of spiritual fusion and self-developed truth creates bondage and discontentment and

“ The pragmatic reality is that a life detached from the Word leads to a loss

of confidence in the truth of God’s Word.”

leaves a very real hunger for something more. That “more” is the freedom and satisfaction of God’s eternal truth.

No quick fix, three-minute browse of the Bible will do for us in 2014. We need full engagement, study, meditation, and commu-nity interaction in order to see God’s Word living and active within us. Then we will experience theological vitality and be able to speak the truth in love the way God calls us to in His mission. As the Psalmist wisely observed:

“Blessed are those who do not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sin-ners take or sit in the company of mockers, but who delight in the law of the Lord and meditate on his law day and night. They are like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither—whatever they do prospers” (Psalm 1:1-3).

God of eternal truth, thank You for not hid-ing that truth from us. May we pursue with passion Your invitation to abide in You, and for Your Word to abide in us, so that our lives will be built on solid ground and our life of mission will lead people to freedom and life. For Your glory. Amen.1Full report and executive summary are available at http://www.bibleengagementstudy.ca; 2Some of these thoughts were in the preface of His Witnesses, a book published by the PAOC in 2013.

34testimony september / october 2014

FROM OUR GENERAL SUPERINTENDENTDavid Wells

A Spiritually Vital Fellowship

A s part of our 2020 Initiative, we have developed three clear state-ments of vision that explain what

we mean when we talk of spiritual, theo-logical and missional vitality. They describe what we believe is needed in order to see our 1,120 churches, and the 236,000 fol-lowers of Jesus who attend them, become 1,500 disciple-making communities with 350,000 spiritually alive Christ followers empowered to share God’s grace and truth. Consider with me these three statements of vision.

1. To experience Spiritual Vitality in an ongoing manner, we envision churches and leaders who:

• Know intimacy with God through prayer and engagement with His Word

• Are actively engaged in Spirit-empowered, Christ-honouring living

• Demonstrate the necessity of Spirit baptism and the ad-venture of living “naturally supernatural”

• Mentor others in a Spirit-filled life.

2. To be a people of Theological Vitality, we envision churches and leaders who:

• Fulfil our mission to glorify God by making disciples who love God and others

• Engage the Word of God in a living, active way

• Know how to interpret the Scripture in a manner that is sound, both doctri-nally and in lifestyle

• Are liberated by the truth of God’s Word and able to share those truths by example and speech in the contexts of their daily lives.

3. For ongoing Missional Vitality, we envision churches and leaders who:

• Personally engage those who do not know Jesus in substantive relation-ships

• Have local, regional, national and

international expressions of mission occurring in their lives

• See the multiplying DNA of the king-dom at work in their life and church

• Passionately intercede for lost people• Generously give of their lives and

resources.

As we move into a fresh season of personal and church ministry, let’s commit ourselves to know the Lord more intimately and trust Him to spiritually renew us. What does that mean practically? The majority of us recog-nize that the pace of life and the placement of our priorities are not conducive to deeply engaging our Lord in prayer and His Word. A relationship with the Almighty built on a tidbit of time here and a Sunday morning there does not lend itself to knowing Christ in the power of His resurrection and the fel-lowship of His sufferings.

A new reality beckons us, one where Christ is formed in us and His Spirit empow-ers us daily. Quite honestly, writing these thoughts challenges me to describe how I personally have experienced intimacy with God and have been able to know firsthand the Spirit’s presence and power every day. I am drawn to 2 Peter 1:3-8. Peter tells us that by interacting with the Lord’s power and knowledge, we have everything we need for a godly life. God has given us His great and precious promises that allow us to participate in the divine nature.

This is where the theological and philo-sophical become practical reality. God calls us to be holy like He is, and He achieves

“It is our birthright to passionately seek God, hunger to know Christ, and

be transformed by the Spirit’s impact.”that in us by His Spirit, by letting us tangi-bly experience His heart, His presence, and His thoughts. One-on-one and in commu-nity we grasp what it looks like to be like Him. His purity becomes mine; a merciful God creates mercy within me. It is more than knowledge in a classroom—it is trans-formation of my life by being heart to heart and mind to mind with the Almighty.

The Holy Spirit is our companion on this journey of transformation. I am so grate-ful for the times when the Spirit has made God’s Word, His presence, love, holiness and grace real to me, shaping my character by His impact. The gift of the Spirit’s bap-tism allows me to worship and intercede in other languages, deepening God’s impact on my life and, hopefully, on the lives of others.

This life of personal and corporate transfor-mation by God’s presence and Word is the expected norm. It is our birthright to pas-sionately seek God, hunger to know Christ, and be transformed by the Spirit’s impact. Simply stated, we must reprioritize our per-sonal, family and church lives to ensure that “first things” remain first. Those who follow us need to see that this is the normal way to live.

Lord, we humbly ask You to forgive us for valuing so many other things more than You. We recognize Your call to a fresh spiritual vi-tality, both individually and as a Pentecostal family. Come, Holy Spirit. Teach us to par-ticipate in the divine nature of our God and transform us into the image of Jesus. For Your glory. Amen.