Video Transcript: The Cry For Spiritual Fathers and Mothers: Chapter 12 Different Kinds of Fathers
Someone once asked Billy Graham this question. Said, Billy, if you wanted to change a city, how would you change a city? I thought Billy would say, have a crusade, because he's been a crusade evangelist for most of most of his life. He didn't say that. He said, Well, I would do something like this. He said I'd find a few key men in the city who love the Lord, but I can spend time with and pour my life into really be a spiritual father to he didn't use that term, but that's what he's talking about. I'd meet with them week after week. And of course, his wife, Ruth could do the same in those days with when she was living. To do the same with women. But he said I'd meet with them. And after six months or a year, I'd encourage each of them to also find a group of men that they could pour their life into. And then we continue to meet, and they would also meet. And then next generation, they would do the same thing. He said it would only be a matter of time until we could take a whole city for Christ. He was talking about the truth and the reality of being a spiritual father and a spiritual mother and having a vision for future multiplication and future reproduction. So spiritual fathering and mothering is throughout the scriptures, Old Testament, New Testament. We see Moses was a spiritual father, obviously to Joshua, and we see and also he's a spiritual father to Caleb. And we see this on or on. Obviously, we see it through it throughout the New Testament also. But I like to talk to you a bit about our story, and then I just want to give you a specific story of someone that I had a privilege of mentoring who was older than I was, but how that I saw him become a father in many different roles. We're going to talk about different kinds of spiritual fathers, different kinds of spiritual mothers in this session, as we, as we're together here, when I was a in a missionary, I heard a term called Paul Timothy relationships. I didn't know what it was. And then I realized that Paul mentored Timothy. He was a spiritual father Timothy, and I just stuck in my in my brain, in my spirit. And then we came back to Pennsylvania, after our time in missions, my I was with my young bride, just married just over a year, got involved in youth ministry there, along with being in the family farm, began to remember Paul Timothy relationship. So when young people came to Christ, through this youth ministry, we started Paul Timothy relationships. So I take a few young men, my wife, Laverne, took a few young women with people on a staff, and they would take some young people. I remember we were all involved in different churches, so in Sunday mornings, we come to you at our house early morning before they go to the church meetings. And we would simply discuss, how are things going with our Paul Timothy relationships, and what's going on? And so we did that for a while. So then later on, it was after start a Bible study, and we started, we started these house fellowships, this heart of fathering and mothering was just instilled in all that we were doing. And so I was simply, it was on the grassroots level. We were simply discipling people and mentoring people and just there for them. It was relational Christianity, just the way, the same way we see in the scriptures. We saw that Jesus did that and Paul did that. We
simply wanted to do the same and follow the model, Imitate me as I imitate Christ, Paul said, and we wanted to do the same thing. So then, as our church began to grow, all these house fellowships, new house fellowships, and they're all coming together in different set. We call them celebrations. We realize that we needed to train leaders, leaders of a higher stature, and we call them pastors. And then so we trained another level of leadership. And then later on, as we began to plant churches in the nations, we realized the need for apostolic leadership and training another level of leadership, all these literate levels of leadership. But see, it all starts with obedience to the Lord, just one person at a time. So if you're called to start a house church, you're called to help someone start a house church. One of the most important things you'll do, obviously, most important thing, is pray next for most important thing would be find who are the spiritual sons and daughters you're called to pour your life into, because you never know where they'll be in the future. So today, as I'm privileged to work with leaders in 20 nations of the world and five continents of the world, and have friends, people who are my friends, I can be in their homes, and we have relationship together, and from Europe to South America and Central America and Asia, and throughout Africa and North America, and even down under New Zealand, places like that. So blessed of all these relationships. But see, it all started with a few mentoring relationships, a few spiritual father and mother relationship. And so today I have the privilege of mentoring leaders of leaders, of leaders. But that's not where it started. It started just on the grassroots level. So I want to challenge you and the grass is over. You never know, as you obey the Lord, you never know where God takes you, and if not, you, your spiritual sons and daughters. As I mentioned, many of my spiritual sons and daughters are much more anointed than I am today, and I honor that and bless that. I'm so grateful to God for what he's done in that now, let me tell you a story about a man that I mentor. As I was a pastor, and his name was Carl, and Carl and his wife, Doris, came to our church when our church was probably we had about I don't know, 10 house fellowships, maybe, and may have been 100 200 people and just a precious couple that had a bit of a Baptist background, and they were just over the Holy Spirit. And he involved in our church. And when one week, I decide I want to know what God's doing the life of every person in all the house fellowships. So I simply gave them all a sheet of paper. I said, You please write down your dream. What would you love to be doing? And so I said, I'm going to pray through these this week. We want to find a way to help you do what God's called you to do. So I remember reading through these, and I got to Carl's, and Carl worked in a local feed mill, and I was shocked that what I saw he said, I'd like to be a pastor who spends all his time pastoring, and when you have to work at my present job, I just want to be supported, just a pastor, people in love, on people. I was shocked. I never thought he even want to do that. And he wasn't the preacher kind of person, he said, I didn't think so in those days, so I
kept that in the back of my mind, and were praying. And then Carl was involved in a House Fellowship. It was then he was leading a House Fellowship. And then he they had to start a second House Fellowship. Didn't have leadership. He led two house fellowships. So he would lead one and lead the other one. And he started multiplying house fellowships in this place called in this area, and that town called Manheim, Pennsylvania. And so as he was taking leading House fellowships, and he led the first one kind of out of default, because the leader, he had moved on to something else, and asked Carl to take over. And he took over. He wasn't sure he could do it, but said, I'll try to do it. I'll do my best. Because he didn't feel like he was necessarily a born leader, but he said he had a heart for Jesus and a heart for people. So here was Carl just saying, I'll try to do it. And he did it, and he was doing a great job with it. Well, a few years later, as we began to grow and grow and grow 1,000 and 1,500 people and all these house fellowships growing all over the place, and so we realized we need somebody on our staff who would give time to training House Fellowship leaders, to train new leaders. And in the Manheim area, Manheim, we call it Manheim. Manheim would be Germany. In Manheim, there were all these house fellowships. So I thought could Carl be the person, and he and thus I sat with him and asked,, Carl, would you like to be on our staff and just, you know, just part of a whole team and your training House Fellowship leaders. He's, well, I don't know, I can try. And he did it. And did he ever he did a great job. People love it. Carl's the kind of guy you sit down at breakfast. People told me he bought him breakfast. He says, Sitting with Carl made all the difference. He was a greatest encourager. He'd encourage people. So then here's Carl, his training leaders. And then in 1996 when we took one large church of all these house fellowships and broke it into eight churches and trained all these pastors, became a movement of churches. We thought, we need a senior leader in the Manheim area. And we thought, could it be Carl again? Carl wasn't the person that felt necessarily comfortable preaching in those kind of things. Who said, I said, Carl in my office. Do you think God might be calling you to, this is water? No, I can try. And you know, he did a great job that a couple who came from from Europe and came to our school, he sat in the back. He planted a church, he started planting other churches. It was amazing how God was using him busy. He built the right team people in the local congregation where all the house fellowships would come together. They, you know, they knew he was the father. He wasn't even offered other people preach, but they knew he was the father of the house, so to speak. And so we kept growing churches and growing churches, and then we realized we need more people on our apostolic council to give leadership to the nations. I thought, could it be Carl? I asked Carl. He said, Well, I can try. And he, he became part of our apostolic Council, and he was mentoring leaders in Europe and different parts of the world. Well, Carl went to be with Jesus, and I remember standing in front of this auditorium of hundreds of people. And knew
and loved Carl, and I read, I read letter after letter after email of people from different parts of the world that said, I've been looking for a father for years, and I never, I never found one until I met Carl. Because Carl had been a father, But, see, he was in all these different levels of leadership. And let me just give you, and God had used him greatly, been a great blessing to the body of Christ. Let me, allow me, please, just to give you a few of the different kinds of spiritual parents. One is what I call a grassroots spiritual parents. They are simply, we're all called to be a spiritual parent, spiritual father or spiritual mother. Like the guy from New Zealand I mentioned in the last session, said I realized that I am a minister. That's the first I remember. I was in Hawaii some years back, and there's this move of God among young people and the pastor. Said, I want you to experience this. And I say, Great, before we go through the airport tonight, take me to this meeting for God's moving among young people. So we got there and the lights were down. These people are fire. These young people. Fire for God, hundreds of them in this place. And then the lights came on. This young man went up and grabbed the microphone, and then he began to just talk about what God was doing, he said. And now he said, everybody here, you need being a power huddle. He said, We need more leaders for power huddles. I said to my pastor friend, I leaned over and I said, What's a power huddle? He said, you know, American football huddle power Holy Spirit. It was house fellowships for young people. And then he said something he drove in the airport. Here's what he said. He said they've learned in this new work of God that the young people, all the young people, come to Christ. He said the ones that are continuing on with the Lord are those who, excuse me, are those who are involved in power huddles, those involved in House Fellowship, those who have spiritual fathers and spiritual mothers. So you've got the grass roots, fathers and mothers. You've got Local in some of those obviously House Fellowship. You've got local church, those who lead house fellowships, fathers and mothers. Your apostolic fathers and mothers. You know, the Apostolic fathers and mothers. Paul said, I Corinthians 3:10, I laid the foundation as a master builder. True apostolic leaders are those who always, always emphasize the importance of Jesus Christ in people's lives. True apostolic leaders, people claim to be apostles. Well, modern day apostles who have apostolic call. If they truly are, there will be fruit. In other words, they were planted churches or overseeing churches. See, how do you know that? Because I Corinthians 9:1-2, Paul says to the Corinthians, you are the seal of our apostleship. And so, you know, when we literally gave the church away to all these different pastors, etc. You know, then there were these senior leaders and had another role, another role of spiritual fathering and spiritual mothering. And, you know, there's followers of regions. I go to different regions of the world, I find there are leaders that are honored in that region, the spiritual fathers and mothers in the region, for different denominations and different ministries, who come together. They're seen as
fathers in the region, there are five-fold, I would call the five-fold fathers. And of course, we've been talking about Ephesians 4:11-12. It was He who gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers to
prepare God's people works of service so the body of Christ might be build up. We all come to a place of maturity. You see, we're talking about the five-fold ministry, Apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor and teacher. Now, really, there's a need for fathers and mothers there. And why say that? Well, because Jesus was the apostle of apostles. He was a prophet of prophets, the evangelist of evangelists, the Teacher of teachers, and the pastor pastors. Now he said that, and in the spiritual fathering crafts better fathers and mothers. I gave you all the scriptures that are better for that. But see, we need fathers who will help train fathers who are apostles, who will train future apostles. We need prophets who we fathers and mothers and train another generation of prophets. So we need apostolic fathers and mothers, prophetic fathers and mothers. We need evangelists, fathers and mothers, teaching fathers and mothers and pastor, fathers and mothers. I was in Dulles Airport some years ago, ran an old friend of mine from New Zealand. He was an evangelist. I said, David, what are you doing with your life right now? He said, I found a group of young men, young evangelists, and I'm mentoring them. I'm fathering them. I thought, That's it. God's God's raising of a generation who will also be mentoring others in these other areas and gifts. In the business world, we need fathers and mothers who train others in business and in enterprise. We need we need this in education. We need this in the political realm. We need this in really, every area, every area of life. So why is this important? Because spiritual fathers and mothers, especially in the area the five-fold ministry, were trained the next generation in their specific gifts and in their specific callings. We need the fruit of the Spirit. We need the gifts of the Spirit, we need the power of God, and it is we the grace and the anointing of God. But it comes to spiritual fathers and mothers who train the next generation.