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. 



Last modified: Monday, October 7, 2024, 10:00 AM