Dream: A NARROW WINDOW
Posted by: prophetic <prophetic@...>
-by J. Lee Grady.
Larry Stockstills Urgent Plea: We Have a Window of Time for
Repentance. The Louisiana pastor is mobilizing American church
leaders for a new movement of holiness and integrity.
Louisiana pastor Larry Stockstill had a disturbing dream last week.
He saw military trucks and armored vehicles getting in formation
for a surprise strike on an American city. Stockstill felt alarmed,
but when he tried to warn a pastor in his dream, the man ignored him.
I knew in my dream that a siege was going to happen the next
day, Stockstill says. The enemy was being positioned. But no
one would listen to me.
Stockstill, pastor of the 10,000-member Bethany World Prayer
Center in Baton Rouge, believes his dream was a prophetic
warning about the spiritual condition of our nation. While America
teeters near an economic and political precipice, many American
church leaders are going on with their business as usualwithout
realizing that the church is in a state of serious moral crisis.
I believe we are facing a window of opportunity for repentance,
Stockstill says. Unless the pastors wake up to avert judgment,
there will be judgment on America. If we dont respond we are
going to lose this nation.
Stockstill became alarmed about the anemic condition of American
churches in 2006, when he had to step in and help bring discipline
to Ted Haggard, the Colorado pastor who was removed as senior
leader of New Life Church because of a moral failure. Stockstill
offered correction and oversight to Haggard and his family and
helped the leaders of New Life pick up the pieces after the scandal.
Many observers praised Stockstill for his level-headed leadership
and compassionate but strict adherence to biblical principles
during the crisis.
What Stockstill learned during that painful process became the
basis of a new book, "The Remnant: Restoring Integrity to
American Ministry". He hopes the message will trigger a movement
of holiness and integrity in the American church, which has
suffered a long string of embarrassing sexual and financial failures
since Haggards fall 15 months ago.
We look like a sleaze bucket in the eyes of the nation, says the
54-year-old pastor, who has avoided the national spotlight during
most of his 33 years in ministry. Once a missionary in Africa,
Stockstill has focused most of his ministry on church planting and
missions. Bethany has helped start more than 17,000 churches
worldwide since 2000.
Stockstill says the level of dysfunction among American ministers
concerns him because their unhealthiness is then passed down to
their congregations. He sees five types of common dysfunction
among ministers today, especially in the independent charismatic
movement:
-Lack of fathering (no affirmation, encouragement or spiritual
covering)
-Lack of correction (no accountability, resulting in pride and moral failure)
-Lack of fruitfulness (no training in evangelism and discipleship,
preventing churches from multiplying as they should)
-Lack of healing (many pastors suffer silently because of sins and
addictions)
-Lack of teaching (many in ministry today are untaught, resulting in
biblically illiterate churches).
At a conference Stockstill is hosting in Baton Rouge from March
4-6, he hopes to blast his trumpet and rally hundreds of pastors to
address this crisis while there is still time. We really have to
relay the foundations of ministry in this country, he says. Many
pastors have not been fathered, so they become posersthey
are just looking to impress people.
Pride, Stockstill says, is a primary reason why so many leaders in
the American church have fallen in recent yearsincluding mature
spiritual fathers who had years of successful ministry behind them
but stumbled in their later years. You look at leaders in the Bible
like Solomon, or like Samson, and you find that years of success
can lead a person into pride. And when pride comes, it brings a
lack of accountability, he explains.
At his Remnant conference, which will feature messages from
Arizona pastor Tommy Barnett and Texas broadcaster James
Robison, Stockstill hopes hundreds of pastors will seize the
moment and launch a movement to reclaim kingdom values
including humility, purity and honestyas well as passion for
missions and church planting.
We dont have a lot of time, Stockstill says, recalling again his
dream about impending danger. We need a quick work of the Holy Spirit.