People of the Cloud
“People of the Cloud: The Kingdom Mandate for OKC”8/23/07
[Author's Note: I apologize for the lack of outlining in this text editor. For a formatted version of this article, click HERE.]
I sense that the cloud of the Lord (Ex. 13:21) is settling over Oklahoma City in a new way, and that we will be seeing a new level of visitation, strategy, and impartation in the days and years to come.
On August 16, 2007, I had a vision as I was waking up. I had sat up in bed and was looking out the door of our bedroom, toward the den. The light was on in the den but not very bright. The north wall of the den was illuminated and the part I could see was shaped exactly like the state of Oklahoma. On the wall, right in the spot where Oklahoma City is, was a brown, splotchy image (I did not have my glasses on yet). It turns out that we have a small plaque hanging there.
I rubbed my eyes but all I could see was Oklahoma with a big, ugly blotch right in its heart. I asked the Holy Spirit what I was seeing and he said, “Just like Cindy Jacobs said, if Oklahoma is okay, the rest of the country will be okay. But Oklahoma is not okay, because the heart of Oklahoma is not okay. And the heart of Oklahoma, Oklahoma City, is broken and has been broken almost from the beginning. Until the heart of the city is healed, the heart of the state cannot be healed.”
I immediately thought back to the teachings of Pastor Kerry Freeman, who taught that the foundation of Oklahoma City was based in corruption, scandal, and organized crime. We have been “broken” almost from day one. Obviously, much good has come from this city, but also there is a root of brokenness (bitterness?) that has sprung up to defile many (e.g., county commissioner scandal, nursing home scandal, health department scandal, etc.).
Those of us who pray for the state know of the stronghold of the religious spirit and its cohorts of division, suspicion, and empire-building. We have a desperate need to part with the old ways that have not worked, and move into a new season, a shift from the “church” age to the Kingdom age. We are entering a season where old wineskins will be replaced, and apostate structures will be destroyed.
The new “wineskin” is really much more than that; it is a bold, broad vision of seeing the Kingdom of God manifest in a lasting way in our city. The old mindset of “God, please send revival” is being replaced with “Let your kingdom come and your will be done in [our] earth as it is in heaven.” As people who have rejected the old, program-based church-as-usual mentality and are actively embracing the new, presence-based reality, we must lift up our heads, our eyes, our expectations to see our city in a new way. The cloud has already moved – will we recognize it? (Is. 43:19)
I suppose that there will always be “tribes” in the Kingdom, different flavors and different perspectives, but the Kingdom Christians from the full spectrum of the tribes must begin to define and walk out a common vision with shared values and shared goals. We are not talking about some dumbed-down, ecumenical bastardization of Christianity. We are talking about maturing into a city-wide vision of the Kingdom of God, based on the five-fold ministry defined in Ephesians 4.
Here are seven proposed goals for the Kingdom Christians in Oklahoma City, to practically and visibly establish our city set on a hill:
1) Establish an apostolic round-table to provide leaders with a forum for influencing the city in all sectors
a. Implement this in a way that is not elitist or overly exclusive (true apostles are humble servant leaders)
b. Base it on covenant; include all who agree on the terms of the covenant; exclude all others
c. Study “best practices” from other cities, if necessary, for what works and what doesn’t
d. The roundtable must cross all boundaries, especially ethnic ones, if it ever hopes to become a viable force in the transformation of our city
e. I call it the “Apostolic Coalition for the Transformation of Society” (ACTS)
f. Have this group develop, implement and oversee the “Master Plan for Transfor-mation” for the city
2) Address the gap between the priests and the kings – the church leaders (shepherds) and the marketplace leaders
a. Identificational repentance between these two strategic groups in the city is man-datory
b. Work must be done to build a bridge between the two
c. Much good work has been done in this critical area in other cities – let’s emulate their progress wherever possible
d. Conduct annual conferences to set goals and assess progress
3) Establish city-wide prayer
a. Establish a prayer “hub”
i. Leverage internet-based communications
ii. Prayer requests coming in
iii. Prayer updates and answers flowing out
iv. Combination of email and website
b. 24-hour prayer in our city
i. Intercessory prayer is the engine of the Kingdom (Lk. 10:2, 18:1; 1 Th. 5:17 et al)
ii. Use the Moravian model, which requires a minimum of twelve couples to be in covenant together to cover the 24-hour-a-day period
iii. Expand this to a much broader group over time
c. Conduct a full Prayer Walk of the city
i. Like Houston did, mark off the whole city in square-mile segments
ii. Group the segments into districts, with district coordinators
iii. Have prayer teams prayer-walk every segment in the city
iv. Plant prayer-stakes in the ground at all key points (as led by the Spirit)
d. Establish prayer teams that will pray over the city
i. Train them
ii. Coordinate them
iii. Release them
iv. Assign them by district
v. Pray over businesses, land, problem areas, etc.
4) Establish city-wide praise
a. Establish Praise Technology Centers
i. Use the laser-projection technology from The Call in Nashville
ii. Find strategically located churches or businesses around the city to host a “praise technology center”
iii. Establish CD-players of anointed praise-and-worship music, 24-hours a day
iv. Link the music to the laser-projectors and beam the sound into the first heaven over our city, and beyond
v. This one project alone with shift the entire spiritual climate and atmos-phere of our city
b. Rebuild “the fallen tabernacle of David” (Acts 15:16)
i. Establish a praise “hub” in the center of the city, for regular monthly praise cele-bration gatherings for all of the Kingdom Christians in the city
5) Establish city-wide discipleship
a. As the cloud of the Lord settles and strengthens over our city, many souls will be saved as part of the last great end-time harvest
b. Unless we plan ahead, we will not disciple these new converts effectively
c. Study best practices for true discipleship from around the globe
d. Establish a network of harvesters and disciplers that perform the task of true, bib-lical discipleship
6) Establish a “Jubilee Covenant” ministry to eradicate debt from the people of God
a. Get churches out of debt
b. Get families out of debt
c. Get Baal out of the church in our city
7) Build a Model
a. It is the clear teaching of scripture that the Kingdom Christians, while still here on the earth, are to become a “city set on a hill”
b. We should encourage the development of one or more models of Kingdom com-munity in the context of our city
c. See my separate paper, “The Vision of the Mile”
d. You can’t have a healthy society without healthy families; you can’t have healthy families outside the context of the Kingdom of God
posted by Steve Gordon @ 6:50 PM
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