Vintage Virgo, absolute vintage.
His three talks will be partly a history of newfrontiers, partly a look to the future, and partly a response to some of the challenge that Mark Driscoll brought last year.
He used Ephesians 2:1-10 and briefly expanded the passage hitting all the targets you would expect. Grace, grace, more grace, God's kindness, God's workmanship, God's calling, God's grace, Christians and the Church being born out of God's workmanship and creation.
Terry shared several prophecies that have shaped our movement of Churches over time.
The most recent was linked to an artist who had started displaying their work to rave reviews. The prophetic word was essentially this is how it will be with newfrontiers, to make public God's workmanship. There are layers of diversity, textures of relationship and colours of grace defining a movement. Don't copy other people's work, we are God's workmanship in us.
Another prophecy was much older, of a herd of elephants charging along and then reaching some jungle and just carrying on charging and forming a new path. Making a road where there was no road.
Another was of new bricks being fashioned into a wall, but God wanting to bring older bricks and place them within the new wall. That struck me as that is exactly what happened to our Church in 1996, when we joined newfrontiers having been completely independent for our first 13 years.
Another word involved "changing the expression of Christianity around the world". Legalism becoming grace. Independence becoming interdependence. Democracy making way for anointed leadership. Inward looking moving to mission orientated. Cessationalist moving to charismatic.
He then went on to unpack some familiar values...
WORD AND SPIRIT:
The word is our compass, our map, our guide.
The Spirit is the presence, the power, the activity of the Holy Spirit in our lives and in our Church meetings
Terry gave an impassioned defence of the work of the Holy Spirit as a current, experiential reality for Christians. The gospels promise it, Acts explains how it happened and the epistles assume it. He went onto define Baptism in the Holy Spirit from Acts 19:1-7 and called people forward to receive it. Hundreds, literally hundreds went forward for prayer.
Not a lot new, nothing left-field, just vintage Virgo. Submission to scripture, power of the Spirit, grace, grace and more grace and a movement shaped by the voice of God.
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