Leadership

TRANSFORMING THE CHURCH INTO A MILITANT TERRITORIAL ENTERPRISE

by Okechukwu Emmanuel
01/31/22
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TRANSFORMING THE CHURCH INTO A MILITANT TERRITORIAL ENTERPRISE

New strategic operations

The Remnant Church must develop strategies and connect them to operations, and make sure that they deliver lasting impact. God has modeled the Remnant Church as both a military enterprise and a business. In addition, God is driving this mandate from His perspective because it is His program. God has generated this pattern as an instrument He will use to reconstitute a "New Thing" Remnant Church (Is. 43:18) and prepare her as a vibrant and militant Body of Christ. He will fit this "re-engineered" Church into His end-time programs, and use her as His instrument for achieving His purposes. The Holy Spirit is reminding the Remnant Church that God runs the earth according to a program format; He divides His activities (programs) on earth into segments. He operates a doctrine and a philosophy, each of which He manifests in each program segment - at each event, at each series of events, and each sequence of events (Dan 2:21).

According to God’s strategic purpose, His "New Thing" end-time divine programs have the following principal goals: choose a remnant from the way-ward “Church,” reconcile it back to Christ and the Father, and constitute this remnant as a "New Thing" Remnant Church (Is. 43:18). Furthermore, these goals will include restoring the status and position of the Church on the earth (Eph. 1:20-23; 2:6; Rev. 5:9-10) and constituting this "New Thing" Remnant Church as the "mountain of the Lord's House that is exalted above other hills" (Isa. 1:1-3). Also, these goals will involve reestablishing the glory of God in her (Col. 2:10) so that she transmits and emits Him as the Light on the mountain into a world filled with gross darkness. The result will be that the kings, philosophers, thinkers, and peoples of the earth will strive to escape from this gross darkness and come to her for the Light that is in her. She will use this opportunity to disciple the nations, their societies, and all their institutions. She will teach them the ways of the Lord that He has commanded her in Matthew 28:19-20 (Ref. Is. 2:1-3). As she does this, Christ will pass through her to destroy the works of the devil on the seven mountains of life (1 Jn. 3:8), recover them from their unrighteousness and desolations, and establish them as bastions of righteousness (Is. 9:6; 11:4-5).

God has developed and is executing His vision and strategies for His end-time program. He has appointed His As One Remnant Church, a collective enterprise and network of "Melchizedek" kings and priests in Jesus Christ, as His instrument and co-laborer in executing these programs. God's vision and strategies focus on the Body of Christ working together As One across geographic borders, functional and operational divides, specific tasks and assignments, and business boundaries. Thus, God's program patterns are now compulsorily territorial (Acts 1:8) and obligatorily networked (Jn. 15:1-5). The vision and goals of God for His Remnant Church are to deliver His unique purposes in all of the seven mountains of society. The Remnant Church operating God's new five-fold ministers, especially the apostles and prophets, will operate in very fluid situational matrices. She will need to disciple, develop, train believer–priests, and finally mature them into functional sons, elders, and fathers. As she does this, God will equip and use them to confront, weather, and overcome the diverse and challenging situational co-ordinates of the end times (1 Sam. 17:50-51; Acts 13:6-12).

God’s territorial pattern and operational mode

Two of the pivots of these territorial patterns and operational mode in God's programs are a non-denominational and dynamic As One Remnant Church productively functional in her territory, and a network of As One Christian professionals functioning as ministers, leaders, and pacesetters in each of the seven mountains of life. Both of these Church groups will in their functions be closely integrated As One.  In other words, God has decided in these end times to saturate the Church with functional, effective, efficient, and productive believers, spread them out and diffuse them into society, and saturate the society with them. God in the early Church, as evidenced in The Acts of the Apostles, set a practical pattern, and provided guiding principles for an As One non-denominational Body of Christ. God used her to show the Jews and their anti-Christ leaders new and corporate structures and strategies of organizations and people groups that work effectively and efficiently (Acts 4:32-35). God had introduced and is still introducing newness and updated perspectives in all His thoughts, plans, and operations. He has gone beyond yesterday's leadership styles and theological interpretive patterns because they can no longer "carry" what he is doing in the now and the prevailing situational matrices He has introduced in the world (Lk. 1:68-75). He has revealed and developed new depths of insight and strength in contemporary Church leadership capacities. For example, God is equipping the Church leaders of today with territorial and network aptitudes and abilities (Acts 11:20-25). As Christ showed in His ministry pattern on earth and demonstrated in Apostle Paul’s missionary journeys, the era of solitary one-man shows (1 Kings 19:14-18) have been severely curtailed (Acts 1:8; 13:2). God is training and equipping believers in the Body of Christ to satisfactorily co-labor with Him in the challenging and fluid environments of the seven mountains of society (Ps. 105:19: Dan. 1:17). The Holy Spirit is raising leaders, who will collaborate to develop in the Remnant Church the aptitudes and talent with which God has equipped each believer–priest (2 Sam. 21:15-22; Acts 11:20-28).

New wine strategy – reengineered fivefold ministers

God, through the Holy Spirit, has completely changed the Church's strategic, tactical, operational, and other modalities to enable her, first, to be a company of functional and productive believer–priests with the mindset of professionals networking closely with each other. Second, these reformed and transformed believer–priests will inculcate, assimilate, and possess the operational and mental attitude of territorial dominion (Gen 13:14-17, Jos. 14:11-12). Finally, they will reproduce themselves as they disciple, train, and develop other believer-priests He will use to actualize His end-game goals and objectives. In these end times and seasons, God will root out and annihilate in the Church the grasshopper and fear of Goliath mentalities that had dominated and driven the Church, and constrained her to hide in tabernacles, temples, and Church buildings completely buried in ignorance and insignificance. She will restore to her the power to witness to all nations about Jesus Christ, disciple her institutions and seven mountains of life, and teach them to obey His commands (Mt. 28:20). God is using His reengineered five-fold ministers, especially the new apostles and prophets, to do new things in the Remnant Church in these end-times. He is using this group to re-teach the Remnant Church the basic principles implied in the Great Commission (Mt. 28:19--20) and change her orientation in the way she does ministry and business. These new apostles and prophets would refocus the Church on the business and ministry of witnessing Christ, salvation, and discipleship (Acts 4:33; 11:25-26). God has a purpose for the advent of Christ on the earth, and the constituent goals and objectives of this purpose must be realized and executed in the practical realities of the lives of believers and society in the different environments God has located each of them (Abraham –Gen 12:1-3; Joseph-Gen. 45:7-8; Daniel-Dan. 2:47-48).

Christ’s ministry purpose is the Father’s business

Christ was very particular about doing "the will of the Father Who sent Him" (Jn. 6:39 AMP, Para-phrased). Thus, His ministry had a purpose “not to lose any of all that He (the Father) has given Him, give them a new life, and raise [them all] up at the last day," and a focus on “any of all that He (the Father) has given Him” (Jn. 6:39 AMP, Paraphrased). Hence, His ministry had a purpose and a focus which were well defined. God’s reengineered five-fold ministers, especially the new apostles and prophets, must note that Christ’s ministry purpose was the business -- the immediate task or objective - the Father had given Him, and His ministry focus was the people the Father has given Him. Therefore, purpose and focus in ministry originated from the Father. Now, His ministry purpose and focus were businesses because they were serious activities that required time and effort with the avoidance of all distractions [Merriam – Webster Dictionary] (Jn. 4:34: 15:15). In addition, God was continuously customizing and expanding Christ's ministry environment and scope to achieve its comprehensiveness. For example, before His Crucifixion, Christ asserted, "I was sent to help the Jews-the lost sheep of Israel-not the Gentiles" (Mt. 15:24 TLB). Nevertheless, after His Crucifixion, and as He was about to physically leave the earth, He charged the Apostles, "You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." (Acts 1:8, NIV). Furthermore, He commanded them to "Go … and make disciples of all the nations… Teaching them to observe everything that (Christ) had commanded (them)" (Mt. 28:19-20, AMP Paraphrased). They were to operate beyond the Jewish Community of Faith. This commission tells the Body of Christ that she must operate beyond the Community of Faith, which is she (Acts 13:2-4).

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