Harvest Christian Fellowship - Holy Spirit Intensive

Since my last blog update, we've made a decision to spend a longer amount of time with a couple of churches to learn more about them and see if they might be where God is leading us. Our first church was CityView where we spent a month going to a Spiritual Gifts class on Wednesday nights. Our second church is Harvest Christian Fellowship which meets in Plainview. We've been attending Sunday worship services there and a small group that meets every other Wednesday that is focused on Raising Kids God's Way.

Soon after deciding to attend Harvest for a while, they offered the Holy Spirit Intensive. Wow - that is kind of a daunting name for folks coming from the churches of Christ. We weren't sure quite what to expect, so we talked with our friend Brad Snellgrove who was helping to organize the event. He assured us it was nothing weird, that "intensive" was a word they used for all types of different conferences - Marriage Intensive, Worship Intensive, etc. It simply meant that this was a special extended time of teaching on the topic of the Holy Spirit. This piqued our interest so we signed up for the Friday Evening and Saturday Morning conference.

We really feel the Spirit has been at work in our lives lately, but wanted to attend this conference to know more about what Harvest believes and teaches as well as develop our understanding of how the Spirit works. Unfortunately, we feel pretty under-educated in this area because of our church background. What I (Gabe) read in the Bible and what is common experience for many church of Christ congregations seems to be extremely different. We've both been frustrated for many years at the lack of demonstrations of power and effectiveness that were evident in early believer's lives and that we believe should still be evident today. When Jesus promises that the Helper will come to us when we believe and are baptized, I believe that is truth and should happen. While we've felt the Spirit's presence all along our spiritual journey, his presence seemed somehow lacking - probably due to our unbelief more than anything.

Anyway - the conference was great. We began each day with a time of worship and that really helped me transition from work mode into learning mode. There were 2 speakers in each session. Friday night the series was introduced by Brad Snellgrove, who is in charge of the small group ministry at Harvest. He did a superb job of introducing the topic in a very humorous way. He was very clear that Harvest was not a charismatic church - that is the over-the-top demonstrations of "spiritual" powers etc. don't have a place here. He was also very clear that Harvest teaches and believes that so-called "miraculous" manifestations of the Spirit are very much still possible and alive in today's church. He taught this is not something to be exploited or even focused on, but to be utilized and enjoyed by the church in the way it was by the church in the New Testament.

One of the things I appreciate about Harvest is their deep appreciate, respect and adherence to Scripture. In fact, I haven't been in a church that was as focused on the Scriptures as Harvest in quite a while. It is refreshing and comforting to know that the guys leading this church spend copious amounts of time in the Word preparing their messages each week. You would expect that such a modern-type church would be using contemporary language Bibles. Not these guys - New American Standard is what is read every week in our services. I'm curious to know more about that as we go along.

The second teacher was a middle aged gentlemen named Doc Sharp. They said that is because he is a full-time Christian who happens to have a hobby or side job as an optometrist. You may know him as he runs the optometry shop at the new 4th and Ave Q Wal-Mart in Lubbock. He was an amusing speaker with lots of interesting stories about how the Spirit works in people's lives. He has a special ministry of healing, rather laying on hands and praying for people. He made it very clear that he has nothing to do with healing people - that is God's job. The main thing I took away from his talk is that we often don't see the Spirit work because we aren't obedient to Scripture. For instance - he said if we aren't obedient to Scripture when it tells the church to lay hands on people, anoint them with oil, and pray for them - we won't see them healed. When we are obedient, then it opens the door for God to work and we can become the conduit for his grace to people. It was very challenging stuff to think about.

Saturday morning the Plainview Campus Pastor, Chris Craig, spoke about listening to the voice of the Spirit. So often we ignore the Spirit's voice and after a while, He stops talking to us just like we would stop talking to someone who never listened to us. He shared a humorous story about ministering to a group of drug-infested Satanists in Plainview last year. Not only did God keep prompting him to continue with this group, he also humbled Chris when he began thinking his own power, and not God's, was having an effect on the family involved. It was a good reminder that we need to really listen to that small voice calling us to action and then respond in obedience with humility.

The second speaker on Saturday was an older gentleman named Ed who shared with us many years of experiencing the Spirit at work in people's lives. It was very humbling and encouraging to hear about stories that evidence the working of the Spirit in people's lives even today. We have been hungering to know that the God we serve is one of authority and has the ability to act today - in ways that might even seem miraculous to us. Our time in Kenya proved to us that he is able and we have often wondered since then why there is so little manifestation of that power in churches here - even when it seems so pertinent and capable of helping people believe.

Each day was closed with a time of prayer from a team of experienced people. It was powerful to be prayed over by people with a powerful and effective faith as demonstrated by their lives and the fruit they bear. God used this time to reaffirm to us that he desired for us to have a time of rest and rebuilding as we re-learn to minister with His power and not our own. I think one reason we've been so drained is that we've been working in the Kingdom for the past 8 years with very little dependence on God. Working on our own, well of course we are tired. Had we been working with the Spirit - I think things might be different! We'll keep pursuing God and see what he has in store!

If you would like to hear the conference for yourself, you can order the CD's here http://www.harvestchristianfellowship.org/.