Sid: I have on the telephone Tony and Felicity Dales they’re heads of a ministry called House to House Ministry in Austin, Texas. I’m interviewing them on their book “An Army of Ordinary People.” A must read if you really want to know what the Holy Spirit is up to at this moment in history. On yesterday’s broadcast you were telling me something so fantastic about how countries are being affected in such a radical fashion; take Cambodia there were 600 Christians in the entire country a decade ago what’s happened there?
Tony: Well, it’s incredible exciting what’s happened a young American missionary went in there understanding the principals of these simple church movements and identified 6 lay people who were ready to work with him in church planting. And that first year they planted 6 churches, then the next year it grew to you know in the region of 10 and then 24 and then 60. Within a decade it had grown to the place where there were an identifiable 100,000 Christians within the country and this all through simple house church movements.
Sid: Now I’m going to take you back to the early 70’s, the charismatic movement, you’re both medical doctors, you’re in England and a phenomena occurred these house churches; tell me what you observed after they started all over the map something happened explain that.
Tony: Well, you know it’s interesting because this movement there in the UK was called the “British House Church Movement” because all of us were starting churches in our homes. But we didn’t have any Biblical framework of home church, this was a descriptive terms and as God blessed these churches got bigger and moved from our homes into local school halls, or you know borrowed other church facilities, or bought local cinemas or whatever. And over the period of 70’s and the early 80’s what had begun in homes really became the mega church movement of the future. So the large independent charismatic churches in the UK now nearly all grew out of the house church movement of the 70’s.
Sid: Now because you’re there I want you to be candid. I’m sure wonderful things are occurring right now but did it lose something when it left the home and became a mega church?
Tony: You know it really did but a lot of that we didn’t understand at the time, you know were moving with the light that we had and God was blessing and you know people were getting saved, they were getting filled with the Holy Spirit, there was life and so people were congregating to these new churches. But yes, as we got big we without realizing it we lost the every member participation we began to see things led more and more from the front and so even though most of these church began with real team leadership the larger they got the more important you know “The Leader” appeared and this type of thing. And so there were all sorts of core values that we were letting go of really without realizing it.
Sid: So what’s the answer who would not want a mega church? But what’s the answer, now you can look back, what could you have done to have kept the vibrancy of the Holy Spirit?
Tony: You know it’s very hard to say what you could do in retrospect, but prospectively and certainly this is where Felicity and I found ourselves you know back in 1996 when we were starting home church here in Austin. We said “There were things that we would do differently, instead of just getting bigger, we would multiply; instead of focusing on leadership we would make sure that everybody remained actively involved and you know everyone participating.” Really understanding it means what it says in 1 Corinthians 12. You know giving honor to the weaker member so that we’re seeing the body of Christ in all of its beauty and not just some of the more obvious gifts.
Sid: Well, you actually had some of those choices to make here in the states in Austin, Texas. You started you know it’s kind of…I find it fascinating the different types of groups that you started. One group was for business leaders, tell me about that.
Felicity: That was the very first group we started, we were involved in business, we obviously couldn’t practice medicine over here and so we moved sideways into business. We knew many unbelievers because of the business that we were involved in. And so we had the idea of pulling some of them together and so we invited about a dozen unbelievers who were involved in the business that we were in. We invited them into our home for pizza and we told them that we were going to look at business principals together and that we were going to use a book as a basis of our discussions it was written by one of the wisest men that ever lived. And so these twelve unsuspecting business people came to our home for supper, pizza, and for a study of the Book of Proverbs. And it was very interesting, we used a pattern that we’ve used again and again in this kind of context of a very open kind of a discussion where everybody can participate there are no right or wrong answers, but all the time we’re looking to the Bible to provide the authority to provide the basis of the answers that we accept.
Sid: Well, what kind of fruit did you have from such a group?
Felicity: Well, over a course of a year every one of them became Christians and so that was very exciting.
Sid: In fact there is a funny story you talk about that two of the successful businessman were former ex-drug dealers, tell me about that conversation.
Felicity: Correct that was a wonderful evening where we found these two discussing together why some of their drug deals of the past doesn’t work because they weren’t following the principals that they were now learning from the Book of Proverbs. And we were sitting there trying very hard to keep a straight face but just laughing inside that such a conversation were even possible.
Sid: But I have to tell you as exciting as that particular group you started was the thing that is close to my heart and I believe close to God’s heart right now is a group you started for teenagers, a Bible Club, in which you serve them breakfast tell, me about that.
Felicity: Well, that followed on from the business people’s one because we were taking those business people to a good church that we were involved in at the time but that moved away to the far end of Austin to sort of a 50 minute to an hour drive and there was no way we could continue going there. So we went and spoke to the Senior Pastor there and he said “Why don’t you start a church?” Which was something that we had always resisted the sort of because you know from our experience back in England where there are so many fewer Christians you tend to stay together and you don’t tend to start things you know unless the Lord’s really leading. And he used an argument that was very persuasive to us because he said “That statistically the best means of evangelism is starting a church.” And we thought “Okay, we’ll be willing to do it” and we had the teenage kids at the time two was still at home and so we suggested to them that we start a breakfast Bible club with them and their friends. And we got them to invite all their friends from the neighborhood around us. And we cooked them a huge breakfast and the kids came for the breakfast but they stayed for the Spiritual activities afterwards. And again they started becoming Christians and as their lives started changing some of their parents began wondering “What’s happening to my kids.” And they said, “Can we come too?” And so we ended up then with a group of many sort of teenage kids and some of their parents.
Sid: Did you see much fruit from those meetings with the teenagers and their parents?
Tony: That was incredibly exciting, yes we did. Over a period of about six months this group it began with 12 to 14 kids it had grown to about 20 kids plus now some of the parents coming because they were seeing the incredible changes in their kid’s lives and then the parents began giving their lives to Jesus as well. So now we had a multi-age church all though we hadn’t called it that right there in our home.
Sid: Another area that intrigues me immensely is you started a group in a low income housing project; tell me about that.
Tony: Well, it has a fascinating story because this was just a very clear example of the principals that are outlined in Luke 10, where it talks about Jesus sending out the 70 into everyplace where He was about to go. And the Lord spoke very specifically to Felicity and said to her “I want you to go and start prayer walking in this particular area.” And finally after a couple of months she did what the Lord had put on her heart and the second day she was out prayer walking in this rather poor part of Austin she came across this low income housing project. And as soon as she found herself there on the housing project the Lord spoke into her spirit “I want you to start a church there.” And you know this was like baffling because we have no natural inroad into a community like Springfield. But the Lord made it plain, a group of us began praying together regularly for the area, on a few occasions we’d either go individually, or as a group, or Felicity and I would go together to Springfield and walk around the area and pray. And then one day we were caught in a torrential downpour there, we had parked our car outside of the housing project for fairly obvious reasons wanted to find the hubcaps when we came back. Caught in this torrential downpour we rushed under a balcony for shelter and found ourselves talking with two middle-aged Hispanic ladies. And one of them Rosa asked us “Well, what are you guys doing here?” I guess we didn’t fit the local profile. So we told her “We had come to the area to pray for it.” And these two ladies began to open up and through the conversation we asked if we could have opportunity to come to their home and perhaps pray over some of the needs in their lives. And that was the beginning of an exciting journey of identifying Rosa as the person of peace, of seeing what happens when the Luke 10 person of peace opens their home, you share their hospitality, you begin to touch…
Sid: Listen Tony the miracles that you’ll talk about on tomorrows broadcast but it is so simple and you’ll be so encourage…
Tags: its supernatural, Sid Roth
Tags: its supernatural, Sid Roth