I know this doesn't have much to do with theology or Kingdom or the usual charismatic historical blogs I normally publish - but it's something I am very personally excited about. I have just had my first article published in medical journal on vaccinations/immunisations.
Long term readers may know that for a couple of years I worked outside of my normal clinical area and focused on Emergency Planning and especially H1N1 (Pandemic Swine Flu). The hospital authorities didn't know whether the H1N1 virus would be more serious than it eventually turned out to be (even though I still feel the death toll was too much for a preventable disease). So my role was to support the nursing staff on the wards with care of H1N1 positive patients alongside working with Microbiologists to prevent impact of the virus.
Another key role was to coordinate the immunisation campaign of all healthcare workers at the hospital. Traditionally the uptake of vaccination of healthcare workers is quite poor. For whatever reason, nurses don't like being told they have to have a flu vaccine. However for the two years I led the campaign we had an outstanding response - from around 90 to 98%.
I wrote the article with some thoughts on why we had such success - and I was interested to see that another article in the journal was by a senior immunisation doctor in the Department of Health - who had also noticed our results and took a more national perspective.
So there it is ... I wonder if I will ever fulfill my dream and have something published in the Christian world on Ern Baxter or Kingdom principles?!
5 comments:
It's important to attempt to clarify some things.
When any of us take things negatively we write understandably in the vein that Friendly did the other day. That is, Dan Bowen's having a tough time, what's this Welch guy writing insensitively about Dan "not making Kingdom noises".
In a Pentecostal understanding of "Kingdom Noises", we understand someone maybe up front in the meeting, cajoling, encouraging, stirring others to praise...or go on with God...or such like.
I'm speaking at a deeper level than that. I'm saying all the things you have previously admitted to...homosexuality, depression, the somehow heartless way people treated you over that issue at your last job....and absolutely tons I dont know about....IS CHRIST working in you. It may look to you like a quarry site. But Jesus bought the whole excavation works when He bought you. This is ALSO what is meant by "buying the field" for the treasure buried in the field.It is not a question of sorting yourself out, than trying to blog a bit on the side about "some outside Kingdom". You are that field. That's what I mean by Kingdom noises. I'm not really that interested in what Ern may or may not have said nearly 40 years ago, or what Rob Rufus may be saying if you personally are still going through hell to make sense of it all.
But while on a more impersonal description of the Kingdom...that is say for example the Dales...I want to describe it in such a way that it can be brought fully up to date, because the Kingdom is still like this today.
I'd found myself in this Catholic town in Grermany where the Holy Spirit was still being outpoured. My friend said he'd just come back from the USA and he had all the tapes from the famous 1975 Kansas City Shepherd's Conference, in which Thy Kingdom Come was the final message.When I phoned Ern at Stanley Jebb's (1984)I asked him...is it true what you said about your feet literally not touching the ground? He confirmed this. So bearing in mind the impact in the next few decades of this one message, plus in the UK of the Dales Bible Weeks, you ca imagine when I handed Thy Kingdom Come to my pastor Stuart Reid, I expected a good deal more than "Enthusiastic preaching!" as a comment. So we left the Baptist church. A few years later Stuart became "an apostle" around the Bucks area. He appears in Greg Haslam's book on preaching.
When we were known to be going to the Dales, some would not speak to us. The pressures to not go were intense.Last minute disasters. Financial problems. People practically disowning us. It was either God...or it was "cultish".
We chose to go.
We fixed our face to go.
Somehow God got us there...and the rest as they say, is history.
The Kingdom is no different today. It has fire round it. If you are a part of it many wont even talk to you. 40 years on and people still wont have you ministering in their churches. The Kingdom. The true one. Is ALWAYS going to be a hot potato. Ern said...at the moment we are on a Ziklag Assignment. Then there's a Hebron Mission. Then there's the final Jerusalem mission, and there is an anointing for all three, and a person who has been in one, doesn't necessarily have a permit to do the others.
I really believe with all my heart that this online stuff has been a part of the next phase.
And as I've written in the Waving the Sheaf of Firstfruits post, i really believe the Holy Spirit had to put the clampers on everything, wind down the spiritual gifts a moment, and like in the Two Winds Prophecy, (the First Wind)...get us all focussed on something hardly anyone in the UK church knows....that it is because Jesus lives in us as us that we are going to make it, not because of Dan Bowen, or Terry Virgo, or Chris Welch...it's because of Jesus. It's Jesus the anchor of our souls. It's Christ in us the Hope of Glory. Not whether Dan happens to feel very homosexual or not, or depressed or not, or wanted in churches or not....It really has nothing to do with Dan Bowen at all. Jesus decided 2000 years ago to buy up his field, mud and all, for the sake of the treasure that the Father had always assigned to this field.
While Dan is arguing over this with Jesus, He's already moved His excavators in. His building programme is already underway.
Thanks Chris for taking the time to explain a bit more what you meant by the original comment.
Starting to follow your train of thought - maybe it was the wrong day for me to read the original.
The one issue I would disagree with you on however is -
"I'm not really that interested in what Ern may or may not have said nearly 40 years ago, or what Rob Rufus may be saying if you personally are still going through hell to make sense of it all".
It is WHAT Ern Baxter said 40 years ago or what Rob is saying that brings focus and faith and hope to the hell I am going through now. I have been contemplating on the "wiles of the devil" - how smart he is, if he can deceive us into thinking that "God does not do thus and so today" - then he knows we will adjust our theology to meet our experience.
It's easy to believe when heaven is on earth and we are in a time of open heaven. It is tough to keep believing when we are not - but to still believe we should be.
Ern of the past and Rob of the present are prophets that remind us - and I won't neglect that.
What Ern and Rob bring is Word.I appreciate that you get gripped with this Word.I wish more got gripped by what they had to say.
My angle is that people who believe on this stuff are shocked to see it take root. Maybe that IS actually why you are having such a tough time.
That side of things is not what i get anxious over. I get anxious over you being lured or sidetracked by a system that might rerun and rehearse these messages, but get no nearer uncovering the true issues blocking the whole system. I'm sorry I'm not being specific. Did you ever see Columbo reruns? The way he kind of bumbled through but uncovered the whole plot in the process. That is kind of my method. I of myself haven't a clue...but the anointing within me uncovers what is really going on when I am with folk. Sometimes it takes weeks. Sometimes it's almost immediate. When I was in the Oasthouse conference last year, I'd only been speaking a few minutes and I'd managed to hit (unbeknown to me) about 5 major strongholds and my new friend Rosie got delivered from lifelong depression as I shared the 2 goats message.
One of the reasons I dont have anything to do with Terry Virgo's Church is not because of the good stuff...but because God might get me to do something embarrassing regarding the barnacles they've picked up en route over the last 30 years.
A huge number of people on the net are picking up the subject of "separation". Once you "see" this you never feel happy in churches that still maintain and promote it.The telltale signs are endlessly circling the same spiritual routes.Creating an ongoing dependency on the same leadership. People not really ever growing strong in their own right.Always praying for "more of the Spirit", yet denying the fulness that is already in the Body, and keeping it in chains.
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