Jarrod Cooper: Worship, signs and wonders and church unity

Sunday 28th June 2015

Tony Cummings went to Kingston Upon Hull to talk to worship songwriter, pastor, author and broadcaster JARROD COOPER



Continued from page 3

So what should we be doing, how should we be structured? The Bible is full of structure, organisation, layers of authority and leadership, ways of operating - so we've got to try to discover some of those and work through them. Smith's right: when Spirit and Word collide, the prophesiers and the miracle-workers, those who love the presence, start getting on with the organisers and the engineers who see the church is something to build. The church is not a river, the church is a city with a river running through it. It's an engineering job: I will build my church. That's what this book is all about: how can we do that? Healthy revival is found somewhere in that message. "It's all a river!" No, it's not: a river needs banks, and people live on the banks; they drown in the river. How can we be those fruitful trees along the side of the river, bearing fruit in season?

Tony: What do you think about church unity, seeing the necessity to work with other churches even if their teachings are different?

Jarrod: This whole concept of Spirit and Word coming together is people with different emphases that we feel very precious about. Sometimes, in our church journey, we discover something, perhaps fairly early in our development, and we build a castle around it. Somebody discovers something about intercession, they'll stop there, they become the First Church Of The Intercessory Saints. Or people discover something about deliverance: that's it, they're now the deliverance church. There's so much more to learn. When we get to Heaven, a lot of us will go, "I was a fool! I stopped so early, made a castle around the first thing I learned. It seemed so exciting at the time and I wanted to defend that." I think we've got to get a little more chilled out, keep our L-plates on our whole lives.

I grew up in a Catholic society, in Gibraltar. Our church was the only Spirit-filled, tongue-talking church on the rock - an Assemblies of God church. Funnily enough, the people most like us were the Catholic charismatic branch - they were more like us than the local Church of Scotland or Anglican church - so I've known that the Holy Spirit can grab the heart of a Catholic, fill them with the Holy Spirit and all this kind of stuff. You'll have protestants worrying about the Mary issue, but what I've found, interestingly, is they would say very soon, "It's not by praying to Mary I got filled with the Holy Spirit." It's amazing how the Holy Spirit does the job for us without us getting cranky. The reality is that the Catholic church, as in any church, if you're born again, if you get to know the Holy Spirit, then we're brothers and sisters; pick your denomination. There are many Pentecostal churches these days that aren't truly Pentecostal. They're Pentecostal in creed - it's on their internet site - but they've not seen a miracle in a decade.

I think there's an incredible unity going on now. I was speaking to an apostolic figure who would be my father's generation, and he was saying, "30 years ago, we were doing unity events - national ones - and we were 'together for the Kingdom'. But we weren't really together and it wasn't really for the Kingdom: we argued about tape-sales afterwards. The aspiration was there, but the spirit of unity hadn't yet got us." I have found the last few years - and this really interests me, again in light of the Smith Wigglesworth prophecy - is there's a spirit of unity coming in. In this country - I'm not saying it's happening everywhere - people are genuinely putting down competitiveness and getting on together at a brotherhood level. American ministers have come in, seen how UK ministers are interacting together in a couple of forums I happened to be involved in, and they said, "You guys are light-years ahead of where we are in America. We're still posturing and competitive."

So let's not sit around arguing about our differences. I think something remarkable is going on with regards unity, but it's not because I have to turn up at every unity thing that goes on. Any church minister could spend every day in a unity meeting, but never get the job done: it's the spirit of unity, not posture of unity. CR

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.
About Tony Cummings
Tony CummingsTony Cummings is the music editor for Cross Rhythms website and attends Grace Church in Stoke-on-Trent.


 
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Reader Comments

Posted by Malcolm Heap @ 10:57 on Dec 5 2018

I just wondered if I may have your postal address, please, to send you something. Thanks. My wife has been following some of your progs on TV. God bless. M



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