The World According To Chris Brewer

There is a song we’ve been singing at JRA for the past few weeks now, originally performed by the famed Hillsong worship crew out of Australia. The buzz was that the pastor that wrote the song, Michael Guglielmucci, under the anointing of the Holy Spirit when he found he was stricken with cancer.

We’ve all been had!!!

Guglielmucci has admitted that he really actually wasn’t fighting cancer. Here’s an excerpt of an article from The Australian detailing the revelation:

It appears Mr Guglielmucci, who was a pastor with one of Australia’s biggest youth churches, Planetshakers, may even have deceived his own family.

“This news has come as a great shock to everyone including, it seems, his own wife and family,” Hillsong general manager George Aghajanian said in an email to his congregation yesterday.

“Michael has confirmed that he is not suffering with a terminal illness and is seeking professional help in Adelaide with the support of his family. We are asking our church to pray for the Guglielmucci family during this difficult time.”

The Advertiser was told last night Mr Guglielmucci may release a statement on the situation.

The Australian Christian Church said Mr Guglielmucci’s credentials immediately were suspended once he told the national executive that his cancer claims were “untrue”.

Mr. Guglielmucci, the local Applebee’s wishes to see you for a job interview today. You are scheduled right after a heavily tattooed man named Todd Bentley. We heard Bentley makes good Kool-Aid and we may hire him on the spot…you two as a team would be GREAT.

As for us singing the song at JRA, can we just kill this song off now? The words are true but I personally don’t see how it can be anointed when it was written by a liar…

UPDATE 11:11 AM — Turns out the guy has an insatiable appetite for porn too. Where is the accountability?

My mantra remains the same — keep prayin’, folks. Pray for the disgraced and once again, pray for those that have been duped.

From now until Sunday, the Church of God of Prophecy is broadcasting their 95th General Assembly online and the quality is excellent. Kudos to the tech team there for providing a television-quality cast with great audio and excellent video. Only thing I’m not a fan of is their lower thirds…too rainbowish.

The Assembly is live from the Sommet Center in Nashville, TN and can be viewed at this link.

Enjoy the webcast and keep the COGOP in prayer as they conduct business at this Assembly.

Trying to get this confirmed, but I have just received an email from a friend formerly in leadership at their local COGOP congregation that Palma Hutchinson, longtime International Youth Ministry coordinator at COGOP Headquarters, is on her way out:

Dear Friends:

Warmest greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus.

I’m writing to inform you that a new International Director for Youth Ministries will be appointed at the upcoming Assembly. Bishop Howard feels that the time has come for a change in youth leadership and will appoint a new director in August.

What an incredible journey the past ten years have been! I’m so humbled by what God has done in my life. Everything about my Christian journey has been miraculous—my conversion, my call to ministry and the opportunities God has given me for ministry. From those very first tentative steps into ministry God put a deep passion in my heart for young people. He’s gifted me with the ability to engage, build relationships and share the Gospel of Love with young people all over the world. I’ve seen the Lord saved, delivered and poured out His Spirit upon thousands of young people from all language, culture, ethnicity and religious background.

What can I say about my life with you—you who are in the trenches day after day reaching, loving and teaching young people. I honor you. You work so hard—in many cases without resources or much help. But you press on because you also share my passion to see young people come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. May the Lord continue to bless you and give you a great harvest of young souls.

It has been my pleasure to serve you. Just praying for you everyday has been a great joy in my life. There’s so much more yet to be done. I hope and pray that the next leader will run faster and harder to take youth ministry into the 21st century for the glory of God. I’m sure the Lord will bless him or her to take ministry to youth in the Church of God of Prophecy to greater and greater heights. The best is yet to come!

I don’t know what the Lord has in store for the next chapter on my journey with Him. I’m praying and listening to hear what’s next. I’ll let you know where I end up. In the meantime, if I can help in anyway in the future, please never hesitate to call on me.

Always making a beeline to Jesus!

Palma

If this is legit, congratulations and thanks to Palma for serving and may the Lord bless her in the next stage of ministry in her life. My personal opinion though, is that this move is overdue, and COGOP has needed a fresh face in youth ministries for awhile — particularly one who will focus on ministries for young adults as well. Palma had a great heart for the youth and that was evident — but what was also evident was the lack of execution of many ideas.

My vote for the next YM director goes to Kirk Rising of North Carolina. Watch it happen.

And at any rate, let’s continue to pray for the leadership of the COGOP, that they make wise decisions in their upcoming Assembly as far as polity and appointments go. This could be a major year that the church moves forward and I pray it happens for the membership’s sake.

The title of my post is the exact text of what I want to say to my fellow Christians who embrace a post-modern view on their personal beliefs in Christ.

Fellow Springfield blogger (and my most recent interviewee on Here’s What’s Brewin’) Jason Wert posted on his blog about a visit he took to the Front Porch, an outreach of a Springfield church called The Core that, at least from my visits there, exhibited a brand of postmodern Christianity that simply did not sit well with me as a fellow believer in Christ.

Having grown up in a Pentecostal church, I’m not used to people openly questioning conventional Christianity, the Bible or the basis of truth itself, but it seemed the pendulum swung too far the other direction in this case…I got a distinct feeling that while what this church was doing was good in its intent, it could actually cause some harm by what seemed to me to be wavering on important topics such as truth, sin, etc. The Core is noted among many people my age for openly holding discussion groups in which people can openly and without reprisal question the Bible, moral absolutes and the very basis of Christianity itself. While questioning is not bad in and of itself, discussing the issues without providing solid faith-based answers (yes that sounds like an oxymoron but it is possible) does more harm than good.

I have been in churches in which the feeling was too rigid, sort of like a “1984″-type setting where everyone is force fed the same thing and acts a certain way — and I have also been to churches and prayer groups where it is a bit too freewheeling and everyone carries their own belief of what God is and who he does (oh, but we’re all still worshipping the same God, right?).

I guess I have a really big question about postmodern Christianity. Why can’t the people who have embraced postmodernism simply crack open their Bible, pray to God for understanding, ask their fellow Christian believers and leadership for help in understanding instead of debating it, and simply grow some faith?

Now I will be the first to admit that I cannot paint with a broad brush, and I certainly am not one to question people’s spiritual walk with Christ. After all, Jesus said Himself to his disciples, “if they’re for me, they’re not against me.” But my question with postmodern Christianity is, how can you be fully for God if you don’t exhibit some concept of faith in your life rather than trying to find a concrete answer to everything?

The post-modern Christian will always be frustrated, because there are answers to some spiritual issues that simply cannot be answered here on earth. I can attest to this because I held a VERY postmodern view for a long time, and only since I resigned myself to simply reading the Word, praying for wisdom and guidance, and seeking guidance from those over me in the Lord, did my frustration with not finding concrete answers stop.

Honestly I think the postmodern view could serve to be a stumbling block to Christians who embrace it. By not fully embracing certain tenets such as truth, morality, etc. they are in effect not embracing the Bible that serves as a guide and an answer to their questions.

And I also believe the community of believers in Christ would be better served to stop debating Christ in and among themselves and go reach their peers and friends for Christ. Best way to do that, I’ve found, is simply be relational. Shouldn’t even have to talk about Christ to get his message across in the first place.

What say ye?

Tonight I was scouring my external hard drive for music projects I had created in Sony ACID and Cubase, and I happened upon an absolute gem.

It wasn’t an audio track that I created, but rather someone had recorded a message I spoke to the youth group at Lakeside Church in Newport News, VA on April 28, 2005. It was entitled “Who Cares?” and it was about spreading the love of Jesus to a lost and hurting world — and more importantly, each other.

I listened to the entire thing, all 39 minutes of it, and my mind wandered to the point two years ago when my faith was at the highest point it had been during my entire profession of Christianity. I was an assistant youth leader at Lakeside under John & Barbara Stevens’ leadership, and our youth/college group was 50 strong.

I was only 20 at the time, I had not met anyone from Springfield (much less even been here), and I had received word the week prior that I was slated to deploy to Iraq that October. It’s amazing how two years has changed things.

Listening to the message I shared that night, it was amazing to see how easily the points I wished to communicate found their way to everyone there. I remember the altar call and seeing nearly everyone step out, pair with someone and pray with each other. It was probably one of the only instances I can remember of when I really allowed the Lord to teach me as I shared His Word with others.

I feel compelled to share the audio clip with each one of you, my readers. If you can spare 40 minutes, or if you’ll be dinking around or working on your computer, click the play button below and let it play in the background.

It restored my faith to a good portion just to hear this clip and remember what I had allowed God to do in me. If He did it before, He can most certainly do it again, even after all I’ve been through after this audio was recorded.

The audio is a bit overblown in many portions, the file is 46 MB and 40 minutes long, but I think there’s some tidbits in there you’ll enjoy, if not the whole thing. Plus, you get to sorta get a feel as to what my teaching style is, and how I interact with a decent-sized crowd.

[audio:http://www.chris-brewer.com/showreel/04-28-05_youth-service.mp3]

The photo above shows our church’s exterior looking pretty spiffy, but after a few steps inside the building on 1616 North Robberson Avenue, you’ll know something definitely happened to the interior.

Sunday evening when we got to church, we all found out something horrible had happened to our church when the lights downstairs and on the east half of the church wouldn’t turn on. Half the church’s power was cut — no, zapped is more like it — when lightning struck a transformer during the windstorm last Wednesday night.

We all checked on the church’s electronic equipment and found out we’re in pretty bad shape. Twenty flourescent lights are dead, the computer in Pastor John’s office has been fried and the computer used with our projector might have bitten the dust as well, many lights downstairs aren’t working, and worst of all our projector isn’t showing any signs of life.

As bad as that is, it could have been even worse. Our sound equipment somehow made it out unscathed, and all the lights on the left side of the sanctuary do work. We have power to most classrooms downstairs and we’re still able to use all our kitchen appliances. We’re just going to have to do church like we did in 1986 for awhile.

This might sound kinda weird, but it actually felt more comfortable in the church on Sunday without all the lights and the projector. Granted, I was running sound, which I’m not too terribly fond of but it’s a good thing to do anyway, but just looking out over the crowd, the lack of light forced everyone to move over to the left a bit and the place looked a little more full as a result. Not having the projector on was beneficial because where you’d usually see people staring at the words, people improvised and worshipped on their own.

One thing I’ve noticed over my two months at Crimson House is that when something goes awry, we tend to disregard the circumstance and the Holy Spirit tends to move a bit more freely. It’s happened twice since I’ve been here. Rich and Anita were sick one Sunday and we had to worship off CD, but it didn’t matter because the Spirit still moved strong and we had a powerful altar call. Now half our power’s been cut and the majority of our electronic equipment is bacon, but we didn’t let it get us down Sunday. In fact we had two visitors, one of which received Christ.

To dig a little deeper, I have been astounded over the past week at how God has moved. Last night I had a conversation with my mom in which I revealed I’m not quite ready to take a giant leap of faith for God yet, but the time will come. Today, after I thought about that conversation, I remembered three things:

1. David, one of the good men of our church, received the baptism of the Holy Spirit last week at prayer meeting. I think it was the first time I’ve ever seen it happen when no one was even laying hands on the recipient. So the Spirit doesn’t operate like I thought it did, which is a good thing.

2. When the altar call was given last night, there was no open call for people to come and receive salvation. The young lady who stepped up and received Christ did so in and of her own accord, with the conviction of the Spirit, but no person begging her to come down and “get saved.”

3. During prayer meetings and altar services at church, when people have prayed, they have received healing, salvation, clarity, etc. instantly and without a period of begging, crying out to God for half an hour, or rolling around on the floor. It just happened, God offered it and they took it. Amazing.

With the same power that the bolt of lightning struck the transformer on the east end of our church last Wednesday, it occurred to me this afternoon that God definitely can’t be put in a box or limited by what we think of Him. And He showed me that the Holy Spirit is not dependent upon an earthen vessel in which to do His work. If He wants a work completed in someone, all he needs is a willing heart and their receptiveness to His Spirit. That’s it.

So turning back to the original point, it’s amazing how a work of nature that has the capability to kill, maim and cause untold damage, has seemingly crippled our church’s technological advancements for the time being — yet has helped us along for one weekend so far and taught me a wonderful spiritual lesson as well.

Now let’s pray the insurance claims process goes well.

Here’s something to break out of my case of writer’s block in a big way.

Omar preached a great message at church tonight, about how we need to be the ones to reach out to those lost and hurting in our community, show them the love of Christ, accept them into our church, and see them as God sees them. Great message — it wasn’t hard-hitting, but it was powerful and it was something that brought a new life to the parable Jesus told about the king who held the wedding feast and when no one who was invited came, they brought anyone and everyone from the highways and byways and they all enjoyed it.

So fast forward to home tonight.

Here’s a little insight as to my music collection. I have 5,050 songs on my computer (I just checked so it’s an accurate count), with maybe about 1,300 of them being labeled as Christian, Religious or Gospel.

The reason I told you that, is that out of 5,050 songs and me wanting to listen to whatever random song would pop up, suddenly “The Stand” by Hillsong United started playing.

Junk, I thought. I’m gonna skip to the next song.

For some odd reason though, I felt intent on listening to the lyrics and I remembered this was a song we had sung at church a few weeks ago, and I had really enjoyed it. So I kinda figured I’d sing along and look up the lyrics, which go as follows:

You stood before creation
Eternity within Your hand
You spoke the earth into motion
My soul now to stand

So I’ll stand
My soul Lord to You surrendered
All I am is Yours

I sang along with the lyrics and about three minutes in, I closed my eyes and imagined everyone in our church singing it again as we had done a few Sundays ago. I sang the lines I’ll stand with arms high and heart abandoned, and before I knew it I had risen out of my chair and raised my arms high in worship.

This is nuts, I thought. I never do this at home. Only in church.

At Shauna and Nick’s wedding yesterday I told Angie Thomason that I wouldn’t cry during anything, because I’m not a crier. In fact a few of my friends told me once that if I cried once a year it was a miracle.

About four weeks ago I cried at prayer meeting, and sure enough I did it tonight. I replayed the song and I closed my eyes as I imagined me being there while Jesus was being crucified. There was Mary and James standing over off to the left, the soldiers all keeping watch on the right, and me just standing there with the song playing.

As I began to pray after the song was over, I imagined something else. Could we call it a vision at this point, I don’t know. But I imagined that our church was full of people singing I’ll stand with arms high and heart abandoned, and they were all standing on their toes and fully extending their arms as if reaching for something that was just out of reach. Imagine that, Crimson House full of people engaging in such a wonderful act of worship, and it was like Jesus was standing there ready to bless everyone.

Anyway, that happened about 30 minutes ago and I knew I had to post that because it was gonna bless someone, I’m sure.

At Crimson House on Sunday, Pastor John spoke about how Jesus’ light testifies of itself. He related how some people cannot see the light because they are blinded by sin, and used a visual illustration of a candle burning, but two pieces of posterboard obstructed the audience’s view of it. He finished by showing that when we get saved and follow God’s will, God removes the veil of sin from our lives and we can see Him clearly.

I found that interesting because I just got done reading 2 Corinthians, chapter 2 this morning and verses 12 through 18 really spoke to me. Here they are in the New International Version:

Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold. We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from gazing at it while the radiance was fading away. But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

I thought that expounds on the point that Pastor kept repeating on Sunday, that Jesus’ light testifies of itself. When we are saved, not only do we see the light, but we also reflect it to others. We are expected to be representations of Jesus for those who need Him.

One great point is how Paul wrote “…whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.” That point serves as a backup to another Bible truth, “Whosoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” It’s a simple thing at first, turn to God…but to continue seeing the light and sharing it, we need to walk in it. Thus the reference to us continuing to be transformed, in verse 18.

Just thought it was neat what I read this morning, and wanted to pass it along before I head out to work.

If you’ve known me for any length of time you know that even as a Christian, and one who has been raised in a Pentecostal church and household, I do not personally speak in tongues or necessarily agree with how the church in general has adopted the practice. I believe it is definitely a biblical concept, but in my studies of 1 Corinthians 12 and 13 this morning, I was prompted to take a closer look at speaking in tongues as a general practice.

In 1 Corinthians 12:4, we plainly find out that there are a vast array of spiritual gifts, but they all come from the same Holy Spirit. In verses 8-10 we’re told the spiritual gifts are as follows: knowledge, faith, miraculous powers, prophecy, distinguishing between spirits, speaking in tongues, and interpretations. While those aren’t the full spectrum of the gifts of the Spirit, it does show that there is indeed more than one gift that we all too often try to exercise too much of, when another gift may be needed in a certain situation.

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The world of Air Force broadcasting is very small. Most people know each other as there are only roughly 175 people in the career field. The opportunities for networking are endless. I had the opportunity to meet and network with several broadcasters during my time in the Air Force.

God also watched out for me. Over my four-year term in the Air Force, I connected with and befriended several Christians who helped keep me in check, helped me build my faith and served as encouragers and accountability partners in my life.

I didn’t, however, get the privilege to serve at the same duty station as one fellow broadcaster whom I had seen on Air Force TV news and even introduced a couple stories I had written.

Not only is he a good broadcaster, but from his writings on his blog, he’s a fellow Christian. His name’s Lee Hoover and he has some really good insight as to Christianity and his personal walk with Christ. Not to mention a nice looking blog.

I’ve added him to the Blogroll below, and I encourage you to check out his site. Also check out his videos, especially his church college group promo. And be sure to pray the Lord’s blessing on his life as well.

If you read this Lee, God bless and keep the faith man!