Praise Reports from Twin Falls, Idaho, July 27-29

** Five years ago I made my first missionary journey to Boise, Idaho—and I often joke that the Lord tricked me in order to get me there! Idaho is like a foreign country to a Southern boy like me. But I fell in love with the people the first time and my trip last week was my fourth time to minister there. Again, I met some wonderful people and am ready to go back.

** The Voice of the Lord conference was a time of encouragement and exhortation. Both men and women came for three days of worship, teaching and prophetic ministry. One special highlight for me was meeting a Native American couple, Albert and Wilma LaRance, who pastor on the Cheyenne reservation in Lame Deer, Montana. We became friends and I am looking forward to taking a ministry team some day to Lame Deer.

** Christie Moore was the organizer of the Voice of the Lord Conference. She is a traveling evangelist and prophetic minister who has spent most of her time overseas until now. Today she feels she will be doing more work in the United States. It was great to work with her. We had both men and women speakers at this event and it was awesome to see how we flowed as a team. That is the new paradigm for the church: Men and women working as kingdom partners, without all the issues of hierarchy that so many of us struggled with in years past.

** I spoke on Friday night about the seven paradigm shifts the Church must make in this season. People were hungry to move on with God. Many came to the altar that night because they were struggling with disappointment—mostly because of ministry dreams that have not been fulfilled or because they were wounded in a church. The Lord brought wonderful healing so that people could get back on track with God’s plan for their lives.

** We had a great victory in the Saturday morning service, when one of the speakers, Abby Olufeyimi of Nigeria, began to sing a prophetic song. The song and the accompanying African rhythms caused everyone in the auditorium to dance in the spirit and the Holy Spirit gave us such a wonderful sense of His presence. It was as if He literally scooped us up and got us all on board with His accelerating agenda.

** We also did a panel discussion on Saturday morning about some controversial issues in the church, including George Barna’s book “Revolution” and the house church movement. I was able to issue a call for balance and caution in relation to this trend. This was strategic since many charismatic Christians in Idaho are entertaining the ideas in Barna’s book. All of the speakers were able to clearly warn people about an independent, renegade spirit. Now more than ever we must have integrity and humility in ministry and a commitment to New Testament church authority.