THE MODEL IN MOTION
© Morris E. Ruddick
“For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things.” Acts 15:28
The world’s system is being shaken. Tenets of leadership, once accepted as the standard, are in question. The response of God’s chosen to this shaking; the response needed to impact 
nations requires more than what can be done in the natural. It demands a community-level response and a higher level of leadership.
The response needed is to foundationally restore God’s order. The response will flow from the ancient model of God-centered entrepreneurial community being fully set in motion by a people mobilized in God.
Within Christendom today are remarkable models to mobilize churches. Likewise, the last generation has seen incredible models that have mobilized missionaries. Now, we have entered the time of mobilizing the marketplace. All this has been good.
However, in each of these cases there’s been a serious blind-spot. That blind-spot is created from the premise that if you are successful in one area, then success will follow in other areas. The blind-spot has also held that if you just employ a successful Western church model, then by doing it enough it will transform society. Not so.
Church growth should be the by-product rather than the goal. Mobilizing missionaries should be the by-product rather than the goal. Spiritual success first pivots on changing the spiritual climate to the level that it impacts a culture. It is a process. It is a process that emanates from God’s order. At its crux is the restoration of the biblical model that fully embraces the interactive dynamic of the spiritual, the economic and community, all operating in concert.
Getting the Model Right
The greatest heroes of faith were catalysts for change; they countered worldly standards with God’s wisdom to bring strategic-level change. In each case, they heard from God, and harnessed strategies from the Spirit of the Lord that shifted the spiritual climate and impacted the culture. In the cases of Joseph and Daniel, against all odds, this shift was done from within the world’s system.
In the cases of Moses and David, the standard of God’s order was elevated and the shift began as the community was mobilized to respond. In all of these cases, the catalyst was a unique brand of leadership; leadership by anointing.
Getting the Priorities Right
Let’s tell it like it is. The marketplace movement is attracting many who operate on the unspoken premise that if you just throw enough money at something, then the result will have God’s blessing and bring the needed restoration. Some assert that if we just plant Western churchianity around the world, it will solve all the problems.
Yet, despite all the mobilization of recent years, both the West and the world seem to have more problems now than ever. America’s leadership is divided and the nation is teetering economically. Haiti has had a lot of money thrown at it; ten times more in aid than it has had investment. Still it remains for the most part under the bondage of corruption. Nigeria, considered one of the most evangelized nations in the world remains one of the most lawless and impoverished. Churches there are escape-hatches from the moral degradation that reigns around them. There indeed needs to be something more that brings genuine change.
Discerning God’s Big-Picture
As a whole, worldly success and power has blinded us to the urgent need for God’s ancient model. It is a spiritual shortsightedness that tends to result in our majoring in minors and getting the priorities wrong. Jesus told the Pharisees that they strained gnats and swallowed camels. In all their religious priorities, they missed the forest for the trees.
Jesus warned that in the latter days, indeed the days we have entered, that we should be wary of false prophets and false messiahs who misguide. We should beware of modern-day Pharisees with myopic mind-sets, whose leadership causes us to miss the big-picture and the model drawn from the ancient paths.
There is a need to restore and a need to revive things spiritually. It involves more than mobilizing people and organizations; it involves the release of a people who, as a community, will demonstrate the reality of God. That’s at the foundation of revival, when it is the Spirit of the Lord truly orchestrating things, rather than man.
It goes back to the opening scripture and the words of the Apostle James as he set in order the priority of the “necessary things” for the early church. Over the centuries, God’s ways through His people has had a pattern. It’s been the simple things that have confounded the wise, as the Lord has used ordinary people to do extraordinary things to break the mold; the mold of the bondage of corruption. That takes God being at the helm of decisions. That means leaders and a community who truly hear His voice.
The Model in Motion
Something very significant happens when a community begins operating in the way that God intended. King David’s leadership exemplified this. When Israel and Judah came together it brought about the dynamic of dominion. That is God’s original mandate. The rest of the world stood in awe, because it was recognized that God was with them. That wasn’t all. With dominion established, it led them into a time of great peace and prosperity reflective of God’s order restored.
Historically, when Jews have been a part of another culture, the dynamic of community has proven to make them stand out and shine as disproportionate achievers and contributors. Only one other ethnic group prospers so well when operating as a culture within a culture and that is the Chinese.
Yet, the strategy is not just community, but business-based community. When God is at the helm, it flourishes even more. In a handful of Asian nations, the Chinese also represent the foundation of Christians. Their employment of Christian community far excels anything even approached by Christians in the West.
Years ago in the West, an attempt was made to replicate community parameters in corporate settings. A book was written about it in the 1950s titled “The Organization Man.” It fell short as a culture driven by conformity and blind-obedience.
God’s Strategy of Community
However, God’s dynamic of community is very different. It is one of service and cooperation. It is one of nurturing and fostering opportunity for others. It is a safe-place with God at the center with His people sharing a common purpose as they apply their diversity of gifts for the common good. It is a light shining in the darkness because God is there. It is God’s people operating beyond that place of human effort turning the ordinary into the extraordinary; an assembly of those known by His name operating in the exponential in making a difference by enabling others. It is the group setting through which God’s Kingdom rule is established.
God’s strategy of community pivots on being a trust society; with influence extended to those around them. It ignites a God-centered middle class bearing the potential for growth and increase. Since God has had a people, in civilizations without a middle class, God has sent the Jewish people in to serve this function as merchants and bankers and people of business. In these roles, they have become a people of influence and change, as they have served as advisors to kings, rulers and leaders in governments and businesses with the wisdom of God’s standards.
When God’s people begin truly operating in community; when the model is set in motion, it is then that God’s full strategies begin to be released. This has quite often been in conjunction with the pressures of operating against impossible odds. Yet, under pressure, this has been how God’s strategy operates at its best: Light against darkness. Again and again, the pressures have galvanized and melded the role of community and the role of community leaders.
The model that began with Abraham, of God-centered, entrepreneurial community works. It works against the odds.
Alignment for the Strategy
When priorities became confused in the first century church, the Apostle James decreed the need to give focus to the “necessary things.” So it is today, that many with good intentions have been majoring in minor things. Priorities have been approached in reverse. There is a need for the alignment of God’s strategy.
We’ve entered a time when the roots to the faith that were expunged by Constantine in the fourth century are being restored and released, with great impact. It’s through the simple things that God is confounding the “wise.” The results are breaking the mold; and building a path into the restoration of God’s order and the fulfillment of His purposes for His creation.
Biblical community is the necessary ingredient to embrace the strategies needed for the times we have entered: to prepare and to be prepared as the world hits the disconnects of its paradigms.
Disruptive Strategies and Anointings
That means preparing for change that will challenge the old order of things. It is change that pivots not on heightened religious activity that marked the Pharisees, but rather on God’s order for a society, with the foundational truths outlined in the Torah. It is change that disrupts the counterfeits and establishes God’s Kingdom dynamic.
Within business terms, a disruptive technology or innovation creates a new market or value structure. It eventually goes on to disrupt an existing market or value structure, often displacing what may have been a technology standard. It typically happens unexpectedly, first by innovations designed for a different set of consumers in a new market and later by lowering prices in an existing market.
Not unlike the way that personal computers established a whole new order of how business is conducted, God’s people historically have employed disruptive strategies in the process of restoring God’s order. Leadership-wise, the heroes of faith operated with disruptive anointings. They were change artists establishing a new standard and order of things; God’s order.
God’s disruptive strategies and anointings are explosive. There are three age-old, big-picture targets for God’s disruptive strategies within the marketplace today: economic, cultural and power. These are the “necessary things.”
Economic. Economically, God has had the original economy. It is based on the Lord, both individually and community-wise being the Senior Partner and leading the way.
Cultural. Culturally, we have the examples of both Joseph and Daniel, who despite the extreme adversity and culture of sorcery, changed the spiritual climate of pagan nations and established God’s order to harness their resources for God’s purposes.
Power. Power-wise, Jesus spent His earthly ministry raising the bar and endowing a small group of followers with the keys to employ righteous power in a corrupt world.
We’ve entered a new season. It is a time to be prepared. It is a time to prepare and be poised to put the model in motion.
It is a time for leaders to see beyond the blind-spots and counterfeits; and get God’s big-picture perspective right. It is a time to reach beyond our false illusions and start applying this age-old, three-fold model of the spiritual, community and the economic working together.
It is a time to be alert for where believers, communities large enough to be a culture within a culture, control the resources with the model in motion. It is a time to be alert for alliances with modern-day pharaohs who seek the prophetic wisdom and model that modern-day Josephs can apply to their resources. Of the top 100 world economies, 53 are corporations. There’s a world whose hopeless condition is looking for the REALITY of God operating, within a people, who can truly demonstrate it.
Before us is the change, the paradigm shift of all ages. The need is for those who will hear God’s voice and obey; mobilized communities who will apply their disruptive anointings and set the model in motion. The need is for prophetic stewards, who like Joseph, are blessed to be a blessing; who wield the authority of the anointing to lead the displacement of the bondages economically, culturally and power-wise; and with a focus on the necessary things, to restore God’s order.
“And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands for us; yes, establish the work of our hands.” Ps 90:17
