We wanted to take a few minutes to update you on some exciting things coming up at Revival Town Seattle.

One important piece of information is that we will not be meeting at St. Lukes in Ballard this next Friday night (September 25).  We are going to be heading over to Bothel to join with the International Fellowship of Ministries (our mothership) at their fall conference.  Our good friends Mike and Linsey Wallace will be ministering and it will be nothing short of amazing!  If you would like more information on the conference you can go directly to their site:  IFM Global Harvest 2009

Also we wanted to keep you updated on some amazing people that we have on the schedule to come and rock the house!

October 2nd – Mike and Linsey Wallace

Kingdom Life International Ministries (Facebook page)

Mike and Linsey have a deep passion and love for Jesus.  Their hearts burn to see people get radically touched by God and set free.  They regularly affect healing and miracles as they minister in God’s love and power.  Linsey is an amazing worship leader, and travels to many ministries all over Washington.  She carries a powerful anointing in worship that leads people into deep encounters with the Lord.

November 6th – Tyler and Christine Johnson

One Glance Ministries

Tyler and Christine Johnson are lovers of Jesus that minister a spirit of revival in the Northwest as well as in the Nations. Signs, wonders, miracles, and encounters with Jesus follow the Johnson family wherever they go as they fall deeper into love with Jesus.

November 13th – Lydia Bucheit

Healing the NW and International Ministries

Forerunners in faith healing, the Buchheits have a reservoir of experience in ministry after being in ministry for over 15 years. They move in incredible faith, love, compassion, generosity, healing, and miracles.  Lydia is an amazing woman that resides in the river and has the gift of taking everyone with her, leading them to many encounters with God.

Below is the e-mail we received:

Greetings to you in Jesus wonderful name,

We hope and pray that you are doing well, we are doing well by the grace of God, how are things going for you, how is everybody at RTM, we are remembering you all in our prayers. we thank you for everything, we thank you for the RTM ministry in India, the Lord is doing wonderful things in India through RTM ministry.

We thank God for the RTM orphanage and church. God bless you all.

A brief update of what is happening at present.

1. we just fixed the gate last monday, it took us quite some time to fix the gate, as we did not get workers, they were so busy with other construction work, but now they are available, and fixed our gate a couple days back, right now we feel safe, and secure. even our  RTM orphans feel the same, we thank you for helping us to fix the gate….

2.even floor work also has been finished, now the surrounding place looks nice, neat, before it used to be so messy with mud and sand , but now it looks so clean, thank you for all these things.continue to pray for our RTM orphans, we are scared of swine flu, it is not yet reached to our place, we pray that it will no more spread across our place and state.even other states.

we are looking forward to seeing you soon, Bless you,

In Him…

Pastor Don and Raju

P.s. we are sending you the pictures of our gate.

It is my hope that Revival Town would be both a local church family, and a watering hole. There will undoubtedly be people that call us their church home (which we love!), however we also want to serve as a watering hole where people can come and get refreshed, blessed, and ministered too. Friday night was fun because it felt like we had a great mix of people from both ends of this spectrum.

It was nice to have a little “fore-taste” of what is to come and I am looking forward to the coming months as we continue to find our “voice” and figure out what God has for us on this adventure!

I’m down in California this week but Chris will be sharing on Friday, I am sure he would love to see whomever shows up! Come out and say hi if you like.

A few weeks ago I actually had someone warn me to be cautious in my involvement with St. Lukes as they are still “church in a box”. When sharing this conversation with a good friend of mine later that week his response to me was; “Well, that box changed the world”

Years ago people came from all over the world TO that location (St. Lukes), had encounters with God, and it touched the world. As I was pondering this I had this thought pop into my head; I believe that God is shifting things so no longer is it about people coming from all over the world for encounter. Instead it is about people going FROM that location TO the world to BE the encounter.

It’s not so much about the physical location as the heart, I’m not interested in building a “revival center” where people flock from all over the world to have encounters with God. As an aside, I understand that has happened in the past, and I am not speaking ill of that type of movement at all. I simply have the feeling that God wants to see people sent out, that its not about getting people IN the building its about getting people out!

As part of a class I am taking I have read through the Gospels and half of Acts in the last month or so. I am repeatedly smacked in the face with the absolute truth of Christ’s message. He didn’t come to show us what God could do on earth, He came to show us what one MAN, submitted to God could do.

What would happen if we truly grasped onto the meaning of that and all it entails? Box or no box, it is my hope, my prayer, and my purpose that we would see a generation equipped with the truth that “All things are possible”. That we would see those very men and women launched OUT into the world to be the encounter, be the revival, be the reformer, and see His Kingdom come to earth.

At the time, this seemed like a daunting task, but after a very long weekend and a few too many hours of googling and reading articles, I realized that I would be able to simply convert “the grand experiment” blog into the website for Revival Town Seattle.

We were using wordpress.com to host our blog for the grand experiment, I discovered that for just under $10 a year I could actually purchase a “domain masking” upgrade from wordpress. This means I didn’t need to purchase hosting, install software on a web-server, teach myself how to edit custom style sheets, or any other web development stuff thats way over my head. This means I could use the simple web based editor that I was already used to,  purchase the domain revivaltownseattle.org and have it point to our already existing blog! All that I had to do from this point was figure out how to convert the grand experiment blog into a workable web page for Revival Town Seattle, this proved to be a rather taxing project as I didn’t quite have the flexibility I wanted with wordpress but I was still fairly happy with the results. The other  good news is that down the road, if I want to stay with the wordpress platform I can actually just download the actual software and install it on my own web-space which would give me complete flexibility when it comes to layout, and I could even add plugins for things like podcasting and online stores.

The other project I accomplished was setting up all our e-mails, this means that along with now having an actual website for Revival Town Seattle we now have @revivaltownseattle.org e-mail address’s. I actually ended up going with google apps to host our e-mail, this ended up saving me quite a bit of money as I didn’t have to pay go-daddy for the service. This proved to be quite a task as I ended up with a conflict in the DNS and Nameservers due to the domain masking we had purchased from wordpress, but again, I was able to power through it due to my google-fu and ability to stay up late into the night.

All in all, a very productive weekend, and for the two of you that are still reading this (Hi Dad, and thanks for being a trooper and slogging though this Mom!) if you are ever looking for a cheap(ish) way to set up domain specific customized website/email here is the breakdown:

1. WordPress.com blog – free

2. Domain registration with go-daddy – $10 (year)

3. Deployment of google apps – free

4. Domain mapping with wordpress -$10 (year)

In October of 2008 Meg and I made the decision to leave our current church in order to pursue a long felt urge to someday launch a ministry here in Seattle. The when and how of this vision were still in the works, but after a few months of rest, we started meeting with a small core group in our apartment living room in Seattle. We didn’t have a plan, or an idea of what God would do, simply a desire to explore and experiment, to see where He wanted to take us. I created a blog called “The Grand Experiment” with the hope that friends and family could follow along on our journey.

I started trying to put on paper  some of the ideas, thoughts, hopes, dreams, and vision that God had put in my heart over the previous years. It was exciting to finally see these things taking shape as up to this point, it had been simply a seed gestating in the unseen realm. We began to identify our vision, mission, and even started making a list of our core values, as we gathered for fellowship, worship, and prayer in our living room. Early on in these meetings I received a call from Jason Phillips, the founder of Revival Towm Ministries (RTM), he had just returned home from a three month stint teaching at the Fire and Fragrance DTS in Kona Hawaii. While in Kona God had been speaking to him about expanding the Revival Town family and Jason asked if I would be interested in helping start a Revival Town Seattle.

Over time, it became abundantly clear that partnering with RTM to pioneer Revival Town Seattle was right where God wanted us to be. In making this decision we were operating out of the principle that ministry flows out of relationships, we have known about RTM almost since their inception. In fact, in late 2004 Jason actually came and spoke at the opening night of the Seattle Healing rooms which myself and my wife were the directors of! One of the highlights, and many confirmations, of this whole process was when Jason emailed me the core values that his team had come up with, these values lined up almost line for line with the list that we had created.

Well, the rest is history! In July of 2009 we started meeting on Friday nights at St. Lukes in Ballard and began a new part of the journey that God would have for us as. The building we have started in is actually the same chapel that housed  a great charismatic renewal back in the 70′s, people came from all over the world to this very spot and had powerful encounters with the Lord, thousands were baptized in the Holy Spirit and this renewal played a large part in forming what is now the modern charismatic movement.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and share in our adventure.

“The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.”

Tonight I was supposed to talk about the 10 plagues, in Exodus 7-12. I got up, as has been my Friday routine, and spent a good portion of the day preparing for that evenings message.  By the time 5 o’clock came around and we needed to head out I had an impressive 2 pages of notes (I usually don’t do hardly any notes as it kind of throws me off when I am trying to share). On the way  to St. Lukes I had this nagging sense that what I had prepared was not for tonight. I don’t know a better way to say it other then the “still small” voice was whispering in my minds ear (does your mind even have an ear?) that He had something else for us tonight.

As we were setting up for the meeting I kept asking God, if not this, then what? About 20 minutes before the meeting I hear that same still small voice, “Idolatry, Hard Heartedness, and then pray for breakthrough” so I flipped over my 2 pages of wonderfully prepared notes, and used them as scratch paper to write out a few things about idolatry and hard heartedness that I noticed while preparing for the message.

5 minutes before the start of the meeting I am sitting down with Chris and Meg , who happen to be the only other two people there, and try to express my concern for not having anything to speak about. Chris in his infinite wisdom says “Hey, it’s gonna get messy man”, this is why I love Chris.

Well, the meeting went great actually, Meg lead worship off the piano which is always a treat, I stumbled through my hand-written notes we had a great time of extended prayer afterwards and best of all Jesus was there, and we even had a healing! Brian healed of extreme back-pain!

As Bill Johnson would say, “Yay God”

I also always promised to myself that I wouldn’t start every post with “sorry it’s been so long”, so now that I have started this post with something else, sorry it’s been so long, and thanks for coming by!

I shared with you in our last update our news that we are partnering with Revival Town Ministries to create a Revival Town Seattle. Last Friday we held our 5th meeting at St Lukes Episcopal in Ballard. It has been a blast so far and I wanted to give you all an update, so for the sake of brevity I have shortened it into a few points:

- I kind of started things backwards in the sense that we began meeting before we had some of the “structure” in place, Now mind you, we had the strategic planning (vision/mission etc.) stuff taken care of, but when it comes to things like, you know, having a bank account so we can receive tithes and offerings, I guess you could say we were a little behind the curve.

- Along those lines, we are in the process of joining an organization called International Fellowship of Ministries (IFM) . Many of our friends and partners in ministry are part of IFM including Revival Town Ministries, Elisha’s Request, and Healing the NW. Not only can IFM help provide the reliability and accountability of being part of something “bigger then ourselves” but they also will handle licensing, ordaining, and will eventually charter our non-profit allowing us to take tax deductible donations which should clear up the above mentioned issues.

- I just finished filling out our articles of incorporation with the Secretary of State via a wonderful online form. Although this process probably caused even more thinning of what’s left of the hair on top of my head, it was surprisingly satisfying to accomplish. To be completely honest, I am really excited right now, it seems to bring an even more concrete sense of legitimacy to this amorphous “thing” that’s been in my heart for all these years.

- As I mentioned, we have been meeting for 5 weeks, when we first started, I felt God directing me to study the Exodus story. I feel like so much of our lives is lived in this tension between “the promise” and what we are experiencing at the moment, or what we see with our eyes. I feel that as we study the Exodus story and see the journey of the Israelites as they received their promise, and eventually entered their promise land, there will be things that we can learn from their success’s and failures. This has proved to be rather exciting for me as I have never done any kind of “series” before  but it has proved to be a valuable, fun, and challenging experience, over-all I would say I am just trying to “embrace the process” for what it is and enjoy the ride.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and thanks again for all your support and prayers, it is much needed and appreciated. If there is any way we can serve you in all of this please let us know as we would love to help in any way we can.

Feel free to drop us a line, you can find us on Twitter (@RevivaltownSEA) and on our Facebook fan page. Of course you can always come join us on a Friday night (St. Lukes at 7pm every Friday) just be sure to bring your appetite as the meeting almost always migrates to “Snoose Junction Pizza” down on Market St.

Blessings and hope to see you soon.

We are partnering with Revival Town Ministries, to launch Revival Town Seattle!

What does this mean? We will still be largely responsible for the development, design, and actualization of the church (little c) but we get a few added strengths,  the biggest is simply partnership. One of my core beliefs is that ministry flows out of relationship, we have known these guys for several years, and so many of their friends are our friends. In short, we are all a “family” and I am looking forward to exploring even more what that looks like as we walk all this out.

We are doing a progressive roll out of the ministry, kind of like a rolling start in NASCAR or whatever racing deal that is. We are currently in the process of establishing our 501(c)(3) status, creating our board, and finalizing other administrative details but in the meantime we are going to begin meeting on a regular basis. Feel free to come and join us for teaching, worship, and prayer here are the details:

Meetings are held every Friday starting this Friday 7:00pm at St. Lukes (Ballard) in the small chapel (the older one) on the NW corner of their property.

5710 22nd ave NW (click for link)

Seattle WA 98107

You can also follow us on twitter for announcements and updates at www.twitter.com/revivaltownsea

Most importantly please be praying for us over these next few months, we have a lot to do (develop web-pages, find worship leaders, get people healed/saved/delivered, you know all the fun stuff) and we could use your support.

Blessings

One of the things I have been amazed by is the amount of friends, family and co-workers that have rallied around Jason and his wife. It makes me wonder how those who do not have this type of support system make it through things like this.

One of the things I am looking forward to as we develop this church is (hopefully) creating a place, a family, a community where we can foster this type of support. I look around and realize that one way or another, everyone is looking to belong. Often times this deep seeded desire to “belong” leads to situations or relationships that are negative, controlling or otherwise unhealthy. I feel so strongly that we have the opportunity to create an environment where authentic, true, healthy, life affirming relationships are fostered.

This does not mean that the pastor goes out and does all the hospital visitations, it doesn’t mean that the pastors wife is responsible for throwing a baby-shower for every new addition to the church. It does mean, that we have the opportunity and responsibility to equip and encourage people with the GIFT of hospitality, we get to help people realize that we have the opportunity to serve and lay down our lives for others. There will be times when we have excess and we can give, and there will be times when we are the ones in need, we can share resources, love, and support one-another.

I can picture it in my minds eye, like a green-house,, an environment where you can place a hurting, dying plant that may be starving for water, and it will be nurtured, watered, and bathed with sun-light until it in turn, becomes healthy.

Related posts: Core Values