Even in communist China, Christians are quietly sharing the message of Christ behind the scenes during the Olympics.
Since 2001, when the International Olympic Committee awarded the city of Beijing the 2008 Olympic Games, many Christian Olympians have been viewing the impending event with both trepidation and excitement.

For this year’s games, set for August 8-24, the Chinese government has stated that religious evangelism of any kind will not be tolerated. Yet Western Christians disagree over observing the moratorium and about whether evangelism should be practiced without prior government approval.

Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham, sparked controversy this year when he told reporters in China, where he had been preaching legally and meeting with government officials, that Christians should not evangelize during the Olympics because it is against the laws of the country.

Bob Fu, president of the China Aid Association, took issue with Graham’s comments, calling them “offensive and inappropriate” and saying that the underground church in China welcomes evangelistic efforts, reported.

“The Chinese Christians are law-abiding, patriotic citizens,” Fu told the online news service. “But when an unjust law demands them to go against their faith and Jesus’ teaching of the Great Commission, they cannot and will not concede to a ‘faith moratorium’ in order to please an atheistic government during the Olympic Games, even if that means enduring imprisonment and torture. Mr. Graham’s comment is a deep offense to hundreds of house-church prisoners and their family members.”

Graham released a statement in June in response to the criticism.

“I support Christian groups that want to do ministry in China during the Olympics,” Graham said. “However, I believe we must be sensitive to and respectful of the local church and the impact we as outsiders could have on them. We are guests in China, and anything we do or say has a lasting effect on Chinese Christians that will be there long after the Olympics.

“If we intentionally or inadvertently engage in any illegal activity we could jeopardize the well being of these Christians and the church in China.”

The dangers associated with evangelizing or practicing Christianity in ways not approved by the government of the communist country are no secret. For years, expression of the Christian faith has been suppressed–particularly for unregistered church groups–through confiscation of Christian literature, arrests, imprisonment and detention in labor camps.

For Christian athletes headed to Beijing for the first time, however, the visit is seen more as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity not only to compete but also to make a lasting impact for the gospel in the influential Asian city.

The idea of sharing one’s faith abroad is exciting to many of the Olympians, who believe the opportunity to reach the Chinese people cannot be glazed over simply because of government restrictions.

Cat Whitehill, a veteran defender on the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team, has been paying close attention to the situation. She hopes, in spite of a recent injury that will prevent her from competing, to be part of something special for the 2008 Olympic Games.

“I know a few missionaries in China,” she says–for whom she is praying, asking God to use them during the Olympics. She has to avoid using the name “God” in e-mails sent to her friends there because the government will flag the correspondence.

“You can’t really bring your Bible out in public without someone looking at you. But what’s cool,” she adds, “is that the Chinese culture is really accepting of God because they want something different. They want someone to love them despite what’s going on. They’re very receptive.”

U.S. athletes will be briefed on how to deal with the media in China–and will even be instructed on what to say and what not to say during the Olympics, according to U.S. marathon record-holder Ryan Hall. But he is one of several Christian athletes who is determined not to let fear get in the way of faith.

“I’m not going to be ashamed to be myself,” he says. “I’m going to give honest answers to the media. I’m not going to bring up my faith just to bring it up, either; but I’m going to be myself and be who God has called me to be.”

According to retired freestyle swimmer Josh Davis, who competed at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta and the 2000 Olympics in Sydney and won three gold medals and two silver medals, the majority of evangelistic efforts take place outside the Olympic Village and are geared toward the host country and the international fan base.

“That’s 99 percent of what happens,” Davis says. “Ministry groups from North America and all over the world converge upon the Olympic city with hundreds of tracts and resources in hand.”

The opportunities for ministering among athletes occur most naturally when the competitors are one-on-one in their dorms, at the lunch hall, on sightseeing excursions or even at the competition venues.

Davis says that “most of the ministry happens on a relational level between athletes–not so much when an outside person is ministering. Athletes are funny that way.”

At the Goodwill Games in 1999, for instance, Davis was there to cheer for fellow Christian athlete Laura Wilkinson at her platform diving event. “I could tell she had a look on her face like she wasn’t 100 percent,” Davis recalls. “I said, ‘Laura, can I pray for you?’ And that was a real turning point for her in the competition. So it was a moment like that. It was more relational and one-on-one. That’s where you see more progress or fruit with athletes.”

Religious faith is an observed element of the Olympic Games. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) assists host cities in providing a designated building for religious services. Specific rooms must be geared toward the faith traditions that are in attendance.

When the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, were approaching, the IOC agreed to allow the formation of a group of 27 Christian chaplains as part of the Protestant chaplaincy program. As a stipulation, the committee included access to all other major religions, including Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism.

Madeline Manning-Mims, who as a U.S. Olympic runner competed in Mexico City (1968), Munich (1972) and Montreal (1976) and won gold in Mexico City and silver in Munich, was one of those original 27 chaplains.

Manning-Mims has worked all over the world not only as a sports chaplain but also as a speaker, singer and interpretive dancer since she retired from competition in 1981.

This year, however, for the first time since 1988, she will not be taking her usual role with a U.S. team as a chaplain. Manning-Mims says the Chinese inexplicably denied access to all but a handful of foreign chaplains and instead opted to supply chaplains from within their government.

None of that dissuades her, however, from a conviction that the athletes are there ultimately to glorify God on an international stage. They aren’t there to be saved, evangelized or proselytized, she believes. Instead, they are there because they have been called to compete at the highest level–whether they acknowledge God or not.

And the chaplains are there, first and foremost, she says, to “develop and strengthen [the athletes’] level of faith.”

“The athletes need to believe that they can do something that’s impossible,” she says.

“When you get there, you have done everything physically that you need to do. You have broken mental barriers. Then, you’re trying to produce at your highest level in front of the whole world with the weight of your country on your back.

“If you don’t have a reservoir of faith to draw on and if you’re depleted, you will not be successful–whether you believe in Jesus or not. Your faith level needs to be empowered and intact so you can believe that you can do what you were born to do.”

She says prayer is the “most strategic thing” that can be done for an athlete, and it is obviously the one thing the communist government of China cannot prevent believers worldwide from doing.

“I’m talking about intercessory prayer,” she explains, “where you are travailing for the very life of that athlete. God can do things you can never do in a thousand years and things that you don’t know about.”

She suggests that groups of intercessors focus on very specific prayer points and seek the Holy Spirit for things to pray about “that you haven’t even thought about for that athlete.”

Chipping Away the Walls

As for evangelistic efforts in Beijing or other parts of China, it is imperative, Christian athletes believe, that Western Christians be respectful of the rare opportunity they have to minister in a communist country. Any evangelistic effort in the city, whether large or small, should be preceded by prayer and practiced with sincerity, they say.

During her more than two decades in sports ministry, Manning-Mims has seen evangelistic efforts at the Olympics take many forms with varying degrees of success. She has been blessed to reach people through well-thought-out street evangelism, mass media and prison ministry efforts.

But she has also been embarrassed by the haphazard approach of some overly zealous and unprepared Christian groups. She advises anyone planning to minister at the Olympics to “seek God for His plan.”

“Have a plan and then let the Holy Spirit lead from there,” she says. “But just to go there empty-minded, like God hasn’t given you the sense to put a plan together, you’re opening the doors for [Satan] to come in and do some major attacking.

“And he’s not just trying to attack you, he’s trying to attack everybody involved in the plan of God. If I’m going to tear the kingdom of darkness down, I’d better have a plan.”

It is also imperative, she says, to connect with other Christians who can follow up with those who have been evangelized. No matter what, all efforts must be done with excellence, and believers should approach the Olympics with a prayerful attitude of expectation.

Retired wheelchair marathon record-holder Jean Driscoll has won multiple medals at both the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games. She has been disappointed at the protests in Europe and the U.S. against China–mostly due to the government’s treatment Buddhist monks in Tibet.

Still, she hopes that a more Christ-centered approach might chip away at the walls of separation. “I think this is a tremendous opportunity for the Western world to have influence on China’s leaders and their people,” Driscoll says. “Rather than shunning them and judging them, I think we should wrap our arms around them and mentor them and guide them. We need to show them a new way.”

Manning-Mims believes that when Christian Olympians are ready for action and prepared to engage in relational evangelism it will ultimately lead to powerful moments of salvation and grace.

“The other athletes watch very closely–even athletes from other countries,” Manning-Mims explains. “There’s a circuit that you run in. They’ll see you maybe five or six times during that running circuit and they’ll get to know you.

“They’ll see how you handle times you win. They’ll see how you handle times you lose. You’re sitting next to them waiting to go out there to compete, and it’s just an awesome time. You have all kinds of opportunities to show the love of Jesus.”

Whitehill is one of many athletes who hopes to see Christian Olympians have an impact in 2008 on not only other athletes but also the fans. She believes the Olympics present a great opportunity for the Christians who are competing because it allows them such a unique platform for sharing the gospel.

“There’s not a whole lot that the Chinese government can do against the Olympics right now,” she says “They’re trying their hardest. [The athletes] have an incredible platform just because of the Olympics, and it’s going to be so neat to see what God has in store for the nation of China.”

Hall agrees and is equally energized by the thought of playing some sort of role–big or small–in a seed-planting effort that might have ramifications for years to come.

“I know that [God’s] got something planned for China,” Hall says. “I don’t know what exactly it is, but I’m excited to be able to contribute what I can. God’s always at work.

“I believe that He’s definitely going to do some neat things at the Olympics. It’s something to look forward to, something to be excited about.

“It is part of God’s plan,” Driscoll adds. “This is part of history. It’s easy for us to look back and see the lessons that history has taught us after we have lived through those times.

“I’m excited about what is to come. You can’t help but be touched and influenced by the world coming into your home and being an example.”

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Chad Bonham is a freelance writer based in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, and producer of the sports television program The ProFILES.

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: To read the testimony of Olympic gold medalist Madeline Manning-Mims, go to .

The underground church has grown as quickly as China’s economy. Although religious freedom is increasing in the nation, Christian persecution is far from over.
It’s been said that whatever you hear about China is true–somewhere. Tales of persecution have become well-known, in particular the story of Brother Yun, the evangelist from rural Henan province whose testimony has shaped many Westerners’ view of Christianity in China. The best-selling book The Heavenly Man tells how, after many years of house-church ministry that saw moves of God alternate with cruel reprisals, Yun eventually escaped into exile.

The Heavenly Man is an important record of Christianity in China, though its publication date of 2002 may have obscured the fact that it recounts events from the 1980s until Yun himself left China in 1997. The signs are that since then, despite ongoing conflicts in provinces such as Henan and Anhui, the situation for many Christians has shifted some.

Several Chinese church leaders say the government is acting on its slogan of building a harmonious society, and the church is one of the elements it is cautiously embracing in its quest for reconciliation.

Spring* is a co-leader of a Beijing house church, a live wire organizer with a finger on the pulse of a citywide network. She points through the window and across a broad avenue to two brand-new apartment blocks that have only just been occupied.

“There are four house churches there,” she says. “And in this building,” indicating the huge corner-complex where we sit talking, “we also have many churches.”

It’s impossible to say how many house churches operate in the sprawling capital, she says, but they number many thousands. Her own church runs four congregations in Beijing, and has another in the neighboring port city of Tianjin that numbers around 300 members. It is unregistered but well-known to the Religious Affairs Bureau (RAB), the same enforcers of religious policy who pursued Brother Yun.

They have paid a number of visits, usually low-key, though they once arrived with police to prove a point and break up a meeting. “They came and said, ‘If you are not registered, you are illegal.’ So we just moved to another building,” Spring says.

Spring’s equanimity might surprise readers of The Heavenly Man. With memories of Yun’s brutal persecution, how can illegal house churches such as hers now treat the authorities so casually?

“In the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China freedom of religious belief is a basic right enjoyed by all citizens,” says a 1997 government white paper. But the law is quicksand; there is no place for due process or legal precedent, as legislation exists to sanction Communist Party control, not citizens’ rights.

Though often couched in magnanimous phrases, the vagueness of many articles makes them so elastic that they are useless as objective principles. This, and the party’s own record of ignoring the law, lie behind an intuitive indifference to legal codes that pervades Chinese society.

“Nothing is really governed by constitution or by laws or by regulations. Almost everything that’s governed is determined by relationships,” says David Wang, former president of the missions group Asian Outreach, who still travels widely in China.

He is referring to guanxi, the underlying principle of virtually any transaction here. Ventures of all kinds try to curry favor with useful and influential people who, on perceiving mutual benefit, will reciprocate. Once established, it is these guanxi relationships that most often govern dealings between the parties.

For the house churches, it pans out as ongoing dialogue with local officials, particularly the RAB. But, as Wang points out, house churches can be worlds apart, varying from rustic backwaters to rapidly urbanizing areas to the sophisticated milieu of the cities. Their experiences are likewise diverse, though one major blessing is that their diversity has not split them into denominations.

Changing Times

The first house churches emerged among simple farm folk in rural communities, the result of foreign-missionary efforts from precommunist days. After the Communist Party’s victory of 1949, the new government tried to direct all Protestant churches into its Three Self Patriotic Movement, representing self-administration, self-support and self-propagation, tying them to the party and proscribing foreign influence.

But Three Self churches preached communist doctrine, not the gospel. Although at least some remnants of independent churches survived, even through the Cultural Revolution, they operated in peril and isolation. Thousands were imprisoned, tortured and martyred for preaching the gospel.

Over time, however, Christianity reached the towns and cities, where it was easier to organize and form networks. From there the networks spread back across the countryside.

Toward the end of Deng Xiaoping’s hold on power, which ended in 1992, there was a softening in official attitudes to religion. Spring remarks that many young people became Christians around this time and attributes their conversions to the disillusionment and soul-searching that followed the massacre at Tiananmen Square in 1989. It is significant, she says, that many pastors are around age 40.

Sensing the more lenient attitude, some churches made approaches to the RAB, with mixed responses. In Brother Yun’s home province not much has changed.

“You go to a small village in Henan,” Wang says, “where I would say both the officials and the house-church leadership are less educated, they are older, they are more traditional, and therefore they would be … of the ‘just after the Cultural Revolution’ mind-set. That is, we still have class enemies in our society.”

Ping*, a longtime associate of Brother Yun’s, says the RAB still aggressively “hunts” unregistered church leaders in the provinces where the majority of house-church Christians reside. Rather than easing its oversight, the government is merely changing its tactics, he says.

For example, in Beijing in the past, when authorities learned of house-church meetings, they raided the location, fined everyone and told participants’ employers that they had been caught in an illegal religious gathering. “But now, suddenly, the authorities are fining the landlords that are renting the spaces to the churches with heavy fines,” he says. “That means the churches are finding it very difficult to gather in large groups.”

And though China is poised to become the world’s largest Bible producer, Ping says the books are largely for export; domestic Bible distribution is still tightly controlled.

“In the last 20 years, we have distributed more than 10 million Bibles,” Ping says. “If it were just possible for me to have my tracts and purchase Bibles with no strings attached, I would gladly do that, but that is not the reality. It does not relate if you want to have one copy or five copies from the bookstore, but if you want to have several boxes or a whole truckload, it is still the same.”

However, the house churches in the major cities, with their growing professional-class memberships, have found the RAB much more accommodating.

“They find that relating and dialoguing with the urban house churches is a very important step toward building community harmony,” Wang says. “For instance, in this [May] earthquake, my understanding is that the Ministry of Civil Affairs has taken quite strong initiatives in approaching the different urban churches to attract and mobilize their medical personnel to become engaged in relief work.”

Although trends can be identified, there is no nationwide consistency of approach.

“While there has been a general decrease in persecution in some areas, I caution against observers being too optimistic,” says Paul Hattaway, director of Asia Harvest, which serves Chinese house churches. “Many house church leaders from some [rural] areas in Henan and Anhui see little or no changes, and some report that the last 12 months in the build-up to the Olympics has been the most difficult for them since the severe persecution of 1983.”

In early June, Texas-based China Aid Association (CAA) reported that nine house-church members in Henan province were detained for assisting earthquake victims. In Hebei province, a Bible school was raided in May, according to CAA, and in the same area China’s Public Security Bureau broke up a prayer service for earthquake victims.

“Don’t think of ‘a nation’ of China. Think of a geographical area called ‘China’ with many different ethnic and language groups and different situations in every part of the nation,” says Dennis Balcombe, pastor of Hong Kong’s Revival Christian Church.

Originally from California, Balcombe has spent 40 years in China ministering in all areas and circumstances, and speaks Mandarin and Cantonese fluently. Whereas he once spoke of the vicious persecution of Chinese Christians and told of churches being bombed, he has since noted a remarkable and sustained change.

Yes, some places still have problems, he admits, citing Hunan province, south of the similar-sounding Henan.

“I was in Hunan just recently, and … it’s still very communist, it’s still very run-down, the infrastructure is not up to what it is in the coastal areas,” he says. “The people, the thinking and the Christians are still very small compared with other parts of China, and there’s still persecution.”

Nonetheless, he says: “We find all over China much more freedom. … Compared to how it was in the Cultural Revolution, or 10 or 20 years ago, China is very free.”

It is, however, a freedom that needs to be earned and protected. Balcombe has spent a lot of time developing good relationships–guanxi–with police and the RAB, stemming from a time when he was actually blacklisted by the government and barred from entering China. He invited several officials to his church, paying for their airfare and accommodations in Hong Kong.

“Because I paid for everything they were embarrassed not to come to church,” he says, “so they came … and they liked our church, and so now I have a lot of these officials as very good personal friends.”

It has enabled him to build bridges between the police and Christians wary of officialdom, often justifiably so because of past abuses. And it gives him a privileged insight into the latest official thinking.

Says Balcombe: “They’re basically saying: ‘We think having a good, strong Christian church in China is a good thing. … Not only do we not oppose it, we really want it because Christians are hard-working, they’re moral people, they have values, they’re honest people, they pay their taxes, they do what they’re supposed to do, they don’t get in trouble–as long as they don’t get involved with politics.’”

‘One Body’

Although dialogue can open doors, attempts at secrecy can cause problems. “You cannot outsmart these people,” Balcombe has said. And likewise Ruby*, another unregistered house-church leader in Beijing, smiles ruefully and nods her head. The authorities know what’s going on, and although they now take a less harsh approach, they can still make life tough if they want to.

A graduate of a prestigious overseas Bible college, Ruby has developed a widely recognized teaching ministry since her return to China and is in daily contact with church and network leaders. She offers another angle on official thinking: The government no longer knows how to deal with the house-church movement. It knows networks are forming and growing but is not taking action.

The reason, she believes, is partly that the churches are ebbing as a perceived threat, but also because the old heavy-handed repression would no longer work. There are too many churches in the networks now and a half-billion cell phones in China. If trouble brewed, word would soon get around and the networks would come to support one another.

The demography of church membership is also changing, especially in the major cities, Ruby explains. Many students and professors are asking about Christianity or becoming Christians–or as Wang puts it, “A rippling effect is spreading higher up in society–more intelligentsia, more professionals, more leaders.”

More party members, too, Ruby believes, though the numbers are unknowable because atheism is one of the membership conditions. But today’s new members, especially the young, are much less likely to have joined from political conviction.

Xinhua reporter Lori* openly admits in an English class that she views her Communist Party card as a passport to promotion. She sees communism as no more than a label now, especially after China’s 2001 entry into the World Trade Organization.

The Three Self churches have changed, too, reflecting the evolving government stance. Wanda*, a senior officer in a Hong Kong nongovernmental organization that has extensive dealings with churches in China, says the separation between Three Self and house churches is melting fast.

“Now the division’s no longer so clear because you’ve got Three Self pastors coming out and forming house churches,” she says. “Talking to some of the urban church leaders, their views are actually that one day there won’t be that division, we’ll all be in one body … working hand-in-hand.”

Ruby’s teaching ministry has expanded to embrace Three Self churches, which are also discovering a new appeal to youth.

Balcombe points out that “a lot of young people are flocking to Three Self churches because they’re becoming very evangelical, even very charismatic, even very Pentecostal.” He adds his voice to Wanda’s and to the voices of those who say systematic Bible teaching is a major need, especially among leaders.

Obstacles remain, however. House churches are still required to register before they are considered to be legitimate Christian groups, but many churches refuse to register because that would require them to have a designated church building, an ordained leader and defined meeting times. Many house churches do not have these. Registration means surrendering to Three Self, which would reorganize the church with a new leadership, premises and meeting times.

For many, such as Spring, the sacrifices would be too great. “The church doesn’t want to be controlled by the Three Self Church because they don’t have any relation to us,” Spring says. “Why should we be regulated by them?”

Her church’s plan to combine its five congregations would be considered reckless by some house-church leaders, as it would draw too much attention.

“Usually if you keep between 30 and 60 people [the police] let you alone, depending where you’re at,” Balcombe says. “If you get over 100 people, especially if you’re getting a few hundred people, you’re really pushing it.”

It may or may not provoke stern measures. Balcombe tells of a growing church in Guangdong province that now comprises several congregations. “From time to time the group would get too big–60, 80, 100 people–and the police know what’s going on, so they’d come by and say, ‘You’d better split your group up now,’” he says.

China is hugely diverse–the fact must not be forgotten–but the church has earned official favor that will be hard to dislodge in these days of promoting societal harmony.

“China is an open door,” Balcombe concludes after reviewing the changes and new opportunities. “The bottom line is that communism has been a tool of God to strengthen the church and create a hunger in the hearts of the people.”

*Denotes name change to protect identity.

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Adrian Brookes is a freelance writer based in Shenzhen, China.

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: Brother Yun, an evangelist in exile from Henan province, offers his thoughts on U.S. Christianity at .

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Having survived cancer, a nervous breakdown and Hurricane Katrina, Bishop Paul S. Morton is spreading a message of hope in New Orleans and across the nation.
Bishop Paul S. Morton leads churches in New Orleans and Atlanta, broadcasts nationally on radio and TV, and records award-winning gospel music. But his office in New Orleans’ Uptown district remains remarkably humble.

A narrow hallway with old, linoleum floors leads to a room where Morton’s disarming smile and voice are the finest features. Except for the crisp black suit and gold tie he wears, Morton seems more like an accessible father than a major ministry personality. “Christ gets all the glory [for the ministry’s influence],” he says with conviction.

It is conviction born from recent years of trial.

In 1998, Morton suffered a nervous breakdown after he made some financial decisions for his church that he admits were poor. In 2005, his then-20,000-strong New Orleans congregation was smashed by Hurricane Katrina and scattered to cities across the South. The following year he was diagnosed with colon cancer that is now in remission. Morton, 57, quickly says God carried him through it all.

“It makes me feel proud just to see how God is using Bishop Morton to touch and change lives of people,” says his executive assistant of 14 years, Jan Breaux. “As much as God uses him, he becomes more humble.”

His humility registers in the soulful pleas Morton issues through his music. In 2003 he released Let It Rain, a powerful cry to be filled with the Holy Spirit’s power. Then in 2006, after his struggles with Hurricane Katrina, cancer and mental illness, he returned to New Orleans, giving God glory in a new CD, Still Standing.

He believes God has him right where He wants him. After more than 40 years in ministry, Morton now feels called to be “a sign to the nation,” offering to America the very “message of hope” he preaches to his New Orleans church. The road, however, has been challenging.

Bapticostal Power

Morton grew up in Windsor, Ontario, the son of a popular Pentecostal pastor who preached widely in Canada and in nearby Detroit. But despite his father’s church and the ministry relationships he had been forming since he began preaching at age 16, Morton sensed God telling him, “Leave and come to New Orleans.”

“It did not seem to make sense,” Morton says in reflection. “I asked the Lord–‘Why would You send me to the South, where I know nobody?’”

Although he was reared in the Church of God in Christ, Morton says God led him to visit Greater St. Stephen Missionary Baptist Church in New Orleans’ Uptown district. Six months later, he became assistant pastor, drawn to St. Stephen’s Baptist emphasis on salvation and the Word. In 1975, the church’s senior pastor died, and Morton, at 24, was tapped as successor. He later married the pastor’s daughter, Debra.

The church saw many conversions leading to exponential growth. Christopher Sylvain, a former nightclub musician, became a Christian through Morton’s ministry. “I was fascinated with the bishop,” says Sylvain, now Morton’s first assistant pastor. “I’ve always just been fascinated by his desire to be closer to God.”

While partying one night on Bourbon Street, another young man heard the Holy Spirit tell him, “Go to church.” During an altar call at St. Stephen, Avery Johnson accepted Christ. “I had considered myself a Christian, but I wasn’t,” Johnson says. “That day, I changed dance partners.”

Today Johnson, who hit the winning shot for the San Antonio Spurs when they won the 1999 NBA championship, is the head coach for the Dallas Mavericks. “I have tried to be a good example of what a man of God is,” Johnson told Charisma. “Whether it has been witnessing, the way I play, the way I prepare or the way I forgive somebody, I try to be a good example.”

As Morton’s first church began to swell, he never stopped operating in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. He finally accepted the fact that he “knew too much about the Holy Ghost to ignore it.” So in 1992 he changed the church’s name to Greater St. Stephen Full Gospel Baptist Church.

He convened top church leaders–including Kenneth Ulmer of Faithful Central Bible Church in Los Angeles and Eddie Long of what was then New Birth Baptist Church in Atlanta–to found the Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship, seeking to meld the best of the black Baptist and Pentecostal traditions.

With Morton as presiding bishop, the fellowship held its first national conference in 1994, when 25,000 descended on the Louisiana Superdome. Today the fellowship has more than 5,000 affiliates worldwide, though several of its founding leaders, including Ulmer and Long, are now independent of the group.

Meanwhile, St. Stephen’s ministry in New Orleans kept expanding. In 1997 it purchased a military base and renamed it St. Stephen City. It provided affordable housing to needy families. St. Stephen Manor opened near Morton’s Uptown church to house about 50 families.

Morton bought an office building to serve as headquarters for community-related efforts and the Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship’s national headquarters. By the late 1990s, Greater St. Stephen had grown to more than 20,000. Morton was named an honorary city council member and was included in many key New Orleans leadership efforts. But despite his busy schedule, he remained committed to his church.

One Church, Two Cities

Morton has always kept a busy work schedule. “Tomorrow, we go in and take care of office business in Atlanta,” Morton says as he waits for a plane in New Orleans.

When Hurricane Katrina hit, Morton and his wife planted a second church, Changing a Generation Full Gospel Baptist Church, in Atlanta. “I prepare to lead a Bible study in Atlanta on Thursday, and we also have a Bible study in New Orleans that either my wife or I lead,” Morton says. “Most often, I am out preaching Friday somewhere around the United States.”

There was a time when Morton made 65-plus trips a year to speaking and singing engagements–plus caring for his church. “And there are only 52 weeks in a year,” laughs Brandon Boutin, 27, who is an elder at Greater St. Stephen church.

But when Morton suffered from a nervous breakdown in 1998–an episode he speaks candidly about–he says God showed him he needed to slow down and make quality time for refreshment and family. Today Morton seeks to model a more balanced lifestyle.

“He is very kind, sensitive, forgiving,” Sylvain says. “And he lives it with his family so you can see it through his family.”

With his wife of 31 years, Morton has raised three children to adulthood. All now are actively involved in ministry. And he has mentored many spiritual children who now work alongside him.

“Bishop Morton is a father,” Boutin says. “He’s an honorable man of integrity. He speaks truth to power; he’s very caring. He is definitely a role model, and a man that believes in striving for excellence.”

These days, Morton often rises at 3 a.m. to pray; after a few hours he takes a quick power nap. “It’s just me and the Lord, no phone ringing,” he says. “I have to have that quiet time.”

When Hurricane Katrina hit on August 29, 2005, wiping out virtually all of Greater St. Stephen’s New Orleans facilities except for the original Uptown church building, God again used catastrophe to bring Morton into a new place of ministry.

Morton was in Baltimore when the storm passed through. Weeks later, when he finally was able to enter New Orleans, his members had been scattered to Houston; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Atlanta; and other cities.

He dove right into rebuilding efforts, helping lead a coalition of pastors. The city looked to him for strategic organization of the thousands affiliated with his ministry.

But today Morton is unsatisfied with the rebuilding effort. “It is still going too slow for me,” he says. “When you look at the Ninth Ward in east New Orleans … it still seems like a Third World country.”

There is way too much red tape, he says. Just getting a building permit takes months. So does accessing federal and state funds. The problem is “definitely politics,” he says. “Now the past governor is out and a new governor is in. We are giving time to see if the problem gets better.

“We are really trying to get to the bottom of it. We’re really sick of all the excuses. Let’s just recover.”

Morton says the hurricane exposed public corruption in the city; it showed the ugly realities of the city’s deep sin problems. And it exposed latent racism, he says, something he believes remains not only in New Orleans but also throughout the nation.

“I think that we have come a long way concerning race in our nation,” he says. “Never in my lifetime did I think our white brothers and sisters might support a black man like Barack Obama for president as they have.

“We have come a long way there. But we have to learn how to appreciate each other. It’s still a problem in the church. This generation is really tired of it.

“It’s not just on the white side. … We have to realize that there are some intelligent, gifted people on both sides [of the racial divide], and we need to be united.”

Giving the Holy Spirit Control

Such candor about tough issues is a trademark of Morton’s. He never shies from speaking his mind. For instance, when the Congressional Black Caucus signaled support for gay marriage, Morton went to Washington, D.C., to take them to task.

And when a 13-year-old black youth was arrested and charged spuriously with murder last year in New Orleans, Morton challenged justice officials via the media, asking if race influenced the charges.

Morton is also willing to scrutinize himself on the hard issues. Recently he shifted his views about women in ministry, which he had opposed. He did more than talk. In May, he made Debra the senior pastor of Greater St. Stephen in New Orleans, lowering himself to the role of co-pastor. He remains senior pastor in Atlanta, with Debra as co-pastor.

“When I was young, I was big on having Debra stay at home and not work and raise a family,” he explains, chuckling. “I was very old-fashioned then–young, but old-fashioned.”

Sylvain calls it “a living illustration of all [Morton’s] theology.”

“Elder Debra has the authority; Bishop Morton doesn’t hover over,” Sylvain says. “This shows the Pentecostal and Baptist churches that the Spirit has control and can speak through whom He would speak through. It recognizes the power of the Spirit.”

These days, Morton also is emphasizing the importance of biblical balance. “We teach prosperity in our churches, but … we also preach about getting saved, too,” he says.

He believes his stepping down as senior pastor in New Orleans models a balanced view of men’s and women’s roles. He swells with enthusiasm when he speaks of his wife’s advancement in ministry.

“For her to come in and initially serve as ‘first lady’ in our church, then head up our ministries in New Orleans, then in 1993 become my co-pastor and now become my senior pastor in New Orleans–that’s wonderful. I am so proud of her when I see her preach. She gets everything she possibly can out of a passage of Scripture.

“She takes people very seriously. She is a lover of people. That’s important.”

After Hurricane Katrina struck, Morton had considered starting a new church in Houston, where many of his people were. But he says God directed him to plant the congregation in Atlanta. It did not seem altogether rational, much like when God first told him to move to New Orleans in his youth.

Morton started the Atlanta church with 220 people, and he says God immediately began blessing the congregation. Playwright and film producer Tyler Perry, a former St. Stephen member, gave the Atlanta church $5 million to help get it started. Based in Atlanta himself, Perry is helping build a major new campus for the church’s ministries and plans to put his new movie studio there. “It’s going to be like Hollywood in Atlanta,” Morton says, noting that today the church draws 6,000.

Morton believes his church complements, rather than competes, with other “great churches in Atlanta,” such as Creflo Dollar’s World Changers ministry and Eddie Long’s New Birth Cathedral. Morton says he leads “one church in two cities.” The two-city congregation has adopted a theme: “Changing the way we do church.”

“We can’t be cliquish,” Morton says. “We can’t just praise the Lord while we are in church–we have to go outside the church.”

Again, Morton emphasizes balance. There has to be balance between praise and worship and preaching salvation and repentance, he says. Concerned about many who seem to be straying from the faith into spurious teachings, Morton wants to preach this message of balance to as many as possible.

“The devil is taking the most powerful and influential people and using them around the nation to lead people astray,” he says. “Look at Oprah Winfrey. Go to the Internet and see the message she’s telling people. We have to break yokes and tell people to dare to believe again. People are searching, and Jesus is the only way.”

Meanwhile, Greater St. Stephen stays firmly planted in New Orleans’ struggling, crime-ridden Uptown neighborhood. Twisted concrete and hurricane debris linger everywhere.

But Paul and Debra Morton are not put off at all. They remain as committed as ever to their New Orleans body. Its outreach ministries have dropped by necessity from more than 60 to about 15, but the key ones continue–ministry to drug addicts, to the homeless, to senior citizens in need of housing.

A sign outside the Uptown church building proclaims to New Orleans that it can still count on the Mortons. They are “repositioning” their ministry efforts, the sign says, not retiring them. After all, Morton says smiling, “Jesus stayed on earth 33 years, then He repositioned.”

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Joe Maxwell is journalist-in-residence and adjunct professor of communications at Belhaven College in Jackson, Mississippi.

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: Go to to find more organizations still helping to rebuild New Orleans.

Believers tend to see failure as a sign of spiritual deficiency. But God can use it to teach us and strengthen our faith.

Have you ever failed at anything in your life? Do you know anyone who has?

If you’ve been around long enough, the answer to both questions is a resounding “yes!” That means you know how difficult it can be to bounce back from a failure, especially if you are a Christian. Believers seem to think that spiritual people will always do the right thing, and that a misstep or failure is a sign that our spirituality is deficient.

Yet with faith, it is possible to be even stronger after a failure. Numerous biblical figures, including Peter, Moses, David and Abraham demonstrated this truth.

When I conduct seminars on this topic, I lead people through the following logic:

Question: Is failure a learning experience? Answer: Yes.

Question: Can we often learn more from failure than from success? Answer: Yes.

Question: Are we always to be learning and growing? Answer: Yes.

I consider the most significant redemptive failure in the Bible to be Samson. Samson is mentioned as a hero of the faith in Hebrews 11, right along with Moses and Abraham. “And what more shall I say? For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Barak and Samson,” the writer of Hebrews tells us (v. 32, NKJV).

When Samson’s name is mentioned, there is no asterisk or footnote pointing out what a colossal failure he was. In fact, it was his faith during a time of failure that earned him this honorable mention.

Let’s look at three lessons we can learn from Samson’s life. If you don’t know his story, take time now to read about him in Judges 13:1-16:31.

1. God is often leading you, even though you may not know it.

The Bible tells us regarding Samson: “Now Samson went down to Timnah, and saw a woman in Timnah of the daughters of the Philistines. So he went up and told his father and mother, saying, ‘I have seen a woman in Timnah of the daughters of the Philistines; now therefore, get her for me as a wife.’ Then his father and mother said to him, ‘Is there no woman among the daughters of your brethren, or among all my people, that you must go and get a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines?’

“And Samson said to his father, ‘Get her for me, for she pleases me well.’ But his father and mother did not know that it was of the Lord–that He was seeking an occasion to move against the Philistines. For at that time the Philistines had dominion over Israel” (Judg. 14:1-4).

Notice that Samson’s parents did not realize his request for a wife from among the Philistines was prompted by God. In a similar way, God is working in your life to fulfill your purpose whether you realize it or not. It doesn’t matter what you can see or understand. Faith requires that you believe God is at work in your life, even in the failures and hardship.

Once I was driving someplace and got lost. The delay made me late for an important meeting. I was so distressed that I was not on time–punctuality is one of my highest values. Yet several years later I encountered a situation in which I was able to use the same roads I was on when I was lost to get to another place I needed to go. God was using my failure to prepare me for future success.

I know this example doesn’t seem significant in view of the much bigger issues we face in life, but doesn’t the end result hold true for more crucial failures, such as relational breakdowns or business losses, as well? God uses our failures, which can be monumental at the time, to prepare us for some future success.

In Samson’s case, his family didn’t understand what was going on, and neither did Samson. God was leading him, however–positioning him right where God wanted him to be so he could do what the Lord wanted him to do.

It may not seem as if God is leading you, but He is. When you feel as if He isn’t there, trust Him more, not less. Put your hope in the God of your purpose and move on. Have faith in God, even in the midst of a seeming failure.

2. Don’t ignore or run from your past; face it.

Samson’s story continues: “So Samson went down to Timnah with his father and mother, and came to the vineyards of Timnah. Now to his surprise, a young lion came roaring against him. And the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and he tore the lion apart as one would have torn apart a young goat, though he had nothing in his hand. But he did not tell his father or his mother what he had done.

“Then he went down and talked with the woman; and she pleased Samson well. After some time, when he returned to get her, he turned aside to see the carcass of the lion. And behold, a swarm of bees and honey were in the carcass of the lion. He took some of it in his hands and went along, eating. When he came to his father and mother, he gave some to them, and they also ate. But he did not tell them that he had taken the honey out of the carcass of the lion” (Judg. 14:5-9).

I would argue that your most significant and life-giving testimonies are not the great successes you’ve had but your greatest failures and the way in which God helped you recover from them. Like Samson, you may have wrestled some lions such as loneliness, bankruptcy, broken relationships and unemployment. Even if you are young, you undoubtedly have testimonies of defeating, through the power of God, lions that came to destroy you.

When Samson returned to the lion he had torn apart with his bare hands, it brought forth something sweet that fed both him and his parents, even though it was dead. What is in your past that you thought was dead? Is it a failure, or something you enjoyed doing but no longer do? Or is it a significant victory that you don’t talk about anymore?

Perhaps it’s time to revisit that and see if there is something sweet in it. In faith, go back over the lessons you learned during a time of failure and see if they can help you or someone else today. Use those lessons to write a book or screenplay, counsel others or simply encourage yourself as you face today’s trials. When you faithfully recount your victories in the midst of failures, God will help you bring forth something sweet.

3. When you fail, run to God–not from Him.

If you are familiar with Samson’s story, you will recall that after falling in love with the Philistine woman, Samson unwittingly gave her the secret to his strength–his uncut hair. The Philistines used this knowledge to take his strength away, and he ended up shaved, blind and in prison. But while he was incarcerated, God prepared him for his ultimate victory, described in the passage below.

“So it happened, when their hearts were merry, that they said, ‘Call for Samson, that he may perform for us.’ So they called for Samson from the prison, and he performed for them. And they stationed him between the pillars. Then Samson said to the lad who held him by the hand, ‘Let me feel the pillars which support the temple, so that I can lean on them.’

“Now the temple was full of men and women. All the lords of the Philistines were there–about three thousand men and women on the roof watching while Samson performed. Then Samson called to the Lord, saying, ‘O Lord God, remember me, I pray! Strengthen me, I pray, just this once, O God, that I may with one blow take vengeance on the Philistines for my two eyes!’

“And Samson took hold of the two middle pillars which supported the temple, and he braced himself against them, one on his right and the other on his left. Then Samson said, ‘Let me die with the Philistines!’ And he pushed with all his might, and the temple fell on the lords and all the people who were in it. So the dead that he killed at his death were more than he had killed in his life” (Judg. 16:25-30).

Earlier in this chapter we find a significant verse: “However, the hair of his head began to grow again after it had been shaven” (Judg. 16:22). Even though Samson failed, the source of his strength (his hair) began to return when he focused again on fulfilling God’s purpose for his life.

At this point in the story, however, Samson was a miserable failure, or so it seemed. He was defeated, blinded and forced to entertain his enemies. Yet Samson prayed and God heard him, and he literally brought the house down at his last performance.

You have to admire Samson’s faith. If failure disqualifies someone, then why was he praying? What right did he have to ask God for another chance? And why did God hear his prayer? God didn’t seem to mind that Samson was a faithful failure.

We too must overcome our tendency to run from God when we fail. We inherited that trait from Adam and Eve, who hid from God in the garden after they disobeyed Him (see Gen. 3:8). In faith, we must overcome the tendency of running from God and substitute it with a habit of running to God. The Scriptures assure us that we can approach God boldly, just as Samson did, even when we fail.

“For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb. 4:15-16).

What lessons can you learn from Samson’s failures? How can you apply them to your current situation? Is it time to trust God even though it seems as if nothing is happening in your life? Is it time to re-evaluate your past through the eyes of faith and see if there is a failure-turned-victory that can yield something useful for Him and others?

Take time to write out your answers on a piece of paper or in your journal. Put down your thoughts as you study Samson’s life. Then look at the lessons from other faithful failures such as Moses, David and Peter. Use their profiles to map out a faith path to recovery, turning your failures into wonderful learning lessons for you and others.

If Samson made it, so can you, but only if you don’t allow your failures to derail you. Having faith in God will keep you on the right path and will help make you into a “faith-full” failure, as Samson was.

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John Stanko is president of PurposeQuest International, through which he has helped people worldwide find their purpose. You can reach John at his blog, .

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: For tips on how to live confidently in spite of failure, go to .

 

A Community of Believers

One of the strengths of the early church was their unity. They supported one another socially, physically and spiritually. Although Americans are more isolated than ever before, Christians still need fellowship. To help meet this need Charisma has created an entire site dedicated to bringing believers of all walks of life together. In our safe, online environment, Christians can be encouraged and uplifted as they network with other believers. To be a part of this community of believers visit Charisma’s Web site and click on the “community” icon.

Help Rebuild New Orleans

Go to to find ministries still helping to rebuild New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf city almost three years ago.

Befriending a Fallen Believer

Are you equipped to help restore fallen believers or do you shun them? Turning our backs on hurting Christians can only make matters worse for them. Go to to find positive solutions to help a fallen brother or sister.

Lou Engle Speaks Out

Visit our Web site to hear a teleconference call with Lou Engle, who will share his heart for TheCall event that will be held August 16 in Washington, D.C. Since the first TheCall event eight years ago, Engle has been mobilizing Americans to pray and fast for a radical change in our nation. Visit to hear him discuss this strategic moment in history and find out what he believes will happen if Christians unite in prayer.

Many of us yearn for a return to the supernatural glory of the early church–healings, angelic protection, earthshaking prayer meetings, mass conversions and missionary adventures.

I want all of that. But I want the real thing, not a poor imitation.

Those first-century miracles flowed amidst a praying church that preached repentance and practiced holiness. The early disciples had been baptized with fire (see Matt. 3:11)–a cleansing flame that burns up sin and produces the fear of the Lord.

We’ve forgotten that the same people who experienced the miracle of Pentecost also watched Ananias and Sapphira drop dead because they willfully sinned in the middle of an outpouring of God’s presence. When their bodies were carried away, the Bible says that, “great fear came upon all the church and upon all who heard these things” (Acts 5:11, NKJV).

The early disciples weren’t playing. Real revival is serious stuff. Not only does it bring joy and peace; it also has the power to crush inflated egos, expose selfishness and kill pride. Do we want that?

In the American church today we see revival hoopla but not much substance. We make things look good for the cameras. We have fanfare without fire. It’s a show. We’ve lost the fear of God.

I believe if we really want the presence of God, we need the reverence of God. Yet it seems that in many of our churches today we want one without the other.

We love the ecstasy and the goose bumps that accompany revival meetings. We like to shake, rattle and roll on the floor as we soak in the anointing. But I fear we’ve become so flippant about the Holy Spirit that we’ve stooped to playing games.

A case in point: In one meeting recently, two ministers stood on the pulpit and threw “fireballs” of “anointing” at each other. When the imagined glob of raw power hit one man, he fell over laughing. Then he threw his invisible fireball at his preacher friend, and he too fell. It made for good entertainment, but that’s all it was.

There’s also a trendy new teaching that compares a spiritual encounter with God to shooting heroin. In one “revival” service, people pretended to shoot invisible needles into their arms as they prayed for one another and asked God for His anointing.

One minister in Oregon actually refers to God as “Jehovahjuana”–implying that the Lord can give you a marijuana high.

Another conference speaker put a plastic Jesus from a nativity scene into his mouth and urged some teens to “smoke Baby Jesus.”

Such flippant mishandling of the Lord’s name is what the Bible calls blasphemy, and it grieves the Holy Spirit. It may seem harmless, but those who cavort so cavalierly with the things of God are in danger of exchanging the truth of the gospel for a counterfeit.

When God’s power is moving in a church service, sometimes people may feel woozy and fall. I know this experience is real. God’s power can do that. But how many times have you been in a meeting in which the visiting preacher felt compelled to push people down, or even slap them silly, in order to give the impression that it was God who sent them crashing to the floor?

Several years ago I was standing near the stage in a large meeting when a visiting evangelist said he wanted to pray for all the ministers in the auditorium. Immediately some ushers yanked me up to the platform, and the man of God raced over to “pray” for me. Before I knew it, I was assaulted in the name of the Lord.

Whack! The guy hit me so hard that I fell down and held my face in my hands to hide my grimace. The skin on my neck was stinging. When I finally went back to my seat, a friend ran over to congratulate me, saying, “Wow, I saw you go down under the power!” I had to grit my teeth and ask the Lord to help me forgive the preacher. (I wanted to whack him back.)

Why do we feel we must force something to happen? Why do we assume more bodies on the floor equals more anointing? To build ministry on foolish theatrics is to trust in the flesh.

Instead of an imaginary drug, a dramatic smack on the head or a fake fireball, we need a major dose of holy reverence–along with a sobering jolt of reality. Let’s repent of our childishness and stop pretending. Let’s show a watching world the real thing.

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J. Lee Grady is the editor of Charisma. You can read his previous online columns, as well as comments from readers, at .

Contemporary Christians often do better at loving God with their hearts and souls than at loving Him with their minds. Taking “mind” to mean that place where thoughts, intellect, creativity and conscience converge, loving God in that powerful engine is no small command. Yet Jesus gave us this mandate–to love the Lord our God with all our hearts, with all our souls and with all our minds (see Matt. 22:37).

The human mind and the human intellect are certainly in the same “place,” as it were, but they are not the same thing entirely. Into the gap between intellect and mind, Satan insinuates himself with horrific results–as during the Holocaust, when great intellects with twisted minds designed and built ingenious methods of mass murder.

It is not at all uncommon for the brightest and most creative to suffer demonic activity in their thoughts. Unchallenged, unchanneled and bored, sparkling rivers of creative energy may ooze out into brackish deltas of video violence and fantasy sex. An idle mind, it turns out, truly is the devil’s workshop.

The evangelical world has too often assumed some adversarial relationship between the “mind of Christ” and the intellect. What wasteful tragedies have resulted! As the president of a Spirit-filled, Christ-centered university, I am grieved by the paralyzing fear of the self-marginalized who condemn “book learning” as the doorway to damnation.

I am persuaded that when Christian minds, with intellect intact and engaged, are applied to societal challenges, God will be magnificently glorified and the world will be a better place. William Wilberforce had the mind of Christ. So did John Wesley, William Booth and Mother Teresa. The Protestant Reformation began at a university. Sir Isaac Newton found the face of God in physics. C.S. Lewis came first to full faith and then to creative genius in his musty rooms at Oxford.

When we fear our own intellect and bludgeon discernment into silence, we drift close to the shoals of mindlessness that have made embarrassing shipwrecks out of some promising moves of God. Education is not anointing, to be sure. But neither is ignorance holiness.

Charismatics and Pentecostals often have mistakenly assumed that for the gifts of the Spirit to operate the brain must be in neutral. Rather, the minds of both speaker and hearer must be fully engaged. Spiritual gifts mindlessly manifested and mindlessly received are the surest path to La-La Land.

Informed by our past, touched upon by circumstance, entangled with emotions and wounded by outrage, the human mind called to love God wholly must be not only engaged but also whole. Those with wounded minds can love God so far as they are able, but God wants them completely healed.

Jesus is the Wonderful Counselor. He also uses the human touch, just as He does in physical healing. Christian psychologists and counselors have sometimes taken a beating from high-octane evangelists, some of whom needed counseling themselves. Well-trained to apply scriptural truth, gifts of healing and valid techniques, Christian psychologists are often the instrument of God to untie the tangled minds of those who want to love God but deeply ache for a whole mind with which to do so.

Beyond healing there is cultivation. We are called to the intentional pursuit of the mind of Christ. In his letter to the Ephesians, the apostle Paul admonishes believers to “be renewed in the spirit of our minds” (4:23, NKJV). Our minds must be bathed by the Word.

We are also called to Christian meditation, another discipline of the mind. “Meditate on these things,” Paul wrote (Phil. 4:8). The mind grows as it is fed. An alert, well-read, Bible-fed mind meditating on God’s Word in faith is a mighty instrument in God’s hands.

This then is the goal: a whole mind, healed and engaged, wholly in love with a holy God.

“Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus,” Paul advised (Phil. 2:5). That “mind,” he went on to explain, is one of a gentle, humble and sacrificial servant (see vv. 6-8).

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Mark Rutland is president of Southeastern University in Lakeland, Florida. He is the author of many books including Most Likely to Succeed (Charisma House). To learn more about Southeastern go to .

After I received the baptism in the Holy Spirit in 1974, everything changed. Though I had served God, I had not led anyone to a personal relationship with Jesus. But as a product of the Jesus movement, I was used by God to win hundreds of souls and saw many awesome healings. The next 10 years were great.

The decade of my life after that was a wilderness. I thought God had lifted His hand off my life. Looking back, I can see that wasn’t true. But I simply didn’t know how to transition from a corporate move of God to personally staying filled with the Holy Spirit.

While working on my doctoral degree at Fuller Seminary, I took John Wimber’s now infamous class, “Signs, Wonders and Church Growth.” Instead of receiving his insights on the depths of being filled with the Spirit, I had a cavalier attitude of “been there, done that.”

In fact, I was consumed with a desire to quit ministry after the hardest year of my life in 1993. I was so depressed, I had to exercise my faith to move from depression to discouragement.

Things dramatically shifted in 1994. I still faced trials, but the power and presence of the Lord in my life changed forever. It began when I experienced the power of God at Anaheim Vineyard Church in California and Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship. My family got revived, and I began an unending transformation in my walk with God.

As a result, I have seen more fruit, healings and radical salvations than I ever imagined. I’ve seen Muslims and many Buddhist Chinese get saved and become members of our church. I’ve seen blind eyes open, tumors disappear, limbs grow and the deaf hear. It’s happening in the more than 36 nations where God has enlarged our outreach.

But what made the difference? For the last 14 years, I have tried to remain constantly filled with the Holy Spirit.

Ephesians 5:18 says, “Do not be drunk with wine … but be filled with the Spirit” (NKJV). The word “filled” in Greek is the “continual” present tense and literally translates “be continually filled with the Spirit.” There is one baptism in the Holy Spirit, but many fillings.

How do I stay continually filled? Every day I give my heart afresh to Jesus and ask Him to fill me anew with the Holy Spirit. I also soak in the presence of God.

Soaking is literally spending enough time on a regular basis in a yielded position that you become “marinated” or “pickled” in the Lord (a term derived from the verse in Ephesians). As we are “continually filled” with the Holy Spirit, we are transformed into God’s image. We delight to do His will.

When I spend this time with Him, I come empty-handed with no list of prayers or expectations. I come to receive His agenda, not mine. I find that soft instrumental worship music sets the tone as I simply sit or lay before the Lord. I let the Holy Spirit take me where He wants to go.

Sometimes I see visions or the majestic works of God in the Spirit, or I see Jesus. I may receive strategies or correction, but I always leave refreshed, encouraged and directed by His love!

But whether alone in your living room or joined by thousands of people, you can stay filled in the Holy Spirit. Doing so will change your life.

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Che Ahn is senior pastor of Harvest Rock Church in Pasadena, California. He leads an apostolic network in more than 30 nations and has authored numerous books, including Fire Evangelism and Close Encounters of the Divine Kind. One of his greatest joys is joining the Father in what He is doing today.

As Christians we are to live in ways that cause other people to hunger for a relationship with Jesus Christ. When we do this, we are being effective believers who bear fruit in God’s kingdom, and we enjoy our lives. We need to break our bad habits and develop good ones, so I want to focus on nine habits of highly effective Christians.

Spend time with God. Moments with God can include praying, studying the Bible and singing. Playing worship music while quietly listening for His voice is another way to experience His presence. David, who was “a man after [God’s] own heart” (Acts 13:22, The Amplified Bible), prayed and communed with God every morning, noon and night. Fellowshiping with the Father should be a habit in our lives.

Keep your conscience clear. Nothing will keep us from enjoying life as much as guilt can. In Acts 24:16, Paul said, “Therefore I always exercise and discipline myself [mortifying my body, deadening my carnal affections, bodily appetites, and worldly desires, endeavoring in all respects] to have a clear (unshaken, blameless) conscience, void of offense toward God and toward men.” Walking in the confidence of a clear conscience will keep us free and happy.

Live by faith, one day at a time. Faith is extremely practical and an invaluable habit to cultivate in our everyday lives. Faith is a positive view of God and His ability and willingness to help us; it always expects something good to happen (see Ps. 27:13-14). Faith believes God’s Word is superior to human reasoning, no matter what. And when we live by this principle, we take life one day at a time, trusting God in everything.

Do your best. We must be motivated to do our very best in whatever we set out to accomplish. God is excellent. As His representatives, we should be too. Paul urges us to “learn to … prize what is excellent and of real value” (Phil. 1:10). As we make excellence a way of life, we will sense God’s joy and be good examples to the world. We must sow excellence in order to reap an excellent harvest.

Handle criticism in a godly way. Everyone who is truly successful in life has to deal with criticism. It can be painful, but a godly response is always a great testimony to those around us. Trust God with your reputation. Respond to criticism in a way that honors Him. The Bible says only a fool hates correction.

Practice peace. One quality that sets believers apart from the world is inner peace. In John 14:27, Jesus makes it clear that peace is available to us: “Peace I leave with you; My [own] peace I now give and bequeath to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you.” When we make and keep peace, people know we belong to God.

Finish what you start. When we begin projects or activities and then leave them undone, we end up with a sense of failure and cause others to feel they cannot depend on us. The Bible teaches diligence, steadfastness and determination–all of which have to do with finishing what we start.

Live by discernment. Simply defined, “discernment” is spiritual understanding, and developing it takes practice. Discernment involves paying attention to our hearts. We have to know that when we do not feel right about something in our hearts we should not do it. As we grow in our understanding of God’s Word and in our relationships with Him, we also grow in our ability to discern.

Be generous. Second Corinthians 9:7 tells us, “God loves (He takes pleasure in, prizes above other things, and is unwilling to abandon or to do without) a cheerful (joyous, ‘prompt to do it’) giver [whose heart is in his giving].” We should give whatever we can: help, encouragement, money, time, talents and forgiveness. And remember, giving makes the devil mad. But those who give cheerfully are happy, fulfilled and highly effective.

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Joyce Meyer is a New York Times best-selling author and one of the world’s leading practical Bible teachers. She has written more than 70 books, including the popular Beauty for Ashes and Battlefield of the Mind, and her most recent, I Dare You (all FaithWords). She is also the founder of Joyce Meyer Ministries Inc. and the host of Enjoying Everyday Life radio and TV programs, which air on hundreds of stations worldwide. To read past columns in Charisma by Joyce Meyer, log on at

I just knew that Joe (not his real name) was my special delivery from God. He had to be. He fit the requirements on my list. Plus, the Bible says: “Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart” (Ps. 37: 4, NKJV).

Joe finally noticed me and asked me out. It was difficult to contain my excitement. Let’s just say I went to sleep smiling.

We started dating, but six weeks later, Joe bailed out, ending the nascent relationship. I was absolutely devastated. Wasn’t Joe the answer to all my years of praying? Maybe the devil was trying to intercept my blessing! I could not accept that and refused to give up on the dream.

Years went by, but Joe never pursued me again. My hopefulness turned into despair, embarrassment and rejection. Now I felt like a failure because I had never wanted someone so badly and invested so much energy into building what I hoped would be a permanent romance.

Over time, the lessons from this failed relationship sunk in, and now I realize that at some point in life we all face disappointment and heartbreak in our relationships with those we love or would like to love. We long for unconditional, undying love and acceptance. As women, we desire to have one man choose us from among all others, and when we are chosen, we want him to have eyes only for us until his dying day.

It is so easy, if we are feeling dejected, rejected and unprotected, to become consumed with those feelings. We forget that God always keeps His promises.

What has God promised you? Are you choosing to hold fast to that? God’s Word says, “No good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly” (Ps. 84:11).

The only relationship that should define us as women and make us complete is an intimate one with Christ. Colossians 2:10 says, “You are complete in Him.”

When my dreams for Joe and me derailed, the Lord spoke to me softly: “Cheryl, you idolize love and relationships. You need to spend more time with Me. Let Me whisper in your ear and tell you how much I love you. I won’t reject you or use you.

“Let your self-esteem as a woman flow out of our relationship. Then you will have the proper view of yourself. You will be confident. Secure. You won’t be clingy and desperate for a man and fall apart if he walks away, because I want you.”

The Word of God strictly forbids us to worship or idolize things–that includes people! Exodus 20:4 says, “‘You shall not make for yourself a carved image–any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth.’” The Word goes on to say that God is a jealous God.

There is nothing wrong with the desire and longing for love. That is how God wired us. But the desire itself can become an idol in our lives.

Years after the breakup with Joe, I asked God what went wrong. He answered ever so softly: “You idolized him. You were obsessed.

“You woke up with him on your mind. You went to bed with him on your mind. You were consumed with him. You idolized him.”

I was shocked because I hadn’t thought about the word “idol” in years. I always thought of it in the context of the children of Israel making graven images and worshiping them. But an idol is anything that means more to us than God.

You can learn from disappointment and rejection and become a better person for having experienced them. See them as necessary learning tools for your journey of faith. I did, and I am grateful to God for being the love of my life.

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Cheryl Martin is a former news anchor and television host. A popular conference speaker, she is also the author of 1st Class Single: Rules for Dating and Waiting God’s Way and currently hosts a weekly radio program for women, Excellent Living. Find more on her life and ministry at .