The Future is Bright 01: There Shall Be Big Churches in the Future!

God is good and your future is awesome. I am so tired of speaking to negative and small-minded pastors. If you are a leader in any sense of the word, the best thing you can do for the people you lead is dream big. The bigger you dream, the more positive you will be, the more influence you will have and the more people will be drawn to you. So I am going to give you some Scriptures that will give you a real expectation for a glorious future. The Word of God is true, and what it says is true. I want to really aim these posts at pastors and inspire them to dream a bit bigger. The next pastor who tries to ignore all of the Bible, all of the teaching of Jesus, and all of logic and sense and tell me God wants their church to be small needs to get back into the Word and actually believe it!

Let’s look at Isaiah 2.2-3.

² In the last days

the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established
    as the highest of the mountains;
it will be exalted above the hills,
    and all nations will stream to it.

³ Many peoples will come and say,

“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
    to the temple of the God of Jacob.
He will teach us his ways,
    so that we may walk in his paths.”
The law will go out from Zion,
    the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

There is a word here for the future. The future will have churches in it that are like giant mountains. Massive, mega churches, powerful churches that cannot be moved, that attract whole nations to them, that attract people from many different nations. They will be noted by:

• How Established they Are. They will be strong and led well. There are a lot of churches today that will go anywhere at the slightest knock. The media says “this church is doing well” and then all the churches copy them. The media says “put this mark on your Facebook or you are a racist” and the churches fall over each other to put the most hashtags on their social media. A lot of churches are knocked about by every wind of doctrine, even the slightest breeze. But we are going to see more and more mountain churches in the last days, churches that will not be moved. Churches that the worldly culture will not move, churches that promises of government money will not move, churches that someone leaving because they speak the truth will not move, churches that are strong, and no one can manipulate them or intimidate them. Mountain churches!
• Nations streaming to them. So much of what goes on in countries with large multi-racial communities is churches that are mono-cultural. It’s not the way God wants it. The future is going to include big churches that have people from so many nations. It’s going to be glorious, we all need each other, we can all learn from each other.
• People saying “let’s go” – they will be evangelistic. People will be so excited about their church, they will not be able to help themselves from inviting people and bringing people. There will be so many salvations, healings, miracles, changed lives, that people will not be able to keep quiet about their faith! The frozen mouths of Christians will get de-thawed when their church is so glorious!
• There will be teaching about the way of the Lord. Church will not just be an 8-minute encouragement each week, but they will be serious about discipleship. There will be teaching all the time on all sorts of media. Churches will run so much discipleship that many Bible Colleges will just lose their appeal because they were never supposed to exist in the first place – the church will take its place, the place that Jesus always intended it to have, to make disciples of the nations. Churches will have courses in the morning, the afternoon, the evening. Teaching will be broadcast from these mountain churches all the time, and it won’t be cold classroom teaching disassociated from real life, it will be real mentoring and discipleship that involves dealing with real people. It’s going to be remarkable!
• People will desire to walk in the paths of the Lord. One of the hallmarks of these mountain churches that are going to come up out of nowhere is that the people just love walking with the Lord. The days of book of Acts will be here again where people devoted themselves to the work of the Lord. Some pastors will not be able to cope as they have been so used to doing people’s devotion for them, and have spent years herding goats and suddenly they will be surrounded by sheep hungry for green pastures and still waters. It’s going to be glorious.
• And the Word will go out from there. There will be so much evangelism in these mountain churches. Sometimes they will send dozens, even hundreds of people, at once into foreign nations to plant a church, and start larger than most of the churches already in that area, and just start a stir that will shake whole cities for the Lord!

That’s going to be a whole lot of glorious churches. I believe with all my heart I am going to be part of this. And I believe if you believe it too, you will see it too. If you get it in your heart and start dreaming, you will start seeing it on the outside.