A weekend that wasn't a weak-end

Pastor Terry Goodwin, pastor of our first disciple driven Church called True Vine did led our second retreat/training weekend.

There were 27 people in attendance at a retreat center located in Ditmer, Mo about 1 hour from St. Louis. The retreat center is in a beautiful setting with some trails, a fishing pond, paddle boat and hotel style rooms and is fairly new construction. It was a perfect place to get alone in the presence of God.

On Friday night Terry did some teaching on the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. Everyone in the group came forward seeking the fullness of the Holy Spirit and those who already received this experience laid hands and prayed over each of them. Several received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit with confirmation, while others were reminded of root sins that need to be dealt with. Those receiving the Holy Spirit's Baptism were overwhelmed and had trouble putting into words what had happened to them. More on this later.

Saturday's teaching was on Spiritual Gifts and each of us discovered our Spiritual Gifts. It was amazing to see how the gifting was balanced and complimentary to carry the movement forward. The Church is excited to say the least. Terry later did a metaphorical teaching with a New Testament link back to the story of Hagar and Sarah in the Old Testament. It had great implications on how we do church today. Do we do what man can do or do we do what only God can do? We decided we wanted to do what only God can do and we ended the night with communion under Sarah's tent (a symbol with significance) with renewed commitment to walk in the Holy Spirit.

Sunday was focused on Spiritual warfare and warfare praying. We ended our time together by praying for those who are lost asking God to put a hedge of thorns around them as recorded in Hosea 2:6-15.

My thoughts are that True Vine is owning this movement more fully, the Vine went deeper, other disciples - making disciples vines will grow out, there will be continued pruning of the vine as the Master gardener cuts away at the the vine/junk/sin for healthy and effective disciple making growth, leaders are rising out of the movement to lead more movements of the same, the vineyard will become ever growing and rapidly expanding with disciples making disciple resulting in more and more God birthed new Churches.

Give us your thoughts.