It was 1998, that was a very difficult year of my life. In the physical realm, I had a boss at work who mentally abused me and belittled me constantly to make his incompetence's look better. It was at this time that I continued the "freely receive, freely give" to the Internet. In July that year, I was forced to resign from my job due to the mental duress and managements denial and unwillingness to deal with the problem. In the logic of corporate America mode and the logic of many "corporate" megachurches, to bring forth a problem means that you are the problem because you have made a leader look bad and dared to question the competence and abilities of the leader. It was during that summer that I began to feel and sense that the ending of the renewal was about to come and the "waiting period" between moves of God was about to come. I went looking in the churches in my area experiencing renewal and online and begin to sense the same thing in those places.

I also began to see in many cases, that there was controversy that brewed in the renewal (Wimber / Arnott) and I was seeing that in many churches, the people were not taking the love of Jesus outside their walls. They became very content with "remaining in the river", "experiencing the fire", "cooling off in the wind", and "getting drenched in the rain". and either did not want to move into mercy and compassion ministries to fulfill a Great Commission or they have experienced and partaken in some of the same paradigms of previous revivals of becoming too inwardly focused to remember the outwardly mandate of the Great Commission. It appeared that the mistakes of past revivals the renewal leaders claimed they "were exempt from" were being repeated. I felt that the renewal had began to run it's course. I began to ask the questions because I felt that It was time to ask the questions. I wondered where the evangelism was at. Many of the churches who experienced growth during this time obtained growth via church migrations rather than by evangelical means. I had come to the conclusion that when this revival ends and a new one comes to a different church while the current church still basks in glories past, a good bit of the church population will migrate like gypsies with plastic guitars to the latest "hopping" church and the old church becomes nothing more than a "monument to a movement". Where previous revivals showed external manifestations via changed communities, lowered crime, etc. Many churches in the "river" manifested not the external changes of their community, but instead manifested more and more internal meetings that did not impact their communities.

It was at this time when I had to question the worship music, written in it's own "Christianese" slang with words and phrazes non-Christians can not understand. It got to where the only songs being sung at many of the renewals were songs about the river, getting drunk in the spirit, the wind, the rain, etc. The faster the pace, the better and more the people ran around the church, waived their flags, and created a party atmosphere in the house of God. In fact, I began to wonder if we were beginning to shift from worshipping Jesus Christ into worshipping "worship" itself. I knew people who had gotten to the point where they could not worship until "Hop on The Bus", "Mercy is Falling", or "The River of God" was played in the worship services. I met people who literally chased after revivals to the point of becoming "Weekend Warriors" spend their weekends going from one revival church to another driving as many as six hours each way to the next renewal service. Many of these people did not belong to a local church, but instead, opted to go around their area where they live and look for revival hopping churches. Addicted to renewal when Jesus stated that He wanted his people free and not addicted to anything. It was the search for a constant high that drove some of these people to revival and not the redemptive grace of Jesus to experience what Jesus had to say, offer, give, and save our souls from.

I kept on taking the "freely receive, freely give" commands of Jesus to my work, the streets, my family, and the Internet to evangelize. I kept on trying to live life outside and beyond the renewals. I learned that there is life beyond the renewal and there are real needy people who need real solutions to their real life's real problems and not a mamby pamby solution of "dive into the river with the kayak of freedom after climbing the mountain of mercy using the pickaxe of grace and the sounds of deliverance" while being forced to adopt a additional lifestyle of becoming a Dobsonized focused family (accurately portrayed by the character Ned Flanders on the TV show The Simpson's) of the "official Christian perspective" of Nine homeschooled kids, vote republican, woodgrained minivan homeschool bus, feminized dads, isolationist, no tv, no radio, news media is Satan himself, who exalt themselves as perfect, but many within this persona hiding gross moral turpitudes etc. I learned that the world wants to see this lifestyle we call Christianity that we proclaim as the answer at work properly and functionally in our lives through our actions, our love, and most importantly our compassionate relationships. I spent the next three years asking this question to myself and others online:

Are the revival centered churches going to and getting ready to take the compassion and mercy to the streets to fulfill the Great commission or will we not go outside to the world instead staying behind inside our six walled building (remember this is the "best and most prosperous revival God produced") repeating the things we promised to never repeat from the last revivals to where we do not interrupt the blessing, singing, talking in "Christianese" and "metaphorical metaphysics", laughing, drinking, baptizing, dancing, waving flags, politicalizing, and in many cases, abuse and error ourselves into cultural irrelevancy making no impact to the world we live in that needs Jesus and therefore completing the same cyclic patterns from start to finish that ended previous revivals?

As I asked the hard questions, I learned that I was not the only one asking the same questions. I realized that it was time to get out of the river and go forward into the Great Commission mandate and the call of God to take His Word and take his love, mercy, compassion, and grace via relationships in the family, neighborhood, job, community, and the online environment. Therefore, I got out of the river and went forward in Christ to start fulfilling his call on my life. Spiritually, I saw my skin had became crinkled by staying too long in the river and in the renewal. In my case, I felt the freedom to leave the Vineyard church I attended for over nine years and started to attend a Spirit-filled evangelical Presbyterian church that is a mixture and a balance of Word and Spirit. Yes, it is a very conservative church, but a free and balanced church. To this day, I hold no ill-will nor any grudges towards anyone there. In fact, it was the first church that I left on good terms and I can still see myself visiting that Vineyard again one Sunday in the future and if I was to see the pastor or other people in a local Wal-Mart, greeting them and talking for a couple of minutes. I have no hard feelings towards the Vineyard. In fact, I have to thank God again for the people there who prayed, helped, discipled, and mentored me and their grace exhibited to me. I do have a lot of relationships there I am greatful for. I just had to go forward in this growth (I am not the 'all-exclusive' person who has seen this, others have "test for echo") I experienced after the "river" and this growth that I am still doing (and will until I die) and fulfill the mandate of the Great Commission via relationships in the family, neighborhood, and the online community. I have been at the new church since February of 2001 and beginning to assimilate and learning to further fulfill my call in Christ.

As I write this article, America has just experienced the worst tragedy in it's history. I am talking about the bombing of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Again, I had to ask the question (listed in bold print) again and wonder what our response will be. I have seen what Christian Television has done so far and I am very disappointed at the way Christian television has handled this disaster. If the way Christian television has handled this disaster coverage reflects the way that river churches will handle this disaster also known as ministry opportunity, will our relevance be further killed? If you desire to read about my feelings of how Christian television has handled this tragedy, click on the Table of Contents Link and on the Table of Contents page, click on "America's worst tragedy today, and what does Christian television do?" to read my viewpoints on this issue.

Click Here for part five of this article.