Heckel Ministries

“I DID NOT COME WITH WISE OR PERSUASIVE WORDS.” -Apostle Paul

But do you know what I hear from most ministry help today and even what people say they enjoy from ministers…

“Here is how you draw 200+ people.”

“How to give better sermons.”

But Paul was saying this, “I wanted you and I to know that I didn’t persuade you, but the truth did.” The truth doesn’t need to yell or make things flowery. If I tell you that flame will burn your hand, you’ll know when you get close to the flame that I am right.

The problem we run into is that people say, “I’m not giving them things to itch their ears. I’m telling the truth. So what’s your problem?”

Because it wasn’t the truth that hit many of them, it was your charisma. It was the mannerisms you chose to give them. A way that they can’t speak to people in everyday without people wondering if they are off their rockers or full of themselves.

Or you chose to speak to them with verbiage that says, “You’re gonna need years of study before you’re adequate to teach this stuff.”

In either situation, being wise or persuasive is telling most people that they don’t carry the same Holy Spirit as you because they can’t see their everyday life in you.

You’ve made those who are convinced believe it is more about being here and listening to you or some other “man of God” than carrying the God of man wherever they are.

And the big problem is, you can tell very little which ones are convinced by the truth and which are convinced by you until issues hit.

The truth exists even in silence, it doesn’t need to yell or be brash in order to be heard. And it existed long before we came up with grandiose, wise words to describe it.

The sign of the truth capturing people is not that they have to keep running back to hear you, it’s that through you they learned to hear the truth wherever they go. They have learned to carry it in the everyday, even in unfavorable circumstances.

So did you convince them? Or did the truth set them free? They may look alike in many ways, but they have very different outcomes.

THE EARLY CHURCH DIDNT HAVE “WORSHIP GATHERINGS”, LETS TALK ABOUT IT…

The early Church never mentions doing things like getting together to simply get worked up and sing some good songs together.

It never even talks about that as being worship.

We hear about offering ourselves as living acts of worship.

A place where we do get some kind of picture like this is the temple worship, and specifically David’s Tabernacle worship where they set up paid musicians and prayer leaders for 24/7 worship unto the Lord.

We have gotten way off from this where we love to have “worship” nights.

But the thing is this, when we boil it down to simply coming together to sing some songs, and we make this the highlight of “ministry” times, we are really saying, “The times I love are where I get to come in, feel like I’m part of the Body without actually engaging with much of the Body, where we done have edification or encouragement, no accountability given to each other, and the we leave patting ourselves on the back.”

This is one of the reasons the role of worship leader needs to be steered back to being a minister first. I really don’t care if you’re a musician if you cannot minister, if chains are not broken, if the glory of God is not evident.

Our worship times should involve just as much ministry as any other time: prophetic words, releasing of scripture, prayer, healings, breakthroughs, impartation, accountability. It should drive people to worship everywhere and in everything they do.

The different venue and setting may cause it to vary in method, but the pieces of ministry should be evident, not simply music.

We have learned how to make good sounds, but the question is does Heaven think the same thing? Is there anointing that breaks yokes and plows up hard ground, or is it simply pretty? Does it give us an easy way to say it was an amazing time without the actual fruit? Would outsiders say, “yeah it sounded good,” or would they say, “you could feel God all over that place and you guys are different!”?

We aren’t here to play games. The Kingdom isn’t a matter of mere words, but of power.