Practical Christianity: Rediscovering the New Testament Church

By Ira Milligan

Practical Christianity: Rediscovering the New Testament Church is a field manual for effective spiritual warfare. God's mighty army is disorganized and uncertain of how to fight against the subtle and deceptive hit-and-run tactics the enemy is using. This book's twofold purpose is to provide a biblical training manual to raise up an effective fighting force for war along with detailed instructions for making a new wineskin to serve the new wine that God has for this generation. Our old wineskin cannot contain or sustain the billion soul, end-time harvest that God has planned. To fight and win a billion souls to Christ and then lose them from the lack of a trained workforce to nurture and disciple them would be a catastrophic loss! The time to prepare is now.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9781639612826

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Practical Christianity

Ira Milligan

Rediscovering the

New Testament Church

ISBN 978-1-63961-281-9 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63961-282-6 (digital)

Copyright © 2021 by Ira Milligan

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

All references to Greek word definitions are from Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance, Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1990. Unless otherwise noted, all scripture references are from the New King James Version, copyright 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. Scriptures marked AMP (Amplified) are taken from The Amplified Bible, Expanded Edition, 1987, Zondervan Corporation. All rights reserved.

The author has modernized the spelling of select words in Scripture to increase readability. Italics are used throughout for clarity of expression and for emphasis. They are sometimes used when quoting scriptures for the same reason.

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Introduction

What Shall We Do?

First Things First

Practical Spiritual Warfare

Practical Pastoring

The Making of a Leader

The Lion and the Bear

Exercising Authority

Practical Leadership

Equipping the Saints

Biblical Church Government

Koinonia

Practical Personal Ministry

Choosing Elders

Pastoral Authority

Wise Effective Leadership

A New Thing

Prayer Points for America

Bibliography

T

o the many faithful pastors who, like Joshua of Old, have willingly served, suffered, and sacrificed to lead the saints into battle to obtain their full inheritance.

The coming move of My Spirit is going to change the existing church as much as the outpouring of the Holy Spirit changed the church of the late 1800s.

—R

eceived from the Holy Spirit in mid-1990

Foreword

Practical Christianity is a revelation of Christ that gets results. The original revelation of the way Jesus intended to build His church is a teaching that you can trust. As time passed, various church leaders replaced the revelation of how Christ wanted the church ordered with their own ideas of church government. These wrong ideas deviated from the original pattern and laid false foundations leading to false directions and false destinies resulting in false legacies. Once there is a return to the revelation of Jesus and the apostles’ leadership, the church will once again share the biblical foundations, directives, and destinies that Christ intended.

When the coronavirus came to the United States, it exposed a problem with the Sunday morning gathered church system. The church was put into a position of needing to be decentralized and didn’t know how to function as a scattered church. After Jesus ascended, the apostles’ understanding of proper church function enabled the churches to operate as both centralized and scattered. The apostles had a model of functioning that could do well even when the church was decentralized. With the advent of persecution, the church prospered because it had an understanding of what it meant to be sent. The coronavirus pandemic exposed the weakness of our current church model of centralization. That model is patently ineffective and needs to be redesigned. The church must return to the original pattern of Jesus and the apostles.

This book is about a return to the forgotten ways of Jesus and the apostles on how to build the church that the Father is after. The early church did not have the church buildings that we have today. They did not have the media, the internet, television, sound systems, and all the things that we feel are so vital today. However, they did have a relationship with Jesus Christ that led to a biblical government that produced miraculous results! The focus of the early church was on who and what Jesus is to us, for us, and within us in our daily lives. They developed an intentional discipleship and disciple-making system, a plan for missions (reaching people for Jesus), and the formation of the fivefold ministry that penetrated the targeted culture with the reality of the kingdom of God.

The people of God must have access to each one of the fivefold ministries in order to grow up fully and completely in the Lord Jesus Christ. Simply put, there must be a return to the original model of church structure and government—a church built upon the apostles and prophets with the Lord Jesus being the chief cornerstone along with the ministry of pastors, teachers, and evangelists!

There must be a return to Christ’s ways and His government! It is time for church leaders to reassess what we have been doing and not repeat the mistakes of our past. We must retrieve biblical discipleship practices and embed them into micro expressions of holy gatherings that can meet Monday through Saturday in homes or other places. We have to reorganize how we meet but keep Jesus central so the discipleship model that we use encourages believers to become more and more like Jesus every day.

Apostolic and prophetic leaders must identify and develop younger leaders so that scalability can be built into the kingdom of God. They must be pressed to multiply other believers to create movement and momentum in the system. There must be an activation of duplication. The original apostles did more than just produce spiritual sons. They produced spiritual fathers who could, in turn, give birth to spiritual sons and daughters.

This is a time of repentance for church leaders. The word repent means a change of mind or to rethink. It means metamind. Thus, it actually means making a paradigm shift in our thinking and practices. This book is meant to bring a recalibration. To recalibrate means to reset something back to its original form, function, and practice. Basically, this means it must be recalibrated in four areas: (1) a return to Jesus and His model for the church, (2) a return to the way Jesus discipled others (and the need to relearn that practice), (3) a return to the original mission, and (4) a reformation of governmental function, structure, and practice!

In addition to that, there must be pressure that bonds the believers into tight-knit communities that develop close relationships where people lovingly serve each other! In Acts 2:42, the scripture says that the early church continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers! The early church walked in the fear of the Lord and saw many signs and wonders done through the apostles by Jesus Christ. The Scripture is clear that they met both in the temple and from house-to-house.

When persecution came and there was the inability to meet in the temple, the disciples met wherever they could. When the church was at risk, their relationships grew closer, and they became more adventurous in the Spirit of Jesus Christ. The persecuted church met in homes, places of business, warehouses, barns, caves, open fields, or any place where they could meet secretly and in relative safety. During times of persecution, no place is completely safe, but there is a bonding of the community of believers who have the revelation of Jesus Christ that comes through taking risks together.

In the original Gospel, Jesus was sent by the Father. The apostles were sent by Jesus. The Greek word translated apostle means sent. The apostles are the custodians of the revelation of the government of Jesus. Therefore, the apostolic church is a church that sends out disciples of Christ to impact, influence, and change various cultures. The Lord Jesus created a company of harvesters who made a harvest of disciples who produced a harvest of souls. This is the model of leadership and ministry that we must return to today to spread the kingdom of God throughout the earth.

While the apostate church invents its methods of missions, the apostolic church finds out what God is doing and works with Him to accomplish it through the Spirit of the Lord. In 1 Corinthians 4:1, when Paul said, So let a man so account of us, as the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God, he was talking about those who find out what the Father wants done, how He wants it done, and then go about doing it His way! The Greek word translated steward means keeper of the house rules.

W

hen Paul said in the next verse, "

I

t is required among those who are stewards that they be found faithful," he meant as stewards, we are required to find out what the Father wants done and be faithful to do it His way. That is the definition of biblical faithfulness.

This book is about finding out what the Father wants done, how He wants it done, and then doing it by the revelation of Jesus! The prophets reveal and release the purposes, plans, strategies, and the justice of God in the church so that the mission of Jesus can be fulfilled. The prophets are the guardians of covenant love and covenant loyalty to Jesus. They urge everyone to obey the truth and walk under the government of the Lord Jesus Christ. The evangelists model getting people saved, healed, and delivered from the evil one then teach and train others how to do the same. Pastors help with the development of the community and defend it while the teachers communicate their revelation of Jesus, the apostles, and prophets so that the reality of Christ is translated to the surrounding cultures.

The word shepherd (or pastor) is only used a few times in the New Testament, but the word apostle is used eighty-four times. These days, the word pastor is used almost all the time, and the word apostle is rarely used. But God wants to turn things around and get us back to the original pattern of the Lord Jesus and the apostles. Get ready to step into the revelation of true scriptural, spiritual, practical Christianity!

Tony Kemp

President of Tony Kemp Ministries

President of Acts Group

Vice president of It’s Supernatural TV Network

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, I wish to express my heartfelt thanks to God who inspired and instructed me to write this book. Also, many thanks go to those precious saints of God who have supported us with their prayers and substance to allow us to give ourselves wholly to prayer and to the ministry of the Word.

A special thanks goes to my patient wife, Judy, and my friends who have faithfully walked this journey with me these many years.

Introduction

One night, I dreamed that a young man was going to change churches. His experience with his former pastor had been an unsatisfactory one. When he went to the new church, the report of his former conflict soon followed him, and his new pastor quickly opposed him.

I saw that he had a lot to offer, but he was offering it in the wrong way, causing conflict. I saw that the reason for his problem was that he wanted to promote his own agenda; therefore, he saw the pastor as wanting to control him. He was contentious because he wasn’t being given the liberty to have his own way.

I counseled him from Romans 2:1: Therefore you are inexcusable, O man, whoever you are who judge, for in whatever you judge [accuse and condemn] another you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things. I explained the meaning to him and showed him that his problem was within his own heart, not in the pastors themselves. Because he wanted control, he saw and accused the