ICAF CONNECT_JUNE ISSUE

Taking Charge of Change
Through True Connection & Covenant Relationships, the ICAF is Building
the RIGHT Leaders for our era.
Taking
Charge of Change
M
any of us are aware of the contemporary
world and how God speaks to us now,
through our experiences and through the
communities where we live, as God spoke to
our ancestors in the past.
Many of us are also open to all that the contemporary
world offers. So as we can see that the old and the
new are not exclusive of each other. They are both
important and necessary for the health and life of the
Kingdom. If we are only living in the past and old and
ignore the modern and new and the contemporary,
then that is gross mismanagement of the Kingdom. On
the other hand if we are only concerned about the
new, modern, and contemporary, to the exclusion of
the old and traditional then we are doing gross
disservice to the Kingdom. Then we are not good
scribes. The good scribe is the one who carefully
preserves in his treasures both the old and the new.
The International Christian Apostolic Fellowship has a
mandate to bridge the divide and maintain that
balance.
If Christianity is to survive in viable denominations;
churches, or their offshoots, must do whatever is
necessary to become more actively relevant to global
and local urgencies. "Churches," "fellowships," or
whatever, have to be agents of Godly transformation
to the contemporary world or they will be a big part of
the world's problems. As in the beginning of
Christianity, those who want a “Jesus” life have to be
open to the Spirit of God in all areas of their being and
must be willing to jump in and "make this old world a
new world" (Martin Luther King, Jr.).
A Synergy of Generations
Synergy is defined as the condition where distinct
groups work together in a cooperative arrangement in
such a way that the total effect is greater than the sum
of individual effects. In other words, the group
accomplishes more working together than individual
members could achieve working independently.
The past and the old are our foundation but at
the same time the future is our hope and
destiny.
One of the things that the ICAF represents is God’s
desire to link multiple generations into a synergistic
relationship once again. The Church has long
suffered from a “generational gap” where there is little
genuine appreciation, understanding, or cooperation
between the older, middle, and younger generations
of believers.
God wants to bring these generations back together
to infuse them with a common vision, a unified sense
of purpose, and recognition of their mutual
interdependence.
Three generations moving together toward a shared
goal can accomplish more than the sum of what each
generation could achieve separately. This synergy of
the generations is something that God promised He
would bring about in the last days.
The challenge is clear, to effectively engage our
culture while maintaining our Biblical identity as the
people of God. Our failure to do this and to explore
new ways of faithfully expressing the Biblical call to
discipleship will result in our becoming increasingly
marginalized and irrelevant.
A Wake up Call to the Church
We must not withdraw into the safe and secure world
that is familiar and precious to us within the history
and traditions of our church. We should not close our
eyes to its accelerating decline, but to face honestly,
open-eyed, the challenge today’s church faces.
Thereby communicating with and winning for God a
world that, no longer believes that God really matters!
That’s why the ICAF is presenting Pastors with the
opportunity to take charge of change by helping
Pastors take their ministries to the next level. The
ICAF is bringing international change to their cities
and churches, training them to be the finishing
generation!