When did HOP begin?

What about you and your family?

What's the vision and direction for HOP?

What does a house of prayer look like?

Will the enemy contest this and how?

What are some important keys for a local HOP to grasp?

What about the leadership in the church and the five-fold ministry?

When did HOP begin?

Lisa and I were sent out by our home church on May 3^rd 1992 to begin the adventure of HOP. Shortly before that we had been asked to pioneer a foursquare church in north Tacoma and while taking that to prayer we both had the words house of prayer come alive in our hearts. In the spirit I saw a house with the name house of prayer on the front of it. We met with our pastor and received confirmation and made the transition from foursquare to beginning hop ministries.  From 1992-1998 we primarily hosted home meetings and worked with area churches with corporate prayer and worship gatherings. In the spring of 1998 God had more than confirmed His desire for us to officially pastor our first hop church in Belfair WA.  (More can be heard on our tapes called “vision Sunday ,2000,2001,2002,2003) we had many prophetic encounters and encouragements from Him concerning this church plant!! In June 1998 we held our first service in Belfair in a beautiful big barn, which had been donated for us to use as a church. We have had several meeting places since then including a old eagles lounge, a Masonic lodge and now our current building is the old Belfair café and bar right in downtown Belfair!! The bar was called the Glow room and was known for all kinds of sin and was a very dark place in Mason County. Now that very room is called the Glory room and is a stronghold for Gods presence and power in our city!!!

What about you and your family?

I was raised in a loving Christian home and attended a Lutheran church in Tacoma, WA where I met my beautiful wife Lisa in 1978. She had just moved up from sunny California with her family. I graduated from the seattle lutheran bible institiute in 1981. We were married in April of 1982 and we now have five children Sarah, Jacob, Joel, Isaac and Isaiah. God has blessed us so much with our marriage and family and we give Him all the praise and glory for that!! Lisa had a background in the Assembly of God church and neither of us had any idea of what was coming our way in our walk with God!!  In 1988 we both had intense powerful encounters with the working of the Holy Spirit. Who for me had only been a name on a page and for Lisa a reminder of early childhood meetings in an “on fire” Assembly of God church in California. Within a few weeks apart both of us were totally undone by the power of God and our spiritual lives had been transformed forever! (I think some of these testimonies are on the same vision tapes I mentioned above)  We began to attend a foursquare church in gig harbor, which is the church that sent us out in 1992.

What’s the vision and direction for hop?

We really feel like we are part of a reformation movement to restore Gods house, the local church, to Him and to make His house a resource for every community. I was just at a conference and a speaker spoke about this current reformation as a reformation of His Presence!! According to Ephesians 4 the church is in a continual state of being changed and transformed.  The great reformation with Martin Luther and others was to bring the Bible into the hands of every man now we are seeing that God wants everyone to have an encounter with His Glory!! Each of theses moves of God builds on the other until we become a dwelling place of His Spirit.  He said his house would be called a house of prayer for and in every nation! Each local church can certainly have it’s own distinctiveness and mission but the core and DNA of it needs to be a house of prayer and worship. Unfortunately, many churches are void of Gods presence and power and resources because either they don’t know how to be a HOP or they have chosen not too, which leaves them to come up with their own ideas and programs. One of our favorite questions is to ask would does God like? How does He want us to pray, how does he want us to worship, how does he want to touch our cities!! What a concept!! We need to repent of our pride and arrogance and doing things the way we like them done. When Gods glory and anointing are “in the house” things change and His purposes start to come forth! So that’s our big picture vision! Equip every local church to be a house of prayer.

When we came out to Belfair in 1998 we started to model a church devoted to prayer and worship and then we began to seek His face about our community. He showed us His heart for the poor and said to take care of them and He showed us His heart for the youth of our area and that He wanted to touch them. So our three-fold vision is to be a house of prayer, to minister to the poor and needy and to reach the youth. He purposely gave us the name House of prayer ministries (plural) because the way He wants to do all this involves much variety and creativity! As he gives us laborers we equip them and release them to fulfill Gods heart.

What does a house of prayer look like?

In both the old and new testament we see a clear pattern of the roles and duties of the priesthood. They are to offer the incense of prayer and worship. (See our tape library and web site links for much more information about this) In the new covenant we are a royal priesthood of believers (1 peter 2:5) so our main job is to equip his sons and daughters to be flowing in the areas of prayer and worship and the anointing of the Holy Spirit. This includes everything found in 1 cor 14:26. If we have Gods house full of His Glory and we have His sons and daughters full of His anointing guess what happens as they go out into the world: evangelism!! The problem is we have been so worried about not offending the unsaved with our prayer, worship and ministry of the Holy Spirit we have two huge problems!! One is our churches are void of His Presence and grieve His Holy Spirit so we fill in with our own strength what seems good. And since the saints are sitting in these sterile pretty services each week without real living encounters with Jesus they have nothing to offer the world on Monday morning so no evangelism takes place!!  Revival is messy.  I love  Proverbs 14:4 “where no oxen are the manager is clean, but much increase comes from the strength of the ox.”  We can have our pretty, sterile church services but we will not have the results that God desires us to have.  Wind, fire, oil and wine are all very volatile substances the bible uses to teach about the Holy Spirit. And when Gods House is full of His strength we see all sorts of manifestations of His Glory! Most of Gods ways are out of our comforts zones anyway and especially what He wants His house to look like and sound like. When His house becomes a house of prayer He is glorified, the prodigals are drawn home and our cities are affected by His radiance.

Will the enemy contest this and how?

Of course!! We have a real adversary and he is so scared of anything to do with the Kingdom of God.  We have cultural, generational, fleshly, demonic oppositions to us as followers of Jesus.  But He said to take heart because He has overcome each one of these by His blood !!  That’s why I love the “breaker anointing”.  The enemy works in lies, imaginations and false authority.  As Christians we carry the real authority of the king of kings and lord of lords to dismantle and bring down the works of the evil one.  For the most part the enemy has robbed the church of her voice, her creativity, her inheritances and it’s time we stood up and said no more.  Our responsibility as carriers of the glory of God is to break heaven through into this earth. Remember what Jesus prayed? On earth as it is in heaven. The enemy is so afraid of us taking ground the church has been paralyzed and handicapped by his lies.  But when we start to move in the anointing and presence of Jesus, the Kingdom of God advances and we boldly declare the victories of His name.  Our worship times are key for this. Again not with just pretty chorus but from the depths of our being we declare the high praises and new songs of God. (see the tapes from our worship conference 8/14/04,8/15/04) The church needs to get her voice back and like Esther move in bold declarations from a place of intimacy and friendship with God. We have cultural challenges that have molded the American church into an intellectual Greek mindset full of idols of our own wisdom and strengths.  We have to know the language of the Holy Spirit, which transcends every tribe and tongue and makes the kingdom of God real into the hearts of men. Only the Holy Spirit knows how to search out our hearts and we do a disservice when all we minister to people is our natural mind and natural abilities. We have to be aware of the perfectionist spirits and religious spirits as they try to invade our services.  Everything God does is in order but it is in His order!! He moves with liberty. All the gifts of the Holy Spirit are to force us to flow into an unknown territory called walking in the spirit not according to our flesh. Our nation needs a demonstration of the power and presence of God just like Africa does just like Australia does just like El Salvador does. Most of our persecution comes from this realm of walking in the Spirit because the natural man does not understand the moving of the spirit and like the Pharisees did with Jesus they will persecute anything outside of their own mindset. We need christians who will be like mighty soldiers and not be afraid or ashamed to advance the kingdom of God with the power of his spirit!! And the cool thing is all this will happen as we make Gods house a house of prayer. When we are continually week after week after week changed in his presence our flesh is crucified and brought low. we learn to hear and speak  the language of His spirit when we meet together, we start to have His zeal and fire burn in our hearts, we ask Him how to pray, how to fast, how to worship, we start to want to hear his burdens and delights, and this river of life grows and grows and grows!!  Since I encountered the Holy Spirit back in 1988 I have never had a boring normal life!! There are always new adventures of following God and knowing Him more!! There are new trials and new victories!! We are changed from Glory to glory and the enemy cannot stop that once we learn the truth.

What are some important keys for a local HOP to grasp?

Probably the biggest one is covenant relationships. Ephesians 4:3 says do everything to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace.  Again we are dealing with cultural mindsets that have to be transformed into kingdom mindsets. We live in a throw away relationship society. Divorce is an epidemic, laws suits are rampant and everyone is looking out for only their own interests.  This creeps into the church as well and for lasting revival to take place lasting relationships have to take place. People leave churches for all sorts of wrong reasons.  Matthew 18 is a clear biblical model for keeping our relationships strong and healthy. Offenses will happen and they are normal in any church family. How we deal with them is paramount for being able to be a house of glory. We need to understand biblical loyalty and there are some powerful prophetic voices out there right now speaking on these issues including John Bevere, Bob Sorge and Juanita Bynum.  Many sheep have been abused by bad authority so they have gone to the other extreme of no commitment at all and without commitment no army can function.  Of course if there are ever blatant issues of un-repented sin present it’s time to flee but mostly people leave fellowships over misunderstandings or unresolved issues and this has been very damaging to the body of Christ.  And again most of this is a demonic attack because the enemy knows if we can get a unified bonded army we will be a major threat to his camp!! (We have flyer called “church membership which may be helpful for you also)   

Another important key is holiness and preparation.  Sin affects the camp and the bible tells us we are members one of another. Our lives are not just our own and the way we live will affect the church we attend.  We teach that holiness comes from the inside out not from the outside in.  No posted set of church rules is going to create lasting change in you but if the spirit of God speaks to your heart and gives you the wisdom to change, you can. Preparation speaks to us having an expectancy to meet with God when we come together. It’s not a bowling club or quilting group you are coming to!!  Getting our heart right throughout the week and setting our face on Gods agenda before we meet are keys to being at HOP.

Extravagant living for the King!!!  Meaning we live with passion and zeal for the things of God including how we tithe, how we worship, how we pray, how we teach, how we play.  Jesus came to give us life and more life.  We are not called to mediocrity but to a wild pursuit of God.  The religious spirit is great to bring a perfect, lukewarm, boring, slumbering balance to our lives. Jesus did not live like that.  He walked each day as an adventure with his father and was spontaneous to His will and did not care what people perceived about what He did. We love having our church meetings like this as well. Every time we meet it is brand new and we follow the winds of God.  He will give us teaching when necessary; He will have us pray when necessary, He will have us do whatever is on His heart!! Talk about staying fresh and alive with daily bread you have to with these kinds of meetings!!  Fewer pastors would burn out if they could get a concept of this and quite trying to move in their own flesh with “good” ideas but not God ideas. Read through 1 Cor 12-14 and the book of acts and you will get a picture of this spontaneous church!! We need to dismantle the man-pleasing spirit as well as we become a HOP.  People will try and manipulate and control us but they can’t as we yield to the life of the Spirit! Jezebel feeds on weak leadership and weak willed Christians.  As we walk in passionate obedience to the King she has no hold on us or our churches. Compromise has got to come out of our vocabulary to walk in victory.

And of course the main key for becoming a HOP is rebuilding the tabernacle of David with worship.  Harp and bowl: worship and prayer. God is releasing such freshness and creativity over worship these last few years it is very exciting. Listen to Jason Upton, Kevin Prosch, Kent Henry and many other new song minstrels that are in the body of Christ right now.  Our songs have to come out of our spirit and soul and not just our head!! “I will sing with my spirit and I will sing with my mind 1cor 14:15”. So why are most our church worship services in English? It should at least be half new songs and half known songs! Again we are handicapped to know how to flow out of our spirit and are producing less fruit than what we are capable of for Gods Glory.  We need extended corporate times of worship and praise. We have hundreds of testimonies about what happens as we enter this place of worship. Sounds, colors, words, music all flowing together to create a habitation of His Presence!!  The more we are intimate with Him the more He can birth in us!! And we want to be full of His Glory!! My wife Lisa has many teachings available in regards to prayer and intercession. Again the church has lost some of the most powerful keys and weapons that the Holy Spirit wants us to flow in.  Please invest some time and learn how to become a radical prayer warrior for Jesus.

What about the leadership in the church and the five-fold ministry?

We believe in the biblical picture of sheep with a shepherd. God has many fields with many shepherds tending many sheep.  Elders and deacons are to help the pastor take care of the flock God has entrusted to him. We do believe in the operation of the full five-fold model found in Ephesians. We are connected to Harvest international ministries (HIM) which is a group of churches with apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers all working together to fulfill the great commission. There is much strength and encouragement as well as resources found in networks such as this one. Church leadership is to encourage, instruct and at times exhort and rebuke those in their care. We are to never forsake the meeting together or refuse to be apart of Gods flocks no matter what are reasons are.  If we will not humble ourselves and say we need the accountability and oversight of the local church we will be hit hard by the enemy and will never fulfill our high call in God. Every church is imperfect and is full of imperfect people.  Working together as a family under authority is key for our growth in Jesus Christ.