Wolfgang Simson A Prophetic Roadmap for an Apostolic Journey

541 Pages·2009·3.11 MB·English

A Prophetic Roadmap for an
Apostolic Journey
Wolfgang Simson
T h e ST a r f iSh
M a n i f eS To
A Prophetic Roadmap for an Apostolic Journey
Version 1.0 by Wolfgang Simson
released October 2009 in Antioch
The Starfish Publishing Agreement
This book is free - but it will cost you!
Starfish Publishing is a new resource function carried by contributing authors committed to
this present reformation. It is the publishing arm of the “Starfish Partnership”, a global, informal
network of followers of Jesus Christ, with the goal of seeing half the planet discipled through
the starfish-type multiplication of organic/simple house churches, regional apostolic networks
and a return to Kingdom economics. Starfish Edition exists to make vital materials towards this
goal easily accessible and globally available for the empowerment of anyone.
Starfish Publishing is a decentralized network and is based on the philosophy of a Christian
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but instead of simply buying another product, we invite you to invest financially into the
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(more in the appendix section).
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CONTENTS
PART I: INTRODUCTION AND VISION
Starfish Publishing Agreement
contents
Foreword by Anderson Williams
Foreword by author
1 I spy something 14
2 The Tale of the Mosquito Net 24
PART II: THE PROPHETIC DIMENSION
3 Spiritual Intelligence 30
GPS: God’s prophetic system
Welcome to the 4th Industrial Revolution
Prophetic pictures
Prophetic warnings
4 Prophetic Signposts 50
Houston: The split pulpit
Esther of India
River Aare in Thun: the flood of the Holy Spirit
Toronto: The disarmament of the Christian Militia
Original purpose
Erich’s vision of trees and the storm “Lothar”
Why, God, such a massive Tsunami Devastation?
Rain and gold
PART III: THE PROBLEM
5 Unmasking the Problem 70
6 The Covenant Principle: - or why we got deported to Babylon 92
7 Blessing: The Power of God to be Fruitful, Multiply and Fill the Earth 104
8 Where Do We Go From Here? 112
9 Apostolic Migration 120
10 My own story 126
PART IV: THE APOSTOLIC DIMENSION
11 Apostolic Architecture 144
12 The Blueprint question – How does God build? 154
13 The Empire of God 168
14 Ekklesia: The Kingdom visible around Tables and in Stadiums 196
15 Apostles – The Master Builders of God 220
16 History of the Restoration of the Apostolic 270
17 False Apostolic Patterns: The three Apostles of Mammon, 298
Dominionism and the Dream of Social Transformation
PART V: APOSTOLIC BUILDING PATTERNS
18 Identify God’s Master Builders today 322
19 The “Tarsus Principle” 328
20 Divine Romance – matching the Apostolic with the Prophetic ministry 336
21 The Gardens of God 350
22 Apostolic Finance Principles 364
23 Modeling the Kingdom 380
24 Apostolic Diaconia 396
PART VI: IMPLICATIONS AND APPLICATIONS
25 Repositioning from Within 426
26 Immediate Consequences 432
27 Organic Servanthood Development 466
28 Transitioning into an Apostolic Order 492
29 The Toolbox 508
30 The Starfish Partnership 520
Appendix 540

Foreword
Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common
salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend
earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints
(Jude 3)
The Global Church has arrived at an incredibly significant kairos-time in its
evolution. It is a day of enlargement, spiritual redefinition, increased under-
standing and total rightness – all aspects of life are being aligned with the template of the
Kingdom. It is a day of unprecedented divine initiatives, as God seeks to reclaim His Church and
enforce His purposes with an urgency never before seen. In these days of unparalleled eternal
movings there is an urgent demand for all aspects of the faith to be brought into complete
alliance with God’s divine will.
The term that was coined to define the present initiative of God is “A Global Apostolic Refor-
mation”. This present reformation cannot be defined as a “move” - moves come and moves go
and like spiritual junkies the global church runs recklessly in search of another move. I choose
to describe it as a divine process that incorporates and encapsulates ALL that God is seeking to
achieve from now until the ultimate completion of His will in the earth. It is certainly a day of
unprecedented advance!
This advance, like all previous advances will not be without its unique breed of skandalon
– those elements that seek to short-circuit the objective. In order to maintain the integrity
of the present process we are encouraged by Jude to “contend earnestly for the faith…” But
that earnest contention must be tooled – it must be Prophetically informed and Apostolically
enforced.
This powerful and relevant process has been mired in misunderstanding, misconception
and misrepresentation. The barrage of confusion has left most of the Church with a false view
of the present Spiritual initiative while others see the Church as nothing more than “opium of
the people”. Manipulation is masquerading as leadership, Apostolic networks are no more than
ultra-modern denominations, polished Pentecostalism is passing for Apostolic, merchandising
and Christian network marketing is passing for evangelism, giftedness is elevated above cha-
racter and religious imperialism has successfully disguised itself as missions. The result of this
cacophony is a disfigured church that has not fulfilled its responsibility; a self indulgent, dispa-
rate and divided Christianity that has deceived masses engaged in blind loyalty to a system that
is in desperate need of reform. Against this backdrop of prevailing exaggerations and abuses it
is refreshing to read The Starfish Manifesto.
Wolfgang Simson strikes a deathblow on traditionalist, pseudo-apostolic companies, religi-
ous despots and charlatans who celebrate an apostolic and prophetic competence that runs
only skin deep. This book openly exposes the redundancy, irrelevance and inaccuracy of the
“Church as we know it” and it powerfully provides us with God’s preferred alternative. It presents
us with spiritual templates and workable solutions to centuries old inaccuracies. This book will
certainly insult ignorance, inform our process, arm us to earnestly contend for the faith and
provide us with clear revelational pathways that can lead us more precisely to the completion
of all things.
Then spake Haggai the Lord’s messenger in the Lord’s message unto the people, saying, I
am with you, saith the Lord (Hag 1:13, KJV)
The Starfish Manifesto is not a ventilation of brainpower neither is it an abstract collection
of statistics, historical data, scriptures, experiences nor academically enriched paragraphs. It is
however a spiritual life buoy that seeks to rescue the church from it desultory practices.
It is the embodiment of the writer’s conviction. This puts an added premium on the book pri-
marily because its impartational value is heightened by virtue of there being very little distance
between declaration and lifestyle. In the words of Wolfgang “much of theology actually spells
biography”.
…having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself
being the corner stone (Eph 2:20,
Every divine initiative in the earth will require a clear, seminal declaration of truth in order to
dignify the process. When Israel marched through the wilderness the movement of the cloud
determined their movement. It was the blast of the trumpet that informed the people of the
cloud’s moving (Num 10). The trumpets then, represented the clear, articulate and unambi-
guous prophetic declaration. Without that “chazon” or prophetic revelational declaration we are
left with an aborted process or a move that has a relatively short shelf life - where divine intent
is derailed and divine purpose is deferred. But prophetic revelation is not a stand-alone com-
modity. When working in tandem with the Apostolic it becomes a lethal foundation on which
divine architecture is actualized and built. These two competences have been preached into
obsolescence by much of the Church. In other circles they (apostolic and prophetic) are com-
peting with each other in an environment of perennial distrust and narcissistic power struggle.
If these two ministries can truly die, then God’s Ekklesia and the world will be better for it.
Wolfgang Simson has provided us with an exceptional book that allows us to look into the
working reality of these two competences and the technology that will allow for God’s intent
to be fully constructed in the earth. A rare voice among many echoes!
Anderson Williams
Trinidad and Tobago
Foreword by author
Whoever wishes to follow God will do it either God‘s way, or his own way. Many have boldly
declared their own ways to be God‘s way, without asking his permission. In kind, God is doing
something in our days without asking anyone’s permission. Those who sense it respond and
either become revolutionaries, reformers – or rebels against their own King. The focus of this
book is on the revolution that is happening out there. And it is causing those that watch it from
inside established Christian systems to wish, believe and call for a reformation in their own
camp. A revolution is a complete replacement of a system with a new one; a reformation, in
comparison, merely changes and reshapes – reforms - that which already exists. However, I see
the current Kingdom revolution, instigated by the King himself, as a benevolent and gracious
act, calling both revolutionaries (the builders of new systems) and reformers (the re-shapers of
existing ones) to march arm in arm, under the directives of their common King, Jesus Christ,
into a common future. Today God’s revolutionaries inspire, challenge and dare all of us to go
were no-one has gone before; in-house reformers restore their churches, Missions and net-
works, while at the same time they help to redeem the rich spiritual legacy and heritage that
each church and movement has accumulated in the past, striving to introduce their own spiri-
tual gems into the public domain.
When Karl Marx published his Communist Manifesto in 1848, the founding document of
Communism, he opened it by saying: “A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of commu-
nism.” In today’s world, God’s Spirit is haunting all of us; but not in the form of some ghostly
phantom threatening to destroy and overthrow, but the Spirit of Jesus rallying all of us with stri-
king, personalized invitations to individually and corporately engage in the biggest and most
exciting endeavor of all of human history: the culmination and ultimate fulfillment of God’s
purposes with mankind before His New Age begins.
In 1996, I sensed I needed to start preaching, teaching, and writing about an imminent
reformation that gradually starts by the return of house churches as a new, but actually age-old
format of ekklesia. Since the book Houses That Change The World came out and was translated
into nearly 20 languages, we have had a never ending stream of visitors at our house telling
us we were expressing something that they had felt in their spirit loud and clear, something
unspeakable they somehow felt was put into words by that book. Since then, hundreds of
thousands of new house churches have been born around the world, and if research serves us
right, it looks like this is only the beginning. The Starfish Manifesto is probably the last book I
will write on the issue of ekklesia, and in many ways, it is the Big Brother of my former book on
house churches.
In 2001, God had asked my wife Mercy and me to completely quit Church-as-we-know-it
(CAWKI) and even missions-as-we-know-it, and to go into an unknown future. We felt lost,
vulnerable, insecure, and alone. But after some time, God started to speak to us that a time
had arrived where age-old secrets of the Kingdom and “mysteries sealed up until the last days”
would be revealed, divine insights that would bring about a dramatic and revolutionary shift in
the way the church understands itself and the task God has for her. One of these mysteries is the
rediscovery of healthy apostolic and prophetic ministries that had gone through God’s mill –
not proud, triumphant, presentable and strong people and their ministries, but weak, crucified,
no-name, faceless, and dead people, unimpressive folks.
I have three specific groups of people in mind for whom this book is written:
1) Seekers of Church 2.0. There are many who have grown up in traditional churches or
missions who feel excited in their spirit, knowing that what they have experienced and seen
in Christianity so far cannot be “it.” It always has been church version 1.x, a slight upgrade, a
cosmetic change of something that has posed as “church” for centuries. But there are literally
millions that, either hiding it deep inside or voicing it aloud, know there must be more, some-
thing you might call Church 2.0. Through all sorts of means they have been thrown into a
search-mode, looking for something else, something that goes beyond their past experience
and brings them into a closer relationship with God and what it truly means to be the church.
If this is you, I have good news for you.
2) I see a generation of young people rising up today and asking new kinds of questions.
They (OK; some!) are passionately in love with Jesus, but strangely at odds with the Church.
They are looking for a cause, a dangerous mission, something worth risking their lives for. If this
is you, then I have good news for you, too. It may feel a bit like Neo in the film “The Matrix.” He
was offered the red and blue pill, took the red one (converted) and experienced how it was to
be “born again” and rescued into the community of Zion on Morpheus’ ship. As Neo woke up
and shook his head, this is what he heard: “The answers are coming!” So hang in there.
3) There are those who are coming to Christ today completely outside traditional church
systems. Are you from a Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Indian, Jewish, New Age, or completely
agnostic background and looking for a church that is unlike the church? For a liberating place
under the shadow of God where your brothers and sisters would wish to be, too? Then I have
good news for you as well. The Western kind of church that you have visited, read about, or seen
advertised on TV, is not the real thing. Jesus was an Asian. And the kind of Church he started is
much closer to your heart and culture than you probably thought possible.
Finally, if you feel safe and comfortable in a position or role in traditional churches or missi-
ons, this book will probably be either rather disturbing to you – or it will open a surprising back
door to a Christianity you never believed existed. And show you a church you never knew. And
if you are a house church enthusiast of the kind that relishes total independence, rejects each
and any authority, and have become a holy island, a part of a harmless, self-centered religious
bubble, this book might serve to burst that bubble and invite you to an apostolic dimension
of organic Christianity that you probably both wanted and feared: wanted because small little
bless-me-clubs can become rather boring, ingrown, and insignificant after some time; and
feared, because this means change, huge change.
But most of all, this book is written for all those followers of Christ who feel in between
worlds and wish to dwell on a map of the Promised Land. It may be a bit like Columbus on
his first journey to discover “India” after the point of no return, that particular spot in a journey
where returning back is not an option anymore. The resources have run dry, and your only hope
is that there is land ahead before all hope dies. For all those, I have a message. As Church-as-
We-Know-It has faded into the distance long ago, there is a rumor that a new land has been
spotted: Church-as-God-Wants-It. And that - God lives there.
Where would you rather be for the rest of your life?
Wolfgang Simson
October 2009