Global Harvest Addresses the 'Changing Church'

By Lillian Kwon, Christian Post Reporter Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Global Harvest Ministries will be holding its second International Congress on Aug. 29-31 in Dallas, Texas, where participants will address the "Changing Church."

"The Church is expanding out beyond the four walls and into the marketplace and into the streets," said Peter Wagner, president of Global Harvest. "Winds of revival are beginning to blow. New church movements are on the rise. The apostolic reformation is on the move."

Guest speakers including Wagner will discuss the new perspective of increased authority and dominion that God is releasing to His people, new insights into spiritual warfare, understanding legal structures that attempt to hold society captive, how religious operations and administrations are shifting at an accelerated rate, and other topics.

"What's the biggest battle right now for the Church?" Doris Wagner, executive vice president of Global Harvest, had asked. "The Church in Europe and in many advanced countries is dying. So what we're trying to do is revitalize it.

"The Church as we have known it is not meeting the needs of people right now."

This week’s gathering, which is not limited to church leaders, will help Christians gain perspective on how they can change society in their "sphere of influence," she added. "The emphasis of the [International Congress] on the Changing Church is we feel Christians are called to change society, which hasn't been done very well."

According to Global Harvest's vice president Chuck D. Pierce, "Change is an inevitable force that we must deal with in our lives at this time in history if we are to remain viable and relative in the earth today. Change is also synonymous with transformation. The enemy of the Church understands the concept of change so he either tries to get us out of time in our changing or hold us 'routinized' in a stagnant, inflexible, methodized wineskin that cannot hold the wine of present-day truth."

The three-day conference follows Global Harvest Ministries' first congress gathering in July when more than 1,000 Christian leaders convened to address intercession and spiritual warfare. International congresses will continue to be conducted on an annual basis.