Preparing Followers of Jesus
Uprising is happening next week and your registration now will help us tremendously in preparing for this gathering. This weblink will take you directly to the registration page.
We see Jesus transforming His church from the inside out and Uprising is moving right in that transformation flow, like a caterpillar’s rebirth into a butterfly. Come taste and see that the Lord is good!
Everyone desires to make a mark – to contribute, to give, to invest into treasures that are worthwhile and will impact others.
In John 13:34-35, Jesus gave us just one simple formula to make a mark, to be noted. That is – to follow His command to show “agape love” to one another. And by that testimony of unconditional generosity in grace, mercy, and forgiveness, we will command the world’s attention and make our mark as Christians.
Uprising 2017 is a gathering of young people who seek to make their mark by pursuing the standards of “agape love” – singular, pure, focused on this one burning desire of Jesus.
MTC 2016 saw the Rushing Wind of grace, forgiveness, and mercy blow through our temple. Our hearts burst with thanksgiving for all the awesome testimonies of healing and giving. The Holy Spirit imparted to us a new level of His manifestation, allowing us to experience a wave of mercy and building up of Christ’s body that we have yet to see.
Brother Lars Magnusson has, once again, provided an awesome set of main session videos for us to broadly share this experience. His exceptional dedication to excellence and detail has been a great encouragement to us all. May the Lord greatly bless the work of his hands.
As a past MTC participant, would you please also take a moment to respond to this very short survey. Your inputs will provide a clearer picture and confirmation of where the Holy Spirit is leading our Body. The survey will also provide an opportunity to join us in co-laboring in MTC. We thank you in advance.
Finally, because we want to generously bless the godly servants who ministered at MTC 2016, we would like to extend to you that opportunity to bless. You may still support MTC through this Paypal link. If you prefer other fund transfer methods such as wire transfer or by mail, please contact us with a reply email.
May the Body be built up through your generous sacrifices.
As a way to bless others with our abundance and open MTC’s experience to more participants, the conference this year will assume the hotel room cost for all registrants.
If you would like to stay at the Marriott for MTC, please register for the conference and make your room reservations through this weblink. The MTC conference will cover the room cost and taxes. If you have already made your room reservation(s), you do not need to do anything. You may also change your reservations as needed for more or less room-night stays.
Note that each room reservation must be made by a person registered for MTC in order for the conference to honor the cost pickup.
This is one of those beautiful opportunities of giving and receiving that builds the Body in very visible and immediate ways. If you are able, we encourage you to give generously to enable this strengthening of the Body. If this season requires you to lean a bit on the Body, it’d be our honor to support you. We only request that you respect this generosity by fully participating in the conference.
May the Rushing Wind of grace, forgiveness, and mercy blow through our temple.
Over 22 years ago, God gave MTC the call to minister to the market place leaders of our generation – the “storehouse builders” – who will play a key role in preparing the church for the coming great harvest and darkness. For this reason, MTC 2016 will host a series of breakout sessions specifically for business and career mentoring.
Leading the mentoring sessions will be our long-time friend and ministry partner, Elder Fred Lin. As a church planter/teacher and the former CEO of Payless Car Rental (now part of Avis), Elder Fred has been faithfully serving the church as a leader and influencer across North America, Asia, and Europe. We stand in great anticipation to see the Holy Spirit move mightily through him in ministering to and mentoring the “storehouse builders” of our generation.
The mentoring sessions will be held at 3:30 PM – 5:00 PM, Thursday-Saturday, during the conference. In order to prepare for a most profitable time together, we require all business mentoring participants to complete a personal profile at this webpage. For couples, please submit individual profiles for each person.
We look forward to standing with you in building up the Body – the precious Bride of Christ.
Ephesians 4:11-13 reveals God’s “open secret” for elevating the Church in Her authority and testimony. It openly states that the functions of apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastors and teachers will build a church that attains to the fullness of Christ – of authority and testimony beyond what we can conjure. But in that bold declaration also embeds a call to grace, forgiveness, and mercy — to maintain teamwork amidst the natural tensions that can arise from these functions’ differing priorities and temperaments. The authority and testimony of the “fullness of Christ” demands that we embrace grace, forgiveness, and mercy.
Too often, we see tensions flair between apostolic dreamers always driving expansion projects and pastors/teachers who may see greater priority with ministering to people’s needs. How about pitting a motivator evangelist who sees opportunity in every opportunity against the discerning and cautious voice a prophetic analyst? The orderly and disciplined teacher can easily take offense at a visionary apostle’s scattered ideas, or a charismatic evangelist’s “hand-waving” sales pitch. Even Paul and Barnabas, two of the church’s greatest contributors, had to separate in sharp disagreement from a clash of apostolic/prophetic versus pastoral personalities. God seems to have designed into these functions a condition favorable for spawning “offenses”. But why?
Overcoming the offenses from these “natural tensions” may be Jesus’ way to qualify us as stewards of His powerful authority and testimony. For this reason, MTC 2016 will seek the Holy Spirit’s heart on raising up standard bearers of His fruit. The fruit of the Spirit – an outflow of grace, forgiveness, and mercy – “immunes” us to the negative aspects of offenses. This “immunity” also frees us from the impossible task of trying to eliminate offenses around us, and break us from the non-ending cycle of demanding “fairness” and restitution from each other. That is powerful!
Standard bearers for the fruit of the Spirit play a crucial role in building the body – to help the functions of the apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastors and teachers build “immunity” to offenses that arise from their natural tensions. The heart of MTC’s mandate is to raise up these standard bearers who bear the fruit in grace, forgiveness, and mercy – and ultimately see the church “attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. “
May the standard bearers of our generation rise to life with that prophetic breath of Ezekiel 37.
From Eden in Genesis, to the cross in the Gospels, all the way to the New Jerusalem in Revelation, there winds the thread of one constant theme. That is the theme of grace, forgiveness, and mercy. Jesus sees this theme with such importance that He imprinted it into us through an indelible picture of The Teacher washing His disciples’ feet – the incredulous act of taking other’s offenses against us as our responsibility. What’s more, in this call of a seemingly “upside-down justice”, Jesus assures that we will be blessed if we do it.
Ephesians 4:11-13 helps us see that the more we embrace this theme of washing each other’s feet – for the functions of the apostle, prophet, evangelist, and pastor/teacher to work in unity – the closer the Church will manifest the fullness of Christ. We can only start to imagine how this blessing will influence the 7 societal mountains, make disciples of nations, and radiate the beauty of Jesus’ Bride to the end of the earth, so all who see us will want to join us.
Through the many years of straining to articulate a Kingdom strategy and to mobilize the “10,000 market place soldiers”, God has finally taken us to a place of seeing this simple truth: Jesus has predicated the Church’s power and influence on our ability to overcome offenses in the body, through the washing of our brother’s and sister’s feet – of taking other’s offense as our responsibility.
MTC 2016.seeks to establish a platform for raising up Kingdom standard bearers of the fruit of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Why? because these are the outflows of grace, forgiveness, and mercy, the elements that encompasses the washing of feet, the elements that builds the body for it to manifests the fullness of Christ.
Unresolved offenses are some of the most stubborn impediments to Church growth today. In that also stands the greatest opportunity for standard bearers of grace, forgiveness, and mercy to rise up and paint that truly extraordinary picture of the Church.
Ephesians 4:11-13 declares an extraordinary picture of the Church.
By the Holy Spirit’s inspiration, Paul states that when we get the functions of the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers to work together, the church will become a body that demonstrates the fullness of Christ. This is extraordinary because it means that Jesus’ extraordinary ministry sets for us the pattern that we should expect to attain to.
Envision a church that serves the needy with the multiplying power of 5 loaves and 2 fishes; a church that can speak restoration of destiny into billions who are living the same shame-driven life as the woman at the well; a church so full of authority that it can compel even the most hardened criminals to repay 4 times of what they owe; a church that solves the world’s most difficult economic problems through the deep wisdom of sacrifice, forgiveness, and mercy.
The bible gave us the revelation and insight to take such a vision to reality. And in the path to that reality lies the challenge of bringing unity to the functions of apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor and teacher. It seems that God’s underlying mandate for us distills down to how each of these functions, in their distinctive personalities and sometime conflicting temperaments, can cover each other in grace – to maintain the unity of the Spirit through the washing of each other’s feet.
We will continue to press forward MTC 2016 by pressing into this mandate – to strive after that extraordinary picture of the Church by building the unity within the functions of the apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor and teacher. It would be our honor to step together with you into the fullness of Christ at MTC 2016.
For this year’s gathering, Uprising will place special emphasis on developing “Life Connection Points” in the pursuit of becoming Standard Setters.
“Life Connections Points” served as a key platform for many Standard Setters in Scripture. Noah and his family had an ark-builders “Life Connection Point” as they stood together to set a standard of God’s heart. Daniel and his friends established standards of godly governance through their “Life Connection Point” as governing cadets of Babylon. Jesus, in preparing the seed for His Kingdom standard, developed a discipleship “Life Connection Point” with the Twelve.
In going beyond the message, music, muse, meals, and ministry of our gathering, we will seek to provide “Life Connection Points” that can take our Standard Setters to the next level. We hope that the “Life Connection Points” will bring about the strength of many great parts connected as one awesome body – as we UPRISE against the patterns of this world and set Kingdom standards through mutual encouragement, accountability, and collaboration.
I would like to invite you to join me on Saturday afternoon (July 2nd) for a “Life Connection Point” session with emphasis for career and pre-career individuals. We will confront issues related to wealth management, singleness, marriage, influencing our work culture, influencing our professional community, committing to the local church body, and other areas that may be burning in your heart. God has a Kingdom standard over all of these areas. In that, we will seek to establish “Life Connection Points” that can bring together the body of Standard Setters – allowing them to testify the blessings of seeking Christ’s Kingdom and righteousness in these areas.
UPRISING against the world’s standards by seeking first Christ’s Kingdom and righteousness is the only path to success. And to be “successful in that success”, we must stand together as one body, the Church. “Life Connection Points” represent our small part in building the body of Standard Setters for seeking the Kingdom. For that reason, we invite you to join us.
The election year has certainly brought prominence to the issues surrounding “What shall we eat? What shall we drink? What shall we wear?”. In Matthew 6:31, Jesus asserts that the world runs after things, and more so than ever, emotions run high over the contention of who can best lead us in “running after these things”. The U.S. political parties stand almost polar opposites on basic areas of taxes, job creation, security, immigration, health care, family values, and even the way we to go to the bathroom. This seemingly unprecedented polarization shows a nation simmering to a boiling point in anger and confusion – and Jesus tells us… not to worry?
We do not worry because Jesus offers the answer to “running after these things,” and it does not lie with the leaning of Republicans or Democrats. The answer will be embedded by the Holy Spirit into those who strive to set the standards of Christ’s Kingdom and righteousness. They are standard setters of Kingdom value – in the way they study for tests, interview for jobs, treat their families, decide where to live, handle their debts, handle their debtors, deal with disappointments, spend their vacation, pick their roommates, pick their spouses, remain single, collaborate in business ventures, service their customers, lead their companies, remain faithful to their spouses, love their enemies, pick up from their brokenness, teach and disciple others, serve their churches, and impact their communities.
The Uprising gathering is a platform, a consolidation point for such standard setters. If you feel such a call, we would be glad to connect with you and hope that you can join us.
To make it easier for our young people to participate, we are not charging any fees. In addition, many local families are generously opening their homes to host our attendees. If you would like such housing, please reply to this message or note that in the registration page.