Report from USAA - Day 2, Session 4 - Mark Pfeifer

NOTE: These are my notes from the sessions. They are sometimes just bullet points or summary statements. If you want more information or clarification on something, please contact me.

According to Mark Pfeifer, the key to USAA is to be able to break things down geographically – not just within the nation, but within the states. The anointing of new wineskins is going to happen regionally. It’s not going to be about national leaders anymore. Many here [at the conference] who don’t have reserved seats [aren’t the guest speakers or state coordinators] are the ones that have remained faithful to God whom God has anointed and is about to raise up to take their territory. We need to define our call by our territory [the territory to which we are assigned].


The Need for A Territorial Vision

In Matt 16:18-19 we see that the Church belongs to Jesus and He is building it. The gates of hell will not prevail against the church He builds. He builds the church – and gives us the keys to the kingdom. We have it backwards. We work at building the church and expect Jesus to build the kingdom. We should be expanding the kingdom and letting Him build the church.

Authority without responsibility is dangerous. Responsibility without authority is frustrating. God is expanding our sphere [of authority & responsibility].

Mark illustrated his point using three concentric circles. Beginning in the inner circle and moving outward, we have 1) our sphere of authority, 2) our sphere of influence and 3) our sphere of concern. According to Mark, we should not worry about the things that concern us that we cannot do anything about. We should spend 90% of our time in our sphere of authority, 8-9% of our time in our sphere of influence, and only 1-2% of our time in areas that simply concern us but over which we have no control or influence. He said God is going to begin to give us responsibility over things that we previously could only influence. He is also going to give us influence over things where we previously only had concern. He is expanding our borders.

One of the biggest hindrances to the kingdom of God in this hour is pastors believing that they have been called by God to a local church when they have been called to a territory. In scripture, we have no example of someone being called to a local church – they were called to cities or regions.

The pastors / church leaders must begin to realize that they are there to equip the people to go out into the mountain to which they are called and take the kingdom there – instead of trying to figure out where they can be plugged in to help fulfill the pastor/apostle’s dream (within the ministry of that leader).

We need to realize that having “a Holy Ghost time” every Sunday morning does not translate into Transformation of a territory. [We can get “drunk in the Spirit” and laugh and roll around on the floor and all of that; but none of that will transform our territory – unless it somehow changes us to go and and take the kingdom of God to our world.]

We have churches full of fans rather than disciples. We cannot blame the sheep for that condition. The pastors have to return to preaching the real word of the Lord instead of something to bring people in. We need to focus on sending people out rather than luring them in. We need to replace Attendance boards [the boards we used to hang in the front of the church reporting the previous Sunday’s attendance numbers] with Sending boards [how many people are currently “sent out” to take the kingdom message to the world].

If we are going to take our territories, we need to learn to work with other churches. We need the Nazarene and the Methodists and the other churches to begin to get this. We will not take our territory without them. When we start trying to take a territory, we realize that we need other churches in that territory to work with. We need to value people for what they do for the territory.

The definition of success should no longer be “how many are you running [in your church]” but “what is the condition of your territory?” Has the crime rate dropped? Has the drug rate gone down? What are the measureable changes that you are seeing in society in your territory?

If we begin to adopt that mindset, here are a few changes in the way we would think:

• We would have to work together with other churches instead of keeping to ourselves.
• We would appreciate and cheer on other churches and pastors knowing that they have key people in their congregations who are needed to bring change into the territory.
• We would value people by what they add to the territory not just by what they do at church on Sundays.
• We would preach for commitment rather than convenience because we now that while convenience may attract a crowd, commitment changes a territory.
• We would raise the bar instead of lowering the bar because we know that true success is determined by the increase of the Kingdom of God in the territory not necessarily the increase of our attendance numbers.
• We would focus on sending people out rather than luring people in.
• We would cater to the Holy Spirit who empowers people to make a difference rather than catering to people who pad our stats.
• We would confront sin rather than tolerate it.
• We would become warfare oriented instead of entertainment oriented.
• We would fear God more than people.
• We would be men and women of God in the Kingdom instead of politicians in the church.
• We would win souls instead of stealing sheep.
• We would concern ourselves with kingdom issues instead of stylistic issues.

The main change in our understanding needs to be that we have not been called to a church, but to a territory.