A fascinating strategy

​Jesus's strategy is radically different than the strategies of most movements and causes. His strategy works from the bottom up and from the inside out.

​

He recruits ordinary people, not many of the rich and powerful, not the attractive influencers. He is looking for people who have one thing--willingness to be part of his movement and to let him lead. And that seems to come easier for people at the bottom than the top.

 

When people are willing, Jesus puts his deep self into their deep self. Sorry, but words can't capture that very well. In traditional church language, we would say that he puts his Holy Spirit into their souls and bodies, but those words are not clear to most people either.   

​

Try thinking of it like this. Imagine that Shakespeare could somehow project his deep self, his "spirit", his essence, into you. You would mysteriously become a great writer, even though you could not really explain what was going on.

 

Shakespeare can't do that. He's dead. Jesus is not dead, and he does it all the time. He projects his Holy Spirit into willing people, and we change from the inside out. We become as passionate as he was about the bottom-up, inside-out movement he launched.

 

The Spirit of Jesus works inside us and enables us to do some things we could never do before. If this sounds a little like Luke using "the Force" in Star Wars, it is similar to a point. The difference is that we don't "use" the Spirit. Besides giving us power, the Spirit of Jesus directs us, coaches us, helps us grow into our role as recruits in the POTF movement. The Force does not direct Luke on any particular path; it only helps him succeed on the path he is already on.

​

Why we don't have to force anything

​Luke Skywalker is about forcing things. The only way to defeat evil in the universe is to blast it before it blasts you. The series is called Star Wars for a reason. It's not Star Discoveries or Star Collaboration and Progress. Would anybody have gone to see that?

​

Jesus, by contrast, is not about forcing things. He let his enemies kill him, and then he defeated them through a strategy no one had thought of. Instead of unleashing a destructive force, he surfs out of the tomb on a tidal wave of life-giving force. The World-changer lives, and he is still leading his life-giving movement. 

​

Jesus did not train his recruits about how to get earthly power and how to organize to force the world to change. Jesus's campaign is not a political, military, or advertising campaign. It is a public awareness campaign. That is how Jesus approached it and that's what he keeps directing us to do in his name--spread some news of events that changed the direction of the story of the world, especially the clinching event, his resurrection.

​

We hope and pray that people who hear the news of these milestones in God's campaign will welcome it. Then they will quit doing things that divide, injure, or impoverish people. Instead they will join Jesus's movement to repair damage already done. That is how the movement rolls on and grows. That is how the world changes from the bottom up and the inside out.

​​

Does Jesus's movement have religious goals?

​Jesus's movement or campaign is not a religious campaign in the ordinary sense of the word. It is not focused on telling people to be more religious and to think more about where they will go when they die. For Jesus those things were side issues.

​

The main point he hammered all the time was the proclamation that heaven's power was arriving on earth. A new era was dawning. God was taking his ancient Abraham-based campaign to a new level by sending the Messiah, the World-Changer, to earth in person so that the promise to Abraham could come true--every family on earth would be blessed through Abraham's descendants. 

​​

Almost everything Jesus did while on earth was done to build up his movement. He led it to a new identity as his POTF, a new level of understanding its special assignment, and a new power to carry on the connect-heal-bless campaign.