Jesus Has Left The Building

Paul Vieira reads a selection from his book Jesus Has Left The Building.

All living things are complex.  If something has a simple structure, it is probably not alive.  I could easily draw the schematic of a chair or a house or a calculator.  Each one is more complex, but yet very simple compared to the human body.  This is also true of church form and activity.  If you can draw out your church life on a piece of paper and it’s the same every week, what you most likely have is something that is inorganic.  It’s not the real church.  In this chapter, you will see how nature organizes itself, painting a vivid picture of how God intended the church to be structured.

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Paul Vieira reads a selection from his book Jesus Has Left The Building.

This is the first of the seven characteristics we examine in the church that Jesus started.  Amphibians are creatures that thrive only when they can move back and forth between land and water.  Using this metaphor, I explain that followers of Jesus too are amphibious.  We must live in two worlds: in community with other believers and out in the world with unbelievers.  Our health and survival as the church depends on this balance.

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Paul Vieira reads a selection from his book Jesus Has Left The Building.

This chapter seeks to introduce a vision of “church”, by going back to the root.  What was Jesus’ church like?  Church as we know it doesn’t go back far enough.  I’m not interested in “improvements” that Constantine brought to the church.  I want to go back past the early church fathers, or even the epistles of Paul.  I want to start with Jesus, and take it from there. I suspect that the future church will look more like the ancient church.  We must go back to go forward.

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Paul Vieira reads a selection from his book Jesus Has Left The Building.

The story of how my whole family encountered God before ever stepping through the doorway of a church.

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Paul Vieira reads a selection from his book Jesus Has Left The Building.

Peter is a believer that grew up in a religious environment that prohibited any contact with an outsider (a Gentile).  Joppa was the place where Peter underwent a mind-blowing paradigm shift, through a supernatural vision, that freed him to go into the home of a Gentile named Cornelius.  The apostle James recognized this event to be the fulfillment of Amos 9:11, when God would rebuild the tabernacle of David.  We live in similar times.  God is meeting people in their own world, outside the walls of organized religion.  He is not requiring outsiders to embrace the Christian sub-culture to find Jesus.  Christ is making personal house calls.

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Paul Vieira reads a selection from his book Jesus Has Left The Building.

Where is this emerging generation?   Most of them are not in churches, where you would imagine these alleged revolutionaries to be. Whether it was Joseph, Moses, David, or Jesus, God kept His anointed ones safe by hiding them in the most unlikely place.  This chapter examines the environment and forces shaping the emerging generations, who will, in turn, change the church and the world forever.

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Paul Vieira reads a selection from his book Jesus Has Left The Building.

The greatest threat to a genuine outpouring of God’s Spirit is the religious spirit. Religion’s deceptive quality convinces those oppressed by it to resist God, in the name of God. This chapter tells the story of a confrontation between King David and his wife Michal, which illustrates characteristics that identify the religious spirit. The story ends with a discovery of how to defeat this evil. There are some who seem to be immune to its poison.

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Paul Vieira reads a selection from his book Jesus Has Left The Building.

God has a dream for planet earth and His will be the final word. This chapter is devoted to the big picture. It reveals how God will fulfill the promise His glory covering the earth, by having His people scattered everywhere throughout the world. The glory of God must be in walking distance from every human being on the planet. God wants to come close. People in the world must be loved by Jesus, served by Jesus, hugged by Jesus, have coffee with Jesus, and we may be the only Jesus that they will ever see.

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Paul Vieira reads a selection from his book Jesus Has Left The Building.

When Jesus was born into this world, many who had been waiting for the promised One missed His arrival.  Even though they had the truth of Scripture to guide them, the Messiah had come in a way that they had not expected.  In this chapter, I uncover a secret to receiving what God is doing in our generation.  Jesus is completely revolutionizing the expression of Christianity in the West.  How can we ensure that we don’t miss or even resist Him?

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Paul Vieira reads a selection from his book Jesus Has Left The Building.

This journey begins with a death.  In this first chapter, I tell my own story of how God required me to end a highly successful ministry in order to prepare and position me for something new.  The reader will be taken from the heights of an exciting youth revival to the disillusionment of pastor who hates going to church.  All along there was one question fueling this holy dissatisfaction, “What was Jesus’ church like?”  The chapter chronicles my pilgrimage to a place outside the walls.

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