Don Hawley

September 19, 2001

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I can still remember the excitement of that special mail call. It was only a small card, but it had a big message—as of that moment I was licensed to set up and operate an amateur radio station!

It wasn’t that I was unacquainted with radio. Believe it or not, I date back to that distant age before TV! Evenings, especially Saturday night, the entire family gathered around the radio and listened to Bob Hope (he too is prehistoric) and Jack Benny. Can you imagine everyone sitting around just staring at a box? No picture! Well, in our innocence we thought it was great.

However, in addition to the standard radio, I also owned a ham radio receiver. That meant I could magically pull in signals from all over the world. But I couldn’t talk back—until I got that all-important card in the mail.

As quickly as possible I bought an amateur radio transmitter, and set up my first home station. With a tremor in my voice I picked up my microphone and called, "CQ, CQ, KA6DEQ. Over." Within moments there was a response, and an entirely new wonderful world opened up to me.

Now let’s move to the spiritual application. Did you know that you already have a license to transmit spiritually? It was yours the moment you became a Christian. With your new license came a command from God to use it to reach others for his Kingdom. Sadly however, if you’re an average Christian, you seldom if ever do any transmitting. You just receive.

Week by week you enter a building dedicated to worship, and settle into a pew that is safely anchored to the floor. Your best view is the back of the neck of the person in front of you. There is a lot of transmitting going on, but it’s all being done by a select few up front. Your only responsibility is to patiently receive—if your mind doesn’t wander.

Although many are not aware, every Christian has been given ministry gifts by the Holy Spirit. These are for the purpose of edifying the Body, and reaching others for Christ. Unfortunately, in large traditional church settings, only a few in leadership get to use their gifts. In many congregations, if you dated to stand and suggest you had a prophetic word from the Lord, the deacons likely would show you the nearest exit.

In the beginning of the Christian era, God saw fit to divide the Body into small house churches. The plan worked so well that, even without technology or money, they "turned the whole world upside down." When the church left its homes to build bigger structures that held large numbers of people, things slowed down.

It appears that the greatest Christian growth in the world today is taking place in China. Due to persecution, the Body there was forced back to the original plan of small house churches. Such a movement is also underway in the United Sates. If you would like to learn more about this house church plan, and begin using your spiritual gifts, I suggest you read the following two books:

1. The Normal Christian Church Life by Watchman Nee. (Don’t mistake this for another of his volumes titled The Normal Christian Life)
2. Churches That Change the World by Wolfgang Simson.

Both books can be obtained through Amazon.com.

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