What is Four12?

Well, from the earliest days of me being born again, I just had this huge desire to live out and really enjoy authentic New Testament Christianity. I grew up in a traditional church and just saw such empty religion in so many so-called Christians that it just kind of made me turn my back upon the Christian faith. When I encountered Jesus at 20, I realized that Christianity was absolutely this life-changing relationship, and I only began to hunger for the kind of Christianity that I read about in my Bible. This just kind of really longing for the real thing led me to join up with a wonderful group of guys who, under the leadership of Dale Daniels, who was a genuine apostolic grace, and for many years I served with him [on] the New Covenant Apostolic Team.

How Four12 Began as a Second-Generation Apostolic Movement

I absolutely loved the incredible journey of just learning how we could live out our faith today in the same way that the guys did in the New Testament, in the Bible times. And then, out of nowhere, the Lord just surprisingly spoke to us through a number of prophetic voices and also just some of our apostolic voices that we had historic relationship with, that God was actually calling us to start a movement. And so, on the 16th of June 2011, we believe, under the leadership of the Holy Spirit, we started a movement. We felt to call it 4:12 because we realized that we were really a second-generation apostolic movement. In Ephesians 4:11, you know, you read about how the Lord has given these apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers to the church after His ascension.

Ephesians 4:12 and Equipping the Saints for Ministry

And being part of the first-generation apostolic movement, felt that too much emphasis had really been placed upon the wonder of these gifts and the theory of how they would work or function. And so, in Ephesians 4:12, then the next verse, we read about how these gifts are supposed to do what they're supposed to do, which really is the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry. So we believe that God had called us to empower the church to become a kingdom of priests and felt the Lord showed us how to follow the biblical pattern prescribed by Paul in the New Testament so that we could better bring the churches into health.

We realized that God's real heart for the church wasn't a bunch of spectators in a Christian church enjoying the show and meetings, but a vibrant community of saints, with each person becoming and doing what God intended them to do. In Ephesians 4, we read that the fruit of these fivefold gifts working with the churches really is that people are able to serve Jesus better and each other better. There's an increased faith and faithfulness that comes about within the churches; Christians who grow up to be like Jesus and also know the real Jesus, are rooted in good doctrine, biblical unity within the churches, and a real increased ability at the hands to be the hands and feet of Jesus on the earth.

Activated Saints and the Church’s Unique Calling

And then finally, in verse 16, we read that the church will only ever be able to do what Jesus wants it to do when every single part of the church is able to do its own unique work. So this has kind of become a hallmark for us in 4:12: activated saints living within it, with really the heart to extend the kingdom of God as their real primary life's focus.

It's actually been unbelievable to see how wonderfully we've grown and to see how far our reach has gone in such a short period of time. We've seen churches partnering in wonderfully, incredibly biblical ways from all over the world, and I certainly, in my life, I've never seen Christians so motivated and devoted to the things of Christ as we see now. Churches are flourishing, new churches being started, and many churches and leaders who are disillusioned at the present status quo of the church and are just hungry to rediscover in our generation what the church should be are joining us in their droves.

Restoring Authentic New Testament Christianity

So we're hungry to be a part of really a restoration of authentic New Testament Christianity, and we're working together in partnerships just like we see in the Bible to bring about God's kingdom on the earth through healthy New Testament churches.