October 2025 – Page 2 – Sons of Issachar

483. Is God Bored? A New Perspective on Church Practices

Mike Parsons

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Bored with this church stuff

God spoke to me and said, “I am really bored with this church stuff.” And I thought, you cannot say that. That cannot be you. How can you be bored with people worshipping you? But he was not saying he was bored of people, or of their desire to worship. He was saying he was bored of the format, the same things, week after week.

So I pressed him. “What do you mean, bored?” He said, “Why do you not ask me what I would like you to do?” I said, “We do. We ask you every week.” And he replied, “Yes, but you are only giving me a menu of five things to choose from. What you are really asking is: what order do you want to do those five things?”

I had to admit he was right. We claimed to be led by the Spirit, but only within the boundaries of those five things. That realisation shocked me. I kept quiet at first, because I knew it would cause an uproar. Instead, I began teaching the Engaging God programme in my office on Sunday mornings. The main meetings had to stay at a basic level for the newer people and those from the rehabilitation unit, so others handled that.

I would spend the first part of the service downstairs teaching, then went upstairs to join the main gathering. And when I did, I felt the same as God had said. This is really boring, is it not? I enjoyed myself more in the office than in the service. It was not the people—I loved the people. But while we were on the cutting edge of engaging God, with angels and portals into heaven, we were still doing everything in the same tired format. Someone would say something, we would sing, there would be ministry, and perhaps something else—but always within the same framework.

What is church?

I began to understand what God was saying, and I felt it too: this is not it, is it? He took me out of that scenario and began to press the deeper question: what is church? Why do we run a meeting? Because church is not a meeting. Church is people in relationship—with each other and with God. But what we had built, with worship, a preach and the rest, was the very thing God was challenging. “Why are you doing this? Who said I wanted you to?” And that challenge shook us.

It challenged people. What was this going to look like? So then we did not do any of that. We turned up on a Sunday and asked, “Oh, what does God want to do then? What do you want to do, God?”

God said, “If you had asked me before you got here, I would have told you I did not want you to come and do this today.” Ah. So it is not about meeting this way and turning up in a building then? No. Not every Sunday. No. If you had asked me, I would have told you I wanted you to go and do something yesterday, to go for a walk and enjoy the beautiful fresh air.

That was a very different challenge to our thinking. This was not just, “Oh well, we will turn up in the building and then ask you what to do.” This was actually, “Do you even want us to meet this way this week?” People struggled with that because they were so conditioned to being told they had to turn up on the day to do whatever was going to happen. That was ‘church’, and they were expected to be there if they were part of church.

What is the way forward?

So it was very challenging, and we got to the point where those who were meeting together began saying, “Well, let’s just seek God and ask Him to show us the way forward. What is the way forward?” This was November–December 2019. Then God used COVID to show us the way forward, because suddenly we could not meet anymore anyway. We had all the technology to meet online, but we asked God, “Do you want us to meet online?” No, because all you would be doing is recreating something online that you cannot do in person.

Eventually, people were weaned off church — the meetings, the format, the structure that we called church. They were still relating to one another, still building relationships, still pursuing the mission God had given to care for people. Some people could not cope with not having a church service, so they went off and found one that made them feel comfortable. Great. If that is what they want to do, no problem. They were free to do that. But some people were so free that they realised they did not have to go to a meeting on a Sunday — or two meetings, or whatever it might have been. They would never want to go back to that. They discovered that being church is very different to going to a meeting that we call church.

That deconstruction took place in people’s understanding of church over quite a long period. I did not turn around and say, “You can’t do this anymore.” I did not say, “You can’t meet this way anymore,” because that would have been forcing them. I said, “Okay, I am not making these decisions. I am not going to be a leader anymore who tells you what God might be saying or not saying. You are responsible to hear God for yourself. So you decide what you are going to do.”

An everyday relationship

When COVID came, with all the restrictions, we could not meet the way we had been meeting, and for a time, we could not even meet together individually. People realised their relationship with God was just as strong, if not stronger, after they stopped doing Sunday church meetings than it had been before. They found their relationship with God was an everyday relationship, not based on the structure we had put in place to ‘help’ them.

Some people struggled. Some wanted the fellowship of meeting together in a bigger setting, and they found that elsewhere. But others found their relationship with God growing anyway. They discovered that their relationship with others, if genuine, is not dependent on meeting on a Sunday. They still had relationships and friends.

It is very interesting to see the process God takes us through to challenge our preconceived ideas about the Christian life, about what church is, about what we ‘should’ or ‘should not’ do. And when we are free from it, we find freedom. Now, I am free to go, free not to go, free to do whatever I feel in God. And I know God enjoys me watching the football just as much as He enjoys it if I went to a home group!

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473. Why Do We Assume? | Questioning Our Beliefs and Practices

Engaging God

430. Being You | The Heart of Your Relationship With God

482. Is Your Heart Aligned with God’s Kingdom or Culture?

Mike Parsons

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There are many questions we should be asking and signs we should be looking for. If God is doing something—like Enoch appearing or other unusual things—what is that about? I cannot give a hard, fast answer, but I do believe God is challenging us to think and to question what we believe. What are the foundations of our lives and the way we live? Are they kingdom foundations, or are they cultural?

If they are cultural and oppose God’s kingdom, which is love, then we must ask, where is my heart? Is it aligned with God’s heart, or with the culture where I live? I do not want to be known culturally as British. Yes, I was born in Britain, it is on my passport, but I do not want to be subject to the culture of Britain if it is anti-kingdom. I would never call myself a British Christian, or even a Christian. I just want to be seen as a follower of God, of the Father.

So, what might cause me to have views which may be contradictory to the kingdom? We need to ask: what has shaped my life, my thinking, my belief systems, my worldview? Are they aligned with God’s heart, or do they need deconstruction? I see three main areas where God is challenging people (there may be more): religious deconstruction, political deconstruction, and financial deconstruction. A friend of mine said God was taking him through those things, and I realised he was doing the same with me. I now know to look at things differently in those areas and make sure that I am not thinking in a cultural way that puts me into contradiction to God.

So, financially, my views have changed from religious rules about tithing to simply asking, “God, what do you want me to do?” Politically, I had to face assumptions about why I voted as I did. I had assumed God agreed with me, but he showed me I had never asked him. I had to be completely unravelled and deconstructed in that area. Now I ask, “Is there a way you want me to vote?” And if he says it does not matter, then I examine my own heart and motives. Each of us may have a different way of looking at that question.

God wants our whole mindset aligned with the kingdom and with one another, to become one mind, the mind of Christ. That requires major shifts, deconstruction, and honest questioning of why we think, believe and act as we do. Most people never really consider these things, but I believe it is part of the process God is taking us through so that heaven can be established on earth.

For the past ten years, God has been deconstructing most of my old assumptions. My thinking has changed in many areas. This does not mean there are simple answers, because each of us must discover what God is asking of us in our own sonship. But it does mean we must begin to make decisions based not on selfishness, economics or cultural conditioning, but on God’s heart.

Strong opinions are often shaped by culture rather than by God. Even in raising my children, I tried to let them think for themselves, yet they still reflected my political views. That made me wonder whether I had been more vocal than I thought. The key is not to pass on political perspectives but to help people find God’s heart.

Some people vote based on economics, others on compassion, but the real question is whether our choices reflect God’s heart or merely our conditioning. I am not convinced God is as invested in political systems as solutions as we might think. Much of the prophetic movement seems to have become politicised in a way it never was 20 years or so ago, perhaps out of disillusionment when promised revivals did not happen as expected. Whatever the reason, it seems to have become blind to the real issues in some way…

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288. Enoch’s Secret to Walking with God

241. You Have Not Desired

277. On Earth as in Heaven

481. Beyond The Pages | Finding Truth Outside the Bible

Mike Parsons –

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We are following a book which has been translated by people with an agenda and a preconceived confirmational bias, rather than out of relationship with Jesus. Yet Jesus said he would speak to us and that we could follow him. We have the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, within us. We do not need another teacher.

So why are we telling people they must follow a book, when they can be guided by the Holy Spirit and through Jesus, who is the Truth? Jesus is the Word of God. The Bible is not the Word of God. The problem is that we have been taught otherwise. I hear people say, “We are going to read the Word.” But they are reading a book, half of which was never intended for them, the other half written for people in the first century preparing for the end. We are not those people.

That does not mean God has not used the Bible. He has used it in my life, but it has also caused huge confusion. I was deceived into believing things simply because I was taught that was what the Bible said. Now, I go with what Jesus says. I will not live by an interpretation of a book; I will follow a person in relationship. He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. The Bible is not. Even if someone had never read a verse, never seen a Bible, they could still encounter Jesus and through him engage the Father.

This is why I would never encourage a new believer to start with the Bible. It will only confuse them, as they are faced with conflicting interpretations and even two seemingly different versions of God. But it was always just people’s limited view of God, not who he truly is. Relationship is what matters. I can walk in relationship even with those I disagree with, because I do not need to prove them wrong. My faith is grounded in personal experience and testimony, not in the teaching of a book.

I use the Bible only as a frame of reference, because that is how people have been taught. Yet I can count fewer than five times when the Father or Jesus has actually quoted a Bible verse to me. When they did, it was revelatory. For example, “Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden…” was spoken to me when I was striving to be good enough and keep a behavioural standard. It showed me why I was weary and how I could come into his rest. The principle was what mattered, not the verse.

Jesus is quite capable of saying directly, “Follow me and enter rest.” He does not need to quote Matthew 11:28. People can and do go astray, but many have also gone astray while following the Bible. History shows how it has been used to persecute, to endorse slavery, the Inquisition and Christendom itself. The Bible is not safe. Only Jesus and the Holy Spirit, as the Way, the Truth and the Life, keep us on a safe path. If you use love as the plumb line, you will not go far wrong.

This is what God showed me when he challenged my views of the Bible. He brought me back to the relationship I had with him, and how he speaks directly. He weaned me off my need for Bible confirmation. I know many still need that, but their thinking must eventually shift. They were told “the Bible says this,” but that has to be undone if they are to truly follow God.

Some quote verses about people falling away from sound teaching in the last days. But those last days were AD 66 to 70, when many fell away under persecution. That does not apply to us in the same way today. And this is the issue.