What is a spiritual village? It is a typical local church working largely on its own. It may have 50-300 people meeting together in isolation with a senior pastor and some elders as their government. This pastor and his leaders spiritually represent a self-contained village. At best, all they can do is wage a guerrilla war against the devil and his demons, but they cannot think of spiritually taking over society.
They may succeed in casting out a few demons, see a few people healed and get a few people saved, but they do not change the balance of power in the heavens. Nor can they change your city or see any kind of significant transformation.
Because of their independence, these thousands of new charismatic churches have been fighting a guerrilla war and not a strategic war. We need to learn from scripture and hear from the Holy Spirit about how to change this situation.
What God primarily trained the first apostles to do was to concentrate on certain strategic major cities in which they would plant churches and then build the growing number of congregations into a powerful regional center or city church.
Jerusalem was the first one. Antioch was the next. Thessalonica and Ephesus followed soon afterwards. These all became powerful regional centers, and they were all characterized by a plurality of apostles, prophets, and Ephesians 4: 11 ministries in each place. Their governments did not consist of a local pastor with a group of elders around him, but a leading apostle who had other apostles, prophets, and Ephesians 4: 11 ministries gathered around him. This one leading Apostle had a humble servant heart, but exercised a clear headship role amongst them. The measure of their gift and faith was to build something much bigger and more powerful than a local church. They became regional centers and built one city church with many congregations.
If we hear God and let the Holy Spirit do what he wants in our cities, then all the qualities of David’s government will be reproduced in them today. That means we would again reproduce what they had in the early church and have the same city transforming power and impact they had. Planting any number of little local village churches will have some effect, but we’ll never change society.
If we work together in the right way, we can build regional centers of incredible power that will be capable of transforming the cities and regions in which they are established and have spiritual authority. With such a strategy, we will begin to see the transformation of whole regions and even nations.
If we really want his Kingdom to come, we must stop playing our little village church games. We must be prepared to learn new things from God. It is a great start to live in his presence and have wonderful times of intimacy with him, but even that is not enough.
We must obey his Word, do his Will, do his Works, understand his Ways, and be ready to fight His Wars. God has great plans and strategies for the nations in which we live and to which he wants to send us.