What's Up With the Brodeurs, Part 1

Dear Friends,

Diane and I are embarking on an amazing spiritual journey that promises to reposition us significantly in our relationship with God and our relationship with others. This letter is a heart-felt effort to let you and a few dozen of our other friends in on the transition we are going through so you can pray for us and walk with us as we seek a deeper alignment with Father in the coming season.

WE ARE BEING REPOSITIONED AND REALIGNED

Over the last few years, God has begun a process of repositioning Diane and me in relationship to Himself and to what He has called us to do. This process came into greater focus a little over a year ago when God spoke to me one morning as I was waking up, saying, “Michael, you are still not in your place.”

Initially I understood this as a mandate from God to reposition myself in terms of my role and responsibilities in the Kingdom. I believed it was a word from God to focus less on pastoral ministry and more on the apostolic calling that had been prophesied many times over my life. Yet, as we have followed the guidance since that time, it has become clear that the primary meaning of “finding my place”, has much less to do with our “assignment” than our “alignment”. In other words, it’s not about our responsibilities but our relationship, with God and others. His assignment needs to proceed out of, and because of, love.

There is a huge difference between doing things out of duty and doing things because we are deeply and intimately in love with Jesus. One of the biggest challenges of ministering non-stop for over 30 years in one location is that we can let the demands of ministry interfere with a deeper relationship with God. Jesus said, “The Son only does what he sees the Father doing.” Yet, the overwhelming pressure of pastoral ministry is geared toward pleasing people, paying bills and fulfilling duties and obligations that come with the territory. We believe this “repositioning” process is designed to transform us from SERVANTS TO SONS.

THE STEPS OF REPOSITIONING

In a desire to facilitate this repositioning process, we will be taking a major portion of the summer to focus on our INWARD ministry to the Lord, rather than our OUTWARD ministry to others. We will be asking The Lord to disciple us personally and lead us into His rest. Jesus said, “Take my yoke upon you and learn of Me for I am meek and lowly, and you will find rest for your souls, for My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” He wants to show us a deeper level of doing things, a different way of living, a different way of being. So we are giving ourselves to a season of “Prayer and ministry in the word”, particularly focused on rediscovering our place as a Son and Daughter of God.

Also, in this repositioning process, we will be spending more time in Redding Ca. to deepen our relationship with our friends at Bethel Church. About two years ago, God clearly directed us to align ourselves with Global Legacy, a network of churches overseen by Bill Johnson. God is using Bill and the Bethel Team to bring the Body of Christ around the world into a deeper experience of His presence and power. We are looking forward to this opportunity to strengthen our friendships, attend a couple of conferences and receive ministry from some of the leaders there.

Finally, in our quest to realign ourselves in a deeper way with God, we are releasing new pastors and leaders at Promised Land Fellowship. In the sixth chapter of Acts, the Church was experiencing a set of significant growing pains. In response, the apostles released a new group of leaders to handle the daily running of the church so they could devote themselves to their primary calling of “Prayer and the Ministry of the Word”. The result of this delegation was a great INCREASE in the impact of the church (Acts 6:7) We are entering an “ACTS 6 SEASON” that will bring great blessing to our Promised Land Family and to the God’s purposes for our region. As Diane and I reposition ourselves in right alignment and assignment, others will be released to find their places in the Body of Christ as well.

PLEASE PRAY FOR US: As we focus more on the INWARD ministry this summer, we ask you to pray for the Pastors and Leaders who will be providing the majority of the OUTWARD ministry in our church. Could you put our names on the “fridge” and pray for us daily? Also, please pray for Diane and me that God will encounter us with healing, wisdom and revelation. That our hearts, eyes and ears would be wide open to God’s heart. Please pray for financial provision to cover all additional expenses during this season. We estimate the cost of extra travel, housing, conferencing, counseling, etc. to be around $7500.00 above our normal expenses. Your prayers will make the difference.

Thank you for being in our lives.
We love you. You are in our hearts and thoughts.
May God’s grace and blessing be abundantly yours,

Michael and Diane