Authors
Autobiography James Rutz
Author, advertising copywriter, columnist, teacher, pioneer thinker, chronicler of the miraculous, and spokesman for the worldwide House Church community.
As a child, I planned to be a professional golfer. This faded when I discovered I had absolutely no talent for the game. I've been trying to get back to the real world ever since.
I was born on Aruba, but was sent, at age 3, to live in the U.S. as something of a refugee from German attacks on the island during World War II. I had a boring childhood, enduring public schools in Oregon, Nebraska, and California. My only real interests were in chess and golf, neither of which attracted much attention from girls. On the side, I sold encyclopedias house to house and also knives, becoming the youngest crew manager in the history of Cutco Cutlery at age 17.
As I entered college in 1956, my faith began to expand pari passu with my understanding of the world. I managed to compress five years of college into eight, bouncing from Fullerton College to UCLA to Los Angeles State University to San Francisco State University, where I received a B.A. and M.A. in the English Language, studying under Sen. S.I. Hayakawa and other general semanticists (scholars who study how language affects people).
Though I served on the Senior Student Board of the University Religious Conference at UCLA, my main avocation in college was volunteer work with Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, which encompassed everything from leading international-student Bible studies to chairing Campus-by-the-Sea for three years. I also briefly taught creative writing at Simpson Bible College, adding greatly to the confusion of my students.
I learned two helpful lessons during college. One, that the world is magnificently interconnected from century to century, from East to West, and from any field of human activity to any other. And two, that if I would study any section of the Bible hard enough, it would make senseCand fit into an overall picture. Without these two insights, I would have given up long ago.
Escaping from the academic womb in 1964, I immediately jumped into Amway and lasted 12 years as a full time distributor, a face-to-face experience that later gave me a permanent advantage over other advertising writers. (Today, I charge the highest royalty fees in the business.)
Along the way, I drifted into full-time writing in 1973, taught Sunday School in a Calvinistic Quaker Church, served as Chuck Colson's communications manager at Prison Fellowship, started a vitamin company with my brother, and wrote or consulted with ministries like World Vision, Youth for Christ, the Christian Booksellers Association, Jews for Jesus, Wycliffe Bible Translators, and the Lausanne Committee. But in retrospect, I was mostly marking time, putting in endless hours of pew time, and polishing my racquetball game across the street from my apartment in Orange County, California.
In 1990, everything began to shift. I had a very nice article rejected by the best Christian magazines and was annoyed enough to expand it into a booklet (1700 Years Is Long Enough), which to my surprise quickly sold 23,000 copies out of my apartment.
In 1992, I moved to the mountains above Colorado Springs, bought my first house, and expanded the booklet into The Open Church, which to date has sold 80,000 copies plus another 150,000 or so in booklet form. It is an eloquent rant on the shortcomings of the traditional, audience-style church and a plea for opening the church to full participation on Sunday mornings.
Though the book sold well, got me on 80-90 radio and TV programs, and earned many plaudits from grateful readers who thought they were the only ones who felt this way, it was an enormous flop in producing fully-participating churches. So after seven years of great effort to pour new wine into old wineskins, I turned to the house church as the logical and Biblical solution to the problem.
In 2005, after six years of research and writing, I released Megashift, a house church book that in addition was filled with numerous over-the-top miracle reports, nearly all documented. The most remarkable miracles are the resurrections, which I've footnoted in 52 nations in recent years.
Megashift launched me on another round of 75 media interviews and established me as a leading spokesman for the rapidly growing house church movement.
To date, I have taught my Open Christianity seminar in seven countries, the most receptive being India, where my students, at last count, have gone out and planted over 10,000 house churches.
In 2005 I was tapped to be a columnist at WorldNetDaily.com, the largest alternative news source on the Web.
You are invited to join me in the extreme adventure of transforming the world, a revolutionary event that is accelerating faster and faster.
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Summary of current activities:
President, Megashift Ministries
Founder/Chairman, Open Church Ministries
Author:
The Open Church (1992)
Megashift: Igniting Spiritual Power (2005) (now in six languages)
The Meaning of Life (2006)
Columnist, WorldNetDaily.com
Adjunct professor: Covenant Bible Institute, Regent University, Wagner Leadership Institute
Copywriter in the field of investment and alternative health
Trainer of House Church planters in seven countries
Guest on over 100 radio/TV programs
Board of Reference Member: Christian Film & Television Commission
Conference speaker
M. Lynn Reddick
is an internationally known motivation speaker and church leadership trainer. He and his wife, Linda, travel extensively throughout North America, Europe, India, and New Zealand conducting seminars on small group dynamics and the power of speaking blessings. He earned a Bachelor of Arts, a Master of Divinity, Master of Theology, Doctor of Ministry (D.Min.) and graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.). Dr. Reddick is president of Covenant Bible Institute and Open Church Minis-tries in Portal, Georgia. His apostolic calling has resulted in several hundred new church plants, a highlight in his 46 year ministry.
Dr. and Mrs. Reddick live in an old country house on the edge of a cotton patch near Portal, Georgia. They have two children and three grandchildren.
Tim Mather, Th.D.,
is an author and conference speaker who serves on the faculty of Covenant Bible Institute, coaching those who have left the in-stitutional church. He has planted and pastored traditional churches until leav-ing the pastorate to engage the house church movement. He lives in Portal, Georgia with his wife Katie surrounded by his four children and eleven grand-children.