‘It’s all about Jesus’ says NCMI leader Tyrone Daniel

[notice]Andre Viljoen interviewed Tyrone Daniel, leader of New Covenant Ministries International (NCMI) at the first-ever NCMI World Equip which was held at Rhema Bible Church, Johannesburg last week. The five-day event to celebrate 35 years of God’s goodness in NCMI and to equip members of partnering churches for Kingdom “impact, increase and influence”, was attended by nearly 5 000 people from about 42 nations.[/notice]

Tyrone Daniel who took over the leadership of the NCMI team from his father Dudley in 2004 says that along the way God has graciously given him a greater personal revelation of Jesus Christ.

“I think it [his revelation that life and ministry is all about Jesus] has been the lifeline for my life and for NCMI,” he said. “It’s where I am stuck and where I want to stay.”

He said that after taking the reigns of the expanding international team which focuses on extending God’s Kingdom and discipling nations by planting and strengthening New Testament churches throughout the world, he got “caught up in ministry like we all do”.

But about five years ago God began to reveal things about Christ to him and he now sees one of his primary calls as “to get the church to fall back in love with Christ”.

The call to be Christ-centered was taken up by speaker after speaker at the World Equip. NCMI team member and Lead Pastor and Elder of Jesus Church International (Kansas, USA), Dr Ron Larson, said: “Go through each culture in your church and put a ‘Jesus fiilter’ over it and dump it if it is not Jesus-centered.”

I asked Daniel if he thinks the Church had lost a central focus on Jesus. “I think so. And its not out of revelation but more out of observation. If you look around the world I think you can see that God has brought it [a central focus on Jesus] back, which is awesome. But I think there was a time when guys began to blow the trumpet of every other theme and focus and I wouldn’t say their hearts were wrong — ours wasn’t either — but they began to get involved in a lot of the doing at the expense of the most important ingredient, that being Christ,” he said.

“We will certainly contend as best as we can for the Church to be obsessed with Jesus,” he said.

He believes that if the Church focuses on Jesus and lives in an ever increasing revelation of who He is, “it has to flourish in whatever season it faces globally”. He pointed to Matthew 16 in which  Jesus says He will build His church on Peter’s revelation that Jesus is “the Messiah, the Son of the living God”.

Taking ground
“So the promise of Jesus is that the Church I am building is victorious, it’s front-footed, its taking ground, it’s not in survival mode — but it’s out of that revelation of Christ. If we keep that revelation, we live in it, we pursue it, we contend for it I think the Church will stand strong and represent Christ to a nation and to the world”.

He said he believes that in the United States, where he lives, “Christendom is dead and there is a rebirthing of Christianity and that is the following of Christ rather than preaching of some message. Its getting back to being authentic followers of Jesus. So my absolute conviction is that through the Church God will do what He said He is going to do but it’s that revelation of Christ. There’s a great future [for the Church] but huge challenges for all of us. As we take this Gospel globally I think we are going to face more challenges but if people are obsessed with Jesus they will stay there until the end. I think we’ll live in the victory.”

Daniel who recently handed over a church that he and his wife Nicole planted five and a half years ago in Denver, Colorado, says they plan to stay there and to give themselves fully to leading NCMI until God gives them another assignment.

Commenting on some of the other main themes that emerged during the World Equip, he said it was important to constantly “hear God for the future” and to “prepare for and become that future”.

“I think that’s the prophetic edge,” he said.

He also said God was reminding them that “it is one thing to be in love with Jesus but another to know the Word and live in it. And I think being a prophetic people we sometimes almost sideline the Word of God because God’s doing a new thing. But if you look at Scripture the new thing God is doing is actually in Scripture, so we’ll never do away with it; so I think it [the emphasis on the Bible] is bringing back the centralising of Christ as the Word as well as the Word spoken.”

He said that while this year’s World Equip was intended to be a once-only event, in place of the normal regional annual Equips held all over the world, there have already been requests to have another world event. “So possibly in 5 years time we will do it again for the 40th celebration.”

Fresh faith
Concluding the interview on the penultimate day of the conference, Daniel said: “I think God has challenged us all in a very personal way [through the World Equip], but there’s also a fresh faith for a huge season ahead. I think if these guys [World Equip delegates] left here knowing that what NCMI is on about is truly about Jesus I think we would have done our job. But I think there is still commissioning to be done. God has been commissioning people to greater levels of where they are or to new locations — planting churches — but all moving in God.”

Delegates from around the world have been invited to participate in outreaches into the rest of Africa before returning to their home nations. The outreaches include Zambia, Lesotho, the Great Lakes region, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe; as well as outreaches throughout South Africa (Johannesburg, Midlands, Eastern and Southern Cape). Details of the outreaches can be found online at ncmiequip2015.co.za/outreaches/.