In Leading the Presence-Driven Church I make the case for the primordiality of experience and encounter with God. Our first order of being, before theologizing and theorizing, is knowing God, by experience.
Such knowing is to be ongoing. Knowing God by experience is in the continuous tense. Today, now, I know the Lord.
In my book I wrote about pastor-colleagues who live in the ongoing knowledge of the Lord. As much as I admire their reflections on their experiences, I am more captured by the experiences themselves, sans interpretation. Ongoing experiential knowing of the Lord makes them credible witnesses to the Lord.
These presence-driven leaders trust in the Lord with all their heart, and experience God making straight their paths. Dallas Willard writes:
"Credibility in any sort of spiritual leadership derives from a life in the Spirit, from the person’s personal encounter and ongoing relationship with God." (Willard, Hearing God Through the Year: A 365-Day Devotional, p. 25)
