About Shulamite Ministries

Shulamite Ministries was long in birthing. God began some 40 years ago to put a few people together and let them meld through living relationships, by His Love.

Then a Bible Study formed and God began to share His Word by revelation through Martha Kilpatrick. In time, couples came and God's visitation of His Spirit was mighty in signs and wonders. Worship rose to praise the Son.

The inevitable warfare and trials were there but God's idea moved on.

Martha's vision was "home church." She prayed for this for 8 years. She said, "Lord, I will not lay a hand to build this. I will not even tell it. You said you would build your church and I ask You to do it without any human help." From the Bible Study emerged a Home Church, a group of people who found in this small gathering all the elements of church life that fulfilled their spiritual needs.

Over several years we have all experienced unending and wrenching repentance and even God's judgment (which Carole Nelson says is dripping with God's love and mercy). We have many promises of glory and blessing from the Lord in His mercy upon us.

In our many phases, the Lord would not let us have a name or be an official church or organization. The moment we would structure the move of God, we would receive a kind but strong reprimand. And He was quick to defend the leadership He chose. We did not choose the leaders but they emerged and The Lord affirmed their position. Our continued goal was to allow Christ to be head of His church in actuality and not in theory. So He was guiding and making decisions for us.

When Martha's first book was published (All and Only), it was obvious that God had formed a ministry around her work. He Himself gave us the name of Shulamite Ministries confirmed by others.

The Shulamite was the maiden in Song of Solomon who loved the king and pursued Him. She stands for that believer who goes past the normal and the nominal into the very presence of God's Son. She represents the believer who loves Him above all loves. The name represents for us that we are a group drawn together by the formation of the Lord Jesus Christ, building His own church, and we seek Him above all. Not so much a 'church affiliation', not a program, not a social setting. We seek the Person of the Son of God, to love Him, to know Him and to see Him. We wish to be like the Shulamite who pursued Him by the power of His own grace upon her and became the bride of the king.

We share a revelation of the Body of Christ as being a Transcendent Church, not an organization of man. T. Austin-Sparks wrote the following insights about the Church. They speak better than we can about the convictions that have brought us together.

There is a need today that there should be the rule of the heavens. But the Holy Spirit has got to do it, and we have got to come to recognize the fact that what we see in organized Christianity is not it. The spiritual people of God are more and more feeling separated from the old system of Christianity and church… People are recognizing a deep dissatisfaction with what has held the ground so long and there is a cry for spiritual reality. Many sermons are clever and full of mental ability, but they are starvation to the spirit.

    Man has taken hold of heavenly things and brought them down to earth and made them earthly things. That is where things all went wrong at the beginning. At the first, things were of the Spirit. The people gathered in the homes or anywhere. It was not the place. It was not the ministry. It was the Lord and they were circled around Him. But then the day came when they said, "We must have public buildings…" and they became something on the earth for men to take note of. They wanted men to be attracted and that was the first step in one of the greatest perils that have overtaken the Church. Things were done for prestige for recognition, for the attracting of the world… with the result that you get the mixed multitudes in the Church. If you can attach some big names to it, you can attract the people: and one of the devil's greatest measures has been the popularizing of the Church. Lost is the preeminent thing - the CHURCH AND CHRIST ARE A MYSTERY TO THE NATURAL MAN… and that it is no use to expect the natural man to appreciate it. The Church according to the mind of God is essentially a spiritual thing. What really governs everything is God's conception of things, not ours; and if we are going on with the Lord, there is going to be a whole system of change… and we are more and more to view things from the heavenly standpoint. You have to get into the heavenly system to get heavenly results."

                                                                                                                                            
(Written in July 1931)

It remains to be seen what we are and where we are going. With many splendid promises from the Spirit of God in His Word, we await with anticipation and excitement what HE has in store for us. Only He knows. We purpose not to touch it with our own agenda. And we purpose to stand back and allow Jesus to be the literal head of this little church.

Welcome to all who visit here on our web site!

To Thy name be the glory.

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