Liz talks with Brian Fenimore, Founder and President of Plumbline Ministries about his mission to teach the Kingdom of God and to reveal the Father’s love to anyone who has grown up with religious/legalistic teachings and have thought that God was mad or disappointed with them.
Learn more about Plumbline Ministries HERE
This is Liz Frenzel with Crawford Media Group in Denver and today our guest is Brian Phanamore, founder and president of Plumline Ministries, author of numerous books and teaching series and international speaker. We’ll be talking about his ministry and their mission to equip believers to walk in the destinies God has for us. Welcome to our program Brian. Thank you. It’s good to be with you today. Brian, I’m a little biased because I know what an amazing teacher you are and I think everyone needs to hear your teachings on the kingdom. But I’ll let you tell us about Plumline Ministries and what your mission and vision is for it. Sure, thank you Liz. All right, well to start with we felt like Plumline was called into existence to actually have an overarching vision which is to reveal who God is as a father and we believe the mission is kind of twofold after that that were to do this by demonstrating the power of the Holy Spirit through the gifts and calls that he has and equip people in that. And then we also believe our standard is to lift up a higher standard of who the Lord Jesus Christ is for people. And so we believe not only does our vision do that but the mission that we have as a group causes that to take place. So when you say the callings of the Holy Spirit, what exactly are you referring to in that? Well, we see that the call that Jesus actually gives us in regard to the Great Commission. That’s one of the calls that we’ve been given but we see in First Corinthians chapter 12 specifically that we are called to let the Holy Spirit do his ministry through us. So all of us are called into walking and demonstrating Jesus and the Holy Spirit’s power. Is that the gifts of the Spirit? Yeah, they would be the gifts of the Spirit. It would also be some of the stuff that we see in Ephesians chapter 4 where it talks about the Lord giving certain ministries to equip the body of Christ to do the work of ministry. And is that something that they just go out and try and do or is that Holy Spirit led? Yeah, it’s supposed to be led by the Lord. There seems to be a process that we see in the New Testament that when Jesus created the Great Commission and told us to go make disciples of the nation, he gave us, we’re supposed to do everything he did. So he raises up teachers and leaders to actually equip the body of Christ to do this. So in our culture we kind of have, well, just go read the book and figure it out, but in the New Testament we have more of a mentoring lifestyle that’s being demonstrated and that’s kind of what we embrace at Plumline. So how long have you been doing your ministry and how did you get started with it? Yeah, I’ve been doing it for 30 years now and I was actually working with another ministry and at the time the ministry believed that it was time for them to move on to a different location and as my wife and I’ve buried about it, we felt that it was time for a Plumline to venture out from that ministry and start going full time and so when we did it we did some test pilots in different cities to see what kind of response and if the Lord was in it and as we did we saw him in the middle of it and that’s the direction we went ultimately. So when you say you have a ministry is it a church that you actually go to or how does how does your ministry work? Yeah so the ministry has a threefold application when it goes out it we believe the Lord calls us to different regions and when we go into those regions we believe that our job is to not only connect with the body of Christ in that region but to connect with the region itself outside of the body of Christ so we try to work with churches and we also try to just do outreach in the community and so we’ll do venues with churches and we’ll also work with just getting venues ourselves and inviting the community ended those trainings or the seminars or the one-day events we do. Which leads me to my next question what are some of the trainings and seminars that you do? Yeah we at Plumline we believe our goal is to actually equip the saints and we’re very specific on what we believe that means we have an idea of what discipleship looks like and then out of that model we try to equip and so we have one-day seminars we do we have ongoing training that we come in and do we do just sometimes just services with church but our goal is to help people identify the callings and gifts they have in their life to equip them with what is their call how they identify that and then equip them in the ministry of the spirit and then teach them a discipleship model that they can learn to actually become a functional disciple and then help other people come into the kingdom and become disciples so it’s a mentorship repeat type of training. When you say help people figure out the call that God has on their lives what would be an example of that? Well what we try to do is usually when people come to the Lord they have a sense of salvation but God has a greater plan we see a scripture that God actually creates people to have a specific impact and so what we do is we take them through teaching them how the scripture talks about that and then we at a certain section of a school we do we sit down and we ask them what’s called value questions because when you begin to ask people their values what they have a desire to do what would it look like if God was working through them what we get out of asking all these questions is we find out that destiny that God has placed in people’s heart has been there since they were created and their mother’s womb and but no one’s ever asked them very technical questions to discover that and we take them through that process to discover that. Well it would be one of those questions I know that you have a whole series but what would be one question that would help people to kind of realize what they’ve been called to do. Well most people have desires to do stuff and so what we try to do either they have desires to do stuff but they haven’t defined it or they have fears that keep them from asking those questions and so what we try to do is ask questions that you can only do one thing in your life and only one thing what would it what would that be and if people say well I don’t know we say well what gives life to you what brings a desire for you to actually want to worship or follow the Lord and we try to get people to throw off things that are interested and really for a focus in on their core what is the core value that God has put inside of them and as we do that then they’re able to say well I have a desire to help people and then we talk about what would that look like and if you could serve people what’s the way you feel life and how you serve and what we do is we just kind of sift through all the things people might not have looked at or considered and try to point them to well this is where did that desire come from if it points to serving people it reflects that God’s grace is touching you and we help people understand that and then begin to ask and focus in a very specific area so it’s not just in ministry I think a lot of Christians they have this idea that if they’re not doing something for the Lord in church serving in church or doing ministry or being a missionary in Africa that they’re not doing what they should be doing is that right or is this these desires something even if somebody wanted to be a fireman or a nurse yeah and that’s what we ended up doing is most people always believe that God’s call is that which you just said be in a missionary or pastor when we’ve been doing this for the last 20 years we’ve been helping people discover they’re supposed to be business leaders or politicians or start a company or be a better parent actually the goal is God has put this in everybody and we just help him discover what that is and then say what Christ is actually through the teaching of the gospel and what we see in the New Testament he wants you to actually be the best at that thing with the grace of God and so we kind of try to help people see that do you have a story that you could share as an example of how Plumline has made a difference in somebody’s life wow I have many stories the one that I always like telling is several years ago I’d had the opportunity to travel with a group of people in Colorado and do some training and as we were going to a restaurant I was going to buy everyone dinner we ended up I was talking to a lady behind the counter she was waiting for me to pay for once food and as we were there I could sense the Lord wanted me to share his love with her and he gave me three things the first thing was that she enjoyed music the second thing was that she likes writing and developing music and the third thing was the impact that her music was gonna have later in our life and I went through a process of just sharing that with her and she didn’t kind of understand that she was kind of caught off guard how do you know these things I’d try to share with her where God loves you he loves telling these things to people to open them up and she kept having this encounter where she was trying to reach for something as I was sharing that with her and when we got done she kind of didn’t understand all that but someone that was with me started to explain to her that that was Christ trying to make himself known to she kept having a sense of the love of God swirling around her and she was trying to capture it and he’s and my friend kind of explained her well that’s Jesus inviting you into the kingdom and she received the Lord right there got wonderfully saved and we gave her her our Bible and we just kind of do stuff like that we’re trying to tell teach people and how to walk out normal Christianity the way we see it in the New Testament well that is what we said earlier about one of the gifts of the spirit as a word of knowledge so the you’re telling her something that God told you straight to her heart and that affected her the probably the rest of her life yeah it changed your life from that point on so it was really wonderful what are your future goals or upcoming projects for the ministry well the future goals of the ministry is it’s coming in over our arching goal we want to equip as many people as we can in the ministry and our project is to develop different trainings or courses or one-based seminars to take different aspects of either how to get whole as a believer or how to learn to reach out and connect with Christians and non-Christians to reveal who Christ is and so we’ll come in a different seasons depending on how the Lord leads us and we’ll teach things like how do you advance the kingdom how do you actually preach the gospel to people I mean we see all these things in the New Testament but we have very little modeling of that going on and so we believe in a plumb line it’s our job to be very detailed and give examples and give people opportunities to do what Jesus commanded us to we’ve been visiting with Brian Fenimore founder and president of Plumb line ministries and we’ve been talking about his ministry and how they equip believers to walk in the destiny God has for them Brian what is one message or takeaway that you’d like to leave our listeners with today well I think one of them is that God is a wonderful parent and that he loves his children deeply and that one of the most exciting transformations that happens to you is when you discover him as a father actually that actually wants to embrace you be nearer to you just as Jesus described and I think that’s could be different for so many people because I think a lot of them have the sense that God has mad at them or disappointed in them or pointing a finger at them and that’s so different than what I think they’ve learned their whole lives yeah I would agree with you where can people learn more about your ministry find your books and either get involved or support it yeah and so when I’m out in the region in Colorado I come out once a month and what I usually do is direct people to our website which is Plumb line m the letter m dot com and there you can find not only information events that we do but you can also find our resources and you can find online training or if that seems difficult just look up Brian Fenimore on whatever search engine and it should take you to Plumb line’s web page are you only on your website or are you in other platforms like YouTube or something else like that yeah great question we’re on YouTube we have a YouTube channel called Plumb line ministries and I’m on X Brian Fenimore you can go to those and check us out and we’d be glad to connect with you at some level well Brian it’s been a pleasure talking to you thank you so much for joining us today. >> Thank you for letting me come on.
