CROSSING OVER
Bret A. Wade
By Jennifer LeClaire

Alabama prophet gets the apostolic revelation and writes the vision on the
Bible belt.

As a youth Bret Wade was what some would refer to as a military brat, implying an upbringing much different than the average kid whose dad wasn’t climbing the ranks of the U.S. military.

So when God decided to put an adult Wade through His prophetic boot camp in the late 1980s, he was ready and willing. His three-year tour of duty included intensive study on forgiveness, the blood and prayer – and plenty of self-deliverance.

When that three-year period was over, Wade discovered that his training would last a lifetime and his next course would be apostolic. The Holy Spirit almost immediately partnered the young prophet with a mature apostle and Wade began to learn more about the practical aspects of every day ministry.

“I had a revelation of the five-fold,” Wade recalls, “so when I met an apostle for the first time I thought, ‘That’s what an apostle looks like!’”

What he didn’t know was that God was preparing him for his own apostleship. The only problem was the apostle he served wouldn’t make room for the up and comer. As Wade began to study and receive more about what it meant to be an apostle, he discovered that his leader didn’t exactly fit the mold. He was just perpetrating the one-man-only pastoral paradigm with a different title.

By 1996, Wade’s heart began crying out to God to see the fullness of the apostolic prototype. But the Lord kept him in the wilderness for another three-year tour of duty, teaching him humility in the process. During that time he continued to grow and develop in the apostolic grace and began to equip others to flow in the gifts of the Spirit. Despite his own hesitation and identity crisis, the Lord released Wade to plant Global Impact Church in Huntsville, Alabama in 1999. That’s when the true “crossing over” experience began.

“I told the Lord I didn’t want to establish anything until He got the old patterns out of me. I didn’t want to build on what I knew. I wanted a new model,” Wade says. “What I didn’t realize was that everything I knew was an old model.”
It took him about five years to unlearn that old model while God simultaneously grew and developed gifts in his members. During that time he discovered that no matter how many books he read on the apostolic, he couldn’t put the complete prototype structure in place without the right people with the right gifts. He prefers to call the frustration of it all “heavy patience training” that became just another class in the school of the Holy Ghost.

The impatience manifested with Wade getting ahead of the Lord. He still remembers the time he tried to start a School of Ministry and business networks. His purposes were frustrated when the same four people showed up to every meeting. When Wade asked God what was wrong, the Holy Spirit asked him a question of His own, “What are you building?…You are supposed to be building what I am building.”

A year later, the Holy Ghost asked Wade another question, “Are you supposed to be running with the vision or writing the vision? If you run with the vision, then nobody can read it. If you stop running and write the vision, then your sons and daughters will run with it and you’ll see something happen.” Wade says those years marked major mindset shifts that helped him redefine his role as the set-man and shake off the remaining residue of the one-man paradigm in which he was raised up.

Wade says the most difficult aspect of crossing over to the apostolic structure, though, has not been the waiting. It’s been the comparisons. That is, people comparing his church with other churches. Believers looking for a laundry list of programs, for example, won’t find any at Global Impact Church. But Wade says the lack of programs has helped to keep out the church hoppers, though perhaps not the Jezebels.

“While I was laying the foundation of the apostolic so many people with Jezebel spirits infiltrated and tried to destroy the ministry. We also fight a spirit that tells people the warfare at our church is too great and they should go somewhere with less warfare,” Wade says. “We’ve also had to battle religion and witchcraft.”

Wade says he’s learned three key lessons over the past few years of apostolic foundation laying. Humility, flexibility, and putting first things first. With mature gifts and a strong apostolic foundation, the next “first thing” is setting the house in order; ordaining pastors so he can begin to minister to the ministers and allow the ministers to pastor the flock.

“I have literally discovered what it means to pull a pattern down from heaven,” Wade says. “You can see it in the Scriptures. You can have the understanding of it. But to implement it you need to pull it out of heaven. And you have to get the people delivered because they come with a lot of bitterness, hurts and rejection. It’s been like Gideon’s army. There’s been a lot of pruning.”

Wade, who considers himself a bridge builder, enjoys sharing his challenges and victories in the apostolic transition with others who are determined to successfully cross over. His advice is this: Don’t get in a hurry. If we are truly building for generations and nations, he says, then we need His perspective.

“We can’t slap something up and call it the Church. We have to find the due process and due order,” Wade says. “That is one of the biggest things I see lacking in churches today. We hear from God but we don’t always take the time to find out the way He wants things done.”

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