In 1966 Derek Prince published his Foundation Series—seven small paperback booklets, stapled and tucked into a plain cardboard slipcover. The material had been developed a few years earlier while he was teaching at a Pentecostal Bible college in Kenya in the early 1960s. In it, Derek laid out in logical order the basic doctrines of the Christian faith drawn from Hebrews 6:1–2, with particular emphasis on the work of the Holy Spirit.
Derek began with Hebrews 5 to identify a key problem in the church: immaturity in the Body of Christ, especially among leaders. Believers who should have been teachers were still spiritual infants, unable to handle solid food. And those who were teaching often taught everything but the foundational doctrines, leaving the church perpetually vulnerable to “every wind of doctrine” (Ephesians 4:14).
From there he turned to Hebrews 6:1–2, presenting the beginning of the solution: a recovery of the six elementary teachings about Christ. Each doctrine was explained in detail, with careful attention to how neglecting them leaves believers unstable, easily deceived, and incapable of sound discernment.
Perhaps most strikingly, Derek exposed why Satan has fought so hard to keep God’s people from understanding these foundations. Without them—and without the equipping ministries of Ephesians 4:11—the Church cannot grow into maturity and unity. Instead, it remains personality-driven, prone to error, and powerless to withstand the pressures of the age.
Seminaries vs. Scripture
The tragedy is this: most seminaries, actually all, do not teach these foundations from a truly Scriptural perspective. Instead, they systematize theology into their own doctrinal categories—Bibliology, Christology, Soteriology, Pneumatology, and so on.
These may touch on some of the same themes, but they rarely present them as Hebrews 6 lays them out. The result is that the actual order and weight of the elementary principles of Christ are lost under layers of academic frameworks.
And for leaders who never attended seminary, the problem is just as great. Unless they were taught these foundations directly, they usually do not know them. And if they don’t know them—they cannot teach them to their congregations. This helps explain the widespread doctrinal shallowness in today’s churches, whether traditional, evangelical, or charismatic.
A Missed Opportunity
Mike Bickle once had the opportunity to invite Derek Prince to come and teach these lessons at his church. To my knowledge, he never took advantage of it. As a result, the people who sat under Mike’s leadership at Forerunner Church and IHOPKC remained vulnerable—swept along by experiences, revelations, and titles, but never anchored in the foundations of Christ’s principles.
The outcome was predictable: zeal without depth, spirituality without discernment, and a movement built on activity rather than on the solid rock of Scriptural foundations.
Again, the reality is this: if your leadership doesn’t know these truths, you probably don’t either.
The Elementary Teachings of Christ
The key Greek phrase in Hebrews 6:1 is:
τὸν τῆς ἀρχῆς τοῦ Χριστοῦ λόγον (ton tēs archēs tou Christou logon)
- ἀρχῆς (archēs) = beginning, origin, first principles, elementary stage.
- λόγον (logon) = word, speech, teaching, doctrine, message.
Literally: “the word of the beginning of Christ.” Most English translations render it “the elementary teaching about Christ” or “the principles/doctrine of Christ.”
The Hebrew equivalent would likely have been:
דִּבְרֵי רֵאשִׁית הַמָּשִׁיחַ (divrei reshit ha-Mashiach)
- דָּבָר (davar) = word, matter, teaching.
- רֵאשִׁית (reshit) = beginning, first, foundational (as in Bereshit = “In the beginning,” Genesis 1:1).
Bereshit (בְּרֵאשִׁית) is the very first word of the Hebrew Bible, opening both the Torah and the Book of Genesis. In Jewish tradition, it anchors creation itself: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
This connection is stunning. The writer of Hebrews ties the “beginning” of Christ’s teaching directly to Genesis 1:1 (“In the beginning”) and John 1:1 (“In the beginning was the Word”). The implication is unmistakable: the six foundation doctrines of Hebrews 6:1–2 are not optional extras. They are the ABCs of Christ, the foundational truths upon which everything else in the Christian life must be built.
Every believer should know them. Every leader should be able to teach them. To neglect them is to remain forever at the nursery stage of faith—immature, unstable, and unprepared to handle the deeper things of God.
My relationship with Derek and The Elementary Teachings of Christ
I was one of those Derek Prince referred to as “the young men from Kansas City,” part of Agape Fellowship in the 1970s. Other than our founder, we were all interchangeable and expendable. Yet in God’s providence, a few of us were given the privilege of traveling with Derek on his ministry teams—across the United States, Israel, and to other nations.
Those experiences shaped me more than I realized at the time. Much like the disciples with Jesus, we heard the same foundational truths again and again until they were etched into us. The repetition, combined with the opportunity to sit around and ask questions, made those truths easier to understand—and ultimately to teach.
Traveling with Derek gave us a front-row seat to how he interacted with church leaders and how he handled Scripture, controversy, and spiritual conflict. We witnessed things that still mark me to this day. It was very much like Jesus’ words to John’s disciples in Luke 7:22: “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them.”
The power of God was undeniable. But just as undeniable was Derek’s unwavering insistence that everything be grounded in the foundations of the Word. He would not allow miracles, deliverance, or prophetic experiences to eclipse Scripture itself.
Derek also made something else clear: we were not his disciples, and he was not “shepherding” us. We were all disciples of Jesus. He went further still—insisting that he was not an apostle and that we were not an “apostolic company.” That statement came during a conversation in Derek’s hotel room after a conference in Germany, when someone had begun to feel a little too heady about our role. Derek cut through the atmosphere with clarity. It reminded us of when Jesus’ disciples argued about who was the greatest among them. In response, Jesus confronted their worldly idea of status and taught them that true greatness is found in humble servanthood.
Over the decades, some of us who carried Derek’s material have expanded his teachings with a deeper perspective—recovering the Jewish roots of the faith as Jesus, Paul, and the other apostles themselves understood them. This has only strengthened the foundations Derek laid, connecting them more fully to the Hebraic context in which they were first given. When we learn to see Scripture through the eyes of a Jewish Yeshua and His Jewish apostles, the result is a fuller, richer, and truer understanding of the faith we profess.
Looking back, I realize I had an opportunity that few others were given. At the time, I did not comprehend the weight of the privilege the Lord had entrusted to me and the other brothers. Only later did I recognize how significant those years really were—both for my own formation and for how I now view situations like Mike Bickle and IHOPKC, and what the Lord is presently doing in Kansas City and beyond.
Blessings