A Vision For the 21st Century Church (1989)

That we would see the church return to the living room. That we would preach in those meetings, but we would also leave them. I have watched Christians gather in a home who at 11 o’clock would get up and walk out on you at 12 a.m., and I watched them gather at 6 and 7 o’clock in the evening and share and sing and pray and fellowship until 11 and 12 o’clock at night, and then complain because they had to leave.  Koinonia, Ekklesia, had returned to a functioning body of people under the ministry of men who were willing to preach to them, show them Christ, show them the depths and the joys, the unfathomable riches of the Lord Jesus Christ, and trust them then to care for one another in those meetings.

Now I know that it’s a fad right now to have home meetings. I went to one recently, and there were all these people gathered, and they had this big thick syllabus; there was a huge notebook, and everyone had one of them, and in it was how to meet in the home.

Brothers, I did not get this nose on my face because I read a book. Nor these eyes in my head because I read a book. I got them because they are organic to my species.  The church of the Lord Jesus Christ has an organic expression that is outside of ritual and form and the traditions of men.  She will express herself, brothers. There is something that is divine within the depths of all of us that is not human.  Something of the Lord’s own life has been placed in us that has an organic expression. That organic expression was known in the first century.  And I have watched Christians who have been well cared for, well ministered to, well pastored by daring men who were willing to show them the riches of Christ and move out of their lives just for an evening.  And the nose just comes forth, and the ears just grow out, and the eyes are just there. There is an organic way that happens when God’s people get together and hold on to one another.

In a sterile society that will become more and more sterile and detached, it will be the community of the redeemed in the next century.  Brothers and sisters loving and caring for one another and holding on to one another in a spirit and atmosphere of total freedom that will be the attracting magnetism that draws men and women to the Lord Jesus Christ in the 21st century.  Whatever happened to the most beautiful girl in the world? She will return in the coming century.  She will leave some in the dust who will hold to their traditions. The church of the Lord Jesus Christ is still the most beautiful thing this world has ever seen.  And for men daring enough to face into the future and see the enormous and unlovely prospects of the 21st century, who are willing to drop, if you please, the Protestant, Reformational traditions that bind us, to the men who take that day, the 21st century will serve them and the Lord Jesus Christ and the church of the Lord Jesus Christ to bring men and women to Christ in multitudes and honor him by a living, breathing, organic expression of the ecclesia.

Back during the Roman days, not the Roman Catholics, the Roman days and the Greek days, when the Olympics were held, just before the games began, there was a parade that would come by of athletes. The first ones that came out were very old men, and then those who came out next were men who would be in the games, and after them were some very young men. And they would all stand before the audience, and the first group would cry out, “We were, We were”, and the second group would come and say, “We are, We are”, and the young ones still practicing would come out and enthusiastically say, “We will be, We will be.”

You heard from men who, forgive me, Dr. Criswell and Brother Lee Robinson, and I’m pushing you, “Were.”  I still, for a short time left, I’m one of those who can say “We are.” But as I look at the young men coming up on that field who are crying out, “We will be, We will be”, my plea with you today is to catch a deeper vision of the Lord Jesus Christ and your people, knowing him in a depth of reality that has not been known in ages.

And of the church. Beautiful, glorious, and free, adaptable, willing, and able, and capable of changing her practices in any and every direction.  And if you wish a chart, gentlemen, if you wish a pattern, then look at the organic, living, breathing expression of the house of God.  God’s people in the first century, as itinerant men, went around the earth preaching the gospel, often having to leave God’s people to the Holy Spirit and to the Word and to one another.  There will come in the next century, as we might say the Roman Catholics here, the high church here, the liberals if they last that long, the present traditional evangelical expression of the Protestant church, there’s going to come a layer, a new layer of Christians who have adapted, who have returned and reverted to a primitive expression of the house of God.  And brothers, that ought to fall to you. To you who are committed to the inerrancy of the Word of God, who are committed to the Scripture.  It ought to fall to you who preach the Word of God today. It is your mantle to seize, to take the 21st century.

But it will take a radical view. It will take brave men. It will take changes in the very nature and composition of our character.  It will take withstanding persecution and criticism, but the mantle belongs to you. And if you take it, God will bless you.  If you don’t, there will be in the 21st century somewhere, someplace, a people who answer the call of God, who will meet the matrix, the need, the culture of the challenge of the 21st century.  May God be pleased to make it men sitting here right now in this auditorium. Brothers, I thank you for the privilege of having addressed you this morning.