Needed, A New Way to Meet #4: How Should Christians Meet? A New Experience of Church

This is one possibility of what I would do. I would ask the brothers and sisters to start meeting in homes, or in one home. Let’s say we got between 20 and 40 people—let’s say even 20, 25. Then I would ask them to start meeting with me in a living room, and I would talk to them about how to experience Christ. Now, I wouldn’t tell them they couldn’t sing or pray, but I wouldn’t put any emphasis on it whatsoever. I would probably try to keep the singing very, very light and non-directional, just like most of your singing is anyway. You know, it’s just got no place it’s going; it doesn’t have any sense, rhyme, or reason. You don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t know which way it’s going to go, whether it’s going to go high or low, high or deep. You don’t know it.

I would work for them for a period of time, between six weeks and six months, until I began to see an overflow in their lives. At the same time, I would ask them to live near one another and suggest ways for them to get to know one another better. In other words, you won’t have anything without community, but community will not come until there’s first experience with Christ. Nonetheless, they would be there. They would be experiencing the Lord. I would give them some things to do to draw them closer to one another.

Now, what would those be? You want an example? One of them would be to have meals together. I’d probably encourage these sisters to do a lot of things together throughout the day if they don’t work. There’s a raft of those: clean one another’s homes, take care of one another’s babies, so everybody can have a day off with other sisters taking care of the children, go shopping together, have some sisters’ meetings together, and have prayer together.

I’m going to come to some more things sisters can do a little bit later in the time together. I would say maybe one of the sisters, if we have an older one—and we may not, but if we did—maybe giving some suggestions, teaching, if you please, sisters, what to do and how to do it. If that seemed practical, I would do it only if I felt there was an older, very godly, and very qualified woman around to do so. I wouldn’t give that job to just anyone.

For the brothers, I would—this is getting into preparation for the meeting—but I would encourage brothers to, at some point, start getting up in the mornings and praying with one another before they left for work.

Communion? You mean the Lord’s Supper? Not yet. I wouldn’t do that yet. No, I would wait. That may be a surprise, but I would wait on the Lord’s Supper. I would wait until that thing becomes a gully washer. I mean knock down and drag out. I don’t want any of this Lord’s Supper business. I want to see a… a cataract. You know what a cataract is? It’s a place where lots of waterfalls meet—roaring waterfalls. I’d like to see a cataract, a tarot when that happens.

I would meet with brothers and sisters for a long time and get them to the point where they would know how to touch the Lord. Then, believe it or not, I’d probably start preaching and speaking. I’ll tell you what I would preach and speak on: I would speak on the Lord Jesus Christ. I would talk on Him—His glory. I wouldn’t talk about things about Him. I would talk about Him, and at the same time, I would give brothers and sisters assignments. I give assignments at the end of meetings. This is what we are going to do. I will not preach. It’s in me to preach, but if I cannot give an assignment at the end of the meeting, I have no business speaking.

I don’t do that at every meeting, but at most meetings. Sometimes there’s no need. Direction is already in its way. But I would say the majority of the time that I speak at the end of the meeting, I give assignments, just like a school teacher. We’re going to do this, this, this, this, this, and this. Really and truly, if you won’t do it, you ought not to be there, and I don’t have that problem, I don’t think. I think most everybody is really willing to do that.

I would start giving assignments. Now, that assignment would dovetail with, or intersect with, the fact that we’d already had several months of meeting in the home, sitting down, and learning how to know the Lord. Most brothers and sisters in the ministry simply don’t know how to do those things. I’m going to tell you something else: I’m not going to tell them. They will learn only if they lay down their ministry and come and say, “Gene, show me.”

There are some things in my life I hold very, very strongly, and one of them is the conviction that I don’t want to roll over in my grave hearing in my grave that Baptist preachers all over the world are preaching my sermons and don’t have the foggiest idea of what they’re saying. I don’t want this ministry to end up being sermon fodder for Sunday morning. I told the brothers and sisters in Canada the other day that I have a whole rack of tapes, and they’re marked AGD. They’ve never been released. You’ll have to guess; somebody’s got to know. You can release these after Gene’s dead, but not in my lifetime.

If you will know what I’m going to be doing in Atlanta, Georgia, with those brothers and sisters sitting in a living room somewhere, you’re going to have to come find out. That’s the only way you’ll know. I’m not going to give this out. You Pentecostals will patent it and sell it. You can put it in a glass jar, and put a label on it, and sell it over television. That’s what you do. Say amen. You’ll market it. You’ll make money out of it.