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

The reason it is important that I preach and you listen—and I’m speaking as the church planner—is there’s so much you don’t know and so much you need to experience, not hear about. Now, when a group of people has a foundation of knowing how to know the Lord, and also has the preaching of the Lord to them, and then has ways of acting on what they hear, generally, if God is merciful, blessing comes. There comes an overflow. You begin to sense overflow. People talk to one another and to you, and they share the Lord with one another. Oh, I tell you, the Lord just spoke to me, or the Lord showed me something, and you begin to know that it is coming—I’m using that word again—organically out of the soil. The church of the Lord is beginning to fill with His life, His experience, His glory.

Aha! Now, are we going to have a meeting? And the answer is no. You’re not writing this down…you’ll make millions of dollars. No, we’re going to have meetings to get ready for a meeting. Write that down; that’s important. You don’t understand that having meetings to get ready for a meeting is very unusual. Yeah. It’s wonderful, and it also means you don’t have to have meetings all the time. I’m trying to tell you, all of you, that one of the neatest things you can do is have meetings and meetings and meetings, getting ready for a meeting, with that in mind that one of these days we’re going to have a meeting. And this will be a meeting I, Gene Edwards, will not be present for. Audience: Are these first meetings just preparatory for the church doing its own thing after you leave?

Preparatory for my leaving? Yes, that ought to go on, but not preparatory for that meeting that we’re talking about. We’re already having church life without meetings; you don’t have to have meetings. If you’re all living in the same place, you don’t have to have meetings, but we’re going to have a meeting.

Now, we’re meeting to get ready for a meeting. We look at everything we can find about the early church and what it did, even if it’s just a hint, and we begin to picture our very first meeting. We get ready for this meeting. I’m not going to tell you what we’re going to do. A little later, I will tell you; I’ll break this down, but I’m not going to put a hole here because you’d probably drown in it. We do begin to see what this meeting is going to be. You begin preparing your own heart for this meeting, and I begin to warn you of things.

What am I going to warn you to do and not do? I’m going to beg you not to talk so long. I’m going to beg you to learn how to have a beginning and an end. I’m going to ask the brothers to please not be preachy. I’m going to get down on one knee and beg the brothers to understand they really don’t know how to share in the meeting. They literally, brothers, you don’t know how to share in a meeting. You bring death. You absolutely bring knowledge, and with knowledge, you bring death. You need a real touch with the Lord, where you sit there and share Him. No Scripture reading. No, “Well, brothers, it says here, and what about, and all that stuff,” but just, “I saw the Lord.”

Now, sisters are more gifted at doing that than brothers are. I’m going to say it now, and I’ll say it again and again. As you all teach, learn from the sisters. Paul, not being…despite all Paul said…learn, yeah, I know…regardless of what Paul said, you need to learn from the sisters how to share in a meeting.

Okay, I’m going to give assignments, and I’m going to say, we’re going to make sure there’s some singing. You will bring the first song, and you’ll have to pick it. That’s going to give our first direction. You’re going to bring the second song, and you’re going to bring the third one. You’re going to pray, and then you’re going to pray. Then you’re going to bring the next song, and you’re going to bring the next one.

Well, Gene, this is not the headship of the Lord. That’s right, it’s not. This is the headship of Gene Edwards. Just be patient with me, because you have never functioned in a meeting before. You literally don’t know you can, and without this kind of help to get you started, what do you call it? Jumping a motor? Jump-starting an engine. This is what this is. An engine that’s been dead for 1,700 years.

I have said this to you before. I want to say it again. Here in this place, throughout America, I have talked to ministers, and ministers have tried to get their people to function, and they report to me that they cannot. That’s because they don’t take weeks and weeks and weeks of preparation, and don’t have the foggiest idea how to have an interrelationship like you and I are having in this room right now. You’re interrupting me. I’m talking. You’re asking questions. You’re sharing things with me. That’s very simple. Most ministers have never been in a meeting where that has actually happened with them and their people.

Do you know that? Are you aware of that? They are used to preaching sermons and expecting people to go out and do things without any practical help. And then come and have a meeting in a church building? With the preacher standing there staring at him? It’s the proverbial snowflake that has a better chance. A lot better chance. This is going to be in the living room, and you are all going to have an assignment.

Now then, Babs, are you a strong sister? You try to, okay. Is there another sister in here? She knows you’re strong. Don’t be ashamed of this. I need you right now. Okay, you two are going to sit together in this meeting we’re going to have. Babs will bring a whistle. You two are going to sit there and discuss with one another when someone goes off topic, talks too long, or brings death to the meetings. Babs will hold up the whistle; we hope she doesn’t have to blow it, but she will if she has to.  Listen, I have never revealed my trade secrets till this night. I never have. No one knows. No one knows how I do these things. I always cut the tape off.

The brothers may not…up until this point, they may not function until at least ten sisters have shared. Now, this is all stuff we’re preparing to do. In the meantime, we’re going to pick a theme. We’re going to pick a theme, and all of us are going to go to the Lord with a passage of Scripture or passages of Scripture. We’re going to meet with the Lord; we’re going to get up in the morning with Christ and with one another toward a certain direction. What will it be? I have no idea, but it will probably come out of something I’ve been ministering on. And in this case, it’s only meetings(laughter). There are things to say and do, even about meetings, that you can share in a meeting.