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

Fight whether it’s grape juice or wine. Discuss and link how to make the bread. Have it be an honor to make the bread and bring the wine; whoever does it. Would I introduce foot washing into a Lord’s Supper meeting? No, but I wouldn’t prevent it either. No, but I don’t encourage it, but I wouldn’t stop it. It’s a heavy-duty kind of a meeting, sister. That is heavy. I personally wouldn’t want to get caught in one of those things very frequently. Those meetings are heavy meetings. Let me tell you how they usually start, and I love this. Two brothers have had one great big fight, and there are two sisters, and the Lord’s Supper is about to begin. Some brother says, before we do, I would like to…the brothers are washing the feet of their wives, and sisters are washing their own feet, and everybody’s sitting there bawling and crying and carrying on. I would never provoke a meeting like that, and I frankly hope I’m not in one or two more in the rest of my life. That’s really hard to handle. If you’ve never had your feet washed, you’ve never known humiliation. I think the guy doing it’s got an easy job compared to the fellow having to receive it. Oh, that is really difficult. Oh, that would break the heart of a Bremer bull.

I’m fearful you’re going to lose the main point, and the main point is that everything about a meeting has got to be about your experiencing the Lord. I beg you not to get caught up in funny ways of talking, praying, or any other weird thing. Keep it simple, keep it real, keep it American, keep it native to the soil, keep it honest, and brothers, don’t come to meetings to preach sermonettes. Sermonettes are preached by “Christianettes.” Anything I’m saying to you now, I would say in the beginning of the birth of the church, probably should take two or three or four weeks of preparation.

Have a meeting in which only sisters share. Now then, what you’re going to do is you’re going to turn that meeting totally over to the sisters. Sisters, you ought to take three or four weeks without us present to prepare what those meetings will be. You will discuss things you want to tell the church. You would discuss things you want to tell the Lord. You would discuss those inimitable things that you can do. Hold a meeting where only the single brothers are in charge, if you have enough. Give them about three or four weeks to prepare. Heaven knows what those mad creatures are doing.  Hold a meeting where only the brothers, the married brothers, or the brothers are in charge.

Have a meeting with ministry, and that’s the main point of the meeting. You’ll select three brothers who have never spoken publicly in their lives to be the ministry of that meeting, and you will be astonished. One of them will faint flat out; you’ll have to be carried out. Another one will stumble all over creation, and the third one will bring one of the most wonderful messages you’ve ever heard in your life. After you’ve done that, do that with three other brothers, and another three brothers, and another three brothers, and another three brothers. Always give about three or four weeks’ leeway. Say, four weeks from now, these three brothers are going to share and tell them that they can ask the church anything. Meet in a hotel, meet in a park, meet in a living room. They may want to ask the church to sit on the floor. If they want to ask everybody to do whatever special thing they will ask, the church will say, yes, we will go along with that. Are you writing this down?

By the way, all this is to break loose from the mooring of whatever we as Christians have been doing up to now. Break the church into groups and homes, go for about ten weeks, and meet once a week in, say, two or three different homes; the only reason you would meet is to hear one or two people share their entire testimony. Now, a church cannot do that in a regular meeting. It would take forever. You take a hundred people; that would be a hundred meetings. Break the church up into groups of ten or fifteen and give everybody the privilege of telling their story. You will always be amazed at what you hear, and it is remarkable. As close as Christians are, they often have never heard one another’s testimonies.

I will tell you this: Usually, the week before we do something like this, I give my own testimony to the whole church, and everybody’s always surprised at mine; we’re always surprised at everybody’s. Even people who think they don’t have a testimony can surprise you with what they end up sharing. I think everybody has a right to know about everyone else’s testimony in the fellowship of believers. Okay, are you with me? Anytime you want to interrupt, please do so. Ask or add; just do so.

All of these things need three or four weeks of preparation. Don’t ever think that this happens easily. It does not happen easily. I would say a church ought to have weekend retreats throughout the year. When some of the brothers or some of the sisters, or some of the brothers and sisters, get up in a mountain or go somewhere and get away from everyone else and have a weekend together, and throw the Sunday night meeting open to having them tell what happened when they were together that weekend. Did you follow that? It’s very simple, but you don’t need any preaching. Just turn it over to them and let them tell you what took place in their lives, and that’s about as simple as it can be. You have a weekend in which all the sisters go up without anybody whatsoever directing them. Let them go up in the mountains, spend the weekend together, and come to a Sunday night meeting to share. Brothers, you’re in for a treat.

Now, that will take place only after a church has learned to share without leaders present. When you have finally recognized the fact that you have a right- no, you don’t have a right; it’s more than that: it’s an honor. I don’t know what it is. You are the church; this is what the church does. She meets under the headship of the Lord Jesus Christ, and she shares about Him. We always talk about having dinners together, but these are all meetings. Hey, these are all meetings. I don’t know if you recognize this. Have a Saturday night in homes, not a home, but in homes, where the brothers have the responsibility of cooking the meal and serving the sisters.

Alright, let me tell you something. Let me tell you a beautiful little story, if I can get through this. I received an invitation in the mail one day that said, Gene and Helen Edwards, the honor of their presence is expected, or is asked for, at the- what was the name of that house? The house had a name, the something house. Oh, it was the Cathedral Oaks House at 6 p.m., and that’s all we knew. We didn’t know any more than that. At 6 p.m., we knocked on the door of the Cathedral Oaks House. The door opened, and a brother with a waiter’s towel over his hand said, “Good evening, Gene and Helen.” We’re glad to have you. Please come in. The room was dark. Candles burned, and three other families were present. The four families were then treated to a sumptuous gourmet dinner that those single brothers had prepared.

When the meeting was over, and the dinner was over, and we just had a wonderful time, those guys – I never saw it. I didn’t even know those single brothers had enough sense to get their heads out of the pot. They waited on those tables. They waited on us hand and foot. Our water cups, or whatever we were drinking, I never got over that far down from the rim. They were around us. They would literally stand at the table like this and wait. A sumptuous feast. When it was over, a group of sisters came and helped the brothers clean up the tables.

One of the golden memories of my life, because this song had only recently come into my life, and one of the people present that night was Jack Miller, if any of you know him. I shall never forget. He expressed in words my feeling. Oh, and I was getting up to go, and the sisters were in the kitchen washing dishes. The single sisters were in the kitchen washing dishes, and they were singing “Sing Hallelujah to the Lord.” They were singing both parts, which I’d rarely ever heard. I don’t know why we don’t know the two parts to that thing. I was mesmerized, and Jack said, “Sounds like angels, doesn’t it?” Just an unforgettable night. That’s community. That’s love. That’s unbridled love. That’s not going to happen in a legalistic situation. It’s not going to happen in a movement situation or orientation. It’s going to happen out of the spontaneous life of a church that is experiencing the Lord Jesus Christ daily, or at least weekly.

Brothers, I would tell you, and again, you need four or five weeks to run at it. I would say to you and your fellowship: have a meeting where the sisters are treated like princesses, and the brothers serve meals to them one night and enjoy serving those sisters the very best you possibly can. That’s a meeting of the church. That’s a meeting of the church.