How to Have True Church Life in Small Towns and Rural Villages

Well, Gene, don’t you believe in submission, women submitting themselves to their husbands? I’m going to talk to you about that before this is over with, so just let it titillate until then. Talk to the women. See if you have any sense that they speak of their love for the body of Christ and church life, out of having been indoctrinated, or because they really, truly haven’t been, and they are absolutely in love with the situation that they are in. Church life should be the most wonderful thing in the world a woman can touch. Ask them, and while you’re doing it, ask how they arrived at that. Talk to the women. Don’t talk to the brothers. Talk to the sisters. After you’ve talked to the sisters, talk to the brothers. If I don’t miss my guess, they will speak to you straightforwardly, and they will speak of their own personal feelings. They will warn you about all the pitfalls. But listen to what those pitfalls are. It’s not authoritarianism or all of these things that most of us have been bruised over. It will be the discovery that we’re fallen, and that living together brings that out, and that we need help. I think you’ll at least run across that.

Now I’m going to talk to those of you who are already meeting. A little more difficult, a little touchier. I’m so glad I don’t know who you are. I’m so glad I don’t know who I’m talking to, and if the shoe fits, wear it. How did you begin? Perhaps some sisters got together, and their husbands followed in. That’s not bad. A woman-dominated—I don’t mean “dominated by,” that they’re dominating, but I mean numerically, there are a lot more women than men. Women are trying to encourage the men to take responsibility, and men, not knowing exactly what to do, and one man finally rises up among them.

Or did you start a Bible class with a brother or a sister, bringing you together? Are you into something? Gosh, what? Well, Gene, we really believe in homeschooling. God bless you. We’re just really into winning people to the Lord. Well, Gene, we really believe in helping others and feeding the poor. We’re into Bible study, or we’re in the Lord’s coming, or we’re into something…Well, you’ve got to get out of that. First of all, no matter what you’re into, the fact that you’re into it makes you an unbalanced person, emphasizing one portion of the verses of Scripture in the New Testament. You can yield…you can make virtually any and all verses in the Scripture yield to whatever it is you’re interested in. The human mind, with its great powers of logic, can simply do that.

Okay, the one thing I want to talk to you about is if you survive over a long period of time, which is unlikely, then you tend to be a “bless me” club. You’re just there to get blessed. The meetings are sweet. Hallelujah, thank God. Boy, you don’t want to mess with a group of people like that. It’s all flowing in one direction. God’s just been sweet to you. His presence is always there, and, man, people can get really upset if you even consider muddying that water. Well, four years from now, they won’t be there. Somebody’s going to have a problem. Somebody’s going through rough waters. The cross is not there. There’s an improper beginning. There’s no planting. It’s not direction. Most of all, it’s a bunch of empty buckets that come and get filled, then go back home. Brothers and sisters, it simply isn’t the Ecclesia of Jesus Christ.

Now, I would love to come join you. As soon as you fall apart, I’d like to run out and find another group where the Lord’s presence is rich. Don’t ever forget that the first year of Jesus Christ’s ministry was sweet. Miracles, blessings, food given freely and spontaneously. The last year of His life, suffering and the cross. A group of Christians meeting together cannot bear suffering and pain corporately, and if somebody will stand up and say, “the devil must be in this”, or “God couldn’t possibly be in this with all this pain”, people just fade into the woodwork. A “bless me” club, quite frankly, is a very pitiful thing in the long run, and it is built on selfishness. Aren’t you glad I don’t know who you are? Or maybe you thought I was thinking of you when I sat here in my home, in my chair, and had you in mind. No, I’m speaking of things universal in every nation and every place.

The Bless Me Club will eventually fall apart as well. Saints, if it wouldn’t, I would tell you there would be little groups of Christians in every city in the English-speaking world. There would be hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of them. They don’t exist. Dry times come. Try to find one that’s 15 years old. Try to find one that’s 20. They don’t exist. If you should find one of those remote creatures that’s 20 years old, you’re going to find it dead. Wall-to-wall dead. Being held together, probably mostly by marriages and intermarriages. Then, a guest speaker once in a while, and books you read. They’re, oh, I don’t know, but dead is it.

Well, usually, it falls apart, or some brother comes in and leads the group. Sometimes there’s a split. Sometimes it stays together. Sometimes he’s a wandering man who comes in and out and ministers to you. Sometimes he stays around a lot. Sometimes he becomes your pastor. Sometimes you end up in a church building. But most of all, you crash and burn. So, question: Can you cohesively make a decision to head for higher ground?

Now I’m going to bring up a tantalizing question. It’s a question I’ve posed in the past. It’s a very simple question. You went to visit the brothers in a small-town USA. Yeah. Are they interested? They are. Are they a group cohesive enough to make a corporate decision? The answer to that is virtually always “no”. They can’t make a corporate decision. Let me tell you that that is very difficult to arrive at, and it is very rare. Let me repeat it. Has your group reached a point in its history where it can make a cohesive decision together about something other than when you’re going to have coffee or a meeting?

Now let’s talk about this because it’s very important. Groups cannot make cohesive decisions, certainly not dramatic ones, because they’re not built together for stress. They’re not built together for crises. There’s just not that much unity in that group of people that they can suffer over long periods of time, go through major crises, and also act like “the church”. The church is a vibrant, living, breathing woman who kicks down the gates of hell. People meeting together, singing pretty songs and sharing, or whatever you do, and then going home, cannot handle a major crisis, cannot do all of those marvelous things that the church is supposed to do.

By the way, that definitely affects the way you interpret Scripture. You have to overlook lots of things that are blatantly obvious about the church of Jesus Christ, and look for the, well, if mellow is who you are, mellow is what you have to find when you open the Scripture. The church of Jesus Christ should be able to walk through any crisis thrown at her and come out on the other side. That’s church life, and church life includes that battle and fulfilling everything that a church does. As I said, most small groups work on the level of the lowest common denominator.

Well, now we come to this matter of the decision, and here is one of the great tragedies that’s usually not even noticed: that when a group of Christians comes to make a decision, they cannot, and therefore, they do nothing. Therefore, faced with this crisis, they have to fall back into a mellow state. I want to propose to you that there is something else you could do, and that is for you to be obedient to the Lord Jesus Christ. That, of course, will split your fellowship, or at least will cause the loss of several people. If you decide to go by way of church life, there is no way it’s going to be unanimous. Therefore, whether you realize it or not, you have attached your future history of your relationship to Jesus Christ to how far the weakest link in that fellowship is willing to follow Him.

How often have I heard it said, whatever we do, we’ve got to do it together? Well, the weakest, most confused person who sees the least, that’s how far you’ve been able to go. Brothers and sisters, there are simply times when that doesn’t work, and quite frankly, I see no scriptural grounds for it. I know that I’m treading on dangerous grounds here, but I also, having watched this for so many years, know that a group has a very limited lifetime anyway. If it’s not this crisis…and listening to this tape is a crisis…if it’s not this crisis, there will be another crisis.