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

Before I tell you the rest of this, I’d better give an introduction here, an explanation as to why I’m saying this. And again, somebody might feel just a little bit uncomfortable. Normally speaking, there are exceptions. Women have a natural instinct for the church; men do not. Some women have to be broken in this matter, but all men do. Let me explain to you that men are very much in their heads, not their hearts. Generally speaking, they do not have a sensitivity to spiritual things, certainly not in comparison to the sisters. Head knowledge of the Scripture they can give to you all day long. Pretty well attached to the thinking that has predominated the Christian faith since the Plymouth Brethren set up a way of thinking toward the Scripture back in the 1830s, and began in the 1880s to dominate our thinking, and today is part of our Bible schools and seminaries all over the world. That is not Scripture, but it is a pattern of verses sewn together that, for some reason, has been accepted as the teachings on major subjects.

What are you talking about, Gene? Oh, the place of a woman in the church. Man, that looks like…Gene, it says, right here…no, it doesn’t. No, you’ve overlooked one little word. In fact, you’ve overlooked one little letter. And elders, it says, yeah, but you haven’t put that in its context, brother. You’ve only put it together with verses sewn together and reason introduced, but not in its great context, chronological sweep, not in the panoramic view of that marvelous story from beginning to end. No. Brothers love to study the Scripture for what they can find in it, and they like to talk about it. They like to reason with one another, but most of all, they like to philosophize in brothers’ meetings. And they can…they just have a hard time. There’s testosterone in brothers’ meetings flowing deep and wide, with brothers jockeying for positions, and brothers resenting those who are taking a leadership role. I want to repeat that really slowly.

Brothers get together, and leaders naturally rise. Those who are quiet don’t care about leading. Those who are introverts, those who don’t do those things, where the introverts are extroverts, begin to resent you, brother. And troubles a-brewing. Troubles a-brewing.

I’m going to make several recommendations to save you from a lot of pain. One: Let the sisters begin the Church of Jesus Christ. Not because it’s scriptural, just because it works. We’re 2,000 years away, and these are things that help. One: All the women get together and have a weekend together. Now, I’m coming back to this question. Is the group cohesive enough to actually put together a weekend retreat for all the sisters? The answer to that is no, unless you are so challenged by it that you just prove me wrong. Generally speaking, the sisters cannot get together to plan a weekend, but that’s where you are now. That’s not where you will be later. There will come a time when I, or some brother, some way, if we had to set the date ourselves, you’d get together.

Okay, so what are we going to do, Gene? Well, you’re going to have fun. That’s all you’re going to do. If you want to pray a little and sing a little, fine, but most of all, you have fun. I always recommend starting on Friday night and having a pillow fight. I recommend that no sister, no matter how strong she is or how much she’s into missions or whatever, that every woman walk into that weekend retreat laying down who she is and whatever it is she’s pushing, and have a time when everybody can share. Keep it positive. Everybody can sing, and some of you just share your hearts. Have fun, and I would recommend that if the retreat’s not too far from somewhere, you cook some of your meals together, but you all go out somewhere. Come back home. Brothers are going to know what you’ve done. Well, have a meeting where you tell them what you did, and have fun telling them.

I’m going to go ahead and push this a little further. I want to tell you, brothers, that you’re going to lose some territory when the sisters begin to become a cohesive group of believers. You’re going to lose territory. You’re not afraid of your wife, or maybe you are. You might want to rethink that proposition. Brothers in the churches come to really respect, not the sister, but the sisters, because the sisters begin to have something together. It’s just a very, very near unbelievable and unspeakable and unfathomable, it’s almost magic, and it’s called sisterhood.

They begin to take care of one another. They take care of one another in homes and share one another’s burdens. They begin to not tolerate abusiveness on the part of any male toward any one sister. Brothers, beware. You will not get away with a few of the abusive things that you may be doing. There are some sisters with broken hearts who are really hurting. Sisters have a way, after a few years of being built together, of becoming very helpful toward one another and very protective. And woe be to the man who does not care for his wife as Christ cared for the church.