Needed, A New Way to Meet #5 – Beyond Traditional Church: Experiencing Christ as Head

What is the church? Get your notes out real quick and start reading them. It’s divine. What else? Organic. Real. A place where Christ feels at home. It’s a place where Christ feels perfectly relaxed and at home. Living…and sometimes she’s beautiful. She’s a girl. I don’t think we wrote that down. Put that in your notes. She’s a girl. She’s a “she.” She’s an organism, not an organization, and you shouldn’t organize her. She has her own natural expression.

I said something else about what she is by nature. She’s a colony from heaven and the one heavenly thing on this earth, the other-realm thing on this earth. She should reflect that. For you and for me, she is our civilization. She is, in fact, our habitat. She is where we live. As many of you have heard me say it before, what school is to fish, what flock is to sheep, what a covey is to quails, what a herd is to cattle, and what civilization is to fallen man, ecclesia is to the redeemed. Therefore, something in me gets really rebellious when I think that everything Christians do today that’s fun is outside the church, and everything that’s boring is in the church. Therefore, something’s wrong with our concept of church. That’s what we’ve been handling and doing all week.

What’s the expression of the church? We talked about that, didn’t we? The expression and purpose of gathering. To display the bride of Christ for the angels. Okay, we meet before angels. Every time we gather, we gather before angels. I never think about that: showing the beauty of the Lord’s wife, or at least His girlfriend, His fiancée, His bride. Okay? To make Jesus Christ visible. We are His body, making Him visible.

Okay, did we say anything else about the purpose? It’s to shame the principalities and powers, to prove that Jesus Christ Himself can come invisibly upon this earth and guide His people. What the Father is to the Son, the Son is to the church. Jesus lived on this earth, heard His Father speak, listened to Him, obeyed Him, followed Him, and made Him visible. When the church gathers, when all the pieces and parts, the body parts, are assembled, we are doing what Christ did in His relationship to the Father; it’s passed on to us. We ensure He can be heard, responded to, loved, and made visible on this earth, and that, as the Father was the head of Jesus Christ, and was His Lord and His King, and, if you please, His dictator, and the one who told Him what to do and what to say.

When the church gathers, she does the same thing. He is her Lord. He speaks; she obeys. A meeting demonstrates Jesus Christ’s headship. No human leaders should lead the meeting. Fred and I share some background, so I’ll say something Fred will appreciate. A meeting isn’t a place where a bunch of people walk in with briefcases, sit in the front row, and start the meeting. And, of course, in the religious system, none of that. You’ve got your bulletin; the pastor has decided it, but at the beginning, at the birth of a church, the one who leads, builds, and lays the foundation ought not to be present. In meetings where you’re seeking to tear down old ways, no one considered a leader should be present. Let the strong say they are weak, not the weak say they are strong. Let the aggressive sit back, and let the timid be the ones who lead.

Well, we have responsibilities in meetings that I cannot possibly touch upon this weekend, so I’m going to say a couple of things that will be very disappointing to you. I’m going to tell you a few problems with meetings where you seek no leadership, human leadership, and following the Lord. One problem is that most of us still know how to follow the Lord in the meeting. At best, we stumble around with one foot in the goo pot. It takes a long time to get sensitive to the Lord. It will take years, literally, but it is a wonderful thing when you do. There is always, and this is my point, someone who never catches on. You can be in the middle of a glorious meeting when you really sense the Lord is at the head; He’s not only being magnified, but He is leading that meeting. I have likened it unto… could you imagine you’re standing in the middle of the Lord’s second coming? The angels have become visible; the heavenly host is gathering; all the redeemed, past and present, are coming; and the Lord is there in His glory. It is the most magnificent moment of all time. About that time, someone walks by hollering, “Peanuts, popcorn. Peanuts, popcorn. Anybody want some peanuts? Popcorn. Anybody want a program?  And you have this human being who just messes up everything royally. He or she, and it is as often a female as it is a male, doesn’t seem to have any sensitivity to the Lord. Here you are all on your knees, praising the Lord. Glory is abounding. The songs all fit. Each one of them tells another story. Everything is…just going on and on, and then someone says, ” Let’s sing ‘Do Lord.’”

I’ll tell you, your first urge…your urge is to kill whoever it is, and this person will be this way all the rest of their life, now and forever, world without end. You’re going to live with them. That’s why I’m saying this: you’ll rarely be in a meeting where the Lord has full headship from beginning to end. I’m sorry to tell you that that’s true.

I will tell you that people will exert leadership in meetings when you know they shouldn’t. That’s another problem. And I’m going to tell you something else. If I’m at a meeting and it’s not going well, I will step in and change it. You might dislike me, but I’m not there so much to be part of a meeting. Now, that’s not always true, but there’s a possibility that if I’m present, I’m there to train, to educate, to lead you, to show you something higher or better. You’ll have to excuse me for being that way. I am extra local, and I will leave in a few days, and you’ll be rid of me. I’m not like that guy who sits in the corner; you’re stuck with him forever.

Songs that are out of place. Testimonies that are out of place. Everybody’s having this wonderful time of sharing about the Lord, and someone says… well, I think this is the right time, or they’ll often say, I’m not sure what I’m doing is great, but I’m going to do it anyway. That’s a sure-shot sign you’re in trouble. They decide to get up and tell the church how ugly it’s treated them, and we have to sit there and bear it, and it’s totally out of order, but it’s there.

Another one is…I don’t like you; you just gave me half the gray hairs I have. I don’t know what to do with you. You don’t know how to stop talking. And one person always comes to mind. I’ve seen dozens of them like this, but one person comes to mind: a girl who ended every sentence with “and.” She did, I am telling you. The Lord showed me such and such and such and such…and. She had no idea what she’d say next. She’d do this long pause, and then she’d say something else. This girl would sometimes talk for 20, 30, or 40 minutes, and every silence ended with an “and.” She could not finish. She could not quit. However, one of the most interesting things about that situation was… she had all the other problems too. She was with us for three or four years. She sold more peanuts and popcorn at the second coming than I’ve ever seen in the church.

The day that I finally sat down with her after years and years and years and years of chaos and trouble and pain she brought to the church. It was the first time she was ever confronted, and I was as gentle as I know how to be, and I can be very, very gentle. In fact, she did most of what was said and done that day, and she packed her bags and left. I always think of that. The church was a platform for her. Do you understand what I’m saying? It’s a place for that person. We always have that kind of person in the church. Sometimes they can be very arrogant. I know you know a few of these folks. They feel the whole world centers on them. Their sharing always has a self-centered element. You’ll have that forever. I made a decision early in my ministry, and that was that, at least for the first 15 or 20 years, until the young ones became older men in their 40s, I was never going to let anyone see me angry, confrontive, judgmental, critical, adjustive, rebuking, or anything negative. I was going to show them patience and force patience on them because that’s much harder than confrontation.