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

Once you confront someone, someone, not just one person in your meeting, will use confrontation then. If I do something once, there’s a saint back there somewhere who’s inclined that way, and once they see it, they have a license from that day forward to do it. I will give you a recent example out of my own life. For the first time in my ministry, from the day I was called to preach at 18 until I was 55, about four or five minutes ago, something happened that got to me. I got hurt; bad enough that I brought it to the church. Boy, some brothers waited 20 years to see me do that; they waited 20 years to have license.

On the day they saw me vulnerable and weak, all sorts of problems broke out. I don’t know if you understand what I’m talking about, but I know my responsibility as a minister of the gospel is not to rebuke or confront. If I do, I will come back and find a church full of rebukers and confronters. Now, on the other hand, I envy you. That’s one side. On the other hand, I envy you because I’m willing to correct and exhort people so many times, and I just haven’t, and haven’t, and haven’t. I have to be pressed to the wall before I lean forward on somebody and say, “thou ailest” here, here, and here.

A fellow came and joined us, and we knew something was wrong, we knew something was wrong, and we knew something was wrong, and something was wrong. Finally, word came that God had sent him to lead us. God told him he would lead our group, and that thought was wrong. He was…when these strange testimonies were coming, they weren’t testimonies; they were orders. Of course, he, being a very unusual person, couldn’t see that. They were just declarations and rebukes, and he was actually acting as the leader. I sent two brothers around here, being the coward that I am. That’s a pretty serious matter, and he was an older man, too. I’m very reluctant to speak to, I’m reluctant to correct.

I’ll be happy to tell you my method. Instead, I will have the church hold a meeting. There are other ways to skin a cat besides using a rusty spoon. The church votes on who they want to blow the whistle on, and it becomes fun. This person is going to correct or stop or whatever. The church chooses someone to do that in the meeting, and that person actually does it, and it goes over really well. By the way, I recommend that. I don’t recommend it for the first meeting in particular, but I recommend it because it will be there.

I think, brothers and sisters, if you’re going to have meetings of such a radical nature as I have described, that I think that you have to do a lot of discussing about these meetings at other times and discuss the problems that are coming up in them and, as I said to you last night, to be aware when they start getting dead and dry and to do something about it. But that’s one of the things: when someone is over-functioning, or, to illustrate, my whole body is functioning, but obviously, some part of my body has started to over-function, and that’s what happens to the Lord’s body. I would say that unless you’ve got a very sick situation in the church, which should be very rare, that shouldn’t ever happen. I’m going to give you a cure for it. The cure has its problems, as all cures do. There are side effects.

For years, it’s been a hallmark of my own ministry…and I’m not telling you to do this, but I wouldn’t know how to do what I do without it. I wouldn’t know how to function without this. We never have Sunday morning meetings; I mean, we have had, and they’re always horrible. There’s something cursed about that, and there’s a little truth to it. It’s just…I don’t know… You can meet any day of the week, except Sunday morning, and something will happen. We don’t have Sunday morning meetings; I won’t have Sunday morning meetings. We’ve tried it before, for two or three months, even recently. I just won’t be part of it. I won’t put up with it. I’m not going to live in that kind of atmosphere. I can’t stand it, but instead we have brothers’ meetings every Sunday, and we dump it all out there. But to deal with a situation like that, you’ve got to have someone who feels very secure about what he’s doing. Not everybody is that secure. And, I mean, we have it. There’s no time for murmuring mid-week; we want to meet on Sundays. That’s one of the things we do: talk about our meetings, where they are, and what they’re doing.

Now, there are times, but I have to admit, murmuring can happen outside, even if you have brothers’ meetings every Sunday; but when you get that, you have major problems in the church. I mean, you’ve got major problems. You’re probably facing a split. One of the problems with having brothers’ meetings, and that’s with all the brothers present, is that the sisters are left out. Brothers and sisters don’t act the same way. The sisters are left out; they kill the brothers’ meeting just like that. So, you have sisters’ meetings. Well, the sisters could not care less. Sisters, y’all get together and talk about your problems. The sisters will get together, worship the Lord, pray, cry, and go home. I’m not going to have to get the sisters to do that. Do the sisters get together and discuss some of the problems in the church? No, but being a woman is a wonderful gift. In my case, I have been asked, therefore, if the sisters won’t be present because we live in a different day.

I have memories dating back to the 60s. There are always one or two sisters who went to those brothers’ meetings. They were liberated. So one of the things we’ve done is we’ve had to back away from decision-making and go to meetings and just air problems and not do anything about them. The other thing is, I try to meet with the sisters once a month, tell them everything I can remember that’s going on, and let them talk with me. No, Gene’s not always there; that’s true. How do you do it? And the answer is someone else needs to do that. About once a month, there needs to be a time.

We have brothers’ meetings, sisters’ meetings, and sometimes we have “persons” meetings. A person’s meeting- I’m surprised you didn’t catch that. There’s a salesman, and then they become a salesperson. We have person meetings, and brothers and sisters are both there. We have brothers do, but generally speaking, sisters don’t split churches. Sisters don’t split churches. Brothers have testosterone, which makes us more aggressive. Sisters don’t have this particular hormone.

Another problem with brothers’ meetings is that some brothers start to think they’re an elders’ meeting. I don’t know what the deal is with guys; they’re just naturally hostile. They don’t want leadership in the church. They’re terrified when elders are appointed because they’re afraid they’ll suddenly have to submit to someone. I would say this to you. I’m going to tell you two brothers from Atlanta and all the rest of you, if you show up here. There’ll be brothers’ meetings, but those brothers’ meetings are grace-given. They’re not scriptural. It’s a privilege, not a scriptural right. It’s not a right; it’s a privilege granted. Again, there are times when you have to ask some brother to stay out of the meeting. I’ve never had to do it yet, but I’ve come awfully close because he’s so antagonistic about everything. It’s a privilege, not a right. Nonetheless, it is my own style, and I enjoy it. Well, that’s not all we do. Most of what we do is worship the Lord. I’d rather do it in a brothers’ meeting than in any meeting on this earth.

Some people absolutely refuse to have a church planter. They’ll let God do it, but God doesn’t work that way. Let me tell you something about your Lord: He is, by nature, hidden. You Pentecostals, you have a God who’s everywhere. He’s in the room, the trees, and the cigarette smoke. He’s in the water, He’s in a sound, and He’s in a vision. He’s in this; He’s there. You’ve got a God that shows up anywhere. God told me this, and God told us that, and we’ve got a vision of this and that, and everybody’s got a vision. You’ve got a God that springs up everywhere.

I want you to look at your God, stand back, and look at your God for a moment. Your God created this universe and left absolutely no proof that He exists. Now I want you, Christian, to put this into your pipe and smoke it: there is no proof for the existence of God. There isn’t. There is no proof. Nobody has found a single shred of evidence for God’s existence.