Needed, A New Way to Meet #3: The Body of Christ: A New Way to Experience Church Life

I cannot give you a better definition of the church. This is a good question. How do you have community when everybody lives out of town? It’s really simple. Some of you sell your homes and move together. That’s what you do, and if you’re not willing to do that, then you’re the wrong religion.

I want to amplify that. Do you realize that Christianity is expressed by its meetings? That our image of the Christian faith is what we project on Sunday morning? That is a pretty poor exhibition, isn’t it? That one hour a week we get dressed up in the most miserable, uncomfortable clothes on this earth, walk into a building, sit down, get a glassy stare in our faces, suffer for one hour, and go home; then the Christian faith must not be much. I mean, it just stands up and preaches all sorts of proclamations about what the Christian faith is. That’s the extent of God’s requirements of your commitment.

Again, that was not a first-century image. It was everything. Paul said, “I don’t want yours…I want you.” But I just couldn’t sell my home and move down to some shaky prospect of meeting with a bunch of people I hardly know. Then you really ought not to be a Christian. Boy, you put everybody on one street or two streets around, something’s going to happen. They’re either going to split to high heavens; that’s all right. And, Gene, if I’m living in some house, I will lose all my profit. That’s okay. You’re going to be here 70 years. That’s all right. Lose everything you have; the Lord will not forget that: you loved Him and His house that much. Sell the blooming thing and move.

All of you get in one place, and if you have to, get in two places. Maybe you need to have all your homes in three places: one where the very rich live, one where the very middle class live, and one where the very poor live. I think some of you rich folks ought to get down off your high horse; come live with the middle class. Now you’re going to have to move near one another. I don’t mind to…I don’t bat an eye to say to you, “Do it.” Do it. Otherwise…put the fat in the fire. Put your money where your mouth is. Where the road and the rubber meet, or where the cookie crumbles(laughter). You’ve been talking big; now do it. But boy, don’t do it unless you’ve got somebody around who knows what he’s doing to help you know the Lord and help you to know one another, because you’re in for big trouble if you think, “God’s going to lead us. We don’t need any man to lead us.” Man, you’re in big trouble. God didn’t ordain it that way. He ordained for men to raise up the church.

I love your question, brother. I appreciate it. That’s my answer. I give it unequivocally, uncompromisingly; I won’t back up. You have to move near one another.

Oh, wait a minute. May I stop right there? Where’s the greater commitment, to one another or to Jesus Christ? To Jesus Christ. I’ve said this before. I said, now, the greatest flaw in my ministry is… I don’t know what to do about it, but Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his book, Life Together, really helped me. This is what he said…to me. He said, Gene, “It happens not to you, but to all of us, that when we get together in a community, our commitment shifts to one another and away from Christ,” and I think that’s when the Lord steps in and starts doing some really terrible things.

Brothers and sisters fall so in love with one another that they absolutely will no longer follow the Lord if it means breaking relationships with each other. And that’s been a flaw in my ministry. I have seen some lifelong, eternal commitments to one another; people are going to be with one another now and forever, world without end…and Christ has been virtually forgotten in the matter. I appreciate those of you who are shaking your heads. You obviously are saying you’ve seen this too. It seems to be the curse that we have to deal with.

You don’t have to worry about a Methodist or a Baptist. You people, meet one another and just fall in love with each other. A preacher has to come along and tell you that’s a no-no; you have to be told you cannot fellowship with others. We, as theologically trained people, have to ingrain it in our heads. Forgive me if this shows up in several videos; you all need to hear it again.

Like Martin Luther King Jr., I have a dream. I see a day when church buildings have been turned into restaurants. Museums; I see that day coming. It will come; if the Lord tarries, they will be turned into museums and libraries and civic auditoriums and restaurants and maybe dance halls. There are already mausoleums there. I see somebody is a radical (laughter). I see the day when seminaries have become places where Christians go to read. I see a day when people look back on the pastoral concept and see it as the worship of relics. I really do. I see that day. I see that day when Christians stop wearing ties to meetings. I see a day when the majority of God’s people who love Him meet in homes. I believe that day is coming as surely as I have seen churches by the hundreds and thousands lying vacant in Europe.

There will be a change. It will come. Death and persecution purified the church and forced her back to her more primitive and simple expression. Everybody here is saying yes. Not everybody’s saying that. I don’t believe that. I know you have, but let me talk about it for a minute. It doesn’t deal with the root problem. Persecution doesn’t address the root problem. Let China or Russia be free tomorrow, and let us Americans hit those two countries with all of our bags of silver and gold, and church buildings are going to go up right and left, and they’re going to take them. Seminaries and Bible schools are going to go up, and they’re going to say, uh-huh.

Right now, they meet in the woods. They meet out in the country. They meet in homes. They meet clandestinely. They meet in hiding and secret, and in intimate meetings, but their heads are still in the religious system. They meet that way out of necessity, not belief, not passion. When the persecution lifts, they go right back to the way they were. This has happened again and again in Christianity. Now, if the Russian and the Chinese situation goes on for another 200 or 300 years, then maybe that will change, but right now, I am really afraid that if Russia or China, either one…if it lifts, it’s going to happen again. I do not see Spain being blessed by the fact that they’ve stopped persecuting Protestants. What’s happening is the religious system is moving in there by the truckloads and doing it all over again. So there is another way, but I’m not sure about the persecution that comes with it; I don’t see much benefit in it.

It takes one to two years to get a group of people together in a city where they live and bring them to the point where you can walk out of there, and they will continue functioning without leadership. They are not prepared to do this in the beginning, but if it’s ever given to them, I will tell you something else. They will be spoiled to everything else on earth for all the rest of their life, now and forever, world without end.