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

Gifts and ministries; I don’t believe in them the way the Pentecostals believe in them. Let me explain this whole thing to you, and I’m going to put this in history. I hope you won’t be offended; I hope no one will. In 1790, when France was in the bowels of the French Revolution, and England was scared to death of France, they began to preach that we need the recovery of the fivefold gifts. I don’t doubt it was pure, but I want you to know, historically, and I’m not speaking for myself, this is taught in Bible schools and seminaries; it became corrupted and became a gimmick. It became a gimmick to bring people into movements numerically.

Now, some of you must be able to witness to this. In my lifetime, I’ve watched it happen twice: in the revival of 1948 to 1952, older men began to stand up and say, younger men, we have to recover the gifts. They drew great movements to themselves on that basis. Then they did it again in the Jesus movement, and that almost destroyed it. The Jesus movement started out of the Lord spontaneously, when my age moved in and began preaching the different doctrines of the different groups…there are only three denominations: the doers, the fears, and the thinkers, and they came in with their message; again, the five-fold ministry. I understand that in recent years, as this has been presented historically, the new word is: now we must go from the gifts to church life.

My feeling is the very opposite: that it is out of the organic expression of the church that the gifts come, the gifted men who have grown up in church life. And it will be much purer than the other way. The other way is, as I have seen it, because it’s been approached in my life…Gene, we recognize you as somebody. Brother, what is your gift? Well, they’re all, in my opinion, not so special, and if I answer that question, then you can come and be with us, be in God’s work, and use your gift there, and then I’m part of the movement. I don’t believe in movements. I do not believe in movements. I don’t believe in movements and will not be part of one. The five-fold gifts have always been attached to a movement and have become a corrupting tool for growth. Ladies, keep waving your heads; you know this is true. You’ve had it happen to you.

Why not begin with the simple experience of the church and let the nose grow in the face? The gift of evangelism is organic to the church’s genetic structure. It cannot be stopped. The gift of prophecy is genetic to the church’s organic structure. It cannot be stopped. I don’t know what the other gifts are. There’s the evangelist, there’s the prophet, there’s the teacher. What else is there? Pastor and the apostle. These are all organic to the church. I have seen them all come up organically except one. I’ve seen the teacher, I’ve seen the pastor, I’ve seen the prophet, I’ve seen the evangelist. I’m waiting…I’m waiting for that guy. I believe he’s out there somewhere. I keep being haunted by the fact that I once said, “Lord, I’m willing to wait until I’m 60 years old to see this.” I’ve got four years and eight days.

Do you have someone who can show you how to know the Lord as a people? Then I’ll ask you another question. Are your people flexible enough for a radical change? The answer is probably no. I don’t know anything about your group, but any group that is going down a certain way, Brother John, hear this: going down a certain pattern, and you try to change that, you will lose half of your people every time. It’s almost impossible to reform or change a group once it is set in its patterns. That’s why we ought not to have patterns…or to be set. Before this weekend is over, I hope to show you how not to be set or to have patterns. My heavenly day; don’t we have any imagination?

Here’s my advice to you, brother. Brother Mike, don’t meet for six weeks. Don’t meet for two months. Come into a living room, sit down; have no singing. Let the person in charge teach you how to know the Lord. Keep doing that for six months. Do nothing but experience Christ for six months, then start having the meetings.

And I’ll tell you something else. God willing, we will meet 1,000 different ways, so many different ways that we cannot possibly remember. I will give you a chance. Now, if you start murmuring, griping, and complaining, I have a foolproof way to cure you of that. I’m just up and walk out; I am not attached to my ministry, brother. I do not have any reputation.

I don’t equate an apostle with a church pattern, because there is no such thing as an apostle. You see, that’s one of those words we transliterated; it doesn’t mean anything. What does that word mean? Apostle. It means nothing to my ears or yours. Now, if you tell me your name is Blacksmith, I know what you do; that’s not transliterated. If the word had been translated instead of transliterated, it wouldn’t have any of the mystique around it. I send you out. You’re “one sent.”

Now, if it could be just kept that simple, there are some men called of God to spend their lives being sent. And sent… and sent, and sent, and sent again. They’ll never quit being sent. Thank God they don’t stay in one place. They get in one place, and God sends them. They go somewhere else. That’s a rare bird. I cannot equate any man today with those first-century men, but some men have the passion of the bride of Christ in their innards; they can’t do anything else, and they’re sent.

Now, my job is not a movement. My job is maybe five, maybe ten churches in my lifetime, and that’s it…and then die. Curl at my toes and die. Get off the scene, get out of the way, and let God’s work go on. Let someone else do something somewhere else, and someone else somewhere else, and let there be the enormous variety of the church of God.

When you get a man who’s gifted…a gifted man, what does he do? He has a vision. We’re going to have 10,000 churches in the next year… and he’s ordaining elders and deacons and apostles and prophets and teachers and pastors and tongues and interpreters and prophets, right and left, people who are hardly Christians. Those people are not prepared for the enormity of these tasks. Then someone says, but God…isn’t God able? Listen, there’s one thing God cannot do. He cannot transform anybody in five years. If you say you’re a pastor, an evangelist, a prophet, a teacher, or an apostle five years later, something is wrong, brother. A cross waits for you.

This 20- to 30-year process. In fact, I’m increasingly beginning to believe that if you get converted at 20, for this business of leadership and key places in the church of God, 30 is an absolute minimum. I started at 37. I got saved at 17; I hit the ground running. I was shooting in every direction. I never stopped for wood, water, coal, gasoline, or diesel. I just kept right on going. Then God stopped me at 30. I had lived about three lifetimes by the time I was 30. I didn’t do anything until I was 37. When the Lord sent me, I was terrified. I have to say, 37 is too young…and I was much better equipped than anybody else I’ve ever met, given my background. I mean, I’ve been around, folks. I have been around and around and around. I’ll be 56 any minute now, and I say to myself, I’m beginning to understand the enormity of this task. I’m just beginning to understand the enormity of this task. 40, minimum, and then I would call you an apprentice.