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

Saints, believe me, before I die, if the Lord lets me live my years, we’re going to see somebody somewhere on this earth. Maybe it’ll be in Africa or Russia, but somewhere on this earth, there will be some new church planters. I don’t know men who had the gift of raising up churches for Americans, and I’ve met most of those who are in other nations. There are a few, and they’ve either died recently, or they’re dying off. I’ve heard them speak, and they’re all scared. They won’t use that word. I’ll use that word. They’re all scared. They’re not seeing anything. They turn around, and they don’t see anything behind them. I’ve always considered myself a young kid, and when y’all start opening doors for me and say, are you sure you can pick that box up, Gene? I realize that I’m one of the old ones now, but I’m not going to be scared.

I believe that somewhere out there, there’s going to be some more. There’s got to be, and they’ve got to be men who are sent, who’ve got something burning in their guts, who see her as a beautiful woman and a bride and not an organization and not something for themselves and not a movement to enshrine themselves in history. Men who will pay any price; they’ve got to be out there somewhere. Now, they may be in Africa. If they are, then you’ll find one of my forwarding addresses in Africa one of these days.

I don’t intend to see my eyes close in death until some way on this earth I see those men. I’m sorry to talk that way, because it always stirs up some young kid. He gets emotionally disturbed. He says, ” Oh, I’m going to be one of those.” I (Gene) was born one of those. I got saved, and I started preaching the gospel as soon as I got saved. You’re born with those things. You’re born that way. It may take you 20 years to figure it out, but you’re born that way. You’re a half-mad zealous radical.

I’m going to see them before this sad day ends. Now, if that is a pessimistic note for you, then listen, American, you who believe that everything has to be “add water and stir,” instant everything, that’s just the way it is. There are not many, and they don’t happen often. Pray for them; pray that they will come. This is the greatest of all ministries: the praying that God will send forth workers.

A physical body exhibiting the Lord, with Jesus Christ invisibly leading that meeting. Now, Jesus Christ ought to be able to lead some of the meetings we’re in. Maybe He won’t lead them all, and I can guarantee you for sure He’s not going to lead them all, but every once in a while, Jesus Christ is literally the leader of the meeting. My job is to see that the Church of Jesus Christ does that. That is the small task.

Now, this is why I can stand here flat-footedly and say that a pastor, the pastor of the modern pastoral concept given to us by Martin Luther of Wittenberg, which was a carryover of the seven pastoral duties of Roman Catholic priests, stands in direct conflict with that possibility. I will say it again: a church meeting today is primarily for the minister to perform. It is primarily his show. If you don’t agree with that, then I’ll say it this way. It is primarily under his direction. He chooses the songs that he puts up on the little board there. He chooses the order of service. If he were to walk in and say, today I’m not going to speak; you’re going to carry this meeting; you’re going to share and announce the songs and stuff, they would not know what to do. They would be totally lost.

My ministry, and the ministry of an evangelist, a prophet, a teacher, a pastor, always moves toward headship of Jesus Christ, of the church. The headship of Christ. Now, that does not end the church’s administrative details. Believe me, most of us are so fundamentally disinterested in that; we do not have men taking care of it. It would never happen. No, you will have elders eventually, and you’ll be begging for them, but there is that period of time when that one who raises up the church teaches God’s people how to carry an entire meeting. The goal is for that meeting to be under the headship of Christ, for those people to be sensitive to their Lord.

Now, I would expand that and say that that is not a meeting or a kind of meeting. That should be all meetings, eventually all meetings of the church, and you should reach the point where you are addicted to that kind of meeting. Anybody who tried to come in and usurp that type of meeting would be considered an enemy of the Lord. Even if he’s a Christian, he would be an enemy of… let’s put it that way, the Lord’s work. That’s too strong, isn’t it? The Lord’s work in your gathering.

You know, we have seen guests come in to talk to us who could not speak to us because we were so informal and so interrupted and so…. You know, wait, what about such and such? Oh, hey, that reminds me. Isn’t that a wonderful story? They keep interrupting the guy, and he just…he backs down. He cannot touch it. He does not know what’s going on and cannot comprehend it. I remember one minister was speaking to us, and he finally stopped and said, folks, will you stop interrupting me? I can’t get anywhere. He didn’t know how to speak to the people who were with him, listening to him, talking to him, and interrupting him, adding to what he had to say.

I’m so thankful for the stories I’m hearing from Africa. I’ve never been there, but my dear friend, Jack Taylor, told me an enormously funny story about a Christian youngster from our country who went over there to one of these churches and got up to speak. These people were enjoying the Lord and the church and so on, and he spoke to them. They kept on talking to one another. When he finished, they had a meal together, and they sat there talking to him, enjoying everything he said, talking back to him, and enjoying what they were saying. Finally, they said to him, “You know, this has all been so wonderful, this fellowship and so forth. There’s just one thing we don’t understand. When you came to our meeting today, why did you stand up and talk to yourself?” (laughter) May their tribe increase. May his tribe diminish. All these people are getting up, talking to themselves. You’re nodding your head at me, but you’re not particularly interrupting me. I’m used to being one with the brothers and sisters I speak to. We were one together. Are you asking for it? Oh, I can take it, brother. I can take it.

Do you not realize that the story that you read in the first century is a story of an organism? It’s not a pattern of an organization. It is a story, a record, of that which was a living, breathing entity. They were not following some pattern of man; they were expressing divine life to human beings, just like the Lord had expressed divine life to one human being. And our meeting is a demonstration to angels that we are not organized, that we are not an organization, that we come together, and men see no human head, see no ritual…and if that vanishes from the earth, I don’t know what that means. I have felt that there has always been, somewhere on this planet, a witness to the headship of Jesus Christ. Brothers and sisters, if there’s anything on the earth to get obsessed about, obsessed about, magnificently obsessed, it would be the church under the headship of the Lord Jesus Christ again on the earth today as it was then.

They are the female Christians. They know what the church is; we learn what the church is. The sisters will teach you what the church is. You will learn from them, or you will never know.