Needed, A New Way to Meet #2: Rediscovering the Biblical Church

When I was twenty-four, I won a contest: $1,000 or a trip to Hawaii. I gave the money to Campus Crusade for Christ. I gave it to Bill Bright, who was a dear friend of mine. At the age of twenty-four, I won a nationwide contest, first place, on how to evangelize the world in one generation, and it was on the concept of church planters…and I didn’t even know it. I didn’t use that term. I’ve been driven by it almost from the day I was saved. I’ve been at one job my whole life; I haven’t changed it.

I meet young brothers and young students, and every once in a while, a sister who wants to be a church planter. I ask you two questions. How big is your library, and how long can you stay gone from your wife? The library is usually about four books long, and they can stay away from their wife about three days. Well, forget it, buddy. Until you can live in the fires of perdition and eat it for supper, eat it for breakfast, eat it before breakfast; if you can take unmitigated persecution, misunderstanding, rumors, and betrayals and everything else, if you can walk out and say goodbye to your wife for three to six months, and if your whole body, soul, and spirit is consumed with Christ and his church, then maybe, maybe that is your call.

I meet a man at least once a week who wants to be an apostle…and now I’m using the word church planter because I don’t like the word apostle, and I’m not comfortable with it, and I don’t even believe it fits. That’s a first-century thing, but those men’s main job was planting churches, and that’s what Jesus Christ did. That’s what he did for a living. He planted churches. He planted one, and that was in the hearts of twelve men. Then those twelve men planted a church, and then they left that church. Actually, the church left them. In that one rare case, the church left them. They stayed hiding in Jerusalem, standing for some principle, I suppose. The church left them, but the church was without them.

Again, the divine principle: it’s not a pattern, it’s not human, it’s not an organization. It’s not a concept. It’s the way divine life operates naturally, like human life grows a nose on your face. There is a world of difference. Until you begin to pray for, until you ask God to raise up again church planters, we’re stuck on how to meet. We’re not going to have those meetings. You and I are going to sit here and suffer till the end of time. Those men have got to know what they’re doing, and one of the things they do is leave.

Those churches, those people left the apostles and went out into Judea. Here is the most important thing I can say to you tonight: those churches had a period of time when they had no leaders. The reason you can’t meet in your group, and never will successfully, is because you began with leaders.

I have never quoted this man before. Ronald Reagan recently said something quite interesting. He said all the other constitutions of the world start “we the government.” Only America’s Constitution starts “We the People.” That’s the way the Church of the Living God has got to be born: we the people. It’s got to belong to her. It doesn’t belong to the apostle. There’s no church in the New Testament, “The Church of the Apostle Paul.” It’s the church of the saints, the church of Christ, the church of God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, and the church of the holy ones. Only they own it. It’s not elders. It’s not apostles. It’s people, and a church has got to be born without leaders, and she’s got to have leaders…later…but the church has got to feel that she has a franchise on the meetings. The franchise does not belong to the pastor. It does not belong to the apostle or the elder. It belongs to God’s people. Until we have that, we get nowhere. You are the church, and the church belongs to you.

In the beginning, that can get very, very confusing. Somebody goes, well, what are you doing here then? The church belongs to us. We’re going to follow nobody but Jesus. Boy, you’d better follow the church planter, or you’re headed for nowhere. You are headed for nowhere for one simple reason: you don’t know how to be the church. You don’t know how to meet. You’re not going to learn, and you’re going to die. I have a standing bet that no group of Christians, no matter how glorious they started or how wonderful they think they’re going to make it, will make it three years without some outside help.

It has to be with a divinely ordained church planter. That church planter has got to leave. That’s divinely ordained. That church has got to have a time without leaders. That’s divinely ordained. You don’t start the church without leaders; you’ll die. Don’t be so doggone idealistic. You’ll never get anywhere. You begin with the church planter; he leaves. Now we got two problems. We ain’t got no church planters. And we ain’t got nobody who’ll leave. They all stay, doggone their hides. Say amen. They ask you to support them all the rest of their days, now and forever, world without end.

I was sitting here between the meetings, talking to some brothers about why some brothers said we tried to change. Well, I hate to be blunt, and forgive me, I am not suggesting that you end your group; I’m suggesting you go home and start over again, but I am telling you that’s not the best way. The best way is to begin with a church planter, but I’m talking pure theory, pure unadulterated theory. I’m talking about that which we should pray for.

And you Americans, doggone you, you need to pray for something else, and that is to get some of this democracy out of your bloodstream. There is such a driving concept among Americans: I ain’t going to follow nobody. Who do you think you are? You’re cutting off; you’re just destroying the church. You need a church planter. He needs to get out of there, or you need to leave him. You’ve got to have a time when there are no leaders and the church understands that the meetings are totally her responsibility and she’s got to carry them. Then you can have your elders, and then you can have whatever else comes: the gifts and all that stuff that you Pentecostals chase after all the time. You don’t need the recovery of the gifts; you need the recovery of the centrality of Jesus Christ. The gifts will come organically.

You’re trying to have a nose and a foot and a leg and an arm before you have a baby. You’re trying to have a tongue and a mouth and an ear and an eye before you have a child. The gifts come after the church. The church only needs one gift, and that’s the gift of the church planter. He gives the church…and the church has the church… and the church grows and matures, and it will produce gifted men with gifts. The earliest churches had only two things: apostles and people. There wasn’t anything else.

I tell you, I know you all are following me perfectly, but you all will – excuse me, I’m an old man now. I get frustrated. You walk out the door, and you forget. I’m telling you, you’re working in an untenable situation. I’m supposed to say all this at the end of this message, but I haven’t even made my point yet. I’m going to say it to you now.