How to Have a Home Church (Part 1) – What a Real Home Church Needs

You mean including cancer? Leukemia? Of course. Yes. What? What? Everything except…with the only exception…90-year-old people who want to get healed so they can get out of bed for another 30 years. I’m sorry. I’m not much into raising 90-year-old people. I won’t ask you to heal me when I’m 90. I might be asking for grace. I might even be asking you to be healed of something immediate in my life, but I’m going to calculate the fact that at night I should have a few things breaking down at night. So it’s very difficult for me when someone…my great-grandmother, the only great I ever met.

I told y’all this the other day. I just met her twice, once as a little kid. I’ve got a picture of her. I was in Louisiana, and she asked me to come over and pray for her. Well, I was 18, and she asked me to pray that she’d get out of that bed and get well. She was just a little this side of the age of dirt and water. I prayed this ridiculously long prayer. And she, that old Irish woman, she chewed me out one side and down the other, lying there in that bed, infirm, just at death’s door. And she reamed me out. You don’t believe in prayer. You don’t believe in faith. You don’t believe in God. You don’t believe God can heal. She taught me some lessons that day. There will be an opportunity for healing, and you will have the opportunity to decide whether healing belongs in the church. If it does, there should be healing.

Now, let me say something else: you’ll take care of one another. But every one of you is going to have to decide and set up your perimeter of how far that goes. We will not intrude without permission. Sometimes we’ll not intrude at all because we know the answer is already no. I’m not talking about healing now. I’m talking about everything.

Saints, the deep depth of the needs that we have in our lives cannot even be calculated. We are blind to them, rebellious, and resentful. When you mess with me, I’ve got my feelings hurt. What do you dare say that I’m a kleptomaniac? Dare you say that you should stop hitting your husband? Or whatever there is. I think I’m going to touch on one more thing here.

Certainly this is just a very, very small portion of it. I do think that the day you see me walk out of this street, going door to door, you will know that we’re in business and we mean business. I think I’ve already told you some of the things we’re going to do—a lot of things on people’s doors. You can do it really quickly. It doesn’t take long to cover a large piece of…possibly one of those little hooks maybe you ever have on the door that hooks on your door? It’ll be our little message. We’re going to have the nicest website in the city among Christians. It will be a doozy, and it will be so different.

We will let people in this town, this end of town, know that we’re here. We will have a clear, distinct beginning. I cannot guarantee that those who lead our land to Christ will even come into this room. I cannot guarantee that. We live in a world of choices. We live…one of the choices is, “Give me a fire insurance policy, and then I’ll not wait.” Do you understand what I mean by that? You all do, I know. I’ll get saved, and now Jesus won’t send me to hell, and I’m right here. My fire insurance policy.

There’s something else I want to say to you. I want to say this to anyone who ever listens to this. When you are dead, you need no maintenance. There are two kinds of deaths. One Sunday morning, church death that’s the first one- and you can go every Sunday; you have the same thing, the same ritual. You never get up. There’s just down. Sometimes there’s a beautiful joke, a beautiful song, maybe a weekend—this is so good. The church, as she is in reality, is up and down. Otherwise, she’s not real. I have been part of a church that did not let you be down. That was virtually a sin. So everybody gets into this game of being up. No, you have the right to hit bottom. But that does not necessarily imply the church is now dead just because you are.

Churches will have dry spells. When a church that’s up gets a dry spell, people leave by the hordes. And the only thing I can say to them is, God bless you, get out of here. I’m looking at a group of people I really sincerely believe don’t fit into that category. I will say this to everyone who might hear this. There will be low times, and when there are low times, you’ve got to understand that doesn’t mean God has left us. If you’re always up or always doing well, there is something really strong…it’s not realistic. It’s not human. Is there anyone in this place that never gets down or discouraged? Is there anybody? Anyone in this room who does? The opposite.

A church can be that way. I’m building this just a little bit. I’m not talking to anybody in this room. I’m talking about the people who are listening to this. I’ll tell you something, sir, you don’t know. If you begin to have a successful home church, of which there are probably ten in this whole nation, you will have people coming in, and they’re so excited they’ve never seen anything like it, but they’re going to notice something else, too. They want something like this with them running it, and they will do what never happens in an institutional church: they’ll rip your fellowship to pieces and never bat an eye in doing it. The only thing I can say for them is they do not understand the word “flesh,” because you can’t do that except in your flesh. No, that’s going to happen. And when it happens, you’re going to come under fire. They tell us that the negative word is nine times more powerful than the positive word. And they’re going to listen; they’re going to be listened to, and they will leave. And you, sir, will no longer be on a picnic. And you’re going to learn what it means to go through agony and suffer.

I’m going to tell you something else. The first time you attack your attackers, you’ll leave the ministry. We’ve had enough people defending their ministry, which only shows you’re not really a servant of God. You’re a servant of yourself. You’re an empire builder for your own personal aggrandizement. Throw in money with that, which brings me to my next point: sometimes God starts dealing with a Christian in areas he didn’t know existed. I will say that, generally speaking, and don’t take me…don’t get too alarmed…there is a certain truth in this: that every one of us, which would include everyone in this room, needs to be broken.

What does that mean, Gene? I have no idea, but I can tell you this: your screams can be heard two miles away. There is a brokenness in our nature that we are born with, and I don’t have any illustration to give to you, but I always think of people who are greatly endowed with musical talent, and they want to give their talent to the Lord. I don’t know of anything worse than seeing God come after someone’s musical gift, because that’s something God gave them, and they’re going to hold on to it, and God can’t have it. I believe it was Watchman Nee who said one of the worst things that will ever happen to a Christian is when God comes to take back the gift he gave you. The disposition you have, your life, your whatever you are. Or, in other words, this is a great place to dissect. And it’s a wonderful, wonderful place.

Now, for those of you who I have never met, may never, and right now I’m thinking about seminary students, I see you there with your computer. I have something I want to say to you. For the last 45 minutes, I’ve been speaking to an 18-year-old kid who left college, went into seminary, and has no idea if he’ll ever be a pastor of a church, doesn’t know how to get one, and is wondering how to make a living. I want to pass that up and say I’m talking to a lot of young men in the seminary and Bible schools today who really want to raise up a house church. Forget it.