What if We Don’t Finish the Task (Part 3) – Preserving the Organic Church for Future Generations

(continued from Part 2)

If we pass off the stage, this is what we will lose.

One, we will lose changing the Lord’s testimony back to where it’s supposed to be…without the gimmicks. The Lord’s testimony will suffer, and we will not be able to put her back on track because we disappeared. That’s the first one, and that’s heavy. As little as we are, we cover many things. And the first one – we’re going to lose a proper expression of the Lord’s testimony.

You won’t understand this till the rest of the evening and till tomorrow, but we’re going to lose—and everybody else is going to lose—a chance at reading the history of God’s people outside the institutional church. Because if we don’t do it, it won’t get done. And let me put it this way. You may say, ‘Yes, but no,’ but the next one is not easy to describe or to explain, and we’re going to lose a non-ministry-centered testimony.

So let me explain what that means. If we were to sit down and interview any evangelical who is on fire for the Lord today and talk to him, and you started talking to him about what he’s doing, he would be talking to you about “me,” “my,” and “us.” There is, in the mind of the minister, that he is always central. He is at the center of the stage. He is the one doing the things. There is no such thing as a man who is out there seeking to work himself out of a job completely. Doesn’t exist.

And if we lose, if we disappear, we’re going to lose a ministry that is not all-pervasive. We’ll lose that testimony and that experience. Please feel free to interrupt me if you’re not clear. Let me give you the ministry’s mind. We are totally self-centered. You are our pawns. We’re going to preach to you, we’re going to get your money, we’re going to go fly to—we’re going to hold “a”—and you’re going to help us do it. Now, please resent that.

If we disappear, we lose a… wash my mouth out with soap… a lay-led church. That’s the same one I just got through saying. We will absolutely lose open meetings. I will now tell you about the first deliberate open meeting that ever existed on this continent. It happened on Fortuna Lane in Isla Vista, and no minister was present. Now they’d been doing all sorts of fellowship, and that’s what made my work so easy in sharing all that, but it was, you know, share or whatever. This was a meeting centered on the Lord Jesus Christ. And yes, I gave assignments because I learned long ago you’ve got to put a match to this thing. You’ve got to give it some direction. You can’t—even here in Jacksonville, I had to show people how to function. You did not talk, you did not share, but it came like that.

It was at Fortuna Lane, and I told the sisters, my sisters in Christ, ‘I want you to do this, this, and this.’ Brothers, I want you to do this and this. And I even then said, ‘The brothers have to speak last.’ That was that long ago. I said, ‘You have to come with a song and a song and a song, and do not announce a number. Start the song.’ And that was that long ago.

By the way, we don’t start songs by numbers; we start songs, and somebody yells out the number. But if you didn’t catch that, it’s because some of us are announcing numbers. But that’s not what we do, and that’s not what they did that night. And they had a long meeting. You know how long that meeting lasted? I don’t know, but I can tell you this: I got a phone call the next day from the owner. He said, ‘Uh, I’m thinking about having these women move because they stayed up last night and made so much noise they bothered the neighbors.’

I was sitting outside under an open window. I knew what was happening inside that room, and I knew it’d happen, and it was really wonderful. And I don’t even know if any of the…Alicia, I don’t even know if you remember. Did you live at Fortuna Lane at any time?” Oh yes. Alright. Do you remember moving in there? Yes. Do you remember you got in trouble with the landlord? Well, I did. I Scotch-taped it. She called me, and I said, ‘Lady, these are the nicest women in the world. This was just a one-time accident. It was an open house. They were this, that, and the other.’ Anyway, that was the very first one ever.

When I came back from the Far East, my wife picked me up at the airport, and I knew I was forever persona non grata. I was burning with a burden, and Helen drove me out to Arizona because I had a terrible infection – a sinus infection, and I was trying to get into a dry place. And I was breathing steam, but I could not sleep. And that night, all night long, I wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote. I put it in a little blue folder, closed it, and I wrote the words, ‘An Open Meeting,’ and I have never opened that book since then.