Winona Conference Part 1 – Intro to the Spiritual Community

Okay, everybody listen. This afternoon, the brothers and sisters from Chicago have put together a treat for you. They’re going to put on a play, Me, My, Mine, tomorrow afternoon. At what time? Three o’clock. Three o’clock. And be there. But whatever else happens to you the rest of your life, you be here Saturday afternoon to watch them perform an incredible feat. They are going to put on this book back here, Turkeys and Eagles, which was just recently written by four people with Peter Lord’s name on it—Turkeys and Eagles—and you don’t want to miss this. It is a classic, trust me, everybody. And nobody here has seen it. Nobody but the actors have seen it. Nobody. And this will be the first production. From here, it goes to Broadway. Alright, I’ve never been—I don’t think I’ve ever been—in a conference, but I put on the suit for the first meeting, and I don’t know why I do that. I think it’s just so you’ll know I have couth. So now you’ve seen my couth, and I’m going to be uncouth right here.

I always read a verse of Scripture out of the Bible, just like everybody else does, but I’m just not going to do it right now. I’m just feeling real free, and I’m not going to do that. Now, here’s what I want to say to you. We’re going to have two conferences this weekend. In the first three meetings, I’m going to speak on one subject, and then I’m going to turn. I’m going to speak on one subject tonight, tomorrow morning, tomorrow night, and then beginning Saturday morning, I’m going to speak on another one. So, we’re going to pack a lot in this weekend; you will definitely get your money’s worth. I’m going to talk on the church for the first three meetings, then I’m going to talk about Christ for the rest of the meetings. So, we’re going to talk about Christ and the church—only I’m going to make it the church and then Christ. I have a very specific burden in both cases, and this is what they are. I really wish to talk to these saints right here from Chicago about the church, because you have touched something, and I want you to understand what you’ve touched, who you are, and where you are going. Then, when we talk about Christ, I want to talk to all of you about knowing Him better. And it will be very introductory, but it will be introductory with a purpose. We’re going somewhere with it. Alright, I am here with a deliberate purpose, and this matter of speaking of Christ…I don’t like conferences that just inspire people, and they go home and there’s nothing there. I try to never speak anything that cannot be made an experience in your life. Unfortunately, that cannot just be done in a weekend, but it can be done. So, when we talk about Christ, we will be talking experientially.  I’ll lift it.

Now I’ll talk to you about the church—no, I don’t—I’m going to try to speak to you without using that word. It’ll slip out every once in a while, because every time we use that word, we see something. Every time we use the word “church,” you know, you get a certain picture in your mind, and there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s a steeple. It’s a minister. It’s a choir. It’s everything it ought not to be. I want to talk to you about the fellowship of the believer, the community of the saints, the fellowship of the redeemed, the koinonia of the brethren. I want to talk to you about a spiritual community. A spiritual community. That’s what I really want to talk to you about. And I want you to just lay aside all other concepts for a moment.

And by the way, I don’t know where all of you folks are from, and I don’t know why you’re here. And let me just say a word of caution here: you must all understand that I am a radical and that I am half crazy. And never, never make the mistake of assuming that I am normal. I am not normal. And I am a radical. And if you are a traditional Christian—with no offense in mind—nonetheless, I will speak radically. I will speak way over on the left side, and then I’ll move way, way over on the right side, but I will never be in the traditional position. Now, that doesn’t mean that I am abnormal or unusual; I’m just radical. And I’m sure you’ve met many, many radical people in your day. So, you’ll feel right at home.

I would say since about the year 380—in fact, I would even say about the year 368—when a gentleman by the name of Priscillian was executed, beheaded in Belgium. The first Christian ever killed by other Christians because of doctrinal differences; they cut his head off. And I think history would side with Priscilla and not with the organized church of that day. Since that time, there has been something that has existed on this earth – very small, but always present – and no one has ever been able to exactly describe it. It doesn’t always follow the same form or expression, but it’s always been there. And I’m going to call that tonight the spiritual community. The spiritual community of the believers. The spiritual community of the redeemed. I can’t tell you exactly what I mean by that, but they’ve always been given names that reflected that flavor of a spiritual community. Or they have taken that name, usually given it.

I can tell you that most believers…first of all, we are all the same in the Lord’s sight. There are no special Christians. There are no special Christians. We’re just redeemed. But these people, almost without exception, have sensed some sort of a call. They have been restless, and they have been heart-hungry to know the Lord Jesus Christ. And I think it always starts there. First, they get hungry to know the Lord. Then that hunger to know Christ drives them to—and I’ll use this word—to community. And if you will pick up your church history book and read it, you’ll discover somebody who has a passion for Christ, and you will always find him being driven toward this community. He has a restlessness in his life, looking for, like Abraham, a city. And this has been true in just about every generation that has ever existed. Maybe some, no, but in every century, for certain.

Now, they’re not connected to one another. They have no singular, definable purpose. Perhaps the greatest single common denominator among them is that heart-hunger for Christ that then drives them to a heart-hunger for the spiritual community of the believer. A coming together with one another. And when that coming together happens—generally speaking, very generally speaking, there is something that happens to them that transcends what usually happens when people gather on Sunday morning. It transcends a worship service. And it becomes a way of life. It becomes a society within itself, and I don’t mean just society; I mean a civilization, a town, a community. I’m using the word town out of place here. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not talking about a Winona Lake that was founded to be a Christian town, I believe by Billy Sunday, if I’m not incorrect here. Does anybody want to tell me if that’s true or not? That is more or less true.

No, I am speaking of a spiritual matter here. Something happens. And here are some characteristics that I want you to keep in mind, would you? One: it’s simple. It’s simple, usually outside of any predictable ritual, outside of a dominating hierarchy. Sometimes it’s had what you might call a clergy, but the walls tend to break down between laity and hierarchy. Simplicity. It is not movement-orientated. I want you to understand this because in our day and age, we’re getting cheated in this community business. Because since 1820, we can go from 368 to 1820—from about 1820, we picked up an awful lot of bad habits among Christians who have stepped outside of the traditional way of meeting. And one of the things that has impelled so many Christians in the last 150 years has been a movement mentality that is not necessary. And you’ll hear it all the time. “Oh, but it will become a movement.” It doesn’t have to. The church witnesses—it did not always become a movement. No. It is not a movement. It is something that happens within the hearts of a bunch of people. And I believe the day will come when it will lay off this business of “movement.”

I had a friend, a dear friend. He is a leader in the largest Protestant denomination in America, and he was speaking to me from within that denomination. He said, “Gene, many of us within our own denomination have the feeling that the day of—listen to this—the day of denominationalism has peaked and passed. And we are also seeing, and he was very positive about this, the decline of Sunday school, and we believe we will see it rescind.” Now, that’s pretty radical stuff there, folks—coming from a Southern Baptist. And those are holy things among Southern Baptists: the denomination and its structure, and Sunday school. I remember Harry Truman said, “There are two things I found out since I’ve been president. One of them is, never criticize Marines and never criticize J. Edgar Hoover.” And I would say as a Christian, there’s one thing that you never do, and that’s never say anything unkind about Sunday school. It’s sacrosanct.

And yet here they were, saying that. I think in another hundred years—and forgive me, those of you who think the Lord’s going to come back tomorrow, that’s fine—but we will see a great declension of much that seems so embedded today. That spiritual community cannot be forced off the pages of church history. She won’t go. She’s just always there, regardless of men, movements, or political situations. She reasserts herself because she is part of the divine expression within the nature, which the Lord Himself puts in us, on the day we are saved. Hey, don’t sit there and look at me like that. Now, you had your mouths open a few minutes ago. Say something to me. Say amen. Thank you, New Zealand. Can you folks say amen? Oh, you can go. Okay, great. Then talk to me. Thank you, brother.

Let me tell you something else. She’s rare. She’s rare. This community of the believers is rare. I get letters all the time from folks who say, Gene, there are three of us meeting in Kalamazoo, in Kokamonga, in Hickory Creek, in Podunk. And down in Texas, we have towns like Jot Em Down, Mule Shoe, and Possum Trot. Those are all towns in Texas. “At some little place, won’t you come, please, and help us have—” and I look at that letter, and I think, centuries have gone by in which nations have never seen even one witness to that spiritual community. Whole nations, with a century or more going by without so much as one place where that community was expressed. Perhaps in another nation, many places—or some—but she’s always been rare. And she will stay and remain rare.