Well, this reminds me of the Scripture: they brought so much treasure that they had to tell them to stop.
Welcome, everyone, to the Christian Family Conference. My name is Frank Lipsey. I know many of you are new here. As I look around, I see a lot of new people, and I know, looking at the registration forms, there were a lot of new people.
So, you people do not know me from anyone else. But those of you who have been coming here awhile are asking, “What is he doing here? I did not even know he was in Richmond.”
People ask me often, “Are you in the Richmond fellowship?” My answer is, “Whenever I am in Richmond, I am.” And I hope we all are, as we are here tonight.
Again, if you are wondering why I am here instead of some of the others you have seen over the years, it is because they asked me what I was willing to do, and I said, “Anything you want.” They said, “Well, okay, do this.”
I want to share a little bit about the conference tonight, and we will try not to be too long. I am going to read one Scripture. If you will, look with me in the book of Matthew, Chapter 13, Verse 52.
In seeking the Lord as to what to say for this time of opening the conference, this may sound a little strange to you, but I will try to explain.
And He said unto them, Therefore every scribe who hath been made a disciple to the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a householder, who bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old.
Now, this was given by the Lord Jesus after He finished speaking the parables known by many as the mysteries of the kingdom. He says that he who knows the mysteries of the kingdom—any scribe who is instructed, or discipled, in the mysteries of the kingdom—is like a householder who brings out of his treasure house things new and old.
As we come to this conference, we realize that we have those who have been many times and have received much revelation during this time from the Lord. Just as Israel, at the time of the Lord Jesus, had received much from the Lord, the Lord Jesus came and gave these teachings, these parables of the kingdom, and He brought in, as it were, a new dimension—a greater fullness and explanation of all that had gone on before.
Every revelation of the Lord is like that. It is new, and yet it is founded firmly upon what has already been given. You might think sometimes that if you just knew all the words of the Bible and could quote it, there would be nothing more to learn. But, of course, that is not true, because the revelation that is there continues. We continue to learn; we continue to have things revealed.
Yet it is not a revelation that is new and different. It is a revelation that advances beyond what we have been given. As we come to this time, we ought to remember that principle: the revelation that we will receive and that which we have already received.
Now, I am going to give a little testimony about this conference, especially for those of you who may be here for the first time. But for those of you who have been here twenty-seven times, it will not hurt to do just a little review of how we got to where we are.
This is the twenty-seventh Christian Family Conference. I can always remember it this way: the first one was in 1975. If you subtract 1974 from 1975, you get one. If you subtract 1974 from 2001, you get twenty-seven. That is the easy way to do it. This is number twenty-seven.
It is also quite easy for me to remember exactly what year it was, because the first year we went to a conference, we had a baby less than one year old. So I just keep up with my children, like you know when Christmas was. I am sure many of you have life experiences very much related to the conference.
There are a lot of people here who have been to twenty-seven Christian Family Conferences. In fact, there are numbers of people here who have been to lots of conferences before that, and they have been to twenty-seven Christian Family Conferences in Richmond. I know a lot of you were not born in 1975, but you join in on this path that we are on, and it is every bit your path as much as the rest of ours.
Our first child was less than one year old when we first attended, and tonight she is here with her own husband and two children of her own. We grow together in this time.
Actually, there were two conferences in Richmond, put together by the Lord through the Richmond assembly, before 1975. I should mention those. They were not called family conferences because they were not open to the entire family; they were basically adult conferences.
But from 1975 on, this has been a family conference. People always ask, “Does that mean you study about the family?” No, it means it is open to the entire family. We have something for all; the Lord has something for all at this time.
I want to mention those other two conferences because of my own personal experience. Everyone has their own story. I will try to give you a quick outline of mine—how I got here.
The first one was in 1973. I do not know the exact date of it, but I know it was just about the exact time that my wife and I were married. So this conference and our marriage are the same age.
I did not know anything about that conference in 1973. I did not know those people. At the time, we were living and meeting together with a few of the Lord’s people in what I would describe as a charismatic house-church meeting. The people we were with also had one other characteristic interest: they were very much readers of Watchman Nee.
In 1974, we heard about this assembly in Richmond and visited it. It was now that there were people around, living along the earth, that we could come in contact with who actually knew Watchman Nee. So naturally, we were drawn to that.
When we heard of the 1974 conference, we were reluctant to go to it for a couple of reasons. We were very strict about what is in the Bible and trying to follow the New Testament pattern right down the line. We did not veer off. We looked in the Bible and did not see anything about conferences in there, so what was this conference thing?
And the people said they believed in the Holy Spirit, but we thought, “Well, I am not quite so sure about it.” We did sense the presence of the Lord. There was a tugging to continue on. But, in any case, we did not go to that conference in 1974.
Soon thereafter, somebody loaned us a set of tapes from there, and we listened to them. The speaker that year was a person we had never heard of. His name was Lance Lambert.
He spoke on God Wants a House. What he spoke in those messages ministered so much to us because he did not tell us something different from what the Lord was showing us and leading us into. In fact, he amplified and explained some of the things we were being led into. It answered so much.
We said, “If they ever have another conference, I think we will go to it.” Well, we have ever since.
That was 1975, when we first went to this conference. I struggled somewhat with this: Is it scriptural? The Bible does not prescribe this particular form of doing things.
We found it to be a living expression of the Lord—not something to institutionalize, not something to say, “Write a new book: if you are going to have the right thing, you have got to have conferences.” But if the Lord is meeting you in something, then surely it is something to continue on with.
Year after year, we have found that the Lord has spoken. This has not been undiluted joy and happiness with no problems. I mean, I have found a conference, in particular, to be very much of a struggle. And if you want to find people you do not agree with, there are plenty of them. They register, all right.
Lots of things are problems, but in continuing on through this, every year the Lord has blessed more and revealed Himself more. There is something new upon something old, and there is continued growth through this time.
This revelation through the ministry of the Word is perhaps the thing that we see and come for in this conference more than any other single thing: for the Lord to speak.
Often, others who do not understand this say, “Why do you go to a conference? You get people coming in from all over the country, people from other places in the world. This is kind of an obsession, is it not? Why does everybody have to go to this one place to hear somebody speak? Could you not put it on tape and send it around? Would that not be a lot more efficient?”
It is not just that we get some information by coming to a conference. Let me put it in a worldly expression you probably can understand. Suppose I say, “I am going to go see my favorite ball team, whatever it is. We are going to watch this game.” You might say, “Well, could you not just tape it and send it home to you? Would that not be just as good? Why does everybody have to pack into that one place?”
Well, of course, that is silly. You want to be there. You want to be with it. But to go to a conference to hear teaching and preaching—that is not the same thing as a ball game. Come on.
No, it is not.
Do you think, if you go to a ball game, that you have any influence over things? People shout like they think they do. Sometimes they talk about, in basketball, the sixth man. I think there is something in principle very much true there.
When you come to a conference, when you come to ministry, you do not come as inactive participants, sitting there waiting to receive information from someone if you care to take it. We are called to actually draw out from the ministers that which they are going to speak. Your being there and your presence—my being there—have an effect upon the ministry of the Word. We are part of it.
It is not just that there are some people who are gifted and we come to hear them. We come to be part of it.
That is the ministry of the Word, but there is another aspect: fellowship with one another. This conference has been such an enlarging thing. It has led not only to knowing many people from many places—people who are meeting here and there, not knowing one another.
Someone has asked me, “What kind of organization do all these different assemblies, these fellowships, have with one another?” I say, “What kind of organization do we have between individuals? Do we speak to each other because we are in the same church, so we speak to each other?”
No, we have a living relationship with one another. We find out that different assemblies are the same way.
I do not say, “Well, now I can talk to this brother because now we have gotten under the same umbrella, so we can talk.” Oh, if we are in the Lord, we have fellowship based on that. The assemblies have fellowship like that too.
Through coming together in times like this, there is a great enrichment and enlargement that the Lord desires, I believe. I can look over these years and see what growth, what fruit, has come out of this.
Many of us have come to the point of not really saying, “Lord, do You want to have a conference again next year?” It is more like this: “Lord, if You have finished with this conference, tell us so. We do not want to continue with something You are not doing. But until You tell us to stop, we will just keep on doing what You told us to do.”
That is basically where some of us have come to.
I will just put a little twofold fact about the conference. One is that our conference is not everything. The whole purpose of life is not to have a conference.
One of the things that bothered me when I came the first time, or even before that, was that people would talk to me: “Come to the conference, come to the conference, come to the conference.” Conference, conference, conference—that was all they talked about. They were not interested in anything about me and growing us into a real fellowship. They just wanted me to come to the conference. After you come to the conference, they may not speak to you.
The conference itself is not everything, and it is not about seeing how many people we can pack into a conference. That is nothing. We understand its limits.
But on the other side, do not despise it and think it is nothing. You may say, “Well, we can meet together in our living room. It is the same thing.” In one way it is, but if the Lord is doing something and He calls us to be there, we cannot just say, “Oh, it is some kind of formality or technicality. It does not matter.”
If we have a heart and a burden for this, if we are called to it, then it is something the Lord has given us to hold up. If you are one of those and you are here because of that, then I am thankful to have you with me. I am thankful to be with you.
If you are someone here who is just checking it out, that is okay. If the Lord calls you into this, all right. If He does not, I am not trying to twist anybody’s arm to build up anything.
But what is old about this conference, and what is new this year? I want to get down to this year. I am not going to talk about all the various things some of you will be doing during the week. When you fellowship together, either with groups or just at the tables or wherever, you can talk to each other about your experiences in the conference and what it has meant to you.
Remember, it is not the conference itself. It is the Lord in this activity of bringing us together. It is just one of many things He does.
Well, let us see. What is old this year? A lot of us people are.
In the ministry of the Word, we have what I will categorize as old and new. We have Stephen Kaung and Lance Lambert, and I am going to put Dana Cardin in there too. They are old.
What is new? We have John Ingalls. We have Ed Miller. They are new.
These brothers are not new, believe me. They have been around. They are new in that they have not spoken at this particular conference, and we really welcome them. We look forward to hearing from these brothers this week. We look forward to hearing what the Lord will speak to us through these brethren.
Besides the speakers, what else is new this year? Well, I want to say that the fact that I am standing up here rather than one of the old brothers is new. I did not name them off as being old, but they are old. What is old is Kenny Kitman, Jerry Amon, and John Blanchett. What is new is Frank Lipsey.
What is new, I think, is the place given and taken by our brethren outside of Richmond. Through these twenty-six family conferences before this year, there are other assemblies outside of Richmond who have always stood with Richmond in carrying out this conference.
But I often liken it to having guests come over who eat dinner, and after you feed them and give them everything, they ask if they could help with the dishes. They did not come over early and prepare the meals and do all those things. There is a whole lot that goes on besides coming to the meal, eating, and doing the dishes afterward.
I know it is not easy for you to come from far away to a conference. I have traveled to faraway conferences, and I have acted as a host in conferences. I will tell you: it is easier to fly around the world to a conference than it is to have people fly to you from around the world.
It is more work in staying at the right thing and having people come to you. The brethren in Richmond have basically borne the heat of the day, the brunt, over these years. Others have pitched in and helped; do not make light of it.
I lived in Richmond full-time for seven years. I was part of the assembly, in a full-time way, for seven years. But I have been away from Richmond for sixteen years. The brethren in Richmond have carried the weight of it most of the time.
This year there is more participation, I believe, from brethren outside of Richmond than there has been at any time in the past. This is partly because a number of brothers and sisters who have borne responsibilities and faithfully carried them for a long time are not able to do it this year. They are not available.
It has made openings where others were really needed—more needed than they had been before. Before, we might have said, “Well, if you do not have this, or this, or this, get some money; Richmond will do it.” But we have gotten to the point where there is just not enough. You have got to call somewhere else.
For those of us who are outside of Richmond, this is actually our blessing. I have to say, I liken it in principle to the Scripture Paul uses about the Jews and the Gentiles: as by their falling away, we were brought in.
The Lord will use even things that are not nice, things that you would not want, to turn them around and make them into a blessing. But He also says, concerning the Jews, if their falling away was the salvation of the Gentiles, then what will be their coming back?
Not just in a conference, but in anything that the Lord has given us charge to do—a place to keep—when the Lord gives us something as a burden, it is His intention that we keep it.
If the Lord has given us something and we do not faithfully keep it, do you think that the purpose of God will stop because we do not keep it? The answer is no, it will not. The Lord will get someone else to take our place. It should make us fear.
But the good side is, if we faithfully keep what He has given us, He will not take it away. It is a privilege, a privilege of honor, to serve the Lord. If this conference is nothing more than a picture of that, we should see it in whatever we are called into.
When difficulties arise, do we leave our post? If we remain and stay faithfully where the Lord puts us, He will make a way for us to do it.
For all those brethren in Richmond who, again this year, are faithfully here, the Lord will renew your soul. The Lord will not take away from you what He has given. I believe that.
I believe that the challenges that have been brought to this conference, the Lord will answer. I am looking to the Lord that this year, in this conference, it will not be a fizzle conference, a failure, but we will have the presence of the Lord. The Lord will meet with us. The Lord will speak. We will respond to the Lord.
This is for all of us, from the youngest to the oldest. The challenge is to go after the Lord. Let us stand and see the salvation of our God.
I was thinking about this: if we do not stand in the place the Lord has given us, He will replace us. The thought came to me: what do you call someone who does not have to be replaced? The Lord’s intention is that we would not have to be replaced.
It is called overcoming.
Overcoming is not doing some tremendous, spectacular thing. Overcoming is not moving out of the place where we were put. If we stay faithfully where the Lord has put us, if we do faithfully what He has called us to, we overcome.
The Lord is calling us to continue to overcome. Let us say, as we had a spirit of worship for the Lord before this time, that we will go on into this week with this and look to the Lord to meet with us and to answer all the challenges against His name.
Shall we pray?
Father in heaven, we do believe that it is You who have called us here. You have a purpose for each one individually, and You have a purpose and plan for us all together.
We look unto You that Your presence may be known, and that new revelation of You may be given and received, that will further lift up Your people and cause them to be able to go on in this day.
In so doing, may there be glory and honor to Your name. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.