Should we just have a word of prayer before we seek to answer these questions? Bow together.
Heavenly Father, we are so thankful for the testimony that we have heard this afternoon to Thy glorious faithfulness and power. And we want, Lord, as we come into this further time together of answering questions, that Thou wouldst, Lord, make it a very precious time.
We pray that questions we really have that are practical may be touched by the answer to these questions we already have. There are many others that may not have been asked, but Lord, we pray that Thou wouldst in some way use this time to instruct us all more clearly and to bring us into a greater liberty and freedom in Thyself.
Now, Lord, we just want to commit ourselves to Thee, that Thou wouldst come upon this time and grant that it may be a fulfillment of Thy design for it. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Shall we have a number of questions asked on this matter of leadership in the church? Here is the first, and you will understand that quite a few of these questions overlap one another. So I hope that once we answer one or two of them, we may be able to answer some of the others as well.
We have a relatively new and young gathering of believers. It may help quite a few, since a lot of them—thirty to forty of us—and only two couples are over forty years old. Everyone else is about thirty or younger.
At the present, we have had only three brothers minister to us from outside in the eighteen months or so we have been together. Two of the younger brothers come from a gathering in a nearby city that teaches that you cannot have a church without elders, and that they are appointed or ordained by the laying on of hands by an apostle.
These brothers are very anxious to have elders appointed by a brother who ministered to us, whom they regard as an apostle. And I believe that they would like us to regard him as our apostle. Several of us are very uncomfortable with this.
Presently, we have a meeting of brethren who have taken responsibility for the gathering. This has been articulated to the brethren, and they seem to be okay with this arrangement so far.
With this information, and assuming that my background is similar to the teachings at the conference, would you please comment on this situation? That would help me and many of us who are here, and answer any or all of the following questions.
The questions are good because they are coming from a lot of others:
Now, I think we had better take one of these questions at a time.
How important is the form of eldership compared to the function? You see, the great question is whether, in the recovery of the church, we expect or look for a complete and absolute recovery of the church to the nth degree—that is, that it should return to exactly the conditions that we had in the first century, in the period of the New Testament.
I personally do not believe that there will be a recovery of the church in that way. Now, there are those who do believe that, and if they are right, I should be very happy.
But if I take the course of history—and Mark Twain once said, “We learn from history that we never learn from history”—if I take the course of history in the world, that is, revealed history, history according to God’s Word, then I find that whereas in every age things began with everybody involved at the beginning, they end always with only a remnant who are, as it were, completing or fulfilling the mind of God for that time.
Now, there are those who believe that there will be a total apostasy in the church. They say there will come a falling away in the church, in the house of God—an apostasy—and that the love of the many will wax cold, and that when the Lord comes to the earth, He will not find faith on it. In other words, there will be a complete breakup and breakdown of everything of God.
Now, I personally do not agree with this because, just where we would least expect to find it, right in the book of Revelation, when there have been all these visions of Babylon, and the dragon, the beast, the serpent, and all this, we find:
Hallelujah: for the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigneth:
let us rejoice and be exceeding glad:
for the marriage supper of the Lamb is come,
and His wife hath made herself ready.
I often think that is a marvelous expression: “The bride hath made herself ready,” because it is not good Reformed doctrine. If we had followed a Reformed doctrine, we would have to say, “And the bride has been made ready.” But it says, “And the bride hath made herself ready.”
I think that the Holy Spirit has deliberately put that there for our encouragement: that right at the time of the end, there is a marvelous energy of the Spirit of God released into the believers, so that the bride is completed and the purpose of God is fulfilled.
So there is another side to the coin. The question is: What are we looking for? It seems to me that we must look for a moving of the Spirit of God upon believers who really see what the Lord’s heart desire is and commit themselves one hundred percent to the Lord and to that purpose of His for our day and generation.
This is not an elitism. When we come together, we—as we say, though it has been misused in some parts—are on church ground. I hardly like to use it, but you understand what I mean. When we come together really on the basis of Christ, we are returning to the original foundation upon which God built the church.
Now, we are looking for those who come. That does not mean we are marvelous people. There may be far better people in the Southern Baptists, in the Methodists, in the Presbyterians, in some charismatic group, or somewhere else. But it so happens that God has shown us something. We want to be faithful and obedient, and we will come together on that ground. We may be the poorest of the lot, but at least we will come together on that ground.
Now, we have a problem. The problem is whether you have this cast-iron, legalistic concept of the church, or whether it is organic. If you have this cast-iron universalist idea—which I believe is at the root of the problem with the Exclusive Brethren and the problem with the local church movement, which I think now, I am afraid to say, is cultic—you have a cast-iron system very much like the papacy.
You have built up a system in which you are the church in so-and-so. Therefore, if you are the church in so-and-so, you can have the elders.
On the other hand, surely the Lord, who understands that at the end of the age it will not be every believer involved as at the beginning, surely there must be those who represent elders. Do you understand what I mean? In other words, surely the Holy Spirit—it is not beyond Him to adapt Himself to the situation in which we are found.
I personally would be a little afraid of making a big thing about elders and deacons, although I personally am not afraid of calling people elder brothers and calling people deacons. I mean, if a person is actually fulfilling the function, he is fulfilling the function of a deacon or an elder. So what does it matter?
Why do people get into such a mess over this, as if the title is all-important? As our sister was saying, quite honestly, it would not have mattered whether the Red Guards called the man a doctor or a peasant. It would not matter, providing he was an actual doctor.
Personally, I would only want someone dealing with me—I do not care whether he calls himself Doctor So-and-so—as long as I know he has gone through medical school, qualified, and had some experience.
Now, do you see what I mean? The matter of eldership: if a man is an elder, you can call him an elder; you do not call him an elder, but he is an elder. Do you understand what I am trying to get at? If you all get tied up on the question of titles and status and position, we do great injustice to this whole matter.
The real thing is that you have got to have the function. So the question is: How important is the form of elder compared to the function? I would say the all-important matter is the function. It always has been. It is not as if, in the New Testament, the important thing was the form. The important thing was the function.
Whatever we call those who have responsibility and leadership in the flock that we are in, the fact remains that the Holy Spirit will adapt Himself to the conditions in which we are found today, in the last part of the twentieth century.
I hope that has answered that question.
What is the best way for a gathering like ours to go under the condition I described? Well, again, I think this answers one or two of our questions here.
I believe that it is a very good idea what he—or she; I do not know whether it is he or she—has said here about having a meeting of brethren who have taken responsibility for the gathering.
I do not quite understand this concept that you cannot have a church without elders. Who said it? I really do not understand it.
I know some people have got this cast-iron concept of the church, which becomes a papal system. You have got to have a kind of whole top-heavy thing. You cannot have a church unless you have elders, and you have deacons, and so on.
It seems to me that a church is where there are two or three believers, saved by the grace of God, and who have been positioned in the Lord Jesus by God. That is a church. To begin with, you may not have any elders or deacons. In the New Testament, they did not in the very beginning, did they?
Jerusalem had apostles at the very start. Before long, we find that they have elders, and James is the presiding elder of such.
You go to another place, and three people or two people get saved. What does the apostle do when he goes? He says, “Now, you are not a church”? Well, what are they then? Who are they? So they are nothing? No, you must wait until you are thirty or forty strong, then you will be a church?
Someone says, “You must have a certain quorum before you can be a church.” Others would say, “No, before you can be a church, you must have elders.” Someone else will say, “No, no, no, you must have elders and deacons.” And someone else will say, “No, no, no, the thing that matters is that you must have the Lord’s Table.”
Well, all these things develop.
In time, of course, one would expect that if there was a church in Antioch, or a church in Ephesus, or a church in Sardis, or somewhere else, when it had been moving on with God, these things would emerge. Whether they break bread every day, whether they have the Lord’s Table once a month, whether they have the Lord’s Table once a week, whether they have the Lord’s Table on Saturday evening, Sunday evening, or Thursday evening, does not really matter.
The church is the body of Christ. If it so happens that in one village or one town there are only three believers to begin with, it may only be the church in embryonic form, but it is still the church of God there in the New Testament sense.
When we all get tied up on this matter of elders and deacons, it is amazing. I do not know any matter that ties up a new, young company of believers more than this matter of elders, deacons, apostles, and all the rest of it. It is quite amazing how people get tied up on this. The real business is to grow in the Lord.
Now, in the meantime, it does seem to me you have got to have some brethren who take responsibility. It might be good at the beginning to open it more rather than less, in the sense that if you had just one or two, automatically it may be very difficult for them to give way if other leadership were to develop amongst them.
This is a big problem. Ambition is a problem, is it not? Especially in the man more than the woman. I mean, the ladies, in spite of all this teaching about total equality and everything else, I do not think we do have quite the same ambitious instinct that men have.
That is a real problem when you get a collection of men together who are normal and virile. They are ambitious, and they all want to be something.
When you raise the matter of eldership, it is like waving a red rag in front of bulls. They all sort of see red and start, you know. It is best, I personally think, to put the point that if men are going to lead the church, it is not a pyramid this way, with the apostles and the elders at the top sitting on the whole church in all their glory, demanding obedience.
We have to invert the pyramid, so that the whole weight of the church comes onto these men. If we can get that concept over to believers, suddenly we see it in terms of service and sacrifice.
Then the question of apostolic ministry, or the question of eldership, the question of leadership, becomes really, in many ways, a sacrificial laying down of the life, a bearing of the burden of the whole.
Now, a third question: Speak about the qualifications of elders, especially in view of the youthfulness of our gathering.
Now, listen. Do you honestly think the Holy Spirit has been taken by surprise? So He suddenly says, “Oh, my goodness. They are all young. I did not realize that when I led them to the Lord Jesus—that they were all young. Then, when I led them together, I was not thinking. Now we have got a whole collection of young people, all under thirty years of age, and only two couples that are over forty years of age. Oh, dear, dear, dear. I have made a mess of this.”
You laugh because once it is put to you, it is so silly. It is not as if the Holy Spirit says, “Oh dear, now what are we going to do about this?” The Holy Spirit knows exactly the constituency of any given company of God’s people.
It so happens that you are all young people. Well, the leadership is going to be young. May I say, if we take only the older ones amongst us, we may make a big mistake. Just because a person is old and has white hair does not mean that they have got wisdom. Some of them are as dumb as they come.
Now, I do not want to say that unkindly, because it is very wrong to despise white hair. But the fact remains that in spiritual things we have learned to our great sorrow that, whereas it ought to be that if a person is old, they have wisdom and know the Lord, it does not follow.
I must tell you that in the work in Richmond, we got all our trouble from the over-fifties. Mercifully, we had only a few of them, but my word, they were the cross to all of us. They disrupted our meetings. They contradicted what we had found together before God. They always knew best. They were always telling us where we were going wrong, and they were frankly wrong.
If we had followed their advice, we would have been in a terrible mess. In fact, at the very beginning of the work in Richmond, we made the terrible mistake of making one of these men—who was a very successful businessman, as well as older than all of us by a generation—an elder.
Oh, boy. De-elderizing him was one of the biggest jobs we ever had.
That was in the very early days of the work in Richmond. We learned our big mistake there in this matter. You do not even appoint people through prayer and fasting. That is what we did, and then we selected three people, because we felt prayer and fasting had sanctified any decision we might make.
It is nonsense, of course, because the emergence of leadership is organic. The selection of leadership is related to the organic development of that company and of those ones.
So I have to say straight away: What are the qualifications for an elder? I do not think they have changed. You will find them in 1 Timothy or in Titus.
Basically, it is people with spiritual character, spiritual vision, and who have laid down their lives for the church of God and have proved it.
Now someone will say to me, “But does it not say there that you have got to be married?” I do not think so. If I understand correctly what it says, it says he must be the husband of one wife.
In fact, it was still common, as it has been until this century, for Oriental Jews to have more than one wife. But they were not allowed to take responsibility if they had more than one. That was following the Old Testament pattern.
It does not mean that a person who is single cannot be an elder, although the general pattern would be that it would be married men, who have families and have experience of life and, above all, have experience of the Lord.
The question of elders does not just mean physical years; it means spiritual years, if you get what I mean. In other words, spiritual experience.
Does that mean that because a person has been converted twenty years, and here is a brother who has been converted seven years, we should choose the brother who is twenty years old in the Lord? No, not at all. I know people who have been converted thirty-five years and they are spiritual babes. They know no more than when they began. They have been carried all their days.
I know some who are only four or five years old in the Lord and who have outstripped them, growing up in wisdom and stature and in a knowledge of the Lord. However, we have to be careful. The Bible says that we should never pick someone who is a novice—that is, someone who is just newly saved and very young in the Lord.
There are one or two other questions here that come within this matter. Here is one: “Do you believe that there is any age constraint on leadership? By age, I mean both physical and spiritual years. I ask this in light of all the apostles having sat for over three years before serving, all of those who waited on the Hebrew widows sat for eight or ten years, and Paul himself sat for ten years, four of which were under Barnabas.”
Now, this raises another question about the matter of leadership, and it is a very good one. I think that this is a point well made.
The apostles had been three and a half years under the leadership of the Lord Jesus. I am afraid, at the end of the three years, quite honestly, most of it was skin deep. It was the coming of the Holy Spirit upon them and into them that turned it all inside and brought them to an inward knowledge. Still, those three and a half years were invaluable.
When they chose the twelfth apostle in place of Judas Iscariot, the one point they made was that he must have been with them all and with the Lord for the three and a half years.
I think that it is quite important, this matter of training. I think the point about Paul being with Barnabas is well taken. This does come more into Brother Stephen’s responsibility, which is to do with work. However, the two do overlap.
I do not think that any person can be an elder or be a leader who has not himself been led. If it is quite clear that he has not been led, however brilliant and clever the brother is, I think it is dangerous to give responsibility to such a one.
We have to prove that we can take orders and do them, that we can submit to discipline, that we ourselves can be under authority, if authority is going to be exercised by us. I think that is quite an important point.
So in this matter of qualifications, I would certainly include the matter of some time in which a person has proved himself in the eyes of the church, and in the eyes of other brethren perhaps with wider responsibilities than the local church, that he really is a man led of God.
What about outside ministry and help to confirm the brothers as they are recognized as elders by the brethren? We lack that now. What do we do?
Well, here we come into a very, very difficult sphere. I have got another question on this: “You shared with us how important it is that the local leadership has the confirmation of a brother other than local, of their calling into responsibility. Does this imply that every local gathering should find a kind of covering and help in leadership outside of their locality—apostolic ministry? How and why, if so? In other words, what is an apostle, and how does a locality recognize him?”
Oh, dear. Well, I think this really comes into Brother Stephen’s responsibility. However, I will do my best and muck it all up as usual.
Let me say this straight away: there are people who say there is no such thing as apostolic ministry today. I have the most serious question about such a statement.
It is perfectly true that the twelve apostles are in a category of their own. But even then, we have others referred to as apostles—Apollos, Titus, Timothy, and others—who did not come into that category.
Furthermore, whatever we might say about the passing away of apostleship with the completion of the New Testament canon of Scripture, the fact remains that in every single move of the Holy Spirit right down through the history of the church, there has always been not only the local, but those with wider responsibilities.
Do you know a single move in the recovery of the church where there were not brethren moving amongst the churches? It does not matter whether it is the Reformers, whether it is the Quakers, whether it is the Wesleyans, or whether it is the Brethren.
Now, the Brethren particularly were a little sticky on some of these things, but in the heyday, when the whole thing was an amazing recovery of church life, you had brethren who moved between the companies all the time, full-time.
Later on in Brethren circles, it became a kind of thing. It has changed sadly because they have lost some of their earliest understanding. When I remember the Brethren thirty years ago, they would not have any full-time ministry. They said everyone had to have a job.
The fact of the matter is, if we look at church history, we find all the way through it, from beginning to end, apostolic ministry. Again, we may not call them apostles, but the function is there. It seems to me that you cannot have anything healthy without that function.
Now, once again, we come into great problems. First of all, I think it is very, very dangerous if one man has a kind of apostolic position in which he holds churches simply in his hands, just like that.
Even when the Apostle Paul had founded churches, yet we find Apollos coming through and complementing his ministry, and Peter coming through and complementing his ministry. There was this marvelous sort of interweaving of different apostolic ministries.
Obviously, if Paul begat a church—do you understand what I mean?—when he said, “You may have many tutors, ten thousand tutors, but you have only got one father,” if someone has spiritually begotten churches, he has a relationship to those churches which no one else has.
But the danger is if that relationship becomes papal. Then I think it becomes a straitjacket, an inhibiting factor upon the growth of those companies.
If, on the other hand, other brethren can come in and give what they have of the Lord with the same type of authority, then I believe the whole thing can be balanced in the most healthy manner.
All I can say is this: when we take the New Testament again, it is quite clear that the apostles did appoint elders in the churches, or at least the work did. That seems to me quite clear. What do we do today?
Well, it seems to me we have got to find our way by following the Lord. There is a statement that has always helped me, and I hope it is true—Brother Stephen can say if it is or not—that Miss Fischbacher told me that G. H. Pember had once said, “If the ark of the covenant and the tent of meeting ever get parted, do not follow the tent of meeting, but follow the ark of the covenant.”
That would have saved us an awful lot of problems through the years. These two things should never be divorced: the tent of meeting and the ark of the covenant. But if there ever comes a time when the ark of the covenant, which represents the presence of God—if you like, almost the testimony of Jesus—should be taken away, and the tent of meeting divorced from it, do not follow the tent of meeting; follow the ark.
That seems to me applicable here in these days of breakdown and so much error. In days when the Lord is seeking to recover, if only in a remnant of His people, some of these marvelous church principles, let us follow the ark, not the tent of meeting. Let us just follow the Lord, and He will find a way through it, surely.
He knows what is happening. I think it would be much better than some company rooting all round the southeast of the United States for an apostle, and possibly ending up with a man who might destroy the work. I think it would be much better for them to follow the Lord and spend hours in prayer on their knees together and let the Holy Spirit lead.
The Holy Spirit is well able to adapt in times of breakdown or even contradiction, and so lead His children into what He wants.
However, there are brethren with wider responsibility. I think what we have to look for is the same qualities we would look for in leadership in the church.
I would always advise any company: never put yourselves in the hand of a man whose life is not totally laid down for the Lord and for His people. There is so much empire-building—personal empire-building—somehow bringing things into power complexes, all dressed up in New Testament terms and phraseology.
I would be very careful. I would want to see in a brother some fruit of a life laid down, of sacrificial service, of a real bearing of the burdens of the church, before we were able to put ourselves into his hands.
The next question really goes on from that: “The role or function of an apostle in this matter. Do apostles even exist in the spiritual sense in the United States today?”
Well, I hope I have answered that. I would say I would hope and trust that there is such a thing as an apostolic function in the United States today, and in Canada. I do hope that there are brethren who really, before God, are functioning in that way. Whether we call them apostles or not matters not. The fact is that we need the function if the house of God is to function.
Then there is another question: “The use of expressions such as fellowship instead of gathering or assembly. Should we call ourselves a church? We feel we are a part of the church, not it.”
Well, I think the last point is the thing we should underline. We are part of the church.
Those who meet together in Richmond on the foundation of the Lord Jesus, seeking to really experience church life, may feel very, very poor. They may feel they have made many, many mistakes. But at least they are seeking to meet together in Christ and on no other ground, and really experience something of church life.
Now, if we say, “We are the church,” I think we have got into a very serious complex.
So what do we call ourselves? Now we have a problem. I do not know that “gathering” is actually very much more scriptural than “fellowship.” I must say, the New Testament does not use the word fellowship as a title—“the fellowship.”
Fellowship is a description, not a title. We do not find in the New Testament, “the fellowship at Antioch” or “the fellowship at Corinth.” No, it does not say that. I quite agree, but neither does it say “the gathering.”
Mr. Sparks loved the word “gathering,” which he always pronounced “gathering” in the Scots way. We use the word “gathering” very much because of our Honor Oak background. We say, “The gathering of the Lord’s people here,” or, “The gathering of the Lord’s people.”
“Company” is another lovely word, in a way—just gathering together in Christ. But it is no more New Testament, in my estimation, if you want to be technical and legal, because it is not used quite like that.
Then the word “assembly”—well, that is perhaps a little better because of the word ekklesia in the New Testament. Some people call it assembly, but I do not know whether it is such a good idea either. Surely there must be some way around it.
That was just the name of the house we met in, and we were very thankful that we had that name. It helped us a little. Folks said, “Oh, well, the folks at Halford House,” or “the company.” That was another word we often used: company—not business company, company, I believe.
Well, try and get over it if you can.
Does the lack of elders hinder the church’s growth, or is it simply the lack of leadership, authority, and responsibility?
I hope now, from answering these questions, it is quite clear that at the very beginning, when you are only two or three, why bring up the question of leadership or eldership or anything else? All we need to do is love the Lord and love one another, care for the things of the Lord and the purpose of the Lord, and be together.
We pray and trust that from three we shall grow to six, and from six to twelve, and from twelve to twenty-four, and from twenty-four to forty-eight. Beyond that, my mathematics do not go. But you can understand that once we start to multiply, once we start to get somewhere around forty, then the question of leadership and responsibility becomes quite clear and apparent.
If there is not an emergence of some kind of responsibility-taking, then there will be a hindrance to that company.
No one is going to tell me that a company of forty people is going to be able to come together without a number of brothers really taking responsibility. The whole thing is going to be so careless, so loose. Who is going to decide when we meet, where we meet, how we meet? If a problem comes up on the matter of discipline, who is going to exercise the discipline?
Of course, having an enemy, we will very quickly be destroyed.
There is no doubt about it: the church’s growth will be hindered once we have started to grow and multiply unless there is the emergence of leadership and authority in that company.
Now, there are one or two other questions here which are good ones. “How should one encourage a brother who has a deep consciousness of self, and a feeling that it has not been fully dealt with, to serve and function in the church?”
I know a number of these brothers. I sometimes feel the best idea is to give them a good kick. However, that is not the spiritual way to do it.
I cannot help feeling—and I shall say something about this if the Lord helps me tonight—that one of the big problems in leadership in the church, or functioning in any way in the church, is unbelief.
Most people whom God has really dealt with know in their spirit if they should be functioning. They know in their spirit—not this big-headed thing that someone has a great ministry or something—but they know that they have a part to play, and they almost intuitively know what that part is. But then they get all tied up in knots.
Some have made too much of this matter of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life, so that it has almost become an error. But I have to say this: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil does symbolize a kind of life in which we spend all our time weighing up the credit and the debit in any given situation.
The tree of life does symbolize a dependence and a reliance upon the Lord.
Our problem is this: as soon as a person intuitively knows that they should be functioning in a certain way, they switch to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and start to weigh up everything. They say, “Now, is it me? Is it the Spirit? This is on the credit side. This is on the debit side.” So they are totally paralyzed.
That is what I mean by living faith. If God really is leading you in a way, you have got to step out in faith.
Most of us have known that when we first prayed in public. We got all sort of worried and frightened: “Is it the Spirit? Is it not the Spirit?” Well, you would never have burst forth in public if, at the end, you had not taken a step forward, opened your mouth, and made all the mess that first time.
Is it not an interesting thing that people can come to a prayer time and feel absolutely out of it, and go out and say, “I did not feel part of that”? Yes, of course you did not. You never opened your mouth. Yet when we open our mouth and are part of it, it is amazing: immediately we feel we are in.
What do we do with this kind of person? Well, I think we have to pray. It is one thing to have a deep consciousness of self—thank God for that—and a feeling that it has not been fully dealt with. But does anyone ever feel their self-life has been fully dealt with? I would like to meet them.
The Apostle Paul said he was the least of all saints at one point, but in the last letter he wrote, he said he was the chief of all sinners. The nearer he got to the end and the fulfillment of the ministry, the more unworthy, in one sense, he felt. But that is not the point.
This is where we need an anointing of the Spirit. I have no doubt about it at all. Otherwise, brethren spend their whole time tied up in a straitjacket, sitting there debating whether they should be doing this or should not be doing that.
What they need is the Holy Spirit to come upon them and provide the dynamic by which they are, as it were, propelled into functioning. It is so important, this matter.
So whoever has written this—I have a funny feeling it could be a sister—pray for this brother, that he may have an anointing. One of the great functions of sisters is to pray for brethren, that they would somehow have a spiritual bomb placed behind them to blow them forward into the fulfillment of God’s purpose for them.
When the brethren fulfill their place, the sisters fulfill theirs. There is no doubt that when the brothers really start to fulfill their function in the church, there is no need for women’s lib. The women are liberated, and they can start to fulfill their right place.
It is just when the men do not fulfill their place that the women get all tied up themselves in knots, sometimes into the wrong place, sometimes doing what they should not be doing. I hope that has not provided more problems. But our brother Ernie Heile will sort them all out for you later this week.
“Once someone has been placed in a position of leadership—elders, deacons—and after some time fails to fulfill the qualifications mentioned in 1 Timothy 3, for example, their children become unruly, or drugs, or fornication, et cetera, should they be removed? How? Should they be restored in time if the situation changes? Who should do the removing and restoring? Should it be handled publicly?”
Oh, yeah. What a question.
First of all, I must say straight away that it is a tragedy when brethren who are leaders fall into sin. May I just say something about the matter of children first and foremost? Do not jump too quickly to judge a brother who is in leadership and who has a child, or a couple of children, that are proving very, very difficult.
Be careful that when you judge, you will not be also judged.
I have heard many a person say something about a marriage that is going through a rocky period—some leader’s marriage—and they have pontificated upon it and said how wrong it is, how the person should be removed, and how this and this and this, only to find a few years later that their own marriage has gone through a far worse period.
Whatever judgment you mete out is liable to be the judgment you receive.
On the other hand, I must say that one of the most marvelous evidences that a man is in the right place is that something is happening in his family. Now, this does not mean that there are not black sheep in the family. There will always be black sheep in any flock.
It does not mean that the children of those brethren will not kick over the traces, that they will not have a period of very real rebellion, and may even go into the far country. This does not mean that a brother’s responsibility and leadership is now ended, that he is to be removed.
Surely it means that we should rise up and pray for that brother and that family more than we have ever prayed before, and support them in their time of trial, because they are in the forefront. If the enemy can get that family, he has really got something.
On the other hand, if a husband cannot rule his own household, how can he rule the church? When children answer back, when there literally is a public disregard, then I wonder: should the man be in leadership? If he cannot lead his own family, can he lead the house of God? That is a different matter. Should the man have ever been there in the first place?
We are not looking for copybook perfection. People get this idea that the leaders and their wives, according to Timothy, should be absolutely perfect. It is impossible. The Apostle Paul has given us those things as a guide, if you like, to spiritual character.
Now, what do we do when someone has fallen into sin, or into drug-taking, or alcoholism? God forbid. But I am afraid, in my experience, that I have found in leadership such things have happened. Perhaps the most common is adultery.
I have no question about it: the brother should be removed. First, we must be absolutely sure that it is established in the mouth of two or three witnesses. We must never accept the witness of one person. Always two or three; the Book says so.
But once established, then I feel that there should be a removing. This has to be done on the part of the church and the other brethren. Of course, in the New Testament, it would also have been apostolic. Paul was writing to Timothy and telling him what to do on some of these very matters.
“I am involved in a school fellowship in which the Lord has blessed us with over a hundred members. There are several people involved in leadership of the fellowship, but no formal leadership has been established. My question is: how should the leadership in such a group be organized, if at all? Right now, a group of us meet and make decisions by consensus. Also, we have a problem in how to view ourselves. What needs should we try to meet, and what about doctrinal matters?”
First of all, I will answer the question, or seek to: How should you view yourself? May I say this quite clearly? A fellowship in a university, a college, or a school is not a church. It is very, very important that we understand that straight away, because if we try to make it a church, we get into a myth.
This is what happens: people begin to see these things to do with the church, and then they say, “Oh, now our fellowship must be the same as this.” There are principles that may be the same, but I would be first of all clear on that.
A fellowship in a college or university is really a getting together of believers in that college for fellowship. It cannot function in the way that the church ought to function, but it meets a particular and specific need on the part of believers in that particular college, university, hospital, or whatever it is.
So we view ourselves simply as a get-together, as a Christian get-together, as a fellowship of believers for testimony, for outreach, for support of one another in the way that we can understand each other.
If there are folks in a hospital, they will understand each other better than people outside, and they can pray for one another and help because they understand the problems that we are all facing within that circle.
What about leadership? Obviously, in a fellowship in a university or a college, you cannot talk in the way that I have been talking about the emergence of leadership in the church, because the church should be a settled matter.
A fellowship in the university, by its very nature, will be a changing population. All the time you have some coming in, some going out, new ones coming in, old ones going out. You cannot think of it in those terms.
I think that what you are doing is quite right. You can have a recognized leadership if you want to, as they often do in Britain, for instance, in Europe and the IVF circles. There is a certain sort of way that they arrange and appoint leaders. I do not think there is anything particularly wrong about that.
But I think the way you are doing it at present is good. If there are a number of brothers there who meet together, who take responsibility, and out of it there is a consensus of feeling before God as to the way things should be done, I think that is a very good way.
It also teaches those young brothers to look to God and to read the mind of God by the Spirit. I believe that is very important. Anything that teaches any of us how to distinguish the mind of God in prayer and in fellowship is invaluable.
Here is one other question. I do not fully understand it, but I am going to ask it and answer it the way I think it was meant.
“I am used to the traditional understanding of calling being a personal sense of being led into ministry. Today, when a man holds a full-time secular job, et cetera, how does one sense a calling? Is it personal? Is it others coming to you? How do you go ahead into a calling? Do others confirm it or test it?”
A calling to ministry, a calling to leadership, or whatever, I do not think being full-time stops you having a calling from God. God may call someone with a full-time secular job. I am not at all sure we can call anything secular. You can be scrubbing a floor and it can be sacred. It is a question of whether you are sacred.
If you are secular, then what you do is secular. But if you become sacred, then what you do is sacred. In other words, if you are sanctified, set apart for God, then what you do likewise marvelously comes within that.
You can have a full-time job, and yet God may give you a ministry of the Word in the company of believers in which you are found, and may have called you to that. There may come a time when you will have to give up your ordinary job and give yourself entirely to the Lord in this matter.
Some people say, “Well, should I not do that earlier?” No, do not ever do it until it is absolutely necessary.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon, a man truly anointed of God, once said, “Never preach and never enter the ministry until you are forced to.”
So this idea, “Oh, God is calling me,” and then you go and sit there and do nothing—I mean, there is nothing to do, so you are now called—I do not understand that kind of calling, quite honestly.
It seems to me that normally a person would be called to a ministry, and then slowly it opens up, whatever it is. As they begin to fulfill it, it becomes more and more in demand until, in the end, you cannot fulfill that ministry and have a normal job alongside it.
When that comes, it is quite clear that you are going to have to give yourself to the ministry to which God has called you.
First of all, this calling is personal in the first analysis. I am quite sure of that. I would be very, very worried if I were to suddenly get hold of Dan here and say to him, “You are called to the ministry,” and then I put some big idea into the poor brother’s head. He thinks, “Oh, I have been called to the ministry,” and now he goes round and round in circles, sort of working up this ministry that he has been called to. It is nonsense, is it not?
Yet these things happen. I have sadly been in meetings where a so-called apostolic meeting has designated that a certain brother marry a certain sister. Do you know they went and did it? Bless my heart and soul.
I do not believe in that kind of thing at all. I think it is monstrous.
I have no doubt that the first thing in a calling is a sense you must have from the Spirit of God yourself, and then it should be confirmed in the church. In other words, there should be others who feel the same thing. When you share it, they say, “Brother, I feel that you are right in this thing, but go carefully. Do not rush. Wait back, test it,” or whatever else.
There are certain brothers I know who have waited for a year or two before they have said that they have really got this call. But once they have, there is no need to say, “Test it.” I say, “Get on with it. You should have gone in a year ago.” But I mean, they get on with it. Go ahead with the Lord. Do not wait.
This same question says, “Did you sense a personal calling in the ministry of the Word, and if so, how did it dawn on you?”
Well, dawn on me? I tell you, my calling came—why I say it must be personal. Of course, I do not say how the Lord dealt with me is the way He dealt with you—but I was less than thirteen when the Lord called me.
He called me first in vision. I saw the Lord. I did not see His face, but I saw the Lord. He quite distinctly called me to a ministry, to a task. Shortly afterward, in three other ways, He confirmed it.
I was only a kid. I came from a pagan background, so I did not know my Bible very well. I went to Alan Redpath, whom some of you know, who was a pastor at that time. He said, “You must get it confirmed by the Word.”
I could not understand what he meant by confirmation from the Word. I thought a bomb should drop on us, because it was in the war years. I thought a bomb would have to drop so that I would be miraculously saved. I thought that must be the confirmation you get for this kind of thing, or something like that.
But in actual fact, God gave me a number of Scriptures which have been, for me, the foundation of all my ministry through the years.
The interesting thing is, the Lord called me when I was all flesh. Really, I was all flesh. I imagine something that is about ninety percent of it is still there, but still, I mean, it was all flesh totally. What a risk the Lord takes with us when He calls us.
I remember that when the Lord first visited me in such a miraculous way, I was greatly humbled and wept very much about it. But I did seek the Lord, and I was one hundred percent ready to sacrifice anything, even in my flesh. I did try to live the Christian life.
Oh, my word, I did try to live: hours in prayer, hours reading the Word, witnessing to somebody every day, until I wore myself out—wore myself, as we say in English English, into a frazzle.
Finally, in absolute desperation, when I thought I would give everything up, the Holy Spirit came upon me.
In that state of absolute being at an end, I saw two things. The Holy Spirit was in me, with authority from God the Father, to reproduce the nature and life of the Lord Jesus. From that day to this, I left the job to Him.
Before then, I had always asked Him to help me to live the Christian life. Then I abdicated, and I said, “Well now, dear Holy Spirit, You are here to do this. I will obey.”
The second thing was, I saw that I was crucified with Christ. When I saw that, it was a great relaxation. A façade I had, and this sort of projection of a Christian personality, all fell away, and I became myself—the ugly person you have to suffer.
I have never bothered about myself from that day to this. I just thought, “Well, I am myself. God crucified me. He finished with me. And if there is anything of the Lord in me, thank God for that. That is what I pray and trust will come through.”
That is how I got called. At the beginning it was all flesh, and it was a few years after that that I came—I cannot say the ministry began; it did not for years.
In fact, the very first time I ever ministered the Word, I made such a mess of it that I got them in shrieks of laughter—not laughter because I was being funny, but because I got so tied up. I was so nervous, you cannot believe it.
After that, for two years, I never opened my mouth again. Do you know, when I opened my mouth in Egypt after two years, they had to force me to do it? The only way I would agree was to write down every word I was going to say.
They did not know it—only the people who were responsible for the meeting. I actually read what I had written. But so many people were blessed, and some got saved, and others got blessed. The people could not believe that I had read this thing out. But I was so afraid after that first experience, you see. I had to write it all down.
Now, I am not expecting you to follow that way. That is a rather unusual way. But what I think is wonderful is this: God does call us because He knows the end from the beginning.
Sometimes He calls us when we are in total flesh—saved, but all flesh. Then He starts to deal with us, bringing us slowly but surely to an end of ourselves.
Actually, I have to tell you that it was the day that I saw the Holy Spirit was in me and upon me, and the day that I saw that I was crucified with Christ, that I trace the ministry God has given to me in practical terms. That was the day. From then on, I saw people saved without me straining or pushing, and other people helped and taught, because it really was a releasing of a ministry of the Lord.
Brother Lawrence talked about responsibility in the body of Christ. He said, “If God has anointed you, you are responsible for expressing the life within you and not repressing it—not burying your talent.”
“How do you know if God has anointed you? How do you know if you are doing what God has asked you to do? Sometimes I am clear about what the Lord seems to be saying, but I am too inhibited to say anything lest others disagree. I have run into this problem before, and instead of expressing the life within, I repress it for fear of offending. So I say nothing now, and I am very discomfited inwardly because of it. I feel I am not functioning in the body and become useless to the Lord. What shall I do?”
It is a good question. I am quite sure it finds an echo in a lot of hearts, if I go by the questions I am personally asked.
Very, very quickly, very simply: first of all, about anointing. How do you know if God has anointed you?
I must say that whereas in some spiritual experience you may not know at what point you entered in—there are some who, by faith, for instance, I know people who were converted who literally coldly took a step in faith, and it was weeks and months before they knew they were really born again, but they took that step of faith.
I know others who have taken a step over the question, for instance, of being crucified with Christ. They really saw it, and in cold faith they committed themselves to the Lord and went forward. There was no great feeling.
But I have to say that in the matter of anointing, generally speaking, you know. I must underline what Stephen has said: I do think temperament comes into this.
If a person is a very phlegmatic type of temperament, very level, very unemotional, never cries, I think it is possible to have an experience of anointing that they might even wonder whether they have received that anointing. But I will tell you this: everybody else knows.
The one thing about anointing is that even if the person anointed does not know that they have been anointed, everybody else knows it. People will go miles to hear an anointed servant of the Lord.
The reason is that it is the difference between night and day, between someone who can take things of God and speak about things of God, or whatever.
It is the same in playing the piano, even in such a natural thing as playing the piano. When a man has an anointing, you meet the Lord through their playing. You are not just left with beautiful playing; something is actually ministered to you.
It is the same sometimes with singing. I know people who sing, and they dazzle me with their ability to sing. I think they have beautiful voices, and that is what I am left with. But other people sing, and they leave me with the Lord. Something is ministered into my heart.
That is the difference between someone unanointed and someone anointed.
However, I would just like to say this: Jesus, as you know, was born of the Spirit. When He was thirty years of age, He was anointed with the Holy Spirit. Generally speaking, anointing is a distinct experience that we enter into after having been saved.
It is to do with service. It is to do with functioning.
If we look at the history of the church, we will discover that all the men whom God has used have all had a real experience. Stephen mentioned some the other day—I think it was yesterday. I could listen for hours on this matter. I find it so interesting because there is such a wide variety of experience in the way that it happened.
I knew Billy Graham before he had his experience. I could keep you in stitches of laughter over what happened before that experience.
I shall never forget Billy Graham preaching in London, in Westminster Chapel, and acting out the lions in the arena at Nîmes eating the Christians. You have never seen anything like it. He was rolling around on the ground fighting with lions, and then in the end we had an appeal, with soft blues-type music in the background and repeated appeals to come forward.
When he came back two years later, you could hardly believe it was the same man. He stood there with his Bible open, and it was the Word, the Word, the Word, the Word. When the appeal was given, no music.
Do you know, very few went forward on those occasions. I felt so sorry for him. I almost wanted to go forward myself. I thought, “You worked so hard, you poor man.” I really felt I wanted to go forward just to help him.
But the second time, there was no need. He never even appealed twice. The people poured forward.
Later he said that in that retreat of his, God had met him and knocked him out for nearly a whole day. He did not have to tell us. It was perfectly apparent that something had happened whereby the Lord in him had been released in his ministry.
Before, it was Billy Graham. Now, it was the Lord in Billy Graham. Do you understand?
This is so in other ways. So I would say that generally speaking, taking most temperaments, you know when you are anointed.
This does not mean that you go round like a spiritual tank, you know—“Now you know I am anointed.” Not at all. When the anointing has come upon a person, I think they become very humbled. Really, I mean it. I think they become very humble, because the Lord allows things to come our way to keep us very, very humble.
The difference is that when we function, there is a divine ability that was not there before.
How do you know if you are doing what God has asked you to do? That is a little more difficult.
In some areas, we know very well. I know that the Lord told me to go back to my own people. So I know that I have to live in Israel and I have to be an Israeli citizen, which I am. I know that I had to do that because God three times spoke to me about it.
There are other areas in which I know. There are other times when I do not know. In the end, I have to take a step in faith and go forward.
I am not absolutely one hundred percent sure that I should be involved in this meeting or involved in this conference, but I believe that the Lord somehow has not said no, and so I will go forward in faith. You know, I find sometimes that the Lord is more in those times than some of the other times when I am quite clear that He has directed me. It is interesting, is it not?
I suppose this person is wondering if they have a function that they should be in. Well, I want to tell you something: your brothers and sisters have good horse sense, if you understand what I mean.
When it really comes to it, you will find that the church, the leadership in the church, and the church itself will be more accurately able to tell you whether you are doing what God wants you to do or not.
There are a lot of people in the life of the church who are actually square pegs in round holes. They are really trying to do things. They have got an idea that God has called them, and it is ridiculous, and all of us could tell them. They are boring to a degree, or what they do is always problem-producing, because they are square pegs in round holes.
If they would only be humble, we could all say, “It is not that,” but we could also say to them, “You know what your gift is? It is that.” We could help one another in this way to find what really the Lord has given.
Sometimes God clearly tells you, but always the evidence that you are doing and functioning in the place that you ought to be is that the church is built up and blessed, and they meet the Lord through your ministry, your functioning, whatever it is.
Now, sometimes I am clear about what the Lord seems to be saying, but I am too inhibited to say anything lest others disagree. I have run into this problem before, and instead of expressing the life within, I repress it for fear of offending.
This is disgraceful. Disgraceful.
Why do I say it so strongly? Because you must understand that this is disobedience. We must not play with this kind of thing and pat you on the back and say, “Very humble.” You are not being humble at all. You are being disobedient.
You have got to find the grace of God and the power of God to do what He wants you to do. You must not expect me, or Stephen, or anyone else, to comfort you in this kind of thing that you are doing. It is quite wrong. You are holding back something God has given you for the church.
If really there is life within you, and if really you should be expressing it, and for fear of others you are repressing it, you are burying your talent. I, for one, am not going to comfort you when the Lord says, “Take away from him what he has and give it to another.”
I have to stand by my Master on this matter, and I think Stephen will as well. We have great sympathy with you because we have all been there ourselves. That is why we shall be hard with you. You need to repent and get to the Lord.
If you have not had an experience of the empowering of the Holy Spirit, that is what you need. Not to throw your weight around in the church, but you need divine ability to distinguish when you should speak and when you should not.
You need deliverance from fear of your brothers and sisters.
This fear of brothers and sisters is a phantom. In some companies of believers, there are ogres and ogresses. There is no doubt about that. There are some who put the fear of God into you in a quite wrong way because they know everything, they are very critical, and they seem to judge everything that is said.
But normally, this feeling is a phantom. When you have given what you really have of the Lord, you will find that the very people you are afraid of are the people most blessed, most ready to thank you, and most ready to open up.
Let me tell you a very funny story, but it may bring this out. I have a very dear friend in Finland, and before he began to see more of the Lord, he was for years a Lutheran pastor.
In one part of Finland is the Swedish-speaking Finnish part, and they are very, very—how do you say it?—they do not express their feelings. Now, the Finnish express their feelings. They are Asiatic people; they are a little more volatile. But the Swedish-speaking Finns are much more mask-like. You never know what is going on behind their faces.
You can speak for half an hour or an hour and you just do not know what is going on there at all, until all of a sudden you see someone weeping at the end. Then you know something has gone home. But otherwise, you could not go by their faces.
This brother went to this place and began to preach. He had humor. He was a very lively brother, and he had a real ministry from the Lord.
He saw, sitting every time he had a service, a certain sister in a certain place with a face like thunder. After a while, he found that he could not ever look anywhere else but at that sister. Whatever he said, he looked back to her. She never smiled, never looked happy, never looked open, but always looked as if she thoroughly disapproved.
After a while, he said to me, after a year, he began to have nightmares. In the night, he used to see this sister’s face. He thought, “You see, my ministry here is shriveling.” He became so afraid of this person.
One day—she never said anything, by the way; she always came into the church, always went out, never said a thing, and there was never a flicker of warmth in her face—then one day at the end of the service, he saw her standing at the back.
He thought, “Oh, my goodness. The confrontation has come. She is now going to tell me how ungodly I am, how hopeless I am, what a terrible kind of ministry I have, how unspiritual it is, how superficial it is.”
But he braced himself and said, “However, I will go, and I will seek to love on this sister.” So he went toward the back. When he was quite near to her, she took two steps forward and said, “Pastor Müller”—without a flicker—“I have sat under your ministry for two years, and I cannot tell you what a blessing it has been. It is beautiful.”
Then she turned and went.
Now, this dear sister had been a nightmare to this brother for all those years. He had no idea that she was being so blessed.
This is the way the enemy works with us. We have a terrible fear in our companies that somehow, although the people do not agree, they would jump on us. They would feel it is flesh, not in the Spirit. It is phantom.
We have all got it. All of us. We all feel it. It is something that living faith has to be exercised over.
If God has given you something, you need the power to be able to do what is right at all times. Sometimes you do not realize that there are others there who are also fearful. When you break through and give what you have, they break through with what they have.
So I hope this thing will—thank you.