Just give this a try.
All right. Okay. The problem is, when I stand up, just standing still, my knees lock up, and I have to get on them or break them loose somehow or other.
Anyway, this morning we are thankful for the Lord Jesus Christ, to gather around Him and Himself alone. That is one of the privileges we have and the great honor we have: to join with all those angels in heaven around the throne, giving glory to God and praising the Lamb.
And this morning, we are thankful for that. It is precious, brothers and sisters—something that, unfortunately, many Christians do not experience, and that is so sad.
Well, let us begin with a word of prayer. We certainly need it.
Lord, we do thank You this day for Your great love. Lord Jesus, that love that was there in eternity past, and yet has been manifested to us in this day, and to this world when You indeed offered up Your Son, a living sacrifice on our behalf, that, Lord, we might come out of death into newness of life—a new creation, a new humanity after God, instead of the things of man.
Lord, we praise and worship You this morning for the lessons, the history, and the vision that You gave us in the early days together as we met. Lord, they are precious memories for me particularly.
And today, Lord, I want to share that with my brothers and sisters, not in any way to lift me up, or even the assembly here, but, Lord, that we might gain precious lessons in life from our experience and our history past.
Lord, we ask You to bless this time. Lord, I ask for a double portion of the Spirit of wisdom and revelation. In Jesus Christ’s name, I pray. Amen.
Well, you know, last time I shared on our early history and the vision that the Lord gave unto us. I will try to summarize that as briefly as I can so that we can go on with this second part this morning.
In the very beginning, there were five sisters in Richmond, Virginia, who came together, and they were hungry and thirsty. They were spiritual sisters who had known the gifts of God, had experienced His provision and His blessings, and had experienced standing on the promises of God. Yet they were still hungry and thirsty.
And I think that is key for all of us: that the Lord would keep us always hungry and thirsty.
They went to a conference in Wabana, I think it was either 1966 or 1967, and they heard Brother Sparks speak, Stephen Kong, and DeVern Fromke. At that time, the Lord began to respond to their hunger and their thirst for Himself.
They had come into possession of a book by Brother Fromke called The Ultimate Intention, and that really impressed their hearts. They also had a poem by A. B. Simpson himself. What they were discovering was that Christianity was not an ecclesiastical system. It was not just promises and things for me. Christianity was Christ Himself.
He was the ultimate expression of God. And that absolutely—as Llewellyn put it—crushed her upon the stone of Christ.
They came back from those times, and they felt very strongly in their hearts that the Lord wanted to raise up something in Richmond that was for Himself—something for the Lord Himself. Not just brothers and sisters gathering together for a time of meeting, but something that would please Him and His heart totally.
These sisters gave themselves to prayer. For five years they prayed, and they were even praying that the Lord would bring in others, particularly some brothers with that same spiritual hunger and desire, and something of the vision that the Lord had given them.
These sisters were very spiritual, in my estimation, and I thank all of the Kennys as well—dear sisters in the Lord. They offered themselves up in this way as prayer vessels to the Lord, in travailing prayer.
We have to say this morning that it was their travailing prayer. It was out of travail that the Lord did give birth to the assembly here in Richmond a number of years later. But for five years, they faithfully prayed.
At the same time, they had heard Stephen Kong, and he had begun to come to Richmond once a month to share with these sisters. He would share three times over a weekend. He encouraged them in their quest for the Lord Jesus Himself, and he fellowshipped with them and prayed with them.
And in 1972, three brothers did show up. They were not mature spiritual brothers by any means. They were young brothers. In fact, one of them was Kenny Pittman. At the time, I think Kenny was twenty years old. He had just been saved for about six months in the Assemblies of God church. Praise the Lord for that.
The other one was me, myself. It was October 1, 1972. I was saved when I was twelve, so I was twenty-eight—what was that? Sixteen years.
Kenny was just bubbling over with the Lord. The life of the Lord was just manifested in my brother, and I was really drawn to Kenny. We worked on the same floor at City Hall, the fifth floor, and at lunchtime we would get together and just share Christ together.
Now, I was fundamental Baptist. I did not agree with this thing about gifts and other things, but actually I saw them manifested in Kenny. Something you may or may not know: Kenny spoke in tongues. Of course, where I went, I had been taught that those things passed away with the apostles when they passed away, which, of course, was not true.
But anyway, that did not deter our fellowship at all. We were just sharing Christ together. Around the book, I shared a book with Kenny, The Normal Christian Life, and that book really brought us to our first great revelation: Christ.
The revelation of Christ Himself—that Christ was everything; that Christianity was Christ and Him alone; that the whole reason for the universe was Christ; the reason for redemption was Christ; the reason to bring many sons to glory was for Christ. It was all Christ.
I remember Kenny coming to me one day. We were in the park, and he said, “Jerry, I see.” He said, “It’s Christ, isn’t it? It’s all about Christ. It’s only Christ.”
Brothers and sisters, that is a great revelation that we all need. I pray that the Lord will forever expand our revelation of Christ Himself. That was really a beginning for Kenny and me.
But we showed up at the meeting at Llewellyn Miller’s house on October 1, 1972. I had been struggling before the Lord because the question in my heart was, “Lord, what is Your church?” I struggled with that greatly, and Kenny was inquiring, “What is this church?”
That night, Stephen spoke—Brother Kong spoke—on Acts 1, the birth of the church. That was amazing to me because I never knew that the church was born. I always thought it was formed as an organization by men and led by the pastor. Oh, how wrong I was, brothers and sisters.
The church was far from that. When Stephen shared those famous words, they spoke to my heart. I will never, never forget them, even in eternity. He said, “The church is not an organization. It is an organism, born.”
Brothers and sisters, it was like the gates of heaven flooded open with light, and my heart was convinced. I had seen not only Christ the Head, but Christ the church.
I do not know if you have ever seen what the church is. Some have not. Some have been coming to meetings for many, many years—Christians meeting for many, many years—and have not ever realized the reality of what the church is.
I do not know if you have discovered it yet or not, brothers and sisters, but the church is a person. It is not an organization. It is not an ecclesiastical system. It is not even a way of meeting.
It is a person, and that person is Jesus Christ.
We discovered that Jesus Christ was the Head in heaven, and the church was Jesus Christ on earth, manifested and expressed through His corporate expression: the body of Christ, the church.
Brothers and sisters, what a tremendous difference it is when you get that point of view of what the church really is. When you gather together, yes, we come and fellowship, and we encourage one another. But when we come together, our true heart is to see Jesus Christ and to manifest Christ to one another as we fellowship and worship around the table.
Christ is in our presence, but brothers and sisters, He manifests Himself through His body, the church. What a great calling the church has.
As we continued to meet during those early days, we decided to have a conference. That was in September 1973, the first conference at Roslyn. Our brother Stephen shared on the testimony of Jesus: What is the testimony of Jesus?
That greatly affected us at that time. The purpose of those conferences was to begin to have our eyes and hearts opened to Christ—the Head and the body—the eternal purpose of God to bring many sons to glory as a corporate expression, that the church might be His effective body upon this earth.
Brothers and sisters, it was a tremendous time of enlightenment during those days for us.
In the spring of 1974, I think probably around March, our brother Stephen asked us, “Should we consider becoming a corporate testimony of Christ, of becoming and standing as the body of Christ?”
We did not answer that right away. He did not want us to. He wanted us to seriously consider it and pray about it. And we did.
We began to gather together, and he shared things like I shared last week about what it meant to gather in the name of Jesus. If we truly gather in His name, there would be no divisions in the church. That was our heart: to truly gather in the name of Jesus.
We met together on the ground of the unity of the Spirit. As I said, Kenny came from a different background than I did. These sisters came from various backgrounds as well—Episcopalian; some were charismatic. But we all gathered in His name in the unity of the Spirit.
We did not gather around trying to decide on which doctrines we could agree. We gathered to meet our Lord Jesus Christ in the unity of the Spirit.
In that context, the very ground of the church meeting together is that we receive all. We do not exclude brothers and sisters because they do not quite think like we do, or maybe hold some doctrines different than I do, unless it is heresy. We receive them.
The other point that was really drawn home was this: you are born into the body of Christ. We do not have a membership; we never have, because it is not necessary. Whenever you accept Christ, you are born into the body of Christ. You have your place there.
These were all important things that we were learning and considering, as we considered whether we truly wanted to stand as a testimony for Jesus Christ on this earth.
In those same times, as Stephen had asked us to consider becoming a testimony, he came to us brothers—Michael Woods, Kenny, and me—and said, “You brothers need to step out and take more responsibility.”
Well, for me—I will only speak for myself—I did not grasp what our brother was saying. I had no idea what he meant. I knew that he wanted us to be more responsible. Of course, his main idea was that we should become more spiritually responsible.
My response was, “Okay, Lord, I will get there early when we meet together and set up the chairs.” That was what I took up. And you know what? That was not wrong at all. I did not quite see what the Lord had in mind at that time, but I did want to be responsible before the Lord.
The Lord leads us in small steps. I was so excited about everything I was receiving and hearing. It was all new to me. The discoveries were absolutely amazing in my heart—the things that I was receiving, the new light. Frankly, being responsible was not quite on my heart at the time.
But during that time, Brother Kong shared a ministry out of 1 Corinthians 11 on God’s divine order. That was during this period of time, right after the first conference we had at Roslyn.
I want to say a few things about this because I think 1 Corinthians 11 is probably one of the most misunderstood, abused, and misused chapters in the Bible. It speaks of the headship of Christ, and it speaks of that in the church.
When the church is together, when the church is in action, there is a divine order. It talks about Christ: the head of Christ is God, the head of man is Christ, and the head of woman is the man.
People misuse that so much. They think it is putting sisters in a secondary place, or that they are less spiritual than brothers. This is far from the truth—far from what Paul was trying to relate to the Corinthian church.
As you know, there was a lot of disorder in the Corinthian church. They had all the gifts; they were operating, but it certainly was disorderly. God was saying, “There is an order.” In the church there is a divine order that should be established, and that is the heavenly order.
Now, that is what chapter 11 is about: God’s divine order.
I think we are all aware that we, as the church, are to be a testimony of Christ. The fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ, and we are to be the expression of Him—the fullness of Him that fills all in all. That is our responsibility.
Not only do we have the responsibility to manifest Christ, manifest His character, manifest Who He is, and manifest to the world His desire and His plan; brothers and sisters, we are also to be a testimony to divine order.
A testimony to divine order.
The best way I know to share that is simply to share what that divine order is. We know that in the Godhead there are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They are all equal, are they not? They are all spiritual. One is not superior to the other.
Yet, when it comes to God executing His plan—the plan of creation, the plan of redemption when man fell, the plan of bringing many sons to glory, and the plan to have a bride for His Son—He set up a divine order.
The Lord Jesus Christ said to the Father, “Okay, I am not going to cling to My position. I am not going to grasp at it,” as it says in Philippians 2. He did not grasp at His deity. He never gave up deity, but He did not grasp at all the privileges that He had as deity. He was willing to let them go.
He was willing to take a lower place under the headship of the Father, to carry out all of this work that They had planned: creation, the redemption of man, many sons to glory, the bride for Christ, the future kingdom. All of that, brothers and sisters, required that those three of the Godhead operate in coordination with each other. Of course, the Holy Spirit did that work of communication.
So we have in this situation that Christ—what did He do, brothers and sisters? He humbled Himself. He was in the form of God, but He took on humanity. Certainly, man is much lower. He became man as well: Son of God, Son of Man.
He took that lower place so that God’s plan and heart could be fulfilled—the heart of the Godhead. Brothers and sisters, the church is to be a testimony of that.
Let me say something to you, dear sisters: you are not inferior or less spiritual than any brother in our midst. But you have been called to take up the divine order, just as Christ was willing to take a lower place.
Remember, He said, “I do not do anything apart from the Father. What the Father says, I do.” In other words, it was a submissive spirit that He had—an obedient spirit, a spirit that we, as a church, need to manifest. That is one of the main functions of sisters.
Now, us brothers, we also need to humble ourselves, do we not? Christ is our Head. By the way, Christ is the Head of the sisters as well. So to speak, they have a double covering in the church: Christ, their Head, and Christ in the brothers.
We brothers should take up our responsibility. We are responsible for the church, for the sisters, and for decisions. Brothers, I just want to say: people who take position in the church as if they have an office—it is so unlike our Lord Jesus.
He is Head of the church, but look at our Head. Look Who He is. Look how humble He was. He said, “I did not come to be served, but to serve.” That is the place of us brothers in the assembly: to serve, to serve everyone.
I remember one time our brother Stephen said that in an organization, in a company, it is set up like a pyramid, with all the people on the lower tiers serving and working, and the one on top being served and giving all the directions. Well, he said, the church is just the opposite.
Those in leadership are at the bottom. They are to serve all.
Brothers and sisters in the church, we are to function. We are to represent the Head, Christ the Head—our Lord Jesus Christ. We are to manifest Christ the Head. We are to manifest His authority.
Now, that does not mean that we ever become authority. We are not. Christ is always the authority. That is why we must be humble and submissive as well if we are going to be a testimony in the church of our Lord Jesus Christ’s headship.
But also, we have to manifest the body in Christ. Christ the body is mainly more the function of the sisters. I hope that no sister goes away ever thinking that the brothers are superior. I hope no brother ever goes away thinking that they are superior to the sisters or to their wives. No.
The function of the sisters is not inferior, brothers and sisters. Us husbands can testify: we cannot do without our wives. Now, we may say that, but if we do, we are lying—absolutely.
Brothers and sisters, that is why it says in the Bible, the two became one. Do you see what the church represents? We are to function as one, brothers and sisters, together.
Oh, what a great impact that had, because you remember, at that time, it was the sisters who were leading. Rightfully so. The Lord raised them up. They were prayer warriors, mighty ones in our midst, spiritual ones—certainly more spiritual than us younger brothers, because we were still in our twenties.
We owe so much to the faithfulness of our sisters.
Soon after that, our sisters were still mainly the ones being responsible at that time. Then the June 1974 conference came. At that conference, our brother Stephen shared on spiritual leadership, and Lance spoke on the house of God. What tremendous messages they both were.
I have to say, Lance, because of his practical experience in manifesting Christ the church at Halford House in England, was a great help in those ministries. He showed us that this was not just Christian doctrine that we were trying to follow, but it was Christ, the Head of the church, Whom we were trying to follow. He made it so living, and it was living.
We gained much from our brother at that conference. One of the most precious things in my own heart was at the end of that conference. I remember Lance’s last message on the house of God. He shared on the bride, the bride of Christ, and it was amazing.
Right after that ministry was over, our brother Kenny and Linda—she was not his wife at the time—stood up, and Stephen married them. We had a beautiful expression of what Lance had been speaking.
Our brother Stephen shared on spiritual leadership. The Lord had given him that, and it was much needed because he had been trying to encourage us brothers. Maybe I will speak for myself—I do not know if I was responding that well, but I wanted to.
The interesting thing was that the first message was on the need for spiritual leadership. What impressed me so much was that the church is called to have leaders. It is to have leaders. But our brother emphasized over and over again that it was a matter of function and not a position.
We were not trying to obtain a position like a corporation, but we were to function, step out, and be responsible. In other words, he was calling us all to be responsible.
Brothers and sisters, that had a tremendous effect on Kenny, Mike, and me at that time. It pierced my heart. The best way I can explain it is that my eyes were finally opened to what our brother Stephen meant when he said we needed to take up responsibility.
I understood that he was talking about spiritual responsibility, in the manner in which our sisters had been so responsible and prayerful during those years.
I will never forget that day. At the time, I was not even staying on campus; I was just coming and going. Oh, the Lord pierced my heart. I immediately went home, got all my belongings that I needed, and came back to campus and tried to help the sisters out as much as I could, because they were doing everything.
They were registering people. They had sent out the invitations. They had set up the meeting place and met with the Episcopal campground there to set it all up. They were very responsible.
After that conference, and through that previous message on God’s divine order, the three of us—Kenny, Mike, and I—went to Stephen and said, “Brother, the Lord has shown us we need to be more responsible. We are going to meet once a week to pray for the Lord’s will to be done in Richmond, like our sisters have been praying.”
We committed ourselves before our brother that we wanted to be faithful to the vision that the Lord was showing him: to make Christ our Head, the Head of our gathering together; to meet on the ground of the unity of the Spirit; not to be divisive from other brothers and sisters; to function as His body on this earth; to be built together as His house, the place where His presence could be known; to be the priesthood that He desired and a prayer instrument to the Lord; and to be submissive to the cross, that He might prepare His bride.
Brothers and sisters, that was a major point in my life, particularly, and in the life of the assembly here.
A short time later, the sisters began to see that we were taking up that responsibility, and that we were committed just as they were committed to the Lord and to having what the Lord wanted in our midst.
They went to us and Brother Stephen and said, “Brother, we want to establish God’s order, divine order, in our midst. We want Christ to be everything. We want His fullness to be able to be manifested. We are going to take a step back, and we are going to support our brothers.”
That was tremendous. Think about our Lord Jesus taking a lower place that God’s work might be accomplished. That is exactly what our sisters did. Though it was a lower place in a sense, it was a place of exaltation.
Remember, Paul says in Philippians that because He took that lower place and was submissive, God exalted Him above all. It is really a place of exaltation.
Then the sisters said, “Not only that, but we are going to meet once a week and pray for the brothers and pray for the assembly.” I have to say, those two commitments have been kept for fifty years, and it is only the Lord’s grace and mercy that that has happened.
So we owe much to our dear sisters in the Lord.
It was our heart not to just continue to have a meeting, simply to be together. We wanted to be built together as a house and a body—to be His body. We wanted to serve His eternal purpose, to head up all things in Christ, and that He might have first place in all things.
The Lord showed us something. He said, “Okay, you are committed now.” The way I received it was, “It is time to drive the stake,” if you know what I mean. Okay? I have driven the stake. I am not going back. I am going on from now on.
There were three things the Lord showed us that, in order to clarify the testimony of Christ, we would have to do: we needed a place of our own, we needed to change the meeting time from three o’clock in the afternoon, and we needed to establish the Lord’s table.
Now, I need to say something at this point that is extremely important. Brothers and sisters, we do not think we are special.
We are humbled that God chose to express His mercy and grace in such a way to us, because we were the least deserving—not because we were anything. But the Lord had given us a vision, something that you cannot turn away from.
Paul said he was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. That is where we were. We did not see ourselves as being special. Yes, we had received some vision that, for some reason, much of the church had not yet seen, but we pray it will.
I have to be extremely emphatic in this: we are not special. We are not the church. We are part of the church, and we try to meet together in the way that the Lord has shown us to meet.
But we can never claim to be the church, as though other brothers and sisters who are not with us are separate from us, because they are not. They are our brothers and sisters, and we embrace them.
May the Lord have mercy. I remember one time we were talking about what the Lord was doing in our midst, and one of the sisters did say, “We are Ephesus.” You know, the thing about Ephesus was that they loved the Lord so much.
Our dear brother Frank Lissey—I will never forget it—said, “No, sister, we are not Ephesus. We are Corinthians.” He was so right. He was so right.
So, brothers and sisters, if pride ever comes within our hearts, may the Lord quickly deal with us, because the most devastating thing in Christianity is pride.
The first thing the Lord showed us was a place of our own. That was interesting. We first were meeting in Llewellyn Miller’s garage. Then, because the Lord showed us that we needed to move out and needed a clear testimony, we rented a space in a community center right across the river here.
I cannot remember the name of it. The what? Tuckahoe Community Center.
It was not very convenient. I remember we had children’s classes, and the class was held on the stair steps leading up to the second floor, because all we had was the first floor, which was a very large room, about like this.
At the time, we were always meeting in circles. I like meeting in circles when we can, when it is convenient. But it was a big circle all the way around, and we were trying to meet and fellowship. Of course, at the time I could still hear pretty well, so it was not too bad.
But that was not convenient. We knew that was not the Lord. We went on to the Garden Club on Hermitage Road and met there for a short period. That was better; it had a little better space for the children and things. But we knew that was not the Lord.
Praise the Lord, an ad came up in the newspaper about a house on Hermitage Road, right down from where we were meeting—a real old Victorian house right there on the corner.
It is interesting: it is at the corner of Pope Avenue and Hermitage Road. Of course, we were not testifying to the pope, but it was Pope Avenue and Hermitage Road.
There is a granite archway with the word “Bellevue” written on it—a beautiful view. That had a big impact on me. I do not know about my other brothers and sisters, but what better view do we have than Christ?
I remember we went up to see the place, and we all knew in our hearts as soon as we saw it: this was it. A number of us went up to the attic, stood together, and laid claim to that house.
We said, “Lord, we do not have the money. We do not have anything much, but we claim this house for You—a house for the Lord, a physical place where we could meet.” We knew we were the house of the Lord.
Back in 1975, the house, I think, was selling for $57,000. That does not sound like much anymore, does it? But today’s equivalent would probably be in the $600,000 or $700,000 range.
We were just young couples, and young couples do not have money—I can tell you that much. Even us older ones do not have a whole lot. We did not have much money, and they wanted an $11,400 down payment, I think either in eight or twelve weeks. That would be about $150,000 today.
Would you just take a number of young couples meeting together, with hardly any funds? But our brother Stephen Kong—oh, what a brother—came through and spoke on the feeding of the five thousand.
The basic message was, “You just offer to the Lord what you have,” like that young boy with his few fishes and loaves of bread, “and the Lord will break it and multiply it.”
Brothers and sisters, the Lord filled our hearts with faith. We believed He was going to do it.
I remember some precious things. One of our sisters did not have much money, but she gave her wedding rings that we might have that place.
I remember another sister—so precious in our midst. Brothers, I am saying “sisters” a lot. There was another sister in our midst. She said to me, “Jerry, I knew this was going to happen. I knew the Lord was going to do this. I have been saving money for these last few years for this purpose.”
She gave us, I think, a couple of thousand dollars, whatever it was. Money did begin to come in. Even many of the children broke their piggy banks, their little saving banks, and came and offered it as well.
It was a true offering to the Lord. Their parents did not even ask them to do it. They had just heard what we were doing, and they wanted to be part of it. It was a precious, precious time in our midst.
The day before the closing, when we had to have the money, we were short $2,000. That afternoon, the $2,000 came in, and we got the place. Eventually, not long after, we were able to pay for it.
We are thankful to the Lord for those early days. So we now had a place.
The next thing was changing the meeting time. This was important because we were meeting at three o’clock in the afternoon. We were having fellowship and praying, but before men, before the world, they would just see it as a little meeting for Christians.
We knew we were called to be a testimony of Christ. So we said, “We need to meet at twelve o’clock to confirm the testimony.”
Many of the people who were meeting with us at that time, at three in the afternoon, were still going to other places of worship during the twelve o’clock time. Then they would come in the afternoon for fellowship. They loved the fellowship, and they loved the teaching that our brother was giving.
We knew it would have an effect on us, but we decided before the Lord that was what we needed to do to confirm the testimony. We did, and quite a few of them stopped coming because they were committed other places. But the ones who had seen what we had seen remained committed.
Yes, our size reduced somewhat, but the testimony was being confirmed.
One of the main things was establishing the Lord’s table. We knew that the Lord’s table—our Lord Jesus—was the center of our meeting on Sunday. That is why we gathered together: to gather around Him.
The Lord’s table would be primary. Yes, we were going to have ministry of the Word, but that was secondary. That was added on, so to speak. Our real heart was to meet the Lord around His table.
I thank the Lord that that is still our heart even today. Those three things made a big difference.
During those years, Stephen Kong had been sharing with us about corporate prayer, and Lance Lambert, I think at the 1977 conference, had shared on corporate prayer. We were involved in that.
I remember when we moved to Huguenot Road. I am not sure exactly what was shared, but I know we were really impressed with being faithful to the prayer time—not just coming when it was convenient, but coming because it was part of the testimony of Christ, a strong prayer vessel to the Lord.
I remember personally, when I saw this—when something became really, really important to me, and I knew I had to make a commitment—that is what happened to me.
Interestingly enough, once I made that commitment, every Wednesday night before the meeting I would get nauseated. I would be sick. Of course, the enemy was telling me, “Jerry, you need to stay home. After all, you are sick.”
But I knew that was not the Lord. Each Wednesday night, I would head out to the meeting nauseated, but as soon as I crossed the river, it went away.
That confirmed even more that it was an attack of the enemy to keep us from prayer—from corporate prayer before the Lord, not praying for our needs, but praying for the concerns of the Lord and His needs.
Those are lessons that were driven home to us in those days.
When we moved here, it was really interesting. The Lord then opened up even more revelation, at least to me, and I think to many of us, of Himself as the Father—God the Father. We were many children. We were family.
We were beginning to see that we were not just meeting together around the table, which was good, and praying together, but that we were His family.
That was brought home because when we got here, of course, we needed to take care of the place. We needed to mow the lawn and clean the house. We had a family meeting over this.
It was suggested that maybe we needed to use some of our funds to hire people to cut the grass and clean the house. From a very practical standpoint, I had been the director of maintenance for the public housing authority in Richmond for many years, and we had hired many different people to come in and clean. It always ended up in a catastrophe.
But anyway, that was not the point. The point was that the Lord showed us something. At the end of that meeting, what He showed us was that we were family and that we needed to take care of the house as a family.
That was so important. Those first times, we called them work groups, not fellowship groups. They were work groups. We had five or six groups at the time, and we alternated coming, as we continued to do, to clean up the house and get it ready.
Eventually, through Brother Stephen Kong, we saw something further. He said, “Every Sunday we come together, we have the Lord’s table, we have ministry, and we go home. Where is the fellowship among the family? Where is the family?”
We thought about that and said, “You are right. We need to be family.” In the beginning, we actually brought in box lunches. We did that for a while, but it was too expensive, for one thing, and it still did not have that sense of family.
So we said, “Okay, we will start having the groups prepare a meal.” Each time they were on for their work day, they would do a meal.
That eventually developed into this: these groups were now in fellowship together as a family. Perhaps they should take up spiritual responsibility for the brothers and sisters in their group—not just the church in general doing it, but because you are closer together and meet more often, you know more about each other’s needs.
Instead of work groups, they became fellowship groups. Eventually, as you know, the groups also became responsible for the opening on Sunday mornings. That is how that developed over the years—just learning to be family together. It was so precious.
That was an amazing twelve years. We were now twelve years in at that time, and everything was going fine for the next number of years.
But in the year 2000, you all remember, tragically, there was a division in leadership here in the assembly. The enemy got us, no doubt about it. He got in, divided the leadership, and eventually the assembly itself. Such a tragedy.
We still love our brothers and sisters who are no longer meeting with us. I do. But they are not meeting with us anymore, and it was because of that division that occurred.
I am not going into details. I do not think that would be helpful, or I would share it. But I will say this much: the remaining leadership, and even the brothers and sisters, kind of went into neutral corners. The war was on. The battle was on.
Even in leadership, I have to say, we drew back. I can say that to you all—not on behalf of my other brothers, but for myself. I know I drew back. I was not taking the lead as I needed to when we were under such great attack.
I was reeling from it, really. I was despondent. I was greatly crushed, and I just did not stand up.
Brothers and sisters, I will say this: I think a fog kind of came over the assembly for almost ten years.
In 2010, while researching our history, I said to myself, “I wonder if there was anything significant in 2010 that began to bring us out of this fog.” You know what I discovered?
At the conference that year, 2010, Stephen spoke on the testimony of Christ—the renewing of the vision that we were losing. A renewing, a recovery.
And it did. The fog began to lift, and praise the Lord, we are thankful it did.
At the same time, our dear, precious brothers and sisters in the Bowling Green area had begun meeting on their own. This is backtracking now: that was in 1990. They started meeting up there, and in 1992 they remodeled a home and have been meeting in that ever since.
But the division that occurred in 2000 greatly affected them as well. We did not have any fellowship between the two groups for a number of years.
But praise the Lord—I shared this with them in Bowling Green—I thank them that they did come back to us and say, “We want to reconcile. We feel like, for the sake of the Lord’s testimony, we need to reconcile.”
And we did. Praise the Lord.
We are thankful that though maybe we have not been faithful—I know I have not quite been faithful at times—the Lord is always faithful. Thank the Lord that He did lift the cloud, that the Lord restored the vision and restored leadership.
Brothers and sisters, for that I ask forgiveness. But at the same time, I am so grateful to our Lord Jesus Christ, Who does not give up on us, you know?
The lesson I learned—and maybe we all should learn—is this: when the enemy is on the attack, do not step back. Step up.
When the enemy is attacking us, either as a fellowship or individually, do not step back. Step up. I think that is a lesson we all need to learn.
Thank the Lord for what He has done through the years. I am encouraged that tonight we are going to be gathering around that little message Brother Stephen Kong gave in 1981—not 1991, I am sorry, 1981. We had been meeting together nine years when that happened, amazingly.
He said, “What justification do you have for meeting?” Huh? All that we had learned through the years began to come back.
Tonight, as we gather, it is my heart and my prayer that we do not receive what we fellowship about tonight as a teaching or as a creed that we follow. It is simply the vision that the Lord gave us and that we need to be faithful to.
Once again, Paul said, “I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision.” Whatever the Lord shows you, do not be disobedient to Him. Be faithful.
Lord, we just want to thank You for Your faithfulness through the years. Lord, I say it once and again: it is not because we deserved anything, but because of Your great grace and mercy that You wanted to express in weak vessels.
Lord, it is all to Your glory, not ours. Lord, no glory at all for us, but only for You, Lord Jesus. You are the One Who did it. You are the One Who initiated it, Lord. You are the One Who raised us up. You are the One Who brought us together.
When we were divided, Lord, You healed and You brought back. Lord, what a merciful God You are. You have demonstrated Your faithfulness and mercy in vessels that are so weak.
But, Lord, we come to You, and I ask particularly for tonight, as we gather together, that these words will once again be living in all of our ears and have a spiritual impact upon all of us, that we might stand up and say, “Glory to God for the great things that He has done.”
In Jesus’ name. Amen.