Theology Of Change, Part 2

We're in the book of Acts. I want to recommend to you, put a little note someplace, go through the book of Acts and find all of the doors. When you preach the book of Acts to encourage the church to go through the open doors, it's there.

The devil tried to slam the door shut, the men were put into prison. God opened the door and said, come on out and preach. Every time the devil tried to close the door, the Lord opened the door.

The trouble is, when the church starts closing the door, then you have problems. And it's happened. We looked at Acts 6. Look at Acts 10.

This is the famous story of Peter having the vision and going to the household of Cornelius. And you get all kind of doors here, you Peter's having this vision and there's a knock at his front gate and a fellow comes and says, Peter, there's some people out here who want to talk to you. And it was an open door for Peter.

Peter went with them, went down to Caesarea and led Cornelius and his family and his friends and his relatives to faith in Christ. By the way, Peter never finished that sermon. Do you ever notice that in Acts chapter 10? He got to what we have in verse 43, which is the gospel of him, Jesus.

All the prophets bear witness that through his name everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sin. Then Peter took a deep breath to continue and they believed. And he never finished the sermon.

By the way, study in your Bible the interruptions in the life of Peter. Just make a little note to study the interruptions in the life of Peter. Here he was interrupted by the Holy Spirit while Peter was still speaking.

The Holy Spirit fell. He was interrupted by God the Father on the Mount of Transfiguration. He was saying, let's build some tabernacles.

And God spoke from heaven, said, this is my beloved son. Listen to him. In Matthew 17, Peter was interrupted by Jesus when they came to get the taxes.

Peter came into the house with his plan all made, and my Bible says that Jesus anticipated him, interrupted him, and said, Peter, here's the way we're gonna do it. How did I get onto that? I'm sorry. Acts chapter 10, God opens the door to the Gentiles.

What happens in Acts chapter 11? Peter's friends and associates say, why did you do that? Now let me give you a little word of counsel on change. Now hear me. It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.

Did you get that? When we were at Moody Church, God began to bless in a wonderful way. New couples were coming in. Sunday school began to grow, and we needed more primary facilities.

We needed room for the primary department. And my building superintendent came and said, I don't know what we're gonna do. We got too many kids in there.

If the fire department shows up, we're gonna be in trouble. I said, is there any space anywhere? He said, yeah, the women's lounge. I said, what is the women's lounge? He said, it's not restrooms.

It's an area that we've set aside for the older ladies in the church, where they can go in and sit in soft chairs or chandeliers and everything. That's rather luxurious. He said, well, I said, well, is that all we got? He said, that's all we got.

I said, let's take it. And so we took it, and we heard about it. But we discovered it was easier to get forgiveness than permission when we told them, this is for the children, your grandchildren.

Oh, okay, that's all right. So every Sunday, we moved in on that lounge, and then they'd move out, and the ladies could have it back again. So Peter was called on the carpet by his own friends.

Now get used to that. You're gonna be a change agent. Get accustomed to the fact that people don't like to associate with radicals, and some of your best friends may turn out to be critical enemies.

Folks do not like to be jarred. They do not like to be disturbed. That we have many, we have hundreds if not thousands of churches in America that I call the good old boys club.

Good old boys club. It's been run by the same people and their relatives year after year. Just a good old boys club.

We're getting together and just doing the religious thing, but nothing's happening. Like a mighty tortoise moves the Church of God, brethren we are treading where we've always trod, you see. And you don't dare disturb it, because they're all intermarried.

And the solution, a part of part of the solution is win new people, like Peter did at Pentecost, win new people, and they get in before long the good old boys look around say, you know what, we're outnumbered. Now it's not a mean thing to do, this is the church. This is God's work.

Souls are hanging in the balance. We don't get together on Sundays to dust off the artifacts in a museum. Easter has transformed the museum into a ministry.

We have a living Savior. That's Acts 12. Now in Acts, I'm sorry, in Acts 12 Peter ends up in prison and God opens the doors for him.

It's marvelous, just opens the doors, turns them loose. Acts 13, Paul and Barnabas are called out into service to go reach the Gentiles. God waited 10 years between Pentecost and the call of the Apostle Paul.

Now you'd think that after Pentecost the Lord would have looked down and said, well look, we've got 3,000 Jews and Jewish proselytes saved, now we're gonna go to the Gentiles. No. You see, your God is too fast.

He waited. He waited until it was the right time. Then he calls Paul and Barnabas and off they go, and of course you know they had a marvelous ministry.

Look at the last, at the end of chapter 14 of Acts. Paul and Barnabas are going home now. When they had arrived, verse 27, at Antioch and gathered the church together, they began to report all things that God had done with them and how he had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles.

And what happens in Acts 15, along come the legalists trying to close the door, saying a Gentile cannot become a Christian until first he becomes a Jew. Now we still have this cultic attitude about evangelism. I served on the board of the Evangelical Alliance Mission, which is one of the largest non-interdenominational missions in the world, and years ago we had a dear lady in China, this was long before China went down and sent the missionaries packing, but she was a dear wonderful woman, but every, she was in China, she had a school, she was teaching Chinese children, had a good ministry, but every year on Norwegian Independence Day she gave each of those Chinese children a Norwegian flag, and they would march around the compound singing the Norwegian National Anthem.

Now what does that have to do with winning people to Jesus? We don't send missionaries out to make Norwegians out of people, or Swedes, or anything else. We've got to rise above that. And here these Jewish people came along, these legalists, and they said, Paul and Barbra, you can't do this anymore.

Those Gentiles must become Jews before they can become Christians. It's Jesus plus Moses, or Jesus plus a certain translation of the Bible, or Jesus plus a certain kind of music, or Jesus, but it's not Jesus plus anything. We get cultic.

Now there's nothing wrong with, I'm a Swede, my mother was a Foresberg, and I grew up in a Swedish church. They thought the Bible was originally written in Swedish, and there, are you Swedish? How about that? It wasn't, was it? And they had certain cultic things that were okay, nothing wrong with having a Swedish coffee clutch and sitting singing Swedish hymns, that's wonderful. I wish I had learned the language, but you don't go to a Jewish person or a Polish person and say you got to become a Swede.

And so here they're trying to close the door. Acts 15 is one of the greatest chapters on how to solve church problems. It actually ended up in a compromise, and by the way, one of the best ways to solve problems is not win lose, but win win.

The Jews said, look, we're not going to require the law of Moses, but we are going to ask you Gentiles not to make nuisances out of yourselves and deliberately offend the Jews. That's good sense, that's good theology, so they compromised. Gentiles said, hey, we'll do exactly what you say.

But the door was not closed. Now I'm gonna let you do your own studying and work your way through the book of Acts and see how many times you find closed doors. Paul preaches and gives his message in the temple, they about killed them.

And when he used the word Gentiles, I'm gonna send you far hence unto the Gentiles, kill this man, and crash, they closed the temple doors. The book of Acts is the story of the conflict between open doors and closed minds, religious minds, zealous minds, people who thought they were right. We have this today, and the change agent has to be aware of that.

I like the way the book of Acts ends, Acts 28, when Paul is in Rome, he's not in prison, he has his own hired house, verse 30 of Acts 28, and was welcoming all who came to him. The open door, the open door. Do you welcome everybody comes to you? I don't, there's some people when they come, I don't, I let them come in, but I don't welcome them.

Paul welcomed them. Our church, I was once in Los Angeles for a conference and I thought I'm gonna go see the Church of the Open Door. Church of the Open Door in Los Angeles, where Dr. J. Vernon McGee was for many years, was a spinoff for Moody Church.

R.A. Torrey, when he pastored Moody Church, felt a burden and he went to Los Angeles, founded Biola, Bible Institute of Los Angeles, like Moody Bible Institute, and he founded Church of the Open Door. Guess what, the door was locked. And looking at the neighborhood, I wasn't surprised, the door was locked.

Well, technically the church door may be locked, but spiritually speaking, that door is always open. I have to welcome everybody Jesus welcomes. I read that in Romans 14.

If Jesus welcomes them, you better welcome them. If you don't welcome them, you don't know anything about the gospel. I'm preaching and I'm sorry.

Let's just summarize this whole thing of our God is a God of change and see what we've learned. We've learned, first of all, that God's not in a hurry. God's not in a hurry.

He's got it all planned. Young people are in a hurry, that's good, that's good. You want to get something done, give it to the young people, they'll get it done.

You want something thought through and planned, give it to the older folks. They can wait. It takes both.

My watch here, I've got a second hand, a minute hand, and an hour hand. The hour hand moves very slowly. The minute hand moves a bit faster.

Second hand keeps moving. It takes all three to find out what time it is. Church is this way.

There's some people who are second hands. But you know, if all you had was a second hand, you'd never know what time it was. Remember the guy that said his watch was right twice, it never worked, but it was right twice a day.

And some people are like that. Well, if all you have is a second hand, you don't have the time. If all you have is a minute hand, you don't have the time.

Gotta have that slow hour hand along with them. And you gotta find out what people are. Some people are the faster ones.

I recommend that you read the essays of Francis Bacon. Now this goes back hundreds of years. You go down to Barnes and Nobles and pick up a paperback copy of the essays of Francis Bacon.

He's got a marvelous little essay in there called On Youth and Age. That ought to be read by every church officer. He says, if you want to get something done, go to the younger people.

They're the doers. You want something thought through, planned wisely, go to the older people. The older need the young and the younger need the old.

I thought, well, when I read that, Paul said that a long time ago. Paul wrote that to Timothy and to Titus. So God is not in a hurry.

Don't be impulsive in your change making. You'll do more harm than good. Wait till the right time.

I can tell you what I used to do. It's no trade secret. Some of you have been doing it for years.

I'd drop an idea on the table and their gut level, knee-jerk reaction would be, no, that won't work. But we tried that once. So I said, nothing.

Okay, let's just think about it. Six months later, somebody else brings it up. You talk about a little bit more.

Six months later, somebody says, you know, I think we ought to do this. Then you oppose it. Say, no, are you sure it's going to work? And they'll argue your case for you.

And they'll vote on it. I'm not, I'm not joking. I have seen, how many of you have seen this happen? I have.

Sure, it works. But you got to know where you're going. Now let me tell you what we used to do.

When I went to the Moody Church, for example, my predecessor, a great man, George Sweeting, had rescued it from total disaster. They had not had a pastor for four years. The area was changing.

It was, it was tough. It was really tough. And God did a marvelous work through George.

When I came in, he said, there's lots to be done. I said, that's all right. You've laid the foundation, you know.

And I made a list. I'd been there for about a year. You go into a new church, the next week you don't change the hymn book and repaint the kitchen.

And that, you don't do that. You know that. I'm not telling you, I don't have to tell you that.

But I just began to make a list of things I would like to see happen at the church. You see, God brings different people in at different times to accomplish different things. Things that George couldn't accomplish, maybe I could.

So I made this list of priorities. Then I arranged it in order of what was the most important. If we do this, it'll help us do this and this.

And I turned it into a prayer list. And I just said, now Lord, I'd love to see this happen, if this is your will. And one by one, God began to stir people to get some things done.

And they got done. When we went, they were in debt. In fact, the first week I was there, they were gonna repossess my car.

I had a church car. They were letting me drive. They were gonna come and take it away from me.

There were financial problems. We said, now Lord, we would like to see this and this. And God did it.

I didn't do it. God did it. So make a list of things you'd like to see happen.

Turn it into a prayer list. And then watch God work. And watch for the right time.

God is not in a hurry. Secondly, structure must yield to ministry. Acts chapter 6, the Apostles were doing everything.

Preaching, teaching, praying, discipling, encouraging, ministering, serving tables. And they changed the structure to make room for ministry. Now, one of the biggest problems we face in ministry is that structure gets in the way of ministry.

The Constitution is sacred. I've noticed, brethren, in the New Testament, and you can correct me, I'm open to learning, I've noticed the church was very flexible. It wasn't rigid, it was flexible.

When Stephen Olford went to Calvary Baptist Church in New York City, it was on the condition that they take the church constitution, put it in the safe, and not consult it, at least for a year. Olford said, if we can't leave this church from the Bible, close it up. Now you have to have rules on how to elect the Sunday school superintendent.

That wasn't what he was talking about. He was saying, we're gonna get our guidance from the Bible. They had a revival on their hands.

Now, I don't recommend you put the Constitution in the safe, because they'll put you someplace, but keep it in your mind that you're gonna lead the church through this word. We have the great privilege of preaching the Bible. If you ever get tired of preaching and thinking, Lord, why can't I do something else? Just get off and realize what a great, the angels of God would change places with us, but they can't.

What a privilege we have, and I found some of my best change opportunities in the pulpit. Not talking about specifics, but just talking about God, about Jesus, and how God does things, and people begin to grow. I think you've noticed you have families.

Some family problems you grow out of. The children get older, more mature, and that problem is gone. We had four children, and the usual, you know, children are children.

I said, just wait, they'll grow out of it, and they did. Same thing is true in a church as you feed them. Churches grow by nutrition, not by addition.

Churches need nutrition, and as you feed them, they start to grow up, and they don't need that stuff anymore. Some churches are playpens where they're fussing over the toys, and they just need to grow up a little bit. God is not in a hurry.

Structure must yield to ministry. Thirdly, problems are opportunities. All depends on your outlook.

Problems are opportunities. Now, being Swedish by extraction, I'm a bit of a pessimist. The Swedish people are pessimistic people.

My mother was a pessimist, and my wife has to correct me every once in a while. I'm always sure that every trip is going to be disaster and everything, but I've had to learn in ministry that problems are opportunities. Behind every problem, I'm not preaching Norman Vincent Peale or the power of positive thinking, although he had some good points.

What I'm saying is, if we have faith and we preach Romans 8 28, we've got to believe that behind these problems, there are opportunities. For the tools of the early church were the Word of God and prayer. We will give ourselves continually to prayer and the Word of God.

Prayer and the Word of God. I wish every one of you, at some time, could pay a visit to the Brooklyn Tabernacle, where Jim Simbel is the pastor, and go to their Tuesday night prayer meeting, where 3,000 plus people gather together to pray. How many churches do you know that are known for prayer? If you had a real burden, you'd call that church and say pray.

Not many. Here you have this multiracial congregation. Sometimes one person is praying on the platform, sometimes all of us are praying together in harmony.

It's a beautiful experience. The Word of God and prayer. The fifth thing I'd say is this, we need change.

Change is good for us. We've got to teach our people that change is good for us. I'm not the same person I was yesterday.

My body's changing. I got several doctors who can tell you about that. You're not the same person you were 10 years ago.

The church is not the same as it was five years ago. We need change. I'll tell you why.

Change keeps us awake. Change, the challenge of change, keeps us awake, alert. It opens up these new opportunities.

It helps us to grow. And it reminds us that we're building on the changeless truth of the Word of God, and the changeless character of the God of the Word. And when your ministry gets comfortable, maybe God's going to move you someplace else.

When you find yourself saying, well I've got it all wired together now, I know exactly how to preach and how to... Watch out. Just watch out. Because comfort is the last thing you want in ministry.

Now, you don't deliberately go out and declare war on people. You don't have to. They'll do it.

Our God is a God of change. Now, I'm going to interject something here that's going to irritate somebody, but it's not... Monday's a good day for irritating. Monday's a good day.

When I was teaching DMIN classes for some seminaries, every once in a while some student would raise his hand and say, sir, shouldn't we get back to the churches of the New Testament? I'd say, all right, which one do you want? Corinth? Getting drunk at the church meals? Suing each other? Incest? Business meetings split four ways? You want to pastor the Corinth church? How about the Roman congregations? You know, they're fussing over what you can eat, what day is a holy day, what day is not a holy day. Gentiles and the Jews weren't getting along with each other. Galatians? Wow.

Paul wrote to the Galatians and said, you're biting and devouring one another. So it's probably a Baptist church. First Church Jerusalem was probably a Baptist church because Peter said, silver and gold have I none.

I mean, which one do you want? Philippi. Paul said, I beseech you Oria, I beseech sin to keep ye of one mind. And here two ladies couldn't get along.

It was so much of a problem, Paul had to write about it in a book about joy. Now which one do you want? But that's not the worst thing. Do you really know, do I really know what it was like to be an elder, a shepherd in a New Testament church? Now suppose, Pastor Michael, suppose we're going to take Sherwood and make it a New Testament church.

Number one, you'd have to go out and find a job because most of the elders and pastors of New Testament churches were bi-vocational. Paul himself, a missionary. They had not yet found Annie Armstrong and Lottie Moon, but Paul had to work to earn his money.

So first thing is, all the pastoral staff will resign and get jobs. Oh, maybe we shouldn't go back to the New Testament church. Secondly, nobody is given a ministry until first it's been exercised and proved that they have the gift and they can be trusted.

How many times have you sat on a nomination committee and heard somebody say, well let's ask, let's ask so-and-so to take that. He's not been coming to church much and maybe it'll bring him back. You ever heard that? I've heard it.

Not in the New Testament church. You proved yourself that you had the gift and the calling and you could do the job. Thirdly, every believer in that church was a minister.

There were leaders, but they were all ministers. They were doing something. Ministry in the New Testament church was a function, not a position.

It was what you were doing, not the title you were carrying. And leadership was plural. They sat down, they prayed, they discussed, they made decisions.

And the most important thing about their ministers was character. I often get phone calls from chairmen of pulpit committees. They think I'm running an employment agency or something.

And they say, you know, we're church needs a new pastor, maybe you can recommend somebody. I said, well what kind of a man do you need? And they immediately began to describe a combination of the Chuck Swindoll and whoever else. I said, no, no, no.

What does the man have to do? What's the most important thing that man has to do when he comes? Is it to activate the missionary program? Is it to stimulate evangelism? Is it to organize the church so it's running better? What are you looking for? Long silence. Because they don't know. They don't know.

But that wasn't true in the early church. They knew what they were supposed to do and they would get together and say, now we need somebody to do this. We're going to appoint these people to do this or to do that.

The leaders in the church were both local and outside. Nobody ever said, pastor, what were you doing over there? Because it was a need to be met over there. Pastor, you are not just a gift to a church, you are a gift to the church.

And more of us need to have ministry to help others. If you've solved a certain problem in your church and you've got God's anointing, share it with somebody else. That's what they did in the New Testament Church.

The main job of the leaders in the New Testament Church was equipping, enlisting, encouraging. That's what they did. They enlisted people, they equipped them, they encouraged them.

They threw them in the water and said, swim. That's what happened to me. I got up in church and said, I've been saved, I think God's called me in the ministry and pray for me.

One of the men came over after the service and said, there's a street meeting Saturday night, I'll see you there. You can't have street meetings now, they'll arrest you. So I was standing on the street corner telling people about being saved.

Then they came and said, we have a meeting at the rescue mission, would you like to do some preaching? Can't do that anymore. Do you have rescue missions around where you can go and preach? We can't, they have a different system. Now, I don't know how they do it.

So I get up to preach and half of them are drunk, the other half are asleep. That's okay, you're learning how to preach, you can't do this by yourself. Enlisting, equipping, encouraging.

Now let's move on to a proposition number two, God's church is built for change. God's church is built for change. There are three chapters, well actually five chapters, but there are three basic chapters in the New Testament that deal with the church as a body.

Now by calling the church a body, we are using an image that is very, very vivid. It's a living thing, it's a growing thing, it's a changing thing, and it is a useful thing. The local church as a body has the life of God in it, and because it has the life of God, it can do the work of God.

And as I said before, this body grows from nutrition, the Word of God, not just from the addition of people. Romans chapter 12, let's just turn there, it's an easy chapter to look at because the others are a little longer. Romans chapter 12, we have the church as a body.

It starts with our dedicating our own bodies to the Lord. Now in each of these chapters, the other chapters, you have Romans 12, 1st Corinthians 12 and 13 and 14, and Ephesians 4. These are the body chapters of the Bible. And in each of these chapters, brethren, the same three matters are emphasized.

Unity, diversity, maturity. Unity, diversity, maturity. Romans 12, verses 4 and 5. For just as we have many members in one body, and all the members do not have the same function, so we who are many are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.

So here we have unity. There is one body. The whole body is not a tongue.

The whole body is not a hand or a foot. So you move from unity to diversity, since we have gifts that differ. Now this is not profound, but it's basic.

You cannot have unity without diversity. If you don't have diversity, you have uniformity. In many churches, it's uniformity.

They don't encourage diversity. When you read church history, you find out that the blessing, the pioneer work, the achievement came from the mavericks. Now we need the monitors, we need the guys who monitor conformity, we need the bean counters who can keep everything basic and so forth, but IBM, General Motors, is not going to go anyplace unless they have some mavericks who are different.

I just think of church history. Martin Luther was a maverick. Who goes around pounding nails on doors and challenging people to argue, you know? Hudson Taylor was a maverick, founder of the China Inland Mission.

When people found out that Hudson Taylor had laid aside his proper British garments and put on Chinese clothes and allowed his hair to grow so he could have a little cue back there, a little pigtail back there, they were offended. Amy Carmichael, I don't know if you've ever read any of Amy Carmichael's books, she went to India to be a missionary, told the board to jump in the lake, stayed there, never came home. Started her own ministry to rescue little girls from temple prostitution.

That's not why we sent you there. That's all right, that's what I'm gonna do. Jesus was a maverick.

Why heal somebody on the Sabbath day? Wait a day and you'll stay out of trouble. No, I want to get in trouble. So unless you have diversity, you've got uniformity, and uniformity kills a church.

Now I'm not saying we should abandon it and become chaotic. No, no, no, no, no. Write this down.

It was said not by me but by Alfred North Whitehead who was not a Christian but he was a brilliant philosopher. He said there must be order in the midst of change and change in the midst of order. Order without change is stagnation.

Change without order is chaos. There must be order in the midst of change and change in the midst of order. Order without change is stagnation.

Change without order is chaos. So there has to be diversity. Thank God we're not all alike.

Let's just praise God for that. I'll tell you why. God so made you and so made me that there are places he has planned where we fit.

Charles Spurgeon wouldn't fit that place. D.L. Moody wouldn't fit that place. A.T. Robertson wouldn't fit that place, but you would.

Don't ever minimize your gifts. Don't ever minimize the way you're put together because God put you together the way he did and gave you the gifts he's given you because he's got jobs for you to do that nobody else can do. I followed Theodore Epp who founded the Back to the Bible broadcast which is international and if you met Mr. Epp he's in glory now, but if you'd met him you'd wonder, how did this happen? In fact, another Bible teacher said that to him.

His good friend M.R. D. Hahn said, I look at the work you're doing, I see no connection between you and this work. Mr. Epp said, I hope it always stays that way. God takes the weak things of this world and confounds the mighty.

So there's, first there's unity. We are one body, regardless of color, regardless of size, regardless of education, economics, we are one body. But there is a diversity in this body because God has made people differently and God has given different people different gifts.

Let's look at, and he mentions these gifts now in Romans 12, he talks about service and teaching and so forth and so on, but then in verse 9 he says, let love be without hypocrisy. What is it that keeps diversity from destroying unity? Maturity. As people mature in the Lord, they're not jealous of other people's gifts, nor are they proud of their own gifts.

They aren't envious of somebody's outreach or blessing, they just thank God. When we get to heaven, brethren, we're gonna find out that some of the people we didn't think a lot of in our churches were the most important people in the church. We just don't know it now.

Look at Ephesians chapter 4. You know 1st Corinthians 12, you have the same thing. You have unity, you have diversity, and in chapter 13, love, you have maturity. But Ephesians, Ephesians chapter 4, verses 1 through 6, you have unity, being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace.

It doesn't say you manufacture unity. If you manufacture unity, you don't have unity, you have uniformity. I'm not an athlete, but I know this much about a team.

If everybody wants to make the scores, nobody's gonna make them. We had some blessing yesterday here at the service, and I was on the platform, pastor was on the platform, the choir was on the platform, but behind the scenes, there were people exercising their gifts, and we couldn't have done one thing without them. Ephesians 4, unity, verses 1 through 6. Then diversity, verse 7, but to each one of us, grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift.

And so from 7 to 11, he talks about diversity, for what purpose? For the equipping of the saints, verse 12, to do the work of the service of the ministry to the building up of the body of Christ. Then he talks in verses 12 through 16 about maturity. You see, unity, we have the gift of the Spirit, diversity, we have the gifts, plural, of the Spirit, maturity, we have the graces of the Spirit.

That was the problem in Corinth. In Corinth, they did not have the graces of the Spirit, and they were using their gifts as weapons to fight with instead of as tools to build with. Are you helping people find their gifts? That's a great joy.

I'm working with some young men now who have a gift, I think, for preaching. And so I work with them, and we study together, and I hope I can get some places for them to preach. The body grows and matures in an atmosphere of love.

So that as you and I pastor a church, we have to keep in mind, number one, the unity is there. It doesn't say you manufacture it, the unity is there. Maintain it, preserve it, protect it.

The unity is there. The most dangerous person in the local church is not necessarily the fellow who got drunk, and his name was in the paper, or the guy who committed adultery. Those are bad things, I'm sorry.

The most dangerous person could be the one who breaks the unity. So the unity is there. Now cultivate the diversity.

Let the mavericks show up. I've served on three different mission boards, and I want you to know the work is being done out there by the mavericks. They just dare to do anything, because that's what God's called them to do.

And behind them are people with other gifts who are making sure things are going on. I said before, and I want to repeat it now, that the early church was flexible. We've lost that flexibility.

We are living in an age when things are happening so fast, that if we have to call four committee meetings and six congregational meetings to do something, it'll never get done. Remember Spurgeon's definition of a committee? A committee is a group of people who individually can do nothing and collectively decide nothing can be done. And I've been in churches where the pastor can't move a chair without some committee giving him permission, and that's wrong.

The leadership of the church is like the leadership of an army. Now an army is just like a body. There's unity.

It's one army following one general for one country. There is diversity. One guy drives a Jeep, one guy digs a well, one guy lays a telephone wire.

There's diversity and there's maturity. These are grown, these are not Boy Scouts out camping. These are mature people who know how to work together.

So here's an army. Now if the general had to call the president and call Congress together to make the city, you'd never win the war, but we're doing that with the church. Things are happening so fast in the third world.

They do not have enough pastors for the churches that are starting. Praise God, but we need to help them. And I hope that situation in your church will someday become such that things are happening.

So what are we going to do? Well God's got somebody to step in there and take care of that. But you're changing things. Did you ever have to move a Sunday school class from one room to another? Ever have to do that? I know of one church in Cincinnati, Ohio that had to move a class and the class sued the church.

The class sued the church. This is our role. One of the churches I pastored, we moved people around maybe every three, four years to make sure they could not say this is our room.

So we're so unlike what the Bible says we should be. We're not cultivating diversity. Are there people in your church who know how to take pictures, paint posters? I can walk into a building and after a while figure out whether women were on the committee or not just by the way it's designed.

And that's the excitement of ministry. It's not uniformity. It is unity with diversity held together by maturity.

And if some little diapered baby comes up to you and says you're making too many changes, say well there are two places maybe God wants you. There's other churches that nothing's happening. You might be happy there.

Or there's a morgue up the street. Now let me tell you about a friend of mine. We were talking about this, Michael and I. A friend of mine pastored a very, very large church in a very big city, but before he was there he was at a smaller church.

And it was a lady in the church, could just as well have been a man, but a lady in the church who was the first one out every Sunday morning. He'd be at the, Bob would be at the front door to thank people for being there and find out where, how everybody is. And she'd be the first one up and she'd stand there and tell him everything that was wrong with the church.

That it was too hot or too cold or too loud or too soft or something. And while she did it, her body language was at work. She was picking things off of his suit.

So she's giving him the rundown and taking this, well he got tired of it. He got tired of it. So one Sunday morning he got a spool of thread, white thread, put it in his pocket, ran it up, and let it hang out.

Let it hang out. And sure enough she showed up, first thing, and she starts, she got a hold, she starts pulling. Of course there's people standing around and the more she pulled, the more they laughed.

I said, what happened? Said, she left and went and joined the Presbyterian Church. Well I don't know if I'd go quite that far, but maybe she learned her lesson. You know the Bible says as much as lies in you, what? What? Yeah, be at peace with all people.

Sometimes you can't. Sometimes God is at work. Suppose Paul and Peter and James had not confronted those legalists in Acts 15.

Where would the church be today? Sometimes, man, we have to be courageous. Make some enemies. I'm sorry, I've had to do it.

I've been attacked physically by a church officer. That's okay. Within one week, a problem that had been in that church for 25 years was solved.

That's okay. My Lord was crucified for me. I don't mind being pushed around by church officers.

As much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all. But sometimes you can't. And there are some people who are sanctified obstructionists.

And you pray for them, and you're patient with them, and you love them, and you return good for evil. But there comes a time occasionally when you simply have to be the leader and say, I'm sorry, we don't allow that around here. I talked about the Brooklyn Tabernacle a few minutes ago.

Jim Simba is one of my good friends. And when they take in new members, when they induct or welcome the new members, that's what he says. He'll say, now folks, we'll praise God you're born again.

We praise God you've given testimony of this in your baptism. We praise God for this. You get in trouble with the police.

He's got a multicultural Brooklyn crowd. You get in trouble with the police, we're there to help you. You get in trouble at home, we're there to help you.

Because if I find you walking around this church criticizing anything, you're in trouble. And you know what? They love him for it. Now, maybe you can't say that.

I couldn't have said that at the Moody Church. I wouldn't have wanted to. It fits his church.

But we have to sometimes just be leaders and say, man, sir, I'm sorry, we can't have that here. This is not the way Christians act. And I think God will bless us.

We have to be flexible. And we have to be courageous. We're leading God's army.

We're building the body. We're building the temple. And it's going to be great.

God's going to do wonderful things. Now, in a smaller church, it's harder because they know what's going on. People could have committed suicide at Moody Church.

They wouldn't have known it. It was a different kind of a church. You have to know your people.

You have to know your church. You have to know God's will. But don't be timid.

Please don't be timid. Don't cow down. Don't bow down to every critic that comes along.

Just listen, say, thank you, God bless you, God bless you. And go on doing the work of God. Before long, the Lord brings the people in who love you, who stand with you, who pray for you, who fight for you.

And then things begin to happen, whether the church is large or small. I'll quit on that note to remind you that there are no big churches. There are no big preachers.

There are no small churches. There are no small preachers. We're all servants of God, wherever he's put us.

And every church is big in God's sight. And every servant is important in God's sight. Now, when we come back, I want to talk to you about how the church and the church change agent kind of work together.

And we're going to have some questions and answers and things. Have you a word for this assembly, brother?