Church Culture: Vision Sets Direction, Culture Charts the Course

Hello everyone, and welcome to this General Conference Zoom-recorded seminar. It's an honor to have this opportunity to speak to you for a few minutes — 20 minutes, to be exact. So obviously, no matter what the subject, we will only be able to offer a cursory review. But I want to talk to you for a few minutes about creating an authentic New Testament church culture. And I certainly don't have the market, or the corner, or the monopoly on this subject. It's something I have done a lot of thinking about, and my purpose today is, if nothing more, than to provoke thought. And I know in this audience today perhaps there are pastors, church leaders, faithful saints of God, ministry leaders, and so I just want to give us some things to think about today, and how we are doing the business of the church.

I want to ask you a question: what did Jesus have in mind when He talked about the church? He said, "On this rock I will build my church." So He's the founder, the author of the church, and surely He has a right to weigh in on what He wants that church to look like, what He wants it to function like. And we're thinking, for our purposes in this session, about a local church. So what did Jesus have in mind for your church when He talked about the church? And I've sort of been asking myself the question: if Jesus was the pastor of a local 21st-century church, what would that look like? So perhaps this is a basis for our discussion the next few minutes.

Would Jesus — you know, what would be the name of His church? You know, "The Church of Me"? You know, I don't know. I don't know what the name of His church would be, and I don't think it matters so much. But when Jesus talked about His church, did He have an address in mind? Did He have a campus in mind? Did He have a certain location in mind when He talked about the church? You know, it's interesting: the word "church" is used, I believe, 112 times in the Scriptures, but only twice does it specifically reference a location, a place, ostensibly where the church gathered. So Jesus, when He talked about the church — when the New Testament writers talked about the church — I don't think they had a campus in mind. I don't think they had a building in mind. But I think they had function in mind. They had activity in mind.

Another thought I've been asking myself, another question, is: if Jesus was a pastor of a church today, would He have departments? Would His church be a program-based church — you know, youth department, children's department, music department, outreach department? I mean, think about that. Jesus is the one that said, "Go make disciples of all nations." Did He just give that to the outreach department of His local church? You know, I'm not sure Jesus would have had an outreach department in His church. I think it would be His expectation — I know it would — that every person in that congregation would be on mission.

Now, I know we all have ministry. We all have ministries. You've done it all, I've done it all, we're doing it all — you know, greeters, ushers, praise team, worship band, folding bulletins, you know, visiting people in the hospital, prayer team — all the, you know, we could talk about a hundred ministries. And ministry is important. But I think sometimes we give ourselves a pass as we hide behind ministry for not engaging the mission. And I have to tell you that not every ministry — at least not every ministry I've observed in a local church — has anything to do with the mission. The mission is to go make disciples, and that is the mission of the church, and no one gets a pass. No one can say, "Well, you know, I have an operatic tenor voice, and you know, I don't know how to make disciples, so I'm going to sing in the choir." Well, we're glad you're in the choir, but that's not the mission. That's your ministry.

And so we're thinking about the church and how we're doing the business of the church. So the church is not an address. It's not a location. It's not a three-times-a-week — you know, we talk about the church so unlike the first-century church. You know, we say, "Well, yeah, I go to church." "Yeah, we go to church three times a week." "Yeah, he's been in the church for 20 years," or "She doesn't come to church anymore," or "You know what, you know, where is your church?" Can I tell you something? If you would have walked up to a first-century believer and asked them where they went to church, they're going to think you're weird. They're not going to have any idea what you're talking about. "What do you mean, where's my church?" Because they didn't see the church as an address, a campus, a location. They saw the church as a functioning, moving, breathing organism, not an institution.

And I tell our church all the time: it's more important what happens Monday through Saturday than what happens on Sunday, because if we're doing church, and if we're being church, Monday through Saturday, we certainly will be the church on Sunday. The problem with too many churches is 95% of all the ministry that happens for their congregation happens behind four walls, or on a campus, where there's an address that we call "the church." And this so limits the Apostolic church in its function, and for its purpose. The first-century believer didn't have a dedicated worship center to go to. In fact, the first dedicated Christian church wasn't built until well into the third century. So we're talking 230 years after the church was born. And it's remarkable that by the end of the second century, that first-century church — who did not do 95% of their ministry behind four walls, but did ministry and church everywhere they went — it's estimated that some 20% of the world's population claimed to be Christian. And in the 21st century we have 34 million Oneness Pentecostals in the world today. We thank God for that, but that's only .03% of the population. So maybe we need to rethink how we're doing church.

And what sort of a culture do we want in our church? So let me just say a couple of things about culture and vision. Vision sets the direction, but it's the culture of your church that will take you there. I'm going to say that again: vision sets direction, but it's culture that takes you there. In other words, you can have an amazing vision and be all excited — and I know us pastors, we like to preach these vision-casting messages in January, and we think, you know, that one sermon is going to change the world. At least I always do. But what happens by, you know, St. Patrick's Day? What happens by Groundhog Day? You know, vision leaks, and culture will eat vision for breakfast every day. Because, you know, vision's exciting, but if the culture doesn't support the vision, then the vision will not be sustainable.

And so we're sort of talking here about, you know, what do we want the culture of our local church to look like? One of the things I have to talk about right here is leadership. I have to talk about pastors, of which I am one. I've been privileged to be a lead pastor now for 37 years. And, you know, pastors have to decide — what, you know, if we don't decide as pastors what we want our culture of our church to look like, believe me, we will have a culture. And every church does have a culture, whether we like it or not. Whether we like the culture or not, there's one there. And so we are the dominant influencers of our congregation, and we have to decide what sort of a culture we want. And then we have to bring our leadership team along with us, and place expectations, and change lifestyles, and change our calendars, and change our vocabulary, and how we talk about the church.

One of the things that challenges the 21st-century church, in light of the first century, is we have to really think about how they did church in the first century, and how are we doing church now. I have to tell you that after the church was born — I'm going to say sometime in the late 3rd century, the early 4th century — a very strong transition began to unfold, and that is what I would call the clergy-laity gap. And I've talked a lot about this, and I've even written about it. But this is something that we have to think about, because the historic church created this gap. Let me put it in our terms: between the pulpit and the pew. Essentially, all the power, all the education, all the ministry, all the authority was on the platform. And when the platform went through their liturgical motions — their authority, their power, their liturgical observations — to a great extent the laity would come and sit and listen and nod their head in approval, and/or, you know, or slumber. And that's sort of how they thought about church. But in the Bible it was not so. In the New Testament there is no big gap between what we would call the fivefold ministry and saints of God. And if there's a pastor that, you know, has another thought about that, I can tell you that it may not be from the Scripture.

You know, so we have to decide: do we want a scriptural New Testament church, modeled from the first century, or do we want a historic orthodox church? I personally don't believe that all the power's on the platform. In fact, Jesus said that all believers would cast out devils, and believers would lay hands on the sick, and believers would see them recover. And so, as pastors and church leaders, we have to decide: what are we willing to allow the members of our church to do? What are we willing to empower them to do?

You know, Ephesians chapter 4 says that the purpose of the fivefold ministry is to equip the saints for the work of the ministry. And so, in Acts chapter 6, the apostles made a decision to decentralize their authority. That doesn't mean they gave up their authority; it means they shared it. They made a decision to empower and ordain seven men to do ministry. But they fasted, and they prayed, and they laid hands on them. And this was a defining moment for the first-century church. Are the apostles going to do all the serving? Are the apostles going to wait on everybody? Or are they going to release people to do the work of the ministry? And they did. And we know that these seven men were destined to greater things than just serving widows in the daily administration. In fact, Stephen and Philip were powerful; they did miracles right in the streets. Philip was a church planter in Samaria, and there was great joy in the city. He baptized. Stephen, of course, was the first martyr.

And so every pastor has to decide if he is going to, you know, control everything, lock down everything, you know, itemize everything, micromanage everything — or is he going to release people, and believe in people, to do the work of the ministry?

So, in the last five minutes or so that I have, I want to direct your attention to the way they did business in the first century. And this is, you know, right out of the Scriptures. The Bible says, when Peter wrote his epistle, he said to the saints, "You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation." He's not writing this to the fivefold ministry. He's writing it to saints in my church and your church. You're a royal priesthood. God wanted the Old Testament church to be a royal priesthood. It never happened. He never lost that vision in the New Testament. When we think of the people in our congregations as a royal priesthood — when we think about the Old Testament priests and New Testament leaders — it's amazing the change that comes over our mind, that, you know, okay, we don't have this, you know — the clergy are the educated, the informed, and the laity — one derivative of the word "laity" actually means "crippled limb." Laity means unlearned and ignorant. And I don't know about you, but I am not serving a congregation full of ignorant, unlearned crippled limbs. People are full of the Holy Ghost, and are educated, and have great talent and ability, and are submitted to spiritual authority. This is not a question of whether or not we have authority in the church or not. But this is the question: is, who will we allow to do the ministry?

There's a reason the average-size church in America is 75: because one pastor can do everything at 75. And we have to decentralize the church, just like the apostles did. And it's interesting: in Acts 6, after they decentralized the church, the Bible says the number of disciples was multiplied greatly. And whenever we empower saints to do ministry, there will be a manifestation of growth and power in the church.

So they had the New Testament priesthood of believers. Acts chapter 4 — number two: all believers preached. Let that sink in. Acts 4: "And they that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the word." This isn't the apostles — they remained in Jerusalem. The believers, at the persecution, were scattered abroad, and they were preaching. The words "preach" and "gospel" are the same root word in the Greek. And so they were basically preaching, or sharing the gospel, everywhere they went. What would happen in the United Pentecostal Church if we had more than just 11,000 licensed ministers — and we thank God for that — but what if all believers went everywhere preaching the word, on mission? That's the second thing.

The third thing is that all believers were disciples, and by definition, all disciples make disciples. And if you want to study that more, you can pick up a copy of the book I wrote four years ago called "Follow to Lead: The Journey of a Disciple Maker." It's at pentecostalpublishing.com. But believers made disciples, disciples made disciples.

And there's one other interesting thing in the New Testament church: believers baptized. You will be very hard-pressed to attempt to prove that only the apostles baptized, or perhaps only the seventy baptized. There really is no Scripture for that. Now, there is some writing by some of the early church fathers, but what else are they going to say? They're in a clergy-laity motif — well, by the fourth century. But in the book of Acts, believers baptized. Believers laid hands on the sick. Believers cast out devils. Believers made disciples. Believers waited on tables. And believers baptized. What would happen in our churches if we would release everyone to go make disciples, to baptize, to preach, to teach? I'll tell you what would happen: our churches would explode with growth, when we go back to the model of the first-century church.

An authentic culture of the first-century church is the priesthood of the New Testament believers. It's been a joy to share some of these things with you today. I've probably raised more questions than I've answered. You certainly are welcome to email me at [email protected] — sgleason at tlckcmo.com. The Lord bless you, and thank you for giving me these few minutes today.