Seminary Commencement Address

Delivered 12/11/10 at Houston Graduate School of Theology

Nicodemus was not seeking for truth when he sneaked over, unnoticed, to interrogate Jesus at night. He was looking for some religious heresy he could use to indict him.

Jesus had become not only a nuisance to the religious establishment but also a threat. His healings and miracles sidetracked those who attended temple services. That was offensive to the Pharisees, but he crossed over the limits when he overturned the moneychangers in the temple. Now He was interfering with their cash flow! This newcomer had to be stopped!

Jesus knew full well what the man’s motives were. He must have been amused by the false flattery in Nicodemus’ trick question: “Jesus, how do you do these miraculous signs?” One blasphemous comment was all he needed to have Jesus arrested.

Jesus’ answers competed with Nicodemus’ religious system. His mental prison cells limited what he could see. So, Jesus talked about his eyes: “Nicodemus, unless you are born again you cannot even see the Kingdom of Heaven.” By that comment, Jesus defined “upstairs” and “downstairs,” revealing his blindside.

Don’t you imagine Jesus was chuckling to himself as the Pharisee gave him a blank look? His first words were not blasphemous; they were ridiculous!

Nicodemus was a “downstairs” man. He was like many professionals in traditional religion today. He had been fully trained in a religious system but had no comprehension of how his own life should duplicate in the lives of others. Totally missing was any comprehension that he should serve God by equipping others in the “upstairs” supernatural Kingdom.

Missing was any awareness that as a religious leader he should equip all Temple worshippers to serve as Priests. He was a religious professional. He was a “downstairs” man. He saw the priesthood as the exclusive property of the Pharisees, not for the common people.

Jesus had just opened his awareness that he lived in a downstairs world and even as a worshipper of God he knew absolutely nothing about the upstairs world where God ruled over an invisible Kingdom.

To make the point about the invisibility of the Upstairs environment, Jesus adds another conundrum: “You see the trees bend and you know there is an unseen wind causing this. In the Upstairs Kingdom, there is also an observable Power, the activity of God’s Spirit. If you had upstairs eyes, you would see the results of the Spirit’s activity. It’s far more powerful than the invisible wind you observe.”

Still trying to gain evidence, Nicodemus says, “How can these things be?” In his mind, he is still thinking, “I have to trap him. Let’s see how he explains this rubbish.”

Jesus replies, “You are a learned scholar and you still do not understand these things? I tell you downstairs things and you do not understand them; how can you understand if I tell you heavenly things?”

One more time Jesus compares Upstairs with Downstairs. He now reminds the Pharisee of how Moses placed the serpent on the pole and people who looked on it lived. He likened it with His own Upstairs death on the cross.

Thus the story ends. Nicodemus retains nothing blasphemous to take away. What we know about him is his upstairs eyes began to see. Later, he became a follower of Jesus and shared in his burial rites.

One of the greatest dangers facing the work of the Eternal Christ in today’s world is that we have unwittingly created a downstairs religious system that seldom experiences the centrality of Christ and the purpose of His present ministry to proclaim the Kingdom of God. Ritual, tradition, and litanies have created Downstairs religious systems that blind both clergy and laity to the Upstairs world of the reign of Christ.

A part of our downstairs system is the danger that a seminary diploma can become a status symbol to decorate a wall in a pastor’s office. It is often a discipline completed with one’s personal career in mind, a stepping-stone to opportunities to pastor a larger congregation, where a doctor’s degree is a prerequisite to candidate for the office. Those that secure it for that purpose compose the career-minded clergy of our present age. The danger is mixing a love for God and a desire to attain significance and power among men. A pastor’s career focus can steer the ministry rather than the Upstairs calling to equip the priesthood for the Kingdom work.

This is the difference between an “Upstairs” pastor and a “Downstairs” pastor. One seeks an office, a career, status, possibly power. The other serves in the Kingdom of God and seeks to equip others. Scripture explains that Christ has given to the church the apostle, prophet, pastor, teacher and evangelist for the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry. A seminary degree should be cherished not for a paper hanging on the wall, but for the skills that make us more valuable in equipping the saints.

Downstairs pastors create downstairs congregations who assemble to get their needs met. The sermons exhort the membership to develop their best talents to gain happiness and success. The promotion of consumerism in American church life has separated us from most of the rest of the people of God in other nations, but its deadly effect has leaked into every third world country where prosperity is taught by preachers with pointed-toe shoes exhorting the barefoot congregants. Downstairs religious systems are propagated by pastors who are building castles instead of the Kingdom.

I recently had a man serving in North Africa fly in to attend one of my seminars, required to earn his D.Min. degree. I asked him how he lives and works in one of the most restricted Islamic nations on earth. He said, “I have been there for 12 years. I have yet to see my first true convert.” I asked, “How does that make you feel?” He answered by referring to a scripture we often overlook in 2 Corinthians 10. Let me quote the passage:

“For we would not dare to classify ourselves or compare ourselves with some of those who recommend themselves. But when they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are without understanding. But we will not boast beyond certain limits, but we will confine our boasting according to the limits of the field to which God has appointed us, that reaches even as far as you. For we were not overextending ourselves, as though we did not reach as far as you, because we were the first to reach as far as you with the gospel about Christ. Nor do we boast beyond certain limits in the work done by others, but we hope that as your faith continues to grow, our work may be greatly expanded among you according to our limits…”

He said, “I never compare my ministry with those seeing great harvests in other fields of Africa. I went to the field my Lord assigned to me. I evaluate my ministry by how faithful I have been serving in my field. Sowing Christ’s seeds of redeeming love is crucial if there is ever to be a future harvest. God sent me to sow, not to reap. I am at peace with my Master. I do not have to be successful, but I must be faithful.”

Mother Theresa said, “Many people mistake our work for our vocation. Our vocation is the love of Jesus.”

The flaw in the Downstairs pastor’s value system is the same as the flaw in Nicodemus: not seeing the Kingdom as the focal point of all we do and not focusing on equipping the saints, not recognizing our priority is to equip all the priests of God and to treat no person as a church member to be used to keep an organization operating. God gives each of us “limits” for our Kingdom assignment and it has nothing to do with what others are doing. Looking over our shoulders to compare our success with that of others guarantees a sure burnout for a Christian worker.

In my book Christ’s Basic Bodies, I refer to the dropouts of American pastors being at an all-time high. Sunscape Re-Creation Ministries, serving ministers in crisis, reports that in all denominations, 1,600 ministers per month are terminated or forced to resign. That represents 19,200 clergymen a year! Comparing ourselves with ourselves produces this dropout.

The stairway to be an Upstairs servant must take us to the cross, to die daily. I still recall a pastor who boasted to me in 1977 that he had a two year strategy he had developed to grow a church. He unpacked it every time he went to a new pastorate. His career was very much programmed like a corporate executive, moving locations with each promotion. He said, “I do not really have a pastor’s heart like you do, Ralph, but I am an expert in churchianity.”

I did not connect Revelation 1 through 3 with Revelation 4 for many years. In the first segment the seven churches are being evaluated by Christ in their midst. Most are warned about how far they have strayed from the Upstairs objectives. The “white stone” refers to the Bema judgment where Christian workers face the shekinah of God in 1 Corinthians 3. The focus was not on the eyes, as with Nicodemus. Instead, it was on the ear: “Anyone with ears to hear must listen to the Spirit and understand what He is saying to the churches.”

Then we see the 24 elders before a throne in chapter 4. But this is not a throne of grace: it is a throne with flashes of lightning and the roll of thunder. It is the Bema. The elders will be separated into the downstairs group who produced wood, hay and stubble, to be consumed by the shekinah fire, and the upstairs ones who produced gold, silver and precious stones. I recall the motto that hung on my parent’s breakfast room as I grew up: “Only one life, t’will soon be past; only what’s done for Christ will last.”

I shall never forget sitting in the coffee shop during my seminary years with our New Testament professor and some fellow students. The white haired professor said, “Men, if your church turned into a locomotive, what part of it would you desire to be?” One of the men smiled and said, “I would want to be the whistle that blows loudly to let everyone know the train is coming.” Another mused and said, “I would like to be the throttle to make it move faster.” Finally, the professor was asked, “What about you?” Softly he said, “I would like to be the coal that must be consumed to make it operate.”

Before you frame your diploma, consider what it means to you. If it witnesses to your qualifications to be a more effective equipper, hang it in your office to remind viewers it made you a better servant. Otherwise, stick it in a file and make copies to send to pulpit committees as you seek larger churches.

Prayer: “Lord, make us saltier that others may become thirstier. Amen.”

Spirit, Soul, Body

Seldom have I found such a clear word as what I am posting below. It is written by Mary Ellen Reber, a former student of mine when I taught at Columbia Seminary. She and Chris have spent their entire ministry in Bangladesh, slugging it out among the hardest to harvest:

Christ abides in your human spirit if you are His property. She understands this:

"People of Antioch, I call your spirit to attention. Listen to the Word of God for you - "Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and Jesus our Lord. His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and godliness. Through these He has given us His very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith, goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ" (2 Peter 1:2-8).

"People of Antioch, your Father God designed your spirit, your soul, and your body, and He ordains and oversees their alignment. I call your spirit to the highest position in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

"I speak to your slumbering spirit to wake up, and I say to you that it is safe, it is time, it is right for your spirit to look outward and upward into the face of your Father God. Holy Spirit, come and speak to Your child's spirit the truth that he is accepted, affirmed, capable, and beloved in You, that he has no lack that detracts from who he is in Your eyes. Nothing can separate him from Your love. Holy Spirit speak to his spirit in a language he can understand and receive. Your promise to him is that he has grace and peace in abundance in You, that as he pursues Jesus and knows Him more deeply, Your divine power gives him everything he needs for living a godly life and receiving his own glory and goodness.

"I call your soul to attention, People of Antioch, saying "Come under God's order. Soul, be healed, restored and whole, submitted to your spirit. Be free from the spirit of fear that would paralyze you - fear of the future, fear of failure, fear of meaninglessness, fear of man, etc." I speak to your soul that it will discern the voice of your Father and your Savior, who will never leave you, and receive His love that casts out fear. Father, cut through the assaults of lies, soulishness, performance, religious spirits, all contrary words spoken or contrary prayers prayed, and everything that keeps your child's soul from being joyful, at peace, effective, and productive.

"People of Antioch, I call your body to attention and command it to come into alignment with your spirit. Hormones, metabolic systems, immune system, brain chemistry and every physical system listen to your Creator God who said, "This is very good," and gave His blessing when He made you. In Jesus' name, come into divine order and alignment with the awesome and wonderful way that God intend you to function - whole, healthy, strong, resilient, and alert. Come into alignment with the ordained order where God has placed you, because He determined the appointed times set for you and the exact places where you should live. Come into alignment with your Father God, the Creator of all things. His covenant of life, peace, and joy precedes and stands above all devices and snares of the enemy. I bless you, people of Antioch, with full participation with the divine nature Father placed in you, His covenants and His blessings, by His great and precious promises that He ratified in Jesus' death on the cross and sealed with the Holy Spirit. I bless you in the name of Jesus of Nazareth."

5,000 Cell Groups Set Off Fireworks Simultaneously!

Last night I stood with the TV camera crew and Pastor Abe Huber on the rooftop of a tall building in Santarem, Brazil. The PAZ congregation has just passed the 50,000 count of cell group members. The PAZ IGREJA owns a TV station, used to direct all 5,000 cells to set off fireworks at the same identical moment across the city.

Wow! All around us to the horizon there were fireworks set off by each cell group. It went on for a full five minutes: crackles and flashes of light everywhere we looked, 360 degrees from that rooftop's view.

Santarem's 250,000 population experiences this public proclamation via fireworks twice each year as the cells give notice of their presence in all of the city's neighborhoods.

In the distance, all lit up, was the huge soccer stadium we will fill Friday and Saturday nights for a gathering of the cells. The seating is a bit smaller than the 60,000 expected, so screens are being set up to project the events to the overflow crowd! I will be preaching on "Psychikos, Sarkikos, Pneumatikos" on Saturday night ("Rejecting God, Rejecting Christ's Lordship, Placing Christ on the Throne). Hundreds of Cell Leaders will be prepared to pray with those who come for salvation or with believers repenting of carnal lifestyles.

I always knew that before the Lord takes me home I would experience a city totally impacted by Christ's Sacred Bodies, the cell groups. I will be smiling in my coffin!

SANTAREM'S CELL CHURCH: AN AMAZING EXPERIENCE

We are in Santarem, Brazil on the Amazon River. This community of 250,000 is about halfway between the mouth and end of the longest river in the world, surrounded by jungles. The cell church here has at present 50,000 in cell groups and conducts dozens of worship services back to back all day Sunday in several locations. We were invited to attend the 5 p.m. service. Arriving at 4:30, we slipped into a packed auditorium of 1,500 and watched with amazement as a total changeover took place at the end of the service, with another 1,500 packing in during a 14 minute break! At the end of the 5 p.m. service, about 350 members returned from their Encounter Retreat at their center a few miles out of town and packed into the area in front of the stage, singing and dancing as they shared reports of deliverances and spiritual victories experienced there. Upon leaving the auditorium we found the next worship service was so overpacked that projector screens and chairs seating hundreds were in the back field and the street in front of the building. They have over 100 pastors planting new cell churches in the villages up and down the Amazon, living on house boats with their families.

I was invited here to bless the church and delegates from all over South America for their annual conference, but will receive tenfold what I will give out! I will post pictures later for you to share in this awesome experience.

A Powerful Word from the Rebers

Chris and Mary Ellen Reber were my students back in the '80's at Columbia Seminary. They have invested their lives in a Muslim nation they refer to as "Antioch" so they will not be discovered. They also use "People of Antioch" as a disguised term for "Christians." They see the problem of American Christians so clearly in these words I am quoting from their last Newsletter:

"People of Antioch, I call your spirit to attention in the name of Jesus of Nazareth. Listen with your spirit to the Word of God for you. "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trails of many kinds" (James 1:2). "His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to His eternal purposes which He accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Eph. 3:10-11).

"People of Antioch, your culture centers on avoiding problems and values happiness, which you define to mean having others take care of your problems. This is a delusion. God placed Adam & Eve in the Garden in a perfect environment and a perfect relationship with Himself. Yet, He created a problem for them - to take the resources of the Garden and of their relationship with Him to the rest of the world to subdue it.

"You were designed by God to face problems and solve them, not to escape them. The problems God designed for you to solve will bring the greatest treasures in your life. People are remembered for the problems that they solve or the problems they create. I bless you, people of Antioch, with wisdom and joy when you face different problems and I bless you with rejoicing in your situation, instead of complaining and turning back.

"People of Antioch, I bless you to know that God sometimes sends problems to help you realize that you need His help. I bless you to come to faith in Him, then His wisdom will be available to help you to solve problems. I bless you with the faith to look at problems through your Father's eyes and realize that every problem He brings you is an opportunity to experience His faithfulness. Eph. 3:10-11 shows that many kinds of problems make known the manifold wisdom of God to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms. God will position you so that He can bring new problems into your life so that you will reach toward your Father and find His multi-faceted wisdom to solve those problems.

"I bless you, people of Antioch, to not have an entitlement (welfare) spirit within you, so you do not look to others to solve your problems, but instead you seek God's answers to your problems and receive answers from Him. I bless you, people of Antioch, with rising to the challenge of finding wisdom through God's Word and I bless you with the endurance and perseverance to seek God's solutions. I bless you with refusing to develop a theology of failure, never settling for something that is a contradiction of Scripture. I bless you with not buying into the enemy's lies to settle for an armed truce rather than real victory.

"I bless you, people of Antioch, with having the mind of Christ, so that you can see from His perspective and see solutions that others cannot see. I bless you with the deep joy of fulfillment, which is not available to those who are merely trying to be happy. I bless you with the joy of discovering the wisdom of God and the mind of Christ to solve problems. I bless you, people of Antioch, with His joy in the name of Jesus of Nazareth."

Wow! They have given us the right term for Bucket Church values: "an entitlement (welfare) spirit."

Did you read this far? ASSIGNMENT: Read the above over again until the words stab at your spirit, the spirit owned by God and not you....

THE BODY AND THE HEAD ARE SACRED

Powerful words of T. Austin Sparks: "The Church is not a theme, it is not a doctrine, a teaching, it is not a subject in the Bible. You can have all the teaching and all the doctrine and know all that the Bible says about it, be conversant with all the theories of the church, and there will be no glory or life about it. The church is not a subject to be studied, a doctrine to be taught. The church is a Person to be manifested; it is Christ. And no one really knows anything about the church until they have seen Christ by the revelation of The Holy Spirit. Do not ask to see the church and do not ask others if they have seen the church. There is a lot of that sort of language going on - have you seen the church, the truth of the Body? Oh, the Lord deliver us from that sort of thing! Have you seen Christ? If you have seen Christ, you have seen something more than just a Person. Great, vast and wonderful as the Person is, that Person signifies something more than Himself as an isolated unit. He represents and signifies a vast, elect company to come to His likeness, to be conformed to His Image. It is only as we really see Christ in a spiritual heavenly way that we know anything about the church in truth. So do not begin to study the doctrine of the church, and be very careful how you take hold of any teaching about the church. Always remember that you can never have that in a living way unless you are seeing Christ, and for the expression of the church we have to keep on seeing Christ. It has to be a manifestation of Christ. You may have none of the doctrine, teaching, theory, and yet be in the good of the reality of seeing The Lord. Far better to have it that way than to have all the technique and not to have seen the Lord. ..."

When does a Christ Body experience seeing Christ? The explanation is in 1 Cor. 14:24-25: "When all are prophesying"- then, it is obvious that Christ is being manifested. It is the empowerment of the Son within His present Body that reveals His presence not only to those who are edified but also to the observing unbelievers, who say, "God is among you!"

Is that too hard to grasp? Then why do we not focus on experiencing it? Comments?

THE BUCKET CHURCH

Gentlemen and Ladies, I want to welcome you to your first day in the Bucket Theological Seminary. You will learn much about the Bible that you never knew before, like the multiple authorship of Isaiah and the unknown book we call “Quelle” that has never been uncovered that is a source for the four Gospels.

"Bucket": A self-contained religious container that becomes an end in itself and justifies its existence and goodness by maintaining its organized activities and tradition. The bucket becomes more important than the living water for which the bucket was originally designed to carry. The wineskin becomes more important than the wine. -Bill Beckham

But the main thing this institution offers you is how to manage Buckets. It is not possible to manage individuals who belong to your congregations by personally taking time to meet all their needs. Through the generations, we have learned that it is more efficient to work with those who are placed in different Buckets. We will show you how to "Love Buckets, Use People."

We always spell this word with a capital “B” because it is a special word for us: a special, almost sacred concept. In fact, most church members and denominational leaders in particular consider the Buckets as inspired by the Holy Spirit. We will teach you all about how to administer religious life through assorted Buckets.

The major Bucket is the Sanctuary you will occupy to present your sermons throughout your career. If you are successful, you will be able to raise millions during your administrations and build ever larger Bucket Rooms with comfortable pews, stained glass windows, and excellent air conditioning systems. This will make you feel significant, having accomplished the distinction of being among the greatest Bucket Building Pastors who leave property (and debt) behind as you move forward to bigger opportunities.

Because of the importance of this major Bucket, we will teach you how to study the theologians so you can quote erudite comments for Bucket audiences who will sit in rows each week while “Sir Oracle” speaks.

There are many other Buckets and as you will learn, you will be able to hire specialists to help you manage the people who are placed in them. You will need an aspiring young zealot who will work with the Youth Bucket, a lovely woman who will manage the Children’s Bucket, a musician to handle the Choir Bucket, an elderly semi-retired person to cater to the Senior’s Bucket, visit hospitals, and so forth. We will show you how to use the latest corporate techniques to manage efficiently. Thus, you will not have to become intimate with the people. Others will take care of them.

Of course, the people who are dumped into these Buckets must be made to feel significant. The Choir and Praise Team Bucket, the Deacon’s Bucket, the Sunday School Bucket, are among those areas where unpaid volunteers will gain personal importance by taking charge of these activities. Feeling significant is a major reason Bucket workers serve. Some will do so out of devotion to God, but beware of them. They often become renegades who sense the Buckets may be unbiblical. Stay distant from these people who often want to be intercessors. They can become “wolves within,” as Paul mentions.

Of course, we will provide you with a few classes in counseling. You need to know about these professional techniques but we recommend that you focus on the Buckets and make referrals to full-time counselors when Bucket people need guidance. Your main work is not with individuals, but with the operation of the Buckets.

Bill Beckham calls this “Program Bucket Design,” often referred to as “P.B.D.” It has been fully developed and much literature is available. Jesus saw the traditions of the Pharisees as religious "buckets." Jesus' "woes" against the Pharisees were "woes" about these "buckets."

Are you happy living in the Buckets?

WHAT IS A CELL CHURCH?

(Note: transcript of presentation at EXPOLIT in Miami on behalf of Spanish cell pastors who sponsored an OIKOS conference.)

The Christ that dwells in me greets the Christ that dwells in you!

I am so blessed to be in your midst. When I was in college, I had to pass Spanish in order to get my degree. I had never met a spanish person in my life. I lived way up in Minnesota and I didn’t care about spanish, and I got a C- in the course, and now I am so sorry. I feel so cheated, and I watch on my television at home spanish tv, and I pick up “poco a poco a poco’, but when we get to heaven, we will all speak the heavenly language. It will not be spanish, it will be the language of the kingdom of God. And that kingdom language is one you do not know how to speak well, and that language is our problem. The language of the kingdom is the language of the invisible diety – God.

If you are only a spirit, others have no way of knowing you exist. Your body allows you to be known. God has no body. God is an invisible spirit and we must begin with knowing Him. We don’t normally do this. We begin with who we are and then we try to connect with Him.

Today I want us to begin with who He is and how He connects with us. I have chosen as the text for this presentation “What is a Cell Church?” It is a body that does not look like this building with a tall steeple. This is what most bodies that are called “churches” look like today. We sing about Christ our head, we preach about our head, but we do not experience the head. And so, we have to understand that if we are going to be the body, we have to experience the head. If we look at Galatians 2:20, there is a great secret, a secret that was hidden for centuries, Paul said, and then in God’s timing finally revealed. We have discovered the head is Christ, and notice that this connection is not Christ in me, although He certainly is, but the emphasis is plural. Christ in you – and the reason is very important: God’s spirit is not single; it is a community. I have watched those in the mosque as they bow to the ground, and when they raise up they hold up one finger in their praying, stating “God is One, God is One”… no, we know He is three. He is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and He cannot be communicated by one.

One of the things we have to do this morning is not to learn something, but to unlearn what we have wrongly learned. We need to understand that Christ always dwells in a community. That community is not comprised of people who sit in rows and look at the backs of people’s heads. That community is composed of those who know each other as intimately as they possibly can, because they must recognize that they are occupied by the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And so this is our journey. I have written a book that is in English, Portugese and Korean, not yet in Spanish. But everything that I want to say to you is embodied in the theme of my book, and I would like to ask you to read this aloud together:

“A community formed and baptized by the Holy Spirit. Each member is led by the embodied Christ, who edifies and reveals his presence, power, and purpose through them.”

What is a Cell church? You are looking at the definition. This is the body of Christ, and nothing less. And this is our journey. And so I want to take us back in time. In fact, I want to go back before there was time, when there was only the Father, the Son and the Spirit, invisible - no way of our knowing them. Think about that for a moment. Are you a spirit? Are you invisible? No. You are known because your spirit is embodied in a being that makes the spirit transmittable and transferable. Before there was time, the Father, Son and Spirit shared what C.S. Lewis called “a divine dance”, and they said “How shall we reveal ourselves? We will create, and what we will create will be an expression of our power. And so they created the universe.

For the first time, something existed that revealed their presence. And the writer of the Psalms says “When I look at the stars I say “how marvelous, how awesome you are!” Now all humanity would have a revelation of His presence. Nothing that was created after the creation would be devoid of knowing the presence and power of the triune God.

But there was more about the nature of God that could not be revealed by His awesome universe. And so the Father and the Son and the Spirit met and they said “we are going to reveal the nature of our intimate communion. The love that exists between us must be revealed. How shall we reveal it?’ And in that session, that conference between the Father, the Son and the Spirit, the Father spoke and said to His Son “You will be anointed to fulfill this mission. I will send you in the fullness of time. I will cause a virgin to become pregnant with your human body. You will go to live among men, and you will be the One who reveals our nature.

And so, the Son was given a special name – “The Anointed One”. What is the word for this? Christ. Christ is the anointed One. The virgin born child Jesus would contain the Anointed One. What many do not understand is this: the Son was anointed for more tasks than could be fulfilled in Jesus alone. In Jesus, the Son, the Christ, would reveal the kingdom - the reign of God superior to all the kingdoms of the world. He would also atone for the sins of all mankind. And He would say “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father. I and the Father are One.” And the shy member of the Triune God, the Holy Spirit, was present. In the form of a dove, the Spirit came upon the Son at the same moment the Father spoke, “This is my Son, I am so proud of Him.” And so Jesus became the revelation, the glorious knowledge of the love of the Triune God – “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.” How awesome, how majestic. And when He came, He said “I have a mission.” That mission was not only to declare the Kingdom and to become a sacrifice, but to personally reveal the presence of that Kingdom and sacrifice beyond the life of Jesus on the earth.

You see, the body of Jesus could only fulfill the first tasks of the Father; it was limited by time and space. The body of Jesus could only be in one place at one time, but the anointing of the Son went beyond the timeline of Jesus. It would be the Son Himself that was anointed to carry the message of the Godhead’s Presence to generations long after the body of Jesus existed on earth. This is where we must begin to understand how our thinking has led us astray.

We do not understand the next truth, and this is what we must go to now. God said, “We will form a community of humans that will live in community together, to experience life not in the kingdoms of this world, but in the kingdom reign of the Son, under the control of Christ, and we will embody our Son in a new body. In that new body, the Son will continue His mission on behalf of the Godhead.

Do you grasp this?

I don’t think you do. You are listening to the words, but when something is new, you filter the thought through everything you already know. So I do not know how much of your filter system is blocking what I am saying.

The Son, Christ, required another body to complete the mission of the Father. This new body would never replace the body of Jesus but it would become the new body inhabited by the Son.

My brothers and sisters, why have we missed that? Did Paul not say it pointedly? “Now you are the body of Christ.” Is that confusing? If that is true, then who should be directing His body? Every body must have a controlling head. That head is the Son, the Christ. And so, here is the great question – are you willing to live in a community under the control of a totally different life form? That life-community is a body supernaturally governed by Christ - not man, but Christ. He will occupy that body. He will not just “motivate” that body to do works in His name. He will not “inspire” that body to do works in His name. He will reveal His presence and fulfill His mission through that body. He will do HIS work through revealing His presence and power within that body. Are you understanding?

That is a cell church. A cell church is a community of believers who contain the presence of Christ, who yield themselves to His life, His presence and His power, and who reveal Him. They reveal HIM. What a glorious thought! There is no heavy labor, no burden, when we become a channel and He is the flowing presence. When we become a channel and He is the power, we don’t go to bed exhausted trying to do the work that will please Him. Are you ready to live in a new life form? Perhaps this time it will make a little more sense. Repeat it again, please.

“A community formed and baptized by the Holy Spirit. Each member is led by the embodied Christ, who edifies and reveals his presence, power, and purpose through them.”

I want you to think about “Upstairs ” and “Downstairs,” two different levels of spiritual lifestyles. On one level, “Downstairs.” we are going to find the power of man. On the other level. “Upstairs,” we’re going to find the power of God.

Consider a man at the Downstairs level in John 3, named Nicodemus. Nicodemus did not come to Jesus as a seeker. He was angry. This man had driven the money changers out of the Temple. He was a Pharisee. He got his salary from those money changers, and this man was doing miracles, and driving out the money changers. “I’ve got to get the dirt on him. I’ve got to find out what he’s up to. We’ve got to put him in prison. I don’t want anybody to see me around him. I’ll go at night when no one is looking.” Jesus knows he’s not coming as a seeker: “Um, Jesus, I am interested in you.”

Do you know what his name means? It means “the victory of the people” – Nicodemus = people’s victory. And he comes to Jesus by night.

He asks, “Tell me how you do all these things?” “Upstairs ” is the Son, the Son of God, and He says “I’m going to play with this man’s mind, I’m going to toy with him.” Because Nicodemus can’t understand Upstairs; he lives in a religious world. Just like we do – Downstairs, where people tithe, so you can get your salary, and consumer Christians have to be coddled. They expect you as their pastor to service them, because throughout the different generations past churches have developed Downstairs church members.

Traditional church members for the most part are not Upstairs . They go to church to get their needs met. There is a word for that: they are “consumers”. We are developing consumers every Sunday. If another church has a better youth program in a sister church they will say, “Bye Bye, I’ll go there.” (They live Downstairs.)

If you pastor a traditional church, the building is viewed as Community Property. Let me explain that expression. You have personal property - a bed to sleep in; is that bed important? At noon? No, only at night. You have a kitchen table: that’s part of your personal property at noon. You have a couch for television, and a bed to sleep in. Depending on what you need, you use certain furniture at specific times. Each item exists to meet your needs. It has no significance when it is not needed, but it had better be there when you want to have your needs met!

In your community, you also have furniture. You need a hospital, only if you’re sick, and a school, needed only if you need to be educated, and a church building, needed only when you want to attend it. That’s Downstairs living. So you pastor Downstairs . Just like Nicodemus. I don’t mean to insult you. But I think your heart tells you I’m telling you the truth.

So Nicodemus comes to Jesus and he says, “I don’t understand you.” I think that’s where many of us are. We really don’t understand the Upstairs Kingdom, and we probably don’t understand Paul’s great secret, either. And so, Downstairs, we operate with “church” as community furniture, missing Upstairs and that which is of the Spirit.

Jesus is going to play with Nicodemus. He asks Jesus,
“How do you do all these things you do?”
“Well, Nicodemus, unless you are born again you can’t understand the reign of God.” “Really?”
“Yes, Nicodemus, you know about the wind that blows Downstairs ? Well there is something that blows Upstairs that you don’t know anything about. And Nicodemus, you know at the seminary, you teach how Moses put a snake on a stick, and you teach on all of that, but you don’t know anything about Upstairs where there will be a man crucified.” Are you beginning to see the difference between Upstairs and Downstairs ?

This is very important. What we pastor is mainly Downstairs. A cell that is the body of Christ is Upstairs . It’s a totally different culture.

Many times through the years I have expanded this thought with a pastor and immediately he has said to me, “If I go Upstairs, where does my salary come from? I make my money doing the Downstairs things: preaching, marrying, burying, taking care of the people, running the budget, counseling, working my heart out. I go to bed exhausted every night. It’s tough serving God. I’m many times misunderstood. I struggle living Downstairs. Upstairs? I’m not sure. How would I survive? I teach my people – ‘God will provide all your needs.’ (Pass the offering plate, please.) But if I didn’t pass the offering plate, how would I live?”

I have a trilogy. It has worked for the old man for many, many years.
1. It is the task of the servant to obey his master.
2. It is the task of the master to provide the needs of that servant.
3. Therefore, the servant will never lack what he needs.
Upstairs , He supplies all your needs!

Living in an Upstairs body of Christ is very different than living Downstairs . This passage in Colossians describes what it’s like to live Downstairs:
Colossians 2:8 “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.”
But when you move Upstairs , Colossians 1:18 says, “And He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.”

If we are doing His work and we are the channels of His activity, He will supply everything that is needed. We become the channels for His presence. That is what a cell is: it is a channel of the grace of God.

In this Upstairs cell there is a radical difference between what we experience Downstairs that replaces a cell group. They are called “small groups.” Many churches are endorsing small groups. I have watched two one-hour long small group workshops on the internet. One was by the Assemblies of God and the other by Southern Baptists. They get 3 or 4 small group experts and have them talk about small groups, because they want to make money from selling their small groups materials. But the concept of Christ Bodies and equipping for ministry is lacking. They are “holding tanks” for members. It’s all Downstairs.

Small groups are Downstairs . I don’t like small groups because they rob the people of their true identity of God Upstairs. Downstairs, all we want is fellowship. Aah, that’s the goal - fellowship. “Six fellows in one ship.” How lovely.

But Upstairs there is followship – we follow Christ. He is the head of His body, and He directs the body. This is only not a small group: it is the body of Christ, to perform His presence and power by revealing Him. The revelation of Christ makes them channels, revealing Him when He is otherwise invisible.

We need to understand that Paul was speaking of downstairs people in the begiining chapters written to the Corinthians. “You say, ‘I am of Apollos.” He’s talking about Downstairs pastors and their ministries. He says, “Oh, you labor so hard, and when you finish your life, you will have built with wood and hay and stubble. You are proud of the buildings you build, of the programs you produce and the lovely edifices that are the memory of your hard work. Wood, hay, stubble. But Upstairs, there was gold, silver, precious stones - that which is eternal. One day there will be a Bima, a “little throne judgment” – not the White Throne for the unbeliever, but the throne of judgment for Christian workers. And all of that Downstairs activity will be burned and only what’s done for Christ will last.

Scary stuff! Only what’s done for Christ will last. I want to show you how it works in the Downstairs church. This is a Downstairs pyramid. It is filled with consumers, and so each person says “I make a choice about what’s best. I know what’s best. I know if I want somebody healed. I know if I want a job. I know if I want a good lottery ticket. I am over all these circumstances and I decide what’s best. That’s what I do. I’m in charge, but sometimes I don’t have the power I need, so that’s where God comes in. When I decide what’s best, I need to ask God to use His power to give me what I think is best. So I pray, ‘God, heal my mother. God, give me a good job. God, give me good luck.’”

And God doesn’t do what I tell Him to do. We think, “I’m not religious enough for God. What I need is a hired holy man, somebody who’s a pastor. “My momma is in the hospital; I can go and pray for her and she won’t be healed but pastor, you go. You go pray for my momma in the hospital and if you go, God will hear your prayer. I pay you money so go visit the hospital for me. Wear out your tires on your car, running around, praying for the people I’m not good enough to pray for. You’re the hired holy man. That’s how you make your money. Go pray for my momma.” But pastor’s prayers don’t work either . . .

Downstairs, we have undeveloped small group members where each person relates to the others without being accountable or responsible for ministry. Small groups believe in Jesus as Savior but do not acknowledge His total ownership of them. They are “dismembered body parts”. Sunday, the arm sits there, a leg sits there, a foot is there, a hand is there. They sit beside each other in pews, unconnected – or they have a small group. Maybe it’s a Bible study group. “I don’t have to minister to you. I study my Bible. You study your Bible. What do you think it says? Oh, that’s good. Let’s go home.” The Bible is insulation. We think it’s good. It’s Bible study. But it hides us from each other.

Let’s go Upstairs. This is how an Upstairs community looks. First of all, Christ is the one who decides “what’s best.” The cell is a servant, and will do what He directs. But it needs His resources. When He commissioned the 70, He told them not to take a cloak, not shoes, not to take a purse. What were they to take? They did not go to do good works. Instead, they were sent to demonstrate the presence and power of the Kingdom. They were to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the leper. Perhaps some said. “We can’t do that.” To which Christ might have responded, “That’s right… you can’t. But I can, if you will be a channel for me.”

The cell, the body of Christ, must recognize that the power of Christ requires the presence of Christ manifesting himself by providing supernatural activities that flow from the believer to meet each need. Spiritual gifts are not stored up like flashlight batteries. Spiritual gifts are like electrical energy flowing through a wire from the source to the need. Every cell member is connected at one end to Christ, and when connected to the condition where Christ’s power and presence is needed, He energizes the body. Afterward the cell members may say, “When did we do that? That wasn’t done with our shoes, or our cloaks or money. That was the result of His presence and His power.”

The cell must receive from Him what He desires to do and all the resources needed. That’s “Upstairs!” And so Christ is revealed. Each cell member, Upstairs, becomes a part of the body of Christ and individually, members one of another: “Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?” In order to live Upstairs, we have to die to the Downstairs. That’s not easy.

We have all been baptized by the Holy Spirit to be members of Christ’s body. Notice – the work of the Holy Spirit and the work of the Son are codependent. The Son and the Spirit have responsibilities assigned by the Father. We often talk about the “gifts of the Holy Spirit.” True, they are provided through the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit is not the source of the gifts. Ephesians 4 makes that very clear. It says pointedly – Christ gives the gifts. The Holy Spirit brings those gifts with all of His presence and energy to empower the believer. They never work separately.

They always work together. Jesus said “When the Spirit comes, He will teach you all things I have commanded.” You see the connection? And when I go to pray, the Spirit is the One who takes my groanings that cannot be uttered to Christ. We cannot separate the Godhead. Jesus said, “In me dwells the fullness of the Godhead.” Yet, the Son is the center of the Father’s commission and the Spirit is “called alongside to help.” He is active in the operation of the cell, having drawn the unbeliever to Christ in the first place.

Let’s understand that we are to put on the full armor of God so we may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. We don’t need to carry any bags, shoes, or moneybags on the way. Christ wants to flow through us. If we understand this, the amazing thing is this – the eternal Christ who lived in the body of Jesus, who performed all of the things He did in that body, and then rose from the dead - we now have the Christ who did all those things in this new body. We have dwelling in us the resurrected Christ. How awesome! It’s not hard to reveal Him if we’re living Upstairs, but if we try to do that same thing while living Downstairs , we’re like poor Nicodemus.

Let’s repeat it together:
“A community formed and baptized by the Holy Spirit. Each member is led by the embodied Christ, who edifies and reveals his presence, power, and purpose through them.”

Now let’s take a look at life Upstairs . First of all, it will be lived in small communities. Those communities are not separated from one another. We have in the world today a “house church” movement, individual clusters who are not connected to the other clusters. But Jesus said in John 17 “I pray that they may all be one.” It’s important for us to understand why the cell church has two wings. In his book, Bill Beckham talks about a bird that tries to fly with one wing, and it just flaps around and around. But when he has two wings, he can soar high into the heavens. I thank the Lord for my house-church friends, but they don’t get far with one wing. You need the gathered church, the gathered body, and you also need the little community that we call the basic body of Christ, that will penetrate a piece of society.

Why do we insist that a cell not grow larger than 12? It doesn’t have to be exactly 12; some have tried to make that a sacred number. It’s not. But I do want you to understand this: community, intimacy, accountability, responsibility cannot exist in a large group. In my book I explain it’s a matter of communication lines. I talk to you, you talk to me – we have two communication lines. A third person joins us. How many communication lines? I’ll give you a mathematical formula: Number times Number minus Number = Communication Lines. How many with 3 in a group? 6. How many in 4? 5? 20? 90? Amazing, isn’t it, how many lines are found after 12 people? Do you know what happens when you get higher than that? The first break in the conversation, you’ve got a little group over here and a little group over there, automatically trying to share because you will not have intimacy otherwise.

If you’re going to have community with accountability and responsibility, you have to keep the size of the group to 12 or less. This is why, world-wide, cell groups are encouraged to remain small or or not remain larger than 12 persons for an extended period of time. That is a very important principle.

Every one of the body members represent an oikos, a group of people divided into three categories: (1) the “People people” I am intimate with; (2) the “Machine people” I don’t want to be intimate with (but I have to be nice to them because they fix my car or serve my food, but a little lower than my family) – who cares whether they go to hell or not? And then I have a third group in my oikos: the people that live four houses down from me that I’ve never met. They’re the “Landscape people”:, they’re part of my world, but I choose not to participate in their life and they choose not to participate in mine.

If every person in the cell has a total of 10 people in their oikos, 10 x 10, there are 100 people in the cell’s mission field. That’s where Christ wants to work. The reason God organizes people in the cell communities to go house to house is that every house draws influence. Place Christ in the middle of that group and release Him to manifest His power and His presence, and you will have a harvest. It’s awesome!

Think of the hundreds of cells that are penetrating different little localities. Many years ago, the predecesor to Pastor Mario Vega went to London, England and he talked to a pompous pastor. The pastor said, “Where are you from?” “From El Salvador.” “How large is your church?” “I have 118,000.” “I didn’t ask you how large your city was!” He couldn’t grasp what can happen when the cell becomes the body of Christ and it embraces about 100,000 souls.

Through the cell, the Christ who was limited in the body of Jesus is now able to manifest His presence and power in all of those cells, and the harvest is astonishing. But to do that things have to change. We have to live Upstairs. Upstairs, the very first thing that must happen, is we all confess our sins to one another.

Oh! We don’t do that Downstairs! 1 John 1:9 says that if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us (note the plural!). The activity in a cell is the purification of the body members. I cannot be an instrument of God’s grace to build you up, to edify you, if you hide your spiritual issues. Of course, every cell has limits to the depth of confession that will take place. It’s a natural event. You have an onion. You don’t peel five or ten layers off an onion all at once. You peel one layer off and you deal with what’s on that layer. The trust level in a cell limits the depths of the confessions. But confession of sins has always been a principle part of cell life, as far back as John Wesley. When his groups, called “class meetings”, got together, there were usually eight persons. Do you know what the first thing they did was? They would answer the question, “What sins have you committed since we last met that we need to pray and talk about?” That was their ice-breaker.

In the kingdom we can trust each other, as Christ flows through me to edify you. If we don’t understand that, we’re always going to avoid intimacy. We’ll never get into edification with each other. Until that intimacy comes, unbelievers will not be impacted by us.

1 Corinthians 14:24 tells us when the cell gathers, “all should prophesy.” The Bible that makes no mistake, that is without error, says “ALL should prophesy.” A-L-L “All” means “all”, ALL of the time. What does this word mean in scripture? In the Old Testament, the hebrew word is n’abi – God comes on me and the prophesying comes out of my mouth. In the New Testament prophesying is totally different. It means the Christ who is within me reveals His presence and power by what He delivers through me. That’s what this word means. It means that Christ is flowing through you.

You are only the conduit. You are not a flashlight battery. Let me illustrate. I formed a cell group in Houston nine months ago in my living room. We had a precious young lady join us. I had baptized her when she was eight years old and then while in college became an atheist, got into drugs, then found her way back She called me: “Uncle Ralph, I want to follow Jesus again. I want to be cared for.” I said, “I’m just forming this group. Please come with your husband.” So here she came with her husband. We also had a person come to the group from Cambodia, 20 years old, on drugs – heavy duty. He works in a donut shop, steals money to buy drugs, and he’s also in the group. As he shared about his addiction, this girl, a repentant child of God, who hasn’t memorized all the Bible, doesn’t pray an hour a day, does have all the righteousness we all have, because Christ is our righteousness. She doesn’t have to get more spiritual to be used by Christ, since she already has His righteousness. And I watch. Her eyes begin to shine with something that I’ve learned is found Upstairs: an empowerment by Christ to prophesy, to edify.

“Upstairs eyes” are very special. Christ is seeing through Upstairs eyes!. She was not looking at this young addict. It was Christ looking. And suddenly, like a stream of living water welling up, she began to flow. She hadn’t planned on saying a word, but she would have exploded if she hadn’t spoken. Powerfully, she ministered into his life. The power of God was in that room! Afterwards I said to her, “Do you know how God used you?” And you know what she said? “He did?” “Lord, when were you naked and we clothed you? When were you hungry and we fed you?” She was not trying to counsel; she was prophesying without effort. That’s precious.

“What is a cell group?” Now you know. Now, what are you going to do about it?

Father, you are so good to us. You have trusted us with your presence, the fullness of the Godhead, the Father, the Son, the Spirit, all abiding within. Thank you for the Christ who dwells in us, that we might be transformed by His presence and transport Him into our oikos, that unbelievers might see who He is by touching us. Oh God, give us bodies of Christ that reveal you and we will praise you forever. Amen.

WHAT IS A CELL CHURCH?

(Note: transcript of presentation at EXPOLIT in Miami on behalf of Spanish cell pastors who sponsored an OIKOS conference.

The Christ that dwells in me greets the Christ that dwells in you!

I am so blessed to be in your midst. When I was in college, I had to pass Spanish in order to get my degree. I had never met a spanish person in my life. I lived way up in Minnesota and I didn’t care about spanish, and I got a C- in the course, and now I am so sorry. I feel so cheated, and I watch on my television at home spanish tv, and I pick up “poco a poco a poco’, but when we get to heaven, we will all speak the heavenly language. It will not be spanish, it will be the language of the kingdom of God. And that kingdom language is one you do not know how to speak well, and that language is our problem. The language of the kingdom is the language of the invisible diety – God.

If you are only a spirit, others have no way of knowing you exist. Your body allows you to be known. God has no body. God is an invisible spirit and we must begin with knowing Him. We don’t normally do this. We begin with who we are and then we try to connect with Him.

Today I want us to begin with who He is and how He connects with us. I have chosen as the text for this presentation “What is a Cell Church?” It is a body that does not look like this building with a tall steeple. This is what most bodies that are called “churches” look like today. We sing about Christ our head, we preach about our head, but we do not experience the head. And so, we have to understand that if we are going to be the body, we have to experience the head. If we look at Galatians 2:20, there is a great secret, a secret that was hidden for centuries, Paul said, and then in God’s timing finally revealed. We have discovered the head is Christ, and notice that this connection is not Christ in me, although He certainly is, but the emphasis is plural. Christ in you – and the reason is very important: God’s spirit is not single; it is a community. I have watched those in the mosque as they bow to the ground, and when they raise up they hold up one finger in their praying, stating “God is One, God is One”… no, we know He is three. He is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and He cannot be communicated by one.

One of the things we have to do this morning is not to learn something, but to unlearn what we have wrongly learned. We need to understand that Christ always dwells in a community. That community is not comprised of people who sit in rows and look at the backs of people’s heads. That community is composed of those who know each other as intimately as they possibly can, because they must recognize that they are occupied by the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And so this is our journey. I have written a book that is in English, Portugese and Korean, not yet in Spanish. But everything that I want to say to you is embodied in the theme of my book, and I would like to ask you to read this aloud together:

“A community formed and baptized by the Holy Spirit. Each member is led by the embodied Christ, who edifies and reveals his presence, power, and purpose through them.”

What is a Cell church? You are looking at the definition. This is the body of Christ, and nothing less. And this is our journey. And so I want to take us back in time. In fact, I want to go back before there was time, when there was only the Father, the Son and the Spirit, invisible - no way of our knowing them. Think about that for a moment. Are you a spirit? Are you invisible? No. You are known because your spirit is embodied in a being that makes the spirit transmittable and transferable. Before there was time, the Father, Son and Spirit shared what C.S. Lewis called “a divine dance”, and they said “How shall we reveal ourselves? We will create, and what we will create will be an expression of our power. And so they created the universe.

For the first time, something existed that revealed their presence. And the writer of the Psalms says “When I look at the stars I say “how marvelous, how awesome you are!” Now all humanity would have a revelation of His presence. Nothing that was created after the creation would be devoid of knowing the presence and power of the triune God.

But there was more about the nature of God that could not be revealed by His awesome universe. And so the Father and the Son and the Spirit met and they said “we are going to reveal the nature of our intimate communion. The love that exists between us must be revealed. How shall we reveal it?’ And in that session, that conference between the Father, the Son and the Spirit, the Father spoke and said to His Son “You will be anointed to fulfill this mission. I will send you in the fullness of time. I will cause a virgin to become pregnant with your human body. You will go to live among men, and you will be the One who reveals our nature.

And so, the Son was given a special name – “The Anointed One”. What is the word for this? Christ. Christ is the anointed One. The virgin born child Jesus would contain the Anointed One. What many do not understand is this: the Son was anointed for more tasks than could be fulfilled in Jesus alone. In Jesus, the Son, the Christ, would reveal the kingdom - the reign of God superior to all the kingdoms of the world. He would also atone for the sins of all mankind. And He would say “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father. I and the Father are One.” And the shy member of the Triune God, the Holy Spirit, was present. In the form of a dove, the Spirit came upon the Son at the same moment the Father spoke, “This is my Son, I am so proud of Him.” And so Jesus became the revelation, the glorious knowledge of the love of the Triune God – “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.” How awesome, how majestic. And when He came, He said “I have a mission.” That mission was not only to declare the Kingdom and to become a sacrifice, but to personally reveal the presence of that Kingdom and sacrifice beyond the life of Jesus on the earth.

You see, the body of Jesus could only fulfill the first tasks of the Father; it was limited by time and space. The body of Jesus could only be in one place at one time, but the anointing of the Son went beyond the timeline of Jesus. It would be the Son Himself that was anointed to carry the message of the Godhead’s Presence to generations long after the body of Jesus existed on earth. This is where we must begin to understand how our thinking has led us astray.

We do not understand the next truth, and this is what we must go to now. God said, “We will form a community of humans that will live in community together, to experience life not in the kingdoms of this world, but in the kingdom reign of the Son, under the control of Christ, and we will embody our Son in a new body. In that new body, the Son will continue His mission on behalf of the Godhead.

Do you grasp this?

I don’t think you do. You are listening to the words, but when something is new, you filter the thought through everything you already know. So I do not know how much of your filter system is blocking what I am saying.

The Son, Christ, required another body to complete the mission of the Father. This new body would never replace the body of Jesus but it would become the new body inhabited by the Son.

My brothers and sisters, why have we missed that? Did Paul not say it pointedly? “Now you are the body of Christ.” Is that confusing? If that is true, then who should be directing His body? Every body must have a controlling head. That head is the Son, the Christ. And so, here is the great question – are you willing to live in a community under the control of a totally different life form? That life-community is a body supernaturally governed by Christ - not man, but Christ. He will occupy that body. He will not just “motivate” that body to do works in His name. He will not “inspire” that body to do works in His name. He will reveal His presence and fulfill His mission through that body. He will do HIS work through revealing His presence and power within that body. Are you understanding?

That is a cell church. A cell church is a community of believers who contain the presence of Christ, who yield themselves to His life, His presence and His power, and who reveal Him. They reveal HIM. What a glorious thought! There is no heavy labor, no burden, when we become a channel and He is the flowing presence. When we become a channel and He is the power, we don’t go to bed exhausted trying to do the work that will please Him. Are you ready to live in a new life form? Perhaps this time it will make a little more sense. Repeat it again, please.

“A community formed and baptized by the Holy Spirit. Each member is led by the embodied Christ, who edifies and reveals his presence, power, and purpose through them.”

I want you to think about “Upstairs ” and “Downstairs,” two different levels of spiritual lifestyles. On one level, “Downstairs.” we are going to find the power of man. On the other level. “Upstairs,” we’re going to find the power of God.

Consider a man at the Downstairs level in John 3, named Nicodemus. Nicodemus did not come to Jesus as a seeker. He was angry. This man had driven the money changers out of the Temple. He was a Pharisee. He got his salary from those money changers, and this man was doing miracles, and driving out the money changers. “I’ve got to get the dirt on him. I’ve got to find out what he’s up to. We’ve got to put him in prison. I don’t want anybody to see me around him. I’ll go at night when no one is looking.” Jesus knows he’s not coming as a seeker: “Um, Jesus, I am interested in you.”

Do you know what his name means? It means “the victory of the people” – Nicodemus = people’s victory. And he comes to Jesus by night.

He asks, “Tell me how you do all these things?” “Upstairs ” is the Son, the Son of God, and He says “I’m going to play with this man’s mind, I’m going to toy with him.” Because Nicodemus can’t understand Upstairs; he lives in a religious world. Just like we do – Downstairs, where people tithe, so you can get your salary, and consumer Christians have to be coddled. They expect you as their pastor to service them, because throughout the different generations past churches have developed Downstairs church members.

Traditional church members for the most part are not Upstairs . They go to church to get their needs met. There is a word for that: they are “consumers”. We are developing consumers every Sunday. If another church has a better youth program in a sister church they will say, “Bye Bye, I’ll go there.” (They live Downstairs.)

If you pastor a traditional church, the building is viewed as Community Property. Let me explain that expression. You have personal property - a bed to sleep in; is that bed important? At noon? No, only at night. You have a kitchen table: that’s part of your personal property at noon. You have a couch for television, and a bed to sleep in. Depending on what you need, you use certain furniture at specific times. Each item exists to meet your needs. It has no significance when it is not needed, but it had better be there when you want to have your needs met!

In your community, you also have furniture. You need a hospital, only if you’re sick, and a school, needed only if you need to be educated, and a church building, needed only when you want to attend it. That’s Downstairs living. So you pastor Downstairs . Just like Nicodemus. I don’t mean to insult you. But I think your heart tells you I’m telling you the truth.

So Nicodemus comes to Jesus and he says, “I don’t understand you.” I think that’s where many of us are. We really don’t understand the Upstairs Kingdom, and we probably don’t understand Paul’s great secret, either. And so, Downstairs, we operate with “church” as community furniture, missing Upstairs and that which is of the Spirit.

Jesus is going to play with Nicodemus. He asks Jesus,
“How do you do all these things you do?”
“Well, Nicodemus, unless you are born again you can’t understand the reign of God.” “Really?”
“Yes, Nicodemus, you know about the wind that blows Downstairs ? Well there is something that blows Upstairs that you don’t know anything about. And Nicodemus, you know at the seminary, you teach how Moses put a snake on a stick, and you teach on all of that, but you don’t know anything about Upstairs where there will be a man crucified.” Are you beginning to see the difference between Upstairs and Downstairs ?

This is very important. What we pastor is mainly Downstairs. A cell that is the body of Christ is Upstairs . It’s a totally different culture.

Many times through the years I have expanded this thought with a pastor and immediately he has said to me, “If I go Upstairs, where does my salary come from? I make my money doing the Downstairs things: preaching, marrying, burying, taking care of the people, running the budget, counseling, working my heart out. I go to bed exhausted every night. It’s tough serving God. I’m many times misunderstood. I struggle living Downstairs. Upstairs? I’m not sure. How would I survive? I teach my people – ‘God will provide all your needs.’ (Pass the offering plate, please.) But if I didn’t pass the offering plate, how would I live?”

I have a trilogy. It has worked for the old man for many, many years.
1. It is the task of the servant to obey his master.
2. It is the task of the master to provide the needs of that servant.
3. Therefore, the servant will never lack what he needs.
Upstairs , He supplies all your needs!

Living in an Upstairs body of Christ is very different than living Downstairs . This passage in Colossians describes what it’s like to live Downstairs:
Colossians 2:8 “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.”
But when you move Upstairs , Colossians 1:18 says, “And He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.”

If we are doing His work and we are the channels of His activity, He will supply everything that is needed. We become the channels for His presence. That is what a cell is: it is a channel of the grace of God.

In this Upstairs cell there is a radical difference between what we experience Downstairs that replaces a cell group. They are called “small groups.” Many churches are endorsing small groups. I have watched two one-hour long small group workshops on the internet. One was by the Assemblies of God and the other by Southern Baptists. They get 3 or 4 small group experts and have them talk about small groups, because they want to make money from selling their small groups materials. But the concept of Christ Bodies and equipping for ministry is lacking. They are “holding tanks” for members. It’s all Downstairs.

Small groups are Downstairs . I don’t like small groups because they rob the people of their true identity of God Upstairs. Downstairs, all we want is fellowship. Aah, that’s the goal - fellowship. “Six fellows in one ship.” How lovely.

But Upstairs there is followship – we follow Christ. He is the head of His body, and He directs the body. This is only not a small group: it is the body of Christ, to perform His presence and power by revealing Him. The revelation of Christ makes them channels, revealing Him when He is otherwise invisible.

We need to understand that Paul was speaking of downstairs people in the begiining chapters written to the Corinthians. “You say, ‘I am of Apollos.” He’s talking about Downstairs pastors and their ministries. He says, “Oh, you labor so hard, and when you finish your life, you will have built with wood and hay and stubble. You are proud of the buildings you build, of the programs you produce and the lovely edifices that are the memory of your hard work. Wood, hay, stubble. But Upstairs, there was gold, silver, precious stones - that which is eternal. One day there will be a Bima, a “little throne judgment” – not the White Throne for the unbeliever, but the throne of judgment for Christian workers. And all of that Downstairs activity will be burned and only what’s done for Christ will last.

Scary stuff! Only what’s done for Christ will last. I want to show you how it works in the Downstairs church. This is a Downstairs pyramid. It is filled with consumers, and so each person says “I make a choice about what’s best. I know what’s best. I know if I want somebody healed. I know if I want a job. I know if I want a good lottery ticket. I am over all these circumstances and I decide what’s best. That’s what I do. I’m in charge, but sometimes I don’t have the power I need, so that’s where God comes in. When I decide what’s best, I need to ask God to use His power to give me what I think is best. So I pray, ‘God, heal my mother. God, give me a good job. God, give me good luck.’”

And God doesn’t do what I tell Him to do. We think, “I’m not religious enough for God. What I need is a hired holy man, somebody who’s a pastor. “My momma is in the hospital; I can go and pray for her and she won’t be healed but pastor, you go. You go pray for my momma in the hospital and if you go, God will hear your prayer. I pay you money so go visit the hospital for me. Wear out your tires on your car, running around, praying for the people I’m not good enough to pray for. You’re the hired holy man. That’s how you make your money. Go pray for my momma.” But pastor’s prayers don’t work either . . .

Downstairs, we have undeveloped small group members where each person relates to the others without being accountable or responsible for ministry. Small groups believe in Jesus as Savior but do not acknowledge His total ownership of them. They are “dismembered body parts”. Sunday, the arm sits there, a leg sits there, a foot is there, a hand is there. They sit beside each other in pews, unconnected – or they have a small group. Maybe it’s a Bible study group. “I don’t have to minister to you. I study my Bible. You study your Bible. What do you think it says? Oh, that’s good. Let’s go home.” The Bible is insulation. We think it’s good. It’s Bible study. But it hides us from each other.

Let’s go Upstairs. This is how an Upstairs community looks. First of all, Christ is the one who decides “what’s best.” The cell is a servant, and will do what He directs. But it needs His resources. When He commissioned the 70, He told them not to take a cloak, not shoes, not to take a purse. What were they to take? They did not go to do good works. Instead, they were sent to demonstrate the presence and power of the Kingdom. They were to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the leper. Perhaps some said. “We can’t do that.” To which Christ might have responded, “That’s right… you can’t. But I can, if you will be a channel for me.”

The cell, the body of Christ, must recognize that the power of Christ requires the presence of Christ manifesting himself by providing supernatural activities that flow from the believer to meet each need. Spiritual gifts are not stored up like flashlight batteries. Spiritual gifts are like electrical energy flowing through a wire from the source to the need. Every cell member is connected at one end to Christ, and when connected to the condition where Christ’s power and presence is needed, He energizes the body. Afterward the cell members may say, “When did we do that? That wasn’t done with our shoes, or our cloaks or money. That was the result of His presence and His power.”

The cell must receive from Him what He desires to do and all the resources needed. That’s “Upstairs!” And so Christ is revealed. Each cell member, Upstairs, becomes a part of the body of Christ and individually, members one of another: “Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?” In order to live Upstairs, we have to die to the Downstairs. That’s not easy.

We have all been baptized by the Holy Spirit to be members of Christ’s body. Notice – the work of the Holy Spirit and the work of the Son are codependent. The Son and the Spirit have responsibilities assigned by the Father. We often talk about the “gifts of the Holy Spirit.” True, they are provided through the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit is not the source of the gifts. Ephesians 4 makes that very clear. It says pointedly – Christ gives the gifts. The Holy Spirit brings those gifts with all of His presence and energy to empower the believer. They never work separately.

They always work together. Jesus said “When the Spirit comes, He will teach you all things I have commanded.” You see the connection? And when I go to pray, the Spirit is the One who takes my groanings that cannot be uttered to Christ. We cannot separate the Godhead. Jesus said, “In me dwells the fullness of the Godhead.” Yet, the Son is the center of the Father’s commission and the Spirit is “called alongside to help.” He is active in the operation of the cell, having drawn the unbeliever to Christ in the first place.

Let’s understand that we are to put on the full armor of God so we may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. We don’t need to carry any bags, shoes, or moneybags on the way. Christ wants to flow through us. If we understand this, the amazing thing is this – the eternal Christ who lived in the body of Jesus, who performed all of the things He did in that body, and then rose from the dead - we now have the Christ who did all those things in this new body. We have dwelling in us the resurrected Christ. How awesome! It’s not hard to reveal Him if we’re living Upstairs, but if we try to do that same thing while living Downstairs , we’re like poor Nicodemus.

Let’s repeat it together:
“A community formed and baptized by the Holy Spirit. Each member is led by the embodied Christ, who edifies and reveals his presence, power, and purpose through them.”

Now let’s take a look at life Upstairs . First of all, it will be lived in small communities. Those communities are not separated from one another. We have in the world today a “house church” movement, individual clusters who are not connected to the other clusters. But Jesus said in John 17 “I pray that they may all be one.” It’s important for us to understand why the cell church has two wings. In his book, Bill Beckham talks about a bird that tries to fly with one wing, and it just flaps around and around. But when he has two wings, he can soar high into the heavens. I thank the Lord for my house-church friends, but they don’t get far with one wing. You need the gathered church, the gathered body, and you also need the little community that we call the basic body of Christ, that will penetrate a piece of society.

Why do we insist that a cell not grow larger than 12? It doesn’t have to be exactly 12; some have tried to make that a sacred number. It’s not. But I do want you to understand this: community, intimacy, accountability, responsibility cannot exist in a large group. In my book I explain it’s a matter of communication lines. I talk to you, you talk to me – we have two communication lines. A third person joins us. How many communication lines? I’ll give you a mathematical formula: Number times Number minus Number = Communication Lines. How many with 3 in a group? 6. How many in 4? 5? 20? 90? Amazing, isn’t it, how many lines are found after 12 people? Do you know what happens when you get higher than that? The first break in the conversation, you’ve got a little group over here and a little group over there, automatically trying to share because you will not have intimacy otherwise.

If you’re going to have community with accountability and responsibility, you have to keep the size of the group to 12 or less. That is why, world-wide, cells never grow larger. That is a very important principle.

Every one of the body members represent an oikos, a group of people divided into three categories: (1) the “People people” I am intimate with; (2) the “Machine people” I don’t want to be intimate with (but I have to be nice to them because they fix my car or serve my food, but a little lower than my family) – who cares whether they go to hell or not? And then I have a third group in my oikos: the people that live four houses down from me that I’ve never met. They’re the “Landscape people”:, they’re part of my world, but I choose not to participate in their life and they choose not to participate in mine.

If every person in the cell has a total of 10 people in their oikos, 10 x 10, there are 100 people in the cell’s mission field. That’s where Christ wants to work. The reason God organizes people in the cell communities to go house to house is that every house draws influence. Place Christ in the middle of that group and release Him to manifest His power and His presence, and you will have a harvest. It’s awesome!

Think of the hundreds of cells that are penetrating different little localities. Many years ago, the predecesor to Pastor Mario Vega went to London, England and he talked to a pompous pastor. The pastor said, “Where are you from?” “From El Salvador.” “How large is your church?” “I have 118,000.” “I didn’t ask you how large your city was!” He couldn’t grasp what can happen when the cell becomes the body of Christ and it embraces about 100,000 souls.

Through the cell, the Christ who was limited in the body of Jesus is now able to manifest His presence and power in all of those cells, and the harvest is astonishing. But to do that things have to change. We have to live Upstairs. Upstairs, the very first thing that must happen, is we all confess our sins to one another.

Oh! We don’t do that Downstairs! 1 John 1:9 says that if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us (note the plural!). The activity in a cell is the purification of the body members. I cannot be an instrument of God’s grace to build you up, to edify you, if you hide your spiritual issues. Of course, every cell has limits to the depth of confession that will take place. It’s a natural event. You have an onion. You don’t peel five or ten layers off an onion all at once. You peel one layer off and you deal with what’s on that layer. The trust level in a cell limits the depths of the confessions. But confession of sins has always been a principle part of cell life, as far back as John Wesley. When his groups, called “class meetings”, got together, there were usually eight persons. Do you know what the first thing they did was? They would answer the question, “What sins have you committed since we last met that we need to pray and talk about?” That was their ice-breaker.

In the kingdom we can trust each other, as Christ flows through me to edify you. If we don’t understand that, we’re always going to avoid intimacy. We’ll never get into edification with each other. Until that intimacy comes, unbelievers will not be impacted by us.

1 Corinthians 14:24 tells us when the cell gathers, “all should prophesy.” The Bible that makes no mistake, that is without error, says “ALL should prophesy.” A-L-L “All” means “all”, ALL of the time. What does this word mean in scripture? In the Old Testament, the hebrew word is n’abi – God comes on me and the prophesying comes out of my mouth. In the New Testament prophesying is totally different. It means the Christ who is within me reveals His presence and power by what He delivers through me. That’s what this word means. It means that Christ is flowing through you.

You are only the conduit. You are not a flashlight battery. Let me illustrate. I formed a cell group in Houston nine months ago in my living room. We had a precious young lady join us. I had baptized her when she was eight years old and then while in college became an atheist, got into drugs, then found her way back She called me: “Uncle Ralph, I want to follow Jesus again. I want to be cared for.” I said, “I’m just forming this group. Please come with your husband.” So here she came with her husband. We also had a person come to the group from Cambodia, 20 years old, on drugs – heavy duty. He works in a donut shop, steals money to buy drugs, and he’s also in the group. As he shared about his addiction, this girl, a repentant child of God, who hasn’t memorized all the Bible, doesn’t pray an hour a day, does have all the righteousness we all have, because Christ is our righteousness. She doesn’t have to get more spiritual to be used by Christ, since she already has His righteousness. And I watch. Her eyes begin to shine with something that I’ve learned is found Upstairs: an empowerment by Christ to prophesy, to edify.

“Upstairs eyes” are very special. Christ is seeing through Upstairs eyes!. She was not looking at this young addict. It was Christ looking. And suddenly, like a stream of living water welling up, she began to flow. She hadn’t planned on saying a word, but she would have exploded if she hadn’t spoken. Powerfully, she ministered into his life. The power of God was in that room! Afterwards I said to her, “Do you know how God used you?” And you know what she said? “He did?” “Lord, when were you naked and we clothed you? When were you hungry and we fed you?” She was not trying to counsel; she was prophesying without effort. That’s precious.

“What is a cell group?” Now you know. Now, what are you going to do about it?

Father, you are so good to us. You have trusted us with your presence, the fullness of the Godhead, the Father, the Son, the Spirit, all abiding within. Thank you for the Christ who dwells in us, that we might be transformed by His presence and transport Him into our oikos, that unbelievers might see who He is by touching us. Oh God, give us bodies of Christ that reveal you and we will praise you forever. Amen.

"Look not to your own interests . . ." (Phil. 2:4)

Belonging to Christ is the work of the Holy Spirit, the third Member of the Trinity. He seeks and saves those who are lost. The formal name for His activity of drawing men to the cross is "Prevenient (before life) Grace." Those who are "called out" (ecclesia) are then sealed by Him and instantly baptized (immersed) into the body of Christ. There are no "lone ranger" Christians. God delivers us from an independent spirit of "I have no need of you!" We enter a new Kingdom at salvation's portal, where it is impossible to exist apart from a communal lifestyle. The church exists to be the corporate expression of Christ wherever He is represented. The church cannot be represented by less than two, because the ecclesia is a body. Or, to use the thought that it is like a building, one brick never makes a temple.

For this reason, we must understand life in Christ is life in community. That is what Paul writes in Philippians 2. Now, connect this thought to 1 Cor. 14:24-25 where ALL are to prophesy. Note in 14:3: "the one who prophesies builds up the ecclesia."

On the right side of this blog I have two teachings about oikodomeo and oikonomos. They explain in depth why in a Christ Basic Body it is mandatory that we focus on becoming agents of Christ, building up one another.

The pathetic "small group" movement in churches dances all around the true purpose of our meeting together. Edification takes place when Christ uses me to minister life to you. When it is authentic, the one who is used to convey the spiritual gift is humbled by the experience.

What say you?

LIFE BASIC TRAINING

On the right column you will find a new link to LIFE BASIC TRAINING. Please follow it to a series of videos that are now available for small groups of five persons to view together. The INTRODUCTION explains the process, which includes one small group session for 11 weeks and five days of Daily Growth Guides.

This content is very powerful and many core values have been changed through its application. Built around the understanding that it "takes six to stick," there is a careful transition through the weeks, divided by Week 5. Up to that time the participant is being challenged to rethink core values. The challenge is then laid down: "do you want to change, or not?"

Some drop out at this point, often with anger that the content is too threatening. These are like the rich young ruler who found the price too great to pay. But those who remain for the balance of the course have made the choice to adopt new core values. Thus, the remaining weeks reinforce this choice.

Often those who complete the 11 weeks are ready to enter into the new lifestyle and become an authentic Christ Body, living in the spirit of 1 Cor. 14:24-25.

If you want to form a group of five or any sets of five and use the videos and the workbooks, I am prepared to send you the workbooks FOR THE PRICE OF THE POSTAGE AND HANDLING!

Contact me personally so I can coach you as you use the content. My email is ralph@touchusa.org.

Now, go to the set of videos by clicking on the right column: LIFE BASIC TRAINING.

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