(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.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
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.
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.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
"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?
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?
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