God's Order for the Local Church

Matthew 18:19 Again I say to you, That if two of you shall agree on earth concerning any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them by my Father who is in heaven.
20 For where two or three have been gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them.

Hebrews 10:24 And let us consider provoking one another to [agape] love and to good works:
25 Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some [is]; but exhorting [one another]: and so much the more, as you see the day approaching.

Meaning of Church

The word church has come to mean a lot of things to different people and there is a lot of confusion in the Body of Christ as to exactly what church means. When you hear the word 'church' what comes to your mind? It might depend on your background, on how you grew up and whether you grew up in church or not.

If you are a Pentecostal then you probably know exactly what the church is and you could give me a simple answer. I will not be giving you a simple answer here. I will be giving you a slightly more complex one and I will confirm some of what you already know. I want to emphasize some new things concerning the church, but especially I want to emphasize the local church.

What is the local church? If you have listened to or read any of our lectures you have heard terms like 'local church', 'universal church', and a term that I have coined which other people are using, which is 'the status quo church'. You have perhaps heard people speak about 'the institutionalized church', and these days there is a very new and popular term that is being used called 'church without walls'.

What do all of these things mean? What do they refer to? Perhaps we need to get back to the Scriptures first to understand exactly what the church refers to so that we don't have any confusion. This is where I show you what a wonderful Greek scholar I am and we look at the Greek word for church which is 'ekklesia'. It is derived from two words meaning 'called out'.

What does the word 'ekklesia' mean in common definitions? I will give you what Strongs says. You can read it for yourself if you have Strong.  He gives a good summary of all the different things that can be meant by the word 'church'.

The first one is that the church is a gathering of citizens called out from their homes into some public place. Secondly, an assembly, like the assembly of the Israelites. Did you know that they were known as the church?

You say, "I thought the church only began in the Acts of Apostles?"

No, the word church was used a long time before then. Now here is one we are used to: An assembly of Christians gathered for worship in a religious meeting. It can also refer to the whole body of Christians scattered throughout the earth. It can also refer to the assembly of faithful Christians already dead and received into heaven.

So where does this word 'church' originate from? It originated when God called the nation of Israel to Himself. When God reached out and called out to Himself from amongst the nations, a people that would be dedicated to Him alone. Stephen referred to the church in the Acts of the Apostles when he stood up and preached that wonderful sermon that got him killed. He spoke about the Church in the Wilderness. In Acts 7:37 he said:

Acts 7:37 This is that Moses, which said to the children of Israel, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up to you of your brothers, like to me; him shall you hear.

38 This is he, that was in the church in the wilderness with the angel which spoke to him in the mount Sinai, and [with] our fathers: who received the lively oracles to give to us:

So I am not so far off when I say that Moses was a picture of the apostle. Moses was with the church in the wilderness. It was the first church, the first group of God's called out ones that God gathered together unto Himself. And then as we come to the New Testament, Jesus uses the term and He calls it His church.

He said to Peter, "I will build my church upon this rock and the gates of hell will not prevail against it."

The Church of God

I found something very interesting looking up the word church using the Fivefold Ministry Bible software, which is the Bible Software we developed especially for use in this ministry? Try it sometime and look up the word church. I could not find one occurrence where it was called the church of Jesus Christ? That is a puzzling one isn't it? But there is a term that is used again and again and Paul used it continuously. He called it the ‘Church of God.’ Why didn't he call it the Church of Jesus? We know that Jesus is God, but even so, why didn't he say, "The Church of the Lord Jesus Christ?" We always refer to the church of the blood-washed. There is a whole denomination already called the Church of Christ, but Paul called it the Church of God.

I puzzled over this one because I had never seen this before. I had read and studied this many times and I thought, "There has to be a reason here that he keeps referring to it as the church of God. There has to be something maybe that the Lord is trying to show me and is trying to get my attention here to see something that I haven't seen before."

Then I began to see something that is so obvious that I had never noticed it before. Ephesians 1:22 says this:

22 And has put all [things] under his (meaning Jesus) feet, and gave him [to be] the head over all [things] to the church,

23 Which is his body, the fullness of him that fills all in all.

Jesus and the Church Are One

I realized then that Jesus and His church are one. Jesus is the church. It is not the church of Jesus Christ. It is the church of God, but you cannot separate Jesus from the church. He is part of it. We tend to think of the head and the body as being separate, and we think of Jesus as being the head, the part that sits above the shoulders. That is not what He was speaking about. He was speaking about the head of authority. He is the head of the church, which is His body.

My body is me. Take it away and you can't even see me because I am in it and I am part of it and it represents all that I am. And when we look at the church, what do we see? We see Jesus. You cannot separate Him from the church. He is part and parcel of it.

What did Jesus say? "Where two or three have been gathered together in my name there I am in the midst of you." We have always used that as a promise to say, "Well two or three of us are gathered together, so Jesus is standing here in our midst." No, he is not just in our midst. He is inside of us. He is permeating us. He is part of us.

He is saying, "If two of my arms and legs come together my body is there. I'm part of it! I'm in you. I'm in the midst of you. I'm in you and outside you and everywhere! I am part of you. You cannot put the limbs together without me being there."

We don't have to take that as a promise and say, "Well Lord you promised you would be here if two or three are gathered together." If two or three are gathered together He cannot avoid being there. He is part of it. And when we come together as His body we bring His presence automatically. It cannot be avoided.

Jesus said to Saul of Tarsus, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" You cannot touch the body of Christ without touching Jesus. Now that might not seem a great revelation, but it just exploded something inside of me. Jesus is here today. He is here in each one of us. Together we make up Christ, and He said, "If two or three are gathered together in my name I will be there in the midst."

The Corporate Anointing

The Lord showed me something in addition to that, because people talk about the corporate anointing.  Have you heard of the corporate anointing? The idea is that the entire church as the fullness of Christ contains the full anointing that God has to give. And so you have one piece of the anointing and another person has another piece of the anointing, and I have a piece of the anointing. If we get together as a group each of us adds that piece of anointing together and we join them together until it becomes highly multiplied, and this is called the corporate anointing.

Now that is very exciting, but what happens if there are only a few of us? Do we only have a small piece of anointing? We have to have a big convention with thousands of people so we can get a bigger anointing.

It used to worry me and I said, "Lord that's not fair. If I don't get to preach to a big church I don't get the corporate anointing."

He said to me, 'What did I say? How many do you need? You need two or three." He said, "If two or three will get together I will bring the rest of the corporate anointing. I'll make up the rest. I just need two or three to stand together in agreement and I'll bring the rest, and you can have all the anointing you need. You can have the fullness of the power that I walked in on this earth."

When we have more than two or three then He is here in His fullness, and the fullness of the power that was in Jesus when He walked this earth is here in our midst. You see that is what the local church is about. The local church is the Body of Christ coming together. So what exactly is the local church? It is the church in a local place. The local church is the church in a city. We see that Paul wrote to churches located in specific cities. He wrote to the saints which were in Ephesus, to the Christians which were in Philippi. There was a church that was in that area. All the believers that lived together in a specific place made up what we call the church in a locality or a location, in a specific physical area where they live.

Universal vs Local Church

The church universal on the other hand, is the church made up of every believer everywhere, all over the world. And not only all over the world, but in heaven as well. Every single person who has ever been born again of the Spirit of God and has entered into the Body of Christ is a member of the universal church. But when we come together in a specific location we have what is known as the local church. So what I want to share on now is the local church, because there are specific things that apply to the local church, and there are slightly different things that apply to the church universal. When God calls you to ministry, the way you function in that ministry can vary according to whether you are functioning in a local church or whether you are functioning in the church universal.

If God gives me a prophetic word for the Body of Christ universal and I publish that word, that word can be read by anybody who comes to our website. That word can be copied and sent out to people around the world and it applies to every single one. However, if I send a prophetic word to the students of GMRN Prophetic School you are a specific group in a specific location and that word was given only to you. It can apply further, but it was given specifically to you and for you.

The Home Church

The local church can be the church in a home. Now we did not originally plan that we would have the church in our home for the Gladiators Conference. Our original plan was to hire the Conference Center as we did last year. But God led very differently and we didn't understand why at first until He confirmed to us that we are to minister to the local church. So we set a pattern in the meetings in that we brought everyone into our home to demonstrate how a local church can be set up in a home.

In Bible times it was very common for people to have churches and meetings in their homes. In fact if you were to walk down the street in early Jerusalem and ask somebody where the nearest church was they would not be pointing to a steeple in the distance. They would be saying, "Well, there are some Christians who live just across the road there. They have meetings there. I believe there are some more down the road over there. And... oh yes, there's a house down there and I hear they gather there." Most of the church was in the home.

The church can be a group of people gathered by a riverside out in the open. We read that Paul, in his missionary journeys, visited a riverside church where a woman by the name of Lydia was gathering a bunch of people together to pray. They were not a New Testament church yet because they were not born again, but they were a church. They were gathering under the Covenant of Israel, to come and worship God and to pray.

Then we have the smallest church recorded in the Bible, and it was in a very unusual place - behind bars. Paul and Silas were thrown into prison and they decided to have a worship service. Do you want confirmation that the Lord will come and add His power if two or three will stand together in agreement?

There were just two of them but they said, "That's it! We don't care if we're in prison. It is meeting time. We're having church now. Let's sing, let's worship, let's praise. Halleluajah!" They began to glorify the Lord and the Lord came in and started tapping His foot to the music. The prison couldn't take it. It began to shake, and they were set free!

You say, "Well you know, I have only got a small home. I can't put twenty or thirty people in my home. We don't have a big sitting room."

Can you fit two or three people in there? Then you have a church.

"So what church do you belong to?"

"Well you know umm... God has let us to leave the church where we were attending and we don't really belong to a church anymore."

That is not true. You are the church.

You say, "Well we don't have many people that can get together with us."

Do you know one person? Do you know just one other Christian? Just think of one. Is it possible that you could invite them over or go and visit them? You could get together at work during your lunch hour. You could go for a walk in the park. You are having church. Those who came to the conference belonged to a church while they were here. And those who did not have a church were able to go back home and start a new one. If you are reading this for the first time, you will learn how to do the same.

You say, "With whom?"

Are you married? Well you have a church. If you are not married go and find somebody quickly! In the meantime you will just have to be satisfied with your girlfriend or boyfriend that you are worshiping the Lord with. But get together with somebody. Start with two or three and build it up and go and start a local church. Why? Because if you want the presence of the Lord to be manifest in your life and in your ministry you must belong to a local church. You must be part of a local church.

No I am not telling you to go back and join that miserable church again. I am not putting the covering thang on you. It is not what I am talking about. I am saying that you should start becoming part of a church. If God called you to leave the church you were in, then maybe He is calling you to start a church. If you have a picture in your mind of what a church should look like then by the end of this course it is likely to change somewhat.

Church on The Internet

Another kind of church that is becoming very popular these days - and it is where we have church mostly, is the church on the Internet.

"You can have church on the Internet?"

People have told us it can't be done.

"You are talking to words on a screen. You don't know this person. How can you fellowship with another believer by email?"

We found that we can cast out demons by email, we can speak healing by email, we can get people baptized in the Holy Ghost by email. We can impart gifts of the Spirit by email, we can impart prophetic keys by email. I have given out more that way than I have in person. Where two or three are gathered together in His name; when we join our hearts and our spirits together in the Lord even if it be apart at a distance communicating with one another just through words by the Spirit we bond together and we begin to form a church.

We have these stereotyped ideas in our heads though don't we, of what it is to belong to a church? If you are a prophet you are sick of church, you are mad at church. You left the church and want nothing to do with the system anymore and you probably went overboard on the other end of the pendulum. Have you been there?

Church Multiplication and Growth

You must belong to a local church! You must be part of the Body of Christ. It is Scriptural that we minister to one another and fellowship with one another. And God wants you to get together with other believers and He wants you to share together and minister together and build the Body of Christ.

He wants many, many local churches. He doesn't want one great big massive church for everybody to belong to. The Scripture says that the new wine is in the cluster and people have taught and said, "Well that means that we must have a big cluster, so we must have this great big bunch of grapes. The more people we have in our church the most new wine we are going to have."

If you know a little bit about growing grapes you will find out that every branch on the vine has a potential to bear a bunch of grapes. And if you have one big bunch on your vine it might be able to bear one big bunch of grapes, but do you know how many bunches of grapes you have? Only one. If you want more grapes make yourself a hundred branches.

You say, "But I only get a small bunch on them."

So what? You have a hundred of them. Multiply. Multiplication the way people seem to think it applies to the church means we build bigger halls, we put in more chairs, we have bigger advertising programs. We invite in bigger names to come and preach and we get more people at our church. We multiply and get bigger and bigger and fatter and fatter. That is not growth, and I am jumping ahead to one of my later messages so I am not going to say too much on that.

There must be the local church and there must be many local churches, because it is in the local church that growth takes place. It is in the local church where we become blended together like a bunch of grapes. We begin to flow together. The bigger the church gets the more the divisions begin to come between people and the less we get to know one another. The less we get to fellowship with one another and interact like a true Body.

God's order never was for the local church to be a huge gathering of people. It has its place as we will see later, but I want you to change your thinking concerning the local church. I want you to change your thinking concerning going to church and belonging to a church, and I want you to realize that no matter what your circumstances, no matter where you live, no matter what God has led you to do, you have the potential to be part of a local church, and it is what God intends for you.

Becoming a Church Member

Now, who makes up the members of a local church? Well obviously everyone who is born again. You have to be a believer before you can be part of a local church. Jesus is not indwelling somebody who is not born again. Anybody who gathers together being a believer, with another believer in one location, makes up a local church.

So how do I become a member of a local church? Do I have to go and fill in a membership application, write exams and be approved by the Bishop? Is that how you become a member of the local church? By the time you have completed this course and done the practical workshops, you will have a very clear picture of what local church you belong to, but you must be a member of something. We are members of His Body and members of one another. You have to be a member.

You say, "I'm not a member of any church."

"So you don't belong to the Body of Christ. You're not a Christian anymore?"

If you are a born-again believer, whether you are a hand, a toe or whatever part of the Body you are, you are a member of the church so you are a member of the church. Where is your local church? That is where you are right now. It is that simple really. I may be laboring the point, but I want to change your thinking about what the church represents.

Where is Your Local Church?

Now your local church means that you are involved in a specific area. As the universal Body of Christ we are all members of the universal church because we are born again. But where is your local church? You need to be able to answer that question. Don't ever answer a person, "Well, I'm between churches now." That is a good prophetic answer isn't it? We have heard it plenty of times. It is a standard reply on our questionnaire. That is okay. We understand what you mean.

Don't be between churches. Know where God wants you to be right now where He wants you to be involved and what local church situation, whether it be your own home or involvement with somebody else. Know where you are meant to be and commit yourself to that and let God begin to use you where you are right now.

We Leads the Local Church?

Okay now we come to the sticky part. Who are the leaders of the local church? We usually call him pastor don't we? He is the guy that all prophets love to hate, because mostly you have problems with authority. The problem is not authority. The problem has been a misunderstanding of who the authority is meant to be in the local church and we are going to answer that according to the Scriptures again.

Who are the leaders in the local church? Well I think we all agree that the supreme authority in the church is the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the head of the Body is he not? He is the leader. After Him comes the pastor, right? Could you show that to me in the New Testament? Do you know that there were only two groups of leaders ever mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles and neither of them was pastor? They were the apostles and the elders. Go and read the Acts and you will see it there. You will read it over and over again - the apostles and elders. They are the only two groups that were ever mentioned. So where does the pastor fit into all of this? We will get to it shortly.

What are the apostles and elders? They refer to two groups of people and each of them has been appointed by somebody different. Who appoints the apostles to leadership? The Lord Himself. He said to His disciples, "As the Father has sent me so send I you." He appointed them, He called them apostles, and the apostles of the New Testament church are appointed and put in place by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. He appoints them not man. We do not have an election as to who we decide is going to be our apostle.

"Well we like this guy and he has been a pretty good pastor, so we'll call him apostle now."

No. You cannot appoint anybody to be an apostle. Only the Lord Jesus can do that.

You say, "Well, can we appoint elders?"

No.

"Can we appoint a pastor."

No.

So who appoints the elders? That is easy. The apostles do. Is that not the order? It says in Acts 13 that there were prophets and teachers in the church at Antioch and they came and ministered to the Lord, waited on Him in prayer and fasting, and the Holy Ghost said, "Separate unto me Paul and Barnabus for the work to which I've called them." They laid hands on them and they sent them forth by the Holy Spirit. They were appointed by the Lord. All that the church did was to recognize what God had appointed, and in obedience release them and let them go.

Paul and Barnabus went forth and they preached the Word and they began to cause local churches to come together in the cities in which they ministered where everybody came to the Lord. And it says that as they preached and those churches sprung up, before they left the city they laid hands and appointed elders in every church.

Appointment of Elders

Who appointed the elders? The apostles. So there are essentially two groups of leaders in the church. There are those that have been appointed by the Lord directly and there are those that have been appointed by those leaders that God has put in place. The church doesn't get a vote, sorry. They had a chance to vote on the deacons but not on the elders.

I want you to understand this very clearly. The church has fallen away from God's true pattern. We have a man in charge and we use the term 'pastor', and yes it is fine if he is a shepherd of a local congregation. Who is the pastor of the local church? He is the elder. That is who the pastor is. How do I know that? Because Paul calls the elders at Ephesus to come together and he speaks to them and he says, "Shepherd (pastor) the church of God over whom the Holy Ghost has made you overseers."

That is who the shepherds are. They are amongst the elders of the local church. So it is fine to have a pastor, preferably many of them. If the church is small it is good that one person has been appointed an elder and a leader.

You are possibly thinking, "So what you are saying to me then is that the pastor is the leader in the church and I have to submit to him after all."

I am afraid so, provided he has been appointed apostolically and has not been put in place because he passed some exams and qualified educationally to be put in a position because he knew the right people. You see, the church has to get back to God's order and God is raising up apostles these days in the church universal, and apostles are going forth and doing what they did in the original church. They are going forth and setting the church in order and they are appointing elders in the local churches, men of God appointed by the wisdom of God and the anointing of God. Being appointed because they are called of God, not because they are qualified in the natural sense.

Husbands and Wives

That is what qualifies you for leadership. So let's get back to your local church. You are going home to your local church and it is husband and wife. Who is the leader? This is a tricky one and we will be covering it later. Who is the boss?

"Oh, of course the man is the head is he not?"

Yes, but perhaps he knows nothing spiritually. His wife is way ahead of him. She is the preacher lady. She is the prophet. He brings home the bread and she brings in the anointing. Who is the leader?

Functioning In The Meetings

So how is the local church run? Well, we need to get together and have meetings. We need to do a lot more than that. We need to function seven days a week, twenty four hours a day, and the big mistake that has been made in the church in the past is that everything has been geared to the meetings. It is only when we come together in the meeting that we actually begin to function or do anything significant and everything is gauged around the meeting.

So naturally, when we have a meeting, I have to do the preaching and you have to do the listening. I have to have somebody to preach to. Somebody is going to have to sit in the chairs. And if I preach for an hour there is no time left for you to get a chance to preach, so don't think you are going to get a chance to preach. Besides I'm the Senior Pastor here and if I go on vacation you might get a chance as Assistant Pastor to preach while I am away, but hey, people came to hear me. I'm the main guy here, right?

Have you ever been an Assistant Pastor? You will understand what I am talking about. That is the whole trouble with the local church the way it has been. You see, we put the body into paralysis and say, "Okay head, do your thang." The body is in a straight jacket while the mouth is flapping! The body can't live that way. It cannot survive that way!

Well we give the body a chance to do something afterwards and go and do all the dirty slog work and the things that the mouth doesn't feel like doing. When we need somebody to mow the grass, "Brother, you have a grass-mowing ministry!"

"I have a ministry of handing out the songbooks."

"There is a special anointing needed for that. I will come and lay hands on you and impart it to you."

The meeting is a place for everybody to function. We will be showing you how to and then we will make you do it, too. Get ready for it, because the Body is going to function and you are going to function in what God has given you. The body must come to life, because that is what a local church is. That is what the Body is meant to be.

Allowing Everyone To Function

Every single person, every single one has a function to perform, and if you are not performing your function the Body is paralyzed. That is God's order for the local church. Ministry is not confined to the leaders. All kinds of ministry should flow together, because all the members of the Body flow together and complement one another.

"Well we can't have that brother. You know Brother So-and-so there, he just likes the sound of his own voice. If we gave him a chance to minister in every meeting he would just dominate the whole thing."

When my foot starts twitching and jerking I pull it in line. I don't tie it up in a splint and say, "That's the last time you move!"

It is the easiest way to do it isn't it?

"Sister, you are too emotive. From now on, shut up in the meetings, please!"

The Lord gave me a very clear word for the Conference. He said, "When my spirit begins to move and people start to do things, sit down and let me take over, please. If somebody wants to dance, somebody wants to shout, if somebody wants to shake then let them do it. Just let them do it, because I'm quite capable of keeping control thank you very much."

So if you want to shake, please shake. If you want to scream and shout and sing or whatever, do it. Some people like to do things when they get emotional, others don't. You should be free to be what God called you to be. And if you are a hand, hands wave. If you want to wave, then wave.

"There is a person standing there waving. They must be nuts!"

No, they are a hand. That is the local church. That is what it is meant to be. There needs to be order. I am not saying that there is no order and we don't keep control, but we must give everybody a chance.

And so it is says in 1 Corinthians 14:6:

14:What is the conclusion then, brothers? When you come together, every one of you...

Every one of you can get involved.

You say, "Well not me. I'm just a quiet sort of person."

Paul lied then! Every one of you.

"Yes, but you know I'm shy."

"Every one of you has a song..."

"But I can't sing."

"Well try something else."

"... has a teaching..."

"Well I can't really teach."

"... has a tongue ..."

"Well I can't speak in tongues yet."

"Come, we'll pray for you."

"... has a revelation, has an interpretation."

What do you have?

You say, "Well I felt it welling up in me this morning and I felt like I should speak in tongues but I thought, well you know I'm just a visitor here and I should keep order."

You disobeyed the Holy Spirit. Don't ever disobey the Holy Spirit. The Scripture says, "Despise not prophesying, forbid not to speak in tongues." If you want to speak in tongues in the meeting, please be free. If you want to prophesy you may have to shout to get over everybody, but please be free. Whatever God gives you to do, you must do it, because everyone of you has something.

You say, 'Well, I had this song just well up in my heart this morning and I really wanted to sing it." Just let it out. Whatever God has given you, use it. Everyone has a song. We have to have a time for worship. It is a very important part of a meeting isn't it? It is very important to have songs. Music releases the anointing and the presence of God. How can you have a meeting without songs, without music?

Everyone has a teaching. Did God open His Word to you this week, last night or this morning? Did you get a new revelation, something that really excited you that you would love to share? You must be given a chance to share it.

You say, "Well, it was nothing fantastic really. I just saw something in the Scripture I had never seen before."

That is wonderful. Maybe somebody else needs to here what God revealed to you. It might just be that somebody else in this local church has had a deep need that needs to be ministered to, and when you stand up and share that little revelation from the Word it will just touch the point of their need and give them the answer they have been waiting for. How do you know? Share it. I don't care if somebody else got the revelation before. There is many a time I have had a wonderful revelation from the Word and then I am reading some book or some commentary and I find out that Matthew Henry discovered this two hundred years ago. I don't care! I discovered it today, for me, and it is precious for me and the Body needs it. Don't hold it back.

You say, 'Well the preacher never really gives me a chance to preach."

This one will, and in the local church you join if you do it the right way you will. Everyone of you has a tongue.

You say, "I'm allowed to speak in tongues in the public meeting?"

You should be permitted to. If you want to. If you feel the urge coming up. Of course if you make a habit of it you are going to be asked to interpret it as well. That is the Scriptural pattern. "If any man speak in an unknown tongue let him pray that he may interpret." If God gives you a tongue then speak the tongue. It could be a word from the Lord. It could just be an intercessory prayer that came spontaneously. During meetings there are times when I shout in tongues, sometimes very loudly. When I do this I am often addressing the devil, because that is the way I come against him by the Spirit. I rebuke him in tongues. And if you are still one of those who believe that the devil does not understand tongues you are wrong. He understands mine, let me tell you. He gets running!

Now that could happen. In the middle of the meeting it may spontaneously rise up in you, a tremendous urge to burst out in tongues. It might be a message in tongues, it might not. It might be an intercessory prayer. It might be you coming against something by the Spirit. Do it. It is the Spirit of God who moved upon you and inspired you to do that.

Do Not Withhold Your Contribution

The Body needs your contribution, and if you get a revelation stand up and share it. If you had a vision while we were worshipping stand up and share it. Let the Body hear it. Once again, it may be for somebody else that is here. If God gave you a revelation He gave it to you for a reason.

Often when people post on our Dreams Board they say, "You know, as I was sitting in church on Sunday morning I got this beautiful vision and I am not sure what it means."

Well if you were in my local church and you had the vision, I would want to hear it before you leave! You don't need to go and post it on somebody else's board and find out what it means, because this is the Body who should be telling you what it means, and this is the Body you should be ministering it to, because God gave it to you in this meeting. I know though that you don't get a chance to do it in a big meeting, because the local church has been all wrong.

What About Disorder?

In conclusion, what about disorder? What about people taking over? I wish I had that problem to handle. Most of the time I have a problem getting people to do things, getting them to come out. Why is this? Perhaps you had some bad experiences. Perhaps as a prophet, God has given you a word to speak and the anointing of God has been upon you and you knew God gave you something powerful to share, and you have stood up to share it and got shouted down. You got told to be quiet. You were corrected for being out of order.

I have been there, except I didn't keep quiet. I am different though! I stood up to share once and one of the elders told me to sit down and be quiet. So I walked over to him and said, "I want to talk to you outside, NOW! God has given me a word. Now are you choosing to reject this word, because if you do, then you are taking responsibility for it."

It takes a bit of courage, but if you know God has given you a word then He has given you a word, and He has given you a word as a prophet. You are standing in prophetic office. Your authority supercedes the authority of the elder. You have a right to speak that word. You don't have a right to stand up in deliberate rebellion against him and say, "I'll speak it anyway," because he is the authority in the local church. But you have the right to give it to him and say, "That is God's word and if you reject it, brother, you withhold it, you are taking the responsibility but I have delivered myself."

Don’t Dominate

There has to be order. And what is the order? Nobody must dominate. Paul said it very nicely in 1 Corinthians 14. He said:

27 If any person speaks in an [unknown] tongue, [let it be] through two, or at the most [through] three [utterances], and in turn; and let one [person] interpret.
28 But if there is no interpreter, let him remain silent in the church; and let him speak to himself, and to God.
29 Let the prophets speak two or three, and let the other [prophets] judge.

30 If [any thing] is revealed to another [prophet] that is sitting out, let the first [prophet] be quiet.

There should be cooperation between the Body of Christ. And in verse 31 he says:

31 For you may all prophesy one by one, [so] that everyone may learn, and everyone may be comforted.  

Notice he says, "You may all prophesy." I come from an old time Pentecostal background that says that you are only allowed three utterances in a meeting and if there is a fourth one you missed it. That is not what Paul is saying here. Paul is saying, "You can all prophesy in this meeting if you want to, but I suggest you give two prophesies, then shut up and give somebody else a turn. And if you really have to do it, give three. Then you have had your turn and there are other prophets that God can use too."

Don't dominate the meeting. Don't draw attention to yourself all the time. There are many other people that God can use. Very often if you are an accomplished prophet and you are used to speaking the Word, you are never giving an opportunity for the junior prophets to pluck up the courage to speak out the word that God is putting in them. It is consideration for one another, that is all it is. God has given me something and I am ready to share it, but I wait to see whether God wants to use somebody else.

And if somebody else wants to speak ahead of me I will stand back and let them speak first. If they don't, then let me not withhold it from the Body, because the Body needs it. I must speak it forth. But if God has given me a prophetic word and I have given it once, and I have given another one, hold back and let God use somebody else to give a word. Give somebody else a turn to function.

It is the same when you are standing in prophetic office. If you are standing to share prophetically what God has revealed to you and God wants to use somebody else, you sit back and you say, "Well okay, I've spoken a lot but I can see that there is another prophet here with something that God has laid on their heart," and we stand back and wait on one another and give one another consideration.

Giving Confirmation or Correction

Now here is the most important one, and I want to end on this. Confirmation or correction must be given. Here is the safe one that pastors use.

"If you have a prophetic word, write it down and bring it to me and I'll decide whether it is good enough for us to give in the meeting and if I accept it or not."

In this case it is very easy for me to take your piece of paper and say, "No, I don't think so. Let's just let it be," and scrunch the paper up.

In GMRN we do it the difficult way and the way people don't like, but the Scriptural way. If you stand up and give a prophetic word in the meeting and you are out of order I will correct you publicly. Now none of you are probably going to prophesy. I didn't say, "If you prophesied in the flesh and you missed it," I said, "If you are out of order." If you stand up and try to use the gift of prophesy to whip people and slam them and to speak your burden that is not the Spirit of God to bring disorder and disunity in the Body I will correct you publicly.

Those of you who have tried this on the Message Boards and on the emails, some of you haven't been around long enough to experience it have you? That is our standard. Sometimes people think I am tough and I want to hurt. But no, I don't want to hurt. I want to encourage you to give what God gives you, but so that you can learn and so that everybody round about you can learn as well. I must both confirm and correct.

And so if you speak a word that is totally in order I will confirm it and say, "Amen sister, you are right on. Amen I confirm that. God showed me and this is what the Body must do. Yes, I got that too."

Somebody else says, "You know, just before you spoke the word, this came to my mind," and the Body confirms itself.

We don't always correct publicly for anything, but if you are out of order and you are definitely causing a problem in the Body then you must be brought to order. You see, it flows both ways. Like I said, if my leg is out of order I pull it in line. It doesn't mean that I don't give it an opportunity to function again.

Final Conclusion for the Local Church

And so this is God's order in the local church - for each person to function according to what God has given them. For each person to have the liberty to contribute now in the meeting as God moves upon you, to minister to one another as a Body, with full liberty but yet with discipline and order and control, but not human control. Control by the Spirit of God. The local church is still God's order for each one of us. That only question that you need to ask yourself now is, “Where is my local church?