Building God's Church Right!

The following is the FIRST of The Seven Steps to the New Church teaching.

Have you ever moved house? I have moved house more times than I have fingers and toes to count, more than I could possibly remember. As far back as I can remember, we have been moving house. In the days when you would sign a six month lease on a house, we would stay for six months and when the lease was up we would move. Sometimes the lease was for a year, and then we would stay a year before we moved, but it seemed like we were always moving house.

The worst thing about moving house is having to pack. It is just amazing how much junk you gather; how much you own that you did not know about. Then you have to pack it up and move it, and you have to go and pull out all the things that you have dumped in the garage and in the other storage places in your basement, and you have to get it all together, get it packed and have it put in boxes and get it loaded up. It is not nice, moving house.

Then the reason you are moving house is probably because you do not own it. You are renting somebody else’s house. And the worst thing about renting somebody else’s house is when you get there, you cannot change it. You cannot make modifications to it. You cannot change the house to make it suit you. You have to change your lifestyle to suit the house. If you want to stay in a big room and the room is small, you have to get used to living in close quarters. You have to change your life to suit the house.

Well, what is the best solution? The best move of all is when you can move into a house that you have designed yourself. And the most wonderful thing about that is you are moving into a place that is yours. You do not need to move out again after six months. You do not have a lease. This house belongs to you. You can stay there for the rest of your life if you want to. And the beauty of it, is before you move in you can decide for yourself what kind of house you want to live in. You can decide what kind of rooms you want in the house. You can decide exactly what shape of house and the locality you are going to live in, and you can lay out everything and make a house that will be the kind you want to live in for the rest of your life.

I think if each one of us had the opportunity to choose our dream house, we would all have different ideas of what we would like in it. I am sure the guys will have their idea, and the women will have their idea of what they want in their dream house.

God’s Dream House

Do you know that God is very particular about the kind of house that He wants to live in? Did you know that? Did you know that God is very fussy, and that He also has a dream house? Well what is God’s house? Paul tells us about it in Ephesians. He speaks about us being the household of God, that we are built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Jesus Himself being the chief cornerstone, we are built together to be a habitation of God through the Spirit. We are His house.

Now God is very fussy and very particular, and He knows exactly what kind of house He wants to live in. And God has designed His dream house, did you know that? He is very fussy about how His house is built. He wants it to be made according to the pattern. When Moses came up to meet with God in the mountain top and He gave him the pattern for the very first structure in this earth that He was going to come and put His presence upon, God was very fussy.

He kept saying to Moses, "Now don’t forget. Do it exactly according to the pattern. Moses make it exactly correct."

If God said that the room would be 5 foot 6 inches, He did not mean, "Well, make it about 5 or 6 feet." He meant, "5 foot 6 inches exactly!"

No builder constructs a house by saying, "We’ll make it about 5 by 6."

You do not make a house with ‘about’, you make it exact. If you do not do that, the walls are not going to reach and touch each other when you are finished them. You are not going to have a pattern, a structure. The walls will not be closed, the roof will not cover. It has to be made exact, and it has to be made correct. It has to be built on the correct foundation.

God is fussy about His house, and His house is the church. The Body of Christ that is on the earth today is the house of God. And we have this idea that we are just going to slap together a house and invite God to live in it. We are forcing God to be like everybody else and say, "Well, I can’t afford to have my own house, so I’ll have to put up with somebody else’s house. I’ll just have to accept the way that they have made it, and I’ll have to adapt to it."

You know, the Lord is so wonderful, so patient and so loving, that He has actually done that in time past. He has actually met up with where we are, and He said, "Okay, I’ll come and live in your house, but it is not the kind of house that I want. But I won’t reject you. I’ll come and be with you. I’ll come and stay with you still."

But God is fussy about His house still, and He wants His house to be made according to the correct pattern. And the correct pattern starts right from the bottom, from the foundation upwards. Because if the foundation of the house is wrong, the house is going to crumble and fall.

We have some houses built right here on the beach down the road from us, or shall I say we had what used to be houses, and what perhaps people thought were going to be houses. It was simply a matter of time before the elements started to show that that house was not built on a secure foundation. And we have houses that have fallen apart and are in pieces, and there are bits of bricks and wall lying all over the beach spread everywhere. The house could not stand. It was not built correctly. The foundation is important.

In this message I want to speak about God’s house and how He wants His house to be built. I want to speak about how we, as the apostles of God, have been called by Him to restore His house, and to build it, His end-time house that He is coming to dwell in, and the bride that He is coming to receive. God wants it made according to the pattern.

The first part of the pattern is that it is to be built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets.

You say, "But I don’t understand that. The apostles and prophets were here already."

When Jesus died and went up to heaven and poured down His Spirit and the church was born on the Day of Pentecost, was God’s house not built? Was the foundation not laid at that time by the prophets and apostles? Were the walls not put up and the roof not there? Was there not a house that God dwelt in? Did not God come and dwell in the mighty midst of His people? Were there not signs and wonders taking place, and miracles? Didn’t the church shaking the world of their day? Yes they did.

But today we can see that God is doing something new. And over a period of time we saw that that church, that house of God fell into ruin. Why? Something must have been wrong, because the early church did not stand. They were mighty and filled with power, but they did not stand. They went into the Dark Ages, and they fell away and disappeared, and they became covered over and smothered by the World System.

And as we look at the Body of Christ, the church today, we see a building. We see a building that has a foundation, and it has walls, and it has a roof. It is functional, and God is living in that building, but it is not His dream house. It is not made according to the pattern that He designed.

So we see that God has been restoring His church. He has been restoring His church over the centuries. And over the last few decades God has gradually been bringing His church more and more to order. We have heard people speaking about the renewal movements, the revival movements, and the restoration movements and Charismatic movements. There have been so many movements in the last century alone where God has been restoring His church back. And now finally we see, in these end days in which we live, we see the restoration of the prophetic ministry coming back into focus. And now finally we see stand on the brink of the manifestation of the revelation, and the restoration of the apostolic office.

Now hang on, something is wrong here. If the apostles and the prophets are meant to be the foundation, then how come God is restoring them last? One would think that if the Lord was going to get His house in order, He would have brought the apostles and prophets first to lay the new foundation and get it in order. Why has God left the apostles and the prophets for last?

I will tell you why. Because the Lord has reached the point where He said, "That’s it. I’m not living in this old house anymore. I want My dream house built, and I want it built correctly."

And what He has been doing over the last decade and centuries is He has been showing us what He does not want in His house. He has been bringing restoration. But we have been taking this old house and restoring it, and we are making it beautiful. And we are making it look closer and closer to what God desires. But I want to tell you, it is not His dream house, because it was not made according to the blueprint. It was not made according to the pattern. The foundation is wrong.

You cannot change a house after it is built. You can knock down a few walls and add on some rooms. You can put on extensions. You can modify it. But you cannot change the original structure. You cannot take the foundation out and put a new one in. You cannot pull the walls up, and hold them suspended in mid air while you put in a new foundation, then put the walls back again. It is not going to fit. It is a different foundation. It looks different. The rooms are in different places. Everything is completely different, it cannot be done. There has to be a new foundation laid. Today, even in this new millenium that we stand facing now, God is raising up His apostles to come and lay a new foundation.

Get your Hands on the Most Comprehensive Teaching available on the: Office of the PROPHET Everything you need to know Everything you need to do Everything you need to BE This is the definitive standard for the Prophetic Office Combined teaching from Apostles Les D. Crause and Colette Toach  read more

Seven steps to building the new church. God is calling His apostles to build His new church, and to build it they are going to lay a new foundation. They are going to put up new walls, they are going to put up a new roof. They are going to put in new everything and they are going to make God’s house the way it was meant to be. We are going to leave that old dilapidated house to fall apart, and we are going to demolish it and destroy it, because the Lord does not want to live there anymore. He is not satisfied to do it anymore. He wants a house that is made according to His specifications and according to His pattern. It is going to have to be done right and built right.

Now, how are we going to move from the old, from where things are at, into the new? I would like to suggest seven stages, seven steps that you, as an apostle of God, are going to be required to take in order to bring the church, the Body of Christ, out of where it is, into where God wants it to be. And until you have accomplished all of those seven steps and done what God wants you to do, you have not fully accomplished the apostolic call that God has placed upon your life.

And if you are not prepared to follow through those steps; if you have no desire or inclination to follow through those steps, the chances are the Lord did not call you to the apostolic ministry, and you are taking this apostolic course in vain, because you have no intention at all of moving out of the old and into the new.

So you need to examine yourself right now and you need to say, "Am I satisfied with the situation that the church is in? Am I satisfied with the house that God is being forced to live in right now?"

That is the first step, the first stage. I have taken seven words that begin with ‘d’ to describe the seven steps that need to be taken to build the new church. I am going to start going through them in this message, and we will cover every aspect of what God wants us to consider and do in order to restore His church to what it should be.

So the first step that needs to be taken is the step of discontentment.

The second is disassociation.

The third is determination.

The fourth is deliberation.

The fifth is displacement.

The sixth is development.

And the seventh is deployment.

Let’s look at the first step now, the step of discontentment. That means becoming dissatisfied with things the way they are; becoming discontented. Most of us do not like to rock the boat. We do not like confrontation. So we tend to accept wrong, just for peace sake, just to let things go. You know that means in society that businesses can get away with bad business practice, because nobody says anything about it. Bad quality can be given out and nobody says anything about it, and it goes from bad to worse.

I am afraid that is what has happened to the Body of Christ. For too long things have been wrong, but nobody has the courage to stand up and say, "Hey, I don’t like the way things are. They are wrong. I don’t believe this is the way God wants it to be." They do not want to rock the boat. And because they do not want to rock the boat, things just carry on and carry on.

So new people come into the church, children are born and grow up, and they learn by example that this is the way things are done.

"Nobody is complaining. My parents aren’t complaining, society’s not complaining, the church people are not complaining. This must be the correct way to do it. This must be the way God wants it done."

Nobody is going to rock the boat, so we just continue. The trouble is people have not become discontented enough. They come home and they complain about meetings, they complain about the church, they complain about the World System that is in the church, but nobody does anything about it. They are not discontented enough.

You must come to a place where you reach a point that you are not prepared to accept it anymore. You have to come to a point of discontentment. And usually the only people who get to that place of discontentment are the people who have become victims of that system, of people who have become victims of the wrong that is in the Body of Christ.

Eventually they come to the place where they say, "I’ve had it up to here. I’ve had enough. I’m dissatisfied and I’m not prepared to accept this anymore."

Discontentment must come about.

I want to go back to the very first time that God called me to the ministry, my very first experience. I want you to know that I grew up in the church. I was born into a Christian home. I had known the church system from as far back as I could remember. I grew up in church, went to Sunday School in church. I went to youth meetings in church. I went the church system. I grew up in it.

But when the time came that God put His Spirit upon me and His anointing upon me and He called me to the ministry for the first time, round about the age of 20 something happened. For the very first time I came into confrontation with something that I did not expect.

We went to a Youth Camp, a conference, a place where all the young people had gathered, and there were older people there too. Of course, the old people were the pastors. The young people were not the pastors, they were there to get ministered to. The old folks were the preachers and spiritual leaders and they were going to minister to the young people.

God began to move in that camp, but He was not moving in the meetings. God began to move outside of the meetings. He moved one night on two little girls, two little teenage girls who had a problem. They began to pray and the Spirit of God came down on them. Then other teenage girls came to join them and the Spirit of God came down on them. Some guys started to come in, and God came down on them. Eventually there was a whole crowd of people in a small little room that could only hold about 2 or 3, and there were about 30 people in the room.

The Spirit of God came down and began to work. People were filled with the Spirit. And that night, for the first time I got filled with the Spirit. I had grown up in a Pentecostal church and been prayed for by pastor after pastor, by visiting preacher and visiting evangelist. They all prayed for me and nothing happened. But I walked into that room that night, and a little 10 year old laid her hands on me and the Spirit of God zapped me. I fell to my knees weeping, and the anointing of God came on me, and my life was changed and transformed. The call of God came down on my life that night in that room. It was wonderful, it was revival, it was an outpouring. But you know what happened? It was going wonderfully until one of the pastors found out about it.

He walked in there in anger and said, "You young people, you’re out of order. You don’t know what you are doing. Stop it at once!"

He tried to put an end to it, and immediately tried to scatter it and stop it, because all these silly little kids were going and laying hands on one another. What did they know about how to use the power of God? What did they know about the Holy Spirit? They were not qualified. They were not pastors. How dare they try this? They were accomplishing what none of these pastors had managed to accomplish yet, except for one man of God thank goodness, who was an adult and had some sense in his head. He had the anointing of God on him.

He intervened and said, "Hold it!" He called all the young people and said, "Just keep in the Spirit. Just keep in the Spirit and follow me," and he led them into the meeting hall. He said, "Just keep it going, keep it going. Just keep worshiping the Lord."

And he brought it into the meeting. And the anointing of God began to move in those meetings like it had not moved up until then. The power of God came on that conference and the young people began to experience God’s anointing and power.

But I looked at this and thought, "Oh Lord, You were moving so mightily, and now these people," (one of them was my own pastor), "are saying, ‘These young children can’t control their emotions. Who do they think they are, coming and trying to take over?" and they squashed it. They crunched it and stopped the move of God. I looked at this and my heart was pained, and I was hurting inside.

I thought, "Lord, how can they do that? Couldn’t they see that it was Your Spirit that was moving?"

But you see, that is not the way it was meant to be. They were out of order. It was not church protocol, so they would not allow it. These young people would get out of hand.

Well, we came back to our normal church services, and I was on fire for God. I stood up on a chair the very first prayer meeting after that and called the young people, and I preached to them. Before that I was too scared to even open in prayer. The power of God came on me and something began to happen. It was exciting. The young people were excited, they had just come back from Camp, and they were drawn to my leadership. I had never been a leader all my life, I had been a wimp. But suddenly I was taking leadership. And the pastor was looking at me skew, I could see it. He was not happy about it.

I tried to fit into the system. We would pray before the meetings on a Sunday night, and God would move mightily in the meeting. Then it was over and everybody had to go home.

I thought, "I want some more of this. I don’t want this to end."

Everybody had gone home. So I got a couple of young people together and said, "Hey, why don’t we go over to your home tonight and go and have a prayer meeting?"

So we went after the meeting and had a prayer meeting. It was exciting. I said, "We have to have another one of these before the next meeting. Let’s get together on Tuesday night. Who has a home that we can go to."

We met in somebody’s home and came together, a bunch of young people. We began to pray and wait on God and the Spirit of God began to move. Gifts of the Spirit began to be manifested and God began to speak in prophetic words through us. God began to tell us to go out and witness to the lost. He began to stir us up. There was revival in that church.

We wanted to do things for the Lord. At the Friday night youth meeting we wanted the Spirit of God to be there. We wanted people to be touched. But some of the leaders in the church preferred to go out and have a social event for the youth meeting. They wanted to go out ice skating on Friday nights. So we let them go ice skating, and the few of us that were left who were zealous for the Lord, went and had a prayer meeting instead and waited on the Lord. And we moved in His anointing and His Spirit, and dug into His Word.

Then the trouble began. Who did we think we were, especially since most of the pastor’s kids were the ones who wanted to go skating? Who did we think we were?

"Mr Super-spiritual, who do you think you are to come and preach at us? Don’t you know I’m the pastor? Don’t you know I’m the pastor’s son? How dare you look down on me like that? How dare you put me down? There’s nothing wrong with us going ice skating."

"I didn’t say there was anything wrong, I just didn’t want to do it. I wanted to pray!"

Blessing Kid's Manual - Book Do your kids know that Jesus is the one who blesses His Children? Most parents find it difficult to explain the deep principles of the spiritual life to their children. So they pass the responsibility to others. They expect the Sunday School Teacher to explain spiritual truths to their kids They hope that the Educational System will equip their children to live effective lives They try not to impose too much on kids until they are old enough to understand better But there is a better way! ...read more

But that was wrong. I began to buck the system. And when you buck the system it is not so good. People do not like you. They are unhappy with you. But I tried to toe the line. I tried to toe the line and fit in there.

The call of God began to rise up within me and I thought, "I’ve got to go to Bible School. The Lord’s coming next year, maybe tomorrow. I have to go to Bible School. I must get trained and go into ministry. I can’t waste any more time, I have to get out of here. Lord, I just want to go and study and prepare. Oh Lord, I must do it tomorrow!"

Well, who do you approach? Obviously you go and see your pastor. He is the one who has been in ministry. He is the one who has the call of God on him and has been to Bible College and is qualified and ordained to the ministry. And if you are going to go into ministry with your denomination, he is the guy to go and see. I was so excited, I could not wait.

I thought, "Just imagine spending the whole day in the Word of the Lord. Imagine spending all day in the College just learning about the Lord and being in His presence and devoting your life completely just to spreading the Word and to ministering to people’s needs."

I was so excited about it. I went to go and see my pastor.

I said, "Pastor, how do I go about it? The Lord’s called me. I want to go into ministry. Tell me, how do I go into ministry with this denomination?"

I expected him to get excited and say, "Oh, that’s wonderful. Let me just share with you the burden that is in my heart. Let me just share with you how God can use you in ministry."

He sat down and he smiled and said, "That’s wonderful." Then he pulled out a bunch of papers and he said, "Okay, these are the applications that you have to fill in." He said, "We have a wonderful denomination here. You will receive a very good salary as a minister. We have excellent Medical Aid benefits, and our Pension Scheme is one of the best."

I looked at him and I could not believe what I was hearing. I did not want a job, nor did I want a career. I did not want to go into the ministry as another professional career. I wanted to work for God. I wanted to minister for the Body of Christ, and he was telling me all the benefits I was going to have in this ‘job’ of the ministry. I looked at him with disgust, but I had no choice. This was my way of doing it.

So I filled in form after form after form. I looked at the subjects that we would be studying and top of the list was Church Government and the Constitution of the denomination that you were. You had to learn all about the ins and outs of this particular denomination and what makes them so important. And scratched somewhere at the bottom was a bit of Bible stuff.

I looked at this and thought, "Man, I can’t believe this. I don’t understand it, but this the way you go into ministry. I have to start somewhere."

I put in my application and sent it off and waited. As I filled that application in I looked at what they wanted. What kind of qualifications did they want? What kind of ministry gifts did they want to see in you?

Well, the first thing they wanted to know was your standard of education. That was top of the list, because if you did not attain a certain standard of education, you were not qualified to be an ordained minister. After all a minister has to be somebody of repute in society. Therefore you must be a well educated man and must be able to stand tall and be able to address people of repute like doctors and lawyers and people like that. You cannot have any old people going into the ministry. You cannot ordain somebody who does not have any good education. Well, thank the Lord I had the education. I had tons of education, not that it did me any good. All that education did not teach me how to serve the Lord and do His work.

I looked at this and I thought, "Well, this is where it’s at. This is what I grew up in. This is the church. I have to do this. I have to follow it through."

So I submitted myself to that and I began to wait while they went through all the red tape and paperwork and assessed my application to see whether I qualified, and went before the Board to see if I was good enough to be accepted to their Bible College. And while all that was happening my younger brother met a girl. Women have this power! He met a girl in another church at some mixed youth meeting somewhere. He fell in love with her and naturally he went to go and visit her church.

He came back telling me about this church he had been in that the Spirit of God was moving in; where God moved in every Sunday night service; where miracles were taking place and the gospel was preached with power and authority. I had go with him to go and visit too and find out if what he was saying was true. When I arrived there I found it was true. It was not like our church at all which was dead. There was life there, there was power there, the people had liberty there. I could see that the man of God, when he preached from the pulpit, was preaching under the unction and anointing of the Spirit of God.

My heart burned and yearned to be in a church like that. And in the process of time, with me being involved in the youth fellowship of our church, I managed to arrange a joint meeting with the youth of that church. We got together and were able meet the young people of that church, and they were on fire for God. What a meeting we had. It was wonderful. It was the first time I ever stood up and preached publicly from the pulpit. It was wonderful, the anointing of God was there.

My own pastor called me aside afterwards and said, "Les, I envy what God’s given you. I envy the way you deliver the Word. I wish I could preach like that."

Well, I did not become big-headed about it. I knew this was something that God had given me because I had never been able to do anything like that before. I was an insecure little wimp. I could not do that until the power of God came on me. But I was drawn to this other church, and it seemed that the more I tried to serve God where I was, the more I was squashed and hampered, and criticized and put down.

Marriage, Family and Relationships (Book) What Does God Say About Marriage, Sex and Family? Covering everything from God's Order in man, to Marriage, Sex and Children, this book gives you principles that will give you a new life. ...read more

As I began to visit this other church I just felt the power of God and the anointing of God. I was in a difficult situation, what do I do? The Spirit of God began to move on me and I began to feel a very strong urging in me that I should move to the other church; that I should leave this church that I have grown up in that I knew so well (that still had not accepted me to their Bible School incidentally) and to do to this other church. If I went I was going as a nobody. They did not know me, they knew nothing about me. They were not going to accept me and ordain me to the ministry. My only chance of going into the ministry had been left behind. I was going to have to give it up.

I made my choice. I decided that that was what I was going to do. So I went to see my pastor and tried to explain it to him.

I tried to say, "Brother, I’ve been faithful here, I’ve done my best. But God has placed a calling on me, and I feel that He is leading me to go to that church, because I feel that God is going to give me a greater opportunity for ministry there."

Well, one would think that he would have prayed about it, been delighted and said, "Well if God is leading you, brother, I can see that you are moving in the Spirit, and we send you forth with the blessing of the Lord, and we pray that God will bless you and use you in that new church."

No, no that is not what he did. He looked at me and he said, "I should never have allowed that joint youth service." He said, "Pastor So-and-so is a sheep stealer. He is known as a sheep stealer in town. You are not the first one that has wanted to leave his church and go and join his church. Just go and look at his church, and you will see all the people that he has in his congregation used to belong to other people’s churches. He’s a sheep stealer. He’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing and he’s drawing people away from other churches," and he began to down mouth and put down that man of God, that I knew and could see was filled with the anointing of the Spirit of God.

Well that made it easier for me. Then I really wanted to go. But before I did, I went to go and see the other pastor. He did not even know of my intentions yet. But I made an appointment and went to go and see him.

I said, "Brother, I’ve visited your church a few times."

I told him my background, where I had come from, etc., and I said, "We really feel that God is leading us to come and join this church."

He looked at me and he smiled and said, "Brother, I don’t want you to come and join this church."

That kind of deflated me. I thought he was going to welcome me with open arms. I mean, this is the sheep stealer who was trying to grab everybody else’s members.

He said, "I don’t want to be accused of being a sheep stealer. I don’t want to steal somebody else’s sheep. If it’s possible at all that you can stay in that church and be happy, please stay."

Well, then I really wanted to come. Then he smiled and said, "But brother, don’t misunderstand me. I’m not telling you you are not welcome. And if God is telling you to come here, who am I to argue with the Lord. But I don’t want you to think that I tried to draw you away from the other church, and to bring you into this congregation. But if you decide to make that decision I’ll back you, and you will be supported and you will be welcomed with open arms."

Well, it did not take me long. So I went back to my other pastor and told him of my decision.

The first thing he did was think of something he had not told me before, and he said to me, "By the way I just want to warn you. This man has an error in his doctrine. He is a heretic. He believes in such-and-such a heretical doctrine, and he teaches this kind of thing."

I had never heard him preach it in the time I was there. He said, "He believes in this particular doctrine, which is heresy, and if you go and join in that church, you are going to be cut off from all the other churches of God, because nobody will want to have anything to do with you."

I had my first experience with the church system, with the status quo system, with the house of God that had been so corrupted and so changed from what God intended originally. That is not the kind of house the Lord wants to live in – a disjointed broken house with bitterness, strife and anger, and backbiting amongst God’s people. Not just amongst God’s people, but against the leaders of the flock.

I was devastated. I did not understand and had never thought of ministry before. I had never seen myself in ministry before. But I began to see a side of ministers, pastors that I had never seen before. I began to see something behind these so-called men of God that began to disgust me.

It hurt deep and I thought, "Lord, how can You tolerate this in Your Body?"

You have to become discontented. You must become dissatisfied with the situation that you are in. You have to become dissatisfied with the condition of the Body of Christ before you are going to be able to be used of God to do anything about it.

The other thing that stops us from taking that step is we have gotten into a rut. It is too much effort to change. A rut is so nice. You know it is difficult to get out of a rut. You have to go uphill a little bit. A rut is so easy. You just give it a push and off it goes, no problem. It is easy to follow the rut.

I grew up in the rut, and even in the church that I was in, it seemed so much better than the church that I had come from. But it did not take long for me to find out that church was church was church ... that the system was the system was the system, and there were elements that were the same in all of the church systems.

So as I became involved in the church I became a deacon. A deacon is a high position in the church. You have been appointed to be a leader in the Body of Christ, and you get together to have the Board Meeting to decide what is going to happen to the church. I looked forward to getting together with the other deacons and the pastor to discuss the future of our church. At last I had an opportunity to decide how the church should be run.

Man, was I disillusioned. Deacons are not there to run the church. Deacons are there to make money for the church and to do the dirty work that nobody else wants. Deacons are there to say, "Yes pastor, no pastor, three bags full pastor. How high would you like me to jump, pastor?" And as long as you are doing that, deacon, you have a good position.

Yes, you will be given opportunities and involvement, and you will be given recognition in the church, but don’t you dare, when the pastor makes a suggestion, say, "I disagree with that." Don’t dare try and change the rut, because this church is not planning to get out of their rut.

I remember sitting in deacons meetings, sitting with the deacons while we were waiting for the pastor to arrive and discussing with the deacons their opinion about certain aspects of the church and the way things were done in the church. And you know what? They all agreed with me about the things that were wrong. They all agreed with me about what needed to be changed. We were in total unity, total harmony. We were as one. We agreed solidly.

But then the pastor walked in, and suddenly Les Crause spoke up. After all I had all the deacons behind me. They had agreed with me before the meeting that this was wrong.

"Pastor, I’ve got a motion to give. I would like to suggest that we change this, and do this, and don’t do that."

Suddenly the room would grow silent and everybody would be staring to see, "Where did you come from? How dare you stand up to pastor like that? Have you got no respect for the man of God?"

And I stood all alone. But I had one other person to back me. It was my dad. My dad and I were the thorns in the side of the pastor. We were not very popular, let me tell you. Do not rock the boat.

I began to realize that I could not fit into this system. But what do you do? Where do you go? I was not discontented enough yet. I just let it ride and let it ride. I let them ride me.

Pathway to Life (Ebook) ...read more

Then I became youth leader in the church. Now was my chance. Now was my chance in the church. I was the youth leader, I was in charge. The pastor never even attended the youth meeting. He did not have time to be bothered with stupid young people. I was the youth leader. I was in charge and had this whole bunch of young people under me.

I appointed a Youth Council, and I was the pastor to them now and I called the shots. That was pretty good. And I began to formulate, amongst my youth group, a way to make the church the way I knew God had showed me, even back there already, the way the church should be. So I began to structure and put people together in groups.

I began to say, "Brother, I can see you have a real desire for intercessory prayer. I want you to take charge of a group, which we are going to call The Prayer Group. I want you to gather together all those who have a real burden for prayer. And your job in this youth fellowship is to intercede and to pray and back the Word of God; to pray for our youth and pray that God would bring new people in."

I knew there were some who wanted fun and games. They were into the fun thing, and yes it is good to have fun. There is nothing wrong with having fun in the presence of the Lord.

So I said, "Brother So-and-so, I can see you have a good sense of humor, you love having fun. I tell you what, we are going to put you in charge of an entertainment group. And you are going to develop new ideas for games and for fun, and for things that the young people can do that are more of a social kind of event. I’m putting you in charge of that and I want you to gather together those who want to help you. You can get together and have your own little meetings, and you can come to decisions, and then you just come and let me know what you have decided, and we will implement in the youth and get things going."

I looked at a young lady and said, "Oh Sister So-and-so, I can see that you have such a burning desire in your heart to reach the lost."

She would be out on the street every Saturday handing out tracts to people and telling them about the Lord. It burned in her.

I said, "Man, go and do it. Do it with our full backing. Gather together those amongst the youth that have the same zeal. Get them together, grab yourself a bunch of tracts. Get together, get into the Word and prepare, then go out and go and reach the lost. Our prayer group will be backing you and we’ll be praying for you while you’re out there. We will be covering you in prayer."

Then I knew there were those who were into the Word, and I said, "You are going to be in charge of our spiritual life group. I want you guys to get together, and put together some Bible Studies and some teachings, and some good ideas and things that can help the other young people. I want you guys to get together in the Word and share in the Word, and come up with some good stuff. Then we are going to put this together as a Body, and each one of you are going to function the way the Body should function. We are going to pool our resources, each person doing what they’re good at; each person doing what God has called them to do. We’re going to come together as one Body."

Man, this was powerful stuff. This was the Body, the way I knew it should be. I was so excited about it, I took it to my pastor. Oh dear. I had it all laid out on paper, all systematically and analytically – point by sub-point by sub sub sub-point. It was beautiful. It was a perfect plan. I was not insubmissive or in rebellion. I just wanted to do amongst the young people what burned in me.

I went to him and I said, "Brother, this is my plan for the youth. I want you to look at it and tell me what you think about it."

He said, "Great. I’ll have a look at it and I’ll get back to you."

I heard from him shortly afterwards and he called me in to speak to me. He looked at me and he said, "Les, this is a great plan – for the whole church, but you are just the youth leader." He said, "Are you planning to take over the whole church? Are you planning to change the whole church and restructure it the way you’ve done the youth?" He said, "I can’t give you the liberty to do this."

In effect what he was saying is, "If you make this work you’re going to make me look like an idiot." That is really what he was saying. He just frowned on it and said, "This is too big a plan. There’s no ways you can make this work. You cannot make this work without the church being part of the same thing. You cannot make the young people do this and it not be an integral part of the main church. And that’s my domain, not yours. I am in control, and I have a plan of how I want this church to be run."

I could just as well have taken my plans, crunched them up and thrown them in the waste paper basket. He did not want them. They made him look bad. It was gone.

I had to let that one go. My teaching ministry was beginning to show so greatly that they appointed me to be the teacher at the Adult Bible Class on a Sunday morning. While the kids had their Sunday School, there were parents and adults there and they would gather together in the foyer of the church. And we would have a normal adults bible study.

Well, the pastor did not have time to get involved in the Sunday School, so they had to find somebody to take the Adults Bible Class, but somebody had recognized my teaching ability. I began to take the Bible Class. Some of those adults would come there and be blessed. We are talking about a young guy in his early 20’s here. That is how old I was at the time. I was a young person, teaching all these old mature people in their 40’s and 50’s, teaching them the Word, and they ate the Word and received it. They were thrilled with it, and I had wonderful times just pouring out all the truths that God had given me.

It was wonderful and people were talking about the kinds of Bible Studies I was giving them. My ministry was flourishing, and at last I found a place in the church where I could do what God had called me to do; something which I seemed to be good at and which people were responding to.

Then this new pastor decided the one day he would sit in on the Bible Study. The previous pastor had not done much, but this new guy came in and suddenly it was not good enough for him. So he sat in on the study the one day. I felt a bit threatened, but he sat there quite calmly and he was not going to take over from me by any means. He let me go ahead and teach.

I began to teach and I got into certain subjects. It is one of the subjects that I still dislike to this day, and I kind of wonder if it does not date back to there, but it had to do with the second coming, eschatology, and all that. I do not even remember what I was teaching, but I was teaching something.

And right in the middle of the teaching he stopped me and said, "I have a question to ask you," and he asked me an extremely difficult question, which I had to think about in order to answer. And in the context of what I was teaching and what God had showed me, I gave him my answer to that question.

He said, "I disagree with you."

There was a deathly hush. Now everybody is sitting there. They are members of his congregation. He is the pastor. I have been teaching them, and the pastor is now questioning my teaching in front of them. Who are they going to side with?

"Yes pastor, no pastor, anything you say pastor …"

Again, my ministry was hindered, because the man of God that was there and was in charge, was hampering it. There comes a point where you have had enough.

I remember once listening to a series on success principles, and one of the lectures in that had a wonderful title that I would never forget. It was entitled, ‘The Day That Turns Your Life Around’. In it, the man was explaining how you reach a point in life, where you are sick of being poor, where you are sick of being down-trodden, where you are sick of being a nobody. Where eventually you reach that point where you say, "That’s it. I’ve had it. Enough!"

He said, "That day, when you’ve finally reached the end of your tether, is the day that is going to turn your life around, because from that day you’re going to stand up and start doing something about it."

Apostle of God, before you can even begin to move into the call that God has given you, you are going to have to go through a time of discontentment with the church system the way it is right now, with the state and condition of the Body of Christ as it is right now. And you are going to have to come to the point where this discontentment is enough to spur you on to action. You are going to have to come to the day that turns your life around.

Well I came to that point. I was not through with all this yet. I was still trying. I went and packed up my job and went full time into the Bible College that was being run by this church, in the hopes that if I qualified in their Bible School and obtained their qualification, that they would finally recognize my ministry and put me into the work.

I knew more than the lecturers. I do not say that to boast, but I had been studying. Most of the lecturers were just ordinary pastors. They were not even teachers. Some of them were even evangelists. I think there was one man amongst the whole lot who was a true teacher, and he was the only one who really taught me anything. I would share and we would be on the same level, and I would know what he was talking about. All the rest of the students would be arguing with him, and I would be arguing for him. I knew what he was talking about. It was a difficult situation. But I rose up and pushed through in this Bible School, hoping that as I qualified they would put me into ministry.

Somebody joined the Bible School a year after I did. This man, at the time I had first felt the call of God several years earlier, had been unsaved and lost in sin. In fact, he was deep into drugs at the time and God had miraculously saved him. It was wonderful. He had been saved a few years and had come into the church. He started to get involved and showed some promise and came and joined the Bible School a year after me.

He had what they wanted. He had the personality, and the right ability to please the leaders by saying the right thing at the right time, and by being the kind of person they wanted him to be. He became the blue-eyed boy, still immature, still a novice, but the blue-eyed boy.

And you know, before long it came time for our pastor to go on furlough and there was nobody to take his place. So who do we appoint? We have to take one of the bible students. Who do we appoint? Who else, but this man was appointed, and he became my pastor. He became over me.

I had served the Lord all my life. I had had the call of God in my life for several years, probably about as long as he had been saved, but he became my pastor, and now I had to submit to this new pastor.

I did it grudgingly, but I submitted. I disagreed with his doctrine. It was false, legalistic and full of error. He had been mentored by somebody who was into some weird doctrine that was somewhat off. But he was accepted and he was put as my pastor. Then the one day somebody who was fairly close to him, who in turn was one of those who was headed for big things, because he knew exactly the right things to say to make the pastor happy, he began to question me and ask me what I thought of the pastor, what I thought of his doctrine, and what I thought of certain things. And I spoke the truth and said what I really thought. It was a big mistake. He went running straight back to his pastor, to make sure that I would never be a threat to him ever again. And he began to tell the stories.

Well, I got a visit the one night from the pastor and this man, and one of the elders – you know one of the elders who was ready to say, "How high do I jump, pastor. I’m happy to do whatever you want, pastor." They came to me to discipline me and to tell me that I was out of order, and that I had said things that were out of order. I had not said things that were out of order. I said them to him to his face.

He sat down there and opened his Bible to try and rebuke me and to bring me to order. He quoted a Scripture to me and I opened my Bible and quoted five back at him. He opened his Bible and quoted another Scripture at me, and I opened my Bible and I quoted another five back at him.

He said there dumbfounded, and he closed his Bible and said, "Well, it’s pointless us looking into the Word."

He did not know the Word. That was his problem, and he wanted to be the leader, to tell me who had grown up in the church, who had grown up in the presence of the Lord, how the church should be run. That was the day that turned my life around.

That is when I reached the point where I said, "Lord, that’s it. Enough! Lord, I don’t care about ministry. I don’t care that if leaving this church cuts off any chance I have to go into ministry. They haven’t put me in anyway, they’ve put this guy in my place. They’re not going to accept me. They’re not going to recognize me. Lord, I’ve had it! I’m out of here."

Well, where do you go? You go to another church and tell them, "I left such and such a church because they disciplined me."

And the pastor is going to get hold of the other pastor and say, "Why did he leave?"

"Well, we kicked him out, because he was out of order and insubordinate."

I had to make a choice. I had to make a choice and that choice cost me, because I walked out of that church never to return. I walked out on every chance that I had, of being a part of the church system in that particular organization.

Apostle, you are going to have to come to the place where you are discontented. Are you unhappy enough yet? Are you discontented enough? Are you dissatisfied enough? Are you plain mad enough with the disorder that is in the Body of Christ, to do something about it, or are you still too spineless to stand up and say, "That is wrong. That is contrary to the Word. That is not God’s order and I’m not going to stand for it. I’m not going to sit around here and take it. I’m going to rise up and I’m going to do something about it."

If you have not come to that point yet, then still awaiting you sometime in the near future, is the day that turns your life around. And when that day arrives for you, then you will be ready to move onto step number two, of building the church of God.

Apostolic Foundation (Book) You Will Not Find Another Book Like This Anywhere This is the Definitive Standard for the Apostolic Office Today God is raising up Apostles to Lead the End Times Church Are You One Of Them? Find out... ...read more