Exploring the Foundations of Church Leadership and Community

Biblical and historical leadership has not left from the biblical roots of Christianity, it's just that we have expanded as the church has grown. Before we move into body lesson let me give you three milestones that are important to us today for all over the world. There are three milestones today that are extremely important. All three of these things celebrate their diamond anniversary. In February of this year, we celebrate the 75th year of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Now if any of you never heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls, they were discovered in 1948 by some shepherds. [00:01:34]

Your Bible is not arranged in chronological order, which means it's not arranged in the order in which it was written. It is arranged in what we call redemptive order. So Genesis is not the first book written, it's just the first book of beginnings. So it is arranged, your Bible is arranged in historical order or rather in redemptive order, not in chronological order. The oldest book in the Bible is what, who knows it? How many Bible scholars we have in... Somebody said Job. Good, that's right. Job is the oldest book in the Bible. [00:03:08]

Will the true church stand up? It involves four things to really understand the church: history, doctrine, worship, and practice. Those are the four things that actually make a church. So will the true church stand up? Why is that important? Because there are so many false churches, and Jesus prophesied about that in Matthew 24 and what we call the Olivet Discourse. Then in the last days, there's going to be many antichrists, many false Christs that's going to come. That's one of the signs of the end. All these things are birth pains. [00:09:06]

Christianity is the largest religion in the world, yet we have made the least impact on the world in 21 centuries. How do you be the largest and make the least impact? Something's wrong, and the problem is our doctrine, our worship, and our practice. We have so many variations of the church, so many misunderstandings of what the church is all about, so people don't only really understand what Christianity is really all about. [00:10:20]

So we evangelize out there, we grow in here. You have to bring people in the kingdom out there. Once they end, we got to get them to grow. There's no point in coming in and just becoming babies all the time. Acts 2:42 said they continued daily in the apostles' doctrine, breaking the bread, fellowship. Acts 2:47 says then the Lord added to the church daily, they that should be saved. So church formulation has got to be these four things: history, doctrine, worship, and practice. [00:13:00]

Church growth has to be supernatural. Can't give you a formula for first growth, that's supernatural. Acts 2:47 says the Lord, not the pastor, but the Lord added to the church, not the members, but the Lord added to the church daily those that were being saved. So as you accept Jesus Christ, the Lord adds you to a group that becomes part of the history and development of what you're doing and developing where you are with the church. [00:13:51]

The ancient church is the church in the book of Acts. That's how the church got started. That's what we call the ancient church, the nucleus, the genesis, the development of the church happened on the day of Pentecost. It was supernatural, it was miraculous, full of signs and wonders, and that's the ancient church. From the ancient church, here we are today. We are the modern church. We're historically what developed from the ancient church. [00:14:44]

The apostolic church was the church that followed the teachings of the apostles. That's the apostolic church, and the apostles taught this. Here's what the apostolic doctrine was: the death, the burial, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That's what makes an apostolic church, teaching the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Look at Ephesians 2:19... Paul does some interesting things here, especially in his development of the church. [00:16:19]

But when God allowed the Holy Spirit to fall on the day of Pentecost, he brought non-Jews into the church, and the Jews at that time referred to anybody who was not circumcised, regardless of your nationality, as a Gentile. You were called a Gentile because you were not part of the covenant that God had with Israel. You were not circumcised on the eighth day. You were not born a Jewish Christian, so racially you are not a historical Jew. [00:17:14]

This is going to be universal. So Paul's talking to a Gentile church, so he's letting them know you are no longer foreigners or non-Christians, non-citizens. You are fellow citizens with the saints and members. Now this means that we have not replaced Israel. We have just become partners with Israel. Amen. No replacement theology. We have become partners because just as they are part of God's covenant, now we become part of God's covenant. [00:18:14]

Old Testament prophets prophesied historically the future. They saw the future of what God was going to do. So when he brings together apostles and prophets, what he's saying is that all that the prophets foretold and talk about what's coming has now come to the point that now apostles can tell us when the timing would occur. Okay, prophecy the future, apostles tell us the timing. So what happened on the day of Pentecost when everybody wanted to know what was going on in the day of Pentecost, what was happening? Peter stood up and said, wait a minute, let me tell you that this is what the prophet Joel prophesied. [00:19:24]

They were looking for a ruler, and he came as a savior. Bishop said they were looking for a ruler, and Jesus came to bring salvation. When he comes again, he will rule. His kingdom will have no end. I have a book coming out in about maybe three weeks now. It's called "Decoding the Kingdom," and I took time in that book to explain what the kingdom of God really is. I took a while to write it, but we're getting ready to put it out. [00:22:43]

John shows us how God became a man. The other three gospels are trying to show us how the earthly man became God. John shows us how God became man. You get it? So one perspective, we need to know how this earthly man who walked in Nazareth, who was born of a virgin Mary, who was a carpenter, actually became the Son of God. That's what Matthew, Mark, and Luke does, is trying to show you how a natural man became a heavenly man. John takes the other perspective and shows us how the heavenly God became a normal man. [00:26:34]

God walked in the world as a man, and nobody knew who he was as God. He was so ordinary that they put him to death because they didn't recognize that he was the Lord of glory. The Bible says they didn't recognize him. He came, look, he came to those who should have recognized him in verse 11. He came to what was his own, but his own people did not receive him. If anybody else, they should have known who he was. [00:27:37]

Sometimes our presumption gets us to miss God because we presume some things that are not reality. See how we keep missing all this healing and deliverance that Bishop keeps showing us, that God is still active, that the Holy Spirit is still present, that the pneuma power of God is still there, and we act like, well, okay, because everybody... And sometimes because we look so much at the man, we can't see God through the man. [00:28:13]

So we have two realities of what we think of the church. The church is both people and the place. They're okay, both people and the place. So we're not really understanding the church, because our concept is even people or the place, and we pitted both of these concepts together. Even the church is the people. When you read about the church in the New Testament, it's always talking about the people. When you talk about the church today, it's always talking about the place, because we talk about going to church. [00:41:38]

No, the New Testament says we are the church. Church is living inside here. What we go to is houses of worship. This is a house of worship, but the church is right here. But when we go to is a house of worship. Go to worship. Israel had their house of worship taken from them in the Old Testament. They lost the temple, so they compromised. They went and improvised, and they started doing synagogues to replace the temple. [00:42:48]

We might have to transition to something else. Don't mean we lose God. So we gotta understand the church is both the people and the place, not evil or, "Well, I can't get to the place, I don't have no church." No. Paul said you are the temple of God, and the fact that God dwells in you, that's where the real temple is. But we gather together in these little tents so that we can fellowship. Man becomes a corporate understand. [00:44:34]

So here's the church pattern. We have to get this church pattern together because we're getting to the point which where you came here for, right? And that's the third one on this list. What the first thing we got to do is get the doctrine straight, then we get our worship perfected, then we can lead. Now, if you're not doctrinally sound and you're not a good worshiper, you're definitely not going to make a good leader. [00:45:27]

You cannot be a Christian without knowing the Christ, because he's the anointed one. The word Christ is from, it's from the Hebrew Messiah. It means the anointed one, the Christos, the one who is anointed. So one who is a Christian must be anointed. You got to have an anointing. So he didn't just teach his disciples, he said, "Now that you've been taught, I want you to go back to Jerusalem until you'll be endured with power." [00:46:11]

Then you can lead others to Christ. So if we got strong doctrine, we've got vibrant worship, we're going to have interactive leaders. Now we're going somewhere now. Take to this next point and we'll take a break. [00:47:05]

The apostles never ruled the church. The apostles never ruled the church. The apostles never ruled the church. The apostles never ruled the church. They had a counsel, but they ruled the church. The reason why the first three centuries of the church, there was really no church, it was an outlaw church. In Latin, it was elecia, which means that it was a legal church. It was illegal to have a church before the third century. [00:49:02]

So prior to that, when all these translations start coming, denominations start forming. Then you have Baptist, Methodists, whatever you name it, going down the line. Hey, me, they started forming as what we call denominations because of translations of scriptures. They all saw a different viewpoint in scripture, and they start developing their own viewpoint of scripture and their own form of government. That's how you got to Presbyterian form of government. [00:52:27]