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THE 1995 VINEYARD INTERNATIONAL PASTOR'S Conference saw many "firsts." We saw the birth of the first Association of Vineyard Churches outside the U.S. with Canada. We also had our first plenary speaker from outside of the Vineyard movement. That honor is held by Jack Hayford, who has been placed providentially in my life. I've known him since before the Vineyard was started. In the early days of developing the Vineyard, Jack generously offered, with no strings attached, to do any number of services for us to help us get started. Even more importantly, he has been a continual sounding board for me. Jack has probably done more "eldering" in my life than any other one person. I'm grateful for his friendship and his love for the Vineyard. -JOHN WIMBER
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IN THE MIDST OF RENEWAL, A PRETENTIOUSNESS can easily crowd into any group when it
thinks it is experiencing something so unique it must have some preferred place in the divine order. All of us are fundamentally insecure enough to be at risk of yielding to that temptation.
Thus, we need to pay heed to the fundamental truth of the first six verses of 1 Corinthians chapter three: the purposes and power of God flow through human agencies not from them. Jesus is the originator of anything that happens with us. We're just avenues for the flow of divine grace.
Movements and structures
Movements grow and develop polity; government, and structures that come with the advance and
maturity of any organization. These are not necessarily negative, unless they substitute for divine life. The fundamental structures themselves are as desirable as the skeletal structure that gives mobility and structure to the human body.
Tradition and history; church polity, and structures are necessary to the maturation of a movement, and people who speak condescendingly of these things are making a serious miscalculation. For any vital body to have mobility, it needs structure, and the structure increases as the body grows.
It would be ludicrous to have the matured physical frame of the flesh of my body and have the same skeletal structure I had as an infant. Yet some within a growing movement often chafe at those skeletal aspects of structure and see growing evidence of "traditions" as a de facto threat to its life. On the contrary; structures can bring blessing and provide protection.
Sectarian spirit
I learned in the life of my denomination that when a non-sectarian spirit exists and we respect those things and people that have gone before us -- not only in our own movements but in those movements we drew our life from -- we retain an objectivity on the work of the Spirit of God.
I've learned the importance of respecting tradition without reverencing tradition. I respect the distinctives I've inherited, yet I don't feel an obligation to bow before them.
From 1 Corinthians 3:4, we pick up that any attitude that fosters sectarianism is worldly and therefore not of the Holy Spirit. "For when one says, 'I follow Paul,' and another, 'I follow Apollos,' are you not mere men?"
Paul's primary basis for upbraiding the Corinthians about their carnality is their sectarian spirit. Paul identifies this spirit as the fountainhead of the Corinthians' problems with immorality their confusion over the issue of tongues, and their disastrous celebration of the Lord's table.
Sectarianism breeds a small-ness of soul. The church today seems to be increasingly subdivided by the nit-picking criticism of people who define their whole mission as sitting in scrutiny over others. Some even uphold this sectarian sideswiping as a mark of maturity. Considering the testimony of Scripture, it's precisely the opposite in the eyes of the Lord.
Aimee Semple Mcphersori, the founder of my denomination, was an Assemblies of God evangelist in the early decades of this century She was attacked for nearly everything she did or Said. "You can talk about me all you please, but I'll talk about you down on my knees" was the phrase she used in the face of unrelenting and bitterly personal diatribes. She refused to enter into the divisive spirit of her attackers and retaliate in kind.
Loving the Whole Church
So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. For we are Gods' fellow workers; you are Gods' field, God's building. (1 Corinthians 3:7-9)
Participation in God's growth program for the church is a privilege we share mutually From the earliest days of my ministry I remember hearing our denominational leaders say "You've been called to be a part of something bigger than yourself." That's true of pastors or leaders in local churches, and it's also true of movements.
Rejecting the spirit of sectarianism is more than simply attending ecumenical prayer meetings and trying to be tolerant and accepting. We are privileged to share mutually in doing Kingdom work.
Twenty-six years ago, I accepted what I thought would be a temporary post at a tiny, nondescript Foursquare church in Van Nuys, California. Nineteen faithful souls gathered each week in the shadows of the - First Baptist Church of Van Nuys, which was then one of the nation's ten largest churches. After two weeks of pastoring, I was one day waiting for a green light directly across from this big, well-known church. I suddenly discovered my face becoming flushed and hot. Then it hit me - I was mad. I was mad because I thought these Baptists thought they were better than I. They not only thought they were better than I because they were bigger, they thought they were better because they weren't Pentecostal. I had all kinds of things I thought they thought about me when really, they probably didn't ever think of my tiny congregation-or me-at all.
As I looked at the building I felt the Lord say, "I want you to pray for the work I'm doing at this church. There's no way the pastoral staff can keep up with it. You are a shepherd to my flock, and though that is not your flock, it's mine and you are mine. Pray for the grace I am working there to advance and be fruitful because the great work needs the care of my shepherds."
Something monumental happened at that moment. It took me years to realize how momentous it was. God changed something in my heart toward the whole body of Christ that has flavored everything about my life since then. Until then, there had been an imperceptible sectarian smallness in my soul. That morning the Lord called me to love the whole Church.
He reminded me that the church was his and I was privileged to share mutually, as this text says, in the work of God's grace in the whole church, not just in my denomination. God told me, "pray down a blessing" for a church that seemed to have more than its share of blessings already while my tiny flock was short on blessings. The Lord told me to bless them when I had nothing in the world and no dream at all of what he was getting ready to do.
When I drove by other church facilities, the same thing started happening. I would drive by a Catholic church and thank the Lord that the testimony of the Blood of Jesus went on in that place every day. I'd thank God when I'd drive by liberal churches that I knew were totally resistant to anything of vital life or truth. Yet someone had dedicated that property to God, so I'd thank the Lord there was a place of kingdom turf and ask him to let his grace come upon it.
I started loving pastors I knew would repudiate anything I stood for. Something very pivotal had happened in my own spirit.
Submission
The power of submission has been perhaps the greatest blessing to me. In early 1971, the Lord appeared in a remarkable way in our church and from that hour there came a stream of blessing that has been the story of God's grace at the place where I serve. Before the end of that year, there would be nearly four times as many people in attendance as at the beginning of that year, and the year after that the same thing again.
Two months after the Lord started visiting us, he spoke to my heart very clearly as I was praying: "You don't believe you're in my will." I answered, "I don't know what you mean."
"Do you believe you're supposed to be pastoring?" the Lord continued.
"Yes."
"Are you supposed to be pastoring in Van Nuys?"
"Yes."
"Are you supposed to be pastoring the Van Nuys Foursquare Church?"
"Yes."
"Do you think it's your own idea that you're Foursquare?"
He had me. I suddenly realized the ludicrous nature of the proposition that I could be pastoring the Foursquare church, be in the will of God, and that the Foursquare part of it was something of my own concoction and not of his sovereign preordination.
The Lord clarified a whole battery of things at that moment. Pastors and other leaders need to come to terms with being in the will of God. If they are, then being in a particular movement is the will of God, too.
Consequently, being in that movement then calls for a spirit of submission to the things that factor into that fellowship.
Submission doesn't imply the movement has perfect insight on doctrinal truth or perfect church polity As much as we seek to align with scripture in our polity or our preaching of the Word, still there are going to be loops and gaps in any one of our perceptions. But God put us in families and calls us to live within the context of our family's fellowship and the rules of its life.
Test
For me the acid test had to do with a principle of Foursquare polity called the church extension tithe. All general offerings and tithes of a local congregation are tithed upon at the direction of the local pastor and sent to the Foursquare headquarters. In our denomination in the late 1960's, almost every church of any size didn't tithe. When they got to a certain size, they would "token tithe," which was an amount less than the 10% the Foursquare headquarters asked for but more than other
churches gave. I had recently started token tithing because our church was starting to grow We weren't a large church, but I knew the amount of tithe most of the churches contributed and we were giving more than they.
The Lord said to me, "If you believe I've been put you in the Foursquare movement, I expect you to submit to their polity -- not because it is perfect but because it is the family where I put you."
So I went back to preceding months when we hadn't tithed as a church and wrote a cheque for $280 because there was $2,800 we hadn't thithed right on. Our budget has changed since then but the principle hasn't. Today, we write a cheque for $75,000 for our monthly tithe to the denomination headquarters. We won't do it because anybody there demands it, but because the living God put me in a church family and expects me to live by "the rules of the house."
Availability to fellowship
Since the birth of Christianity, there's always been a stream of vital life in the church, though at times it's been like a subterranean river in the desert. Reminding ourselves of those things will keep a certain humility and availability to fellowship. It will encourage a respect for things that have gone before us, not only in our own movement, but in those movements that we drew our life from.
Denominational life shouldn't necessarily inhibit an openness towards the larger body of Christ or breed sectarianism. I benefited in this regard from the spirit that existed in the Foursquare movement. That spirit has a point of tangible identification. To this day you can walk up to the Angelus Temple in the Echo Park area of Los Angeles and see the words Aimee Semple McPherson had inscribed on the cornerstone when that building was opened in 1923: "Dedicated to Interdenominational Worldwide Evangelism." Not a bad cornerstone for any movement.
Jack Hayford is the pastor of Church on the Way, America's largest Foursquare Church. Dr. Hayford has written 16 books; he produces weekly radio and television programs and is senior editorial advisor to Ministries Today magazine.
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• © 1999-2003 Len Hjalmarson.•
Last Updated on July 29, 2003
