Glad you're with us.
Can you hear me?
Am I turned on here?
Got me?
Got the volume here?
All right.
Praise God.
Turn with me, if you would, to the
book of 1 Corinthians and the second chapter.
I want to talk to you about the
cross-centered church.
A lot of ideas about how to do
church today, isn't there?
A lot of conferences, a lot of books,
a lot of tape series, a lot of
programs that we could pick up in a
Christian bookstore or at a different conference and
find out about how to do church.
And we don't have a lot of how
-to's here at this gathering.
We just want to talk about Jesus.
We believe He is the how-to.
He is the how-to.
1 Corinthians, if you would, chapter 2.
We'll be reading from verse 2 in just
a moment.
Let's pray first.
Ask God to give us ears to hear.
Father, we thank you in the name of
Jesus that you delight to proclaim your word.
You are a God who loves to speak.
We want to tell you here this morning,
we are people who love to hear.
So speak to us, God, that once again,
we thank you for what we heard this
morning.
I know personally, it just really touched my
heart in a deep way.
And I ask you to continue this work
as you speak about the cross to your
people in Jesus' precious name.
Everybody say it together, amen?
Amen.
1 Corinthians chapter 2, verse 2, for I
received, for I resolved to know nothing while
I was with you except Jesus Christ and
Him crucified.
Another translation says, for I determined.
Paul says, I determined to know nothing except
Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
He was speaking to the church at Corinth.
If you have studied, which I'm sure most
of you have, the life of the church
that Paul was ministering, pastoring, shepherding, this was
a church that had some problems.
It was a church in doctrinal disputes.
They varied in different ideas on how to
live out the gospel.
They were a church that was in division.
Some said they were Vapal or some said
they were of Apollos.
Some said they were of others.
And so they had conflict within.
It was a church that was in moral
decay.
They had a sexual immorality that was named
among them that Paul said, the stuff that
you guys are involved in is even worse
than what's going on in the world.
Welcome to the church.
Every pastor in this room knows what it's
like to pastor a group of people who
aren't perfect, just like their pastor.
We understand what it's like to have chaos,
conflicts, strife, difficulties.
I personally think, I've been on the, working
with my father for about 18 months now,
going around the world, traveling in these pastors'
conferences.
It's been a great delight to be with
my father.
I have such a joy to work with
a man of God who I see behind
the scenes.
He doesn't just preach the stuff, but he
lives the stuff.
And that to me is the greatest testimony.
That's part of the reason I'm here today.
Jesus called me and I saw a good
role model in my own father.
But in this past 18 months traveling with
him, it's been such a great joy.
But I miss the church.
I've been a pastor almost all my life.
I started as a youth pastor when I
was 19.
Started my first church when I was 23
years old.
And I have absolutely, totally fallen in love
with the Church of Jesus Christ.
Now I know some of you are evangelists,
and some are seminary professors, and some work
with other programs, but I just want to
speak to you pastors just for a moment
because you've got the best job in the
world.
I mean you guys, you get to do
it all.
I mean, you know, an evangelist comes in
and preaches, then he leaves.
But you get to see new believers come
into the kingdom.
You get to see them discipled.
You get to see them baptized.
You get to disciple people.
You get to build community.
It's exciting, isn't it?
Amen?
But it's also extremely difficult.
You got the best job in the world,
but you got the most difficult job in
the world.
And a whole lot more you should have
said amen, but you're wondering what other people
might think of you if you say amen
too loud at this point.
My teenage son, when I was pastoring in
Denver, Colorado, told me, Dad, I really love
the church.
It's just the people in it I can't
stand.
He kind of put in a nutshell what
a lot of pastors go through.
They love the vision of the church.
They love the idea of the church.
They love God's heart for his church, but
it's just the day-in, day-out functioning.
I remember times where the phone would ring
at my house and my heart would start
beating faster, because it's just another problem.
It's another person that's saying the music's too
loud, the music's too soft.
The music's too old-fashioned, the music's too
contemporary.
Your preaching's too long, your preaching's too short.
You don't preach enough like Pastor Dave.
You preach too much like this constant.
I didn't even want to answer the phone,
and yet I still had, and to this
day have, a tremendous love for the church.
And Paul is describing his love for the
church, even though it was a church in
chaos, in conflict, in turmoil, and problem.
Also, so in the middle of this church,
what do I do?
What program do I turn to?
Can I start small groups?
Can I invite somebody to come in with
a deliverance ministry?
Do we need Alpha Course?
What do I do to make my church
change and work the way God intends it
to work?
And so he has this, I'm sure the
great thinker that Paul was could have come
up with a plethora of ideas, but he
says this, I fixed in my heart.
I got steadfast in my spirit.
I got resolute about this one thing, and
it's one thing alone.
The only answer for the church of Jesus
Christ, when it's in chaos, the only answer
for the church of Jesus Christ, when it's
in declension, the only answer for the church
of Jesus Christ, when there's any situation at
all that comes up in time of need,
it's the cross of Jesus Christ.
Paul says, I determined.
I got gritty about this, man.
I clenched my fist and grit my teeth
and said, nothing will dissuade me from keeping
this as first and foremost.
It's the cross of Jesus Christ applied to
the body of Christ that changes the life
of the church.
There's no greater program.
There's no other solution that comes back down
to the cross of Jesus Christ.
He starts the book of Corinthians this way.
We don't have to turn there, but even
in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, as he's concluding
the letter, almost as book ends in the
15th chapter, he's saying, God gave me a
message, and I'm going to deliver the message
to you just as he gave it to
me.
And he said, this is a first importance
that Christ died.
He's speaking of what again?
Of the cross.
He starts off by saying, I determined to
know nothing else.
He ends by saying, this is the first
importance.
The cross of Jesus Christ should be number
one on our list.
That's not an experience a lot of pastors
have.
That's not an experience a lot of leaders
in ministries have, keeping the cross of Jesus
Christ first.
And Paul said, I had to determine because
it's so easy to get distracted into other
things, other ways of living life.
Can I share a few minutes with you
my own personal testimony?
I started a church about 10 years ago,
maybe 11 years ago, in Denver, Colorado.
We met on a university campus.
We rented a building, and God blessed very
quickly.
There was probably about 300 people in the
first few months, first year or so.
The church grew real rapidly at first.
We had 300 people, and I was excited.
I just was, you know, sort of like
my vision was this was Times Square Church
in the middle of the country.
I just, you know, I just figured, you
know, Times Square Church grew to five, six
thousand in a couple years, and we were
well on our way.
You know, six months old, and already just
having to get new auditoriums.
The smaller ones don't fit us anymore.
I was so excited, except we got to
a place in the life of our church
where the church, and here's what the church
growth experts use this phrase, they called your
church plateaus.
I'm sure most of you pastors here have
never experienced that ever happening to you before,
but what they mean by plateau is the
church grows, but then it hits a certain
spot, and it stops growing.
You no longer have, you might have new
people coming, but other people are leaving, so
the church stays about the same number.
So for about a year into our second
year of ministry, our church had plateaued.
The third year, it was about the same,
and I started feeling discouraged.
What's wrong with me?
What's wrong with this church?
Why isn't, why aren't we growing?
Why aren't we seeing?
I came to Denver, Colorado to build a
prevailing church, to see a church that really
reaches the city in powerful ways, and why
are we stifled at this situation?
Why are we at the same amount we
were last year?
And so I started looking for solutions, looking
for answers, and a friend of mine said,
hey, what you ought to do is go
up to this conference.
There's this really amazing conference.
It's up in Illinois.
It's a big church, and they have wonderful
ministries, and they really help you.
They really can help you reach lost people,
and help you grow your church bigger.
You'll reach out to people that are far
from God, like, man, that sounds good to
me.
I'd love to see this.
So I went to this conference up in
Chicago, and it was an amazing conference.
Man, they were, they were like, I just
got all excited about it.
Wow, here's how you break from the 200
level to the 300 level, and here's how
you go from the 300 level to the
500 level, and here's how you reach lost
people, and here's how you do this, and
here's how you design your church services.
If you don't design your church services this
way, then when lost people come into church,
they're not going to understand what you're talking
about, and they don't know these old songs,
so you have to retool your whole church,
reconfigure it, and restructure it, and so I
was so excited.
I was thrilled.
I got, and I bought all the tapes,
and I bought all the books, and I
had to buy an extra suitcase just going
home with all the extra materials I had
from this conference, and I got back to
my church, and I said, guys, the reason
we plateaued is because we haven't understood this
seeker-sensitive mentality towards lost people, and so
what we need to do is we're going
to restructure.
We're going to take about the next two
or three months, and we're going to listen
to all these, and I gave all my
staff all the tapes.
I gave them all the books, and the
materials, and the how-tos, and we kind
of...staff members changed roles, and I trained the
elders on how to be more sensitive to
lost people, and I took my tie off
and my shirt, and I started dressing casually,
and I was like, this has got to
be it.
I was so excited, and about three months
later, we kind of launched this new kind
of church, and I was so excited because
lost people came in and new people I'd
never seen before.
They'd heard we were doing this kind of
new style of church, so they started coming
to our church, but the problem was we
sort of started in a different way, just
a real sort of basic Bible-believing, Holy
Spirit-filled, preaching the gospel, and so when
we kind of shifted gears a little bit,
those people who had come to hear the
Word in depth and really worship God, and
have prayer meetings, and pray, and cry out
to God, those people left.
So I was kind of confused as a
pastor because we're still plateaued.
It's just new people now.
We've got, we still have 300 people.
There's 50 new people, but 50 of our
old, you know, and real pillars of the
church, so to speak, have left the church.
So I was, so after six months, eight
months, nine months, a year, we were still
plateaued, but I wasn't the kind of pastor
who gives up easily, so I heard about
another conference out on the West Coast.
This conference was even better because it didn't
just, see, the problem with the previous conference
was it just zeroed in on one thing,
sort of reaching seekers, and so I went
to this one on the West Coast, and
it was much better because it wasn't just
reaching one group of people.
It was like it had the whole diagram
set up for us, you know?
It had first base, second base, third base,
home.
It had, you know, and so it had
discipleship and maturity, and so I went to
this conference, and I'm like, this is it.
Praise God, I finally found, you know, this,
I feel so at home here, and I
went back to my church with the new
suitcase, with all the tapes, and all the
strategies, the structures, the sermons, the books, the
tapes, the CDs, everything, and I called the
staff together, and I said, the reason we've
plateaued as a church is because all's we're
doing is just this seeker type of thing.
We're just reaching people far from God, but
we don't disciple them, we don't nurture them,
and so I started meeting with the staff.
I said, we're going to retool our whole
church, we're going to restructure.
We're not going to be just like a
seeker type church, now we're going to be
purpose driven, we're going to have the whole
thing now, and so my staff says, okay,
that's good, let's go for it, and I
changed, like we had, it wasn't that big
a church, so I didn't have that big
a staff.
The book recommends each base, discipleship, maturity, worship,
each base has a pastor covering that area.
So I had like, sort of I had
two associate pastors, so I made them sort
of the pastor of evangelism, the pastor of
discipleship, but I didn't have a pastor for
maturity, so I asked my janitor if he
would help.
I'm not kidding.
I asked him if he'd help because I
really needed a third base covered.
You can't do it right unless you have
a third base covered.
So, some of you may have no idea
what I'm talking about here.
You've like never read any of these books
or been in any of these conferences, just
bear with me, we'll get back to the
scriptures here in just a moment.
So I got back to this conference, and
I'm meeting with my staff and the elders,
and we're training them.
I said, in six months, we're going to
launch this new kind of church, and we'll
have courses, and training, and development, and so
we launched it.
And it was so exciting because people heard
we were having this kind of church, and
so new people started coming, but you know
what else happened?
The seeker-sensitive people said, no, we don't
want all this, like discipleship, and maturity, and
response.
So they left the church, but about 50
people leave the church, and we had about
50 people added to the church.
So two years later now, after still struggling,
striving, what's the answer, what's the solution?
Two years later, I'm left now with a
sort of post-seeker, purpose-driven kind of
something or other church, and we're still at
300 people.
But I'm not a pastor who gives up
easily.
And so I went to, I kind of
ran out of conferences.
My story can go a lot longer.
I could take you hours through the conferences
I've been to.
I went to other conferences.
I finally ran out of conferences in America
to go to.
I even went to England, and I went
to an Alpha conference.
Have you ever heard of Alpha?
And I thought, I came back to the
church, and I said, you know what, we
need to run this Alpha course.
It's a 10-week course.
It's for new believers.
It's for people that are, you know, and
so I kind of got the staff together,
and I gave them all the tapes, and
all the books.
And I love the guy who, the guy's
name is Nicky Gumbel, who leads Alpha in
England, and he just speaks so well.
So I came back, I think I even
adopted a little bit of a British accent.
I'm like, welcome to church this morning, everyone.
So delighted to have you here today.
And it's just like a chameleon, just going
from different things to different things.
It's like, whatever looked good, whatever seemed exciting,
whatever seemed big, whatever seemed to be growing,
it's like, oh, I'll become like that.
And that's exciting.
Didn't even know who to be myself.
So I went to that conference and came
back, and this one was, this was the
toughest one, because my church was getting tired
of it.
And I'll never forget the day.
I'll never forget, my elders called me and
said, can we meet with you tonight, Pastor
Gary?
I said, sure.
And that's, that's probably when your pastors call
you and, and, and when, excuse me, when
your elders call you and say they need
to meet with you.
I mean, that's, you know, usually something's wrong.
And, and so we got to meeting that
night, and the first elder, kind of the
head elder, he said, Pastor Gary, we, we
love you.
Now, you know, something really bad's wrong.
Something's, you're, you know, your job is on
the line when they start off, we really
love you.
And so, so they said, we love you,
but, but we just noticed something.
We, we're, we're confused.
We, we don't know whether we're seeker sensitive,
seeker friendly, seeker hostile.
We, we don't know whether we're Baptist or
Pentecostal.
We don't know whether we're purpose driven, alpha
driven, cell group driven.
Two years ago, we were a church with
small groups.
Now we're a church of small groups.
One, one of the elders had heard there's,
there's this new thing happening down in South
America where everybody meets in groups of 12.
They said, please don't go to South America.
And, and they, they just said, yeah, we
love you, and we think you're a good
pastor, and we know you have a good
heart.
We see, under the surface of all this,
we see a love for Jesus and a
love for a church, but, but we're really
confused.
We just don't, and, and then the, the,
there's one of our elders is fairly wealthy,
and he said, Pastor Gary, I'll do anything
for you.
I will give you two weeks paid vacation.
I will, I will buy you a new
car, he told me.
He says, but please just promise me you'll
never go to another conference ever again.
So, so I was, I was, but, but
I'm not the kind of pastor that gets,
gives up easily, so.
So I didn't take their advice, and I,
and I went to one last conference.
This is now probably over a five year
time period, and, and I'm getting discouraged.
And I really am.
It's, none of the people that helped us
start, I've been through like five different churches
already.
We were sort of Pentecostal when we started,
then we became secret sensitive, then purpose driven,
then alpha, then cell group, and then, and
it's like, and I, the church is now,
you know, six, seven, eight years old.
It's still 300 people, but none of the
people that were there, you know, a year
ago are there anymore.
It's a whole brand new group of people,
and it's, I don't, this is tough, and
I was, I mean, I was, I was
truly discouraged.
This is hard.
This is not working.
I have a dream in my heart of
what the church could be like.
I know there's, there's something that God's after
in this church.
There's, there's, there's, there's something in my soul
that says the church could be more than
this.
There's something in my heart that says, says
God can really build in any city a
prevailing church that really does touch the lost,
that really does build disciples, that really understands
what it's like to have true, genuine Christian
community.
And I, I know the dream is there,
God, but I'm not seeming to be able
to get it done.
But I didn't give up, and I went
to one more conference, not taking the advice
of my elders.
And, and this conference was, was different than
the others.
They weren't presenting a program or a how
-to, and it should have been very encouraging
for me, but I remember sitting in that
conference and just thinking, oh, now I get
it.
Because I looked up on the stage, and
there was like a 200-voice choir.
And, and when the preachers got up, they
were, they were powerful and anointed and eloquent
and, and just, there were sermons like I've
never heard before.
Wow, that, and it just hit my heart.
And I just began to almost weep there
in my chair.
I just said, that's what it is.
I mean, I, I can't do this.
I can't preach like these guys preach.
I can't build a choir like these guys
have built this kind of choir.
I don't have the kind of, if, if
I had a choir like that, everybody in
my church would be in the choir.
When I, I'd have like, there'd be nobody
out there.
I'd have to turn and preach to the
choir.
The choir is bigger than my church.
And I was just, I was, it was
like, like the proverbial thing, the straw that
broke the camel's back.
I was broken.
It was, that was it.
I'm finished.
Because I just said, I realized for the
first time, it's, it's not the style of
church.
It's not the structure of the church.
It's not the program you use.
I realized for the first time, it was,
and I was wrong, but here's my thinking.
It's not, there's no program out there good
enough because I'm not good enough.
And I remember saying to myself, or Satan
said to me, I don't know what it
was, but it was, you don't have what
it takes.
You're not good enough.
You're not eloquent enough.
You're not powerful enough in your leadership.
You're changing all the time.
People are confused, leaving your church.
They're scattered.
You, you, you, you've done nothing but cause
trouble.
And I was just so frustrated.
I said, you know, if that's what it
takes to, to have a super choir and,
and the most skilled musicians in the world
and the most eloquent preaching, and I don't
have what it takes, I might as well
just give up.
And I walked out of the middle of
that conference and I went back to my
hotel room.
I'll never forget it.
I got down on my face on the
carpet in that room and I said, God,
why did you put this burden in my
heart?
Why did you give me this desire and
this passion and then not give me the
skill and the ability and the vision and
the, and the fortitude and the wisdom to
be able to see it through, to, to
make it come to fruition?
Why did you put something in my heart
that, that I don't have what it takes
to make happen?
I just began to get frustrated.
Have you ever gotten angry at God?
I, I have never got so angry at
God.
I literally shook the angry fist at God.
You, I used some of the words of
scripture to describe it, but I could have
just as easily used words of the street
language because the anger in my heart was
rising.
And I just said, God, you like Jeremiah
said, you, you've deceived me and I was
deceived.
You seem to work against me rather than
for me.
You're blessing all these people.
Look at these guys at this conference I've
just been listening to.
Look at the ones in Chicago.
Look at the ones in California.
I remember singing this song when I was
a young man.
Do you remember the song?
Pass me not oh gentle savior.
Hear my humble cry while on others thou
art falling.
Do not pass me by.
And I was crying on that carpet in
that hotel room saying, God, you passed me
by others.
You have fallen on others.
You have loved others.
You have blessed, but you just passed me
by.
And then the words came to me, Jacob,
I have loved Esau.
I have hated.
I said, God, do you hate me?
Am I an Esau to you?
Have I done something to you that has
caused you to put a carrot out in
front of me, a hope and a dream
and a desire and then not allow me
to see it through?
I would have rather you not called me
at all than for you to call me
and then let me see the thing that
I felt you called me to.
Have I become an Esau to you?
In that hotel room, all of a sudden,
something changed.
I mean, it's oftentimes I realized that it
was at that point my life changed.
I mean, I have a testimony.
I can tell you I was saved when
I was six years old at one of
my father's meetings when I was preaching.
I have a testimony I can tell you
when I got filled with the Holy Spirit
and baptized.
I was 18 years old, which is really
late when you grow up in a Pentecostal
church.
My whole church was fastened and praying for
me.
He's 18 and he doesn't even speak in
tongues.
What's wrong?
And I can tell you all those different
testimonies, but my real testimony is on that
carpet in my face because it's when God
broke me.
And in some senses, He almost agreed with
my argument, you don't have what it takes.
And all along, you thought you did.
If you could just learn the right methodology,
you thought you had what it takes if
you could just get the right staff together,
if you could just institute the right program,
if you could just have the right style,
if you could just lead people the right
way, that your skill, your eloquence, your powerful
leadership, your giftedness can see you through to
make your dreams come true.
And that's an American gospel that's damnable.
An American gospel that says, just dream it
and rub the magic lantern and God will
come out and give you everything you want.
But what God wants to do is to
take His servants and break them.
Oh God, give me a broken contrite heart.
Oh God, give me a heart that says,
God, I don't care about numbers anymore.
God, give me a heart that says, I
don't care about success any longer.
What I care about is having a heart
after God.
And I got up from that hotel room
and I said, God, do you, I feel
like quitting.
Matter of fact, I told you on my
knees right here in this room that I
quit.
I don't wanna have any, I'm gonna be
a good Christian, but I'm not gonna, I'm
gonna quit the ministry.
I'm gonna quit church.
I'm not gonna do this anymore.
By the time I got up, I was
a changed person.
I felt like Jacob when, my dad was
speaking about Jacob earlier.
I felt like Jacob when Jacob was at
that point of wrestling with God and God
said, let me go, let it go.
And I felt like God was saying to
me, it's not just a fight you're having
with me right now.
It's a fight you've been having with me
your whole life.
And Jacob was a wrestler and God said,
the Lord said to him, let it go.
It wasn't just saying, you're beating me up,
like my dad said last night.
It's not just that you're beating me up
and please let me go.
It's like, let this war go.
Quit the wrestling.
And I just took a deep breath.
And I went back to my church and
they were scared.
Like, uh-oh, he just got back from
another conference.
But I think the first thing they noticed
is I didn't have any tapes.
I didn't have any books.
And I didn't call the staff together.
I didn't call the elders and tell them
we're going to change.
I just changed on the inside.
People ask me, what do you think of
Willow Creek?
What do you think of Saddleback?
What do you think of this movement, that
movement?
I think we do what we're called to
do when God calls us to do it.
I let them do what they do.
But I changed that day because I no
longer want to be Bill Hybels.
I no longer want to be Rick Warren.
I no longer want to be David Wilkerson.
I want to be Gary Wilkerson, the man
of God.
God called me to be.
And the Lord set me free.
He set me so free.
And I just, I didn't change anything in
the church.
We didn't do a whole new routine or
policy set up or anything like that.
I just kind of started getting back to
knowing Jesus, loving Him, being a friend of
God.
And all of a sudden, people in my
church said, hey, there's something different about you.
There's not a confusion.
There's a clarity.
You're not trying to be something else or
somebody else.
You're just being what God's called this church
to be.
You're just being what God has called you
to be.
You don't have to travel all over the
world to borrow things from people.
God wants to speak to you.
God wants to speak to everything because each
church is unique.
Each ministry is different.
And let me tell you this.
When, if you and your ministry superimposes another
ministry upon your ministry, it squeezes out your
ministry so your ministry isn't getting done.
And there's an emptiness in what God wants
to do.
You have to be what God called you
to be.
And so I got up off the carpet
and I went back to my church and
I was so excited just because there was
just a peace now about pastoring.
And there was no longer that striving.
And a few months later, I got a
phone call from my father.
He said, I've been listening to some of
your sermon tapes.
He said, what's happened to you?
You're different.
There's a difference in your voice.
And I said, I just kind of laid
down all the plans of man.
I'm just trying to obey God.
And he said, you know what?
I'm starting to do these pastors conferences.
Would you mind traveling with me around the
world preaching to pastors?
I went, would I mind?
Would I mind?
And I tell you what, I never dreamed
about doing anything like this.
It was never an agenda of mine.
And you know what I learned from that?
When you start putting your own dreams down,
your own desires down, your own ambitions, your
own agendas, then God raises something up far
above what you ever thought or imagined in
your whole life.
And folks, you're gonna get worn out, weary,
downcast and defeated if you keep running from
conference to conference, trying to support yourself and
your level of encouragement by trying to implement
some new kind of program in your church.
Time to forget about all that stuff right
now.
And just say, this day, I set my
mind, I set my heart.
I determined to know nothing except Jesus Christ
and Him crucified.
Hallelujah.
Stand with me if you would, please.
When my father introduced me yesterday, he said,
there was this bishop that said, you know,
we really love your sermons, but we relate
to you more.
I think a lot of pastors relate to
me more because I have made every mistake
a pastor could possibly make.
I think people relate to me because most
churches are 300 or under.
Most pastors are pastoring small churches like I've
pastored most of my life.
And most pastors that are pastoring small churches
struggle the same way that I have struggled
in my past.
Feeling like I need to make the church
bigger.
I need to do more.
And I've been to all the conferences where,
you know, you sit around the table with
all the guys and one guy says, you
know, my church has 200.
And then the next guy goes, I remember
when my church was that small.
We have 500.
And the next guy on the table says,
oh, 500, is that all?
We have a thousand.
And I've been at those kind of meetings.
And I know what it's like to kind
of feel small sometimes or insignificant or you're
not doing enough for God.
That's a lie from the pit of hell.
Some of the best churches in the United
States of America are churches of 50, 60,
70, 80, 90, 100 people.
And we just need to be men and
women who are faithful to God.
And God, if you call me to...
And I do have a passion still to...