There are Christians all over the world who are asking the same question: Where do we go from here?
Some have spent their lives in churches and ministries. They have listened to gifted men, attended meetings, studied the Bible, and supported the work. Others have already left. Yet many are still hungry. They have heard so much about Christ, but they want to know Him as their life.
I have no desire to start a movement or to become someone people follow. We already have too many people occupying that place. But if I could offer a simple invitation to those who share this hunger, it would be this: cross the river, leave Babylon, and return to Jerusalem.
Not to establish another religion. Not to recover a meeting method. Not to organize the dissatisfied. We must leave everything that has replaced Christ, for the possibility of His living expression among His people.
Cross the River
God called Abraham to leave his country, his relatives, and his father’s house. He was not handed a complete plan. He was called to go. The Hebrew, the one who crossed over, left what he knew because God had called him.
We have inherited an enormous religious world. Its traditions, ministries, leaders, and teachings have shaped our understanding of Christianity. We have lived in it so long that we can hardly imagine knowing Christ apart from it.
But what if the Lord is calling us to leave? Not to find a better denomination, not to follow a more accurate ministry, and not to become founders of something new. We are being called to leave what has taken the place of His life.
Crossing the river means leaving our dependence upon religious arrangements, recognized teachers, and methods. It means surrendering even our cherished picture of what the church should look like.
And the crossing must happen within us. We can leave a denomination and still be religious. We can reject another man’s authority and secretly want that authority ourselves. We can abandon a system and immediately begin constructing another.
Our ambition must die. Our need to be right must die. Our desire to become important in God’s work must die. We are crossing to gain Christ.
Leave Babylon
After generations in captivity, a remnant returned from Babylon to Jerusalem. Some had never known another home. They left familiar lives and security because the house of God mattered more than what they had established in captivity.
I see in Babylon a picture of the religious world we have learned to live in. It has authority, organization, tradition, accomplishment, and human importance. It can be beautiful and impressive. It can possess centuries of teaching. And it can function without anyone actually abiding in Christ.
That is the danger. We can become loyal to a ministry while neglecting the Lord within us. We can master the teaching of divine life while living from our natural life. We can preserve a religious institution because we cannot imagine what would happen without it.
But Babylon is not our destination. We must be willing to leave without knowing what awaits us. We must be willing to lose the religious world we know for the One we say is our life.
Do Not Let the Gifted Draw You to Themselves
There is something I want to say plainly to every hungry believer: do not let gifted people draw you to themselves.
Listen, perhaps. Read what they have written, perhaps. Receive whatever truly brings you to Christ. But do not become their follower. Do not let their gift become your source. Do not surrender your inward fellowship with the Lord to their understanding or authority.
I know the Scriptures speak of the many gifts Christ gives His Body. I am not denying those gifts. I am questioning what we have made of them.
A gift should supply Christ to the members. Instead, we have often made the gifted man indispensable. He becomes the permanent speaker, the recognized interpreter, the one who decides how everyone should meet and what everyone should believe. Others become an audience.
Around some gifted men grow ministries, salaries, offices, programs, and full-time religious careers. The work acquires goals to meet, influence to protect, and an organization to keep alive. The gifted man’s success becomes the work’s success. His importance becomes something everyone is expected to preserve.
I cannot accept that this is what the gifts were given for. A gift meant to serve the Body must never become a kingdom built around the one who possesses it.
A Smile Can Hide Control
Sometimes this domination is obvious. Often it is not. A gifted man may be warm, charming, and affectionate. He may speak beautifully about love and oneness. He may greet people with a smile and a hug.
Yet the entire gathering may still revolve around him. His interpretation must prevail. His decisions must be accepted. His ministry must continue. Those who question the arrangement may discover that there is little freedom to disagree.
A charming hug does not make control into fellowship. A beautiful message about the Body does not justify turning its members into spectators. Speaking about humility does not prove that a man has surrendered his importance.
I believe gifted people can crush the living expression of the church while appearing to serve it. Not every gifted person does this. But wherever the members learn to depend upon a man rather than Christ, the danger is already present.
The members wait for direction, repeat approved phrases, and measure their experience by the accepted teaching. They may know the vocabulary of Zoe without being free to live by the Lord within them.
What was meant to supply the Body has begun to replace it.
The Five-Talented Must Become Ordinary
What should the gifted do? I believe the five-talented brother must die to his giftedness. Not lose the gift, but lose the importance attached to it.
He must be willing to remain silent. Willing to be unnoticed. Willing for a quiet brother or sister to express Christ without his correction, explanation, or approval. Willing for the gathering to continue without him.
If his gift is from Christ, it does not need to make him the center. If he cannot bear to lose his place, we should ask what has become more precious to him than the Lord.
The Body does not need more impressive men. It needs the life of Christ expressed through all its members. A person who never speaks publicly may know the Lord more deeply than someone who can hold an audience for hours.
We must stop confusing ability with life. We must stop handing the church over to those who speak most convincingly about it.
Return to Jerusalem
The remnant left Babylon to rebuild the temple. What does that picture mean for us? We are not returning to a geographical city or constructing another building. God’s dwelling today is His people.
Christ lives within us. As His life is expressed through His members, there is the reality of His house. This is the Jerusalem to which I believe we must return.
But we cannot build the true church through the same natural ability that built the systems we are leaving. We cannot organize people into Zoe. We cannot train people into divine life. We cannot appoint gifted men to manufacture the Body.
The house must be the expression of Christ Himself. We may give ourselves to Him, remain in Him, and share the life we have received. But we cannot become the architects of another religious kingdom and call it Jerusalem.
We must leave Babylon without rebuilding Babylon in the place to which we return.
What Do We Actually Do?
Begin with Christ. Not a new teaching about Him. Not a method for abiding. Turn to the Lord who lives within you and remain in Him.
Let Him become your response when you are misunderstood. Let Him become your peace when you are disappointed. Let Him touch the need to prevail, to be admired, and to prove that you are right.
And when you find others who hunger for the same life, be together. Share a meal. Talk about Christ. Pray if prayer comes. Be silent if there is nothing to say. Let every member be free.
No one needs to be the permanent speaker. No one needs to prepare a sermon. No one needs to manage everyone’s participation. No gathering needs to become a program that must be maintained.
We are not coming together to create fellowship. The fellowship is the life we already share in Christ. The meeting is not the source. Christ is.
Do Not Start Another Movement
This is where we must be careful. Someone may suggest a name. Someone may want a statement of beliefs, a schedule, or a leadership team. Soon there are expectations, recognized workers, and a religious identity to defend.
Then Babylon has returned. The names have changed, but the source has not.
Do not establish a headquarters. Do not create bylaws defining who belongs. Do not make agreement with this essay a condition for fellowship. Do not give its writer a special place. If these words help, receive what points you to Christ and leave the writer behind.
We are not trying to become the people who finally got church right. Even that ambition must die. We are asking that Christ have His expression without our need to own it.
Do Not Measure the Building
Christianity measures attendance, money, conversions, buildings, and influence. But none of these numbers tells us whether Zoe is being lived.
What is the fruit of divine life? Christ becoming our patience, our peace, our love, our response when the natural man would have defended himself. Not a polished religious personality, but another life expressed through our humanity.
If two or three believers quietly share Christ and nothing impressive comes from it, has God failed? If no ministry develops, no leader becomes famous, and no organization survives, has the Lord lost anything?
If Christ is being expressed, the true building is taking place. We do not need to turn it into something the world can count.
Cross the River and Do Not Look Back
So to those who have spent years listening, serving, and still hungering for Christ, I would say: cross the river. Leave Babylon. Return to Jerusalem.
Leave the ministries that have made themselves indispensable. Leave dependence upon gifted men. Leave the need to accomplish something great for God. Leave the religious identity that has become more important than the Lord within.
And do not carry those things into the new. There is no new organization waiting on the other side. There is Christ.
Perhaps there will be people scattered throughout the world who quietly make this crossing. They may never know one another. They may never establish anything history will remember. They may never become important in the eyes of Christianity.
But they will have Christ. And Christ will have His expression.
Let Babylon remain behind us. Let the gifted lose their place of importance. Let Jerusalem be the reality of God’s presence. Let the temple be Christ expressed through His people.
Let Zoe triumph.
And let us stop building things for God long enough to allow Him to have what He has always wanted: a people who abide in Him, live by His life, and have no other source, no other center, and no other destination but Christ Himself.
