Before I tell you about anything we are building, I want to ask you three questions about yourself. Why did you go to church? Why did you stay? And why did you become what you are now?
Most of us went for one of three reasons. Someone invited us, or we needed something, or we went because God commanded it. But plenty of people go to church once. We stayed, and we stayed for different reasons than we came. We stayed because we were loved there, because we were growing there, because at some point we understood that God had planted us there. And then something else happened. Someone trained us. The church had a need, and we were the one standing nearest to it. We were called. Nobody in ministry became a minister by visiting. We became because a church kept us, taught us, and sent us.
So every one of us has lived the same three things. We came in need. We stayed because we belonged. We became because we were needed.
My own story is no different. A passenger told me to visit a small church on a hill, and I went. I stayed because I found purpose there, and because an older pastor prophesied over me that God had sent me to that church for a reason. When the founding pastor passed away, the Holy Spirit prompted me to step forward, and the congregation chose me to lead. I reorganized the church, renamed it to match the vision God had given me, and within a year I had trained and ordained ten ministers and two deacons to carry the work.
Now ask those same three questions of your church. What would you say to a new believer who told you, “I love God, but I do not need a church”? You would tell them that no believer was meant to grow alone, that someone has to watch over them, that they have something to give and nowhere to give it. We would never advise a believer to live without a church. Yet we accept exactly that for our churches. Our churches go to other churches, for an anniversary or a guest preacher, but they do not stay. They visit, and they return home, and they stand alone. A church with no covenant with other churches is a church without a body.
I know what that costs, because it happened to mine. After my first year as pastor the church was strong. I had even started a second work in a new location. In that season of strength a minister came to me for help to start his church. I worked hard beside him, and his ministry is thriving today. Then, after COVID, I lost my building. Then I lost my congregation. And because my church was not part of a body, no one knew my ministry was dying. I did not know who to call. I had been strong enough to help another church stand, and when mine fell there was no one to do the same for me.
In that moment the Holy Spirit showed me the gap in the Church. I was called to become the very thing I had needed. For seven years I studied how the Church is built. I trained in presenting, in teaching and in leading. And when the time came, I began to bring leaders together, so that what happened to me would not happen to another pastor.
What happened to me is not rare. Too many churches close, not because their people have no faith, but because one pastor carried everything alone: the preaching, the music, the records, the visiting. No pastor was built to be the whole ministry, and no church was built to have everything. One church is strong in teaching and has no one to lead worship. Another is full of musicians and has no one to teach. Neither is poor. They are simply apart. The strength of one was always meant to cover the need of another.
It was not always this way. In the book of Acts, Jerusalem sent Barnabas to Antioch. Antioch sent relief to the brethren in Judaea. The churches of Macedonia gave out of their poverty for Jerusalem. Titus was left in Crete to set in order what was wanting. Help moved in both directions, and nobody had to organize those churches into it, because they knew they were one Body in many places. That is why we are here: to live again the way the Church began.
The answer is a covenant. Fellowship and visiting are good, but they are not a covenant. A covenant is written, signed and kept. It says what each church will give, what each church may ask, and what no church may ever do to another. It is meant to last, because the Body lasts. This covenant has a name: the Fivefold Church Alliance. It does not sit over the churches, because no church governs another. It does not sit inside one church. It sits between the churches, in what we promise each other. What the church did for you, the Fivefold Church Alliance does for your church. Your church comes: invited, or in need, or because we are commanded to bear one another’s burdens. Your church stays: known by the churches beside it, strengthened by what they share, bound in covenant. And your church becomes: restored, needed, and sent to the next church.
What is there to share? What Christ already gave. He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints. The apostle builds. The prophet discerns. The evangelist reaches. The pastor keeps. The teacher gives understanding. He gave gifts to people, and He gave people to the Church. The five are ministers, and the gifts belong to every member; the ministers equip the people, and the people do the work. Few churches have all five, and a missing ministry is not a failure. It is the reason we stand together. The pastor stands between his people and the other ministers as a bridge: his people grow through him into ministry, and the other ministers come through him to equip them. Nothing goes around the pastor. And every church is in one of three seasons, the same three you have lived yourself: being helped, steady, or helping. A season is never a rank. We give without pride and we receive without shame, because any church may enter a hard season again.
To live this way, five things are needed, and they come in this order. First, a Headquarters is born, so that the work has one place where the churches gather, train and meet. Second, we will need a Chairperson, so that someone calls the churches together and keeps everything true to the Covenant. Third, out of that Headquarters come the officers: leaders who agree to serve at that place, so that there are hands to do the daily work. Fourth, each of those leaders sends a delegate, one of their own members, to the Headquarters church, so that the Headquarters is built up, their own church is represented there, and training and resources come back home. And fifth, this same pattern of coming, staying and becoming is repeated in every church, according to its season, so that what is built in one place is built in all. Let me take each in turn.
Headquarters is not chosen by a vote. It is born. There were many scattered churches and no place where they met. Then the ministers Christ gave, apostle, prophet, pastor and teacher, came together in one place; the call was given to form an alliance; and the charge to help the churches was laid on the apostle. When those three things came into alignment, the apostle, under the leading of the Holy Spirit, declared that place the Headquarters and consecrated it to the work. It was so at Antioch: prophets and teachers were gathered in one church, the Holy Ghost spoke, and from that place the work went out. Nobody voted. From then on it is recognized as the place where the work begins: where the delegates serve, where the training is held, and where the churches meet. It trains; it does not govern, and it holds one vote like every other church.
The Chairperson presides and keeps the whole in balance. I hold that seat. I call the churches together, and if a decision ever breaks the Covenant I say so in writing and send it back. I do not vote, I do not handle money, and I cannot reach inside any church. I am bound by the Covenant like everyone else.
The officers are the leaders who agree to serve at Headquarters: a President, a Vice President, a Secretary and a Planning Secretary. They are volunteers. They place the workers, keep the records and set the calendar, and they carry out what the churches decide together. They begin to serve when Headquarters is born, and the Council confirms them once it is seated.
The delegate is one person a church sends to serve at the Headquarters church three Sundays a month. It can be the pastor or anyone the pastor chooses. The delegate is stationed, not transferred: they remain a member of their home church, they help build up the Headquarters while they are there, they speak for their church, and they bring the training and the resources home. When the delegates sit together they are the Council: one church, one vote, whatever a church’s size or season. The Council decides where people, gifts and help are sent. It never decides the internal matters of any church.
And then the pattern repeats. A church comes, as you once came. It stays, as you stayed. It becomes, as you became. What Headquarters and its delegates do for one church, that church in its season does for the next, until every church has been built up and every church is building another.
When a church needs help, a worker is sent. A worker does not only perform; a worker teaches, trains and builds, so that when the assignment ends the church can do more on its own. That help is freely given. “Freely ye have received, freely give.” No church buys help, no money passes between churches, and a church in need is never asked what it can pay. So that no one has to choose between their own church and another, our hours follow one another. Headquarters meets from 10:30 to noon, and it does not move. A church being helped meets at 12:30, so that its delegate can serve at Headquarters and still be home, and the workers sent to it are free to come. A church that keeps another hour is one strong enough to spare the people it sends. The church in need is the one that adjusts, because it is adjusting for its own need. And when a church that was being helped has its own people carrying the ministry, with music, order, sound governance and steady attendance for ninety days, the Council visits and presents it with the Restoration Mark. That church came in need, and stayed, and now becomes. “Thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach.”
What does it ask of you? A delegate, a service time, and a willingness to give when you can and receive when you must. It asks that we grow only by reaching new people, never by taking one another’s members. It asks that everyone we send into another church be checked, referenced and bound by a Code of Conduct. It asks no dues. There is a financial side, and the churches may agree it together later, by their own vote; it is not what you are deciding today. And here is what it never touches: your name, your leaders, your members, your decisions, your money and your property. Your church stays your church.
The Holy Spirit ordained me an apostle for this work, and the evidence is the support and the collaboration I received when I called on leaders to help. This is a new thing in our day: independent churches coming together to form one body. You are witnessing the birth of the Fivefold Church Alliance.
So I end where I began, with three questions, now asked of your church. What season is it in today? What could it send without weakening its own services? And what would it take for it to become a helping church? Whatever your season, there is a place for you. Enter the Covenant, station a delegate, hold your one vote. Then go home and ask your own people why they went, why they stayed, and why they became, and pass on what was given to you. “The same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.”
“Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.”