(Message by Bishop Allen Davis, presented during a Presbytery Meeting August 25, 1969)
don’t believe there is any thought but that we love the Church, and the Church is our life. A number of you have put a lot of your life into the advancement of the Church. I am sure that we have one thought in mind, and that is to continue to do this. I don’t have all the answers. Anything that has been accomplished has been through the Lord. The Lord and the power of God, I do believe, is the answer to any problem that we have. I would love to feel the presence of the Lord in this. I have found in any kind of work that the power of God will solve more problems than we can ever solve. I know we are in the modern day, and we have on the best suits we have ever worn. We drive the best automobiles we have ever driven. We have never had a time that we could gather in a building like this, but we can’t set aside the power of God. I believe that we believe this. I am not sure that all of our people believe this. We have to watch that no substitution comes in for the Spirit of the Lord. You keep our people spiritual and they will work with the program of the Church. This is not a mechanical program, this is not a natural program, but this is a spiritual program. A man is going to have to have the Holy Ghost to shake him around once in a while; he is going to have to stick his head in the Bible; he is going to have to respect the government of the Church of God to go along with the program.
“Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people! Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men; that I might leave my people, and go from them! for they be all adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men” (Jer. 9:1, 2). When I was very young, God called me into the ministry. I studied about it and talked about it a lot during high school. I talked to the principal about it. There was a power to me about being in the ministry. The thing I dreaded most was raising the finance. I was reared in the Church, and I knew that buildings had to be maintained, and auxiliary programs to operate. I had to really pray through over this and get a hold of the Lord. I couldn’t see how this could be done and for a while if baffled me. I am happy to report that you can get the victory over it. You can get to the place where you know that giving is a part of the work, and it is a privilege to do that. When I was put in overseer work, I had been quite busy and had never thought about it, and I developed a horror. This is not to be critical, but I began to think about the growth, and I wasn’t really concerned about the previous year, and the years that followed, but the thing that bothered me is the growth while I am there. This began to get bigger and bigger all the time. I lived with it, I ate with it, I slept with it.
Well, just suppose that there are no new churches organized. Just suppose there is no increase in membership. After a while it dawned upon me that it could be this way. A scripture came to me that we are not sufficient of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God. I believe that growth in the Church needs to be an area of concern for all of us. I notice the churches in the states that preach the baptism of the Holy Ghost get people prayed through to the Holy Ghost. The churches that talk about having Vacation Bible School, usually get around to having one. The churches that occasionally mention giving the pastor a 1st Sunday offering will give the pastor a good 1st Sunday offering once in a while. What all this sums up to is that these people in these churches usually accomplish what they talk about. I believe it would be good for us to talk about growth in the Church. I have been told in Germany where the Volkswagens are built that there is a sign, “The man that thinks big has already been fired.” The idea of Volkswagen people is to build a small compact car. Keep it little. They don’t want a man walking around in that factory talking about Cadillacs all the time. It wouldn’t be long until the Volkswagen would be as large as the Cadillacs. They want a man who visualizes a small car, a car that is economical to buy and operate. They want him to think that way. Volkswagen has been successful.
I believe it will help us in the Church to think big and carry out our thinking and to think big about expansion. I was district overseer once, and had a district meeting. A fellow preached about going to build a new church. It was one of the greatest sermons I have ever heard. On Monday he staked off the foundation for that new church, and I stopped by to see him.
After shaking the world on Sunday afternoon and telling what he was going to do, when he staked off that building he staked off less than 20 feet wide and 30 feet long. I visited with him, and I said, “Brother, is this the building you were preaching about yesterday?” He said, “Brother Davis, I don’t feel like I did yesterday.” He had changed his perspective along that line. I believe we can encourage each other by talking “big” to each other in the Church of God. There has to be a real concern over the growth. Some may say, “I don’t care what happens to the Church,” but I care what happens to the Church! Everything you and I have had the past 30 years came out of the Church of God. It was a Church of God man that caused me to get saved, sanctified and filled with the Holy Ghost. The doctrine of the Church of God has kept me going all these years. I am interested in this. I am expecting Jesus to come after us, and I expect to meet Him in the clouds by sticking to the doctrine of the Church of God. I am interested in what happens, not only in Missouri, but I am interested in what happens in everything else, in all other States.
We need to look at our method. Just turn around, if you have a problem, admit that you have a problem. If you are not growing, admit that you are not growing. You don’t have to broadcast it all over the country. The responsible people need to look at the right place, and when there is something, just admit that it is that way. If you have a rock in your shoe, you can tell yourself all day that you don’t have one there, but every time you tell yourself that there is not one there your foot sends a message back to your brain that it is still there. Instead of ignoring your problems, admit them. You say, “Brother Davis, what will we do about this problem?” The only way I know to solve a problem is deep spirituality. Get people spiritual. The first year I was in Missouri they had the system of having a goal for the State Headquarters, which is alright. One brother came to me and said our goal is too high. I said, “How hard have your tried?” He said, “I haven’t tried at all.” I said, “Do you mean you are after me to cut the goal before you try?” I said, “I will never agree to cut the goal until you go back and try hard to get the goal.” It went two months and I hadn’t heard from him. I saw him and mentioned that I thought he was coming back to talk to me. He said, “I got it so fast that I was ashamed to come back and tell you.” Sometimes we feel that we can’t have goals when we haven’t really tried to reach that goal.
I have deep feelings on watching the back door of the Church, that is turning out the members of the Church. I have lost more sleep, shed more tears, and driven more miles over this. I know that there is a time fellowship has to be withdrawn. If a man quits coming to church, and he is just discouraged, I don’t believe the way to solve the problem is to withdraw fellowship from him. If I can’t pray him through and can’t get him spiritual, I don’t want to take advantage of him. I believe this is the number one thing that we need to watch, turning people out of the Church. I am not talking about people who robbed the bank or committed adultery, or somebody going with somebody else’s wife. I am talking about discouragement over some frivolous thing. The Bible said, “Ye which are spiritual…” I believe that God put some responsibility on me to be able to get out and help that man where he needs to be with the Lord. I am serious about this. I believe that some people are out of the Church that somebody is going to have to be responsible for. I have wrestled with this for hours. I am not advocating keeping sin in the Church. I am advocating that if that man is discouraged, Lord help us to get to him and encourage him. The thrill is to encourage somebody that is discouraged, encourage someone that needs help.
Genesis 30:1 records that Rachel was barren, she didn’t have any children. For a woman to be barren in that day and time was considered shameful—it was a terrible calamity. Rachel became so desperate, she said, “Give me children, or else I die.” This woman came to the place that she said, “This is the only thing that matters to me.”
I pastored in Chattanooga and some couples didn’t have children. One couple came to see me, and they had been married for years. They sat down in my home. This man said, “I have the best wife in the world,” and she said, “I’ve got the best husband in the world, but we don’t have any children. We have a brick home, a new automobile, a bank account, but we don’t have children. Something is lacking in our home.” It is good to be in the middle of the Church of God. It is good to look around and say we have a flag. It is good to look around and say we have buildings, and all these other things. But do we have children? Are we reproducing the children as we need to? You may inlay the floor with gold, but if your church does not produce, there is something lacking in that church. I am amazed. I went to one of our smaller churches the other day; they had remodeled, they had painted, and they had borrowed a new red carpet. They said, “We heard you were coming overseer. We have the red carpet.” It was pretty, but when I pulled the records I cried when I saw how long it had been since a soul had been saved in that church. I am not against red carpet, but I would rather be in that church without a floor and it produce some members than have the carpet and not have any growth. This
couple in my home said, “Brother Davis, we don’t have any children. We have been told by the doctors there will never be any. We are considering adopting a child. We want your advice.” I talked with them and said that there would be certain risks, but I see nothing wrong with it. On one occasion I was with them when the case worker was getting ready to let them have a child. This case worker said “The baby we make arrangements for you to get, does it make any difference what color of hair it has?” They said, “Not a bit.” …I have run into a few people who are particular what kind of converts they get. Would it make a difference if it is a boy or girl? The couple said, “It won’t make any difference.” Would it make a difference how much it weighed? They didn’t know it, but if they hadn’t answered these questions correctly they were not going to get the baby.
I was doing Sunday School work once and found a man and his wife with seven children and they didn’t have enough clothes to come to Sunday School. They said, “We can’t come to Sunday School, we don’t have enough clothes.” I said that the church has been squalling and bawling, we want more members in our church. We want more members in our Sunday School. I went back and told the church, “I have nine people who don’t have enough clothes to come to Sunday School.” They said, “We have our own families.” I said, “Wait a minute, you told God you wanted some converts. I find nine that don’t have enough clothes to come to Sunday School.” Now I am not against get banker or lawyers. That is all right, but I just want to get anyone who has a soul.
This couple progressed and all the papers had been finished, and they had been told that on a certain day they could get this child. They came by the church where I was working, and I believe it was the happiest couple I have ever seen in my life. They said, “Brother Davis, we are going after the baby. We will be back by and show you the baby.” They had never seen the baby. They went to the adoption agency and the baby was brought in and laid on the couch. These folks were in another room, and someone came out and told them that when you go in the room, there will be a baby on the couch, and that will be your baby. They walked in. The mother walked in and looked at the baby a few weeks old. As she looked at the baby, she smiled and then the baby smiled. She reached down and lifted the baby up and caressed him, and the tears of joy began to flow. Today he is quite a nice young man. They have given him the necessary love and attention. They have loved him, and he has loved, but prior to this there had to be the attitude of Rachel, “Give me children, or else I die.”
If some of the churches in Missouri don’t have an old-fashioned revival, they won’t make it. I don’t have one on the list to be disbanded, but if they don’t have a break through, some overseer is going to talk to me and say we are going to have to disband them. We may lay it on this way, we lay it on something else, but the fact is we didn’t have a break through. There must be a way, Church of God, to get a move of God. There is a way to do it. Sometimes we get so involved that we miss the Lord.
I’m thinking of two of our churches—one church took in twelve members, and the other church didn’t take in any. We missed the Lord in one place. The other place got it just right. You ask me what happened when we missed the Lord. We just drug around. It was in the air. This getting people in the Church will get hold of you just like getting them saved. In one of our district conventions this year when the power of God began to move, a young lady in the altar jumped up and said, “I want to get into the Church.” I said, “All right, hang around and we will open the doors of the Church in just a little while.” When the doors were opened, twelve people in that district joined the Church. These people had been there all night, but they hadn’t got stirred up about getting in the Church and seeing the necessity. You can take a man to a certain place that if you don’t take him on and get him in the Church, you will lose him. Rachel said, “Give me children, or else I die.” Life wasn’t worth anything unless there was a child. I guarantee you where people don’t get along as well as they need to, if you can get them to forget that and get down to business to pray for the lost in the community, it will solve their problem. If there is a financial problem, you just need an old-fashioned revival that moves people and causes them to feel like they are doing something for the Lord.
I would like for us to do something in closing. I would like for us to pray for one another. I’d love to preach for the Lord next year. I want to fill out the report. I haven’t missed a report since I started in 1940. I am not just interested in a report. I would love to get a few people saved. I would love for you to pray for me. I know we have to be concerned with the operation of the Church and the problems. If there is a problem in the States, we know it. We have to live with it. We have to cut loose once in a while and get a few people saved along the line. Could we just pray for each other? Many of you have been serving the Lord for many years and preaching, wouldn’t you love to get more people saved than you have ever got saved before?