No Substitute for The Local Church

No Substitute for the Local Church
By Kenneth E. Hagin

That’s the reason I take umbrage with some of these teachers who downgrade the local church and encourage folks to be independent from a church body. They leave the impression that folks don’t need the local church.

One Bible teacher I knew actually said to several pastors, “I don’t much believe in the local church. If folks will listen to me on radio and television and read my books and listen to my tapes, they can stay home and grow spiritually just as much as anyone who goes to church.”

That’s not scriptural. By saying that, he did away with the pastoral office, which Jesus Christ, the Head of the Church, set in the local body! Folks may grow some just by listening to tapes and television ministries, but it will be a lopsided spiritual growth. They need a pastor — a shepherd. The shepherd holds a unique place in the fivefold ministry because he is the one who has been set in the Church by Jesus to nurture and tend the sheep.

I said, “Isn’t it awful that poor ole Jesus didn’t know that folks could grow spiritually with just the ministry of teachers, so He went ahead and put shepherds in the local body. Poor ole Jesus is not as smart as that fellow! He must not have known what He was doing by setting pastors in the Church.”

But then this teacher admitted, “I don’t like to be around people and take care of their problems.” But, you see, that is a shepherd’s job. A pastor is on call twenty-four hours a day for the needs of the sheep.

When I say God put his approval on the church, that means the local body, not someone’s television ministry. That’s not the church. That is just an arm of ministry, and it can never substitute for the local body. A radio ministry can never take the place of the local church, nor can crusades or seminars.

Radio and television ministries and crusades and seminars are just supplements or outreaches of the church; they are not the local church. People who think they can quit going to church and just listen to television ministries and go to crusades and seminars is like someone trying to stay alive eating only vitamin supplements instead of food!

You can see how unreasonable it would be for someone to say, “I’m going to quit eating food and just take vitamins.” No, if a person did that he would die.

It’s the same way with the local church. If you quit going to church and just try to grow spiritually by relying on radio or television ministries for your spiritual diet, your spiritual health will suffer.

Some of these radio and television ministries want you to send them your tithes and offerings. I won’t even listen to television or radio ministers who try to get people to send tithes to them. Actually, television and radio preachers shouldn’t drain money away from the local church.

I’m not against Christians supporting other preachers if they think they are worthy. But television or radio ministries can’t take the place of the local church and they shouldn’t encourage folks to send their tithes to them.

I’ve told people for years, “Send your tithes to your local church. After you’ve paid your tithes and offerings to your local church, then you can send an offering to another ministry if you want to.” I’ve never asked anyone to send me their tithes because I believe the tenth belongs to the local church (Lev. 27:32; Mal. 3:10).

When you are sick or in the hospital, do these television ministers who want your tithes and offerings come and minister to you? When you get married, do they come and counsel you and perform the ceremony? Do they help you in times of trouble and family bereavement? No!

No, the pastor is the one who performs those functions in the local church. And he is the one who makes sure the flock of God is fed a balanced spiritual diet. For that reason he holds a unique place among the sheep. He is like the daddy of a family. He loves the sheep in a way that an evangelist, prophet, or teacher can’t love them because he has the shepherd’s anointing on him.

You see, the evangelist can preach, but when the service is over, he can walk out the door. And the teacher and the prophet can come along and hold a teaching crusade at a church and teach the people, but when it’s over, they can leave.

But the pastor can’t leave the sheep that have been committed to his care, nor does he want to — not if he’s a true shepherd. His ministry is stationary in the local body. He’s got to stay right there with the people and help nurture them.

Let me say something else while I’m at it. Teaching centers cannot take the place of the local church. Some of these teaching centers have one or two services a week, but there is no shepherd, only a teacher. That’s not having church.

A pastor will either be a preacher or a teacher of the Word, but his main office is to pastor. But if a minister just has the teaching gift, then his ministry gift is teaching, not the pastoral office. Just because a person can preach or teach, doesn’t make him a shepherd.

A pastor can be a teacher, don’t misunderstand me. But if a minister is just a teacher, and he isn’t called to the pastoral office, then his teaching center can’t take the place of the local church. If he’s just a teacher, he ought to teach the people about getting into a good home church.

Then there are those fellows who claim to be pastors, but they run in and preach on Sunday morning and they’re gone all the rest of the time. That’s not a true shepherd! They ought to stay home and pastor their flock.

It’s all right for a pastor to be gone once in a while. But for the most part a pastor ought to be in the local body tending the sheep. Some pastors wonder why their people aren’t growing spiritually. Sometimes it’s because the pastor isn’t tending the sheep properly.

What has happened in the Body of Christ is that we have gotten some of these things out of balance. One reason we have gotten them out of balance is that many folks who came into the Charismatic Movement and got saved and filled with the Holy Ghost had not been raised in church. Some of them came out of the denominational church, but many really didn’t know the purpose of the local church so they didn’t esteem it properly.

As wonderful as crusades and seminars are for our spiritual growth and edification, they cannot take the place of the local church. You cannot run a church like you would a crusade or a seminar.

For example, when I’m holding a crusade, I usually leave the auditorium as soon as the service is over. The anointing is so strong, it is sometimes hard for the physical body to stand up under it. I don’t want to call attention to myself, so I leave the services. As a traveling minister, I can leave the service immediately in a crusade or a seminar.

But a pastor can’t do that in the local assembly — not if he is a true shepherd. When I was a pastor, I was the first one in the church to greet the people, and I was the last one to leave, shaking hands and fellow-shipping with people after the service was over.

As a pastor, the people needed to know I was available and that I was there to serve them. You can’t run a church service like you do a seminar. You might have a crusade in the church, and the minister holding the crusade might act that way, but the pastor can’t. Besides, a pastor would rather minister to the needs of the sheep than do anything else.

That’s the reason it is readily apparent that some folks aren’t called to the pastoral office. They don’t want to be with the sheep.

I recently heard about a fellow who was supposedly a pastor. But after several years, he was still only running twenty-five people in his congregation. It’s no wonder because when he finished preaching, he would turn and walk out the back door! That man either wasn’t called to the pastoral office, or he was misled as to the true nature of the shepherd’s role in the local body. That’s not the pastoral office in demonstration.

No, the true shepherd loves the sheep. He’d rather die than to see them hurt. He wants to see the sheep blessed and helped more than anything else.

The Local Church Is a Church Family
As a church family, the local church is going to have some of the same problems that any natural family will have because it’s made up of people. The pastor will have to deal with those problems, whether it is discipline problems, financial problems, or any other kind of problems. It is not the job of some so-called apostle or prophet who doesn’t even know the sheep to come in and start disciplining another man’s sheep.

In the natural realm, children in a family sometimes get into disobedience and need a father’s guidance. Sometimes the father of a family needs to provide correction. When your children need discipline, you don’t call an outsider in to take care of disciplining them, do you? Of course not.

It’s the same way in the local body. That local pastor is like the daddy of the local church. The sheep in a church body need the shepherd to nurture them with the Word of God and care for them in the sheepfold. And if they need discipline, they need a pastor who has their best interests at heart to administer biblical correction in a loving way.

The shepherd is the one who is qualified to correct the sheep spiritually if they need it because he is there all the time with them. He knows his congregation and has a genuine care and concern for their welfare. If his flock sometimes needs to be corrected, it is certainly not the teacher’s responsibility, any more than it is the apostle’s or prophet’s responsibility, to come in and spiritually correct a pastor’s church members.

No, people need a shepherd! They can’t be perfected without the pastor of the local body. Actually, all the other ministry gifts would labor in vain if it weren’t for the pastor, because he is the one who is responsible to tend, care for, and nurture the sheep with the Word of God. Sheep will never grow spiritually and never reach full maturity without a shepherd and the local church.

Because the local church is a family, the church ought to see after their own members, just as a family takes care of its own family members. If church members are sick and in the hospital, the pastoral staff ought to be right there to minister to them. When folks want to get married, the pastor is there to counsel them and perform the ceremony. When someone dies in a person’s family, the pastor and that church family is right there to surround that family with love and support.

If you don’t belong to a local church, or you only go once in a while, how would anyone in the church know if you needed prayer or were sick?

The benefit of the local church goes beyond just the spiritual side of life. The local church was also instituted by God to be a blessing to people on the natural side of life.

You see, there’s the spiritual side of life, but there’s also the natural side of life. You can’t just live in the Spirit all the time; you’re not supposed to because you’re still living in the natural realm.

You’ve got to walk in the Spirit as you live in this natural world. Of course, the local church is to feed people spiritually, but it can also be a blessing to its members in certain natural ways too.

That’s why the local church is so important. At one time or another in our lives, all of us need help in the natural realm as well as in the spiritual realm.

God puts each of us with a group of believers in the local body with whom we can fellowship and grow spiritually. And in times of trouble we all need those to whom we can turn for edification and comfort.

For example, who did the disciples go to in times of trouble? When they were thrown into jail, threatened, and finally released, the Bible says the disciples . . went to their own COMPANY. . . ” (Acts 4:23).

Yes, you can turn in prayer requests to some other ministry, but sometimes you need more than prayer. Sometimes you need the fellowship of other believers of like faith; you need the physical presence of brothers and sisters around you, surrounding you with their faith and love.

Excerpt from He Gave Gifts Unto Men by Kenneth E. Hagin; Faith Library Publications.