Get­ting Peo­ple to Relate Bib­li­cally with Each Other.

Get­ting them to “love one another”.

by Mis­sion­ary David R. Cox

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Prin­ci­ple of Lov­ing Christ

Let’s start by deposit­ing a prin­ci­ple of sal­va­tion. You must love Christ in order to be saved. 1 John speaks of our sal­va­tion rela­tion­ship with God. Sal­va­tion is a rela­tion­ship with God, not a work which we do (like pray­ing the sinner’s prayer).

John 17:3 And this is life eter­nal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.

In this rela­tion­ship that we have with God, there is a very impor­tant prin­ci­ple. We must be like God in order to one day live for eter­nity with God. Think for a moment, what really is sal­va­tion? Is it not being with God (wher­ever He is)? We die and our souls go to heaven with God, for­ever more to be in the pres­ence of God, and live with God.

2 Corinthi­ans 5:6 There­fore we are always con­fi­dent, know­ing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord:

So sal­va­tion is liv­ing and hav­ing fel­low­ship with God wher­ever He is for eter­nity. We under­stand that for now, heaven is above some­where, and one day God will end the drama of the his­tory of this world, have a great judg­ment, and from there, God will empty hell (the pit), judge those peo­ple and throw them into the lake of fire. As for us, God will bless us with rewards in these end time events. But in the plans is a total destruc­tion of the heav­ens and earth, and a remake by God of the heav­ens and earth. At that point “heaven” (where God lives) will come down to earth, and will be the “new Jerusalem”.

But our point is sal­va­tion is liv­ing with, get­ting along with God. God pro­vides a means (called Sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion) for our chang­ing our spir­its, atti­tudes, and way of think­ing and act­ing. This process begins at sal­va­tion, and is ter­mi­nated in our going to heaven, or if we are alive when the Lord returns for us, then.

But sal­va­tion has to be defined as a lov­ing of Christ, our Sav­ior. 1 John presents a trea­tise on lov­ing God. Here it is nec­es­sary to run through the teach­ing of John on love in order to under­stand how this fits into our sal­va­tion. But before we do, we need to reaf­firm a fact of sal­va­tion. Nobody is saved by works, but by faith in Jesus Christ as their Sav­ior. Keep this in mind as you read through the fol­low­ing dis­cus­sion, and remem­ber that how­ever we under­stand this teach­ing on love, it has to fit in with the fact that works do not save us, but faith in Jesus Christ.

Rejec­tion of the World for Lov­ing God

1 John 2:15 Love not the world, nei­ther the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

God makes it an either or deci­sion, either we love God or we don’t. If we love the things of the world (any­thing there) then we do not and can­not love God.

1 John 4:7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. 8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.

God is Love

More­over God defines Him­self with the expla­na­tion that “God is love”. The essence of God is love. What is love then? Love is to desire and effect good in some­way to some­body else by your sac­ri­fice and effort. You make some­thing good hap­pen in their lives. This is love, this is God, and every sin­gle child of God (saved per­son) will have this trait of God.

How do we do this then? How do we “love other”?

1 John 2:5 But whoso keep­eth his word, in him ver­ily is the love of God per­fected: hereby know we that we are in him.

John gives us a clear mark of a Chris­t­ian here. Those who are truly saved, keep the word of God. Those who are saved love because that is the essence of God, and all who embrace God, who is a God whose essence is love, will in turn also have love, man­i­fest love, and desire to show forth love through their lives.

Sal­va­tion is God lov­ing us

To clar­ify this a lit­tle more, what is salvation?

John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begot­ten Son, that whoso­ever believeth in him should not per­ish, but have ever­last­ing life.

1 John 4:9 In this was man­i­fested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begot­ten Son into the world, that we might live through him.

So sal­va­tion is defined as God lov­ing us so much that God the Father does the unthink­able, hor­ri­ble thing that no father really wants to do. He offers the life of his own flesh and blood so that we may be saved. The hor­ri­ble price that God paid to pro­cure sal­va­tion for us is based in his love towards us. See­ing then this hor­ri­ble, great, per­sonal sac­ri­fice of God to save us, we must respond to that love action in one way or another. We must embrace that love action, (hav­ing faith in Jesus Christ), or we must despise that love action and refuse to let it move us. We believe with faith and con­fi­dence in God as some­one who truly loves us, or we dis­count the action as not so mov­ing, not so impor­tant per­son­ally to us. There are no other options here.

Chris­tians reflect God’s love to their Brethren

1 John 4:11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.

In this recep­tion and embrac­ing of the God of love, we must take on in our moral char­ac­ter the char­ac­ter of God. What is God’s char­ac­ter? Love. We must love, and be sat­u­rated with love or we know noth­ing of God, and we despise God’s attribute of supreme love for us. Refus­ing to love is to desire heaven but refuse to reflect the char­ac­ter of the God of heaven, which will land you in hell.

1 John 3:10 In this the chil­dren of God are man­i­fest, and the chil­dren of the devil: whoso­ever doeth not right­eous­ness is not of God, nei­ther he that loveth not his brother.

Here John lays down the prin­ci­ple that ALL true Chris­tians are peo­ple who show two things strongly in their lives. (1) they obey God, and (2) they love their brethren. Here we see a refin­ing of the con­cept of love and focus­ing on love of oth­ers, but prin­ci­pally love of your Chris­t­ian brethren.

1 John 4:12 No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is per­fected in us.

Sal­va­tion it would seem is that the love of God is “per­fected” or made mature and fruit bear­ing within us.

1 John 4:15–17 Whoso­ever shall con­fess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God. 16 And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. 17 Herein is our love made per­fect, that we may have bold­ness in the day of judg­ment: because as he is, so are we in this world.

Nobody can claim to be saved if they do not man­i­fest this love of God in their lives. See­ing the love of God towards us in sac­ri­fic­ing Jesus Christ for our sal­va­tion has to have a vis­i­ble, tan­gi­ble impact on our lives such that this love works its way out in actions and atti­tudes. Oth­er­wise we can­not claim to be part of God, nor chil­dren of God.

1 John 5:2–3 By this we know that we love the chil­dren of God, when we love God, and keep his com­mand­ments. 3 For this is the love of God, that we keep his com­mand­ments: and his com­mand­ments are not grievous.

This rela­tion­ship of love and obe­di­ence is one in which we don’t see our rela­tion­ship with God, what God demands of us, as being “griev­ous”. This is a tri­an­gle love affair. We love God, we love God’s chil­dren (our brethren), and we keep God’s com­mand­ments. Each feeds into the oth­ers, and each comes from the oth­ers. Nobody can claim they love God (which is sal­va­tion) with­out obey­ing God.

1 John 3:11 For this is the mes­sage that ye heard from the begin­ning, that we should love one another

Lov­ing the brethren is lov­ing Christ

Now this is a prin­ci­ple focal point. God’s com­mand­ment to us is that we love one another (our brethren). Let’s side­track for a minute to Matthew 25.

Mateo 25:31–46 When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: 32 And before him shall be gath­ered all nations: and he shall sep­a­rate them one from another, as a shep­herd divideth his sheep from the goats: 33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. 34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the king­dom pre­pared for you from the foun­da­tion of the world: 35 For I was an hun­gred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: 36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye vis­ited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. 37 Then shall the right­eous answer him, say­ing, Lord, when saw we thee an hun­gred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? 38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? 39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? 40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Ver­ily I say unto you, Inas­much as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. 41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into ever­last­ing fire, pre­pared for the devil and his angels: 42 For I was an hun­gred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: 43 I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye vis­ited me not. 44 Then shall they also answer him, say­ing, Lord, when saw we thee an hun­gred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not min­is­ter unto thee? 45 Then shall he answer them, say­ing, Ver­ily I say unto you, Inas­much as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. 46 And these shall go away into ever­last­ing pun­ish­ment: but the right­eous into life eternal.

Again God places our lat­eral rela­tion­ship of love to our brethren like a do or die thing. We do it right or we are not saved? How to we inter­pret this with­out get­ting into a works sal­va­tion kind of thing (which is unscrip­tural). Very sim­ple. Christ is the head, and we (your brethren in Christ) are the body. You love God, or you are not saved. You respond to God’s love to you but embrac­ing this God of love, and mak­ing his love for you the pri­mary con­trol­ling spir­i­tual prin­ci­ple in your life. Your faith (here the term “con­fi­dence” is bet­ter) in Jesus is really a trust in his pref­er­ences and pri­or­i­ties. This divine will (of God the Father) is bet­ter than what your pref­er­ences are. By embrac­ing the will of God, we are saved. What is the will of God? Trust­ing and believ­ing in the form and plan of Sal­va­tion that God has set before us. What is that? Christ dying on the cross for your sins.

In Matthew 25, what we see is that ALL TRUE CHRISTIANS (God will iden­tify true faith in the lov­ing exam­ple of Jesus dying on the cross for you) by what it pro­duces spir­i­tu­ally in your life. This is prin­ci­pally an atti­tude and out­work­ing of love for our brethren. What you do for the body of Christ is as if you were doing it to the very Jesus Christ him­self. So this makes it extremely impor­tant that we take an atti­tude of pro­found respect towards our brethren, and that we serve them with love. With­out a rela­tion­ship of love with our brethren, we can­not pos­si­bly claim we love Christ, and there is no hope of sal­va­tion. These peo­ple who pro­claim that they are good Chris­tians but never go to any church except once a year (or by acci­dent it would seem), can­not pos­si­bly under­stand the love of God required in all believ­ers. They are truly “clueless”.

1 John 3:14 We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.

Sim­ply put, God tells us in no uncer­tain terms, we can dis­cern exter­nally those who are pre­tend­ing to be saved but are not by their love of the brethren or the lack thereof. Once this is under­stood, we must fight con­stantly for a dif­fer­ent atti­tude in our church envi­ron­ment. We must under­stand this sit­u­a­tion and work it for all its worth.

1 John 3:23 And this is his com­mand­ment, That we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave us commandment.

Notice that God prac­ti­cally reduces all that he asks of us to two things, faith in Jesus Christ, and love one another.

What is a local church then?

It is a group of believ­ers who are con­gre­gat­ing (for­mal orga­nized meet­ing and activ­i­ties). The pur­pose of the meet­ing, build­ing, activ­i­ties, etc. is to do the work of God.

The com­po­si­tion of this group is very clearly given. There wheat and tares among us. Some unsaved are always present, pre­tend­ing to be Chris­tians, but in actu­al­ity not. For this rea­son we also preach sal­va­tion mes­sages even to the home folk from time to time.

More­over there are spir­i­tual babies, spir­i­tual chil­dren, spir­i­tual young peo­ple, and spir­i­tual adults. Note that not all of these groups are defined by age. Some spir­i­tual babies may be 70–80 years old, and some spir­i­tual adults may be only 18. In addi­tion to this mixed mul­ti­tude, there are peo­ple in each group in highs and lows in their spir­i­tual lives. Some are very encour­aged and “up”, while oth­ers are suf­fer­ing temp­ta­tions, set-backs, dis­cour­age­ments, even death of fam­ily or dis­ap­points in other ways, and these last ones need help, spir­i­tual help.

What is the inter­ac­tion between these dif­fer­ent groups. The strong help the weak, the encour­aged and vic­to­ri­ous build up the weak or imma­ture. In every church there are spir­i­tual needy peo­ple. If there are not, then that church needs to do its work of evan­ge­lism, and shortly there will be. Also in every church there should be some spir­i­tu­ally mature peo­ple. The church should be seen as a work­shop, where the mature and encour­aged help and pull up the rest. Once these weak, imma­ture, or spir­i­tu­ally dis­cour­aged peo­ple build up over time oth­ers, they in turn min­is­ter to the weak and dis­cour­aged. It is a never end­ing bat­tle, an end­less work.

If this is cor­rect, then we must under­stand that every good church will have some prob­lem mak­ers, some imma­ture peo­ple. It is like say­ing no sick peo­ple can come to a hos­pi­tal. The pur­pose of the hos­pi­tal is to treat the sick, and if you pro­hibit them for com­ing in, you defeat the whole pur­pose of the hos­pi­tal from the beginning.

Prac­ti­cal Appli­ca­tions of this Teaching

1. Our first prin­ci­ple here is that resolv­ing prob­lems is what we are all about.

A church with­out prob­lems, and here we are speak­ing of prob­lem peo­ple, per­son­al­ity con­flicts, imma­ture peo­ple, spir­i­tu­ally defi­cient peo­ple, is sim­ply a church that lives in a fan­tasy land, and is not ful­fill­ing its pur­pose. It is like a clean mechanic’s shop. For­get it. It doesn’t hap­pen. Mechanic that work on cars do a dirty job, because what they deal with day in and day out is dirty.

Churches must deal with prob­lem peo­ple, and peo­ple with prob­lems. So just get used to that fact, and for­get about pipe dreams of a church with­out prob­lem peo­ple, or a church with peo­ple but that don’t have spir­i­tual problems.

2. We fix what’s wrong, so come here to us.

There is a weird, freaky think­ing cir­cu­lat­ing in churches that sim­ply is ridicu­lous. The idea goes like this. So and so has started com­ing to our church, and he/she is a big prob­lem. He/she is an embrace­ment to us as a church. We will either cold shoul­der the per­son hop­ing they get offended and leave, and if they don’t we will come out strongly against them and just tell them to go find another place and leave us alone.

It is like a doc­tor telling a patience to get lost because he is sick. “We only treat well sick peo­ple here.” (What?) This is just beyond belief.

3. You either love your brethren, or you need to be saved.

For the cruel and heart­less that have no love for their brethren in Christ, “Go back to the draw­ing board and start over.” “Return to Go and do not col­lect your $200 dol­lars” (Monop­oly). The point here is that the per­son who has no love for their brethren, and this is gen­er­ally for all their brethren in their local church, and is specif­i­cally, that they have treat­ment, rela­tion­ship, friend­ship, con­cern, pre­oc­cu­pa­tion for each and every one, well, you just are not even saved, much less spir­i­tual. You can­not love God and be indif­fer­ent to your brethren in Christ. It is impos­si­ble, and God tells you this.

4. Love is your ben­e­fit at my expense.

Here we define love by what it costs me, and the ben­e­fit it pro­vides to oth­ers. In other words, love has to cost some­body some­thing (time, energy, inter­est, pri­or­ity, money, etc.) and it has to ben­e­fit some­body else. To love your brethren you have to spend time and energy with them, and show gen­uine inter­est and con­cern for them. Oth­er­wise what you have is not love.

We also define love by meet­ing the needs of oth­ers, serv­ing their needs by our sup­ply. It is not what you want to give them, nor what they want from you, but in the eyes of God, what God says they need.

5. True love of God absolutely has to be man­i­fested tan­gi­bly with our Chris­t­ian brethren.

God has allowed us to con­tinue on earth after sal­va­tion in order to build a rela­tion­ship with our brethren and prove our love to God. This love of God must should itself by a tremen­dous amount of evi­dence, where we should our love by serv­ing and meet­ing needs. Yes it costs us because God’s love to us cost Him. There is no other way.

6. The needy and imma­ture bother me, and this will never change on their side of things, so it has to change on my side.

Here we talk about offense and frus­tra­tion. Yes the needy and imma­ture have their extreme bad habits. Babies use the bath­room at the most incon­ve­nient times. They throw up always when I hold them. The belch when I am want­ing to give them a kiss. They sleep when I want to play with them, and they want atten­tion from me when I have to sleep to get up and work in the morn­ing. That is the norm with babies. The needy in our church are exactly the same. Every time I have some­thing of ben­e­fit for them (a ser­mon, a teach­ing they need, etc), they miss, and when there are things that are prob­a­bly over their heads and they will not under­stand it, they are on the front row with their eye­brows in knots because they don’t under­stand and I am con­fus­ing them. All of this is just par for the course. Get used to it, and think over the long haul. Noth­ing is quick and fast here, noth­ing comes easy with babies. It just takes a lot of time, effort, and work, and then there is a lot of set backs to deal with also. Don’t get dis­cour­aged, get adjusted. You just have to work with what God gives you and allows you to work with, and thank God that He allows you to do some­thing in His work.

Here a corol­lary to the above is peo­ple who are hurt, some­times kick at the very peo­ple in the whole wide world that are on their side and help­ing them. I like to pic­ture this as a sheep stuck in a barbed wire fence. He is bleed­ing, he is hurt­ing, he is twist­ing and turn­ing try­ing to get free any way he can. When the shep­herd comes and tries to free him, the sheep may bite and scratch or even kick the shep­herd who is help­ing him. This is nor­mal for the sit­u­a­tion, even though it is not nor­mal for the sheep (which loves and is ten­der towards the shep­herd). So when you deal with peo­ple who are suf­fer­ing spir­i­tu­ally from the effects of sin, don’t be sur­prised if the spit and kick at you (spir­i­tu­ally or emo­tion­ally). That too is par for the course. Just love them, let it pass, for­get about it, and don’t take it seriously.

Think about it this way. You are a doc­tor or a nurse, and some­body who has acid all over their body comes under your care. They are thrash­ing around from the pain, and they strike you because they can­not stand the pain they are in. You should not take their aggres­sion or attacks at you seri­ously, because under dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances, they would prob­a­bly never do that, and if you were under their cir­cum­stances, you might do just what they are doing. So just take it all with a grain of salt, and remem­ber, the foun­tain head from which all love and ser­vice flows is our love rela­tion­ship with God, not nec­es­sar­ily the great love our brethren have for us.

7. Don’t fret the prob­lems, because with­out them, you would be out of a job.

God saves us so that we may par­take in His min­istry. So often Chris­t­ian peo­ple get the idea that they want a life with­out prob­lems, and a church with­out prob­lems. Nei­ther is real­is­tic. Nei­ther is going to hap­pen. One the one hand, God gives us prob­lems to work through so that we may be of spir­i­tual ben­e­fit to the work of God. This is what gives us glory in heaven (our suf­fer­ing now down here). So do like Paul and glory in tribu­la­tions, per­se­cu­tions, and all sorts of prob­lems. They are for our ulti­mate glory, reward, and good.

It is a priv­i­lege to be able to help our brethren. Do not under­es­ti­mate the good parts of this “prob­lem solv­ing”. God saved us for His ser­vice. If we had no prob­lems we would be of no use to God. There­fore be happy in all the prob­lems that God sends you way, because in these prob­lems is the con­fi­dence of God in you, that God thinks you can han­dle it.

8. Pas­tors, cre­ate an envi­ron­ment of love, and con­stantly thrust this con­cept on your con­gre­ga­tion with­out end.

In some churches it actu­ally gets to the point where peo­ple feel the church does not want to help them with their prob­lems. The mem­bers are so mature that they ridicule and scorn those who come with prob­lems. The pas­tor is so great of a pas­tor that he has no time for help­ing peo­ple because he stud­ies and admin­is­trates so much.

The busi­ness of pas­tor is tak­ing care of sheep, fix­ing what’s wrong in their lives, fix­ing their prob­lems. A large part of these prob­lems can be fixed through strong spir­i­tual exam­ples of mature Chris­tians, and through the encour­age­ment of Chris­t­ian brethren. This should not be passed over lightly. But in the end, most imma­ture peo­ple need some­one to sit down with them and talk them through a sit­u­a­tion and clar­ify the Bible’s posi­tion in regard to their sit­u­a­tion, and only a mature Chris­t­ian can do that.

As pas­tor (over­sight of the church), you must absolutely preach, and preach hard the con­cept of love among the brethren. If you preach con­stantly and strongly, maybe in sev­eral years of hear­ing it preached your peo­ple will finally under­stand it and put it into prac­tice (until the offense comes along wherein they will stick their thumbs in their mouths, go in a cor­ner and pout). As pas­tor, it is your duty to estab­lish bib­li­cal under­stand­ing and prac­tice in the local church. Don’t think your peo­ple will nat­u­rally do this. What they will do nat­u­rally is the works of the flesh, destroy each other and themselves.

As a side note here, this love can­not hap­pen in the nor­mal rhythm of wor­ship ser­vices. In other words it does not fit into a wor­ship ser­vice nor was it meant to fit in their. This lov­ing is done out­side of ser­vices. It is social­iz­ing, or done dur­ing social­iz­ing. Encour­age your peo­ple to come early, and stay after ser­vices to talk, even briefly, with their brethren. Hat­ing is the same as ignor­ing in this scheme of things. To not take time or effort to social­ize and show love is just a sin. It shows one thing, that you are set­ting up other things in your life that you think is more impor­tant than your brethren and God.

As a pas­tor, orga­nize socials for your church, and encour­age your peo­ple to social­ize out­side of church (like eat­ing Sun­day din­ner together).

9. Be ready for the back­lash, because Satan doesn’t like a lov­ing church.

As a pas­tor who preaches this con­stantly, let me out­line what will hap­pen, the com­mon events involved in this teach­ing. When you first start preach­ing this, it will take your peo­ple off guard. They will agree, smile, go home, and never again occur to them that they have no love, inter­est, affec­tion, nor con­cern for their brethren. They already have friends among the con­gre­ga­tion, and those friends are peo­ple who they nat­u­rally grav­i­tate to them before any love teach­ing. Fine. Let things stay that way and keep preach­ing on love.

After a time, they will get mad at some­body, or some imma­ture Chris­t­ian will have prob­lems and you will want the church’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in help­ing this needy per­son. That is when you bring it to their atten­tion again. This is when things start get­ting rough. They want to love, but only to whom they choose, not to whom God places in their midst. This is when the real teach­ing gets under­way. Love is shown to whom needs it, not to whom you want to receive it. In Matthew 25, the loving-kindness that defines a Chris­t­ian is based on the other person’s needs, not on your choice of whom you want to show that love, con­cern, and help to. The teach­ing of the Good Samar­i­tan is like­wise teach­ing us to respond when God places needy peo­ple in our path. We do not have much in the way of con­trol of who, just what we do for them.

That’s the first and sec­ond round. What comes next is some real growth in lov­ing one another. This is when Satan will let loose with a fist­ful of prob­lems in your church. Your peo­ple (espe­cially the sup­pos­edly mature ones) will do the stu­pid­est things. They will offend oth­ers, they them­selves will get mad over it, and every­body will either offend oth­ers or be offended. This is when Satan has destroyed all love among your people.

In this shake out, prob­a­bly a num­ber of peo­ple will leave your church “to find a more lov­ing group”. Don’t get upset. The accu­sa­tion is exactly the prob­lem that they are caus­ing or that they have. Once things set­tle down again, keep teach­ing on love. Now there are a few peo­ple who at least have some kind of idea of what it is all about. They see the hypocrisy of those who have left, they feel guilty over the stu­pid things they them­selves have done, and they are begin­ning to grow and be mature, just a lit­tle. This roller coaster ride will repeat over and over again. If you get a dozen peo­ple in your church that are truly mature, and truly under­stand and prac­tice love, be pre­pared for some­thing hor­ri­ble to hap­pen. Satan will split up that group because he can­not allow such a hot spot of growth and matu­rity to con­tinue. People’s jobs take them away, a nat­ural dis­as­ter occurs, or key peo­ple die, something.

This is within the plans of God. Once we dom­i­nate true fra­ter­nal love among us, God often allows us to break up, and these peo­ple take this teach­ing, under­stand­ing, and prac­tice, and carry it to other churches wher­ever they go. So you have to start over just about at zero again. It is not uncom­mon. It is a con­stant project and work that never is finished.

–finis–