What My Wife Has Modeled for Me — Jim Cymbala

The Church’s Decline and the Need for Change

I'm not going to pick a verse that I'm going to refer to several. I would title this things my wife modeled for me. Let me start by saying this. Right now the statistics are not good for the Christian church in America.

Let's save hype up talk and faith talk and let's just talk reality here. The major denominations like Southern Baptist Convention, Assemblies of God, others are in negative growth for the last 8 -10 years.

Negative growth after 9 -11. Negative growth. Southern Baptist official and Assembly of God official told me they have more empty pulpits right now than any time in the history of their denomination. Right now in America 1500 ministers are leaving the ministry every month.

That's a focus on the family figure. 1500 a month. While you are rejoicing today and eating lunch and going out with other folks hopefully and making new friends, 50 are going to bite the dust. 50 are going to quit.

Why? Discouragement, not knowing what to do, nobody getting saved, nobody getting baptized, mega churches sucking people away from middle and small sized churches, personal problems, personal failures.

But that's a stat that's true. Then another one that George Barna just said, for every 10 ministers who join the ministry now, only one retires still in the ministry. Nine are selling insurance or doing something else.

They opted out or they're out. And that hurts me as a pastor because it's hard being a pastor today. It's hard being a minister of music. It's hard being a worship leader. Satan's powers, you know, there's a greater hardness now in our country against religion.

How many would agree with that, right? The media, how many know the media is more against Christianity now than ever before? Wave your hand if you know what I'm talking about. So it's harder now. And you know I grew up as a basketball player, an all city basketball player in New York.

I went to college on a basketball scholarship and we had a scoreboard and we didn't play by faith. We played. We played by faith that we would do well. But you have a scoreboard and the scoreboard forces you to change things.

If you're losing 28 to 12 after nine minutes of the game, when you call a timeout and you come back, the coach doesn't say, wow, aren't these uniforms nice with the trim here on the trunks? No, the coach says it's 28 to 12.

We're losing. We got to change what we're doing. We're going to full court press. We're going to slow the game down. No, we're going to speed the game up. I was a point guard. We're going to do this. We're going to do that.

But we're not going to keep losing. No, you will not beat me. I will change. I will do something. And that industry does that. Businesses do that. People trying to sell things do that. But the church is slow to do that because we're just born and raised this way.

We're going to die this way. Yeah, but it's not bringing much blessing to anyone. That's OK. I was born in Nazarene. I'm going to die in Nazarene, you know, or whatever. I'm not picking on any denomination.

It could just. Isn't that the way a lot of people think? That's not what I saw growing up. I know, but what is it? We're not supposed to go by what you saw growing up or what I saw growing up or what Alvin saw growing up.

We're supposed to go by the word of God. And the word of God says that if we do this thing God's way, preaching God's message, lifting up Jesus Christ with the help of the Holy Spirit, God will add a blessing.

There will be lives changed because that's the power that there is in the gospel. Paul says, I'm not ashamed of it. It's the power of God to everyone who believes. So you being here, you're involved. I saw when Carol asked how many are leaders, singers, worship leaders, directors of music, choir members are here.

You folks are involved in ministry. But being involved in ministry is not enough. We have to have quality in the ministry. Did you ever notice in First Corinthians, Paul says at the end of the day, Alvin Slaughter, Jim Simbala, Carol Simbala, Michael Archibald, everybody here that's involved in ministry.

We're going to stand at the judgment seat of Christ and be judged for the quality of our work, not the quantity, the quality, not how long you've been doing it. It's the quality of the work. Paul says, God helped me to be a master builder and be careful how anybody builds on top of the foundation that I laid, which was Jesus Christ.

So it's the quality of the work, not I held the fort for 40 years. That's important. You need steadfastness, endurance, but it's the quality of the work. And that's why we go back to the word of God. And, you know, we want you to leave encouraged by the word of God, encouraged by the same with the choir, encouraged by the meetings on Sunday, encouraged by brother Sidney, who's anointed by Alvin is we want you to go back and do it better for Jesus Christ.

Unity Beyond Denominations and Cultural Divisions

And if you think we care what denomination you're in, we learned a long time ago from the word of God, there are no denominations to God. Do I get a witness here? Somebody put their hands together. God does not recognize any Baptist.

There's only one Baptist, John the Baptist. He died a long time ago. He's gone. There are no assemblies of God. There are no charismatics. There's no evangelicals. These are names not found in the Bible.

We've made them up and they hurt us. Why do they hurt us? Because we don't care about the other group. We get a party spirit. We go to church where people brainwash us into thinking about our group, but this is the way we do it.

My local church, this is the way I do it. I'm black. We're, you know, we're in my, I'm in my blackness. I'm in my whiteness. I'm into my southerness and the angels are weeping because folks are going to hell in a handbasket.

And we're talking about what group we're in. My goodness, that's sad. And I know at firsthand, because when I was playing basketball and a substitute went in and he scored, I was leaping off the bench.

Even if he substituted for me, he scored. That means we were winning, but we don't have that attitude in the church. It's whether it's our group. And I've talked to people, let's say I go to, I was just in Memphis, uh, preaching at a Bellevue Baptist church and, and we're Adrian Rogers pastor.

And I spoke there on a midweek service and God was there. And that pastor, I admire him. I encourage him. He's a new friend. And if I go to another denomination and they go, well, how are things going?

Brother Jim, where you been lately? Well, I was just over in Memphis and God is doing something good in that church. And, and I'm excited about it, let's say. And, and, you know, and I looked up in the choir and here were Hispanics and, and, and African-Americans lifting their hands in the choir, part of the choir mixed in with that.

And we know Memphis, if you live near Memphis, you've been in Memphis. Memphis is a tough city. It's racially divided like black and white. And we're talking God is love. And, and, and everybody like Dr. King, they're all divided on Sunday morning, 11 o 'clock.

It's sad. It's sad, but some of us are so used to it. Doesn't even bother us anymore. And I tell that person the reaction, you know, what happened in the meeting? And I could just, it's happened to me a thousand times.

They just look at me like, why are you telling us we're not Baptist? You're not Baptist. Are we Christians or not? What are we doing this for, for Baptist, for a denomination, for the Brooklyn Tabernacle?

I thought this is about Jesus. I thought we're all on the same team. If your church and your choir is doing good, guess what? I rejoice for you. I don't care where you come from. It's irrelevant. I don't care your color.

God doesn't recognize any colors because if you strip the color off, we're all the same on the inside. We cry, we hurt, we rejoice. So we want you to know we're rooting for you. We want you to root for us.

And we're all on one team. How many are all on one team? And since we're on one team, I want you to just turn around and high five somebody like you're on their team. Come on, come on. No handshake, just high five.

We're on the same team, brother. So black, white, brown, Hispanic, all that stuff, it's nonsense. And denomination, just total nonsense. We got a job to do. Look at the country. Look at the moral decline in our country decade after decade.

And the Republicans don't have the answer. The Democrats don't have the answer. That's a joke. We're the salt of the earth. We're the light of the world. We're the church of Jesus Christ. The White House is not supposed to win people of Christ.

I'm, you and I are supposed to win them. The church grew in, in a decadent Roman empire in the book of Acts, when at times, and during the book of Acts, people like Caligula and Nero were the emperors, cross dressers, homosexuals, no prayer in schools, no written Bibles, no public buildings for 300 years.

And they turned the world upside down. And what are you and I complaining about? Secular humanists and all this stuff. My goodness, this is all a diversion. It's a dream. We're in denial. We're in denial.

Let's get it on. Let's be what God wants us to be. We want you to go back on fire for the Lord Jesus Christ. Ah, but then we got to do ministry God's way. Not the way you saw your pastor growing up, or what I saw growing up.

That's the problem. Our churches are cultural. They're black churches. My goodness, white churches with certain traditions, so predictable, whether they're loud or noisy, or whether they're quiet, it's so predictable.

It's boring. Because Christian church is not supposed to be boring. It's supposed to be exciting. Jesus is alive. Come on. Is Jesus alive or is Jesus not alive? Who's getting saved? What's happening? The presence of the Lord.

The presence of the Lord. Things happening. Well, we don't do things that way. I'm not interested how you do it, or how I do it, or what I saw growing up. In the little church that I grew up in, they were very strict.

Women couldn't cut their hair. There was no makeup, but they wouldn't want a black person within 100 yards of the church. Should I follow what I saw growing up? You think my wife and I would be in downtown Brooklyn if I followed the tradition of my elders?

Of course not. I'm not bound to that. My elders didn't die for me. No denomination died for you. Christ died for you. We belong to Jesus Christ. White prejudice is bad, and black prejudice is just as bad.

And I've been around both of it and seen it. It's ugly. Hispanics, whatever. And denominational stuff, we got to be just set free from that. Now, my wife has modeled for me three important things that I've watched all her life.

Humility and Refusing the Spotlight

Since we were married and after just a couple of years, we were in the ministry, and she was way ahead of me. She was a pastor's daughter. She'd been more in church than I had. I was this college basketball player not knowing what I was doing.

My sermons were so bad when I went in the ministry, I fell asleep while I was preaching. Forget the congregation. People had trouble sleeping at night, we would just give them CDs of my messages and just, they go right out.

Come on, Alvin, you remember that. So, I want to tell you three things. There's a lot of things in the New Testament. You study the life of Paul. You see all kinds of things that are important in ministry.

But I want to tell you three that Carol has exhibited. I've never done this before, but I just feel this is appropriate because you've come here, most of you, because you've been blessed by the choir, by her writing, by her arranging.

She has perfect pitch. She has a lot of natural gifts. She's never been trained musically, can't read or write music technically like a lot of you can. Won six Grammy Awards and can even use one book.

I think Word has sold more than two million pieces of sheet music, books, octavos, two million they've sold of her work, and she can't read any of them. And we never used any of them. She could if she followed it and do it, but she does it all by here and by here.

So, let me tell you a couple things about the ministry. I don't care what you do. You ask God to apply this to your life because she's encouraged me and modeled this for me. First of all, in all the time my wife started with nine voices in the choir in this little rundown building we were in, two were tone deaf.

And then when the church grew and the choir grew, they never resigned from the choir. They stayed there the whole time. That's the truth. They stayed for more than 20 years, tone deaf. They needed radar to find the melody.

They didn't know what was going on. But back in that day when the church was little, if you could walk up on the platform, you could sing in the choir. She tests them now, interviews them now, but has vocal tests now and all that.

There was none of that back then. But from the beginning to this moment, my wife, this is good for all of us, I'm not making my wife the model, although she's modeled for me here in these things, but we're going to reflect it to the Bible, obviously.

You don't want to follow carol symbol, you want to follow the word of God. But Paul does say, imitate me as I've imitated Christ. She has never once, that I've observed, sought attention and tried to be the center of attraction.

Not once. Listen, I live with her. Not once. She never had grand dreams for the choir. She's never wanted to be acknowledged. She never wanted an award, never heard her say, oh, I hope I win that. Never heard it once.

And I'm talking about in the privacy of my home. So when God sees, you don't want something, then he'll give it to you. If he sees that you don't want notoriety and you don't want to be famous, he can give you a notoriety because you could deal with it.

But if he sees that you want it, you want your name mentioned, you want your church in lights, you want your choir or your music and lights. If you want that attention, you want to be famous. You want to be a star.

Watch it because whoever lifts himself up, God says, I'll bring you down. But whoever humbles himself, what does God say? I'll raise you up. And that's a good lesson for all of us is a lot of preachers want to be famous.

They don't want to be a blessing so much. They don't want to change people's lives. They want fame and money and the perks that come with that. And they will sell their soul, some of them, unfortunately, to be well known.

They want to know other famous preachers. They want to go to the White House. They want to rub shoulders with people who are really important. I've never seen that once in my life. Not once. She just goes about her business and wants Christ to be glorified.

Did you notice the words that were chosen on the screen at the beginning? Not to emulate her, but to draw closer to Christ. Don't you think we all need a good injection of that, all of us? Because pride comes naturally to us.

Pride is not something you have to teach people. People, we're just proud naturally by our fallen nature. And that's an insidious thing because do you realize that it's pride that changed Lucifer from the most beautiful of all God's angels into Satan himself?

Because your heart was lifted up with pride, the Old Testament says. You were cast down out of heaven. Now, Lucifer got his beauty from God, just like a lot of you have your gift. Any gift you have comes from God.

For every good and perfect gift comes from whom? God. Whatever you have, you sing good, you lead well, you have a good pitch, you hear harmony parts, you can direct well, you know how to sing, you can riff.

Whatever you're gifting is it came from God. Do you think God's going to share his glory with you? Does that sound right? Do you think God is going to share his glory, the glory of Christ with Brooklyn Tabernacle, that name?

Let that name perish. Let it be trampled on. Let everybody forget it ever existed, but let Jesus be glorified. And brothers and sisters, here's what I've seen, not just in Carol, but I've seen in the Bible and I've seen it through church history.

Whenever God sees someone who wants to give him all the glory, he will help you in ways you can't even imagine. There will be an anointing, there will be a provision, there will be open doors because God says, oh, it's not about you, it's about me.

You want to see my name lifted up? Angels, go and help them. Holy Spirit, go and help them. Come on, let's all put our hands together, say amen. So Paul says we don't preach ourselves, we preach Christ.

We don't preach our denomination. We don't preach, join our church. Our church is special. It's not, it's just another church. Get over it. It's just another church. It's all about Jesus. Your church, my church won't change a soul.

A relationship with Jesus Christ will change anyone. And wherever it happens, wherever it happens, God will get the glory. But a lot of our ministry is not so much to build up Christ and his kingdom as to build up our church.

Churches can become idols. Your choir can become an idol. I know this sounds radical to some of you, but I'm telling you the truth, what the Bible says. Paul never talks about some group. In fact, he says this is a sign of carnality.

One says I'm a Paul, one says I'm a Cephas, one says I'm Apollos. Did any of those guys die for you? Are you not carnal, 1 Corinthians? Are you not carnal? What we call carnal is someone, you know, uh, uh, drinking alcohol or, you know, involved with what we call worldly habits.

But Paul says, no carnality is you're trying to get your own name glorified rather than just Jesus Christ. So I want to encourage all of you. Do you want more anointing? Do you want more strength from God?

You want more creativity from God? Then like Thomas A Kempis says in the imitation of Christ, seek to be obscure. Seek that nobody will know who you are because you compared to Jesus, it's not a good comparison.

I'll be honest with you. Me compared to Jesus. I want people to notice me and Jesus died for my sins and rose again from the dead. And he's the son of God seated at the right end of the father, but I don't want to give him all the glory I've noticed.

One of the reasons God has blessed my wife is that she's been taught by the Holy Spirit. Make it about Jesus, not about yourself. She uses other people's music. She recognizes other people's talent. I, I know of a certain church has a good choir and the minister of music is a good person and all of that, but every album, uh, for a while there, it had to be written by this minister of music.

Well, that minister of music wasn't that good as songwriter. Maybe God gave him one or two good songs, but see, it had to be by this minister of music. You know, this is my production. My wife's always like, well, that's a good song.

Someone else wrote it. Praise God. Let's put it on the album. In fact, I can't get to hear the song she wrote in this church. I want to protest that publicly right now. Alvin is here. I cannot wait. I would imagine Alvin.

You're saying I'm clean while you're here. I've been waiting to hear I'm clean. We've never heard it because if she wrote it, she says, nah, it's not that good. That's the truth. Anybody here ever hear the song?

He's been faithful. Lift your hand. If you heard, he'd been faithful. Do you like it? I like it too, but I'll never hear it here. I'll never hear it here. Music department, they'll back me up. We can't get her to pick her songs.

She's going to pick someone else's songs, but God watches that and God says, oh, it's like that. Then I'll really help you. Whether you're a preacher, teacher, minister of music, soloist, you want people to draw attention to your voice, fine.

The Holy Spirit's leaving town. If you want people to be conscious of Jesus, the Holy Spirit will help you. If you want to do riffs and show them you can really sing, fine. You're on your own because the Holy Spirit is not here to help you glorify your voice.

I can assure you your talent, but if you're there to just God, don't even let them notice who I am. Just let them be conscious of Jesus. Did you know what? I just got an email. Someone sent me an email.

They got saved up in the balcony doing the choir rehearsal before a service. Did you hear what I just said? They said, I want to thank God. I came to your church and got saved, but it wasn't from your preaching and it wasn't through the service.

God convicted me and I gave my heart to Christ while they were warming up. How many are happy God's ways are not our ways? God is something else. Number two, number two, I've observed my wife all these years.

Following the Leading of the Holy Spirit

She has, she's not been perfect on it, no one is, but she's always tried to be led by the Holy Spirit. She tries to feel in her heart after what God wants her to do and try to follow that. Now look up here for me for a second.

The Bible is our only rule of faith and doctrine. Am I correct? Everything that happens in the church has to be judged by the word of God. There's some manifestation or some weird thing going on that's not in the Bible.

It's best to just stop it. Someone said, I have a revelation, an angel talked to me and, and all that. And if it's not you, you listen, I'm listening to you. Go ahead and tell me what the angel said. Then if it's not in the Bible, remember what Paul said, if an angel comes and preaches another gospel, let the angel be cursed.

So any preacher, you know, this is what God showed me. This is the vision I have and all that hyped up stuff. You listen to it, but you judge it by the word of God. Some of the fundraising techniques that you hear is just people must not know their Bible because they're getting played.

They're getting conned by these charlatans because they, they, they're, they just know you don't know the Bible enough or people don't know the Bible enough to say, that's not Jesus. That's not apostle Paul.

That's not the teaching of the Bible. But the problem with this is this Bible does not tell you what's the next song you should teach your choir. You will not find that in that book, nor who you should marry.

If you're single here, all it tells you is that you should marry a believer, but there's a lot of them out there. Which one is the question, right? Won't find that in the Bible. Somebody has a call to the mission field.

You won't find that in the Bible. What country should you go to? It's not there. You won't find it. These are non-moral decisions, which are very important. They have to do with the will of God. You won't find them in the Bible.

So churches and denominations that downplay the power of the Holy Spirit, they're in, they're in the soup. They got a real problem because they turn to computers and they turn to all kinds of, you know, there's an invasion in the church now of the corporate world.

Corporate thinking has invaded the church. So people are making decisions, not by the Holy Ghost, not led by the Holy Spirit. I don't even believe that anymore. You got to use your brain. You got to copy what Apple does.

AT &T. You got to be up with this stuff. Well, I'm sure there's room for using all the wisdom we can get from anyone, but Carol has always believed in the Holy Spirit leading her. She might practice. I've seen this happen.

She practiced a song on a practice night and said, we're going to sing that song and this other song. And then in the meeting, the texture of the meeting, the spirit of the meeting, she'll change and sing something.

They haven't even practiced in two months. Why? Because I feel that's what we're supposed to sing because meetings aren't supposed to be a mechanical. They're supposed to be the leading of the Holy Spirit.

Don't you think if God could lead the Israelites for 40 years in the wilderness, couldn't he lead you and me through one service? Do I get a witness here? Now I'm not talking about, look, I'm not talking about this weird stuff.

And, and, you know, the Holy ghost just showed me that 10 people supposed to give $5 ,000 and, and all that other hyped up these con artists there on TV. But I'm talking now about being led by the spirit.

Paul says in, um, in the book, uh, of acts, Luke writes and says, uh, so Paul and us, we wanted to go into Asia and preach the gospel, but Jesus forbid us the spirit of Jesus forbid us. So then we were going to go to Bithynia, you know, Bithynia needs the gospel.

But again, the spirit said, no, well, then they're not selling crack. They're not, they're not, they're not involved in drug trafficking. They want to preach the gospel, but the Holy spirit says, no, that's for someone else to do there.

I got a different plan for you. Do you believe in that today? Do you, how many believe the Holy spirit can still lead us? Well, if he can't, if he can't, what are we going to do? What am I supposed to preach on this Sunday?

I don't know, but I know the whole, what would Jesus speak this Sunday with all of you here? Plus the thousands and thousands of come in our congregation. What would Jesus speak about? I'm trying to find that out because there is a message that's right for that Sunday, right?

Paul tells us, Paul tells Timothy preach the word, but what word there's 66 books in there. That's a lot of word, right? And Carol has always believed. And I want to encourage you follow your heart, get close to God and follow the leading of your heart.

She's going to do what she feels to do. She has had Sundays where thinking back over the years, it just came to me now. She said to me at times, the choir is not singing today. And I said, why they're not ready that's happened.

And I don't say to her, well, guess what woman you have them sing? No, I don't. If she feels that God doesn't want the choir to sing, then God has something else to do in that meeting. So not to make it about ourselves, to make it focused on Jesus, to take a humble place.

Number two, to want to be led by the Holy spirit. Now a great spiritual writer once said, if you want to be set on errands by Jesus, you got to live close to him. And that's a challenge to all of us, not fake leading, not emotionalism, not charismatic excesses and all of that stuff, but the real true Holy spirit.

Who leads us, who shows us what to do. I'll just, I feel impressed here to tell you this one day, many years ago, we were in another building. Service began. I went to sit in the front row. I wanted to hear the choir sing and see them instead of sitting on the side or wherever we were in that church.

So I was listening to choir sing and a former drug addict named Calvin Hunt was there and he was singing a song doing the lead solo with the choir singing. I sat down, Carol had told me, I'm going to do two songs.

I want to do to that song, another song. So I went and sat down and all of you listening to me, you can believe this or not believe this. I'm going to tell you what happened. And then you sort it out with God.

So I'm sitting there and the song is about a third of the way through. And suddenly the Holy spirit starts to bear down on me and say, get up and preach the gospel. Now tell them I love them. Tell them now, make them come to me now.

Tell them now. And I'm going, no. First of all, there's a song going on. Number two, she got another song and we haven't even taken the offering. God, don't you even, God, don't you know how this works?

I mean, you have the announcements, you have the offering, you know, that's the way we do it. But now it's getting stronger. Get up now, go up now, go up now. And I tried to resist it and I felt pain in my innermost being pain from God, the Holy spirit, because when you grieve him or quench him, it can get bad on you.

Right? So my heart starts to beat because I don't like being weird. Some people, some, I mean by this, this, some people think that to be led by the Holy spirit, you act strange, but some people who act strange are just strange.

How many say amen to that? They're just strange. That's not the Holy spirit focus. That boy is just strange. So I'm sitting there and I can't, the meeting isn't even a half hour old. So I, I can't fight it off.

So the song is ending and I walk up on the platform and my wife just looks at me like, you know, I have another song, but she sensed, no, this is something's going on here. I grabbed the soloist before he can walk away.

And I said, Calvin, you got five minutes, tell people how Jesus changed you. He lived in a crack houses, blues, his whole life apart, ended up living in a dog house, hopeless crack addict. You know, they say here in the city, I was, he's the first one I ever heard it from.

He says, you know, crack has a voice. And when you're a crack addict, when it calls you coming, it's not, do you want to come? Might you come? You're coming when it calls. He takes a few minutes. I grabbed the microphone from him, choir still standing.

And I make an invitation, preach the gospel in less than five minutes. My heart's pounding. I want to be obedient. I make an invitation for those who want to receive Christ. People start flying out of their seats and coming to the front.

Some kid comes out of the balcony, standing over to my right. He's all broken up and crying. And all these people are there. So I tell the people, all right, I pray over them. They pray out loud, the sinner's prayer, receive Christ.

They go back to their seats. I go, well, what do we do now here? That took a lot of time. But you know what? If you want a show, you should go to Broadway. Not to a church. Churches shouldn't have shows.

And those, I go to these places now, they have all the, you know, the script of the meeting. This will take two minutes. That will take one minute. Your sermon is 14 minutes. That's the, got to keep it moving.

You think, you think you, exactly. That's a good word. You program God right out of it. God's not fitting into my program. I'm supposed to fit into God's program. Come on, how many believe that? Say amen, right?

Well, brother, you can't do that. You can't do that because if the meeting goes too long, the people won't come. The cowboy game, it starts at one o 'clock. They got to be there to see the Falcons or whatever.

Then what kind of church you got? No, I'm telling you the truth. They don't want to be in the presence of Jesus. Then why would God punish them and send them to heaven? If they don't want to be in his presence.

No, look at me, look at me. If they, if you don't want to be in God's presence here on earth, why would you think heaven is great? There's nothing in heaven, but God, his presence. But you know what? We've institutionalized backsliddenness.

So we're, we're, we're making meetings in many places, either based on the lowest carnal denominator and fitting it into what the people want, or because they're so into money, we've changed the gospel and just talking money, money, money.

You watch Christian television, money, money, money, money, money, money. I don't see that in the Bible. I see a lot of other subjects, but no, no, because they're just, it's all about people. You give the money to me and you'll get more money because they're into money and that's how they're running it.

So I present the gospel in these few minutes, people come, people go back. We take the offering. The meeting goes on. I really couldn't preach long that day. I just spent all my energy at that moment.