reChurch Podcast
Welcome to the reChurch Podcast, hosted by Justin and Brooke Knoop.
As we speak, there is a massive number of people leaving the institutional Church...but interestingly, they aren’t walking away from Jesus. Many of us have noticed a significant gap between what we see in the Bible and what we experience on Sunday mornings. Let’s talk about it.
reChurch Podcast
Too Many House Churches Fall Into This Trap! Here's How You Avoid It | #reChurch Ep. 08
Just because you exchanged the 4 walls of the Church building for the 4 walls in your house doesn't mean you're immune from falling into the same trap.
Today we discuss one of the most common pitfalls for house churches and how to avoid it.
Then we end by discussing the 7 traits of a healthy organic church gathering.
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We think it's got to be bigger, better, more. So we go from oh I've discipled two or three, that's not enough, I need more people. So then we start stacking chairs, just dispelling information. But information is not discipleship. Discipleship is doing true intimate life with someone.
Speaker 2:Because we could step out of a certain method or model of church gathering because of certain reasons right, that are good reasons and then find ourself one, two, three years down the road beginning to implement some of the things into the home.
Speaker 1:So many people are like hey, can you write a this and can you do a this, and can we do it this way and can we establish this? And it's like for a minute we're tempted because it would make it easier. It would make it easier, it would give us more power in our community and whatever we're doing. But as soon as we try to head down that direction, the Lord is like I want you to stop. What have I called you to do? And we have to again humble ourselves again and be like you're right, lord. This isn't about me, this isn't my kingdom. We're building it your way.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the ReChurch podcast. If you're tired of business as usual Christianity and you're ready to live like Jesus, then you found yourself in the right place.
Speaker 1:I'm here with my wife, my beautiful wife today, brooke Brooke you ready to flip some tables?
Speaker 2:Start flipping. That sounded funny, so I'm going to make a statement today that's going to drive the conversation forward. Hopefully it was sparked by something that I was aware of, but I was doing some research and found some more that just blew me away, and the statement is you know, you can have different settings and still institutionalize those settings. What do I mean by that? When we use the term institutional church or traditional church, normally we're speaking about the building known as church, the organization, the corporation, traditional style meeting. But a lot of people will say, hey, I've left institutional church and now I do house church. Right, but you can institutionalize house, church, so it's so funny.
Speaker 2:I don't even like to use the terminology anymore because I feel like it's a word that meant something at one point but it's been stolen. I prefer to use either organic or simple church because I feel like it's hard to mess that up. It's hard to turn a term like organic or simple which we probably could do but turn that into a denomination or something like that. We've even turned non-denominational into a denomination. It's crazy. But here's what I saw. We're going to talk about basically three different things. I want to talk about first what do we mean when we say institutionalization or institutionalized church? We're going to talk about what that is. Number two, we're going to talk about how to really protect your house church or church in the home, organic church, from re-institutionalizing itself Because we could step out of a certain method or model of church gathering because of certain reasons right, that are good reasons and then find ourself one, two, three years down the road beginning to implement some of the things into the home.
Speaker 1:And we've been. I think we can say honestly we've been tempted to do that at some point because simple, organic church can get really messy, because there isn't like a bylaws, you know on how to exactly do something or whatever.
Speaker 1:It's really just like being led of the Spirit and also obeying the Word of God as best as possible. And I think people have to understand when you read the Bible, especially the Book of Acts, they still were doing some Old Testament practices in the early parts of the Book of Acts that were not continued on into the book of Acts and into the letters because they realized like, oh, that's part of the old system, we actually don't need to do that now. It's not of the spirit. And so you see that wrestled through there in the scriptures, and it's the same thing with organic church or simple church, whatever language you want to choose to explain. That is, it has to really be done by the spirit, um and and through scripture and other people who've gone before use experience to help you not fall into pitfalls or re-institutionalize what you're trying to get away from the institution, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I agree and hang out to the end because in the end, we're going to talk about I'm going to talk about seven traits of a healthy biblical church gathering and what that looks like, and we'll go through them. So we're going to we're going to be try to be as practical as we can because, like I said before, I was on Instagram and I was looking. I'm a lot of. The reason that we started this podcast is because, yeah, there are books and there are some resources out there, but a lot of the resources are pretty old People that are talking about this specific topic. It's almost like a lot of people just gave up on it because it was an uphill battle. And so when you look on YouTube and stuff and you're looking for organic church, simple church, how church, outside the box church, you're either finding extremely old resources that are not, they're just outdated in a sense with technology.
Speaker 2:wise, they're not like current conversations, because there was something totally different going on 10, 15 years ago than there is now. So what does it look like now? That's one reason we wanted to start this podcast and have this conversation Kind of explain that.
Speaker 1:Why did those voices kind of get silenced and muffled out?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the second thing I want to talk about first, before I do.
Speaker 1:That is what I found when I was doing my research.
Speaker 2:And that was.
Speaker 2:There's all these videos and these posts and these pictures that are labeled house church, but they're just mini institutions In a house, yeah, in a house, yeah, but they're just many institutions in a house in a house, and so one in particular that I read not trying to, you know, throw shade on this guy or whatever, if you've seen this post, but he, he, he starts off the post and he says you know, it's been amazing since I've left traditional style Christianity church and started meeting in the home in a more intimate setting, we've seen so much fruit, dah, dah, dah. And I'm reading it I'm like, oh, awesome, like this is great. And then he hits this point and he says just preached my 138th sermon, like celebrating my hundred and so odd sermon in the house. Yeah, and.
Speaker 2:I'm like, and then he goes on to say we're starting a seminary to like teach people how to plant house churches, and I'm like we're missing the point.
Speaker 2:We're missing the point. What we're doing is we're trying to start this new thing and it starts off good, and then we just implement all of the same things that got us into trouble in the first place, and that's the institutionalization of the body of Christ, which is a living organism. So what is institutional church? Why do we use that terminology? Because it differentiates it from more of a simple, organic, spirit led type of church that has doesn't have as much structure or anything like that around it that are kind of binding it to one thing or Well, I think also, when you say the word institutional church, it means that there are things that have been set as a standard that were not biblical.
Speaker 1:That's actually hindering a true move of God. That's the issue. That's the issue we have, that we are more concerned about our programs and our packages and our sermon setup and things like that more than like true revival in the hearts. And I think that even revival is planned in the institutional church, which always gets on my flipping nerves.
Speaker 1:Like revival is going to happen November 15th through the 18th be here every night from seven to nine you know, and I'm like uh-huh, no, if a revival breaks out, you will not be able to contain that thing you know, and like so that that's where it gets.
Speaker 2:That's a good point, like a true move of God you cannot contain. If you can contain it, then you it's either not real, or you've stopped it right, you've halted.
Speaker 2:So what we mean when we say institutional church, traditional church is, is that, um, basically, the church meetings, the church is run like an organization or a corporation, as opposed to a community or a family. Okay, and I stand very strongly by that statement, because it means that these organizations are driving everything forward with mainly programs, structures, positions, hierarchy and buildings. Okay, it's the very same thing that drives forth businesses and corporations.
Speaker 1:I think what Justin's saying is so good, like if it goes beyond if it, if you need to add more to it than what the family model represents, you're going in the wrong direction. Yeah yeah, that's a good litmus test, like what I do this at home with my children around the dinner table. Right.
Speaker 1:You know, like if I wouldn't do this in my home because that's not natural and organic, then why am I doing this, like in in in my church setting, when we're literally supposed to be the body of family, a living organism, a building of people, that house the Holy Spirit of one mind and one spirit? Like, why are we going to sit here and begin to do things that we wouldn't even do in our own home? You know then, then you know you need to like start turning back the other direction.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and going back to the institutionalization of I know I've said that word a hundred times, but, and I'll probably say it a hundred more of the of of the, the organic church in a home setting, which is not even organic church anymore, it's just, it's just literally a mini institution, is. I've seen even people like put pulpits in their house and preach from their pulpits, from their living room, with a passive crowd Like you're doing the same thing, that's not it. And so it goes back to the, the, the, the lens that we actually read scripture through. And what was interesting because I was studying this and trying to learn like, how did we get here? Like, how did we? We get to where not only we've made up all of these imaginary positions in the scriptures, but we can still look back in there.
Speaker 2:And a lot of people you have conversations with they don't see it. They're like oh, there, it is right there. Or I'll say like, uh, you know the, the, there's no, there's no position of senior pastor in scripture. And there'll be like Ephesians, chapter four, and I'm like that's what you see in that. Or they'll go to scriptures in Hebrews and, and and, where it talks about leadership, and they're reading their, their current experience, their current experience into that scripture and then validating it and I'm like no, look, look at what they were actually doing.
Speaker 2:Do you think, by reading that if you didn't have this example to go by, that you would actually see that that's what it is and it's? It's very difficult to have that conversation with a lot of people because of what we're experiencing all over, right, and we think you know that is the norm. But going back to what you said about why basically the question of why isn't this the right way to do things, or the biblical way to do things? And that is because when Jesus talks about the church, he talks about the church as a spiritual family, a living organism. So if you use these corporation models and try to implement them into an organic living thing that's supposed to be led by the spirit, you know the Bible says the one who's led by the spirit, like you, can't tell where they're coming from and where they're going, and all this stuff.
Speaker 2:It's like you start to stamp out the life of that thing, to stamp out the life of that thing. And so we're we're so naturally uh, in the flesh prone to those systems and processes because they make things feel comfortable that no matter where we do whether we're meeting for church in a home and a coffee shop and a park and a building we're going to there's going to be those natural temptations. Tell me about some of that. You said even we experienced some of those natural temptations. What are some of those temptations of things to go back to out of comfort?
Speaker 1:Well, as you're talking, I feel like the Lord's speaking to me and I feel like the reason why the Western world goes back to institutionalism or systemizations in the church is, first of all, like you're saying, this business model, but it's because we have Roman philosophy built into our DNA as.
Speaker 1:Westerners. I would even beg to say like did Rome really ever die, you know? Because the way the Western world looks at things, it's very business get big, grow large, huge amounts of financial, this and that and the other, and I think that that's what causes us to have that mindset of like this is what it's supposed to look like, because Rome is the one that really jacked up Christianity to begin with. They took it to a hard right from this being this beautiful, organic thing that Jesus left behind. Let the Spirit take over and they institutionalized it. So I think, first of all, we've got to get out of the Roman mindset of best speakers, all the best cathedrals and buildings and the nicest this and that, and just back to what Jesus did, the simple mission and words he gave us. But what was your question? Again, I'm sorry, um all the pitfalls we had.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so um but but to go off of that, like a lot of people, don't understand the history of how the church entered into that place, and that was that the uh emperor, constantine, was, quote unquote, converted to Christianity.
Speaker 2:But what did Rome look like during that time? They had professional orators and philosophers. So they were literally professionally trained speakers that would lead meetings in the pagan world. And so when that took place, when Christianity at one time people were persecuted for it and then all of a sudden, when the emperor becomes Christian, it's widely accepted. Now it's brought into the mainstream. Now you become a Christian just by being a citizen of the Roman Empire. That's right. And do you think the emperor is going to be like oh, let's just continue meeting in houses?
Speaker 1:No, let's do it big. Let's build cathedrals, let's build buildings.
Speaker 2:Let's institutionalize it, and so people don't realize that it happened very early on, within the first couple hundred years, that's why it seems so weird to us, because this has been going on for years and years and years and years and years.
Speaker 1:And so it's like well, this is weird, this is all we've ever known and our ancestors ever knew. But this is not the original design. It was corrupted not long after Jesus died and the 12 had passed away and had been killed, and the 12 had passed away and had been killed. That then it was then institutionalized and it was just. It's been built into this event, this event, this institution, this 501c3, this money-making machine that we just have to keep feeding the machine. And, like I said, like, did Rome really die? Like, has that mindset actually stopped? So, and it hasn't.
Speaker 1:It's proven that it hasn't stopped, because people get really riled up about this conversation, they get frustrated and it's like guys and people are like y'all must be hurt by the church and y'all must be this and that and I, to be honest with you, like I've never been hurt. Well, I take that back. As a young girl I had an incident happen with a youth pastor situation, but Justin was never raised in church. You never went to church as a kid.
Speaker 2:I wasn't there enough to get hurt. You weren't there enough.
Speaker 1:I think y'all went a couple times a year and even in high school never went to church. When he met God he was first generation Christian. Y'all Never been raised in the church, never read a Bible. And then when we were, we did become believers and we were in the institutional church like we never had, like a horrific experience like ever. We were actually really well liked in most ways, you know like and like really encouraged by people because they could see that we were really radical about the Lord. It wasn't until we stepped out and actually began to like do what the Bible said, did people speak out against it? But it wasn't while I was in the institution that I had issues or had a problem, you know, um, and things like that. So that's not. We're not hurt. Y'all Like I don't.
Speaker 2:I don't feel hurt and you'll be able to see if you read even of course there's going to be negative comments, but if you even read the comments on our YouTube videos you'll see so many people that are speaking the same language, whether it's I just stepped out of institutional church five months ago or I'm in the process of having that revelation, or 15, 20 years ago. I'm hoping to reach out to a person that I recently the Lord told me to connect with, that's been doing it since the 1980s.
Speaker 2:You know, this is not a new thing.
Speaker 1:This is just reviving what I think what Jesus was trying to teach originally and has been broken down and built into our society and stuff like that. But let me go back to the pitfalls we found.
Speaker 2:Sorry, we kind of got a little windy in the turns here.
Speaker 1:But this is just organic conversation. We don't really super plan these, we kind of just let the Lord lead us. We have an idea, but I think for us the pitfalls have been you see, you begin to compare yourself to what other people are doing, and or people come to you and they're like and you really love them and you care about them and you really like, care about what they think or how they do things and they do have wisdom in a lot of things and be like hey, like I read this book and it says this and here's this curriculum that goes with it. Maybe you should try it in your community or whatever. And and we're like oh okay, you know, we'll try and look at it and we go to read through it. And there's this temptation to like curriculum-atize. Is that even a word? I don't even know. I make up words sometimes.
Speaker 1:Our, our community, and like get a pamphlet and a book because it's just easier to pass along information. When you do that, Then just truly letting the DNA of Jesus grow in each person, Because I can institutionalize you, I can brainwash you to believe what I believe and to think how I think, by giving you a book and making you read it and making you fill out questions and making you da-da-da-da-da-da-da. But do I truly trust the Holy Spirit with that? Do I truly trust the Holy Spirit to be your teacher, Like 1 John 2.27 says, like no, like I'm just making you believe what I've written on a piece of paper.
Speaker 1:Like can we wrestle through things together? Can we talk about things together? You are going to collect more information. It's going to become more of who you are if we just actually do life together and hang out together and and and be be together and talk together and communicate together and like do things together. So we've had that temptation to begin to like institutionalize what we've done. So many people are like hey, can you write a this and can you do a this and can we do it this way and can we establish this? And it's like, for a minute, we're tempted because it would make it easier it would make it easier.
Speaker 1:It would make it easier, it would give us more power in our community and whatever we're doing. But as soon as we try to head down that direction, the Lord is like I want you to stop what have I called you to do? And we have to again, humble ourselves again and be like. You're right, lord. This isn't about me, this isn't my kingdom. We're building it your way, not our way, and then continue on in what he showed us. And it makes people uncomfortable because you can't predict things. You don't have a system necessarily Like. It can get a little messy sometimes, you know, but it just it's beautiful when you really break it down at what's going on, you know you're right, that is the hardest battle is is, I think, in many ways and many other, into many industries and different areas of life.
Speaker 2:You're working with human beings, ideas and methods, and so we're used to improving on those methods right, but we forget when we're reading the Bible. Jesus gave us a way and a pattern, and I think it's the human temptation to try and improve on his methods, and that's what we do. We find ourselves trying to improve on the message of methods of Jesus. Well, I know Jesus shared the gospel disciple like this. I know they met like this in the early church, but we could probably make it better. We can make it better. You know we could, we could, we could like, do this big. And I've heard this argument of like well, well, you know, as Christians, we're supposed to do everything you know, amazing, like, with excellence, and so that's our argument for having big buildings and cathedrals and programs and all of these different things, and I'm like, no, no, no. Is that what Jesus considers excellent? Or is that what you consider?
Speaker 2:excellent Because to me, when I read the scripture, what Jesus considers excellent is the fruit. That's right. He's looking at what kind of fruit does that produce? So it's not how big, how bad, and how much technology is put into it, how much smoke there is and all of that stuff, how big of a boom it's creating, but what is the fruit of that? And I think this brings us back to honestly. If I could boil this whole down I'm going to mention some things in the end about traits of what I see to be a healthy church gathering but honestly, if you could boil it down to one thing the goal in discipleship and what we're called to do as Christians is walk people into maturity is to disciple them into maturity in Christ. That's what Paul-.
Speaker 1:And release them. Disciple and release them.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:My thing is. The one thing I love so much about our community back in North Carolina is I could take a whole group of people. Church could be canceled in America, or I could take them and I could put one person over there in Canada. I could put one person in Brazil. I could put one person in North Korea, and they're going to be able to make a disciple, no matter where they're at, who they're around or what they're doing, because the DNA of Jesus is in them.
Speaker 1:And it's not because I did something special. I just challenged their traditional mindsets. I said does what you're doing now? You've been doing it for 25 years. How many disciples have you made? How many people have you baptized? How many people have you handed over to Jesus? How many people have you released to do the Great Commission? Have you ever done the Great Commission? Challenge them with those questions. And when they realized, oh snap, I've never really been obedient to Jesus. I've just sat in a church for the past 15 years. What do I do? I just taught them to obey Jesus. And then they became true disciples of Jesus, not of Brooke or Justin, but of Christ. They started preaching the gospel, they started baptizing, they started laying hands on people. They started seeing people healed. They started seeing people delivered. They started seeing the works of Christ from Matthew 1 to Acts 28 be fulfilled in their life and they've never had more purpose in their life than now. There's some people in the community or anywhere in any church, you know they get this spiritual high.
Speaker 1:they've experienced these amazing things and then all of a sudden, like old mindsets, come back in or or they stop seeing some things because maybe they've, you know, got a little prideful in a way, or whatever the case may be. And all of a sudden, the next thing, you know, like they're nitpicking people and I'm like, hey guys, like we're just trying to like keep on the mission of Jesus. Like don't try to like re-institutionalize this thing. Like let's just say, focus, disciple release, disciple release. You know, like they're not your people.
Speaker 1:If you don't ever release them to go out and actually do what they've been taught to do through the word of God, you're actually like causing them to be spiritually like handicapped. Yeah. You're producing the handicapped Christians, yep, and that's a problem. Oh yeah, so.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's that. It's literally that simple. That's like that's what we're called to do, and so what we're doing in the church at large, in the traditional church setting, is we don't have the fruit. So, instead of actually doing what Jesus has called us to do and asked us to do, we're creating programs and traditions to fill those spaces so that we can feel like we're doing something like we're fruitful Christians.
Speaker 2:And then when you ask somebody what they've done, well, I've served here and I've opened doors and I've done all this, all these different things and Jesus is sitting there and goes yeah, I didn't ask, those are good. Yeah, that's great that you did that.
Speaker 2:Be kind to people Be welcoming to people, Hold doors for people Right, Make food for people, serve people. But he's like I didn't ask you to do that specifically. You're neglecting the things I asked you to do. To do things that you've made up in your head is traditionally. They're the things you're supposed to do.
Speaker 1:But programs keep people dependent on you. Yeah. That's what they do. Programs don't release people.
Speaker 2:I would say, even more so. They keep people dependent on a system, on a system, yeah.
Speaker 1:On a program, yeah. Or the. When I say you, the person who created the program, it keeps them attached and like dependent on that. Yeah, they don't really know how to feed.
Speaker 2:Let me share this in this thought, and you let me know what you think about this. So, uh, because a lot of people will argue that there is hierarchy in scripture and and so I've even had this conversation with I'm like, really like, really like, they'll even argue that the, the, the, the Trinity has hierarchy in it, because the son submitted to the father and stuff. And I'm like, no, you have to understand, like, jesus was a human being on earth and so he chose to lay down certain rights that he had as a human being on earth. But then he says, like in Philippians, that he counted himself equal. Right, he was equal to God, right, the father. And so there's no hierarchy in the Trinity, right, there's a cohesive community relationship.
Speaker 1:God like created everything through Christ Jesus. Right, right, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so people get confused on that. That's what I'm talking about how they read their lenses back into scripture and then they read scriptures in Hebrews about obeying your leaders and all this stuff. And the problem is, is that like we need to just take a little step further, look into those scriptures, do a couple of word studies. We've got all the tools to look at what those words mean and see what is a biblical way of leadership, because leadership is real and we believe in it in a biblical way of leading people.
Speaker 2:Okay, we believe in biblical elders, but what we're trying to tell you is what you're seeing in the churches is not biblical eldership. Okay, these are made up positions. I'm not saying that elders are made up. I'm saying what you call an elder in your church institution is a made up position. Right, all Jesus was trying to do and all the scriptures were trying to do when they talked about elders. What does the word elder mean? Older, more mature, wiser Christian men and women? Right, there's there's so many things that I would, I would love to get into.
Speaker 2:Maybe we can get in, we can do a whole episode on biblical leadership and get into, like, the Greek and the language and stuff like that, because there's so many things that we manipulate when we're translating the scriptures to make it like we put the word office in there, it's not in there. We make everything masculine when there's no, there's actually. The language is not masculine or feminine, it's neutral, and stuff like that, to create these positions and then say, hey, these are the only types of people that can fill these positions. And so what we're doing is we're building a hierarchy in the church, and this is what separates organic church from an institutional type of church, is we create hierarchy. But guess what hierarchy is? Hierarchy? It's a hard word to say. It's a triangle. It's always a triangle. Do you know why? Because as you go up the chain of command, does it get smaller? Does it get in a business? As you go up the chain of command, is there more people or less people?
Speaker 1:Lesser people get up to the top.
Speaker 2:There's less people. So let's look, I want you to, I want to look at this real quick, because let's look at Ephesians, chapter four, because this is going to go back to what we talked about the goal of maturity. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I'll start reading in Ephesians, chapter four. It talks about the, the, what is known as the fivefold ministry. Okay, it's the APES gifts apostle, uh, prophet, evangelist, shepherd, teacher. So it says. And he gave some as apostles and some as prophets, and some as evangelists and some as pastors or shepherds and teachers. Listen to this, verse 12, for the equipping of the saints for the works of service or ministry, to the building up of the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure, the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. So there's two ways that we can look at the functions of people with these giftings. Again, we believe in these giftings, okay, but what does it say those giftings are for?
Speaker 1:for the body of.
Speaker 2:Christ or for the body of Christ, but are they? Are these people ministering their gifts to the body of Christ? Are're for the body of Christ, but are these people ministering their gifts to the body of Christ? Are they ministering them to them or are they using their gifts to equip the people so the people would minister? Okay. So that is why.
Speaker 1:If your people aren't ministering you're doing it wrong.
Speaker 2:You're misusing your gift, hello, because you've turned your gift into a title, into a position, into a career, and I've got to think Jesus is up there going like you're missing it. I've gifted you by the Holy Spirit to train and equip, because discipleship is your job, maturity is your goal. It's that simple. Preach the gospel. Make disciples, baptizing them, teaching them to obey everything that I commanded you and, lo, I'll be with you even to the end of the age.
Speaker 2:It's that simple, and so we put all these rules and regulations and programs and structures around it, when Jesus said hey, take your gift, use it to train others so that we all would be able to minister. And so you see, this is so cool and I want to relate it back to about the goal of maturity. Right, remember that. Actually, I want to let me read a scripture, just to nail this in. Okay, so we'll look at what Hebrew first of all. Hebrews 5, 12, is so funny People. I've never heard people preach on this uh, very rarely, if I have. But he, actually the writer of Hebrews, tells the church here. He says you should all be teachers by now. He rebukes them and tells them they should all be teachers by now. What does that tell us? Why is the whole?
Speaker 1:church not teaching. Why aren't there teachers in the church? Can I ask this question? Yeah, might be a little light spicy, but why is it that you know? If a pastor leaves a church, most of the time the person that replaces him is never within his own body? Yeah, why is that?
Speaker 2:I have the answer. Why Tell them it's because they're not doing their job?
Speaker 1:Yes, you can't pick one person out of your mega church to take your place. You've been teaching that congregation For 13, 14, 15, 20 years, for years and years and years and years, and there is nobody that is qualified to teach. That's sad.
Speaker 2:I mean, people are having, there's people having revelations right now. Okay, and then Paul confirms this goal of maturity. So the goal of maturity in Hebrews five would be and also in Hebrews, I think it's in chapter five as well he's like I can't give you solid food, I can only give you milk. Right, why and how do you become mature? It talks later in Hebrews 5. It says through the practicing of righteousness, right. You learn to discern right from wrong. Through practicing of righteousness, that's where maturity comes by putting things into practice, not by hearing hundreds and hundreds of sermons. That's right. By putting things into practice. Listen, this is super simple. I hope this is practical for you guys, because this is all you have to do as a Christian.
Speaker 2:You don't have to go to a church meeting on Sunday. You don't have to serve here, serve there. You are called to obey Christ and to make disciples and to love people, and this is how you do it. This is what we're talking about. So Paul verifies this in Colossians, colossians 1, chapter 1, verse 28. He says him we proclaim, warning everybody and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ.
Speaker 2:His whole life's goal, why he laid down his life for God's people, why he risked his life, why he was beaten and shipwrecked and all of those things jowled was why he was trying to get to people was so that at the end of his life, every life he touched, he could present to Christ as a mature believer in the family of God. That was his life goal. Like that's, that's what you should be focused on. So now, now let's take a step back and look at the hierarchical system and see is that facilitating the goal, is that helping the goal, or is it hindering it? Is the current model of church that we have? Is that hindering maturity in believers, or is it growing, making more mature believers?
Speaker 2:I don't know how in the world staring at the back of someone's head for for 45 minutes to an hour once a week is going to make me mature? Okay, and the one the last thing I want to get to is talking about that. Remember we talked about the triangle of hierarchy Once you get to the top, there's less and less people think about this. If our goal is is more in line with spiritual parents and spiritual children, which I believe that's the biblical design, the biblical model that we see for discipleship is spiritual families and it mimics the natural family, that is, fathers and mothers in the faith raising up spiritual children. But what happens? What is your goal for that child?
Speaker 1:To become like you and go beyond you. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Just like in your physical family. You want to make children who make children. That's right.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness, it's almost like God designed that.
Speaker 1:They take on your successes, learn from your failures and go farther than you. Does that make sense? Like when I think of the kingdom and I think of the kingdom and I think of what the biblical concept of leadership should be? It should actually be like leaders calling people higher so they can go farther, because that's true legacy, and the kingdom of God is a legacy, right? So even Jesus was as humble enough to say hey, you've seen me do some really cool things, but you're going to go and do greater than even I have done. That is a leader example. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, yeah, it's the the. The role of, of leaders in the body of Christ is facilitation, not mediation. Does that make sense, and so what we have done is we have placed leaders in our life, most of them we don't even know.
Speaker 2:We don't even have relationships which is not a qualified leader Like they may be. Qualified in the sense of their character may be great, but some man standing on a stage that I've never actually had or maybe I've talked to once and shaken his hand. He's not my leader, he's not my lead. How am I, how am I? How am I leading? Or how is he leading me? He doesn't even know me. You know what I'm saying, and that's where we miss it.
Speaker 1:We're like oh, that's my pastor. Go back to the home, home understanding. Like would your children say to a father who's completely checked out and not there? That's my spiritual leader. He would never. Yeah. So why are we doing that with people we've never even met and you're just a number to their congregation.
Speaker 2:Because I think actually it makes people feel safe.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It makes people feel safe, like the whole idea of spiritual covering and organizational covering, denominational covering. It makes people feel comfortable because they feel like there's a layer of protection. They feel like there's an umbrella over them because they affiliate with an organization. It's a delusion. What you need I hope you understand this by now but our heart is not saying that you need to be a rogue Christian that has no community and just runs away from every other Christian. I still don't get it how people hear this and think we're against the church.
Speaker 1:We are praying night and day for the church to wake up and be the church. We're upset because we're seeing the church actually demobilized. We're seeing the church actually demobilized and we have conversations with Christians in churches and when we talk to them they're either spiritually ignorant or they're spiritually starving one of the two. And we're like, hey, did you know there's actually more? Did you know you actually have a purpose other than going to church on Sunday listening to a man give you a message that could have been planned out a year from now or a year ago. You know what I mean. And they're just going through a book that they have written up over the past year 52 sermons for the year. There's more for you to actually do. You don't have to sit here and just take what he's saying and be like, oh, that was good. And just live your life with no purpose, like, honestly, he's held accountable. I mean first, corinthians three says if you teach a disciple with hay, wood and stubble, the 10 best ways to have a good life.
Speaker 1:It's going to burn up when it's tested by fire and if you didn't teach them with precious stones of silver, gold and precious stones, it won't last Like. You will be judged for what you're teaching and putting in people's lives, and you can't disciple someone from a pulpit. You can't do it.
Speaker 2:You can't. You can dispel information.
Speaker 1:You can dispel information, but you cannot disciple someone from a pulpit.
Speaker 2:You can maybe teach them some knowledge. But true discipleship, but knowledge puffs up.
Speaker 1:Practicality brings humility. Yes.
Speaker 1:You go start making disciples. It's the most humbling experience I've ever done in my life, because you start sitting here and you start to pour into someone's life and there might be something you don't know or you've never experienced and you got to sit before the Lord and wait on an answer. Or you start to pour your life into somebody and then they trample every pearl you gave them. Or you sit there and you pour your life into someone and they actually take it and they go farther than you. It keeps you humble, no matter what, no matter what happens, whether they trample, whether they have, take it and run with it, because they're going to do it even better, because God is going to speak to them and teach them through your experiences. And then they're going to go farther than you could ever go. That's our goal, guys.
Speaker 1:But we're seeing people in church. That's what woke us up. We lived overseas. We come back home and the people we love are still doing the same old thing and they haven't seen God move in their lives. And we're over here like, guess what God did yesterday? They're still telling me about their testimony from 20 years ago when they first met Jesus, and I'm like what about yesterday. I have a story Let me tell you about this. We shouldn't stop there. There's so much more to be done and the institutional church keeps you stuck. They just keep you stuck because you're really there to feed the system of the vision of the man behind the pulpit, and it might not even be biblical sometimes. If you check beneath the curtain, kind of like the Wizard of Oz, you know what I'm saying Like oh, there's secrets, you know what I'm saying, pay no attention to the man behind that pulpit.
Speaker 2:Don't do that, don't do that?
Speaker 2:No, that's good, and just ending that thought of that triangle, as you go up the ladder, there's less and less people at the top right. That's right and ladder. There's less and less people at the top Right. And so think about this. For the person at the top, for the senior pastor, the CEO model. So in a business, think about this. In the Bible, Jesus says that our goal is to disciple people into maturity and multiplication, which would mean they would either exceed us or they would replace us. But we, in the business model, you'd never see a CEO be replaced, training one of his subordinates to replace him, unless he planned on going elsewhere.
Speaker 1:Right, that's his job, right.
Speaker 2:So because, think about this we're going to have some more light bulbs going off. Because we've set the church system up like a corporation, we cannot actually do the the, the gifted people in the church can't do their jobs because they'll risk being replaced or not needed and then they're out of a job, they're out of a paycheck, all of that stuff. So because we've made Christianity a career, we've made our callings a career, our gifts a career. We've made our callings a career, our gifts a career. We've actually put ourselves in a position where we are limited, of actually making true disciples without fear of us being replaced and losing everything we've had. That's why the model doesn't work. That's right.
Speaker 1:Right, because if people you should work yourself out of your role. Yes, just like the same with a parent situation. Like you have your children. They become teenagers and then they become adults, and then you become peers with that child, that you no longer are holding their hand leading them through life, but they're actually making decisions for themselves. You work yourself out of position because you've given them your best shot, everything you got. Work yourself out of position because you've given them your best shot everything you got.
Speaker 1:And then the next thing, you know, they take over and they become the father, the grandfather, the thing like that, and then you pass away and you've left a longer legacy, and so I feel like that's kind of what happened with us in North Carolina. It got to the point where we realized, as people that established a healthy community of believers, we were actually like worked ourselves out of a position. Justin's like I don't have anything else new to teach anybody and we're watching them take it on and make it their own and actually like do things with it and multiply and make disciples. People I've never even met before, but I'm hearing all these testimonies about them and I'm like this is the most amazing thing and we're like, okay, there's enough people here.
Speaker 1:They might not all get it, but enough, get it to the point where we can step away and it's just going to continue to grow and like every single day, I hear a testimony from back home that I had nothing to do with and I'm like what is happening, like something good is going on here. So then that's where you, us, as grandma and grandpa, we go on and we make new disciples somewhere else and become fathers and mothers again and then become grandpas and grandmas again and then just repeat that cycle. But that's something that's called a movement. You see what I'm saying. You start with a few people and then those few people make more people and those few people make more people. I haven't discipled 2000 people. I think I've discipled about 25, real deep and solid, and they are reaching the masses right now and I'm not burnt out.
Speaker 2:Even better than you could have.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 1:And I'm not burnt out, I don't feel overwhelmed, I don't feel any pressure because they're doing their thing and now I can move on and find new disciples through evangelism. I'm going to go evangelize, I'm going to go meet people, I'm going to go tell people my story, naturally and organically. I'm not going to go pressure myself and force myself to do it, but Jesus is in me and if you poke me or you touch me or you hug me, he's going to get on you. You know what I'm saying. So I'm going to tell you about Jesus and the Lord's going to bring me new circle. And all of a sudden, I've just bared 30, 60, 100-fold, because I've intimately discipled 50 people. Jesus didn't do anything beyond the 12, but it's reached a million plus.
Speaker 1:Why aren't we doing that? Why are we trying to disciple 13,000 people at one time from a pulpit? That's what's happened, though we think it's got to be bigger, better, more. So we go from oh, I've discipled two or three, that's not enough, I need more people. So then we start stacking chairs, just dispelling information. But information is not discipleship. Discipleship is doing true, intimate life with someone. So you just created a church in your house or in a building or however you would like it to be an institutional church in that setting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so back to the original thing that we talked about is you can do those things. You can set up a hierarchy, you can set up programs, you can set up structures. You can do all of those things, no matter what the four walls look like of the place that you're meeting in.
Speaker 2:It'd be kind of awkward to drag a pulpit into a coffee shop, but you could do that if you wanted to. Right, and so organic and simple is more of a setting of hey, this is, uh, uh, we are gathering around the presence of Christ and we are truly going to let him lead. People ask all the time. They're like who leads your meetings? And you say the Holy spirit.
Speaker 1:And they're like no, no, no, no. The funny thing is, they're like yeah, yeah, yeah, we know that, but who leads your meetings?
Speaker 2:And I'm like, I'm like, no, you don't know that. Because, yeah, and it's because they understand the position of leadership, like in their heads, they're thinking that's impossible. It is impossible to have a church gathering where no human being actually leads. And it's like, well, there can be facilitators present, but they're not doing what you think they're doing. They're not standing up and like driving the meeting by giving all of the content, making sure everything happens right. But the thing is is there's an interesting scripture where Jesus and Jesus didn't have to do this because he's the son of God, he's the creator right, so he's really the only right, the person that has the only right to say you are truly my subordinate, like I am your master. And what's interesting is when he hit an area of what's the word for it, when he hit a level of discipleship with his own apostles, with his disciples, they reached a point where he turned to them and said I no longer call you servant, I call you friends.
Speaker 1:That's one of my favorite verses. I have a lot, but that's one of them, and he says because a servant doesn't know what his master is doing.
Speaker 2:But you know what I'm doing. Why did he make that shift there? Right? Why do we, when we raise our kids, reach a certain point where I look at my son and I'm like no longer?
Speaker 1:are you?
Speaker 2:a child. You're a man, right. Our relationship shifts and it changes. If our identity is in my role as a, as a father, in the sense of I have to control my children, then I'll lose my identity. You'll lose your identity as a mother when your kids move out of the house. Right, that's right. We cannot put our identities in those positions. So now we've built a system that is working fully against us in the church to not allow the most fruitful situation to happen, and so-.
Speaker 1:Because we have Roman minds. We have to be at the top of the food chain, whether it's in your job, your career, your ministry, your whatever.
Speaker 2:Again, it's because we've lost sight of the goal. That's right. What is the goal? Paul says the goal is maturity. The goal for your disciples, for your congregation is maturity.
Speaker 1:Present you as mature. If you're not making mature disciples for your conversation congregation, my goal is to present you as mature. If you do, if you're not making mature disciples, you have failed your mission and you'll be judged for that. Yeah. That's where I walk, in the fear of the Lord.
Speaker 2:But I love what you said and I want people to know this that maybe sitting there they're having this revelation they're just getting started on this walk or they've been doing it for a little year, you know a couple of years or something like that, and they're, they're overwhelmed because they think, because of their out of that institutional setting um, and they've only maybe made one or two disciples, that they're doing it wrong or they're falling behind or anything like that, but it's not. It's not forget.
Speaker 2:Lose the number mindset and just focus on the people the Lord has put in your path and be very, very faithful and diligent, and intentional with them Because your path, and be very, very faithful and diligent and intentional with them Because, going back to something you said you were like people, they're about numbers, right, but interestingly enough, I don't think in the long run they'll have more numbers. I don't think the megachurch pastors will have more numbers than the people that discipled the 10, 20 people over their whole lifetime, but really, really deep.
Speaker 1:The megachurch pastor has no numbers. I'm sorry. Yeah. Unless he's behind closed doors, closely discipling.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Some folks. You preaching a message to them is not discipleship. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Again, the Bible differentiates this. He says there are some who will build with precious stones 1 Corinthians 3, and gold and silver, and some will build with hay, hay, wood and stubble. If you're just projecting information and your opinion to 1,300 people, or 1,500 people, or 25,000 people, that is the hay, wood and stubble 25,000 people. That is the hay wooden stubble. It can even be biblical truths, but that is not discipleship. In that passage of scripture, 1 Corinthians 3, it's talking about someone building a building. How can someone build a?
Speaker 1:building without ever picking up a hammer or a nail and Right and putting the hammer to the nail.
Speaker 2:They just talk about it in theory.
Speaker 1:You just talk about it in theory. Your fruit is hay, wood and stubble. Let's continue on that passage. That passage says in the end, those who build with those materials, their building will get burnt up while the other building passes through and pass the test of fire and you will escape it. Hell by the skin of your teeth. Let the fear of the Lord rest upon you when you read 1 Corinthians 3. It'll wreck you.
Speaker 1:So megachurch pastors. It's a facade and unfortunately that facade makes them feel good about themselves, but they're actually in deception. And I say this with so much love. I do not want any pastor who is supposedly given up their whole lives to do the ministry of Jesus miss it because they missed the ministry of Jesus. They read in what their seminary taught them or what their Bible college taught them to do, and they never truly made a disciple, cast out a single demon. And one thing I want to say too is you cannot disciple demonized. You can't disciple demons. So if your congregation is full of demons, you're not going to see a lot of fruit. You got to get the demons out so you can actually get good disciples. So anyways, that's a whole nother topic.
Speaker 2:I don't know if I should have said that that's a whole nother podcast talking about you know, knowledge alone will not set you free.
Speaker 1:No, it doesn't set you free, Like you're just puffing people up and you're giving them a false assurance that they're true disciples of Jesus, because they can regurgitate a lot and they have a lot of Christianese, but they're not reproducing. If the people in your congregation are not making disciples of their own, you have failed, as a minister of the gospel.
Speaker 2:I think this will lead into the next, the seven kind of key traits I want to talk about, because the very first one, I think, is hitting right on that. So a lot of people ask well then, what does it look like? What is a biblical, healthy Um? You know, it's interesting because I'm like I'm not gonna structure it for you, I'm not going to lay it out. It looks exactly like this. You know what I'm saying. We already talked about what discipleship is what Jesus wants you to do. Get together, love each other, serve each other, preach the gospel, read scripture, pray together and make disciples, present them mature before Christ. That's it.
Speaker 2:Do that for the rest of your life. There's plenty of work to do. There's plenty of people that need to be discipled. There's plenty of people sitting in the church pews that aren't getting discipled. That's right, right. They're listening to sermons at church. They're going home, they're listening at sermons during the week. It's like, it's almost like we're taking a medication that doesn't work, but we're like maybe I need to just double the dose.
Speaker 1:It's called fast food. Yeah, that's what it is. Yeah, you're not eating from the outside of the grocery store where you got your produce on the outside of the aisles. You're eating from the inside, where it's all processed food.
Speaker 2:It's the cruise ship buffet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're taking someone's processed information. They're regurgitating it, feeding back to you. You're only getting 10% of your nutrition. I just had that vision. You know how health gurus will tell you to only buy from the outside of the aisles of the grocery store and anything in the center aisles are processed Church people are in the center of the aisles eating processed food, not getting any revelation or nutrition of their own.
Speaker 2:That's what Jesus told his disciples. I got food.
Speaker 1:you don't even know about you eating that processed stuff About. But they figured it out. Once. Jesus went away, they started eating on that food. Let me tell you. Yeah. They got some red peppers in there.
Speaker 2:And they got some celery. You need to put down a little Debbie and get a little Holy spirit.
Speaker 1:Y'all, this is up my alley. I love talking about healthy eating, but anyways, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all right, so I'm going to. I'm going to talk about seven things you can comment on and feel free to. So what does a healthy fellowship look like? Relational over rigid? So what made me think of this is that there was a lot of superficial relationships I had in the church congregation, cause the majority of them are large. It's a lot of people relationships I had in the church congregation because the majority of them are large. It's a lot of people. You feel like you have to have a lot of Christian relationships and you end up having none.
Speaker 1:Right. None that are authentic because it's just too many relationships.
Speaker 2:So when you start to meet in a more organic setting, you can actually begin to fully commit yourself and do life in relation. True relationships of trust are forged. That's right, right. They're not just created out of thin air. So the closest people to you are because you've been through the hardest struggles with them. Ain't that the truth, right? And so how beautiful when a disciple and another disciple has a relationship that's forged through hardship and overcoming. That's what a true iron sharpens iron relationship in Christ looks like. You're not. Some people may fight for that and get that in the institutional setting, but the least I'll say is it's not. It's, the setting is not for that. The environment is not facilitating that. It might happen in spite of it, but not because of it. Number two participation over passivity. Spite of it, but not because of it. Number two participation over passivity. What does a healthy fellowship looks like? First Corinthians, where it says when you gather everybody participates.
Speaker 2:This is one thing that I never understood. We say, well, we've got small groups for that or this for that, and we do this in our Sunday service. It says when you gather, everybody have a teaching, a revelation, a tongue an interpretation a song. It's talking about mutual participation. We have thrown that out the door. 10% participate, 90% sit passively. So participation over passivity.
Speaker 1:And again you have to look at what the Bible says to bring to the table. It doesn't say bring a door holder, bring a coffee barista, bring a this, bring a that. It says bring a song, a teaching a word, a gift of encouragement anything but not what we're. But I serve at the church. I open the door, which is so nice. I hope you open the door for the lady at Harris Teeter too.
Speaker 2:Some of them. Don't you know that They'd be stealing parking spots and leaving their car out in the middle of it?
Speaker 1:Or praying for a front row parking spot. Parking by the back. Let Grandma have the front row parking spot. I've never heard from that. But anyways, those are not what we're bringing to the table. We're bringing gifts of the spirit. We're bringing functions of the body, functions of the spirit. Please serve your little hearts out. That may look like opening a door, but what does it say we bring to the table is what I want to know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Number three discipleship over duty, meaning that we exemplify what discipleship looks like for people. We don't just speak about it in theory and then tell them to serve by doing the task that you just mentioned. Right, that's not discipleship, that's right. Discipleship is teaching people to obey Christ, not teaching people. Like when we read teaching, we hear teaching with words education. No, show them, people don't know they don't. With words education. No, show them, people don't know you don't go into your regular job, and or some might, but it would be pretty jacked up if your job just said, hey, this is what you do, and then they just sent you on your way Right.
Speaker 2:They never actually gave you a trainer. Right. Like we need to be trainers in the church.
Speaker 1:So why does the business world actually get that part? They have where you. You bring someone in and you have three weeks of training. They pay you a whole lot to go to these trainings so that you can actually do the job. Well, but the church doesn't do that. Why is that?
Speaker 2:I like to say the church is a business model, not a good business model.
Speaker 1:No, because even the business model gets that, even the entrepreneurial world, the secular world gets. There has to be training, hands-on training, but the Christian world we just teach in theory. Mm-hmm. Hmm, scary.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean that goes back to the Roman mindset and philosophy, which is that information is King.
Speaker 1:That's right. Think a lot, understand a lot, but don't do anything.
Speaker 2:Pump ourselves. We're in the information age, that's right, and we're less we're fat and less productive as possible.
Speaker 3:You know what I'm saying Least productive possible We've got the same thing with fast food.
Speaker 2:It's like we've got all this fast food in no time.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:And it's just leaving us overweight and sick. Number four flexibility over formality, so programs. We don't allow programs to determine what we do. We allow the spirit to tell us what to do. What does that look like? That might look like sitting until the spirit says do something. That's right. People are scared of that. Do you know what would happen if people went into the Sunday service and the pastor got on the stage and was like hey, we're, you know what? We're not going to do anything until the spirit till we feel like the spirit has led us to.
Speaker 1:I've seen that happen once in a church service. Yeah. A pastor invited us to come and he got up to preach and he looked over and he said I'm not supposed to speak, we're going to do something different today. He got fired. Yeah, that worked out well. That worked out great, because there wasn't room for the spirit to move.
Speaker 2:Which also it kind of is in tandem with number five spirit led over structured and dead. So no over dependence, or really any dependence on programs, right.
Speaker 1:So we don't have to depend on exactly.
Speaker 2:It's uncomfortable to walk into a meeting and not have all your ducks in a row When's?
Speaker 1:the last time you prepared for a meeting, babe. I mean, there's there's preparation in things in certain ways, but not preparation like that, Not preparation where we, you don't sit down at a desk for 40 hours a week preparing a sermon for Sunday.
Speaker 2:Oh, I've got so many, so much time for that, so what does?
Speaker 1:it look like to prepare your heart, then, for a meeting. It looks like getting before God, sitting with the Holy Spirit. It looks like seeking God.
Speaker 2:It looks like seeking God. It looks like praying, it looks like reading the scriptures and allowing the Lord to bring you revelation, to highlight things in your life, to call you to obedience, to call you to repentance in areas right. He, just he shows you. We did this a few episodes ago. We were getting ready to talk on something and he changed it.
Speaker 1:I was like I don't think there's much of a start on it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you. Just, we don't always know 100%, but we try to go where we feel led and then if we feel like we're hitting a wall, then we kind of back up and ask why is this something we need to press through, or is this something that the Lord is redirecting us on? That's what it looks like to follow the Spirit practically in those things.
Speaker 1:Number six mission over maintenance.
Speaker 2:That's so good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, maintenance, that's so good, yeah, so the majority of the resources in the church go to maintaining the machine. Real quick. Going back to the last one, you just said what was the last step?
Speaker 2:you just said Spirit led over structured and dead.
Speaker 1:I had this picture of like a mom, and like I'm a mom of four, I don't go to bed at night like preparing sermons for my children the next day. I don't go to bed at night like practicing, like the fastest folding skills, you know, or the fastest this or that, but what I do go and do is I make sure I get enough sleep. I make sure that I'm eating healthy so I have energy for my children. I make sure that my heart is pure before the Lord so that when they do something real stupid and I want to be like I don't scream. I actually teach them. I don't freak out on them.
Speaker 1:You know I prepare myself in that way, but I don't study being a mom. I just set myself up for success. So that's what the body of Christ should be doing. What's going to make you the most spiritually healthy Christian, that you can be Putting godly disciplines in your life, that the scripture talks about, that Jesus taught us and lived by example. And then you're going to get up the next day and anything that comes your way whether it comes from the devil, it comes from the Lord or it's just something natural in the flesh that takes place you're prepared, no matter what. That's what it looks like to prepare yourself to come and meet with the body of Christ, a group of believers just making sure that you're doing your part. It's seeking the Lord, and then everything just flows because everybody in that room is doing the same thing. That's right, yeah, and there's unity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure it made me think of, I think, on YouTube. That's why conversations like this I believe this podcast is going to continue to grow, because it's real and people know that we're speaking out of experience and conviction, we're not speaking out of just preparation of knowledge that we've learned, and so I think people are sick of people just regurgitating information. It's almost like they're and I almost got pulled into it too a couple years ago almost like they're, and I almost got pulled into it too a couple of years ago. That's either like reactionary content to where we just make videos reacting to other people's information, or we um, or we study, study, study something for the week and then we make a video and we're just regurgitating what we just learned three minutes ago.
Speaker 2:And people want authentic, like they want to know, especially in the church, that this is tried, tested and true that it lines up with scripture, and it also is coming from the mouth of people that have actually, you know, seen it work in their life that's all we're talking about.
Speaker 1:That's why some of this stuff can sound repetitive is because we're going to talk about what we've seen. Like I have never built a mega church. I'm not that cool, I'm not that smart, I don't have that much money to do that. I've never built even a small church, but I have made disciples that have reproduced four times beyond themselves.
Speaker 2:Yeah, multi-generational.
Speaker 1:They are multi-generational disciple makers. I've had disciples that I've personally discipled, who've made a disciple, who has then personally discipled someone and then has personally discipled someone four generations down. Yep. That is the true tell of a disciple maker.
Speaker 2:Next time you're looking for someone to disciple, you ask them that question have you ever made a disciple? Who made a disciple? Who made a disciple?
Speaker 1:That's the coolest thing ever. It is, it's so cool. It is Sorry.
Speaker 2:So yeah, so we talked about mission over maintenance, and that's a huge revelation for people. We lose the focus of our mission when we're caught up in the maintenance of the institution. Again, that can happen in a house, church, right that's right.
Speaker 2:You can get caught up with maintaining what you have, but every time you shift your focus to maintaining what you have, guess what stops the mission? Growth, the mission and finally, christ over custom. And I'll just end this with a verse Mark 7, 13. You nullify the word of God by your traditions, so you can limit the Spirit's activity by exalting your customs over Christ.
Speaker 1:Lord, we repent Church. That's all you got to do is repent, Just humble yourselves and be like Lord. We repent Church. That's all you gotta do is repent, Just humble yourselves and be like, wow, we missed it and it wasn't really my fault. I was just told to do this. But I repent and I'm gonna do it different, Just like your parents. All of us are trying to do better than our parents did for us. Just do better, Just repent and start over, and that's okay.
Speaker 2:And God will redeem the time that's lost. Oh yeah, we made so many mistakes, oh, my god, and you're gonna make mistakes. You're gonna make mistakes on this journey. We had to learn this as we went. But it's just like parenting, that's right, like spiritual parenting is is just like actual parenting, where you're learning a lot of things by the spirit, by trial and error, um, but you're, you're doing your best to obey the Lord by the grace of the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1:But I heard somebody say the other day if you're not making mistakes, you're not trying. Yeah. Just don't be afraid to make mistakes. I think that's the one thing that I would say that we're really good at.
Speaker 2:Making mistakes. Some of you are probably like Amen, making mistakes. Some of you are probably like Amen.
Speaker 1:We're really good at making mistakes, but we don't let the fear of making mistakes stop us.
Speaker 2:Oh sure.
Speaker 1:You see what I'm saying Like, and we do learn from our mistakes. Sometimes we have to make them twice, that's okay, but we learn from them and we keep and then we try to say, okay, how can we do it better the next time. You know, but I think so many people are afraid to make mistakes and it's like, you'll never learn. You'll never make an impact on anything If you're not willing to just make a few mistakes along the way, because if you make mistakes and learn from them, you're just going to get better. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So just be okay with that, be okay with it being a little messy, like I'm okay with that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's so good, so hopefully this episode was practical for you and really helpful.
Speaker 1:Please continue to comment in the comment section on our YouTube videos and let us know if there's anything within your journey, unless you're going to say y'all must be really hurt by the institutional church. I'm not hurt.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, let us know if there's any hangups you're having along your journey. Listen, we'll try to help out the best we can. I don't know where this is going. You know we we want to make ourselves available, like you got to recognize too, we are, uh, we're doing this because we felt led of the Lord to do it. I think sometimes people will, and don't let this stop you from emailing us or messaging us. We've actually received, since we started this podcast, quite a few emails and messages of people asking for help or that they want to actually fly down or have us train them and stuff like that, and we'll do that to the best of our ability. We also have we still help with a community back home. We have a community here and we have a business and we have four children and you know all of those things, so we're trying to We'll never neglect our children for the ministry.
Speaker 2:That's right, because they're our first priority, yeah, so give us some grace as well too, but we want to help most of all by listening to your guys' comments and your emails and stuff like that and hopefully start hitting all of the things that we have experience on in these podcasts and just be an encouragement along the way. Might there be a time where our schedules free up more to where we can travel and train and stuff like that. Maybe down the road, hopefully, we can do that, um, but at this point, thank you for your grace. Uh, thank you for tuning into this episode and sticking with us, and I'm excited for where this journey is going to go. This is not, I don't see, any any near end insight with this. There's so much to talk about and so much to go through, but again, we want to be practical.