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
Undeniable Proof The American Church Model Is Doomed To Fail | #reChurch Ep. 12
The current mainstream church model in america makes it impossible to fulfill the great commission. In this episode we will proof that with undeniable evidence and talk about the way forward if we want to reach the world.
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What happens is you empower disciples and encourage multiplication. You've lowered the barrier of what it takes to actually multiply churches and make disciples. It's like it was in the Bible, it's simple.
Speaker 2:You've been in the church for more than 10 years and you've never made a disciple, there's a problem. So ask yourself have you ever reproduced a disciple? If your whole purpose of once you're born again yes, to be rescued from your sin and to be in relationship with God, all those things, that's beautiful, Okay. So now you have that. But now that you are in that place, if you've never reproduced, what are you here for?
Speaker 1:But solid food is for the mature who, because of practice, have their senses trained to discern good from evil. So he tells us the progression, he tells us the goal and he tells us the progression. He tells us the goal and he tells us how to tell whether you're infant or you're mature, it's not like saying, oh, you're an infant, so there's something wrong with you.
Speaker 1:Everybody goes through infancy. The problem is when you have Christians that are in infancy for 30 years. Welcome to the ReChurch Podcast. If you're tired of business as usual, christianity, faith, all that jazz, and you want to live just like Jesus, you found yourself in the right place. I'm your host, justin Nope, and I'm here with my lovely wife, brooke. Hello, hello. How are you doing today?
Speaker 2:Good.
Speaker 1:Are you sure Uh-huh Brooke's not feeling well today?
Speaker 2:Uh-huh.
Speaker 1:But she's pushing through.
Speaker 2:Uh-huh, I'm going to make it.
Speaker 1:She's a trooper, she's the mom, the mother of all mothers.
Speaker 2:Mother, that's an inside joke.
Speaker 1:It's a funny inside joke too, but she is a pretty amazing mom. But today we're going to today's going to be if you watched last week's episode, it's going to be a little bit of a spinoff of that. There's some things that I have been thinking about when it comes to church multiplication, church planting in relation to the great commission that I'd like to talk to you about today, and that is the question of. I'm going to make a statement actually not a question, a statement. It's a pretty crazy one, but I think our current church model, our current institutional model of the way that we make disciples, of the way that we do church, if you will, it makes it impossible to fulfill the great commission.
Speaker 1:That is a bold statement, and in a minute I'm going to prove that to you. Number one, let's look at the Great Commission before we break that down and see what it says. And then I have a question about it. So Matthew 28, 19, which is, you know, it doesn't say it in the Scripture, but we title it as the Great Commission. It says but we title it as the Great Commission, it says the eleven disciples, starting in verse 16,.
Speaker 1:But the eleven disciples proceeded to Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus had designated. When they saw him, they worshipped him, but some were doubtful. And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you and, lo, I am with you, even to the end of the age. Now a lot of people know that scripture, They've heard that scripture. They would say they believe that scripture. When Jesus gave us that commission to go baptize and disciple all nations, that he thought or he meant for us to actually fulfill that.
Speaker 2:I do think he did.
Speaker 1:I do too. But I would doubt, if you had conversations with people, that all Christians believe that it's possible Totally, which is an interesting thought. He says I have all authority. And then he says I'm with you. And then he gives them a command, and yet we're sitting here thinking it's not possible. Well, I do think it's possible, but I'm going to get, we're going to get really, really practical in a minute. Since you believe, and I believe, that the great commission is supposed to be fulfilled, I'm going to hit you with a few statistics that make me think that our current model, the way we do church, doesn't allow for us to fulfill that great commission. And here's the, here's the deal. If I can convince you that our current model can't fulfill the great commission, do you think there is that's a viable reason to abandon the current model?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I would say so.
Speaker 2:I think that is the reason you should.
Speaker 1:All right, I'm just trying, I'm just saying. I'm just saying, if you're convinced, by the end of this episode you might have a reason to abandon our current model. Okay, number one reason they did a poll. I pulled this out of a book called small is big, formerly known as the rabbit and the elephant, and, uh, the statistic which, interestingly, it's an older statistic, but I actually believe it's a declining statistic.
Speaker 1:So, it's probably worse now than it was a few years ago when it was taken Was current. When I say current church model, I mean the Sunday service go to a building at this time, listen to a sermon. That's what I mean when I say current church model. If you've watched this podcast up until now, you know what I mean. And that's what I mean when I say current church model. If you've watched this podcast up until now, you know what I mean. They asked and they pulled people from the current society, not non-Christians, christians, whatever, just people and they came up with this number. That style of church, that way of gathering, appeals to 30% of the population in America. Very interesting, you know. What makes it really interesting Is that our goal is to reach 100% of the population and we're using a model that reaches 30% of the population maximum.
Speaker 2:Right, that's a very small percentage.
Speaker 1:What about the other 70%? Yeah, Right Now, if it was something like 80, 20 or something like that, then we could be like well, we'll do this mainly and then we'll find out a way to reach those other 20 people. But I feel like what we're doing is trying to reach those 30, 30% of people and then trying to convert those 70% of people into our model. That's right which I think is not a good way to do it. Okay Now, this statistic is just from a couple years ago.
Speaker 1:The percentage of the population of Americans that attend church on a weekly basis. Can you guess? Americans total percentage of Americans? And just so you know, there's 334 million Americans.
Speaker 2:So you're asking me for the percentage.
Speaker 1:What's the percentage of of those 334 million people that attend church on a weekly basis? A church service 22% 20%. That's pretty good.
Speaker 2:That was great.
Speaker 1:What that tells us is a number one that percentage is down from whatever 50, 20, 10 years ago, and it's so. It's so we're on a decline is down from whatever 10 years ago, and so we're on a decline. So not only are we on a decline of people that are attending church services, we're on a decline on the amount of people that this appeals to. 31% of the population has never attended a church service ever at this age. That's a wild. And so this is where I begin to think things through, because the way my mind works some of you may think like this, some of you may not is if I have, number one, a command from Jesus. Number two an expectation that it will be fulfilled. Number three I have a model that I'm using to fulfill that command. Wouldn't it be logical for me to think if it's, if it's possible to fulfill that command?
Speaker 1:yeah right, okay, so this is the way my brain thinks. How do I, how do I figure out if that's possible? Well, I figure there's 334 million people, right? Our current model requires us to have square footage of buildings to fit those 334 people in, 334 million people in each Sunday. So I made some calculations.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:So, in order to have people seated, in order to seat 334 million people, comfortably seat them not even that doesn't include stages and all that stuff, that doesn't include other rooms and gymnasiums this is just purely to find enough people to comfortably sit side by side. We would need 6.68 billion square feet of church buildings.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Now, I don't think that's impossible. Do you know what I think is more impossible? Getting 334 million Christians to agree enough to sit next to each other in the same building.
Speaker 2:That's good.
Speaker 1:Right. So now that we have these separations of denominations, belief systems, all of those stuff, you can imagine that those that 6 billion square feet now turns into 18 billion square feet, because not that many Christians can actually agree for long enough to sit together in a Sunday service. Okay, so now we're talking about having to somehow build and pay for almost 20 billion square feet of buildings and maintain those buildings. Do you see where I'm going with this? Like, if we want to actually lead every person, that's just America.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:That's just America, that's not the world, like. I'm trying to give you this on a small scale so you can think about it when you get to 7 billion people, right, all right, how are we going to fit 7 billion people? Even if half the world was evangelized, how are we going to fit 3.5 billion people in church buildings every Sunday? Okay, and so check this statistic out as of 2018,. Do you know what the total square footage of current homes already built is?
Speaker 2:Now remember we need 6 billion, maybe 18 billion Square footage.
Speaker 1:Take a wild guess of how much square footage in America of homes there currently is already existing.
Speaker 2:I'm going to say Not buildings, homes, 20 billion square feet 256 billion square feet, that was all Okay, that's wild, that's wild.
Speaker 1:So we have enough room technically for like 10 times the population already existing. That's wild, hello. Okay, so this is how my brain starts to work and the best thing and I've heard it said before, but this is the best way that I can correlate it to that's the current model that we're going forward, and in a minute I'm going to tell you 10 reasons why that doesn't work, and then I'm going to give you 10 reasons for the correct model. And here's what I think the correct model is. You have, like a the traditional church system verse, more of an organic model and style of church, more like Jesus exemplified in the first century.
Speaker 1:And the first century Christians did the way that they multiplied, the way that they met in existing homes. It's so logical. It's like they're thinking these spaces are already here, we're already paying for them, we already have them. Why not utilize those? No, let's go pay for more buildings, right, and then leave our home and go. It just makes no sense. But anyway, the, the, the, the model is hotel versus Airbnb, and so it would be like.
Speaker 1:It's like I started to look at and study just a little bit about, like the reason that Airbnbs were started in the first place, and it was uh, lots of different reasons, but really the first, the very first and primary reason was innovation. They were thinking about wasted space. So, instead of building and it's so funny because it's so lines up with the current situation that we're having all of this space in our homes already, and yet people are looking for places to stay when they go and travel into a certain city we could either take out a block and build another giant hotel in place of whatever was there before Maybe it's trees, maybe it's something like this and then not use the existing space, and so it's very wasteful, is what it is. And so they wanted to innovate. And then, all of a sudden, you started to see that number one.
Speaker 1:Not only was it very innovating and using stuff that was wasted space that was wasted, it was using the resources that were already there. It was also way less expensive to run. You don't have to have, you know, all of these employees. It just, it just makes sense, or whatever. And so I'm going to go through 10, 10, you know different reasons on why I feel like this is the, this is the model moving forward, because now it's very easy to see if you can understand the difference in how the great commission gets fulfilled.
Speaker 1:You have a much lower barrier of entry of how you can actually see that take place and make that happen, because the things are already existing, so the people can just start meeting in the home.
Speaker 2:It's already there.
Speaker 1:You don't have to build anything, you don't have to raise money for anything. It's already there and boom. So now you have a lower barrier of multiplication. Now you can actually fulfill the great commission within one generation.
Speaker 1:That's right, you know, instead of having to figure out how to come up with and maintain all these resources. So, number one, the first reason that I think we should move towards this approach is it's a it's. It takes more biblical precedence, and people could argue this all they want, but go ahead and look in the book of Acts and tell me where they met.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And the letters were written to households such and such.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a lot of people argue they're like, well they would, they would have met in buildings if they had the ability to. Or it was because of persecutions, and this is interesting, I've heard this argument before. So they met in homes because of persecution? Right, that's what people say. They didn't meet in buildings because then you would be able to find the buildings and they would be persecuted and stuff like that. But do you remember in Acts, chapter eight, when Paul goes out to look for the Christians, where does he go?
Speaker 2:From house to house they go into your address.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it doesn't make it any harder just because you've got a church sign Resource efficiency. So it basically eliminates the need for expensive church buildings and then those resources that you were going to put into those buildings and the electric bills and all that stuff can actually go towards the mission Right. So you can fund actually whatever you need to, whether that's money for the poor, to take care of the people, to take care of other believers needs or to minister to people in your community. You have way bigger resources for outreach and for needs in the community or to do whatever God is calling you to do, to pour that into Accessibility and reach. So it's very easy to bring the church into any community.
Speaker 1:Because, in all honesty, if you want to go to a place to where there's no real estate, then you have to figure out a way to get those people to come out of that area and travel to you. So say, you're in a very busy city and you want to bring that whole city to Christ and there's a million and a half people in that city and there's no real estate or very little real estate, those buildings might be maxed out. They can only hold this many people. Then in reality, if there was a revival that took place. You couldn't actually have a place for all those people to meet and ultimately, do you know what ended up having you'd have ended up having to do if you let all those people to Christ? You'd have to use their homes.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:You have no other choice. It's like we're heading in this direction anyway, if we actually are successful in what we're doing. Uh, scalable and flexible. So it's flexible in the sense of that it it can grow organically, naturally, and it can expand into other homes, right? You don't have to have all this planning and raising a building fund or whatever to start a new campus, and you remember being involved in churches that had new building projects, expansions, new campuses. The process is like a long, grueling process to figure that out, as opposed to saying, man, we got too many people. Hey, john, can we start meeting at your house? Boom, next week, you're in the other house.
Speaker 1:It's like it's wild to me. Here's a big one Appeal. You go from 30% appeal of the population to what I would say is 100% appeal, because who do you know that is against sitting at a dinner table in their own house or someone else's house.
Speaker 2:Right, it's a way more different. You're already there.
Speaker 1:It's a 100% appeal rate.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So you now have changed from appealing to 30, from 30% of the population to 100% of the population. Are you convinced? Yet? Because I got more? Less cost. Using homes avoids the environmental cost of new construction. So you're, you're, you're being less wasteful and more resourceful with what, what you have? Well, think about it.
Speaker 2:Some of these mega church buildings are, you know, tens of thousands of dollars, tens of hundreds of thousands of dollars, I guess maybe even millions of dollars. Um, and you can take that money and actually put it into the kingdom, back into the body of Christ, that where our true needs are needing to be had inside your own church, you know? Um, and things like that. So it is extremely wasteful when you start to look at the calculations of the finances behind mega churches.
Speaker 1:And some people might make the argument where, like it's God, he owns everything. So if he wants to be extravagant and stuff like that, he can be. But I would argue that having resources doesn't mean that it's smart to be wasteful with them.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean I look at Solomon's temple right, the most elaborate building to ever have been built, covered in gold and all of those things. And God told him to build it that way, you know. But then when Jesus came, he actually said this temple will be torn down and you are now the living temple of God. My spirit will no longer be behind the veil, but it will be in you, and we are very valuable, bought at a high cost. So it's like I look, I look at it like we can't. We can't say it's about how big it is or God owns things. It's like no, what does God do? Like what is Jesus doing, what did he do? And it has to look at it that way. We can't look at at at it any other way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, no, it just aligns so much more with the mission of the church. So what happens is you empower disciples and encourage multiplication. That's right. Right, because you've lowered the barrier of what it takes to actually multiply churches and make disciples. That's right. It's like it was in the Bible. It's simple. Okay, and I overheard a conversation you were having on the phone I think it was earlier, um with erica and she was talking about.
Speaker 1:I don't think she'd mind me sharing this, but she was talking about like can we not just just like make disciples?
Speaker 2:do you know what I'm saying? Like?
Speaker 1:meet with people and make disciples and sometimes in in, she said I overheard, that's all I heard and I overheard that and I'm like amen. It is so flipping complicated, Like just ministries and organizations and programs and board meetings and protocols and bylaws and I'm like what the heck are we doing?
Speaker 1:Like Jesus just said, go make disciples, go build relationships, go teach people how to obey Jesus on a practical level. Like, sit down, have conversations with people, love people, serve people. It's such a natural, organic thing to do and we systematize it and turn it into a program and then now we go back into just checking off a box of what we have to do and, honestly, the maturity of the church is so overwhelmed with the difficulty of it that they they either don't think it's possible for them or they don't, uh, they just don't want to do it. Well, I think, going back to the I think maybe you use the illustration on one of the podcasts of the't- want to do it.
Speaker 2:Well, I think. Going back to the, I think maybe you use the illustration on one of the podcasts of the elephant to the rabbit situation like using taking an elephant. It takes how many months to incubate an elephant. Isn't it like 22 months or something like that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're like pregnant for like 22 forever.
Speaker 2:And then um, and, and then you get this one massive elephant, you know, and it's a huge consuming thing. Once it's out, it takes a lot to sustain and that mom can only carry one elephant, you know. But then you look at something that's much more smaller and much more simple and it can reproduce quicker, more rapidly. It actually can go anywhere. Like you have to think about this at large Mega church does not translate outside of the West it doesn't. So why are we trying to hold on to a method that's not even translatable outside of our Western world mindset? So we have to question that too. And again, I'm not coming from talking theology here, I've lived in third world countries. It does not translate at all, at all it doesn't translate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've seen people try to do it. It corrupts the people. I mean, you could make the argument there are places I'd probably say those aren't third world countries, but there are places where they utilize this model. But you see the exact same thing happen in the unhealthy church, mega churches in America. What happens? One leader gets exalted, everybody there becomes this one charismatic person that the whole system is built around, the whole organization is built around and people come just to hear from and be ministered to by the man of God. That's right, and all of this stuff. And still it goes back to what we talk about on every episode. If the goal, according to Paul, according to Jesus' maturity right Becoming more Christ-like, then we have to look at these things that we're doing and asks ourselves the question is this the best thing to get the fruit and the result that Jesus is calling us?
Speaker 2:to.
Speaker 1:Right John 15.
Speaker 2:Jesus expects us to get fruit. I think there's a reason why Jesus came the way he came to the earth simple and lowly. He did not exalt himself and he was God in the flesh. Anybody said I came to draw all men to myself. But it looks like he would have failed actually, because that didn't actually happen. But what did he choose to do? He did draw all men to himself through the bride. He's drawing people to himself through the body of Christ right now, not one man, one Persis, one Moses, one this. He kind of got rid of all that. Don't we see that in the New Testament there was never again a Moses resurrected because Jesus came, no more a mediator, because of christ you make a good point because there are so many people that point to those things like moses.
Speaker 1:Um, there are even whole denominations that would appoint to those, those people, as the model for church leadership. And do you know what they forget? Moses was a type of jesus that's right, he was. He was pointing to christ, he was a prophetic picture pointing to christ, not pointing to a future senior pastor.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:And so that's where we mix up, and we get mixed up and we start putting people in the position of Christ, and then that's why these models don't work. That's right, they become broken. But, like I said, and those kind of models produce codependent Christians.
Speaker 2:Sure, think about you know, and it may be in your own family. It may be in a family you've observed about that codependent child or even codependent parent how toxic that relationship is. It's not healthy and it actually reproduces toxicity in other people's relationships and childhood relationships, things like that, or even their own children. And I look at the model that we're in in the church and that's what we're developing. We're developing codependent, toxic Christians that cannot stand on their own two feet outside of the programs and the pastor and the situation, and that's not what Christ has called us. To multiply, he's literally. When I read the letters that Paul's written, he's like I beat my body into submission Stay sober, stay alert, have an answer for everything. And I'm looking around at the body of.
Speaker 2:Christ right now. And you're like, what's the Great Commission? They're like, uh, I've had these conversations a hundred times across coffee tables Like, hey, what's the Great Commission? Do you know it? They're like, uh, and I'm like, where's it at in the Bible? I don't even know what you're talking about. And some of these people have been in church longer than I have, are born again, born again longer than I have. And I'm like why am I sitting here having these conversations with people? And then what happened in my heart was it became broken. My heart became broken because I realized we cannot fulfill a mission. Broken because I realized we cannot fulfill a mission, the.
Speaker 2:Great Commission if we don't even know what it is, but we do have pastors every Sunday talking about the 10 ways to have the best marriage. I'm like, if you're fulfilling the Great Commission, your marriage is going to be great because the grace is on it. You're going to learn, you're going to be submissive and obedient and loving, and there's grace and the Lord works in that marriage. What better, better marriage happens when, like you're fully obeying Christ and what he's called you to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:The Lord's going to bless that. So I just look at those things and I just question like if half the church doesn't even know what the great commission is, how are we ever going to fulfill that?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so good thought to have.
Speaker 1:It is. I think it's probably what happens when a lot of people are listening to this podcast. I'm hoping that things are, they hear something and it sparks something in them to go wow, I know a lot about this and it doesn't really matter. And I know very little bit about this, which is the very simple foundational principles of faith. We have become, we have built a culture in the church that exalts high and lofty knowledge and revelation over simplicity of foundational principles and practical obedience Right.
Speaker 1:So in any place, and it's like we know this. So, as I'm saying this, you're probably like oh, I know that If at my job, I try to learn the things that are level eight and I don't understand the foundations of what I'm doing, it's going to be wrong. That's right. Like, think about just going into the gym and looking at what some bodybuilder who's been working out for 30 years is doing and you just try to mimic what he's doing Right, and you're like well, teach me that stuff.
Speaker 1:I want to know. I want to know how to make this muscle bigger. It's like, bro, you need to bench, press, squat and get your foundations down first.
Speaker 2:Get the foundational movements down first. I even think about homeschooling my kids. We have one kid who's struggled with reading recently, or has been struggling with reading, and I kind of thought he would grow out of it if he just practiced it. But the more I begin to work with him I realized, oh, there's a foundational issue here, and if I just kind of keep pushing him to keep going forward, the building's going to fall apart eventually, and so we had to get help and kind of go back to the foundations of a few core basic reading, phonics skills that he just missed or just wasn't ready for, because maybe he was too young when I tried to give it to him.
Speaker 2:So it's the same with the body of Christ. If we see it's not working, why do we put more pressure on her to perform or to do this thing when they're like I don't even know the foundational things of what to do, or to make my faith actually real and practical, to give to someone else for it, to produce something in someone else's own life if I can't even accomplish it in my own?
Speaker 1:do something in someone else's own life if I can't even accomplish it in my own, you know. So I want you guys that are listening to take a look at Hebrews, chapter five and six, whenever you can, whenever you got a Bible in front of you. Starting in verse 12 of chapter five, the writer of Hebrews who we're not sure who it is, but he's talking to the believers he said he sounds a little frustrated with them because he has an expectation that they should be further along. Uh, Paul was frustrated.
Speaker 2:I don't know if Paul wrote it, but whoever oh, we don't know who wrote, that's right. That's right Hebrews.
Speaker 1:Um, he says this. He says for, though, by this time you ought to be teachers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's interesting comment. That's where we're at. Guys Like what he's reading right now is what I feel like we like struggle with. Like we're like why are we not? Why have we been in the church for 20 years and we're not teaching anyone? It's a frustration. We're not mad at the body, we're not mad at anyone, but like why are we not teaching others?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:For, though by this time you ought to be teachers by now. You have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk, not solid food. How many of you have heard that verse before ever, or you've breezed over it. Understand what he's saying. He's saying there comes a point where you should be teaching others by now. He's saying there comes a point where you should be teaching others by now, but for some reason you need to be taught the basic principles of the faith again.
Speaker 1:And do you know why it is? It's probably not most of you, it's probably not your fault. It's because they were either breezed over in your church by your pastor or never even taught. Because, think about it, if this is a church organization that the pastor has preached a thousand sermons before and he's already gone, maybe he's gone over this. Maybe he has. It'll give him the benefit of the doubt, but like 20 years down the road, he's not going back to the foundational principles. He's on to his next sermon series and you come in, say you give your life to Christ. You come in and you've. You come in, say you give your life to Christ. You come in and you've. You don't know the foundational principles of the faith. Or maybe you know, in some cases you'll have churches that'll have like foundation classes or whatever. But again, we systematize and we pro, you know, set up programs for people to have their foundations class or whatever, and who knows what the heck they're teaching in that foundation class, whatever they deem foundational.
Speaker 2:But we don't actually sit with people and work through them. Well, we know an experience that you know sometimes the foundations have taken years for some people to truly grasp to where they can go teach it to someone else. So it doesn't take a five week class, correct?
Speaker 1:Correct, because then you feel the pressure of say I'm going through a foundations class with 30 or 40 other people, 10 other people, whatever, and you're working through those things, but it's on a set schedule, it's every Wednesday night at this time or whatever. It's a little hard for you to stop and actually work through things in front of people, because when you're going through foundations which we'll get to in a minute he explains exactly what they are. Maybe you need to stop and spend a couple of weeks on repentance and work through some difficult things, work through some forgiveness get delivered Like God work in someone's heart.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know what I'm saying, or baptism, or faith or whatever that is, and there's not a lot of time for that in the systems and programs, because you breeze right over it, or even if there's opportunity to stop, a lot of people feel that pressure, yeah it kind of reminds me of the program no Child Left Behind that was established in the school system X amount of years ago. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I think it's the stupidest system possible, not because I think I want a child left behind, but I think that we lowered the standard so that every child could be pushed through.
Speaker 2:And it actually has dumbed down the children in the US and in the Western world Well, just the US, actually, because that's not in any other country, but I do think it's the same concept. It's like no child left behind. So we're just going to go through this very complex spiritual conversation in one week and then hope you get it and we're just going to move on. But then you're also made to feel silly for maybe not grasping it so fast. So then you don't feel like you can ask questions or be like hey, I think I've got a hiccup in this area, you know, or I haven't really done this, you know before. And then you feel silly, you know. So yeah, we've lowered the bar.
Speaker 1:We have and we push people through. It's such a fun, it's so funny because, honestly, in reality, school what they do is they push people forward and eventually you graduate and you move on to real life Right In the church. We push you forward and then you never graduate. That's right. You just hang out in 12th grade forever. Wow, yeah.
Speaker 1:So he says for everyone who partakes in only milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant, but solid food is for the mature, whom whom, because of practice, have their senses trained to discern good from evil. So good. So he tells us the progression, he tells us the goal and he tells us how to tell whether you're an infant or you're mature. And it's not the point of like, it's not like saying, oh, you're an infant, so there's something wrong with you.
Speaker 1:Everybody goes through infancy. The problem is when you have Christians that are in infancy for 30 years and none of their leaders, nobody is concerned about it. That's right Because, honestly, the system is set up to maintain infants and because if everybody matured there would be no need for the leader. That's right and because our system is set up to where the leader is dependent on that system for his livelihood. If he actually does his job, he loses his job Right, and so there's no motivation to work yourself out of a job, there's no motivation to work to disciple Christians into maturity, because then you have nobody to disciple.
Speaker 2:Well, I just think if you've been in the church for more than 10 years and you've never made a disciple, there's a problem. So ask yourself have you ever reproduced a disciple? If your whole purpose of once you're born again, yes, to be rescued from your sin and to be in relationship with God, all those things, that's beautiful. Okay, so now you have that. But now that you are in that place, if you've never reproduced, what are you here for? Like you see what I'm saying, Just ask yourself that question.
Speaker 2:And if you've never reproduced, you've never made a disciple, that means there's a bad seed somewhere in your understanding or you're still just a baby. But some people that's been in the church for 20 years would be very offended by that comment. But if you've never reproduced and you've been in the church for 10 to 20 years and you've never made a disciple of any type, either the seed is wrong, because the seed will produce of its own kind. So either the seed is wrong or you have been deceived and kept an infant nursing on milk. But you think you're mature because you know a lot of things and your Christianese is sharp, but you have never truly actually done what Jesus has called you to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel like you know there's people that can. They can regurgitate what their favorite preacher and teacher says, but when you try to go a level deeper, it's void of substance. That's right, it's void of substance. What I mean is if you, some people can talk a lot of talk, and then if you ask them a deeper level question, it's just like there's nothing there, because that's the true test of whether or not a revelation is your own, because you've sought God on it or you've just heard it from somebody else and so you're just mimicking that person you've heard or you've just heard it from somebody else and so you're just mimicking that person you heard.
Speaker 1:It may hurt to come to this reality. That that's you, but it's such a beautiful place because think about not coming to that reality until you stood before Jesus. And he's like listen, all you did your whole life was just idolize this preacher and this teacher and go from ministry to ministry and listen to prophetic word, from prophetic word to prophetic word, and but you never actually had any substance, you never actually like sought me, you never obeyed me, you never actually did what I wanted you to do.
Speaker 1:It's really really sad and so that's why it's such an important thing. It's an important question to ask and a realization to come to, because if there's humility in your heart, you'll be like crap. That is me. What do I do now?
Speaker 2:And then start. Start from where you find out. Like that takes true humility to be like, wow, I've missed it. I've maybe wasted five, 10, 15, 20 years, 30 years, but I'm going to start now, and that's when God becomes who. God is the redeemer of time and he redeems what was lost, and you actually have crowns to put at his feet.
Speaker 1:And I want to say this too, because I think it's I don't know if it's it could be like this now, but I feel like it was back when we first started, I don't know became believers and stuff like that If you wanted to seek out or whatever, you went straight to a ministry school. Right, you like quit your job or raise support and you go to this ministry school or that ministry school and like that's, you know what you do. And some people can feel pressure because, like, maybe you're in a in a position where you just can't do that at this stage in life, maybe you're already a parent, you have children, you have a family.
Speaker 1:Like you can't do this stuff. Like, don't put that pressure on yourself. That that's what it's got to be in order for you to be a successful disciple maker.
Speaker 2:Like that's not it. Well, I had a girl reach out kind of on the topic of what you're talking about. She said, hey, like I'm a high school teacher and a middle school teacher she teaches both grades Um, and she said I have such an opportunity at hand and she's like, but I feel like I don't know how to begin. And I said all you have to do is ask God for opportunities. He'll present the opportunity and you seize the day when the opportunity arises. Seize the moment.
Speaker 2:And the more you seize the moment, the more opportunities are going to come up. That's right and just open your mouth and speak.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like, if you're even concerned about the harvest there, even concerned about the harvest, there's a seed in you that needs to come out. So just start speaking and see what happens and maybe God shows up and a miracle takes place. But you'll never know if you just say you know, I really want to, but you never put, like your hand to the plow, yeah.
Speaker 1:And I'm going to read right now. So if you're like, where do I start?
Speaker 2:You know what?
Speaker 1:are the foundations of faith. I'm going to give you some of these things and then that will give you endless, endless months and months and months of study to begin to seek God and read the Bible. And all you got to do is take one of these things that I mentioned and just look up there are so many tools and resources nowadays on studying the Bible and see what does the Bible have to say about this. What does Jesus have to say about this specific subject or topic? Okay, starting in chapter six in Hebrews, it says therefore, leaving the elementary teachings about Christ, let us press on to maturity, not having to lay down again the foundation of writer of Hebrews. What are the elementary principles? Oh well, I'm glad you told us of repentance from dead works.
Speaker 1:Okay, number one repentance. Number two faith towards God. Number three instructions about washings and laying out of hands. So, uh, the washings. If you look that up, it's speaking about, uh, baptism. So it's speaking about baptism. And then the laying out of hands, uh, the Holy spirit. And so these are the four foundation, foundational principles, what we would call like out of hands, uh, the Holy spirit. And so these are the, the four foundation, foundational principles, what we would call like kind of the four wheels or the four um the four, uh cylinders of a car.
Speaker 1:So repentance, faith, water, baptism, holy spirit. And it talks about two other things. It talks about the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment. So, as Christians, we believe that, just as Jesus was resurrected from the dead, that we one day will be in our resurrected bodies, and we believe that every person in existence will be judged one day. Like those six things, study those six things.
Speaker 2:And they're not complex in and of themselves.
Speaker 1:They can be as deep as you can go.
Speaker 2:That's right. But they're simple in the sense of like it's clear and you can find where the scripture teaches on those things and just start there, study those things and then walk people through those things and then teach them to do the same thing.
Speaker 1:And I'll give you an example, practically, of how your mind can be renewed in one of those things Repentance. Ask yourself, ask yourself this question before you start to study in scripture what is repentance to me? What does it mean? You may be like. I mean. It's like I guess repentance is asking for forgiveness from your sins. Um, I don't know. That's all I got.
Speaker 2:You know, that's okay.
Speaker 1:Start there. Now. Start to look in the scripture. You're going to come across passages from John the Baptist calling people to repentance. You're going to come to passages about Jesus calling people to to repentance and uh, and now you'll start to get a deeper understanding.
Speaker 1:You may come into the understanding that, wow, uh, repentance it does mean a change of mind, it is changing your mind, but that's not where it ends, right, it's a change of mind, a change of heart and it's a change of action. If it doesn't lead to change of action, then it's not actually true repentance. Right, because if it doesn't have any effect on you, what is that? It's like me saying that I have faith in god, but I don't. Nothing ever changes in my life. The bible would call that dead faith. That's right. Um, I believe there can be dead repentance.
Speaker 1:There can be a type of repentance that is just somebody who feels bad for their sin because they don't want to deal with the repercussions of it, but they actually don't feel remote.
Speaker 1:They don't feel their heart's not broken towards God. They're not convicted towards God enough to actually change their lifestyle, to actually want to stop sinning and turn away from the old life. Those are revelations that come when you're studying these foundational principles. And here we'll end with this how does, how has that helped in the way that you disciple others? Because most of the issues that you're going to deal with and you're going to help people work through when making a disciple are going to be in those six areas, primarily in the first four, because people are going to have issues that they're working through is that stem from a problem with their foundations, a problem with the way that they were birthed into the kingdom. Either they didn't fully repent there were things that they didn't turn from, they didn't repent from, or I was never water baptized, or I was baptized when I was six years old and I didn't know what it meant, you know what.
Speaker 1:I'm saying, or I don't know what it's like to fully trust God, to fully give myself in full abandonment to him, like, what does it mean to full to have faith in God? Maybe that person believes that it's just believing God exists. That's very different by trusting your entire life with him. Maybe it's a person that knows nothing of the Holy spirit and how to receive the Holy spirit and how the Holy Spirit is, is, uh, empowers you, uh, they know nothing about the miraculous powers that the Holy Spirit is able to work through you and things like that. Um, and then there's, there's obviously the resurrection and judgment, knowing the beginning from the end, like where, where we're coming from and where we're going to what does the future hold? Because once you begin to grasp these things, then the Bible says you begin to put them into practice. And what Hebrews, chapter five says is when you begin to put righteousness into practice, you gain the ability to train your senses to discern right from wrong, to discern. This is the right way to go, this is the wrong way to go. This is the right thing to do, this is the wrong thing to do, and you find yourself into maturity, which, again going back, that's our goal. That's right. I'm saying so. That's discipleship in a nutshell, and the very simple foundational principles that you can hang out for as long as you want for the rest of your life.
Speaker 1:Then you can get into other conversations about. You know whatever, eschatology, uh, prophecy. You know um or different, different, whatever you know, whatever you want to study in the scripture there's a million things that you can study, but there are certain things that are going to really really help you build strong foundations that will completely change your life. These are the types of things going back to what we talked about in the beginning that you can begin to have discussions around with people. You can't systematize it and program it, because everybody's going through a different scenario and different situation.
Speaker 1:If you don't create an environment where people are free to understand how to apply those things to their exact situation and work through some of those nuances, you end up having people that skip through the process and they just never deal with those things and then you're going back around the next year wondering why they're not maturing in Christ. Well, it's because they didn't know how to work through that specific problem and we breeze right past it. That's right, right. That's the heart and the essence of discipleship. In the organic church you meet around the presence of Christ and you allow scripture to um, to transform your mind with the truth that it brings. And then, as you grow, you begin to multiply that outward, not inward multiplication, not addition.
Speaker 1:And so hopefully people get to the point to where they can actually make disciples outside of your gathering. And it can spread and spread and spread, and spread and spread. That's really good. Yeah, it can spread and spread and spread and spread, and spread.
Speaker 2:That's really good. I'm excited.
Speaker 1:Yeah, me too. So hopefully that was helpful and you are left with that strong analogy in your mind of hotel versus Airbnb model and why Airbnb works so much better. There are other problems that come with it right. There are other problems that come with it right, but I think overall it's just such a more innovative model and it can actually reach the world with less barrier and less restriction. And ultimately, what is our goal? What's your goal? Jesus wants us to fulfill the Great Commission.
Speaker 2:Not preach at the nations, but disciple the nations.
Speaker 1:Exactly, not just preach the gospel to all nations, disciple all nations. Then we've got to look at our current system and our current model and the way we're doing things and ask ourselves the question can we actually obey Jesus and do what he's told us to do in the current model? I think no, and I think what we talked about is a better option. So thank you, guys, for being with us today and we'll see you in the next episode.