00:01:04.860And so I think what makes this question even more interesting is that people tend to view house church at having somewhat lower standards almost than maybe a traditional church.
00:01:18.840And so, people might even be more surprised that house church planting pastors go to seminary.
00:01:38.320And they don't need to in the sense that it's not a requirement of scripture.
00:01:43.940However, it is in principle a requirement to be trained.
00:01:49.260We don't see Jesus sending out the 12 after three months of training.
00:01:57.020No, it's three years of 24-7 training with the Messiah himself before Jesus sends them out to do ministry.
00:02:08.500We also know that Jesus chooses men who are actually not starting at ground zero, meaning that I think about Peter as he's sitting on the roof and the vision of animals becoming clean.
00:02:23.660He sees this vision of all these things and he says, you know, the spirit of the Lord has taken and eat these things.
00:02:29.620And Peter's response is, Lord, I have never eaten an unclean thing in my life.
00:02:34.780Okay. This implies that you have a man, Peter, who has lived according to the law. He is well aware of the law. He is well aware of the Torah. He understands the narrative of scripture pointing to a Messiah.
00:02:54.160um this is not a man who is like just a fisherman who doesn't know anything about the bible
00:03:00.620so we got guys that are already biblically informed then they're spending three years
00:03:07.700before they go out into ministry we also have an example of paul who gets converted
00:03:13.860in damascus on the road to damascus and i don't know specifically i wish i researched this before
00:03:21.080but I believe it was 10 years before he started his first missionary journey.
00:03:26.840And it talks about him being trained by the Spirit of God in Arabia. I mean, there's obviously some
00:03:32.680discussion to be around there, but he didn't go conversion into mission work. It was an
00:03:40.600absolute training period. We also know that Paul spent time at the school of Tyrannus
00:07:00.340You need to understand what all of that means so that you can navigate those doctrinal matters.
00:07:06.640If you don't understand how to preach and how to homiletically, that is to prepare and deliver a compelling and persuasive and accurate sermon.
00:07:18.540If you don't understand what it means to be an elder and the qualifications there.
00:07:22.320If you don't understand biblical counseling and shepherding and how to shepherd people with scripture, you're not ready to care for the souls of others. This is essential. We need to realize that it is a huge, it's a work of great gravity to shepherd souls and to preach truth. And without training, it's a dangerous endeavor.
00:07:50.620Right. Now, in theory, you can get this training in churches. You can get this in different places. There is something very structured and I hate to use the word efficient, but efficient and effective about a seminary education.
00:08:06.980And if you think about it, you mentioned the idea of the weight of the work that we do.
00:08:13.020One of my professors, preaching professors, often said, before you get up in the pulpit and say, thus saith the Lord, you better make sure that's what he saith.
00:08:23.140And that is the weight, because as pastors, as preachers, biblical house church planting preachers, you are speaking on behalf of the Lord.
00:08:33.480There's something special about that preaching dynamic.
00:08:35.660And so, you want to make sure that you've been trained as effectively as possible. Seminary is a great way of doing that. Talk to us a little bit then, Dale, about Reformation Seminary. What are some of the distinctives of it? What's the program like? And so on.
00:08:49.940So my experience is with seminary is that there was a gap. There was either guy who read his entire Bible and is a lay leader in the church, elder, knows the Lord, has some decent theology, mature.
00:09:07.080the next stop on the continuum of training is like an mdiv which is in reality a three to five
00:09:15.320year program and almost a heart attack right in terms of you know memorization of greek and hebrew
00:09:22.440but yeah yes yeah you're doing better than i did so in every other industry when you have an
00:09:28.440education continuum you basically have for example in the medical industry you would have say emt
00:10:57.160there is, I would say, less of a need for that scholarly level of training. However,
00:11:05.380my experience has been that guys that go through seminary, our program is one year.
00:11:10.040So instead of it being three years or five years, it's one year, but there's no breaks.
00:11:14.480So there's no semesters off. And there is three in-person intensives. It's about half of a
00:11:22.980master's degree program. It's a graduate level training. But these individuals are pre-qualified
00:11:31.100as elder candidates already before they start. They've already read the entire Bible. These are
00:11:35.600men who, when you look to 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, you see that in these men. These are already
00:11:40.620men who are married for usually 10 plus years, have children, have done some sort of ministry
00:11:47.820in the past. We're not starting from ground zero. And then in addition, these are men who are
00:11:55.380likely not going to stop reading when seminary is over. So these are guys that will go on to have
00:12:02.520further study, maybe even jump into Greek and Hebrew, maybe jump into some of those deeper
00:12:07.580systematic theologies. But we wanted to produce a program that was accessible for the average
00:12:14.880dad, father, husband, full-time worker. Because try going to seminary at 36 years old
00:12:23.260with four kids, a wife, and a full-time job. It'll take you seven years. And so we wanted
00:12:31.160to create a program that was accessible and go, hey, let's jump in for five to 12 hours a week,
00:12:36.880depending on the week, and go full-blown for one year, train you up with a community of other men
00:12:45.160who are on the same mission as you, with a passion for the house church, with a passion for the gospel
00:12:49.960and evangelism, with accountability and structure. And our program really has five core elements,
00:12:57.780which is a book to read, a lecture to watch, a paper to write, a quiz to take, and an exercise
00:13:04.100to do now you know jason seminaries are great at making honest men into liars
00:13:09.560yeah that's a good way of putting it yeah so it's you have these programs that you're like
00:13:16.580a class it's like you have to read six books for this class yeah and you're like no human being
00:13:24.660if i was a single man no can read six books in addition to my other classes that have six books
00:13:30.220We call that a seminary read, which is, you know, major headings, first couple of sentences,
00:13:37.360you're moving on to the next page to basically get the gist of it.
00:13:40.300Yes. And it's, you feel like gross. You're just like, I can't do all this stuff. And I just go,
00:13:48.040there's something wrong with that educational curriculum design there. So we designed our
00:13:53.120program that you can actually finish everything without compromising your family. And that's
00:14:00.200was essential. So it's basically a 12-month program, one module per month for 12 months.
00:14:07.320And it ends with you actually planting a biblical house church. In fact, you can't graduate
00:14:13.960unless you plant. And so we do a full graduation ceremony. We do ordination for those men who are
00:14:22.040qualified for that. You get a full diploma, graduate studies diploma. We have intensive
00:14:27.240times here doing block diagramming and exegetical layouts and outlines and, and preaching workshops
00:14:32.660and, and house church culture and house church multiplication and church history and, and
00:14:38.060hermeneutics and, and all of the things. And so it's a wonderful time and we get to get
00:14:44.660really close. We get to become friends. We talk a lot and it's just a wonderful time
00:14:50.700to be with the men. We actually have group four in town right now.
00:14:53.740Yeah. You know, I think the great thing about our program and this graduate diploma in ecclesiology is that we've catered it to the house church pastor and to his needs. And so you may be thinking, if you're, you know, tuning into this and you have some interest, well, how can I actually learn what I need to know if an MDiv is three years, how much are you actually teaching me in one year?
00:15:15.200And what we've done, Dale, and you know this, is we've basically said, what do you need to know to pastor a house church?
00:15:22.340And so things like church administration, Sunday school and small groups, kids ministry, youth ministry, leadership development, policy and procedure manuals, all of those things that are very pertinent and relevant to a traditional church that we don't really deal with in the house church.
00:15:40.620we we've trimmed those out and we basically brought it down to to preaching uh and so even
00:15:47.120as the program goes along those papers they morph into sermons so you're not writing papers anymore
00:15:51.640you're writing sermons and you're delivering those sermons and you're getting critiqued on those
00:15:55.060and so the the beauty of it really is that we have taken a master's level education catered it
00:16:02.580specifically with one end in mind of producing house church planters and and you've told guys
00:16:07.960this i've told guys this in those initial interviews that if if you want to go work at a
00:16:12.600traditional church we're not the seminary for you yes because you're not going to learn the things
00:16:17.820that you need to know to be successful but if you want to plant a house church this is the place for
00:16:22.540you yeah i always tell people if you're gonna only come here if you're gonna plant a house church
00:16:29.080if you're not sure don't come here we are a missionary training school we have every
00:16:35.340expectation for men to come here to plant a house church. And to plant a house church in our network
00:16:42.960at Reformation Fellowship, which you can see at reformationfellowship.org. And so
00:16:46.580that is our mission and our goal. We'd love to have you guys come to seminary. And actually,
00:16:56.000we're even developing more of a program of people moving here. It's a remote program. We have guys
00:17:02.060international. We have guys all over the world. We have guys in Europe. We have guys in Australia.
00:17:08.180We have guys in Canada. We have a guy in Jamaica. And so you can enroll anywhere. However, for those
00:17:16.140that are domestic, if you want to come and move here to Sedona, Cottonwood, Arizona,
00:17:24.380where our headquarters is at here, where we do all of our intensives here, you can move here
00:17:28.540and actually get a discounted tuition and basically have a residential program, be a part of our house
00:17:35.580church, get a chance to learn house church from us, be in our church. It's almost more of a work
00:17:40.860study. It's a work situation. Yeah. And if your job allows you to do that, where you can work
00:17:45.200remotely, come, be a part of what we're doing here. Or if you want to come and just be here,
00:17:50.900be here with us and plant house churches and multiply here, we always invite people. Come,
00:17:54.460be with us. We actually have several families that have moved here already. Not one of them
00:17:58.260being Jason. I've been trying to convince this guy to move here for a while. But so we love
00:18:06.540the seminary and the men, and we have 20 to 25 guys in every group. And we're in group four now.
00:18:14.240We're enrolling for group five right now. And so Lord willing, if you're interested in doing this,
00:18:20.640just go to reformationseminary.com. Yep. And speaking of group four, we got to meet these
00:18:25.780guys real soon here this morning. We have lots of lectures and exercises on block diagramming to get
00:18:31.700to today. So guys, thanks so much for tuning into this episode of how we do house church. As Dale
00:18:37.020mentioned, if you have questions about how to receive training to be a biblical house church
00:18:41.660planter, head to reformationseminary.com. If you're not quite ready to do that yet, and you
00:18:46.500want to get some more information on biblical house churches, check out Dale's book, How We Do
00:18:50.780House Church. This is the Doctrines and Convictions of the Reformation Fellowship Church Planting
00:18:56.140Network. It'll give you all of the answers to the questions that you have about what is a house
00:19:02.000church and what are some of the specifics of it. You can pick this up on Amazon. You can also,
00:19:06.980Dale, get this at the Relearn store. Is that right? Yeah, Relearn.org store. You can buy it
00:19:11.200there. And a little bit more profit comes to the ministry that way. Awesome. Well, hey,
00:19:17.060thanks again for tuning in and we will see you guys next time.