Dale Partridge - How Do You Start A Biblical House Church？

00:00:00.000 Welcome to How We Do House Church, the official podcast of Reformation Seminary and the Reformation

00:00:12.840 Fellowship Network of Church Planters. My name is Dr. Jason Barker, and I serve as the academic

00:00:18.520 dean at Reformation Seminary. And I'm joined by my friend and our founder and president,

00:00:23.520 Dale Partridge. Dale, you ready to talk some house church today?

00:00:26.620 Yeah. And I think we're going to hit this topic of really the practicality of how do you get a

00:00:32.100 house church going? Where does it start? When does it start? How does it start? And I think

00:00:37.300 that's a common question that a lot of people are asking.

00:00:39.860 Yeah, absolutely. It is one of the ones that we get most often. How do I get started? So

00:00:43.860 Dale, how do we start a biblical house church?

00:00:47.300 So I would say you start it the same way that you would start any other church.

00:00:52.560 You want to be ideally trained.

00:00:56.060 I'm even going to back up a little bit further.

00:00:58.260 You want to be called, you want to be qualified, and you want to be trained.

00:01:03.800 And so we need to make sure that these men who are called, truly are called to plant,

00:01:10.400 to pastor, and to preach.

00:01:12.100 And the criteria is no less than it would be if you were to plant a traditional church.

00:01:18.200 You have to be qualified, according to 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1,

00:01:21.060 that you are to be able to oversee faithfully a congregation and assembly of God's people,

00:01:29.400 and that you are trained. You've been theologically trained. You're not a new believer.

00:01:35.800 You are able to correct false doctrine. You are able to know what true doctrine is.

00:01:42.940 You can preach the word of God faithfully. All of these things are essential to really

00:01:49.040 start this discussion about how do I start a house church. The second thing that is essential is that

00:01:56.560 it's the same as you would do any church plan out of a traditional church. You need to be sent.

00:02:03.340 You should be sent from another local church or an ordaining body. And so the way that you could

00:02:09.760 do that and the way that we've done that is that we would, for the graduates of Reformation Seminary,

00:02:16.560 those men that are qualified. And we do a pretty significant check on these individuals after

00:02:22.680 knowing them for a year, after seeing their theological work, after meeting their families

00:02:28.040 and meeting their children and having a discussion with them and talking to the references and

00:02:32.780 clarifying their calling and understanding their doctrinal convictions. We would ordain these

00:02:38.560 individuals from the Reformation Fellowship Network of house churches, which is really

00:02:43.560 kind of an outflowing of our local church here in Cottonwood, Arizona, and has continued on to other

00:02:51.640 house church gatherings around the country, we would ordain these individuals to gospel ministry

00:02:58.680 or to church planting ministry. Now, there's a lot more involved in just, you know, it's not just

00:03:05.880 being called, being qualified, and being trained, and then being sent. That's for sure the basics.

00:03:14.280 But there's also a lot of nitty-gritty in the middle of all this that you have to

00:03:20.720 have discussions with your family and have discussions with your friends and have those

00:03:25.840 individuals that are going to go on that journey with you. If you go to any church plant out of a

00:03:32.240 traditional church, you're going to see lots of planning, lots of preparing, lots of discussions

00:03:37.520 around getting other families who are committed to going on this journey with you, making sure

00:03:44.880 that you have families that are committed to showing up every Sunday, identifying those what

00:03:49.780 we call a four core, your four core individual families that are committed to showing up every

00:03:54.640 Sunday no matter what, rain or shine, unless they're sick or out of town, they are there with

00:03:59.500 you so that you can establish that core group of mature families. One thing we've learned

00:04:04.820 in planting is that, for house churches specifically, is visitors or guests or new

00:04:14.100 members will assimilate to the culture that exists already. And so what you want to do is you want to

00:04:20.420 have a strong culture of biblical families that are mature, that really establish sound doctrine

00:04:28.340 culture, Christian culture, biblical culture in that house church, so that when new families come,

00:04:34.300 they assimilate to what's already there versus having a situation where you only have one

00:04:40.980 mature family and you have lots of guests and members that are maybe new to the faith,

00:04:46.820 new converts, or maybe immature in their faith. And it becomes very difficult to shepherd those

00:04:53.580 individuals towards sound doctrine. It takes a lot longer. And so there's a lot of things

00:04:57.820 to think about there and the practicalities of getting a house church planted. But those are

00:05:02.340 some of the starting points. One of the things that sticks out to me in everything you mentioned

00:05:05.980 is it's the importance of doing a house church plant within the broader context of a community.

00:05:14.920 We're not wanting men to go out and launch this completely on their own. I think one of the

00:05:20.160 challenges we find in churches today, let's just step all the way back to the topic of calling.

00:05:25.200 In many churches today, you basically, you inform the church that you've been called to ministry and then they ordain you.

00:05:34.180 That's a little backwards of how it should be, right?

00:05:36.560 And so this kind of helps avoid some of the rogue mentality.

00:05:41.540 And let's be honest, house church planters are entrepreneurial, aren't they?

00:05:45.000 They are.

00:05:45.300 by nature. And so there is somewhat, to a degree, that the training, the network,

00:05:52.080 the community kind of reigns some of that in and channels everything maybe more so in the right

00:05:57.100 direction. Yeah. And I think a point that you made there is two points. One is that we have

00:06:03.100 found that maybe 80% of our house church planters are self-employed. Yes. There's just an interesting

00:06:09.180 correlation there. We also have a handful of police officers. So there's just a range of

00:06:17.420 people there, but we have seen a thread of having that. There's a missionary mentality that comes

00:06:26.480 from that entrepreneurial spirit. There's kind of a kin relationship there. And another thing

00:06:31.980 that you mentioned there about calling

00:06:35.660 is we want individuals to tell us,

00:06:40.920 it looks like you're called to ministry.

00:06:42.820 We want people to recognize that gifting,

00:06:45.420 that spiritual calling in us.

00:06:48.220 We don't want to just identify it on our own

00:06:50.800 and go, I'm called and I'm going.

00:06:53.460 And so we want to have that affirmation of the body

00:06:56.060 and through proven faithfulness

00:06:59.840 in the local church that you're in.

00:07:01.980 and so we also want and one thing i want to say is that for individuals that you know

00:07:10.060 go through reformation seminary they're part of a traditional church i mean these are men

00:07:16.060 and families that are currently part of traditional churches that love the traditional church but are

00:07:22.780 looking to offer an alternative expression uh for the the assembly of god's people

00:07:29.900 And so we've had several churches who have sent off a house church from their traditional church.

00:07:37.860 And that's how it should be in the sense of there shouldn't be some sort of, we're leaving this terrible traditional church so that we can do it right.

00:07:47.540 That's not the posture.

00:07:49.540 We want to have the posture of, we're going to be sent off.

00:07:52.800 And ideally, you'd have a pastor who was supportive and saying, we want to announce to the church if there's any families here that feel called to go with you.

00:08:02.760 And if they can't spare three or four families to go with you, you know, especially if they're a larger church, that's kind of a bad sign.

00:08:13.160 Sure.

00:08:13.860 And so, yeah, so I think it's a good thing.

00:08:15.480 We want to be sent off.

00:08:17.020 And I know the last thing is we want to be a part of a community of other house churches.

00:08:20.500 Yeah, let's talk about that for just a minute.

00:08:22.360 I know we're probably limited on time here.

00:08:24.660 So maybe 45 seconds or so on the importance of Reformation Fellowship, the church planting network.

00:08:32.520 What does it do and how does it help?

00:08:34.800 Yeah, there's no way I'm going to be able to do this in 45 seconds.

00:08:37.020 So we'll just keep going.

00:08:37.600 47.

00:08:38.060 Okay, there we go.

00:08:38.580 So the Reformation Fellowship is a network, an international network of house churches.

00:08:45.960 It's not a denomination, it's an association.

00:08:47.620 And it's where all of our graduates that plant house churches, they plant churches in the Reformation Fellowship.

00:08:54.380 It's a fellowship of reformed biblical house churches.

00:08:59.240 And we are confessional.

00:09:01.520 We abide by the 1689 substantial affirmation of the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith.

00:09:08.640 We also affirm and allow the Presbyterians to go into the Westminster Confession to be a part of the network.

00:09:14.260 But this is a network of house churches where men can establish a house church, be sent off from the network, be accountable to the network.

00:09:28.300 What this does is it allows guests to feel comfortable and safe that they're in a church with biblically qualified elders who have been trained, who have been ordained, who are in good standing.

00:09:44.260 who affirm this the 1689 statement of faith and are maintaining that good standing that

00:09:50.180 good relationship with the network and then for the church planter it allows ongoing education

00:09:56.500 relationship with other church planters around the country and around the world

00:10:01.380 and support pastoral support for those who are walking in a similar calling and it also allows

00:10:10.500 them to be found on reformationfellowship.org through our church finder we provide different

00:10:16.180 resources and tools we want those churches to be healthy thriving fruitful churches and so we're

00:10:22.820 working on establishing that network there's no fee to be a part of it it's it's a pure ministry

00:10:29.860 out of reformation seminary but it's our hope to really pioneer and legitimize house church

00:10:38.420 biblical house church as a valid alternative for christians to gather yeah so it kind of sounds

00:10:46.260 like one of the main takeaways here for somebody asking how do i plant a biblical house church is

00:10:51.780 to understand that it is number one it's it's not insurmountable it's not this huge task that

00:10:57.860 absolutely cannot be done and takes just more than you have but at the same time it's also

00:11:03.060 not without standards there there there are some uh standards some methods some practices

00:11:09.540 and certainly some doctrinal beliefs that are that are an essential part of doing that well

00:11:14.100 and so i think this really also speaks to the importance of being trained and that's

00:11:18.820 really what we're trying to accomplish at reformation seminary yeah it's not a fly

00:11:22.340 by night operation which we think is that people go i'm just gonna start a house church because

00:11:26.340 we have a good small group right now we're just gonna turn into house church and we're just gonna

00:11:29.060 to kind of start meeting on sunday mornings and that is what it is that's not the right posture

00:11:33.940 a house church plant is just as complex uh as a traditional church plant on the training level

00:11:44.020 but it's not uh complex on the financial level right it's it's not complex on the staff and

00:11:51.620 human resources levels but on the training on the calling on the preparation for

00:11:59.060 the reverential work of ministry, we need to take the same amount of diligence to prepare ourselves to do this faithfully.

00:12:12.120 And so, yeah, if you've planted a traditional church, it's way less work because it's much smaller.

00:12:17.800 But there's no less degree of seriousness and required prayer and required discussions with those families.

00:12:32.420 And so it is a slightly lower bar to entry for individuals that might go, I feel called to ministry, but I don't want to maybe do the traditional church with the big building and all that stuff, quit my job.

00:12:50.840 And so this is a great way for those individuals who feel called to ministry to do so, to carry out that calling without really stepping in to an absolute substantial change in their life.

00:13:05.760 Right. So it's possible that you've tuned into the podcast and maybe you're in one of two places.

00:13:11.220 The first place, maybe you just have more questions about House Church and you'd like to find a way to get some more information about that and study it a little bit more.

00:13:19.100 Your best next step would be to pick up a copy of Dale's book, How We Do House Church.

00:13:22.800 It's available on Amazon.

00:13:24.120 You can also purchase it through the ReLearn store.

00:13:27.060 If you purchase it through the ReLearn store,

00:13:28.720 there actually a little bit more money goes to the ministry.

00:13:30.600 So we'd love it if you took the opportunity to do that.

00:13:33.440 It could be that you're in a position where,

00:13:36.480 Dale, I feel like I'm giving an invitation here at the end of a worship service or something,

00:13:40.360 and it's time for you to come make your commitment.

00:13:42.280 That's how it feels.

00:13:42.980 but it could be today that you're in a place where you're ready to actually pursue training,

00:13:49.180 formal training for house church planting. If that's the case, we want you to take the

00:13:53.680 opportunity to fill out an enrollment inquiry at reformationseminary.com. That's a great next

00:13:59.840 step. We'd love to dialogue with you more about that and get that ball rolling. So Dale, any last

00:14:04.700 thoughts before we wrap up? No, just excited to have anybody that feels called to house church

00:14:09.760 ministry. We need faithful men to step up. We have hundreds of people per year that write us,

00:14:17.960 do you have a house church in this town? Do you have a house church in that town? Do you have a

00:14:20.640 house church here where I live? And more often than not, we have to say no. So we need you men

00:14:26.020 to step up if you feel called and you feel qualified and you want to be trained. We're

00:14:30.680 here for you. So that's it, folks. Thanks for checking out this episode of How We Do House

00:14:35.500 Church. Just as a reminder, these shows are available in both podcast and video format

00:14:40.400 across all platforms. So we hope you'll have the chance to continue to tune in and then pass these

00:14:46.020 along to friends as well. We'll see you guys next time.

Dale Partridge - October 10, 2022

How Do You Start A Biblical House Church？

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