Dale Partridge - November 28, 2018


Ultimate Marriage #21： What is House Church Part II


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Length

37 minutes

Words per minute

174.45

Word count

6,512

Sentence count

265

Harmful content

Hate speech

4

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Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, we talk about what a biblical house church looks like and why it's so important for a biblical marriage. We also talk about why a home fellowship is so important and why a biblical church is even more so.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 welcome to ultimate marriage today we're gonna be talking about house church and
00:00:14.280 what does it really look like part two yes so we did part one last week and you
00:00:18.360 guys got a chance to see that and listen to that and if you have not I recommend
00:00:24.040 that you go back and you listen to the previous episode give you some context
00:00:27.480 for today's show. It would be very odd, I guess, to hear the side without hearing the previous
00:00:32.940 conversation. And a couple of things before we start the episode is subscribe. If you guys are
00:00:40.960 listening to the podcast, we'd love to have you as a subscriber. This is also a YouTube show. You
00:00:45.160 can go to our YouTube channel and every episode is available there. And we would also like to ask
00:00:50.900 you to leave a review. And that means just tapping the stars in iTunes. You don't even need the
00:00:57.360 write anything. But if you did write something, we'd read it. And thank you guys for all you that
00:01:02.040 have left reviews. They've been very kind. So we're going to just dive right in the conversation
00:01:07.900 about what does biblical house church look like? Veronica and I have been doing biblical house
00:01:16.800 church for four years, four years now. And yeah, we, you know, again, in the previous episode,
00:01:24.320 we talked about this, but I want to give you a little bit of a refresher. Um, we, we left the
00:01:29.080 institutional church, um, just as a, a search for biblical church. Right. And, um, I in spirit was
00:01:38.220 just feel like God was going, Hey, it's time to go. I'm taking you on a pilgrimage. And we were
00:01:43.440 led into a community after many years of walking in a desert, learning how to do biblical community,
00:01:50.960 what the Bible had to say about the church gathering, and we'll share more about those
00:01:56.360 details. And then, yeah, Veronica has some stuff to say here in a second. I want to go back real
00:02:03.940 quick, is why is biblical church so critical for biblical marriage? This is a marriage podcast.
00:02:11.100 One thing I'll say is that the Bible says that our marriage is to reflect that relationship
00:02:16.860 between Christ and his bride.
00:02:18.720 And you can't properly understand how to do that
00:02:21.820 if you don't have a proper
00:02:22.980 and biblical understanding of church.
00:02:25.440 And the church experience that we have today,
00:02:29.720 you would never get to what we have 0.73
00:02:32.900 if you just use the Bible as a blueprint
00:02:35.020 to create church gatherings.
00:02:37.100 We've added so many extra biblical practices.
00:02:40.040 It's actually more extra biblical
00:02:41.280 than it is even biblical.
00:02:42.700 It's not sinful.
00:02:44.140 It's just extra biblical.
00:02:45.280 And so it's hard to kind of model properly that relationship between Christ and the bride if you don't understand the real physical relationship between like what church looks like and how it relates to Christ according to scripture.
00:03:00.840 The other thing, I don't know, Veronica, if you want to talk about accountability just in terms of how it's important to our marriage.
00:03:08.100 Yeah, I think accountability is super vital to a biblical marriage and a biblical house church.
00:03:14.680 Before we were in a home fellowship, we were in the institutional church.
00:03:19.440 And yeah, people would say, okay, you're my accountability partner and have them keep you accountable.
00:03:27.640 Check in with them here and there.
00:03:28.720 And it didn't really seem, at least in my experience, like real authentic until we joined a home fellowship.
00:03:35.320 it up. Yeah. And there's something about just being small and intimate. It just provides an
00:03:41.460 environment to be known, you know, and people are, I guess, just more likely to share. Yeah.
00:03:49.800 I just say it creates an environment to feel free to be vulnerable and to share your heart
00:03:56.280 and what you're struggling with. Yeah. And if you think about it, you know, just, just, it's not
00:04:02.300 just free to be vulnerable, but it's also a committed group of people. And so you feel safe
00:04:07.480 with just this commitment. There's not a lot of visitors kind of coming in, or there's not always
00:04:11.320 visitors in terms of an institutional church. There's always people there. And again, it's such
00:04:15.400 a different structure because it's a meeting, it's a gathering. It's, you know, what was the last time
00:04:20.160 you went to a meeting and only one person talked and it was a good meeting? No, you want to go to
00:04:24.200 a meeting where you can engage and be involved and have a conversation and be known and know
00:04:28.580 others and and and bear burdens and pray over one another and hear from one another and and that is
00:04:34.840 again the biblical church that we see um and that's that that accountability structure i mean
00:04:41.060 how has that been just in our own marriage of having account deep accountability from other
00:04:45.380 couples yeah i think it's been extremely beneficial um you see these same people week after week and
00:04:53.840 it's again a smaller it's in your home it's small it's intimate and so people um can read you
00:05:00.760 a lot better they know you they know your burdens and even if you're not if you're guarded i guess
00:05:07.620 um they see your everyday life and they see you walking that out and so i think that even if you
00:05:13.740 were to say oh no like i'm doing great they would catch something yeah they know your family they
00:05:19.600 know your marriage it's and you're not just meeting like you're doing life with these people
00:05:23.840 this is what biblical community looks like it's not hey nice to see you you know 300 feet away
00:05:29.020 from me over in the row nine um at the at church on sunday and i'll see you next sunday it's very
00:05:35.600 different it's it's very i'm gonna see you on sunday i'm gonna hopefully see you on wednesday
00:05:39.820 we're gonna do lunch on thursday and and we'll talk through text message throughout the week and
00:05:44.500 It's this very committed community, and it's so healthy for your family, for your marriage, and even for singles.
00:05:52.640 And so it's also protection, and that's the one thing we talked about last week,
00:05:55.760 which we're going to dive into more questions this week, is it's protection to be known.
00:06:00.240 It's really to learn how to do relationship.
00:06:03.940 I want to bring up a scripture, and this scripture is going to be our memory verse for this week.
00:06:08.080 Veronica will mention it at the end of the podcast, but I want you to listen to it.
00:06:11.800 It's 1 Timothy 3, verse 15.
00:06:15.260 And Timothy is receiving this letter from Paul.
00:06:18.220 And Paul just gets, he's writing this letter to Paul.
00:06:22.620 Or to Peter, gosh, he's writing this letter to Timothy.
00:06:25.160 And he's telling Timothy how they should conduct themselves at church in case he cannot come.
00:06:32.040 He wants to come and be with him, with Timothy.
00:06:34.700 He's probably in Crete at this time.
00:06:36.160 And he can't be.
00:06:38.040 So he's writing this letter and he says,
00:06:39.600 hey, if I am delayed, I write you so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself
00:06:47.380 in the house of God. Okay, period for a second. House of God means house of God, like the house
00:06:54.540 church, the house of God. Now, there's no doctrinal support that church must be done in a house.
00:07:01.420 However, that is the biblical example of how it was done. There's nothing wrong with doing it in
00:07:07.080 a building or doing it under a tree or doing it in a garage. But it says, I'm writing you so that
00:07:12.840 you ought to know how to conduct yourself in the house of God, comma, which is the church of the
00:07:18.760 living God, comma, the pillar and the ground of the truth. And so I want you to like visualize
00:07:27.520 for a second, there's a pillar. And what does a pillar do? It supports. It supports. It upholds
00:07:34.360 something. Paul is saying that the church is the pillar and the ground, the ground of the truth.
00:07:42.820 It's upholding the truth in the world. Christians, pay attention to this. The church's job is to
00:07:49.760 uphold all the truth in the world. And it's critical that the way we structure our gatherings,
00:07:58.560 the way we do church, affects our ability to uphold truth. And you can see that we're losing
00:08:04.100 every single battle on truth politically abortion biblical sexuality conversations around gender
00:08:12.300 uh legalization of drugs uh pornography like we're losing because the church is like a sleeping giant
00:08:21.220 instead of being a warrior in the world for good and for love and so it's church structure really
00:08:28.900 does have an important, I guess, element of us fulfilling our role, which is to be the pillar
00:08:37.080 and the ground of the truth. A couple things. There's a big difference between talking bad
00:08:43.820 about the church, which is Christ's bride, and bringing identification to the problems that it's
00:08:47.960 facing. So we're allowed to correct and rebuke each other in love. And that's what this conversation
00:08:53.260 is doing we are not anti-institutional church that's not us um we think the lord's doing great
00:08:59.480 work in a variety of different churches in a variety of different ways however we are going
00:09:03.340 to call us back to what the bible says and the most we should all be seeking out the most fruitful
00:09:09.760 expression of church which is the most scripturally accurate expression of church
00:09:14.540 um yeah i think you mentioned it earlier where if you were to read the bible on your own without
00:09:20.200 any preconceived ideas without any experience of the church without anybody telling you anything
00:09:25.760 about the Bible if you were to read it on your own and then step into a regular institutional
00:09:31.800 church I don't think that your definitions would match up yeah what you get is the situation where
00:09:37.240 you go I'm reading my Bible in my left hand and I'm looking my church experience in my right hand
00:09:42.160 and they're not the same and yeah you you would never get youth age segregated youth ministries
00:09:50.740 you would never get evangelism and outreach and the church meeting all blended together
00:09:57.100 you would never get one man talking to an audience of an inactive spectators
00:10:03.240 you would never get let's go and buy a big expensive building and get a bunch of people
00:10:11.280 on salaries. Like you just wouldn't get these things. They're not sinful. Yeah. That's exactly
00:10:17.340 what I was going to say. They're not sinful. But if you're having a struggle here, when you're
00:10:22.720 listening to this podcast, I'd encourage you to just go read what the Bible says. Yeah. Read what
00:10:27.000 the Bible says. Yeah. And there's, there's been some books that have really helped our journey
00:10:30.720 of people that have gone before us. One of them is called pagan Christianity. It sounds like a
00:10:36.800 crazy book. It's written by George Barna and Frank Viola. And George, if you've heard of the
00:10:42.920 Barna Group that does all the Barna research, that's him. And awesome godly men. And then
00:10:50.320 Organic Church, Reimagining Church, and then Francis Chan just wrote a really great book.
00:10:56.040 The Letters to the Church. Yeah, Letters to the Church, which again, you know, he's doing the
00:11:00.300 same. He would say the exact same thing that we're saying today. He's challenging people to go,
00:11:05.380 if we just read this book how did we get from this book to here and he has that story of even
00:11:12.060 being a megachurch pastor um and so yeah he's doing something left and he left and now he's
00:11:18.960 planting plants home fellowships yeah house fellowships now and so it's very similar um
00:11:24.360 we're not ultra connected but we have talked on both of our organizations and
00:11:28.600 i i expect the lord will bring us unified together in some time in the future
00:11:32.220 um a couple notes we're looking at here um yeah on our journey just of this process we're going
00:11:41.160 to answer some questions for you guys that common questions but we had to unlearn a lot
00:11:45.540 you know before we could relearn it was this process of having to kind of deconstruct
00:11:52.680 um before we can reconstruct and it was so weird do you remember feeling weird
00:11:59.180 i remember feeling weird and just like okay well then what do i do yeah like if all this is wrong
00:12:07.520 yeah then what am i supposed to do yeah and and i remember you had said this is years ago but you
00:12:15.020 you're like i just feel like like i was lied to yeah for so long and now i'm just trying to figure
00:12:22.160 out truth well we trust what happens is you just go man i don't got a seminary degree like
00:12:28.300 I'm an average guy like I expect that those guys the pastors there at the church are going to do
00:12:34.660 everything correctly according to the book I'm putting my faith in them and again the Bible
00:12:39.820 warns against that for all of us to actually know the word so that we can judge lovingly
00:12:45.920 our actions in each other according to the word be diligent to show yourself approved to God a
00:12:50.900 worker who does not need to be ashamed rightly dividing the word of truth we are called to that
00:12:54.620 so just don't expect that just because your pastor went to seminary that you're doing church according
00:13:00.760 to the scriptures a lot of us are doing church according to how americans do church because
00:13:06.400 we've done it that way for so long and it's at least previously been successful yeah previously
00:13:13.380 yeah and again not so much anymore yeah exactly we've we've it's changing it's morphed i mean even
00:13:18.160 if you just do a study on like where did sunday school come from it's amazing when you see where
00:13:22.800 it came from and what it is now. It's an amazing story. A quote that I said last week is a man-made
00:13:32.920 structure will never deliver Christ-like results. And so if you want to, Jesus said to Peter,
00:13:38.220 on this rock, I will build my church. He's going to build it. We don't got to do the big marketing
00:13:44.760 thing. The Lord is going to build his church. And again, when you have a man-made structure
00:13:54.100 versus just a spirit-built structure, you can see the difference. People that are committed,
00:13:59.560 loving, encouraged, and they're so fruitful, so small, and so fruitful. It's amazing.
00:14:06.840 So I feel like we've given a good testimony of how it's changed our lives
00:14:14.520 in a good way i mean it's increased our maturity it's it's we wouldn't we wouldn't have this
00:14:19.420 podcast if we hadn't joined a home fellowship we wouldn't be teaching an ultimate the ultimate
00:14:24.900 marriage uh program program if we had not entered that like no we wouldn't have any of these tools
00:14:32.020 um had we not entered a biblical fellowship yeah veronica spent like a couple hours yesterday and
00:14:38.500 this morning studying the Jehovah's Witness faith so that she can help defend the truth against some
00:14:45.520 of those things for conversations that come up. I'm doing that with Islam. Our friend who's in
00:14:52.460 our gathering is doing that on Mormonism. There's just a sense of ownership of your faith that you
00:14:58.060 go, I'm here to learn the truth so I can defend the faith. I have my own ministry that the Lord's
00:15:04.060 calling me i'm not a passive spectator yeah and another thing about just since we're on this topic
00:15:10.040 biblical house church um as a lot of you guys a lot of you listeners know this last year has just
00:15:16.480 been crazy trial after trial um and we probably this year probably had 50 meals brought over to
00:15:22.940 our house yeah like the church body is caring for us in the season when we can't and we've had
00:15:29.640 multiple members in the and the body offered to watch our kids and come over and help clean the
00:15:36.340 house and come over and fold my laundry for me stack the wood and stack our wood yeah and just
00:15:41.500 just care for us and a and a like a few weeks ago we were sick you were getting over bronchitis and
00:15:48.760 our friends their children were with their grandparents a couple of hours away they were
00:15:54.360 staying the night for the weekend and this couple called us and asked if they could come over and
00:16:00.900 watch our kids while we went and just rested and watched a movie in the room in our bedroom in our
00:16:06.600 room we were home yeah they came over and just hung out and watched our kids just because we
00:16:10.440 were so burnt out and tired on their time off yeah um but they loved us so much and cared for
00:16:18.240 us so much that they're like oh we don't have kids we can come over and watch your kids totally
00:16:21.440 Totally. Yeah. And if you can hear some airplanes flying over our studio, it's because it's, I think there are there. We have like an F-14 fighter jet pilots like sometimes fly over our house. So that's them. But yeah, I mean, that is exactly true. I mean, it's just deeper. Biblical fellowship, because you're so close to the word of God. You're so close. You're allowing the spirit to lead the relationships in the meeting and the gathering times. You get to know the word. You have a better understanding of the word and you learn how to do real relationship.
00:16:49.920 Yeah. I feel like it, there's no masks. All the masks are removed. It's like going into your
00:16:56.380 friend's house and you're just like, Hey, are you up for a visitor? She's like, yeah, sure.
00:17:01.580 And then she texts me and he's like, Hey, by the way, my house is a mess. I'm just like, okay,
00:17:05.080 I don't care. And I get there and I was like, Oh wow. Your house is a mess. I didn't say that,
00:17:09.300 but I'm like, wow. Okay. But like, but I didn't care. Like this is my house looks like that
00:17:15.060 sometimes too. Like it's just, it's just life. Like I don't feel like you have to put up a front
00:17:21.700 like kind of thing. It's very much instead of being 10 feet wide, one inch deep, it's one inch
00:17:27.300 wide and 10 feet deep. And I think we're longing, we're built for that. Psychology proves, science
00:17:32.660 proves that we're designed to only be intimate with up to about 12 people. After that, you just
00:17:37.100 can't be super known by more people than that. And so it really does help that. So we're going to
00:17:43.160 answer four questions and we're going to try to be brief about that and then we'll jump into
00:17:47.680 these are the questions that we get most often most often yeah yeah what do you do no question
00:17:53.220 number one what do you do with the children in an institutional church i'll let you take it
00:17:58.360 you just put them in the backyard and shut the door yeah right just the kids are with us they're
00:18:05.800 generally sitting at our feet and they're part of the meeting even the young kids even the young
00:18:11.400 kids yeah valor's with me are all three of our kids even we've got four and a
00:18:15.160 half two and a half and one and a half yeah and they're all with us it's funny
00:18:18.660 when you read the book of Ephesians Paul's talking to the like so this is a
00:18:23.560 book a letter written to the church at Ephesus and it was to be expected to be
00:18:29.180 read to the church aloud and he's talking to the married couples and he's
00:18:36.400 talking to the fathers, you know, don't, don't treat your children, raise them up in a nurturing
00:18:43.100 admonition of the Lord. And then he turns to the children, just addresses the children,
00:18:46.880 children, obey your parents, right? And, and so it's, there was an expectation that the children
00:18:52.300 are there. But also in the Old Testament, you see this is like, you know, when they would read the
00:18:57.320 law in the sitting of all the Israelites, it would, it would say, even with the suckling babes,
00:19:01.240 like the children are there they're not outsourced you don't outsource your spiritual
00:19:07.040 responsibility of your children to some other ministry you know the Old Testament in the New
00:19:15.600 Testament and Malachi to Matthew it talks about turning the hearts to the fathers and turning
00:19:22.880 the children's hearts to the fathers and the father's hearts towards the children
00:19:25.840 And this idea that a lot of youth ministers become the children's pastor, like instead of dad being the pastor of the home or mom upholding that spiritual growth in the child's life, we've outsourced that spiritual headship to somebody else.
00:19:49.120 And that's not their role.
00:19:52.780 Now, can someone supplement?
00:19:54.620 For sure.
00:19:55.400 Yeah.
00:19:55.840 but I would never allow anybody to be the spiritual leader of my child.
00:20:01.440 Pouring into your child way more than you would be.
00:20:03.800 Yeah, and the system teaches that.
00:20:07.080 I mean, you walk into a church, and mom and dad go left, and the kids go right.
00:20:12.060 And that is dad's and mom's church and their pastor,
00:20:15.640 and then I'm going right, and this is my pastor.
00:20:17.720 And that church over there where dad and mom go is very boring and uncool,
00:20:21.540 and this is where I'm going to go over here.
00:20:22.880 It's very cool, and it's for me.
00:20:24.360 like it's a divided family right there age segregated ministries so we have the kids
00:20:30.520 sitting right at our feet we believe that we teach them to be quiet if they act up then we get out
00:20:36.060 we have a talk with them give them a consequence maybe and bring them back into the meeting and
00:20:40.700 they learn to sit quietly for an hour and a half maybe even two hours listening to the meeting
00:20:47.520 several people teaching prayer requests a lot a couple weeks ago i remember we were sitting there
00:20:52.920 and the whole church came and laid hands on me and prayed and um we have about eight families
00:20:58.860 in our church and aria came i was crying in this moment and aria kind of comes in like you know
00:21:06.040 crawls under people's legs and she comes and puts her hand on my hand and says it's gonna be okay
00:21:09.820 dad it's gonna be okay and she prayed with us and those are moments you don't want your kids to miss
00:21:15.800 and because i know we'll probably get a lot of questions just based off of that
00:21:20.620 A lot of the child training for these moments, for fellowship on Sundays, happens during the week.
00:21:26.660 So it's proactive training during the week and not reactive training in the moment.
00:21:31.800 Training in the moment.
00:21:33.160 Yeah.
00:21:33.720 So you have to prepare your children and set them up for success.
00:21:37.740 Yeah.
00:21:37.980 And so that's been, that's what we do with the children.
00:21:40.900 They're there.
00:21:42.000 And to be honest, when they come of age, whatever that might be, they're to be expected to be participants in that meeting.
00:21:49.160 And so, you know, especially like some of the young men who, you know, we have a coming of age kind of thing for the guys that, you know, their father gets to make that determination, 13, 14, 15 years old.
00:22:00.800 And at that point, those guys are expected to bring something to the meeting, a prayer request, an encouragement, a song, revelation, a teaching, something.
00:22:08.360 Participate.
00:22:08.920 Participate.
00:22:09.700 Yeah.
00:22:10.240 And so that is important.
00:22:13.580 Next question is, how does giving work?
00:22:19.160 i'm looking at veronica waiting for her to say something uh i mean i'm just gonna say just
00:22:25.840 we don't have a ton of time because it's a huge topic yeah it's a huge topic i'll be very quick
00:22:31.440 so it's brief but informative as you can make it yeah this is a big topic um we're not a
00:22:38.480 non-profit organization as our church you know like your little house church isn't a corporation
00:22:44.420 it's it's a group of people gathering together so you don't get a tax write-off so that's one
00:22:50.340 and um two you know again i've done teaches of this in the past but we don't tithe tithing is
00:22:59.020 biblical but it's not christian tithing was the old testament way of paying the 11 tribes of
00:23:05.560 israel to pay for the 12 tribes of israel the levites uh giving giving the levites uh who were
00:23:11.160 the Israel's nation's workers who were taking care of this temple sacrifices. They couldn't
00:23:16.220 have a job, so everybody else had to bring their tithes to the storehouse and allow to give them
00:23:20.640 money and food so that would pay for them, plus also the poor. And that's what tithing is, and
00:23:25.740 it's not 10%. There's three tithes that range between 10 and 23 to 30%. So it's an Old Testament
00:23:34.000 practice that was crucified with the cross, with temples, sacrifices, and priests. All that stuff's
00:23:39.740 gone now jesus calls us to biblical generosity and we give in three different ways and you can
00:23:48.540 research this stuff yeah go to learn about it on your own yeah if you listen you can share for sure
00:23:55.320 but like i said if anybody's have has this like um they're they're not receiving this well in
00:24:03.180 their spirit yeah just go go research it yourself yeah and trust me god wants more than 10 in most
00:24:08.460 cases in my experience. But yeah, I don't know if the Bible Project has one on this, but Tim Mackey,
00:24:17.000 who leads up the Bible Project, shares the same opinion, and he's a Hebrew scholar. And so if
00:24:22.380 you're a Bible Project person, just know that that's another person you can turn to. Giving
00:24:28.920 comes in three forms, and I'm going to just talk about them briefly. Christians are called to give
00:24:34.920 to the poor and to not forget the poor. Actively go seek out the poor. Give to the poor. If you're 1.00
00:24:40.900 a Christian and you're not giving to the poor right now, you're so in opposition to what Jesus 0.83
00:24:45.740 has taught about. So you should really try to find a way to start giving to the poor. 0.97
00:24:50.100 Number two is giving to those who teach. That might be elders, that might be pastors,
00:24:55.840 and that might be Bible teachers. But giving to those who teach is really critical. And it says
00:25:02.180 not to muzzle the ox. The laborer is worthy of his wages. Those who hear the word share all those
00:25:07.460 things, share all good, and all good things with those who hear it. That's in Galatians.
00:25:13.400 First Corinthians chapter 9 talks about Paul saying, hey, we should, you know, we're giving
00:25:19.160 you spiritual things. You know, people reap the benefits when they give you material things,
00:25:25.980 but we're giving you spiritual things. How much more should we be able to reap material things
00:25:30.460 like food and sustenance and money there's such a huge teaching on this you should absolutely be
00:25:34.500 giving to those that are discipling you and teaching you the word of god and what if they
00:25:39.140 don't have one what if they just listen to a sermon online or a podcast yeah sure like i you
00:25:43.500 know i listen to robbie zacharias podcast all the time like every week almost every day and he's
00:25:49.920 pouring into you via this podcast and i donate to their to their ministry and so again it's one of
00:25:56.340 those things that wherever you're receiving the word of god that is is helping you grow unto
00:26:04.100 salvation you'll pay for the guy to install your washing machine but you won't pay for the guy
00:26:10.940 that's helping you grow closer to the lord like that's a problem so absolutely and there is no
00:26:18.340 number there's no number there's no no it's just generosity just generosity and uh just seek the
00:26:23.620 lord god wants a cheerful giver not under compulsion a cheerful giver um and then the last category so
00:26:31.900 you first is give to the poor give to the teachers and the last one is to the needs of the saints
00:26:37.800 yeah people in your body in your fellowship and so christians yeah this has happened in our church
00:26:43.960 many times right we've had people that express a need and boom it's filled many times and that's
00:26:51.240 awesome it's so safe to go it's a way to bear one another's burdens again yeah uh lost my job
00:26:58.280 we're struggling have some debt we've changed our way of thinking about finances
00:27:02.440 but we need some help okay five families come in you're you're cared for like that happens
00:27:09.720 all the time um okay that was as brief as you could make it that was very brief
00:27:17.060 It's a big, big topic.
00:27:19.920 So if you feel like we left something out, we probably did.
00:27:23.520 Yeah.
00:27:24.860 Two more questions.
00:27:26.200 Who watches over the theology?
00:27:31.000 Well, it's not audience church, so we're all participating.
00:27:35.580 And so there's kind of like a, I feel like especially with the men,
00:27:39.480 there's the desire to really always be on guard against false theology.
00:27:45.420 it's very rare that you can get something false past 10 men who are independently mature
00:27:54.500 and all study the scriptures yeah in their own timing as well as meeting with the men throughout
00:28:01.040 the week and praying and they're very strong mature believers and the women and you know like
00:28:06.940 there's just some godly women in our gathering that just know theology and you know you're not
00:28:12.380 going to be able to get stuff passed independently, 10. And so that's one thing. And then, you know,
00:28:19.640 it says in 1 Corinthians chapter 14, I forget which verse it is. It's between 26 and 40, but it says,
00:28:24.220 you know, and the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets, meaning that the spirits
00:28:30.780 of the teachers, those that are prophetically forth telling God's truth, are subject to the
00:28:37.660 other teachers um and we've seen this right i mean what does this look like in a someone's
00:28:43.420 teaching something uh i mean i can i use you for an example i mean when you were being trained up
00:28:49.760 in this a couple of years ago if you would be standing up and preaching and giving a sermon
00:28:54.740 when we were a part of another home fellowship before we were sent off to plant the current one
00:28:58.960 that we are a part of um if you said something that maybe sounded even a little bit off or you
00:29:04.500 meant to word it a different way, but it didn't. Or just said something straight wrong. Or said
00:29:08.440 something wrong. You would definitely have one of the elders or older men interrupt you. Not in a
00:29:14.080 rude way, respectfully. But be like, Dale, can you maybe explain that again? Or tell me what you
00:29:19.360 actually meant by this? Because what you're saying sounds like this, but what it, but what I think
00:29:25.860 you mean is this. Yes. Or, you know what? Actually, that's not what happened. It's this what, this is
00:29:32.120 what happened it's a common mistake but we need to make sure and and this is again this is good
00:29:36.860 the last thing you want to be doing is preaching false theology so there's there's safety and in
00:29:44.480 that um and so yeah she said the word elders um not every church we don't have elders at our church
00:29:52.440 right now we're a new church plant praying for them praying for them could could i be appointed
00:29:57.520 as an elder, if I meet the requirements according to 1 Timothy chapter 3 and Titus 1, which I'm
00:30:04.740 constantly aiming for, then yeah, but we haven't done that yet. We haven't. It's one of those
00:30:10.940 things I think that the congregation naturally comes to do. I'm still relatively young, you know,
00:30:17.320 and so, but having elders, a plurality of elders ideally, is great. And you might even have elders
00:30:24.740 that oversee, you know, a gathering in a new plant, but church elders are the, like, elders
00:30:31.680 and deacons, if you look in 1 Timothy chapter 3 and Titus 1, they're the only church governance
00:30:37.000 thing you see in the entire Bible, or sorry, the entire New Testament. And so what I'm saying here
00:30:44.080 is that, like, the idea of, like, cardinals and bishops, and, well, I guess a bishop is another
00:30:47.920 word for an elder, but, like, these, like, other types of roles that we've kind of created to be,
00:30:53.960 they're generally helpful but the only real biblical protection against false theology is
00:31:00.320 elders and deacons um so again you can read first timothy chapter 3 titus 1 you want some of those
00:31:06.700 dudes in your church that's a good thing um last one why don't you read the question and start us
00:31:14.660 off how do people find out about it how do people find out about a home church gathering people ask
00:31:20.820 us this all the time um because people are craving it they desire it um and that's it's hard yeah it
00:31:28.460 took us several years to find the one that we were a part of um but a lot of it is just organic
00:31:34.720 relationship just meet somebody and get to know them yeah i mean you know we've blended in the
00:31:42.800 institutional church we've blended evangelism and the meeting of the saints so they're like two
00:31:49.940 they're two separate things like evangelism and the scriptures and outreach is always an outward
00:31:54.800 work and the meeting of the saints is always like a gathering of christians to talk about christian
00:32:01.020 stuff we've made them one of the same and that's why we have what's called lowest common denominator
00:32:07.000 preaching where you're constantly at the institutional church having to preach to the
00:32:10.640 guy that's on his first day there because it's his first day he's a visitor and so the preaching is
00:32:15.160 always at least palatable for the guy that's on his first day um and uh that creates a dilemma
00:32:23.080 because for the guy that's been there for 10 years it's always milk i mean you were a believer
00:32:28.880 for how long before 12 years 10 years so yeah it was just but you were still a baby a very yeah
00:32:38.120 baby in your faith because you didn't know a lot until you know five years ago yeah once you get
00:32:43.960 into a biblical community it is like rocket fuel for your spiritual maturity um and so yeah how do
00:32:51.880 we we share the gospel with people if we get a chance to share the gospel we do it i had a guy
00:32:57.580 over here not too long ago in this very room talking about the gospel and so you share the
00:33:03.600 gospel it's an outward work you build a relationship you disciple them you baptize them you take them
00:33:08.480 to church that's what you see in the scriptures you don't outsource your spiritual responsibility
00:33:14.300 to share the gospel to your pastor by inviting your friends to come to church who don't know
00:33:18.680 the lord and that's just not what happens hopefully they get saved hopefully they get
00:33:23.360 saved no no that's your job and so oh not that the holy spirit couldn't work that way too because
00:33:31.680 yeah i mean you and i both became christians in a institutional church and got baptized in
00:33:36.900 It was a two-stall church, so again, not bashing that.
00:33:40.860 Yeah, the Lord uses our junk and our misinterpretation of Scripture in spite of us.
00:33:48.540 He'll still use it, and that's beautiful.
00:33:50.900 It doesn't mean that what we do is right, meaning just because good things happen inside of wrong things doesn't make the wrong thing right,
00:34:00.940 because good things happen in wrong things all the time.
00:34:02.680 There's people that are getting saved inside of a war.
00:34:04.280 doesn't mean that we should do more war
00:34:06.560 because people are getting saved there
00:34:07.580 no, it's that the Lord uses this stuff
00:34:10.560 no matter what
00:34:11.860 okay, that was a lot
00:34:16.420 hopefully you guys aren't overwhelmed
00:34:18.900 if you guys want to learn more about this
00:34:22.060 you guys can go to relearnchurch.org
00:34:25.260 and we got tons of articles and stuff
00:34:28.960 we're going to be adding more in 2019
00:34:30.740 I have taken probably a six month break
00:34:33.160 on ReLearn Church.
00:34:35.120 I felt like the Lord was going,
00:34:36.020 hey, Dale, I need you to learn more
00:34:37.380 before you start talking more.
00:34:39.800 And I've been in it,
00:34:42.360 quietly in it.
00:34:44.540 And so we're excited to go back
00:34:47.120 into this journey of planting
00:34:48.700 and establishing house churches
00:34:50.200 and teaching people what it means
00:34:55.140 to have a biblical community.
00:34:57.320 So if you want to learn more,
00:34:58.040 just relearnchurch.org.
00:35:03.160 If you want to read our memory verse for the week.
00:35:05.280 Is there a memory verse?
00:35:06.160 Yep.
00:35:06.760 All righty.
00:35:07.660 1 Timothy 3.15.
00:35:09.120 I write to you.
00:35:10.140 Sorry.
00:35:10.900 I totally butchered that.
00:35:12.340 I write so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God,
00:35:16.620 which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.
00:35:20.620 1 Timothy 3.15.
00:35:22.340 Yeah.
00:35:22.580 I love how he says how you ought to conduct yourself.
00:35:25.160 There is a way to properly conduct yourself.
00:35:27.980 You might also want to read 1 Corinthians 14, 26-40.
00:35:31.780 at the end of that scripture he says um he says if any one of you thinks that you're spiritual
00:35:37.820 or a prophet let it be known the things that i write to you are the commandments of the lord
00:35:41.800 and you go wow that's very rare that paul says something like that i want to go back to what he
00:35:48.060 just said that is the commandments of the lord and read that read that unpopular pieces of scripture
00:35:54.140 in there, but you should take it seriously. Yep. Um, okay. We didn't write it. We didn't write it.
00:36:00.640 Yeah. That's the, I often have to say that I did not write this. Um, so, um, again, thank you guys
00:36:07.640 for your support and, uh, just for joining us on the show. We're excited. The show is continuing
00:36:12.080 to grow. Uh, would you guys leave us a review if you could, if you remember, that would be a
00:36:16.060 blessing for us and we will see you. We have an awesome couple of shows coming up that are going
00:36:22.380 to be talking about holiday related topics that I think are very common for Christians to deal
00:36:29.300 with. So that's coming up. So we'll see you guys next week. Bye-bye. Thank you for joining us on
00:36:36.160 this episode of Ultimate Marriage. If you're homesick for a stronger marriage, visit our
00:36:40.240 website at ultimatemarriage.com and consider enrolling in our one-year online marriage mentor
00:36:44.620 program. Also, if you're interested in learning more about building a better marriage, follow
00:36:48.740 Veronica and I on social media, where each week we share tips, tricks, and lessons on building a biblical marriage.
00:37:18.740 Amen.