Dale Partridge - What Is A Biblical House Church？

00:00:00.000 Hey, everyone, and welcome to this episode of How We Do House Church. My name is Dr.

00:00:12.120 Jason Barker, and I am the Academic Dean at Reformation Seminary, where our goal is to

00:00:16.960 train men to plant biblical house churches all around the world. I'm joined here, as

00:00:20.580 always, by our founder and president, Dale Partridge.

00:00:23.440 Hey, man, I'm excited to be here. I think today's conversation is going to be very

00:00:26.600 clarifying for those that are interested in the very basics of house church.

00:00:31.180 Exactly. So our question, as always, we have one question that we want to address.

00:00:35.560 We're going to address it from some different angles and get you guys some good information.

00:00:38.520 So our question for today, Dale, is what is a biblical house church?

00:00:44.680 Yeah. So the emphasis there was on biblical.

00:00:47.380 That's right.

00:00:48.100 And there is a lot to say there because we are basically having a biblical church that meets

00:00:56.100 in a house. And so there's not much difference between a biblical traditional church and a

00:01:02.400 biblical house church except the location. But the location actually does highly influence

00:01:09.080 the gathering, the intimacy, the capability, the closeness. Again, in a house church,

00:01:15.080 you are actually structured usually more like a circle because you're wrapped around a living room

00:01:19.720 versus everybody sitting in pews facing one direction.

00:01:24.760 It becomes more of a dialogue instead of a monologue.

00:01:30.040 There are some elements of just the environment itself

00:01:33.340 that really lends itself to closeness.

00:01:35.160 There's, you know, a mom can step into another room

00:01:38.160 and care for a baby.

00:01:40.060 The kitchen's there and you're in someone's home,

00:01:42.420 which just also creates a level of closeness that,

00:01:46.780 you know, have you been in your pastor's house before?

00:01:49.260 Right.

00:01:49.720 Sometimes guys who have planted house churches through our program at Reformation Seminary

00:01:55.300 have said, well, I have a really great back building on our property. We're just going

00:02:00.320 to meet there. And I'm like, no, don't meet there. Meet in your home. Because there's something about

00:02:06.140 being in someone's home, the way that it smells, the way that it looks, looking inside of your

00:02:10.540 children's rooms, seeing how clean it is. What is the kitchen? Where are your spices at?

00:02:14.180 But what is your life and your wife and your family?

00:02:18.840 How do they operate together in your home?

00:02:21.180 There's something about that that really invites people.

00:02:24.620 And when you do it somewhere else, it's kind of like saying, well, you're not allowed in

00:02:28.800 my home.

00:02:30.620 And so house church in itself, from the house itself, really is a vital component of creating

00:02:40.540 that intimacy.

00:02:41.240 So yes, it's a biblical church that meets in a house. And what I mean by that is it's got all

00:02:51.080 the core tenets of a biblical church, which are a statement of faith. We here at Reformation

00:02:58.440 Seminary, we do the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith. It's the same statement of faith that

00:03:03.180 Spurgeon had. And so it is a tried and true statement of faith. We are a confessional

00:03:10.680 community, meaning that you know what to expect from us. You know that we are aligned and congruent

00:03:20.160 with historical theology. That's important. Most people at most churches have never read

00:03:26.460 their statement of faith. We emphasize that quite a bit because the more clarity you have

00:03:35.940 on your statement of faith, the more unity that can be achieved in your local body.

00:03:40.680 And we have so many churches today that are essentially, they've never read their statement

00:03:44.440 of faith at church, and there's superficial unity.

00:03:48.580 They think they're unified, but when in reality, they believe varying different things about

00:03:52.540 God, about the Bible, about the scriptures, about Christ.

00:03:55.920 So we're a confessional community.

00:03:58.000 In addition to that, there's elders and deacons and communion and church government and church

00:04:02.040 membership and church discipline and giving and all of the regular preaching, expository

00:04:08.340 preaching and prayer over one another and fellowship and a meal together. And so there's

00:04:14.400 all of those core elements that are so essential to a church. In other words, it's not a Bible

00:04:21.240 study. Right. And I think that there's probably two primary misconceptions, so let's deal with

00:04:26.960 both of those. Because frankly, what you just described is not what most people think of when

00:04:33.000 they think of house church. Very often when people think of house church, they're thinking of

00:04:38.040 well, I know this guy or this family who got mad at their church, and they might not put it this

00:04:43.540 way, but I know this family that got mad at church and they went off and decided to do their own

00:04:47.240 thing. So contrast for a minute, if you would, biblical house church with what people think of

00:04:52.520 when they hear house church. Yeah. So there is a community of house churches in the past decades

00:05:00.780 that have been what I would call Christian elitists,

00:05:06.200 where they feel like they have figured out the right way

00:05:09.100 or the better way to do church,

00:05:11.400 and they leave the traditional model

00:05:13.620 to pursue church in the purest form.

00:05:18.460 Well, you have those people in the homeschool movement too.

00:05:21.920 Right.

00:05:22.440 Right?

00:05:22.900 Public school.

00:05:23.840 Yeah, and I am adamantly against public school.

00:05:28.800 However, I know that there is a reality that some people have to do it.

00:05:32.820 It's not possible for some families to get their kids out.

00:05:36.860 Now, that being said, the traditional model of church, there is this history of people leaving the church.

00:05:45.020 They're nonconformists.

00:05:47.380 They're people that are seeking to—they're separatists.

00:05:54.440 They're seeking to produce a community that is frustrated at the traditional model. 0.68

00:05:59.880 And they are glorified Bible studies at best.

00:06:04.780 They're usually charismatic.

00:06:06.800 There's no church structure.

00:06:09.920 They go back to this kind of desire and romantic idea of the, quote, early church.

00:06:15.320 but they don't have the historical theological doctrines

00:06:20.220 around ecclesiology that make a church what a church is.

00:06:25.240 I often say, we have the early church passion

00:06:27.700 in a house church community,

00:06:28.980 but we also have Reformation doctrine.

00:06:31.300 And when you combine the two,

00:06:33.220 then you get a real strong expression of church.

00:06:36.340 So when most people,

00:06:38.640 like even when people tell me about a house church,

00:06:41.120 I automatically default to,

00:06:43.380 ooh, I wonder if it's...

00:06:44.860 Yeah, what crazy stuff is being taught there?

00:06:46.780 What weird, yeah, sure.

00:06:48.160 Because it's pretty strange,

00:06:49.420 and there's usually a lack of accountability.

00:06:52.860 And again, this is why,

00:06:54.120 which we'll talk about in later episodes,

00:06:55.520 is why we have the Reformation Fellowship Network,

00:06:58.560 where the house churches that are in our network

00:07:01.080 are actually held accountable to a variety of standards,

00:07:03.800 keeping them in good standing with the network

00:07:05.800 so that parishioners can feel confident

00:07:11.120 when they arrive at a house church

00:07:12.460 that it's not a cult.

00:07:13.380 or not some weird heretical surprise.

00:07:15.980 Yeah, surprise.

00:07:16.680 So essentially, yeah, what we're talking about here

00:07:19.920 is that it's not a Bible study.

00:07:21.540 It's a real church with real authority,

00:07:26.280 with real biblical commitments,

00:07:28.260 and with a real desire to multiply,

00:07:33.020 to plant other house churches,

00:07:35.200 to fulfill the Great Commission,

00:07:37.560 and to stay in alignment with historical,

00:07:41.600 confessional, biblical Christianity. Right. And so, like I said, there's kind of those

00:07:46.860 two things to contrast it with. And you mentioned the second one, the first being kind of that rogue

00:07:51.260 house church, right, led by who knows what doing who knows what. The second one you already

00:07:56.380 mentioned is a Bible study. Now, one of the traditional churches' pretty good solutions 0.99

00:08:01.500 to trying to fix that intimacy and loneliness problem has been Sunday school or small groups

00:08:06.580 or life groups or community groups, whatever name they happen to go by at the church.

00:08:11.600 Um, this, what we're talking about is different than a Bible study, but why and how?

00:08:17.840 Yeah. So this is not a small group either. Um, imagine someone trying to exercise church

00:08:23.640 discipline at a small group. You're like, wait, are you, are you an elder? Um, and, uh, or just,

00:08:31.720 you know, maybe doing communion or having a baptism or some of these things that are

00:08:37.520 traditionally, and I would say theologically connected to the church, trying to do those

00:08:42.640 things at a Bible study. A Bible study is a Bible study. And my, just a quick kind of sidetrack on

00:08:50.460 that is that we don't generally see Bible studies or small groups anywhere in church history.

00:08:58.780 The only time we would see a Bible study is that a pastor, an elder at the church was leading them

00:09:03.600 in like the Puritan era. Matthew Henry would lead a Bible study for his church throughout the midweek

00:09:09.280 to young adults and to older adults, for example. But we don't see Christians getting together with

00:09:17.600 their Bibles without the oversight of elders in their life to do Bible studies or small groups.

00:09:22.820 This is a very new concept. I'm talking 1900 and something years goes by. We've never done this.

00:09:29.060 And now, I think it's actually a big part of the problem of the church today. If you search on YouTube how to start a Bible study, it's the top videos are 21-year-old girls teaching you how to do the Bible study. 0.97

00:09:43.440 And so it becomes this disconnected opportunity for the church to gather and learn doctrine without the oversight of biblical elders.

00:09:53.100 And so these Bible studies become these really rich environments for people.

00:09:59.260 People actually, if you go to the average Christian, you say, where do you feel like you've grown most and feel most connected?

00:10:04.780 It's going to be in their small group Bible study.

00:10:06.660 Yes, they're not going to say Sunday.

00:10:07.940 They're going to say their small group.

00:10:08.740 So they're getting the half of the element of the house church where they're getting that closeness and the connectedness, but they're typically lacking that doctrinal, biblical, authoritative church oversight on those small groups.

00:10:24.140 So yes, the small group has been essentially the traditional models, the traditional church's way to compensate for the inadequacy of the connectedness in the traditional model.

00:10:34.740 And so, you know, we can't get connected on Sunday.

00:10:38.200 So get connected with your small group.

00:10:39.940 Where in a house church, you don't need a small group.

00:10:43.880 Like we don't have small groups.

00:10:45.580 We'll have a men's meeting and a women's meeting once a week.

00:10:48.500 They're not Bible studies.

00:10:50.060 We might talk about the Bible.

00:10:51.900 We might have a thing that's a book that we're going to read together on some theology book or something.

00:10:57.180 But we don't need a small group Bible study because church is sufficient.

00:11:02.940 We are already closely connected.

00:11:05.260 And so that's why we're different.

00:11:07.800 And again, there's a liturgical structure when we get together.

00:11:11.580 It's not just, hey, how's everybody doing?

00:11:14.740 Let's pray together.

00:11:15.600 It's not just spirit-led chaos.

00:11:16.820 Yes, it's not spirit-led chaos.

00:11:18.220 We have a liturgical order of worship that we follow that is rooted in Scripture.

00:11:24.080 And I mean, we print it out and hand it to you when you're at the door.

00:11:27.100 I mean, so it's traditional church, but it's just in a house.

00:11:30.900 But the environment itself creates an opportunity to fulfill some of those longing desires and inconsistencies that people are feeling between what they read and what they experience.

00:11:42.360 Right. And so really the biblical house church then is an attempt or a way, a method of trying to have the best of both worlds.

00:11:49.960 still being very much rooted in the history of the church and historical doctrines of the church

00:11:55.140 and practice of the church, but also working to capitalize on that smaller dynamic that has been

00:12:02.540 present throughout most of the church's history. And one of the things, I think the things that is

00:12:07.600 key to keeping these biblical house churches on track is the Reformation Fellowship Network,

00:12:15.040 but we don't have time to talk about it. Yeah, we're going to have to talk about that on the

00:12:19.040 next episode or later down the line. Absolutely. So I'm excited to get into that dynamic because

00:12:24.140 that network is really one of the keys because it's one of the things that keeps the churches

00:12:28.920 connected, keeps them accountable, and really answers a lot of the questions that people have

00:12:33.160 about how do we keep house churches walking on the straight and narrow. But we will get to that

00:12:37.540 in a future episode. So all of that said, thanks so much for joining us again for this episode of

00:12:43.000 How We Do House Church. We are so excited and blessed to be bringing this to you on a regular

00:12:47.000 basis. Dale, thank you again for your time today. Awesome. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. So

00:12:51.400 that's a wrap on this one. If you would like more information on how to start a house church in your

00:12:56.900 area, you can head to reformationseminary.com for more information or pick up a copy of Dale's book,

00:13:02.540 How We Do House Church. Just as a reminder, these episodes are available in both podcast

00:13:08.720 and video format across all platforms. So keep checking us out and we'll talk to you next time.

00:13:17.000 Transcription by CastingWords

Dale Partridge - July 21, 2020

What Is A Biblical House Church？

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