Dale Partridge - Why House Church？

00:00:00.000 Welcome to How We Do House Church. My name is Dr. Jason Barker, and I serve as the academic

00:00:12.960 dean at Reformation Seminary, where it is our mission to train men to plant biblical

00:00:17.320 house churches all around the world. I'm joined here, as always, by our founder and

00:00:21.280 president, Dale Partridge. Dale, thanks for joining us today.

00:00:23.540 I'm excited to be here.

00:00:24.620 So our goal each time that we gather is to discuss one question that is relevant to

00:00:29.720 house church planting? And today, Dale, it's a pretty big, but sort of general, broad question,

00:00:36.360 and that is this. Dale, why house church? Yeah, so this is a question I think a lot of

00:00:41.540 families, a lot of Christian men and women are asking themselves right now,

00:00:46.700 why house church? They want to know more about it. I think that it starts with

00:00:50.480 my experience is that I was looking at my Bible with my left hand,

00:00:56.600 and then looking at my Sunday experience in my right hand, and they weren't matching up.

00:01:03.060 And so that was the beginning or the inauguration of the journey of

00:01:06.460 really seeking out alternative expressions of church. I didn't want something that was

00:01:13.560 unbiblical, but I was definitely frustrated with how extra biblical the traditional church had

00:01:22.100 become. The things that we did at church, I wasn't finding in scripture, children's ministry,

00:01:28.060 the pragmatism, the monologue versus a dialogue, the visitor-centric versus the committed-centric

00:01:38.500 focus. There's a variety of those things. I don't remember who said it, but they said that

00:01:46.020 going to church should be more like going to the gym and less like going to the movies.

00:01:52.100 And I thought that was really profound because I was feeling this sense of contributor Christianity.

00:02:00.320 I wanted to be involved, but really I was an inactive spectator.

00:02:04.200 I was having inactive spectator Christianity or audience Christianity.

00:02:08.560 And so there just started to be a rub on my heart.

00:02:14.360 And this is over 10 years ago.

00:02:17.060 And it took a long time to figure out what a biblical expression of house church really looked like.

00:02:22.100 But that was the sense of I wanted the deeply connected, intimate relationships that were so prevalent in Scripture, but not prevalent in my life.

00:02:35.700 And so Veronica and I started having discussions about that and what that looked like.

00:02:40.180 And we started going from bigger church to smaller church to smaller church to smaller church.

00:02:45.980 there's a metaphor i once heard or an illustration about polar bears and there was a a polar bear

00:02:57.480 that was born in new mexico and polar bears interestingly they can live in new mexico

00:03:04.160 but they can't reproduce in that type of climate and a polar bear from washington state comes up

00:03:12.920 to this polar bear in New Mexico and says,

00:03:15.600 hey, I know you think that New Mexico is the habitat for the polar bear,

00:03:20.500 but I'm telling you, Washington, it's cool.

00:03:23.820 There's some snow parts of the year.

00:03:26.220 The habitat for the polar bear is here in Washington.

00:03:31.780 Well, he goes up to Washington.

00:03:33.700 A polar bear comes down from Alaska and says,

00:03:35.680 hey, guys, I know you think that Washington is the place

00:03:39.120 where the habitat for the polar bear is,

00:03:44.060 but it's cold year round here in Alaska

00:03:47.280 and there's snow most of the year.

00:03:49.100 You really should come to be in Alaska.

00:03:52.120 Well, finally, the Antarctic polar bear comes and says,

00:03:56.040 well, polar bears,

00:03:58.580 there's only one habitat for the polar bear

00:04:01.680 and it's Antarctica.

00:04:05.080 And that is where the polar bear flourishes.

00:04:07.760 Well, that concept is how I think about biblical church, is that we have found Antarctica.

00:04:16.840 It's this place where you go, wow, I'm never going to go back to a traditional function.

00:04:25.020 Now, that being said, we love the traditional church.

00:04:28.540 Absolutely love it.

00:04:29.760 Between us leaving Oregon and planting a house church here in Arizona, we were at a traditional

00:04:37.220 church worshiping the Lord with our brothers and sisters in Christ there. But there is just a sense

00:04:44.420 of several vital elements that are missing. So that was the drive. There's other parts that we

00:04:52.840 can chat about, but that was the personal and intimate drive. So I have a question for you.

00:04:57.420 hit on an interesting dynamic, and it has to do with the size of churches. You mentioned kind of

00:05:03.720 coming from a larger church into a smaller church. Why is it that in the church world,

00:05:09.580 we seem to think that larger is better? And if you think about it, in every other area of life,

00:05:14.840 we want smaller. We want our children in smaller classrooms because we understand there's an

00:05:18.740 educational benefit to that. You don't take your entire extended family with you when you go on

00:05:23.080 vacation, just your immediate family, your wife and your kids. If we acknowledge that smaller is

00:05:29.000 better and more effective and preferable, why is it that the benchmark, the ruler for churches is

00:05:36.640 the bigger they are, the better they are? Yeah, we've all fought for our children's classrooms

00:05:40.560 to be smaller. And we've all fought for, you know, if you go to a conference and there's a

00:05:47.160 certain influential individual leading that conference, you pay more when there's less

00:05:52.920 people, implying that less is more. And it's interesting that there's an inconsistency that

00:06:00.460 we're not applying that same principle to church where we think is more is better.

00:06:07.040 When in reality, it's proving almost on every metric that it's not. I mean, I think that

00:06:13.160 It's evident that we are designed to only be close with a handful of people, 10 to 12 people.

00:06:21.460 There's a reason that Jesus had 12 and not 80 or 100 or 1,000.

00:06:27.040 He preached to thousands.

00:06:28.880 He was influential to thousands, but he was discipling 12.

00:06:33.540 And he was single, right?

00:06:35.140 Didn't have a family.

00:06:35.960 And so, I mean, if you asked your wife and you go, hey, how many friends do we have that are like, we could drop our kids off for a couple nights without even asking and trust that everything's going to be good.

00:06:50.780 And these are, I'm not talking family.

00:06:52.260 I'm talking just friends.

00:06:53.760 You might have two or three families.

00:06:56.820 At most, right?

00:06:57.400 At most.

00:06:58.220 And so, we don't have the time to be close with 40 people.

00:07:04.280 we have the time to be close with maybe five to ten people if we work at it i mean at a house

00:07:12.040 church we have say 10 families 12 families if i wanted to get dinner with every one of those

00:07:18.480 families once a month at 12 families that's three dinners a week that's not going to happen right

00:07:27.300 not when you have little kids um so it might take me two months to get through with the dinner

00:07:33.840 and that's still having a dinner at least once a week or twice a week,

00:07:37.600 probably more realistically, three months to have dinner

00:07:40.520 with just every family in our 12-family house church.

00:07:44.260 You turn that into a 50, 70, 80-family church,

00:07:48.240 and you might get dinner once every year and a half with your pastor.

00:07:52.480 There's just a lack of deeply connected relationships

00:07:55.640 that can be achieved in a larger gathering.

00:08:00.860 And so one thing I want to talk about more, Jason, is this idea of institutional distrust.

00:08:10.760 Right. Yes.

00:08:12.040 There's this thing of, I think people are seeing it in every possible category in business and economics and education and medical.

00:08:21.920 and there's this kind of fear of big being dishonest or big having some sort of...

00:08:32.800 You've been in ministry for 20 years, and you were talking to me about

00:08:37.820 the one thing you love about house church is that there's no money involved.

00:08:43.040 Just talk about that for a second.

00:08:44.680 Yeah. One of the challenges in being a pastor and being in ministry is that there are often things

00:08:51.780 that you know you need to say or counsel you want to give from the full counsel of scripture,

00:08:56.820 but you're often having to decide, do I sugarcoat this? Do I deliver it in the way that it needs to

00:09:03.800 be? Do I deliver it all? Because I am relying on this paycheck to provide for my family.

00:09:09.440 And so, you know, like many things in life, when money gets involved, it does tend to make it more

00:09:14.940 challenging and you do feel like your hands are tied a little bit. So in this house church format,

00:09:21.360 While we do believe that a pastor should be paid for his service, it's not by design going to be a full-time income.

00:09:29.920 And so you're very much freer to do ministry the way that is in line with Scripture.

00:09:36.240 Yeah, you don't have a salary in a house church model.

00:09:39.480 You can receive giving, but you're bivocational.

00:09:44.200 It allows you to be free in the way that you speak.

00:09:47.100 there's a quote by Upton Sinclair that I've twisted that says something like at least you're

00:09:52.100 honest yeah it's like it's difficult for a man to preach on something when his salary depends on him

00:09:57.560 not preaching it yeah and that is so true and then in addition like we can reinvest all the

00:10:03.880 money that's used for the landscaping budget or the parking lot painting or the sign or the electric

00:10:12.080 bill, you can reinvest those financial realities into other things locally in your ministry.

00:10:21.420 And so we already have buildings. They're just houses. And I think the big gap really,

00:10:27.360 as we kind of wrap up this episode, is people are just intimidated because they don't know

00:10:33.040 how to begin. It's difficult to take someone to something you've never been yourself.

00:10:38.860 and you can't explain what you don't understand.

00:10:42.340 And so there's this barrier to entry to house church

00:10:45.000 that we're hoping to solve, obviously, with this podcast,

00:10:49.380 episode after episode, letting people learn what it is,

00:10:53.380 what it's like, so that they can feel more confident

00:10:56.220 to establish one of these.

00:10:58.080 No, absolutely.

00:10:59.320 Before we wrap up, I want to touch back on one thing

00:11:01.640 that you mentioned.

00:11:02.280 You talked about the relational depth

00:11:04.300 and the intimacy of relationships.

00:11:05.880 And I know multiple times, separate from this podcast, you and I have discussed what we would

00:11:12.000 probably call an epidemic of loneliness in society today. I think it's really important

00:11:15.960 to touch on this topic. How does House Church help with that? Yeah, so last Sunday I actually

00:11:25.220 preached on the New Testament call to one-anothering, this mutual ministering of the gospel.

00:11:34.060 and there's over a hundred instances where this greek word alelon

00:11:40.620 appears and it's this idea of one anothering this deeply intimate relationship you know

00:11:49.320 confess your sins into one another and pray for one another you may be healed bear one another's

00:11:53.160 burdens and so fulfill the law of christ um love one another be humble towards one another um you

00:11:59.220 they're all over the New Testament. Most Christians have not had a chance to experience

00:12:05.780 more than a few of those one another's carried out in their own life.

00:12:11.520 And the loneliness factor, this sense of everything's 10 feet wide and one inch deep,

00:12:19.440 where we're just kind of, we know each other, but we don't really know each other.

00:12:26.200 House Church forces an environment that produces a level of intimacy that's very uncommon to American individualism.

00:12:37.340 And so it provides an environment and an ambiance and a structure that takes people to a level of connectedness and dependability and transparency and fellowship that most American Christians have never experienced.

00:13:01.360 And I'll say one example.

00:13:04.920 On Sundays in a house church, we have a period of time where we're allowing anybody from the body to share prayer requests and praise reports.

00:13:14.320 And in a traditional church, you don't get that opportunity to share your prayer request.

00:13:19.340 It can't be done.

00:13:21.140 In a house church, you're shocked by how many people have prayer requests.

00:13:25.180 and how almost every person in the room

00:13:29.000 has something very difficult going on in their life

00:13:33.000 that in a traditional model, you would have never known.

00:13:36.860 And the traditional model is, hey, how you doing?

00:13:38.940 Oh, we're doing all right.

00:13:39.960 Okay, great.

00:13:41.480 Move on to the next person.

00:13:43.300 In the house church, you walk away and you go,

00:13:45.200 my goodness, everybody's life is tough.

00:13:48.260 And there's a sense of the sharing of those tough moments and asking for prayer that brings people to a place of closeness that is just rich and solves the vast majority of those loneliness issues because there's real relationship there.

00:14:12.940 There's a reciprocating, participating fellowship that's occurring that is like the fabric woven together of Christian life.

00:14:27.540 And so, House Church does that.

00:14:30.420 Now, you need a shepherd who can really lead you towards that.

00:14:36.120 And it takes a lot of training and time, which is why we started Reformation Seminary.

00:14:40.780 But it is absolutely part of that journey, and it does solve that problem.

00:14:47.640 Yeah, you know, it's almost as if, and this seems kind of a pessimistic way of looking at it,

00:14:53.140 but pain, suffering, difficulty, challenges, disappointment,

00:14:57.660 those are almost universal constants in life, not just in life as a whole,

00:15:01.540 but in life of believers as well.

00:15:03.260 And what is a church, if not a place, where people gather together

00:15:08.140 and we bring all of our baggage with us and we find hope and we find guidance and direction from

00:15:12.980 God's word and from other believers on what steps to take to move forward with hope in life. And so

00:15:19.480 it's neat to know about this house church model and that it is uniquely designed to meet those

00:15:26.080 needs. Amen. Yeah, it is. We've gone a few centuries with only one way to do church.

00:15:37.200 And there is an alternative that is biblical. And that's really the mission of this show is

00:15:44.680 to teach people how to do that. Well, Dale, I think that's probably a good place for us to

00:15:48.400 wrap this episode. And we want to thank you guys for taking the time to tune into this episode of

00:15:53.140 How We Do House Church. I want to remind you that it is available in both video and podcast form

00:15:58.680 across all formats. Now, if you happen to have any questions about how you can be trained

00:16:02.820 to plant a biblical house church in your neck of the woods, you've got two options. You can 0.99

00:16:07.760 head to reformationseminary.com and inquire for more information, or you can order a copy of

00:16:13.380 Dale's book, also titled How We Do House Church. But for now, thanks so much for joining us,

00:16:18.040 and we'll see you next time.

00:16:23.140 Transcription by CastingWords

Dale Partridge - September 06, 2022

Why House Church？

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