Video Transcript: House to House - Chapter 10 The Responsibilities of Leaders

In this session, we want to talk about the responsibilities of leaders, especially  the responsibilities of house church leaders. Because really, in a true house  church, I'm not talking about House Fellowship, that's part of a larger  congregation. But a true house church, the leadership of the house church  would be in an eldership role, and there'd be, I would use the term, we use them senior elder, or lead elder or and then those who serve with them would also be  elders. So many of the house churches that we're involved with throughout the  nations, and house church networks, again, all over America, Canada. They're  in the Caribbean, South America, Europe, and also in in Asia and Africa. We find that the eldership at a local church really are the ones in house church. They're  the ones who lead the house. Here's what I'm saying. You know, there's a lot  more than I have time to give in this teaching, but this book of I'd written many  years ago with three of my leadership friends who we served in Devon and  astral now, many of us were 30 and 35 years and Ron Myer, Steve Procopchak,  Brain Sauder, and myself, it's called the biblical role of elders for today's church.  And so just that can be online, or you get that is available if you'd ever want the I don't have time to get into all the details of that here. But I also want to mention,  we'll talk more later. A bit more about the five fold ministry. There's a great little  book by my friend Ron Myer. Serves as the the director of United States of  America and also the assistant international director of dove International. It's  called the five fold ministry made practical. And you know, let me just explain  this. You have elders, and then you have the five fold ministry. They're all  leadership. Now, elders give governmental leadership to the church, and they're  the ones who make decisions about finance in the church, and what's the vision  of our house church, and what's God calls to do, and when do we multiply? And  all those things, elders main decisions. Again, I would call that governmental  authority. But then you have the five fold ministry. You have the apostles, the  prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and the teachers. And these are more  what I would call equipping gifts, because Ephesians 4:11-12, says God says in  the church he has given some to be apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors,  teachers for the equipping, training of the believers, the saints, for the work of  ministry. So we need people to train us. We need evangelists to train us to  evangelize. We need apostles to train us to think bigger. Not just think about our  own little house church or little city, but think about our nation and the nations.  We need prophets who will hear the clear word of the Lord for the now. What's  God saying? What's he doing now? And what do you want to do in the future?  We need pastors because pastors will help shepherd us. I love being around  pastors because they Shepherd. My wife is a role pastor. That's our gift, and I  feel very pastored by her, because she's a shepherd, and shepherds will do that. I love being around pastors. They'll help us grow in the Lord from a shepherding  perspective. And then there's a teacher. They'll keep us grounded on the Word  of God. But these five fold gifts in the Bible, in Acts 15, they had to make some 

decisions, whatever, what do they do with the problem they're having in Antioch? And they all came together. There's a group of people called the Judaizers, and  they were saying, everyone, all the Gentiles, must be circumcised. Paul and  Barnabas said, no we don't agree with that. And I'll tell more the story later, but I  want to say this, there were a couple groups of people that there was the  apostles and elders. The key apostles were making decisions for an whole area. Paul sent Titus to preach, and he said in Titus 1:5, and I'm sending you to set in  order those seem to be set in order get things straightened out like ordain elders in every church, appoint elders in every church. Because he Titus had an  apostolic call to the island of Crete working with elders. So you have  governmental leadership elders, governmental leadership apostles, but apostles also have an equipping gift. They're called to equip people to think larger. So let  me tell you how it worked for me. I thought I was an evangelist because my  heart when I was in my 20s was lead people to Jesus Christ. I was a missionary. I was in construction. I wore one of those heavy hard hats inside the hard hats  were tracts, tracts with the gospel on to give people. I was always thinking, Who  do I serve Christ with today? I was sure I was an evangelist. I came back to  Pennsylvania and began have Bible studies that grew into hundreds of young  people would come together, and there would be young people give their lives to Christ every week. I was convinced I was an evangelist. And then I was asked to continue to teach and do more and more teaching. I thought, well, maybe I'm not evangelist, maybe I'm a teacher. So then I began to teach. And then would you  believe in 1980 we started our church, and they called me a pastor. Well, really  we use the term pastor very freely today, but really we say the leader of the  church is a pastor. They might have a Pastoral gift. They might have a  shepherding gift, but really is eldership is really the rule of government. They  have many people we call pastors are not pastors. I meet evangelists are called  pastors. I meet prophets are called pastors. I meet apostles are called pastors.  And I meet teachers who are called pastors. There are some Prophet teachers  who obviously work together that way, but teachers also have a gift to help me  see people's lives changed by the word of God. So why am I saying all this?  Well, I was convinced I was called to be a teacher, and then, would you believe? After a while, I thought, well, maybe I'm not called be a teacher, a teacher. I'm  called to be a pastor. Now that people called me the senior pastor of this church, it sounds really confusing but that's what was going on in my life. And then I  began to hang around these prophets who prophesy, and I began to prophesy  over people. I said, Well, there's a supernatural power of God available.  Perhaps I'm a prophet. And then when you believe, people begin to use the a  word, the apostle. Word, I still personally like the term apostolic leader, because  the word apostle was so misused in many parts the body of Christ. I mean,  people who have a business card says apostle as a as a title, and usually  they're really not. I mean, these are gifts. These are not titles. Jesus didn't give 

us titles. He gave us gifts. So we can lead God's people. There be any reason I  probably have some apostolic gifts in my life, or gift of apostle, and realize that  today, that's what I do. I haven't been a senior elder or a pastor a local church  for over 20 years, but I pastor pastors, and I see larger visions, and I go into I  was in Zambia a few weeks ago, meeting with the leadership of people who are  starting churches throughout the nation. I was in Kenya just a couple days  before that, where I saw in 10 years. Saw 2000 people's lives changed, and 10  churches planted in this region. It's all that, whereas I was training others who  have apostolic gifts to do the same thing, why am I saying all that? It's all about  leadership. So the truth is, some of us carry both. So some of us carry gift of  government and also a gift of five fold ministry at the same time but I want you  to know, if you want to know more, and I know, depending on the nation of the  world you're in, it may not be possible, but this is all available online if that's  something that you're they're interested in. Now let's get back to the specifics of  house church leadership in this book, house to house. That's the book that is the the text that we're using for this course, in this book, house to house. Now in this section, in this chapter, it's called the responsibilities, just working through the  responsibilities of leaders, what they're responsible for this is talking about  House Fellowship or small group leaders. It's also talking about house church  leaders. Now I want to, in this verbal session I'm giving you here, I want to talk  to you about house church leadership. What's the responsibility of those who  lead house churches. So we're going to begin with the most important thing this  may surprise some of you, most important thing that we do is we pray. We're  called to pray for the people under our care. That's the most important thing that  we will do. And I want to read a few scriptures that will bear this out. The first  one is found in Ezekiel 22:30, God says, I look for a man among them who  would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so  that I would not have to destroy it, but I found none. And Ezekiel, the Prophet,  speaking God, speaking to the Prophet, said, I'm looking for someone who will  stand in the gap between the people and God. I can't find anybody. God is  looking for people stand in the gap between the people of God under our care in house church, and the God who we serve. Now we pray for them. Obviously,  they need their own relationship with God. You know, we are all kings and  priests, and yet, as leaders, were called to pray for God's people. Here's how  Paul the Apostle said it. He said in Galatians 4:19 he said this. And it takes time, takes time to learn to pray. And I mentioned in a earlier session how I learned to  pray through, you know, through becoming a house of prayer and I'm still in that  process of learning and growing in that and these 12 rooms of prayers I talked  about before, it's helped me tremendously, because often I was I would get this  focus, or, you know, and praying, and I you get my focus on the Lord and on  how he prayed. So yes, it's time for warfare and prayer. I have time for that. And  there's a time for predict declaration, prayer, and I time for that, a time to 

surrender my heart, my life to God in prayer, and surrender others, my character to God, and on or on. So that's important. But listen to this Scripture. Paul said  this in Galatians, 4:19 my dear children for whom I'm again in the pains of  childbirth, until Christ is formed in you know, he said, I'm praying that Christ will  be formed in you, and that's what it's all about. All of us are growing in the image of Jesus Christ. I'm becoming more like Jesus. You're becoming more like  Jesus. We're praying, as I pray every day for my family, that they would come  into a place where they conformed into the image of Christ, and Paul said,  That's what I was doing for the Galatians. And so he said, I labor in prayer, for  your prayer is a labor. And I love this Matthew 18:18, I tell you the truth. He said, Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. Whatever you loose in  Earth will be loosed in heaven. And we're talking about spiritual warfare. We're  talking about prayer and seeking the face of God and stay in the gap for those  who we whom we serve with and I love, Ephesians 6:12 says, For our struggle  is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, the authorities, against the  powers of this dark world, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly  places. It's not the people that's the problem. Many times, the leadership think  that people are the problem? No, it's the demons behind the scenes. They're  causing people to do what they do. Yes, they still make choices. However, it's  amazing what can happen with spiritual warfare. As we pray and we see lives  change. I was just with a Christian leader this week, and he told me how his  family began to pray and they began to increase their area of prayer and a focus in prayer, how they saw this major change happen. It was almost overnight. Was shocking to him, but happened, happened through prayer. And so, of all the  things that we do, we are called to pray as a leader, as a house church leader,  we're called to pray now, I would encourage you to not take this on all by  yourself. That's why you have assistant leaders. That's why you need to think  strategically. Yes, you're not called to pray for everybody every day, but you're  called to make sure everybody's prayed for every day. I'll say it again. You may  not be called to pray for everyone every day, but you're called to be sure  everyone is prayed for. I would draw on a map. I make a circle. I make some  concentric circles. I put your leadership team in the middle. And I would say,  Who are these people out here and who? And get with your leadership team. If  you have two or three people who serve with you leadership, are you willing to  pray for this person every day, this person every day, you take the people are  left and all a sudden the prayer burden is being spread out. You have all these  people who are being blessed by God because they're learning how to pray. And you have the people God, whom you're serving, they're blessed because they're receiving the answers to prayer through the people who are praying. So again,  we're responsible to pray. See Christ formed in people. Second thing is, we are  called as leaders to make disciples. And we'll talk much more about this some  later sessions, very practically how we do this. But we are called to fulfill the 

Great Commission, Matthew 28 we read in a former session 19-20. We're called to make this happen. We're called to be sure everyone in our house church is  disciple. I'm involved in house church right now. Who's going to do they say  people are too busy. We just don't know how to do this. What they do? It works.  They said, one week will come. They meet Saturday night. They have 40  people. They come together, and the leader is just a dynamic young man. And  with time, they eat, first of all, every living spirit, we eat, and we eat because a  lot happens while you eat. You find out what's going on people's lives. You're a  family. You're connecting. And then after that, is some time of worship, and they  have the kids involved in worship, a young girl playing drums, a little girl about 9- 10, years of age, she's helping to lead worships. Great, we lead worship. And  then often there'll be some kind of either someone will teach, or they'll do what's  called sermon jam. You can Google that and find out what that is. Or they'll do,  you know, to be some kind of scripture or something that they'll look at together,  and they'll do it all together the next week. They do some of the same things.  But when, rather than having everyone together after worship, they have food.  They worship together. They have people go to different parts of the property,  some outside, some the little bedroom, maybe two or three people. They have  discipleship groups, because of smaller groups, where people can really show  the hearts, and they can really pray. And you have that way, you're training  future leaders. People learn by doing, and then they all come back together at  the end, share what God's doing. And sometimes this opposite groups meet  outside that meeting, and that's great, but there's many ways every house  church looks different, but we need to make sure we're making disciples.  Because you can, rather than having 100 people in a building, you can have 40  people in a house, and you're meeting in the house church to look just like the  building church. And that's what we need to think strategically. Holy Spirit. What  are you doing? How can we be a family? How can everyone be discipled? How  can we do that again? You're called to decide for everybody personally, but  you're responsible to make sure everyone's disciple. Next thing the leaders are  called to do is encourage in that control when they're called to be controlling  leaders. I love Colossians 1:28 we proclaim Him Jesus, admonishing, teaching  everyone with all wisdom. So we need to present everyone mature or perfect in  Christ. And honestly, that's the heart cry, the heart cry of all leaders. How church leaders should be? How do we present people mature in Christ, and we gotta be very careful that we don't take the role the Holy Spirit. I mean, people need to.  We need to train people how to hear the voice of God. A couple years ago, I  began to write down all the ways that God speaks to us. And I. Had 10 ways in  12 ways. And God obviously speaks through His Word, speaks through dreams,  speaks through visions, he speaks through his still small voice. You know, he  speaks through prophecy. He speaks, you know, through nature, many ways.  And I can't I came up with 30 ways. I wrote a book was called, hearing God 30 

different ways. And then a publishing company said, Aren't there more ways to  God? only, I'm sure there are. They said to keep praying and asking God, get  some more. So I wrote another book. It's called Speak Lord. I'm listening 50  ways God speaks now. Then the interesting thing about this, I have all these  ways that God speaks. Interesting thing about that we have, we have churches  in house, churches. That can take this book one way God speaks every week.  They take 50 different weeks to go through the whole thing to recognize, how is  God speaking to them. But here's the thing is I find very interesting, and that is  this God speaks to different people in different ways at different times. But it's  our responsibility to encourage people to listen to God for themselves and not  always expect to hear it through somebody else. Some people say, if I would get a prophecy, or if this person just speak to me, what's God saying to you?  Because again, I said before, I'll say it again. If somebody can talk you into it,  somebody else will talk you out of it. We need to make sure we're hearing the  voice of God. We're not controlling people. We're encouraging people. Also, I  believe, after there's a few small groups, has started a few house churches to  start, there's more of an apostolic, pastoral role, and you become a coach to  house church leaders. That's a whole, whole other area, and I just want to say it  again and again and again. If you're called to leadership, to lead a house  church, have as many assistant leaders as you can. Why? Because some of  them, when you start a new house church, they'll stay with the old house church, that one others will go out and start a house church. Remember, people learn by doing. And you know that I find others. There's really different kinds of assistant  leaders. One is the developmental house church leader. And that he's gonna  assistant leader, he's gonna grow into becoming house church leader. One is a  perpetual assistant leader? Some people, that's their call to support somebody  else, or do it the whole life. They'll help you to help somebody else, and that's  okay. Don't expect every assistant leader to become a house church leader.  They won't. That's a big mistake we made many years ago. This is what I call a  catalyst house church leader. I've been this many times I see house church  leader. I mean assistant leader, many times. I did that a year ago, helping with  new house church. I was an elder with them, just for a bit. I was assistant leader just helping them for a bit, because I was a catalyst to help them, because we  had helped start so many house churches in the past, it was a great, great  blessing, not only for us, but for them. And we continue to train assistant  leaders, because many of them, as I said, will be the future house church  leaders that you're looking for. I think the last few things I would say in this  session is this, I'd say we need to have a heart of a pastor. Heart of a shepherd  doesn't mean you're the gift of a shepherd, but you have the heart of a  shepherd. And your heart, you just want to see people's lives changed. And I  say the last thing is leaders are called. Our responsibility is we are called to set  the example to build relationships with people. And by the way, it doesn't all 

happen at the house church meeting. If the only time the people in your house  church see one another is at the house church meeting, there's something  wrong. There should be people having coffee or tea someplace that people  again, wherever you at in part of the world, whatever, wherever, wherever  people do socially in your village, or whatever, the people are connecting  together, and you're encouraging that that's just you and the people. But  remember, you're delegating as much as you can, whatever you can give away,  give away, whatever responsibility you give away, give away, you still have the  final responsibility. If people make a mistake, you kind of help you help them.  You're compassionate with them. You bless them, and you take the  responsibility. If people do well, make sure that God and them are the ones who  get the credit and not you that is healthy servant leadership, fulfilling the  responsibilities that God's given them.