Video Transcript: House to House - Chapter 11 The Meetings

We've been talking about the responsibilities that a house church leader would  have, and obviously, obviously, one of the big responsibilities is, how do you  actually lead the meeting? That's part of it. But reason I emphasize some other  areas in the last session was, I want to be clear, this leading house church is  leading a family it's leading a group of people. It's not just leading a meeting. I  have a family, a wonderful wife, four wonderful children. We grew up before the  kids get married. Bottom line was, there were six of us in our family, and it  wasn't because we ate a meal at five o'clock every night together. It was  because we were a family. Yes, the family in a meal is because we were family. I was responsible for those in our family, not just at five o'clock every night. I  responsible for them to help them grow become all they could ever be in God.  The same thing is true with leadership in a house church, really any church, but  it's really exemplified. You really see it is magnified in house church setting,  because the parents, that the spiritual parents are, the senior leaders, lead  elders, senior elders, what ever you want to call them of the local house church.  So I want to read you a scripture that applies to the meeting, and then hopefully  we'll have some time in this session and talk about some other responsibilities  also that are even outside the meeting. The scripture I want to read is I  Corinthians 14:26 it says, What then shall we say, brothers, when you come  together, everyone has a hymn or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation, all these must be done for the strengthening of the church.  Now let's get real. How could that verse fit in most churches today? How could  that fit in a church of 100 people? How can it fit when you come together  everyone as a hymn? You'd be there all day, you know, or word of instruction,  Revelation, tongue, interpretation, and then he says, but everything happens.  That's where leadership comes in. It must come be done for the strengthening of the church. That's why I believe so much in house church. In a house church of  10 people, or eight people or 20 people, you can do this thing. Someone can  come with a song, someone can come with some instruction. Someone can  come with a revelation or interpretation, or gifts of the Spirit, tongue,  interpretation, prophecy, whatever you can do that in house church. You can do  some of that in a larger church setting. But a house church, it really happens.  That's why I encourage pastors of large churches have some kind of small  House Fellowship expression somehow for everyone, so they can experience  the Bible so they can experience that. Now, what does this say about house  church leadership? Here's the word I want to use, the best house church leaders I know are not necessarily the best preachers, they're not, necessarily, you  know, the most dynamic, charismatic leaders, they're shepherds. They care for  people, they love people, and they are facilitators. That's the word, they're  facilitators. And let me explain to you what I mean by that? What is a facilitator?  Because to lead a house church meeting? Yes, there's food. Yes, yes. I said  before, we encourage that. You don't have to have food. We encourage it, you 

know, because something happens relationally around food it doesn't happen  any other way. Yes, I think is some time of worship, whether or not you have a  CD, or you know that you play, or someone plays a guitar, or you simply read  

Scripture again. Every house church is different, and you need to do what God's called you to do. Be your own unique house church before the Lord. The values  of the kingdom don't change. The Scripture doesn't change, but the way it works out will change. Now, what will a wise leader do if they're a facilitator, let's say  

you're in a house church. I'm the leader and you're there. Let's say there's, I  don't know, 12 people in a house church. Now if I'm a facilitator, let me give you  an example of what I do. We'll come together, and after some worship together,  then I'll say something like this. I'll say, tell me what's happened in your life last  week. Have you seen God in any situation your life last week? If so, what does  that look like? Or I can say, Do you have any answers to prayer last week? Or I'll just ask something. Or I'll say, What do you remember from the last house  church meeting? What did you take home? What were your takeaways? What  did you take home? And I'll wait, and Sally says something. I say, Okay, that's  good. Sally and and John something totally different. And then Jack says, Yeah,  my child. Because often what happens is the children, it may be somebody in  the house church, they'll take take turns, different times, different weeks, and  they'll be ministering to the children, or someone from another house church,  who meets another night of the week can also minister to the children. You can  share responsibilities. Say, this happened to my child. This happened. We're so  thankful for this, for giving the testimony, and you're listening. Five people are  speaking. You haven't said a thing except tell me what you think your a facilitator and all at once, it's different than Sunday morning church in a building where  one where you. The most, most anointed preacher, most anointed worship  leader, and those things are all wonderful and good. It's only a few people who  are actually ministering. Here you have many people who are learning to  minister. That's the genius in the spirit of the house church ministry, but you  have become the facilitator. So I encourage you to be a facilitator. It doesn't  mean there's no times of teaching. It doesn't mean there's no times of  preaching, or whatever you do your house church. There's many ways you can  do that. I mean, the internet today has many opportunities for you, from, you  know, from sermon jams, as I mentioned before, to others, all kinds of  opportunities that that you can have for people to take five minutes, 10 minutes,  share something from Scripture and then simply talk about it. How does this  apply to your life or my life? Something I learned many years ago from a friend  from Houston, Texas was that in a small group meeting, including house church, there are four basic components. I'll have to get my friend, Ralph Neighbor, they  give him the the credit for learning this from him. He said, I've learned there are  four w's. He said, the first W in a meeting. And this applied more to small group,  but I find the same thing applies to house church. This is not a rule. You have to 

do these four things, but it gives you some some structural give you a sense of,  just give you a sense of, of making sure you have a pattern that you can follow.  If Holy Spirit rips this apart into something different, that's great, but gives you a  place to start. The 4w are simply this welcome worship, Word and works, the  

works of God. Let me start with welcome. If you have food, the welcome's  happening? If you have food, people welcoming one another, getting to know  one another. New people are coming, saying, Hey, sit down and have some  pizza with me, or Chinese food, or Indian food, or wherever you're in the world,  Kenyan food, or wherever you're in the world. And say, let's have some food  together, and you share together in food. Or if you do not have food, or some  kind of welcome, you get to know people. You might ask some kind of a  question that people can respond to. Could be something in life, but something  they can connect with. That is the first and basically welcome is the relationship  from you to me. It's a horizontal relationship that's the first thing. So to use the  analogy we used earlier in the welcome, you have living stones who are  beginning to connect with one another. That's welcome. So you're this living  stone is learning about this living stone. And all this living stone said, No, we had to pray because my mother was sick and went to a hospital. And I'm reaching  out to this guy at work and and, but he's really resisting, and I need some  prayer. And all the ones you're getting this kind of relationship together, that is  the horizontal relationship. And that's important. That's the first w, that is the  welcome. The second W that we want to look at is worship again. It can be any  way. With many, many house churches I found throughout the nations, you can  just use, use your your phone, and you can play some, you know, play. I'm  grateful for places like like Bethel and and in Hillsong in Australia, and on and  on. These places have these worship songs to honor God. We can use those to  worship the Lord together. Or, if you're somebody who's gifted, use their gift. Or  they play the guitar, the piano, they sing whatever, where we worship together.  Somebody read scripture, read the Psalms together, the apostles creed or, you  know, whatever fits with the genre of your local house church. That's the second that is worship. It doesn't have to be that long, but we need a time of getting  before the presence of God. The third thing is the word. And by the way, worship is me and us to God vertical. So first, living stones each other, the welcome us  toward another horizontal. Then you had the vertical. It's us to God, and then the Word of God. Is God speaking to us. So that's what we need, the word. And  however you do that, and I would encourage you not to have long, drawn out  teachings, because I think that the blessing of house church is you can teach for 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, and then have people respond. What's God saying to you? Is there something that's in this scripture that applies to your life,  or or you find jumps off the page to you? And what's happening then is, you  seem to me, see the word many people use, what's called a discovery Bible  study. You can Google that, and they where they take a scripture or take a story,

and they are certain questions about that. It gets everybody involved. Everybody committed to the Scripture. You coming back next week, when you come back  together again, say, What has God done? Was God show me what's applied to  my life? It's wonderful. There's many ways to do this. It's the word of God. So in  the last one, is the works of God. And what I mean by that is prayer and  evangelism. Is God working through us? So welcome me to you and you to me.  First, W, second, W, worship me and us to God. Third, W, the word God to us, or God to me, and the fourth W, works prayer and evangelism, the works of God.  God's through us, and that's where we have the opportunity that we can say, is  anybody need prayer? We've seen God do so many things. We laid hands on  one another. We pray. We pray for the the empty chair the two empty chairs you  have, the chairs that God would bring people into the kingdom of God. We pray  for people to reaching out to at work or wherever that might be. So I have found  Honestly, though, when it comes to house church, the meeting after the meeting  is more important than the meeting. Let me explain that the meeting after the  meeting is you have the things you do, you eat, that you worship and you pray  again. If you do three of the four, two of the four obey Holy Spirit. It just gives us  a starting point. It gives us a pattern to help us. It's like, it's like lighting the  match to start the fire, and so that we do that. But there's times that God may  lead us to have to have the meeting a bit shorter, and then after the meeting  becomes more important than the meeting. Here's what I mean by the meeting.  After the meeting we have two people who begin to get together, and  somebody's crying, and they're over, over here, one side of the room, God is  ministering powerfully after the meeting. It's a meeting after the meeting where  people would be to open up about the lives and the struggle with their children in school or lack of school, whatever's going through the meeting after the  meeting, I think my favorite house church meeting that ever was involved in, as I think back in many, many years, was we had some new Christians who had  come to our house church, and they came to our house church, and But one  night they called me, said, we're not coming tonight. We're busy. We I said,  What are you doing? They said, we have a we have some work we have to do  at our house, in our lawn, around our house. And my first thought, honestly, was, I wish they'd be committed. And I got this divine idea from the Lord said, tonight,  when we all get together and get our Bibles, let's just put our Bibles back in the  car. Let's all of us go to their house and let's help them. Let's be the hands and  feet of Jesus. Let's help them with the lawn. Do what they need to do. It was  amazing. I look back as probably one of my, if not my, all time favorite house  church meeting. There wasn't a meeting with us, being a family together and  serving them. You can do prayer walks together. There's so many things. It's not  always sitting around a circle with the Bible in your lap it's taking the living Christ with us, with this family God's given us, growing together, learning together,  expecting that we will say that other people and other churches and new church 

in the future to see the kingdom of God advance. So a couple more things that I  think would be give clarity. You say, people ask me, must we have food? You  don't have to, but it's great if you can. It just sort of that food in your hand and a  cup in your hand, drinking that causes people to be able to somehow open up  about their lives and see these living stones really, really come together. I  People ask me often about spiritual gifts, supernatural spiritual gifts. I think the  house church is a great place to see spiritual gifts. Release you say, what if  someone makes a mistake? We all do. The Bible says we should not despise  prophecy, and we should not despise him, but we should test all things, hold on  fast to that which is good. The house church is a great place because the  leadership of the house church said, need to learn, to give the guidance this  needed. In the midst of the house church setting, I remember we had a guy  came for the first time. I was a house church leader came for the first time,  Began to speak in this demonic language. It was horrible. These chills grew up  your spine about, whoa, there's something wrong here. Well, I was responsible.  I was a leader the group, myself and assistant leader took that person into  another room, and he had a time of deliverance, getting free from demonic  activity, because we were responsible. Remember, when God makes you  responsible, you're responsible for the family. You bring protection, correction  and direction to the family. That's what elders do in a local church, whether it's a  large church or a small church, they bring protection. They bring correction and  protection, direction and correction to the local church. I would encourage you to use a home that people there, that people are free to come to again. Every  culture is different, but many cultures needs to be home. There's this clean  enough that doesn't turn people off, so to speak. And I say, keep the meetings  as short as possible, an hour, perhaps an hour and a quarter, maybe an hour  and a half maximum. And they say, you have time for the meeting after the  meeting. And again, worship can be in many, many, many different ways. People often ask this. They say, what about the children? And I mentioned you what we  do in our house church that we're involved with right now, where we have, we  have some people who recalled the children, and every other week, one week,  the children in the whole time, and our house church leader has a gift, or bring  the children into the teaching works great. Everyone cannot do that. Sometimes  you share responsibility, as I said before, where it's another house church and  there's two house church in the same area, meet two different nights, and you  have some people from this house church or this house church with children.  Children need to be ministered to. They should not just be the you know,  involved in recreation or sports or whatever, while the children their parents are  involved in worshiping the Lord. They need to have their own experience with  God, and there's many ways to do that. Sometimes house churches will have  the children in all the time, but it takes a special group of people to do that.  Again, you have to know what works for you, and you need to hear from the 

Holy Spirit on that. And you'll see wonderful things happen as you obey God in  that and in the midst of that, let me say something about finances. It's really  important in our house church that we always have. We take offerings every  week. We take people give gifts. They give offerings, they encourage people to  tithe, and then the eldership of that house church makes a decision on that tithe, and in fact, and then they give a 10th of that because they're involved in a  network of house churches. They give a 10th of the tithe. They give that to the  leadership team of the network of the house churches, and plus the fact even  the leader of the house church gives his tithe to that group, because, rather than tithing into his own church to where he makes a decision, others make that  decision. What I'm saying is that it's important that there were people of integrity. And so often I'll see two people who are designated, and they'll be counting the  money together. It'll be signing, signing a little piece of paper the amount of  money giving to the person in the house church who is the treasurer, because  we need to be people of integrity. And you know house church members family  celebrate birthdays, celebrate anniversaries? You know, celebrate where Jesus  loves. When we celebrate, we celebrate him, and we celebrate what he's doing  in our midst. House churches, baptize people, have communion, the  sacraments. All can happen in the house church, and because we see in the  scriptures, remember, in the New Testament church, they met from house to  house, baby dedications. House church, it's church. So whatever's happening is  happening in the house church. Again, I'm gonna answer to answer the question I miss so many times I mentioned earlier, how many people in house church? It  can be five, it can be three, it can be 10, it can be 50 or more, even, I don't  recommend that. But the key is that here's the difference between the house  church, a multiline house church and community church. In a house church, as it begins to grow, we realize, okay, we need to start another house church. Now.  What happens when there's small groups in a community church? They multiply  small groups in a community church, but still part of the same church in a house  church is starting a whole new church that's part of the network, and growing  network. There are some amazing house church networks in India today,  Myanmar today in many, many nations in America today is happening in  America, from coast to coast. I know house church networks, just even the word is involved with right here in this nation, it's happening in Canada. It's happening in many parts of the world. And again, it's something new that God's doing, but  it's not new. It's as old as the Bible. The church in the New Testament was a  house church network. They met publicly at times Solomon's temple Acts 15.  They met together when the apostle get back and spoke to the church, but they  met from house to house, and again, the first church building, as I said earlier,  was built in 323 ad so the first few 100 years of the early church, the church was a house church, network of networks of networks of networks. God's restoring  his church today, and one of the ways he's doing that is by seeing people who 

get this heart for the Lord to start brand new house churches. I remember  speaking at a mega church leadership training gathering, and an elderly man  came up to me and he said, Could I talk to you? Took me to Sunday school  room in the back of the auditorium, and he began to weep. He said, I love this  church. I love this pastor. I've been here for many years, but I have a call to be a pastor. He said, I don't think it's gonna ever happened? I'm called to be a pastor. And I knew immediately, I mean, I was it was not a church, was part of our  family of churches, that I didn't have authority in that church I knew immediately  was talking about. And, you know, he went on to be with the Lord a few years  ago, to my knowledge, he never experienced that opportunity to be a pastor, but he'd been released from his church to start a house church, he could have  fulfilled the call of God in his life to be the pastor he was called to be, I believe,  as many who are taking this course, and you've been involved with some of you  in church for years, some of you more recently, some of you for years, but God's calling you to be a house church planter, a house church leader. There's a  pastoral call in your life that will be released as you obey the Lord in this day.  And I pray right now for the blessing of God to be over you in the name of  Jesus. And I pray that you would rise up and take the mantle Lord has given  you, and you begin to not only be involved in house church, but you'd be  involved to see how church was planted for the glory of God. Amen.