Video Transcript: House to House - Twelve Scriptural Values for Healthy House Churches
12 scriptural values for healthy house churches and and basically I'm putting in this one little section there about 15 minutes, or 15 to 20 minutes. I'm putting a lot of things we've been teaching in this entire course. But just so you can have
it in one setting, you can write these down. Number one is the first value we need to have, the first scripture value. Value something you die remember. Vision is work, excuse me, is where you're going. Value something is deep in your heart. When you work with a team of people, for example, you have the same vision, but you must eventually have the same values. If you do not, eventually, the team will tear down. I have learned over many years of leadership before I give you soil values that for any team to work together long term, you must have four commonalities. Number one, you must have commonality of vision. We've gone the same direction. Number two, you must have commonality of values. Values are those things you die for, things you really believe you might have to work with somebody five years, six years or 10 years to find what are the true values in the heart. Eventually it'll come out. Number three is procedure. How you're going to do it? If you're called a house church, that's a different kind of procedure in Community Church, different kind of procedure than mega church. So you call the house church, you're calling that procedure the people that work with you need to call the same procedure if you're gonna work with you long term. And number four, you must have God given relationship, healthy relationship. And if you break down on one of those areas, vision, values, procedure, relationship, the team that you're serving will no longer be effective, and there will be problems most church planting teams, I should say, many church planting teams start out lots of faith. You're down the road. Some people are leaving. Initial people are gone. Why? Because there were some differences, usually in values. See you can use the same terms. That's like the word elder means one thing to one person in one movement, means something is totally different to somebody else in another movement or one nation, or another nation, the word apostle means one thing in one nation, maybe something else to somebody else. So why do I say that? Because when you're building a team as much as possible, talk about those four areas, your vision, write it down, your values. What are the things you really believe? Do you believe that women can be in leadership? That's a value. I mean on and on, you go many different. Do you believe that God, supernaturally works today by His Holy Spirit? You believe in His miracles today? That's a value. So if you're working with people who see that differently, and we be in heaven together, it's wonderful, but to work together, we have the same values, same procedure. House church is a procedure, a way to do church. House church networking? It's a procedure. And then the fourth area, as they said, is relationship. It's all built on relationship, but it's not just relationship, and that's why some people, when they come together again, if I can use this analogy here and these four squares, vision, values, procedure, relationship, you can come
together, be in the same family, have great relationships, it is going to be awesome, and two years down the road, things fall apart. Why? Because there may be never values or maybe procedure, and even though the relationship may have been good, and can that affect the relationship? Now I've learned something else about church planting, house, church planting, any kind of church planting. I've learned that some people, when you start a house church, are like bricks on the wall. I mean, they are here. They are bricks on the wall. They'll be here till the Lord comes back. There are bricks on the wall, stones on the wall built together other people who help you, or what I call scaffolding. So I can't quite reach this, but I had a scaffolding here. I'd stand on the scaffolding and I'd be able to get this brick up here on top. Scaffolding. Now, what happens when the wall is completely built? If this whole wall was built with all these stones, then the scaffolding comes down. It's no longer needed. Some people are called by God to be scaffolding. They'll come and help you start. But it's just for a season of time, and then eventually they'll be going through, what did I do wrong? You didn't didn't that do anything wrong? They were called to be scaffolding. They will probably go and help somebody else do the same thing. And it's okay. You say, what if? How do I know somebody scaffolding or bricks? You may not know. Just know that change happens. It's okay, but for long term, consistency, building together, seeing the kingdom of God built through a house church network, we need to be on the same page with basic scriptural values. Now I'm gonna give you 12 values, 12 scriptural values for a healthy house church and a healthy house church network. Number one, we're called to prepare for the harvest. We're called to prepare for the harvest. There is a harvest coming. And I will read all these scriptures because we will have time in the session. But the Bible says in Matthew 9:7 he is the Lord of the harvest. Pray for laborers to bring forth. It. For the harvest, and so we're preparing for harvest. The reason that we need house churches is because there's a harvest coming, and many who come will not fit into the institutional church. I remember, well, when I was a young man, the Jesus movement hit America from the West Coast to the East Coast. I remember people filled barns, young people. They call them hippies in those days, long hair in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where I lived, they were filled. It was exciting. All these new things God was doing, new these people come to Christ. No Christian background. It was just a God thing. It's something that God had done. But we needed new wineskins. We needed new churches. About 10 years ago, where I live in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, we had another a move of God among young people. And some young people came out of Youth With A Mission, moved back home, began to pray, said, we're concerned about the young people of our area. They started a Bible study where one of the main leaders was killed in a car accident. And in the fear of God, came on these young people, and soon there was more than 1000 young people every week, every week, gathering together young people come to
Christ. It was another move of God. I mean, it was in newspapers. It was in television program. It was just a God thing that he did, but it was for harvesting these young people when they come into the kingdom of God, get right with God. May one day are in new churches that were formed in our community, not all, but many, because there's a need for new wineskins, for the new wine. So why do we need new house churches? What's the value the harvest? Let's reach people for Jesus number two, the second value is to teach. We want to teach people how to know Jesus. And you can only get so much from a sermon with 100 or 1000 or 20,000 people praise God for good preachers and good sermons, but much of it, it's just learning one on one. I remember when I was a young pastor, we have a house church, and we had a young man who's a fairly new believer, and he said to me one day, he said, I don't understand all the $1,000 words there's always being preached in these big churches and these churches. I need someone to explain to me in layman's terms and regular, regular terms. I remember another but see when someone sat with him and explained it to him, he understood it because we're helping him know how to walk with Jesus, how to pray, how to read the scriptures, and another friend and he said, Larry, I'm afraid to pray publicly. I've never done that. I said, I'll help you. We had little house church that met at six o'clock in the morning. Bunch of guys got together, and I said, I'll help you. I said, How could I? How could What should I do? He said, sometime I'm not expecting it. Asked me to pray. I said, Sure, love to do that. So I remember six o'clock in the morning, we had a little breakfast there, little coffee and we're gonna pray. And we had a bunch of prayer requests. I thought, this is a day, and I asked him to pray. His eyes got real big, but he did it. He went on and gave a leadership, but later on, different kinds of leadership in the church. But what happened was, it happened because of a house church where people together were learning together and growing together. It wasn't just going to a meeting and seeing the back of somebody's head. Value number three is the value of reaching the lost. So we're preparing for harvest, teaching people to know Jesus and to pray. And then we are, we are focusing on outreach and reaching the lost. And again, we had a whole session on that before I simply want you to know. I want to say it again, the church is not a hospital. Yes, there's a medical unit. Helps people get healed up, but it's not a hospital. But the Church of Jesus Christ is a is an army, and we're called to see people come into the kingdom of God. Let's keep our focus always on the extra chair. Keep our focus always a who are the people in our oikosis that we can reach for Jesus? Number four, we focus on the Great Commission. We've been talking about that throughout this entire course, prayer, evangelism, discipleship, are called to make disciples. We're going to talk more about that when we talk more about mentoring and spiritual fathering and spiritual mothering. It's really interesting. The world system understands making disciples. It's a church that is kind of slow. I mean, really, I flew here in an airplane, and I'm glad when I was in
Newark Liberty airport yesterday, and I flew here to Michigan to do this, this course. I am very glad to know that the pilot had some training, was discipled. He was discipled properly. I'm glad when I got in the plane, didn't say, Hello. I've never done this before, but I was on YouTube, and I think on how to fly a plane, I said, let me open this plane. You know, how would you feel? You go to a doctor. He says, You have appendicitis, and you have to go to a hospital and have to have your appendix taken out. And doctor says, Man, I'm glad you're here. I've never done this, but I looked it up and I Googled it, and I found out how to do that. He said, it's crazy. No, that doctor was discipled. He was discipled, and the same thing is true for us. We're called to make disciples. That is a value. It doesn't just happen. Is a kingdom value. House church is a great place to make disciples. Seeing the church as people and not a building is a value. We've talked a lot about that already in this course, the church is people. Again, it's not just, it's not just having a meeting someplace, or it's not. Say, Well, my church is that building. No church is not a building. It is people. And we already, we already talked about that. It's the called out ones. Number six, the believers are called to do the work of ministry. I often talk about what's called a holy man myth and a holy building myth. Holy building myth is people think we're in the building. That's where God is. Well, he's there because you're there because Christ lives in you. That's why he's there. He's in the car when you're driving down the road, just as much as in the church building or church sanctuary. We often call it, no he's in our house. When we have a house church. That's where Jesus is. He comes in us and together, together, we're experiencing Jesus in our in our midst, and that's what we need to be released to train others in these very important truths. The church number seven is built through trust and relationships. It's trust in relationships. It's the as I mentioned earlier in our training. It's the living stones being built together into a spiritual house. It's the mortar of relationships. It's all about relationship. It's relationship with God and relationship with people. And that is a value we hold for healthy house church ministry. I mean, I meet pastors, and you know, they say, Well, yeah, we have relationship in our church. Say, really, if you have a group of 100 people, 200 people, 500 meeting in a building, and again, if you have some kind of house fellowships can work, but that's all you have. You see people sitting there, seeing the back of somebody's head every Sunday, you don't have living stones built together. You have a truck that goes all over town picks up stones, dumps them on a pile at your church building. And you say, that's living stones being built together. No, it's not. It's a pile of rocks, pile of people not connected together. We're called to be connected through relationship. We expect spiritual multiplication. Number eight, we talked about that already. God's creation is characterized by multiplication, and we expect multiplication to happen. Number nine, God is the God of flexibility and creativity. Every snowflake is different and every house church is different. I remember talk. I was speaking to a group of leaders, and the lady
came up to me and said, our house church, we meet. It was like a small group house church. We meet at 12 midnight every week. I said, 12 midnight? Why do you do that? She said, we work second shift. We're off work at 11. We're ready to worship God and hang out together. Say, Great, I'm in bed at that time. That's fine for me, but see, there's a sense of flexibility, in creativity, in the kingdom, in the kingdom of God, in number 10 value, we're called to empower God's people. It's all about empowerment. It's empowering other people to be ministers. Other people do a job we hope will be better than we could ever do it. Others like Elijah had Elisha expected a double anointing, expecting that a loose. And we serve. And I've seen that again and again as I served in the nations with with those that that have been trained to empower God's people. I had house church leader came to our training, and Becky called us a he called a House Fellowship leader, I believe, he came to our training. He said, You know, we're doing everything. He said, we use our house. I do the teaching. We do everything. I said, make a list of all the stuff you're doing and ask the people, anybody want to help? So he did. I made a list. He came back the next time he said, I made the list, he said, and I showed the people. I said, here's the house. We needed anybody else for use the house. And we meet people the door and we have some coffee, and here's all the stuff we do the teaching and all this. And he said, people took everything. He was shocked. And that doesn't easily happen me. They took everything. You know, six months later, that one house church became three house churches. And you know why? Because people learn by doing, because they had a chance to experience what God was doing. So we empower God's people. Number 11, here's a value God's building teams God is a team player, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit team, and he's called us to be teams also go to California and see those big redwoods. You know, they're huge. You know, the root system does not go very far on the ground. You know why they stand tall? Because they go out and interlock with one another, and that's why teamwork is so powerful. That's why I shared before. If you're a Walt, Disney, find your Roy, if you're a Roy, and go find your Walt and share with him. And make sure that we build teams. We build with common vision, values, procedure and relationships. And the last thing we'll take much more time on, and that, is this, God's called us to raise up spiritual fathers and spiritual mothers. We're going to talk a lot more about that. How does that apply to house church ministry throughout the other sessions that we have together in this course on developing house churches