Video Transcript: House to House (Introductory Materials)

So we're seeing house church networks today, and places like Myanmar and India, all over the United States and Canada and the Caribbean, South America and Europe and ice like go backtrack about 45 years and tell you how this whole thing actually got started. 

And so basically, I grew up in a Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, grew up in a religious home, and I grew up in the Church of the Brethren, founded by Alexander Mack from back in the days there of the Reformation in Germany. And I came gave my life to Christ as a young man at 11 years of age, but I wasn't disciple. It really didn't. I often say it didn't really stick, so to speak. And next 7 years, it wasn't long until I was living a double life. I met a girl in high school who really knew Jesus in a personal way, and her name was Laverne, and I really liked her a lot. 

So I was living this double life, but I began to act like I'm a great Christian with her. To make a long story short, one day she said to me, she said, Larry, if you're to die tonight, are you sure you're going to heaven? And well, I wasn't quite sure, given my life was really a mess. And that night, I went home, and I said to the Lord, I met over my Bible. And you know, I read in the New Testament where Jesus was speaking to the Pharisees, and he said, You whitewash tombstones. And I realized that's what I was. I was a huge hypocrite. And I said, Jesus, enough beside my bed. If you can use my messed up life, I'll serve you the rest of my life. And I just believed in faith, that the cross took care of all my sins and all that happened my life, and I was totally changed, totally transformed. 

Next time I saw this young lady, she knew something happened to me, that I was totally revolutionized through Jesus and through faith in Christ. And the great part of the story is that a few years later, and by three years, by four or five years later, I married her, and we've been partners for life. Are now married 45 years, and God's blesses with four wonderful kids and in six wonderful grandchildren. So we feel very, very blessed. 

So let me tell you what happened in those days. I was so hungry for God, so hungry for what God wanted to do in my life and our lives, and so I started to devour the Bible. I love the book of Acts. Man, I take the book of Acts. I read the book of Acts again and again and again. I noticed in the book of Acts that every day people were coming to faith in Christ, every day they be added to the church in Acts, chapter 247 I said, you know, that's exactly what I want to see. Because honestly, many my friends in those days were Christians. 

We're having youth Bible studies and and again, she grew up in a Mennonite tradition, and Mennonite Church, for me, they love the Lord and Anna Baptist tradition, and they love the Lord, and I would get involved in her church and her youth group, and then we, then she get married, but, and, but we saw, I saw in the Bible that I wanted to live the way the early apostles did the book of Acts. 

So when did we decide in our little youth Bible studies all young people? And we decided we're gonna go into our community and find young people who really need Jesus. So we did that. We went into our local community, you found a group of young people who knew nothing about the Lord. I mean, in the high school that I grew up in, these young people were the ones they go into front of the of the school in the morning. They've got a walk through the back. They leave for the day. I mean, their lives are totally, totally messed up.

If we started by baseball, basketball. Just hung out with these kids who knew nothing about Jesus, and it was not easy. We had we had times they come with a rock suit or the windows of our house, all kinds of crazy things, but we knew we're connecting with a generation who needed Jesus. And one by one, here's what they said. They said, why do you do this? Why do you come and hang out with us? It was just friendship evangelism. And we said, because Jesus changed our lives, and he can change your life too, and you're one by one young men and young women begin to give their lives to Christ. So as I said, I get married. 

My wife, Laverne, and I became missionaries for a year a little island off the coast of South Carolina and USA called JOHN'S ISLAND, and we ministered to many people that came back and I was a farm boy. I tell people I didn't have seminary experience back in those days. I didn't have Bible school experience. In those days, I loved Jesus, I devoured the Bible, and I want to see young people come. To Jesus and give the lives to Jesus Christ. And so I was like, I tell people I was a chicken farmer, and my dad and I had this business. By day, I was working in my day job. By night, we're trying to help young people come to Christ. 

Well, soon there were so many young people who gave the lives to Jesus. I mean, we're talking dozens of young people, and so we knew they needed to become part of the local church, and so we decide we better take them into local churches. 

Now, we took them into our church. I joined the Mennonite Church in those days, which was a very traditional church and but they just didn't fit a culturally. Every church has its own culture, and culturally, these young people didn't fit into our Mennonite shirt. You see, my wife's background was her daddy was a pastor, her brother's brother in law's pastor, uncle's pastors. My background basically alcoholism. You know, my family said through mental and problems many, many of my ancestors have been in mental hospitals. 

That was my background. But see, when Jesus changed me, he really changed me, and just gave me a heart for the lost, heart for Jesus, heart for the kingdom of God, love for the church. So we took young people, really band, loads of them, every weekend, into local churches all over our community. That's how we learned to love the body of Christ. We went to Baptist churches and Methodist churches, and you name it, Presbyterian churches, and you name it, just because we want to help these young people fit in to these local churches. 

But there was a problem. The problem was, sometimes we literally took more young people into these local churches. Sometimes they were actually in the whole church. It was the craziest thing. And then after the whole church service was over, we were hoping they connected, but they didn't, because we go to our house and we take van loads of these young people back to our house, pack out our house, I play my guitar. We'd worship together. We pray for young people, you know, as they're giving their lives to Christ and helping get and get their act cleaned up. And we didn't know it, but we had become their spiritual parents, the spiritual moms and dads to these young people. We used to know it was happening in the midst of all was going on as we were just praying with these young people, we realized one day there, we have to figure out what you can do with all these young men and women who've given their lives to Jesus Christ.

And so we begin to take the next steps. And if I can fast forward now, 45 years later, today, we're privileged to serve with a family of churches called dove International, D, O, V, E, declaring a victory Emmanuel International and planting churches, and many them house churches all over the world.

Now here's what we realize when we look at the New Testament Church. We realize the New Testament church looked different than the church that we've seen. We were thinking church was a building where church, we know is not Abigail Dominiak, one since those are called out into the life of Jesus Christ, and we saw in the New Testament, they met from house to house. In fact, I've often said we need to have a 2020 vision, 2020 acts, 2020 he taught them publicly. He taught them from house to house. 2020 and yes, there's a place to come together publicly. 

There's a place where we see that in the Scriptures when they come together in Solomon's courts, you know acts. Chapter Two, Holy Spirit is poured out. Peter stands up to preach. And what happens? 3000 people say, you what must we do to be saved? They give the lives to Jesus Christ. And what happened after that? Acts, chapter 2;42, to 47 what we see the New Testament. Church began to take shape, and they met from house to house or breaking bread. It was relational church. So if there's anything we want to understand here in the beginning about house church and about the body of Christ and what church really looks like, it's relational church. 

Now, I want to give a disclaimer right now, I was privileged to be a mega church pastor. I pastored a church of a few 1000 people. I've experienced that I believe in large churches. I pastored a community church, church of 100 you know, 200 300 as we're in that whole process. I believe in churches that meet in the building, and that their buildings not the church, but the church meets in the building. I believe in that, but I want you to know that there is a place in Scripture and God's taking us back to the future, back in that old movie I grew up with, Back to the Future.

 You take his back to the future. I believe the future church, there's going to be 1000s and 1000s and millions. Is happening, ready? Of house churches. You can call them organic churches, or house churches or micro churches. Call whatever you want, but I want you to the Gods doing something today. He's taking his back, I believe, to the book of Acts, where we can see we can experience the same things they experience in the book of act relational church, where the leaders of the church are spiritual fathers and spiritual mothers who are caring for their spiritual kids, or spiritual children, so to speak, because that is what God's doing today's. 

So today, as I said, we're privileged to work with leaders all over the world, training in many nations, helping people understand that the church is not a meeting. The church is not Abigail Dominiak, the church is people, people who are committed to Jesus, committed to one another, committed to family, spiritual family. I've said for years, if you can understand the natural family in a healthy way. You'll understand the spiritual family, because we realize, way back in those days, long before I was ever a quote, unquote, pastors they would call today, you know, given spiritual leadership to a group of people from the understanding that many of us have long before that, we realized that we really were spiritual moms and spiritual dads to these kids, and they were just looking to us for leadership.

Now I want to tell you much more in the next few sessions, but I want to share with you a scripture that is kind of puts it all together for me. In the Scripture is found in 1 Samuel in chapter 7, and this is when the Philistines were invading the Israelites, and they didn't know what theory is. Cried out to God. Samuel, the Prophet, was there leading the way. And the Bible says, as they cried out to God, they offered the sacrifice to God in 1 Samuel, chapter 7, the Bible says it like this. He says that day in verse 11 and verse 10, that day the Lord against the Philistines threw them into such a panic, they were routed before the Israelites. 

So what happened? God came and provide a miracle on the salad back on my life, the last 45 years, God came and provide a miracle. I was a chicken farmer. I wasn't expecting the God would use me and use others, my friends, in the way they had to continue to train another generation plant churches all over the world. I had no idea that was going to happen, but I knew it was God. And then the Bible says that Samuel did an amazing thing. He took a stone, he set it up between Mizpah and Shen, and he named it Ebenezer. Saying the meaning of Ebenezer, thus far, the Lord has helped us. I simply want to say that any people say to me, how in the world you find yourself at the place, sure, today where you work here, I service. I'm blessed to serve as international director of domination with churches in 20 nations, 100 and 100 and 100 of churches, 1000s of house fellowships all over the world. 

That how that happened? Well, it's really, I say two things. 

Number one, it's the grace of God. Because God wants to use you to see your nation change. He will see you to see your city change. He wants to use you to see your friend’s change, to see true spiritual families emerge in the form of house fellowships. Because, see, house fellowships is just in house fell and house church is just one of the ways guys working today, but a very important ways working today. And that's why I'm excited to be with you for these 36 sessions in this course, as we go through the nuts and bolts about what does it really mean to lead a House Fellowship, to lead a house Church? What does that look like? What's the requirements? And I'm going to share with you our mistakes. Only share with you are the problems we went through. I would tell you more of our story these next few sessions, but as I said, I look back now say, you know, it's just the grace of God. 

But number two, I've been so blessed to have an amazing group of people. If they work with me and work with us, I make tons of mistakes. I'll share all those mistakes with you. But I want you to know the Word of God is true, and when the Bible says in the last day, so pour out a spirit in all flesh, sons and daughters will prophesy. Young men will see visions. Old men dream dreams. It's happening today. It's happening in your nation. It's happening in your city. And believe me, if God can use this chicken farmer to see 1000s of house fellowships released in the nations, He will use you in an even greater way to see your nation changed, to see your city changed, to see your family changed for the glory of God. 

So God loves teamwork. He honors teamwork. And God also gives His grace, His abundant favor. And because of the favor of God, I can simply say I can stand here today a very, very, very blessed man, my wife, Laverne, has been a tremendous blessing with me as we get married a few years after she was warned to really influence me for Christ, and we've been the team together with a group of amazing people throughout the world, and got that amazing grace is on your life. Expect God to use you in a powerful way, to see house fellowships release in your city and your town and your village, in your nation and in the nations of the world.