(gentle music) - Matt, we must keep stressing that planting churches does not begin with the Sunday service. And it's not all about the service. If someone is gonna follow the missionary task, they have to plant biblical and healthy churches.
And a big part of that is systems and structures. So Matt Planters need to know ecclesiology. What are some of the main aspects of the doctrine of the church ecclesiology that planters have to embed at the very beginning?
- You know, unfortunately learned a lot of this the hard way. (laughs jokingly) I was one of these guys that planted the church that I planted before I went to seminary. - [Noah] Wow.
- And so, and I don't think seminary's answer for everything, but my point is, is that I got an appreciation for theology later on in my ministry. - Yeah. - After I planted the church and after I realized the absolute need for an understanding of things like ecclesiology.
- Yeah. - You know, you plan a church and you realize pretty quickly that you need help, you need leadership. And lo and behold, you open up the Bible.
It talks about that very thing. It talks about elders and it talks about deacons and- - [Noah] Yeah. - And I learned pretty quickly that just a, not a basic understanding, but a thorough understanding of ecclesiology, specifically in the area of church leadership is crucial.
- [Noah] Yeah. - It's similar to understanding roles in marriage or similar to understanding the roles in the family. God created an order in the church and He wants it to function in the way that He's aligned it.
And it works best when you do. - Yeah. - And so, you know, one of the things that, and you and I have talked about this at length, but I think that a lack of understanding of ecclesiology led to probably one of the biggest mistakes that I ever made a ministry.
You know, I get the opportunity to speak in different places and people ask me like, "You know, Matt, what's the biggest mistake you made in church planning? " And the answer is pretty clear. It has to do with my lack of understanding.
- [Noah] Hmm. - Of elders and deacons and the structure of the church. You know, I planted the Austin Stone in 2002 and we grew pretty lap rapidly, but it was mostly college students.
- Yeah. - You know, and so we had a bunch of people coming. I didn't know what I was doing and we didn't have any money.
And so if some guy came along that was over the age of 30 and you know, was, had a heartbeat and carried a Bible, I'm like, "Brother, you wanna be an elder. " (both laughs happily) And that was a mistake. It turns out, and you know, the Bible is very clear that men that are called to be elders and deconstructed, lemme just say this.
There are are two biblical leadership positions, if you will, in the church. There's elder and there's deacon and they're very clear about what God is looking for. And those, that's okay.
I'll just, - [Noah] Yeah, - I'll just read 'em. But says, the saying is trustworthy. If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task.
Therefore, an overseer must be above reproach the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, which is important. Not a drunkard, not violent, but gentle, not quarrelsome, which is also very important. Not a lover of money.
He must manage his own household well with all dignity, keeping his children submissive. For someone who does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care? For God's church, he must not be a recent convert.
He may come puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil. You know, the three men that I chose to be my first elders just honestly were good men. But I did not ensure the basic necessity of making sure they were qualified.
And I know that sounds crazy, but I was 27 years old and didn't know what I was doing. - [Noah] Yeah. - And so, man, understanding what the scripture says, having the wisdom to follow through that, and we can talk more specifically about how I changed in the system that I built in to make sure it didn't happen yet.
But man, we had a difficult time with those guys. They're gonna be people that you, if you, the Bible says, don't lay hands on people too quickly. You know.
- So elders and deacons leadership. - [Matt] Yeah. - You talked about the family of God.
What's the other piece of that family of God that we see in ecclesiology is membership? - Yep. - And what about membership?
How important is that for church plants from the get go? - No, I think it's more than important. I personally think you can make a fairly strong biblical argument that it's biblical.
- [Noah] Yeah. - People argue this and there's smarter people that I, that disagree with me, but I preached the sermon one time on is church membership biblical. And you know, when you look at the New Testament church, when you look at what the scripture says, we are called to submit ourselves to elders.
- [Noah] Yeah. - And elders are placed biblically in the context of the local church. And so I think you can make a strong argument that at the very least, we are called to be in some sort of submitting, if not covenantal relationship with a group of biblically qualified men that we can submit ourselves under.
And so we structured membership at the Austin Stone, kind of based on that idea. But yeah, I think membership is crucial. I don't see how you do church without it.
- Right. - I think if you don't have kind of a structure for membership in your church and then a way to hold people accountable to that structure, then it's super easy to fall into a consumer mentality. - Yeah.
- If you're not calling people to that relationship of serving and giving and membership. So yeah, I think they're vital. - Hey, one more I'd like to ask you about.
You've got the Sunday gathering and you have elders that are leading there, but the church is so much more than the Sunday gathering, membership is so much more. It's all this other stuff that we're called to do with one another, talk about the ecclesiology as it relates to the church. Not only gather, but the church scattered, small groups.
What does that look like for a church and why is that so necessary? - When you look at Acts chapter two, it talks about how that the New Testament church was committed to fellowship. - [Noah] Yeah.
- So there was a commitment to cornea. And I remember reading that as a young church planner going, okay, that's just, you know, when I grew up, fellowship meant that after church, one Sunday a month, you went to the fellowship hall and had a potluck dinner, which was awesome, by the way. - Awesome.
- I mean, some of my best memories growing up were. - Yeah. - Eating all those old ladies fried chicken.
But there seems to be a stronger term used in the scripture that there was a commitment to it. - Yeah. - And so when I planted the stone, we made it a part of our DNA and where we were calling people from day one.
Look, the fact that you're coming on a Sunday and gathering with the body of Christ and worshiping the Lord and hearing from more to God is amazing. - [Noah] Yeah. - But God's called you to more.
And so we were constantly pushing people towards that smaller environment where they could be known and where they can be discipled in a face-to-face relationship. We actually, we can talk about it if you want to, but we actually transformed our small group environment later on in the life of our church from just being small groups to what we called missional small groups where it was not only were they gathering together and doing life together and discipling each other, but they were on mission together. And it was probably one of the best decisions we ever made.
- That's so awesome. So all this, you talked about all this ecclesiology, it's important to have a doctrinal understanding, a doctrinal underpinning from scripture, but there are some systems that have gotta be put in place. So what systems does a planter need to begin implementing in those first three years to make sure that the doctrinal ecclesiology is more than just head knowledge, but it's actually functioning in the life of the church?
- Yeah, that's a great question. And so I would, let's start with what we talked about first. Elders, let's just talk about elders.
You know, again, I just, I picked the first guys over 30 that were Christians and acted like they at least knew the Bible a little bit. But again, we read through the qualifications of elders. So we created a system that, man, I called it the Benaiah Project.
Basically what it was is I would just watch men that were serving in the church and that in many ways were fulfilling the role of elder without the title. - [Noah] Yeah. - They were the guys that were defending sound doctrine in a humble, godly way in the small group.
They were the ones that were going and serving the sick and the under-resourced and serving and you know, setting up and tearing down without having to be asked, just living out the godly life of a servant in the church. And I would handpick, I started with five or six, and by the way, this is after our first elder board imploded, you know, and had to start from scratch. - Yeah.
- And I that, I blame that on me, 100% But, and I would watch guys that were already sort of fulfilling the role. And then I created a system nowhere I basically told them, look, we're gonna put you through about a year-long just time of training and studying together. And we're gonna learn together what the scripture says about being an elder.
This is no promise that you're gonna be an elder, but we're gonna put you on a leadership track for potential leadership in the church. Either an elder or deacon. And I was super clear on the front-end, just 'cause you're in this doesn't mean you're gonna be called to do it.
But man, I, we spent a year together and we did life together. We walked through the scriptures together, we walked through the qualifications. And it's just a time where not only was I teaching them theology, it was also, and making sure they knew it, but I was also ensuring that they had the qualifications themselves.
- Yeah. - And you know, that their wife was the kind of person that we wanted to do ministry with. Women obviously are not elders, but they impact the elder.
And then, and this is key, after we spent a year together discipling these guys, training them, doing practical ministry together, then after that they did a six-month kind of probationary period where they would serve as an elder without the title, without laying hands on 'em. Because man, I think that's an important part of that. - Yeah.
- Because there's, I've just seen it happen a few times where guys will be a certain way, but there's something about getting the title that. - [Noah] Yeah. - Something changes in them.
- [Noah] Yeah. - And so we wanted to see what it was like to actually serve alongside 'em in that area. And then after that six-month period, we would bring 'em before the church, give people the opportunity to speak in, into that publicly.
And then we would lay hands on 'em. And after we implemented that system, year-long training, vetting, doing life together, six-month probationary period. The guys that didn't make it after that were, gosh, one out of 40 or 50.
- [Noah] Yeah. - Over the course of 20 years. - So Matt, we got leadership structure, leadership system in place.
But what about missional community? You talked about people being called to not just come to church on Sunday, but be involved in the church throughout the week. What does that look like?
How does that system work? - Yeah. That was a system we implemented 10, 12 years into the church.
One of the best decisions we ever made. Ultimately, we changed the definition of success for our small groups. The definition of success starting at the Austin Small Groups was, "Hey, that's great that you're going to Sunday morning experience.
We want you in a smaller environment where you can do life, pray, study the word together, have accountability. " But we changed the definition of success from that to not only being in a smaller environment, but that group of people you're with are living out the great commission together. You're on mission together somewhere, someplace outside the four walls of the church.
We let all those folks make the choice on what that would be. Some of 'em chose a neighborhood, some of 'em chose a school, some of 'em chose a nonprofit. But we wanted our people to live on mission together and not just gather.
I'm gonna tell you why. You know, what we discovered, man, is when you aim for community alone, a lot of times, we got either mission or community, people didn't get tight. - Yeah.
- You know, a lot of times in a small group. But when we put 'em in small groups and aim for mission. - [Noah] Wow.
- We almost always got both mission and community. - [Noah] Wow. - I mean, think about, I mean, let's just go World War II here.
I know we don't have much time, but you know, you look at the Band of Brothers, that thing that came out a long time ago. - Yeah. - Story of the 100 first Airborne, you know, I was watching an interview with those old guys that were only together four years, but there was a bond.
- [Noah] Yep. - That those guys built together that lasted the rest of their lives. And it crossed all these boundaries.
You had Jewish guys becoming friends with Christians, folks from different parts of the country, Texans in New York, and they just became brothers. And you asked the question, what caused them to get so tight? What banded them together?
And it was mission. And so, man, when we changed the definition of success for our small groups and said, that's great. Get together, study the word, pray together, that's important.
But go, live out the great commission together. That's when the temperature, the missional temperature of our church really changed. - That's awesome, man.
Thanks man.
