How Does a House Church Maintain Good Theology and Practice?

[Music] foreign [Music] hey there and welcome to this episode of How We Do House Church my name is Dr Jason Barker and I serve as the academic Dean at Reformation Seminary Reformation Seminary has the one goal of training men to plant biblical house churches all around the world as always I'm joined by our founder and president Dale Partridge how's it going Dale man I'm excited for this conversation because one of the main critiques that we get as a House Church Network and Community is around this topic absolutely yeah there's a a Viewpoint or an opinion

or an image of house church today which is um I know you you've used the comparison before of of say a restaurant versus a hot dog stand right talk to me about that for just a minute yeah so um when we think about House Church a lot of people go is this some kind of Fly by Night operation here um and I have a little analogy between hot dog stands in restaurants the hot dog stand takes very little uh the barrier to entry is quite low you need maybe you know five thousand dollars and uh

a passion for hot dogs um now if you have a restaurant it takes you know more like a million dollars and a full business plan and a financial model and lots of training and a chef and a team and and so uh my experience is that traditional churches have been more like the restaurant and they viewed the house church more like the hot dog stand and what we have to do and what I've made the commitment to do for our ministry here at Reformation Seminary Reformation Fellowship is that we have to treat the hot dog

stand like the restaurant we have to train and prepare and and plan and study in a way that is equivalent to the work that would be required for a traditional Church and that's why we have Reformation Seminary to train men theologically ecclesiologically [Music] um homiletically they're preaching well doctrinally so that they are prepared to not just have a hot dog stand that may or may not stick but really a full functioning operation that's small but very fruitful and very sound yeah because the the picture people generally have of a house church is a rogue man

or woman or family who is it may be justifiably Church hurt they were wounded there was something that didn't go right and and they've gone off uh and and maybe they're unprepared for what's coming and they start something uh that maybe last a little while or or whatever but that's what people think of when they think of of House Church and so our our question today is how does a Biblical House Church not only avoid that but how does a Biblical House Church stay grounded in good Theology and practice Yeah so the first thing we

do as a network of house churches as a seminary training House Church planters as individual house churches is we we commit to the 1689 London Baptist confession of faith we also affirm the Westminster standards so we do have men who have been through our school who plant Presbyterian house churches in our Network they are committed to the Westminster standards if they do so in comparison to the 1689 and so we we won have that as our rule of faith in terms of obviously there's the scriptures are the the Bedrock but the practical application and the

carrying out of that that Doctrine is clarified in the 1689 on our statement of faith in addition to that we have this book right here actually which you can see if you're watching the video version of this but it's titled How We Do House Church which is the biblical doctrines and convictions of reformation Fellowship and this has been uh theologically reviewed documentation of how we do house church and it has the doctrines the convictions doctrines are things that are backed in scripture convictions are things that are a little bit more interpretive and allow some more

flexibility but it's how we have done this uh for example we have a section on how do you invite a guest to a house Church what's the best practice for that it's not a Doctrine it's a conviction and this is what we've learned over the years to be a fruitful way of doing so um and so we try to hold ourselves accountable because again Clarity of Doctrine and belief and structure really offers an opportunity for more Unity uh we think that that vagueness or ambiguity um is the way to go because people can be falsely

unified or superficially Unified no the more you know the more opportunity you have to be unified as a body and so we try to get very clear with members uh with Planters uh with people that are interested in a house Church to have absolute understanding of our theological and doctrinal commitments and how we do House Church what to expect at a house church and you can find some of those things at reformationfellowship.org but that's our heart is that we are grounded we are accountable we we do stand arm and arm with our brothers and sisters

who have stood for the 1689 confession of Faith again that's Charles spurgeon's confession of faith if you're wondering he was one of the many people that have adhered to that confession of faith and so um it does it keeps us accountable because we have a rule of Faith to be measured by right and that's really the benefit of house churches that are united together in a network like this one is that we have this theological grounding and we're expecting these men and these pastors to be in substantial alignment with that yes and so we have

the theological grounding let's talk for a minute about the ecclesiastical grounding of this we have certain structures in place in biblical house churches that keep them on the straight and narrow as well yeah so we have as any biblical church should have elders and deacons according to First Timothy 3 and Titus 1. um these are men who are overseeing serving the church and these are um biblically qualified men who have been ordained in Ministry by other Elders or by the network those are the two governing offices that scripture offers us and these men we also

really push for a plurality I think in certain unique circumstances like at the very beginning of an inauguration of a plant it's possible that you might only have one Elder but maybe another Elder candidate another possibility for that person to be in that position soon um but ideally you have two Elders from the beginning now it's sometimes nice to have three Elders if you can but the reality is in a house church when you only have 10 to 15 families having two elders and a deacon is a really a sufficient um leadership in the body

the elders can meet with different families and share the teaching responsibilities the Deacon or two can help and serve some of the the complexities of meeting with families or needs that are going on we have a a wife that just had a baby and helping get a meal train set up for that family um bringing certain resources to the Pregnancy Resource Center that we've gathered as a church those are some of the things that a deacon might do and so we do have that theological oversight uh and the church's responsibility is to hold these men

accountable to scripture in the sense that they have the ability to you know if there are uh Witnesses of two or three to see something going wrong with an elder that there's a accountable structure there we teach that that if you see something going on in my life as an elder and and the church has a has a you know an allegation against me those things can be raised and um having men and we teach men to be in gospel Community where they are accountable to one another uh submitting to one another in love um

and really making sure that these guys are qualified we look at their homes we look at their families we look at their wives the relationship there we look at are they radically in debt and not able to afford like is there home in order um are they you know obviously mature believers do they have sound Doctrine are they dealing with any sins that are absolutely overcoming them and so we we try to do a lot of this through Seminary as we evaluate these men but that is an absolute commitment so you have not just the

confession of Faith but you have men who stand behind that who have been qualified ordained does it mean that men can't fail right they can but uh it is another check in the process of sustaining strong Gatherings right and and sort of in line with that uh when the men go through Seminary uh at Reformation Seminary and they graduate they're ordained they go out and they plant a church we're not just sending them out there on their own right they're not just going out into a vacuum to minister as they best see fit and without

any assistance along the way we actually have the Reformation Fellowship Church planting Network now it's I want to be clear we're not a denomination we don't function that way but there is a certain alignment between these churches to be a part of that Network so talk with us for just a minute about what what is the network what does it do with particular attention to how it helps hold pastors and churches accountable yeah I often say we're not a denomination we're an association of biblical house churches around the world and we're we're early if you're

listening to this in real time this is still pretty early we have a handful of churches that are in this network as men graduate and get trained and planted they are being added to that network but the network allows us to keep up on an on a bi-annual basis so every six months checking in with them making sure that they are still substantially affirming that statement of faith making sure that their heads above water uh talking to a few of their members at their Church to make sure that things are going well over there from

a member's perspective and we basically allow them to maintain good standing in the network so that if you're a visitor you can go to the website or Reformation Fellowship you see a church in your area on our church finder and you can uh see that this guy graduated from Seminary this guy is in good standing with the network you can see that he's got he's married he's got kids uh you can see maybe a little bio about him and so we want to help guests feel comfortable that this is a trusted Pastor uh they can

bring their family to and have coffee with for a you know a potential invitation to the church and so the network is ongoing accountability in addition to that when churches multiply when a house Church multiplies and multiplies into what we call a parish and really this is the idea that um the the plant the church that planted and multiplies into two churches those churches become connected at a local level that those Elders of those two Gatherings because they're essentially sister churches can have accountability to one another locally and so if you have something go Rogue

with one Church they can talk to the Elders of the church in their Hometown as another layer of accountability they also would share things like a calendar where they might do maybe if they could baptisms together or uh if they're doing a parenting class by one of the families in congregation C the people from congregation A and B are welcome to come to that parenting class so it creates this ability where you can have not just the intimacy of the House Church but the capability of the traditional Church exactly it allows you to have that

larger we're going to do a worship in prayer night and we're gonna have a Christmas Eve service we're going to have an Easter Sunrise Service yes and we're gonna go meet at the park and you're gonna have three churches they're gonna have 30 families that get together or you're going to do something in the summer like a family camp or whatever it may be and so that's another layer of accountability so we are working very hard to create that and I think as time goes on because we're this is we're our ministry guys if you're

if you're if you're new here we are pioneering um by God's grace the House Church movement in this generation and so this is still very new um our job really and I feel my calling is to to Really legitimize House Church is a valid alternative for the modern western church um and so uh we're working at we're working hard to to create accountability to create trust and um and I I expect that it'll get stronger and stronger as the years go by yeah you know you know one of our goals has always been as we're

planting churches to keep them connected to where if a family is attending a Reformation Fellowship Network Church in Southern California where where I live and they want to they move to uh Sedona Arizona or their vacationing here one weekend that they can go to that church and expect to have not an identical experience but a very similar experience that they can trust is going to be grounded in the same Doctrine in the same practice and that's really the beauty of what we're trying to put together here yeah and Lord willing 10 years from today there

will be several hundred biblical austrations in the Reformation Fellowship and [Music] we can create a a movement of deeply connected Christian individuals and Families and if you're interested I mean I'm telling you here I'm looking at the camera now if you're interested in being a part of what we're doing men enroll uh we we do classes every six months that go for a year and so the Seminary is a one-year program so we we would love to have you as a part of our program and it is a calling I mean if you're called to

Ministry I think we've had so many guys that are that are that are uh self-employed individuals who really are excited because they've develop called a Ministry but not full-time get the building do the big thing with the staff all encompassing All In traditional church planting yeah but they found that wow I can keep my job we have police officers we have firemen we have electricians we have all these men that have been able to come in be a part of the network be a part of the Seminary and and really obey that calling to Ministry

without radically changing their entire life right you know it's interesting that we're on this topic on this day because here today in real time when we're recording this we're getting ready to welcome our fourth group of men our fourth cohort of men to Sedona today yes for their first intensive and and I know it's a little bit off topic but but we're here so let's talk about it for a second what what is going to happen this weekend for these men what are they doing why does it matter why is it great every group of

guys that comes in we've had a we're coming close on 75 students that have gone to the program or in the program and our intensive today is going to teach men how to prepare an expository sermon from start to finish and it's a wonderful experience uh from block diagramming to grammar to causal layouts to how to study scripture and to extract the meaning of the text and and we teach men everything that I learned uh from John McArthur and Dr Steve Lawson who was my professor for preaching and we we teach these to these things

to these men so that these guys at these churches are faithful expositors of the word and um and they know how to study their Bible hermeneutically exegetically and faithfully and so it's it's an exciting time yeah these intenses are so great because the guys come together they learn they Fellowship they hang out and there's some late nights there's just time chatting hanging out in some of the later intensives when families are invited to attend we have activities for wives and we we coordinate informal things for the kids that come along and it really is this

expanding family of of House Church Planters and so it's it's a huge thing to be a part of again if that sounds like something you're interested in finding more information about we welcome you to number one pick up a copy of Dale's book How We Do House Church this is going to answer and expand on a lot of the answers that we gave today a lot of the questions that we that we've reviewed in these podcasts if you really want some some specific information on planting a house Church head to Reformation seminary.com fill out an

enrollment inquiry that basically goes straight to me and I'll be in touch with you about a candidate interview and what those next steps are where we can answer all the questions that you have Seminary is a big decision with with Reformation Seminary we've made it as accessible as possible both financially and in terms of time commitment but it is a big decision and we want to walk through that with you so we hope that if you have those questions you'll take the opportunity to reach out to us and I think that's all of our time

today Dale thanks again for joining and guys we will see you next time [Music]