All right, so it is just after three o'clock, so we'll go ahead and get started. First of all, I want to do an ear check, some thumbs up if you can hear me. All right, good. And then the next thing is it makes it a lot more conversational. We love to see all of your faces as well. So if you're in a place that you can show your camera, your video, we really appreciate that. We really, really enjoy seeing everybody that's participating. My name is Clark Ray.
I'm on the team here at Sattler College that's working on the historicfaith.com. I want to thank Brother Finny for joining us today. Finny could be described as a Swiss army knife. He's a church planter, professor, college founder, author, entrepreneur, I think more closer to his heart, father to eight, wife of one. And those are just some of the endeavors he engages in. He is the author of King Jesus Claims His Church, and he recently co-authored a journal with his wife, Lara, called The Core Discipleship Journal.
And today, we'll be taking your questions that were regarding church planting, evangelism, kingdom building. We thought this was a particularly important topic to be engaging in this week. I feel like the news and a lot of our mental real estate has been taken up by kingdom building as far as nations of this world these last months. And it's good to make sure that we are taking time and priority to build the eternal kingdom here on Earth.
So I want to thank Finny for coming and joining us, and I thank you all for joining us as well and for bringing us your questions. Finny, are you ready to get started? I'm ready. Hopefully you can hear me. Okay. Great. Great. All right. We're going to start off with a question by Caleb Otto. What is the most important character quality for church planters to cultivate? Yeah, great question. Great way to open up here. So I'll say there's a couple of things that come to mind. The first thing is humility.
And the reason I say humility is that it's really, really hard work in doing church planting. And you often feel foolish, don't like what you see. And I think we have to recognize that as church planters, that's on us. And we're going to make a lot of mistakes, so many mistakes along the way. And to not have that be something where it turns into blaming other people or what's wrong with them, but to truly have that spirit of, " Father, what am I doing wrong in here?
And how can I how can I learn and grow and be sanctified through this? " I would say that's number one. Number two, I would say, is a deep love for people. And one of the things that I like to say about church planting is that there's actually no direct command in the New Testament to church plan. It's really supposed to be the outflow, the overflow of disciple-making. And it's easy sometimes when we think about church planting, that sounds very, very exciting and very grand.
But to let that be something that overshadows really the primary goal, which is evangelizing and saving people. And really, churches that are the most successful at their best are discipling people well. And so a deep love of people is something that not everybody has. And a lot of people are in love with the idea of something, the thought of something, as opposed to the people itself. I'll share with you a quote that is one of my favorite quotes from Spurgeon who says this.
He says, " If there existed only one man or woman who did not love the Savior, and if that person lived among the wilds of Siberia, and if it were necessary that all the millions of believers on the face of the earth should journey there, and every one of them plead with him to come to Jesus before he could be converted. It would well be worth all the zeal, labor, and expense.
If we had to preach the thousands year after year and never rescued but one soul, that one soul would be full reward for all our labor for our soul is of a countless price. And we want to just keep that love of people preeminent in our efforts here. And then the third, I would say, I'm sort of doing this in rank order, is a love of learning and a love of the truth.
It's something that I believe that no matter where you start in this journey, you're going to need to push higher and deeper in that by learning from one another, reading books, coming to conferences, forums, different events where you can grow and be taught. And I've been at this now for many years. I'm the son of a church planter. My father is a church planter in India. And I still feel like I'm learning so much. I still feel like I'm on the steep part of the learning curve, frankly.
And I often feel like, okay, if I had one more year, I'd get there. And then the next year, I need another year, another year. And I think I've decided that I'm in my mid-40s now. I think I've decided that when I'm 50, I'll feel like semi-competent. But I'm personally not yet happy with my own standing there on that. So I've still got a lot of reading and studying and learning to do myself in all this. So everything I share on here is going to be still part of my own journey on that steep part of the incline curve.
And when you get to 50, that humility might kick back in and start that cycle all over again. I really like that. It is a bit of a self-feeding cycle of beginning with humility and now that grows the love for people and other human beings and what God would have us to do and also the desire to learn and to grow, which then makes us realize how much we need to learn, which humbles us and kind of creates a cycle there. Exactly.
I really appreciate that kind of an internal state to what drives church planting versus church planting being the first goal. Now we have some questions about some practical elements of church building, church planting, going into new places or starting where you're at. I don't know if practical is the right word, but at least questions that are on many people's minds is, what do we need to start? So Alex T has a question here.
Do we have some guidelines on what initial numbers can look like for a church plant to be viable? Yeah, so here I would say that the number that I would recommend is just follows the New Testament guidelines, which is a bare minimum, but I would say it's two solid families or it can be two singles potentially. Two is a really good number there. When we think about Paul and Barnabas, Paul and Silas, we have pretty clear examples of that Jesus sending out his disciples two by two.
The one piece I'll put in there is that two is a bare minimum. And it seems like from what we know about Paul's entourage, there were often others accompanying them. So sometimes there would be Titus or Tychicus or other characters in his company that aren't always mentioned. And so it may well be the case that there were two prominent people and some others that played more of a supportive role. So I would say two is a bare minimum.
Normally when we start in new churches, we're in the middle of doing a couple right now. We actually recommend three just so that there's a little bit of cushion there because someone is sick or it can feel a little bit more like there's critical mass. We started Followers of the Way here in Boston with three families and I thought that worked really well to have three there. It also helps to break a tie, so to speak, if there's a disagreement there. So I would aim for that.
And we'll talk in later questions, I think, about the types of people that they should be, those two to three singles or families. Very good. Yeah, thank you for that. So we have three questions here that kind of all fall into the same category. And I'm just going to read all three of them, and then you can kind of feel free to answer them how you see fit. The first one's from Mark Zier. Is it important to have a sending church or group of churches?
Is it possible for two or three couples who are agreed on doing a church plant to glorify Jesus to do it without a sending church or denomination? And then from Sam and Christina Bear, we, my wife and I are trying to follow Jesus literally and have burdens for our town. Is it okay to try and start a church on our own? Joe Morris said, " Should church planting asked, should church planting only be done with the blessing of your current church leaders?
What if your current church does not have the vision for church planting or is very slow to act? " I don't want to forget the example of Patrick of Ireland though. Smiley face. Yeah, I appreciate very much the tone that I heard in those questions. And I think that's a great sign of that humility that we were talking about before. Yeah, so, you know, the first off that we can say is that, you know, one of the most successful churches in history was the Church of Antioch.
And we have shadowy records of that in the book of Acts. But as far as we can tell, and I think almost everyone would agree on this, it was not a formal church that began with an apostolic delegate from Jerusalem. It mentions these anonymous people that came from Cyprus and Cyrene that went and evangelized there. And the church began as a result of that.
And so we do see precedent for that right in the New Testament of one of the most impressive, maybe the most impressive church outside of Jerusalem to begin was not the result of a formal sendoff there. So I would say absolutely it is very, very possible there and to glorify Jesus just as the Antioch Church did. There's a kind of a related question in all this, which is, even though it's possible and that I think there's many examples of that in church history, is it the wisest course?
And here is where it's a little bit of a case-by-case, but I would say that if one can do it in a way that secures the blessing of those that you're coming from, that's certainly the best. And we want to be as good as possible at keeping bridges and working with those that we have some kind of relationship with.
There are times, however, where one of our trust points right now that we're working with, there's a very negative view in general of evangelism that one of the churches that the couples come from have, and they just would not be supportive at all. And so I think there are times where we just have to say the differences are so stark. And biblically, we're coming at such a different perspective on things that it doesn't seem like here. It's very productive to wait for that.
You know In Patrick's case there, of course, that was of course he was working under the Roman Catholic paradigm, and that was something that I don't know that we want to press too far. I love that book. And I love Let Me Die in Ireland. It's a really great book for those who haven't read it about patience and showing that submissive spirit.
But I think in general, I would say possible to do it, often advisable, but if at all possible, we should try to work with those and at least get the blessing of those and not do it in an underhanded way from those that we're working out with. And we can have a good testimony, hopefully, as we depart and say, hey, we want to bless you. Hopefully you'll bless us in that. And hopefully there would even be some exchange of people and ideas as the church plant begins. Thank you for that.
The next question is kind of in the same vein as that, but more specific to efforts that they've already put in to try to start a community. And I don't know if you'd have any advice or direction for them, but this is from Boaz and Rebecca. They asked, " Dear brother Finny, we are living as conservative Anabaptists in the Netherlands for now more than eight years. And we know David Bercot very well, preaching a lot, giving Bible resources, et cetera.
But we haven't yet found people who will make the same commitment to Christ in His kingdom. Why can't we start a fellowship over here? What are we doing wrong? Could there be maybe two or three couples from USA or Canada who are willing to help church planting? Please, your advice and help. May God bless you, Boas and Rebecca. Yeah, great. And I believe you're on the call here. I'd love to meet you both there. And actually, if there is some way to communicate, I would love to do so.
There's a couple of people that I'm thinking of in the Netherlands who are native Dutch that we've been in communication with. And I've not been able to plug them in to anyone there. They're both single women who are one of them who was very interested in followers of the way when she was here and just recently graduated with her PhD. So I would love to share both of their contact information with you there, and there might be something there.
So yeah, a couple comments there besides wanting to share those contacts with you and not knowing your specific contacts that well. One of the things that I wonder if, going back to an earlier question, if there would be that validation from having the other one or two couples or families to work with you, which is I understand what you're asking for anyway there.
There is a principle in the Bible that I think we can generalize, which is that it says from the mouth from the mouth of two or three witnesses, everything shall be confirmed. And I remember just from personal experience when we were starting Followers of the Way in 2012, that I really felt like I wanted to have someone else with us from the outset as a way to validate that God was going to bless what we were doing.
And so I like the direction that your question is aimed at looking at other couples who want to potentially help with that. So there may well be other families from the U.S. or Canada who want to help with that. And again, it would be some way for us to connect outside of this form. I'd love to discuss that.
I do want to say one other point here, which is going to come up, I think, in other questions as well, which is that often what I have found is that you can have the right first couple there, but they're missing the gifts of a second couple that might have the complementary gifts that are required in order to make a church plant truly viable.
And in particular, one of the most important gifts that we should be looking for as one of the gifts that, say, the two or three singles or families have is this church planting or apostolic gifting there. And what I mean by that is not apostle in the sense of one of the 12, but I mean by that in the church planting sense. And there's a lot to be said for this gift, which is just such an important gift to have where it's usually someone who has a proven success in starting things from scratch.
And then they also are often very hungry for branching out into new directions. And often where you will find such people is actually in the business world, they've often been very successful as entrepreneurs. And they're often very successful in sort of winning people and traveling and sort of building up something that, like I said, often manifests in the business sense as well.
There's a corresponding aspect to the lowercase apostolic or church planting gift, which is that there's often a zeal for fidelity to Jesus and to the movement. And on all of these attributes, let's call it entrepreneurial ability, a desire to be itinerant, a fidelity for the movement. You can see them in people long before they actually begin their career as a church planter. And so I like to use the example of the apostle Paul. And we should ask, was he a person who was starting things? Was he itinerant?
Was he zealous for guarding the movement? And he was all those things, right? He was someone who was itinerant on behalf of Judaism. He was zealous to guard Judaism. And he was even trying to capture Christians and imprison them. And Paul ended up being that catalyst that was required to get Barnabas mobilized and commissioned. And obviously, the missionary journeys began from that. And so the question, it may not be, what are we doing wrong, but it may be, who are we missing?
And do we have that church planter gift in our midst? And I think you would find pretty consistently that without at least one individual with a strong church planting gift in that apostolic gift, lowercase apostolic gift, it'll be difficult to gain traction. So that would be my working hypothesis there. But I would really love to communicate with you offline. So maybe I'll work with Clark on doing that. Yeah, thank you for that. And yeah, we can definitely connect you both if they're interested in that.
In the context of the eight years comment, I think it was Adoniram Judson, how long till he had some of his first converts? I don't remember the exact time, but it was years. And yeah, he went to Myanmar or Burma, as it used to be called, and labored and labored and did not have success. And interestingly, I would definitely say that he had the church planting gift and was very skilled in the very things that I just spoke about there.
But what took him a while to make his breakthrough was actually learning the language and the communication style of the people that he was serving among. And lo and behold, after some time working among the Burmese, he found that his breakthrough came from converting his preaching into these short proverbs, these sort of mysterious proverbs that sound very profound. And the Buddhist mind is apparently attracted to that.
And once he did that, he started to gather more and more people and start to make converts as a result of that. So yeah, very interesting story about, I would say there, especially about learning and communication. That's really interesting meeting people where they are to some extent. And Europe probably isn't much, much less secular than Burma at this point. So yeah, keep up the work and faith there. Boaz and Rebecca. All right, so next up, we have a few questions related to obedience.
We have another question here by Alex T. What is a tender yet firm way of changing people's minds on counter cultural commands of Christ? Yeah, whenever I'm thinking about this topic, there's really two categories of people that are out there, and it helps a lot to think about what category of person I'm addressing. So one category is someone who I call them the virtuosos.
So the virtuoso, I take that term from the musical world where a virtuoso is someone who can be playing the violin, playing Mozart on the violin at the age of five. You know, they're extremely gifted. And they have an ability to transcend normal boundaries and limitations that people have. There's very few virtuosos in the world.
And there are some people who, and I'm sure many people on this call are like this, where you can read something in the Bible, you're very truth-driven, and that will be sufficient for you to go out and say, I want to live this. And praise God that we have virtuosos out there. And as I said, I'm sure a number of you on the call fall in that category. But there's a different category of people out there. And in fact, the vast majority are not in that.
And what they need is what a sociologist calls a plausibility structure. So there's this concept that for most people, what they need to see is, yes, they want to see that this is grounded in the truth. But for a lot of people, they need to see it lived out in a winsome way in order for this to be compelling there.
And so for that reason, one of the things that we really need to do, particularly as we think about church planting, is to have that core of two to three winsome families that can live and model the countercultural commands effectively, because that's going to be the best way to win people over, the vast majority of people.
And I've heard this many times that if you can have that environment and then just simply invite people over to your dinner table, that alone, even without speaking about anything related to the subject at hand, is going to win people over more effectively, most people more effectively than maybe the direct frontal assault on let me try to change your mind on this issue. So I've really learned to think about the people who are receptive in those two categories.
Of course, there's another category of people who simply have no interest whatsoever, and we're not speaking about them. But in that other category, we got to be thinking about that. And I think what happens is that a lot of you who are probably virtuosos, you're going to talk to somebody, and you're going to assume that they're a virtuoso, and they may not be. And in fact, they're probably not.
And you have to sort of reframe your thinking and say, okay, well, really, they're going to be compelled more by the John 13, the John 17, the good works of Matthew 5, the ways that Jesus describes as other ways to win people over. And that's going to be what wins is over. I'll say one other thing here, which is that once you get that foothold in, I do think that there's a role for good books, good teaching.
I'm very grateful for historic faith, David Bercot, and the now the huge platform of books and people that are now beginning to emerge. And what we like to do here in Boston, because there's a lot of people who fall into this category, is start with come over to our house. We often have people to our house, especially when it's not COVID time. And then to say, can I take you through a set of Bible studies through a set of topics?
And I have a sheet of, okay, you're going to listen to this sermon, and then you're going to come back, and we're going to discuss. And this sermon, we're going to come back and discuss. And that is a really effective way to win people over who are open, right? And if they're not open, then you're going to lose them after one or two sessions.
So I would say that combination of a lived out plausibility structure with some kind of a structured program where you can walk people through all of these commands and really the broader picture of what it is to be a New Testament disciple. Sounds like we need an evangelism, of course, from Finny on the historicfaith.com. That would be a useful tool. But yeah, thank you very much for that. I appreciate that. We have another question in that same category. There's actually, these two kind of go together.
I'll read them together from Mark Zir and Sam and Christina Bear. Mark first. There seems to be two extremes in churches where on one hand, some barely seem to be able to apply any biblical principles to their members, lives therefore being little different from the world around them. And on the other hand, others have so many details laid out for the members to follow that it becomes burdensome and discourages many from joining. How can a balance be struck?
Actually, that doesn't really go together with the next question, but I'm going to add to that. Maybe specifically in the context of starting a new community, is there anything that can be thought about on how to maybe address that from the beginning? Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's correct that there are these two extremes that are out there. And I mean, to use an overly broad brush perhaps, but often my background, the Protestant Evangelical background, has that difficulty differentiating from the world.
And then there are some, not all, but some plain churches that have so many restrictions that they can be too burdensome there. Yeah. With respect to church planting, especially, I think what we have to do, and this was a lot of the motivation when I wrote my book, King Jesus Claims His Church, and how to strike that balance.
I think what we have to recognize, though, that when we do church planting and evangelism and discipleship, hopefully what we're trying to do is reach out to new people outside of those poles and start with a clean slate or start with a cleaner slate. Maybe they have a weak Christian background there because it is very, very difficult to rewrite some of those old habits and thought patterns that have been developed there.
And my hope for those who are interested in church planting is that your heart is really to reach those that are not already sort of in situations where they're all set, so to speak. You know, that's the phrase we hear so often today. And when you walk through that curriculum that I just talked about, and I would specifically say that in my book, especially the first eight chapters, I try to walk through this theologically. And then I have a number of messages on this as well on YouTube.
I personally actually walk through people these questions and I say, OK, we're going to listen to the sermon and then discuss it. Now this one, then discuss it. And I think you'll find that you get good traction if you do that in a careful and systematic way. Very good. Thank you for that. So now the other question from Sam and Christina Bear here. Last question related to obedience is how do we call people we meet in our home church to a greater level of obedience to Jesus? Yeah.
This is something that is one of the humbling factors that I mentioned before. When we start, you know when we began church planting, we have visions of there just being this group of people that are all on fire and we're all pulling together there. And then you realize pretty quickly that it's more heterogeneous and more complex there. And of course, this is exactly what Paul wrestles with, isn't it?
When he writes to the Corinthians, when he writes to the Galatians, I mean, there's all these confusions and errors that they're falling into. And I would say that one of the things that I really appreciate about Paul's strategy here is he first grounds people in a much richer theology of who God is.
And he spends, for example, if we take Romans where they're having problems with Jew and Gentiles agreeing, you know he spends the first 11 chapters of the book just laying out Christology and Adam versus Christ and very profound theology about baptism, about justification. And then it's not until he gets to chapter 12 that he gets to the obedience question, right, when he says in verse 1, " Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed the renewing of your mind. " And so we are tempted, aren't we?
I certainly am, when you see disobedience is to rush right in and to address that directly. And I think in general, it's premature that we need to do a lot more preparatory work at who God is and what God has done in Jesus for our lives. So I would say that would be my number one there is to really flesh that out and to begin with a worshipful, theologically deep portrait of who God is and what God has done in Jesus.
The second thing I would say is that we, and this gets really back to the very first question I asked about love for people, is that I truly believe that in the midst of our church planting, we have to have enough one-on-one time with the various people that we're hoping to lead and walk with there to gain that currency of relationship so that our words will be received. And I will say that I myself, this is one of the things that I'm constantly questioning in my own life is, where's the balance of my time?
Is it too much at the big group meta level? And to the neglect, really, of these smaller sessions where I'm just being with somebody and just spending time with an individual. And my temptation is definitely to be too much at those higher-order levels and to be reading books and going to meetings and whatnot, and not enough time with that ground level, just heart-level fellowship.
And so I would say the combination of those two will give you the ability to have that foothold in someone's life there in order to hopefully call them to the higher level of obedience. Yeah, thank you for that. Being grounded in the why so when we know what we need to be doing, we understand it, and it's easier to live out. That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for that. All right, so now we have a couple of questions here in the context of unity.
This seems to be a prevailing question in the context of the church today and the variety of groups, the large variety of groups out there doing similar and dissimilar things. I've been watching a lot of people going to what they consider to be ancient churches out of this very issue of unity and maybe not going far enough back as we would see on the historic faith. But nonetheless, it's close to people's hearts and is an important issue. Let's start with a question from Colleen Barnhart here.
Is there a precedent from early church writings for withholding communion from Christian visitors to your fellowship who don't believe and practice exactly the same as you do? Yeah, there is a precedent there certainly for the use of needing authentication from somebody else to validate someone's Christian walk so that you're not just participating in communion in too loose of a manner. And so I'll give you some references there in a sec.
You know We have to watch about being too strict in that, but certainly there's strong precedent there. Before I give you the early church evidence, let me just give the New Testament evidence first. In 2 Corinthians chapter 3, verses 1 to 2, Paul specifically speaks about letters of recommendation.
Now, he says that he himself as the church planter there doesn't require letters of recommendation, but he makes the side comment that implies that they're using those and that that's already in practice even in the first century. And we see something very similar in Acts chapter 9, verses 26 to 28, where Barnabas has to personally vouch for Paul. There's a suspicion about him and it's only on Barnabas ' credibility. Is Paul able to be received by the church there?
But I'll read to you because I got this question in advance. I actually pulled the quotes here. So one is from the Ante-Nicene Church Fathers set volume 5, page 292. And it's from Cyprian. Actually, it's a little bit long, but I'll just say that either speaks of these receiving a certificate there to be taken into communion there. The other one is volume six, page 171.
And this is from someone named Malchion, a document called Malchion, who says, " We have communicated this back to you in order that you may write him and receive letters of communion from him. " And then finally, the apostolic constitutions, which most people believe that Hippolytus had something to do with that, but it was at least compiled in the fourth century. This is in volume 7, page 422.
He says, " If any brother, man or woman comes in from another parish and brings recommendatory letters or recommendation letters, let the deacon be the judge of that affair. " And so, again, you can see this carry into the practice of the early church. It wasn't just this totally open vouch for yourself type concept there. So yeah, I think it's something we need to watch for.
And our communions in general, we say should be close, but not closed in the sense that we at least believe that we can gladly take in people into our communion from other churches, but there should be some level of comfort with who they are based on other relationships. Thanks for that. Second question related to unity here is from Casey Burns.
" Considering Jesus ' prayer recorded in John 17 for our oneness so that the world would know that the Father sent the Son, how can churches be planted in a manner that shows the world our oneness rather than increased division, but also maintains integrity of an obedient love faith relationship with Christ? " Yeah.
You know, and I really appreciate this question as well, because I think one of the things that we have to be watching for in church planting is the spirit in which we do it, and is it done with a deep desire for unity? So I'll say just quickly a little story here. When I was much younger, when I was in my late 20s, I was very active in a basically a Protestant evangelical house church movement. I used to go to the conferences, super involved there.
And I noticed something, which was that many people in those settings were there because they were anti wherever they were, wherever they were from before. And you would go and speak there and it's like, " Oh, I have a problem with this, no problem with that. " And what bound people together wasn't a common vision, but it was that they didn't like wherever they were from. And people would always there talk about the institutional church and how evil and broken it was.
And what was so sad is that those churches, almost every single one, in fact, I only know of one exception disintegrated because that's not going to hold you together for very long. And to see how those groups would kind of almost smugly gather together in ways that just felt divisive, even in the meetings themselves. It was very, very ugly, very unpleasant. And so you know really what we're trying to do in church planting and discipleship is to call people higher into the unity of the Triune God.
And what we want to therefore do is not our goal is not to be casting stones at others and to be putting down this group and that group. And I just think we really have to watch our hearts in this. We really want to watch that we're not anti some other group, but that we're evangelists for Jesus, that we're pro-Jesus here.
And if we have that attitude, and if we can truly even be grieved almost at the unnecessary divisions and just jabs that you hear often, I think that's the bulk of the right starting point is just having that right attitude and frame of mind. I really like that. I think that's for many of us that have maybe come from other groups is a good question to ask ourselves, how often do I speak negatively about the people that I've come from? Might be a good self-check.
All right, so the next few questions here is regarding how do we find fellowship? So maybe folks that haven't considered church planting or would like to find fellowship in various situations. First of all, or trying to find fellowship within their own context. From Joshua Vander Torne, " What advice do you have for someone who has just embraced the kingdom gospel but still going to a Protestant church?
I'm currently meeting with my pastor once or twice a month for lunch to challenge him and explain to him the kingdom gospel. I don't want to be a church member that just up and leaves because there are things I don't agree with, but want to challenge my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. However, I realize there are some real discrepancies in some theological areas. Moving is not really an option to be discipled by kingdom-minded churches due to job and employees.
And there is no kingdom churches in my area that I know of. Yeah. Yeah, this is a very, very common situation that many people are in here. So my heart goes out to you there, Joshua, on this. Yeah, I would say the bad news first. The bad news is that institutions rarely change and institutions, by their very nature, resist change. And so you know we often would like to believe that a church once it hears the truth is going to change and kind of come our way. But it's rarely the case.
And there's even a concept that we see in revelation of a church having its lampstand removed. Somehow that church becomes disenfranchised and not legitimate in Jesus ' eyes. And this is sad but true that there are many places out there that are really ghosts and shells of true churches. They've long since lost their lampstand there. I'm not speaking about your church in particular. I'm not sure where you are there, but I'll just speak in generalities here.
I would say that it's a great thing to be speaking with your pastor there and to see where he's at. If you come to an impasse, though, and there's just not movement happening, which I think is going to most likely be the case, then you're sort of stuck, right? And you have to, at that point, make a decision, which is, am I going to plant myself here for the indefinite future, or am I going to search for something else?
And I know you said that moving wasn't really an option, but I assume you mean currently an option. And I strongly advocate that what we should be doing in our lives is first choosing our church. And then, number two, a distant number two is choosing job and all those kinds of things. And you know I realized, especially in America, we tend to invert that. We tend to first pick our job and then choose our church as a function of where we are geographically there. But I would flip that.
And I would pray, if it comes to that impasse, I would pray about, is there some of the place that I could potentially move to? I had to move myself a couple times, actually, in the pursuit of the kingdom. And I will say that it was so good that I did. And I've not regretted either of the moves that I've done. And at both times, I had families. And it was the first time we had a smaller family, just one child. Second time, we had five children. But they've both been great, both of them.
And I believe God has really blessed that. And I take that as being what Jesus means when he says, " Seek first the kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. " So keep at it with the dialogue. If things change, that would be amazing and a miracle there. But if it doesn't, then I would urge you to consider a different praying about potentially going to a different area.
I don't want to spend too much time on this question, but I think it would be relevant to that question that was just asked. I'd like to get through quite a few more here if we can. But Sam and Christina Bear, my wife and I are trying to follow the teachings of Jesus, but are having difficulty finding like-minded believers. How do we find a group?
Yeah, what I would recommend doing there you know I think historic faith is a great platform for it, but there's a couple of venues for those that are like-minded that are useful here. So one is Kingdom Fellowship Weekend, which again, all this during COVID is not really happening. But Kingdom Fellowship Weekend is a great place just to meet people and to find what's out there.
I remember when I was when I was at the stage of just trying to figure out where we were going to be, that was a really, really helpful place for me to go. Another place is called the Church Planting Forum, which is organized by Ernest Evie. I think those are really great places just to network and to understand what's out there. You do want to choose well and choose someone that's in alignment, a group that's in alignment with you there. And so I would say using platforms like those two, historic faith.
And then I think, frankly, just using today sermons and whatnot, you can kind of find people who are like-minded and just putting an inbound in and saying, " Hey, can we do a call with you? " And see if there's an appetite to potentially work with us. We are often and I speak for myself here. I do usually two or three calls a week with those that are contemplating a church plant or just beginning a church plant. And it doesn't always work out that they're going to work with us. That's okay.
But it's a big part of our ministry. And I know others think likewise. So keep pushing on. That's good. I'm going to butcher this next name, I think, but I'm going to give it a shot. Solrak Kijoi asks, " I was part of three Bible studies that were short-lived, two of which were initiated by me, but all of which I presided. All of these failures were due to differences in doctrines, beliefs, and lack of interest. I prayed for a true seeking Bible study and hopefully become a small house church.
But after these three failures, I've given up trying. How do I reach out to like-minded people in our country when many are either hardcore Roman Catholic or Protestant? Not in the U.S. is what I'm guessing. Right. And by the way, that question didn't show up on your screen. Oh, sorry about that. There we go. There you go. Yeah, thank you. So yeah, a couple of comments I would make on this one.
So I wonder here with some of the previous comments that I made that finding one or two other singles or couples that are like-minded here before seeking out too much to do that outreach yet. I mean, I don't want to ever squash someone who's trying to do outreach with those reaching to the loss. But I wonder that if you can't offer that plausibility structure, if you can't offer to a person like, hey, look at not just me and my family, but look at who we are and point to a broader group that is backing you up.
It's very difficult. It's very, very difficult. And you will have much more gravitas and credibility if you have that behind you. I think one of the other things too that I've really benefited from just today is an example of this. I had some pretty heavy conversations this afternoon. And I'm refined by those as we work with one another. And I believe that I've been personally developed into a much better follower of Jesus as a result of walking with other believers there.
That being said, once you do that and in terms of reaching out to like-minded people who are hardcore, Roman Catholic or Protestant, one of the things that I like to term that I like to use is this concept of a fishing pond, which is a place where you have a sense of like, wow, I can actually go here regularly, and I can connect with people, and I know how to relate with them in ways that are compatible with my gifts and my strengths.
And just like a fisherman knows a certain whole fishing pond or lake to go to, they know what bait to use, they know, they know what to do there in order to catch the fish. It takes some iteration to figure that out for ourselves. And there's a huge topic, and maybe Brother Clark, you're right, we should do a historic faith on this. But there's a lot to be said for figuring out where that is and not giving up yet.
I heard in your question that you're fatigued after some of the failures there, but I hope you don't lose hope and realize that God does have a special calling for you and a special type of fishing pond that's going to work there. You just got to persist in figuring out where that is. Amen. All right, we are officially into the miscellaneous questions bucket, but these by no means are less important. They just don't necessarily fit into any particular common theme with other questions.
First question here that I wanted to ask was from Mark Zier. Again, how much time and effort should we put into individuals who seem interested but aren't ready to commit themselves to join the church? Yeah, there's an acronym that I use, which I find very helpful. The acronym is HATS, H-A-T-S, Hungry, Available, Teachable, Sacrificial. And Hungry is like, hey, are they hungry for the truth? Do you feel like this is coming from inside of them, or are you trying to cajole them and somehow force them?
Available is, do they show up to meetings? Do they make a priority to meetings? Teachable is, are they willing to change their views? And then ask sacrificial, are they willing to sacrifice for their new views that cost them relationships, time, money, et cetera? And I will say that rarely do you find someone who will be a good disciple who is not hats, who does not exhibit those four qualities.
And usually what I will say is that if there's somebody who you just seem like you're having to push them, take a step back and keep praying for them. But probably your efforts are going to be better directed at not pushing them so much because they're probably now counter-pushing as they feel that they feel that you want to take them to a place where they want to go. I will say every single time we've had a successful disciple here, it's felt very natural. It's felt like that person wants to be here.
They're really putting forth effort. They're showing you with their time, their energy, their heart, that they have a commitment there. And it's just a joy to be with people like that. And there have been so many examples and stories I could tell you of people who they wear you out because they have so many questions and they want to be with you way more than you have commitment and way more than you have availability to do so. And so be looking for that, be praying for those kinds of individuals.
And I think this is demonstrated in Jesus as well that he seemed to, in general, not chase people, but he seemed to be selecting for people who are hats, who are hungry, available, teachable, and sacrificial. Yeah, thank you for that. That's something that's been a shift for me. But I think you're right. It's not necessarily giving up on people to step back, but maybe giving space for them to process through things, but then periodically re-engage and work there as possible. A question from Sean Martin here.
And this kind of goes into the same bucket as far as how to woo people or engage with people or unbelievers. Sean Martin asks, " How highly does Christian hospitality rank as a means of establishing a church presence in a new community? What does hospitality look like for a young church seeking to establish permanence and relevance in a town? " Yeah, so hospitality, I'm guessing by Sean's question here, it doesn't mean just hospitality for individuals. Maybe it does.
So I'm trying to read a little bit in between the lines here about exactly what's meant. I would say that hospitality in general is huge, especially for evangelism. I mean, one of the things we didn't talk about this yet, but when we think about the relative gifts there, I often use Ephesians 4:11, so apostle, church planter, prophet, evangelist, shepherd, teacher. And especially Christian hospitality, I would say, is very closely associated with both the E and the S, the evangelism and the shepherding gifts.
And there are few things more powerful in this world than walking into the home of a godly family and just feeling Jesus in that home. And so to the degree that one can do that, I think that is incredible. And there's a variety of ways that I'll just give you some ideas that we've done here that you might want to use or consider using.
One of the things that we've done, and we make it an annual tradition, is we go around our block and a couple of blocks, actually, and we just flyer and say, we're going to have a neighborhood barbecue in our driveway on a Saturday there, and it's potluck. Everyone brings something. And we get a lot of the neighborhood to turn out for that. And people are so grateful because nobody does this today. I mean, I live in a city, and it's pretty rare that people will do something like this.
And then they come, and then you exchange contact information, and relationships get built out of that. And so that, for us, has been something that we've been able to implement just locally here in Boston. Hospitality, for me, is really important. Every Saturday, I had one today. I do an apologetics group, and I do that on the local university campus here. And I take students out to lunch afterwards. And it's on me. And so we just talk and get to know them and hear their stories.
And then for those who demonstrate hats, then I'll say, " Hey, would you want to come over to our house? They'll meet my wife, my children. " And there is a hospitality is really every step along the way at going from brand new to the community to having people ultimately baptized there. So yeah, we need to really be pushing hard in that direction. Yeah, and I imagine hospitality is a lot like church planting. It stems from humility, love of people, and love of learning how to be hospitable. Amen, yeah.
All right, we're gonna do one more, I think one more question, and then we'll do a couple follow-up questions here. Jason George asked, " I am part of an ethnic, race-based church. What are the best steps to broadening the membership of this church and spread the gospel further? " Yeah, I was actually in this situation, and I'm guessing from your name that you're Malayali. So we have that in common. So Kerala is a state in southern India. Malayalam is a language that's spoken by 30 to 50 million people there.
And I was part of a Malayali church for many years, and they wanted to do exactly this. And I'll say that most of the time, it's an abysmal failure. And it doesn't work at all. I think there's a good way to do it. I can tell a lot of stories about this. But in this particular Malayali church where I was, many of the people would speak Malayalam, which is a very difficult language to learn.
They dressed in ethnic clothes, the food, they would often have food afterwards, and it would be Biryani and Shore and you know all these ethnic foods there. And hey, for me, I've grown up in this, right? But if you're not from that background, I mean, you walk in, you just feel like, whoa, I don't fit here at all. And I highly recommend for all of us who are thinking in this situation, for us to go to a different ethnicity church and to see how we feel in that, it's just not comfortable, right?
It's very difficult for us to feel like this is home. I could really put my roots down here. The particular pastor at this Malayali Church that I was at, he really wanted to get the membership broader. And it just bombed. It didn't work at all. Because it was not because people didn't have good intention, but the barriers were so strong there that people thought, okay, are my children going to be able to blend in here? I don't know the food. I don't know the language.
Half the time when I hear things, it's talking about some cousin. A lot of people have this inside track on who's related to who, and you don't have any of those things if you're an outsider. If someone is truly serious about doing that, the way to do that is you have to do a break off where you send no more than two.
And I stress here, this is where two would be not a floor, but a ceiling, no more than two people to start almost a separate group that would be maybe under the umbrella of the parent group where they're not going to talk about cousins. They're not ever going to switch into Malayalam. They're not ever going to do these kinds of things that are off-putting. And you're going to be able to, out of that beachhead, bring in other people.
And your first person to bring in has to be a non-Malayali or somebody outside of that ethnicity. So it's difficult. It can be done. But I'll just say right now that most of these efforts just don't go very well. Would you say this is like almost a Paul said that I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.
Is this basically that context, that question is basically the gist of it, like sacrificing things that make us comfortable knowing that they're making other people uncomfortable. Exactly, exactly. And we've all felt that on the uncomfortable, on the discomfort side, right? We've all been in situations where everyone's laughing at the joke. You don't know the joke. Everybody knows what you're talking about. You don't know. It doesn't feel good. You don't feel like that's home to you.
And we need to have that perspective of putting ourselves in the position of being the outsider and trying to make an environment that truly is welcoming. So yeah, I think that for Scranton's design passage is appropriate. Very good. All right. So we're going to transition. There's a few more questions. We're not going to get to them, but I really want to say thanks to everybody that did send in questions. Maybe we'll have a follow-up session on this topic in the future where we could get to some of those.
But we have a couple of follow-up questions here. I'm going to ask, some have submitted more than one, but for the sake of getting to multiple people, we'll ask just one from each. From Robert Cataldo, question one, " Many live in an area where there are seemingly few, if any, kingdom-minded Christians, what do you consider as the essentials for the planting and local gathering of the church in such areas? " I think you've covered that to some extent as far as people. Do you want to add to that?
Yeah, maybe I'll add a tiny bit on that. And by the way, Robert, good to hear from you here through the Q&A. It's good to see you. Hope you and Kayleen are doing well. Yeah, I would say that kind of a related question to that is essentials, how do you define the essentials? And what does that really mean? Because a lot of people who are thinking about genome visit, do you have to include 10 things, nine things, what else in that? And we really try to stress that the essentials are the commands of the New Testament.
And what that means is that we're not allowed to pick and choose. It's a high bar, admittedly, but you know sometimes you'll hear this test in all things. In non-essentials liberty and all things charity, right? That's the phrase there. In essentials unity and non-essentials liberty and all things charity. And that sounds nice and you know like a good saying, but then it just begs the question, what are the essentials? It doesn't actually really answer very much.
And unfortunately, their essentials gets redefined according to the context. And people will treat things that should be essential and they'll say, oh, that's a non-essential. So that's Romans 14. And so we can agree to disagree about that. I think we have to be striving for the New Testament and it's the totality of its commands. And so you know we talk about sometimes head covering and non-resistance and divorce and remarriage and these kinds of topics there. Those are all essentials.
I will say this, though, that we have to remember that it's very, very easy to neglect other commands. So I often say lifting up holy hands is a command of Scripture 1 Timothy 2. Evangelism, Matthew 28, is a command of scripture. And there's plenty of things out there that we can be totally stuck on and then be blind on other things. And that is just as bad as the other errors of just neglecting some of those other teachings as well.
So we need to be very zealous here to not be basically giving ourselves a pass on issues that are just hard for us or we don't want to consider there and not be content with anything short of, as what Jesus said in Matthew 28, teaching them to obey everything that I've commanded you, right? That's our mandate as disciple makers and church planters is to teach people to follow everything that Jesus taught. Thank you for that.
There's several other great questions here I'd love to ask, but I'm going to finish it with this one. I think it's a fairly quick question, I think, from Alex T. If I may also ask in case there's time for it, what's a good way to facilitate the discipleship of children in a church plant? Do they join the main meeting or should we cater for Sunday school? Yeah, we generally, and I generally don't advocate for the Sunday School model. There's a lot that could be said on that.
But the Sunday School Model is premised on age segregation. And in general, we advocate for family integration and being together. The single best way to facilitate discipleship of children is to have a great family worship at home and to build your families around a great family worship. I have a message online, YouTube. It's called Core Discipleship Comes from Family Worship. I'd encourage you to listen to that.
And I'll say that you know I have eight children now, and I'm watching them grow in their biblical thinking from teenage all the way down to baby. And it is exhilarating. Absolutely delighting to hear your children in a daily context of walking with you through the Scriptures grow in their knowledge and love of God. So I would say that's by far the core, and we really need to make that the core. And then what we do is we have them join the main meeting. I require my children to take notes.
And then what we do is we discuss the sermon afterward. We'll actually use one of our family devotions as a way to discuss what they just heard to ensure there's comprehension. And they're generally giving good respect and attention to whoever is preaching there. So I will say that's important. That's more the supplement than the core of what we do. But yeah, please, please, please devote a lot of time and energy to this there because discipleship begins at home in the family.
And the church is very important in that, but it's number two after the family for the sake of your children. Yeah, I've heard the term, I can't remember from who, but don't sacrifice your children at the altar of, I don't know, evangelism or church planting or church ministry that children do become, but bring them into it rather than maybe separating them as a different thing. I like that. All right, well, thank you very much, Finny, for your time here and sharing some of your experiences.
I know it's a blessing to me to hear some of these responses, and hopefully it's been encouraging to everyone that's joined us today. I want to say real quick a few things as we wrap up here. I mentioned last time that Bryant Miller and now Hadassabichi, who has joined our team recently, have been working on social media, building out our social media. So it really helps us get the word out by following that, sharing that with others.
We also launched a blog on the historicfaith.com, and we'll be having hopefully monthly blog posts coming to that. And people can sign up to get notices about that, even if they're not part of the platform. On the course development side of the team, Timothy Miller and others have been working on some new exclusive video content from Chuck Pike, as well as a new video course from David Bercot coming down the pipeline.
We're getting those done as quickly as we can between classes and everything else that's going on here. But keep your eyes out for that. We're really excited to put that out there. We also have, this might be a little early to announce anything hard, but looks like early next year we're gonna be able to launch a mobile app for the platform that will allow for offline streaming and access to content and the whole platform, including forums and discussions and events all right there natively on Android and iOS.
So I want to give a shout out to everyone that's been working behind the scenes. We obviously have the people that you see here in the Q&A as myself, people like Finny and David and Dean and Chuck, all the work that they put into preparing messages and providing those. But we also have in the background people like Timothy Miller, Bryant Miller, Jonathan Good, Seth Bon Breon, Hans Hertzler, Hadassabichi, and Daniel Willis doing a lot of work to make all this happen.
But last and not least, I want to thank all of you for joining us today. It's by your donations and your support and sticking with us through months of little new, little announcements. And then when we actually get things out, that's really making all of this possible. So may God bless all of you for supporting this ministry really. And I pray that it's been strengthening to your love faith relationship with Jesus in this kingdom. Thanks everybody for joining us.
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