Latest / Reformed Thinking / Church Planting by the Book

Transcript

Church Planting by the Book · Reformed Thinking

• 0:00
  Welcome back to Reformed Thinking.
• 0:02
  It's really good to have you with us again as we well as we
• 0:05
  try to do what we always try to do, align our minds and
• 0:09
  hopefully our practices with the text of Scripture.
• 0:13
  We're glad you're here. It's always a privilege to open
• 0:15
  the word and, you know, see how it actually speaks to the world
• 0:18
  around us. Today we're tackling a subject
• 0:21
  that I think for a lot of people, we just assume is going
• 0:25
  well, you know, until you actually look under the hood.
• 0:28
  We're talking about missions, the Great Commission.
• 0:31
  It's the marching order for the church, right?
• 0:34
  Go make disciples. It's been burning in the hearts
• 0:37
  of believers for what, 2000 years now?
• 0:39
  It has. But here's the thing.
• 0:40
  And the sources we're looking at today are not pulling any
• 0:43
  punches. They're saying there is a crisis
• 0:45
  in missions. It is a crisis, and it's one
• 0:47
  that's easily masked by enthusiasm.
• 0:49
  I mean, you see the activity, you see people traveling, you
• 0:51
  see funds being raised, lots of motion.
• 0:55
  But the source material for this deep dive argues that underneath
• 0:59
  all that activity, there's there's apathy, there's
• 1:04
  distraction, And maybe most dangerously, there is real
• 1:08
  theological weakness. You know that one phrase from
• 1:11
  the text? Really just it stuck with me.
• 1:14
  Weak churches send weak missionaries who then plant weak
• 1:18
  churches. It's like this generational
• 1:20
  cycle of anemia just keeps getting passed down.
• 1:22
  That's it. Exactly.
• 1:23
  If the root is withered, the fruit is going to be withered
• 1:26
  too. The central argument we're going
• 1:28
  to be examining today is that we have in a lot of sectors traded
• 1:31
  biblical fidelity for well, for pragmatic results, for what
• 1:34
  works, for what works, or what seems to work fast.
• 1:37
  We've decided that the how of missions can be determined by
• 1:41
  what gets numbers rather than by what is actually written in the
• 1:43
  book. And to get specific, we're going
• 1:45
  to be looking at a critique of some some very popular modern
• 1:48
  movements, things you probably heard of like the Disciple
• 1:51
  making movement or DMM and the church planting movement, CPM.
• 1:55
  And then after we look at the problem, we're going to pivot
• 1:58
  and see what the alternative is. What does church planting by the
• 2:01
  book actually look like? And we've got some heavy hitting
• 2:04
  sources for this. We're drawing from the book
• 2:06
  Biblical Missions, Principles, Priorities, and Practices,
• 2:09
  looking specifically at some writings by Stephen Linetti, and
• 2:12
  then this really fascinating case study from Mexico by
• 2:16
  Eduardo Esquerdo and David Perez.
• 2:19
  So the mission for this discussion is pretty clear. 1st
• 2:22
  we need to define what a local church actually is.
• 2:25
  Which sounds so basic. It sounds basic, but as we're
• 2:28
  going to see, it is the one step that gets skipped over and over
• 2:31
  again. Then we need to understand why
• 2:35
  authoritative preaching is, you know, absolutely non negotiable.
• 2:39
  And finally, we need to see how this all plays out in the real
• 2:42
  world. That's the plan.
• 2:43
  OK, so let's start there. Let's unpack this problem,
• 2:46
  pragmatism versus the biblical pattern.
• 2:49
  I really want to pause on this idea of speed and multiplication
• 2:52
  because look, on paper, if I read a missions report that says
• 2:56
  we planted 500 churches in this province in the last six months,
• 3:00
  my knee jerk reaction is to cheer.
• 3:02
  Of course, that sounds like the book of Acts.
• 3:04
  That sounds like revival. So why are our sources basically
• 3:08
  throwing a wet blanket on this? What is the specific mechanism
• 3:12
  in these movements, DMM or CPM, that makes that kind of speed
• 3:16
  suspect rather than, you know, miraculous?
• 3:19
  That's a great question and you're right, we are absolutely
• 3:21
  wired to celebrate numbers. It feels like success, but the
• 3:25
  source material asks us to look at the methodology that's being
• 3:28
  used to get those numbers. Okay.
• 3:30
  In many of these disciple making movements, the primary engine is
• 3:33
  something they call the Discovery Bible Study or DBS.
• 3:36
  Discovery Bible study. Okay, that sounds harmless.
• 3:38
  Enough. It sounds completely benign,
• 3:39
  yes, but the philosophy behind it is very specific and very
• 3:44
  intentional. The idea is to gather a group of
• 3:47
  what they call persons of peace, so non believers, seekers and
• 3:50
  you have them read a passage of scripture and then discuss it
• 3:53
  among themselves with very minimal or in some cases 0
• 3:57
  outside teaching. Wait, wait, hold on.
• 3:59
  Just clarify that for me. The missionary, the person who
• 4:02
  actually knows the theology, who knows the Bible, who's been
• 4:05
  trained, is explicitly told not to explain the text.
• 4:09
  That is correct. They are told to be a
• 4:11
  facilitator, not a teacher. They are instructed to ask
• 4:14
  questions like what does this say to you or what will you do
• 4:18
  about this? But never.
• 4:20
  This is what this passage means. So why?
• 4:22
  What's the rationale for that? It seems insane.
• 4:24
  The rationale is, well, it's a pragmatic 1.
• 4:27
  The philosophy is that external teaching, what you and I would
• 4:31
  just call preaching or teaching, creates dependency.
• 4:35
  Dependency. Yes.
• 4:37
  They believe that if a missionary actually explains the
• 4:39
  Bible, the local people will become dependent on an expert,
• 4:42
  and if they're dependent on an expert, they won't be able to
• 4:44
  reproduce the movement fast enough.
• 4:47
  They view theological precision sound doctrine as a bottlenecked
• 4:51
  speed. I see.
• 4:52
  OK, so it's a supply chain issue in their minds.
• 4:54
  If you have to train a pastor for four years to preach
• 4:57
  accurately, you can only plant one church every four years.
• 5:00
  But if all you need is a facilitator who can ask what do
• 5:04
  you feel about this passage? Well, you could plant 1000
• 5:08
  so-called churches next. Week you've got it.
• 5:10
  It prioritizes what we could call viral transmission over
• 5:14
  genetic integrity. Oof, that's a powerful way to
• 5:17
  put it. And the critique from our
• 5:19
  source, especially from Stephen Lynetti, is that this
• 5:22
  methodology just completely ignores the biblical mandate.
• 5:26
  You cannot have a disciple without a teacher.
• 5:28
  The Great Commission isn't just go, it's go and teach them to
• 5:32
  observe all that I commanded. The teaching part is not
• 5:35
  optional. It's the very heart of it.
• 5:37
  So if you remove the teacher from the equation, you aren't
• 5:39
  removing a bottleneck and removing the body's immune
• 5:42
  system. You're basically leaving a group
• 5:44
  of unbelievers to sit in a room, confirm their own biases from
• 5:48
  their own worldview, and then call the result church.
• 5:51
  Wow, that's a stark metaphor. Removing the immune system.
• 5:55
  So you might get rapid growth, but it's the growth of an
• 5:58
  infection, not the growth of a healthy body.
• 6:00
  That's the argument, and that is why the source says weak
• 6:04
  churches plant weak churches. If the first generation
• 6:08
  essentially just jest at what the Bible meant, well, the
• 6:11
  second generation is going to be even further off the mark and a
• 6:15
  third. And by the 3rd or 4th generation
• 6:17
  you might have a nice social club, you might have a
• 6:19
  synchronistic cult that mixes a little bit of Jesus with their
• 6:23
  old beliefs, but you do not have a biblical church.
• 6:26
  Which brings us right to the core of it, the definition of
• 6:29
  the church itself. And I think this is where a lot
• 6:32
  of us, even those of us in, you know, solid Reformed camps, can
• 6:37
  get a little squishy. We live in such an
• 6:40
  individualized age. I have heard people say things
• 6:43
  like, well, you know, me and my buddies, we go for a hike on
• 6:45
  Sunday mornings and we talk about God.
• 6:47
  That's my church. All the time.
• 6:48
  Or we have a family Bible study at home.
• 6:50
  That's our church. Does the source material give us
• 6:53
  a, you know, a hard and fast boundary here?
• 6:56
  Where does a gathering stop being just a gathering and start
• 6:59
  being a church? It does, and it tackles that
• 7:02
  exact sentiment head on because there is one very popular verse
• 7:06
  that gets, well, it gets weaponized to justify this sort
• 7:10
  of do it yourself ecclesiology. I think I know where you're
• 7:12
  going with this. Matthew 18.20 4 Where two or
• 7:17
  three have gathered together in my name, I am there in their
• 7:21
  midst. It's the ultimate get out of
• 7:22
  church free card, isn't it? It is.
• 7:25
  People use it to say, see, we don't need elders, we don't need
• 7:28
  ordinances, we don't need membership.
• 7:31
  We're just two or three people and Jesus is here.
• 7:33
  We're a church. Why?
• 7:34
  But the source points out that this is a massive, massive
• 7:37
  contextual error if you just look at the verses immediately
• 7:40
  preceding it. Matthew 18 isn't talking about
• 7:42
  worship or fellowship at all. It's about church discipline.
• 7:45
  It's about a judicial process. He's talking about church
• 7:47
  discipline. If your brother sins against
• 7:49
  you, go and tell him his fault and it walks through the steps.
• 7:53
  Right. And if he doesn't listen, take
• 7:55
  one or two others along with you.
• 7:56
  Exactly. The two or three there refers to
• 8:00
  witnesses in a trial context confirming a fact.
• 8:03
  Jesus is essentially saying when you, the assembly, the church,
• 8:08
  have to make a difficult binding decision to remove an
• 8:11
  unrepentant Sinner, I am with you.
• 8:13
  I am ratifying that judgement. It has absolutely nothing to do
• 8:16
  with redefining the church as just any 2 Christians hanging
• 8:19
  out so. It's about the church's
• 8:20
  authority, not its minimum size for a coffee meeting.
• 8:24
  Precisely. It affirms the authority of the
• 8:26
  gathered body. It doesn't dismantle it.
• 8:28
  OK, so if two guys hiking isn't a church, and a family Bible
• 8:32
  study isn't a church, what is? What does the source give us as
• 8:36
  the sort of irreducible minimum? Well, it points us to Acts 2 as
• 8:40
  the prototype, but it goes deeper than just listing the
• 8:43
  activities. They did, you know, devoting
• 8:45
  themselves to the apostles, teaching fellowship, breaking of
• 8:48
  bread and prayers. Which are all vital.
• 8:50
  Absolutely vital. But those activities flowed from
• 8:52
  something. They flowed from regenerated
• 8:53
  hearts gathered into a specific, identifiable assembly.
• 8:57
  And the source argues that a biblical local church has to
• 9:00
  have structure. Structure.
• 9:01
  Yes, it's an assembly of regenerated people, absolutely.
• 9:05
  But it must have biblically qualified leadership, elders and
• 9:08
  deacons. That's non negotiable.
• 9:10
  First Timothy 3 Titus One. The lists are right there, and
• 9:14
  it must practice the ordinances as Christ commanded them,
• 9:16
  baptism and the Lord's Supper. And this seems to be the part
• 9:19
  everyone wants to skip because it takes time.
• 9:22
  You can't just appoint an elder overnight.
• 9:24
  No, you can't. And it's also because it implies
• 9:26
  authority. A hiking group has no spiritual
• 9:29
  authority over you. If you sin in your hiking group,
• 9:32
  your buddies might feel awkward, but they can't discipline you.
• 9:35
  In the biblical sense, they can't.
• 9:36
  Bind and loose. They can't.
• 9:38
  A true church has the keys of the Kingdom.
• 9:40
  It has the solemn responsibility to watch over your soul, as
• 9:44
  Hebrews 13.7 says. And our source makes this
• 9:47
  argument really powerfully. The local church is the only
• 9:51
  institution God has promised to build and bless for the
• 9:54
  preservation of the truth. It's the pillar and support of
• 9:57
  the truth. First Timothy 3.15.
• 9:59
  That's the verse. It is God's appointed
• 10:01
  institution for that work. So a para church organization,
• 10:05
  you know, a campus ministry, a missions agency.
• 10:08
  As good as they might be, none of them are the Church.
• 10:12
  They can be helpful. They can be great tools, but
• 10:15
  they are not the bride of Christ.
• 10:18
  And this is so crucial for missions.
• 10:20
  You cannot plant a mission station.
• 10:22
  You cannot plant a Bible study. You must plant a church.
• 10:26
  And that means you need to know what a church is before you even
• 10:28
  think about buying your plane ticket.
• 10:30
  You have to have the blueprint before you start laying the
• 10:32
  foundation. OK, so let's assume we agree on
• 10:34
  the definition. We have the blueprint.
• 10:36
  We aren't just making clubs. We're planting these pillars of
• 10:39
  truth. The source material then
• 10:41
  outlines what it calls the five steps of biblical church
• 10:45
  planting. And again, this isn't some slick
• 10:47
  marketing strategy. This is a pattern derived from
• 10:50
  the New Testament. Step one is commissioning, and
• 10:53
  this starts with ascending church.
• 10:54
  But I want to push on this a little.
• 10:56
  Why can't someone just go? If the Spirit moves them, If
• 10:59
  they feel a profound calling, who is the church to stand in
• 11:02
  the way and stop them? That's a common sentiment, but
• 11:05
  it's a check against The Lone Ranger mentality that is so
• 11:10
  prevalent in our culture. The source highlights that in
• 11:13
  the book of Acts, you never see a missionary acting on
• 11:16
  subjective compulsion alone. Subjective compulsion.
• 11:20
  That's a good phrase. You mean I feel cold so I'm
• 11:22
  going. Right, I had a dream or I just
• 11:24
  really, really want to go to this people group.
• 11:26
  Desire is good, desire is often from the Lord.
• 11:30
  But desire is not sufficient qualification.
• 11:33
  The sending Church has a solemn responsibility to test and
• 11:36
  approve the planter. So we're back to those
• 11:38
  qualifications in First Timothy 3 and Titus 1 again.
• 11:41
  We are the elders of the sending church have to ask the hard
• 11:44
  questions. Is this man elder qualified?
• 11:47
  Is he sound in his doctrine? Can he teach?
• 11:50
  Is he a novice prone to pride? Is his family life in order?
• 11:54
  The expert really emphasizes that character matters more than
• 11:57
  zeal. It does.
• 11:58
  You can have all the passion in the world, you can be the most
• 12:00
  charismatic speaker, but if you lack godly character, you will
• 12:04
  eventually destroy the work. You'll bring reproach on the
• 12:06
  name of Christ. And the source also mentioned
• 12:08
  that this requires a long term view from the church.
• 12:11
  We're not sending someone or a two week mission trip to pay
• 12:14
  defense. No, not at all.
• 12:15
  We are talking about commissioning someone for years
• 12:18
  of their life, maybe their whole life.
• 12:20
  Language learning alone can take years of intense, dedicated work
• 12:25
  before you can even begin to preach with any clarity.
• 12:28
  So the church has to be in it for the long haul.
• 12:30
  They are investing in a person, not just a project.
• 12:33
  They need to understand that they are supporting a man to go,
• 12:36
  to learn, to live and to labor for a massive chunk of his life.
• 12:40
  OK, so the church tests and confirms the man.
• 12:44
  That's step one. Step 2 is proclaiming the
• 12:47
  Gospel, and we've touched on this already in the critique of
• 12:50
  DMM. But let's define evangelism in
• 12:53
  this positive sense. What is it?
• 12:54
  In this context, evangelism is defined as being a mouthpiece
• 12:58
  for God's message of mercy. A.
• 12:59
  Mouthpiece. I like that.
• 13:01
  It's not about my story, my feelings.
• 13:03
  Exactly. It is a communication of
• 13:05
  objective content. It's a Herald's work.
• 13:07
  The Herald doesn't invent the message, he delivers it
• 13:09
  faithfully. And that message must include a
• 13:12
  call to turn, to trust and to repent.
• 13:14
  Simple, yet so often complicated or watered down.
• 13:18
  OK, so Step 3 is gathering and teaching, and the source says
• 13:22
  the central activity here is giving a thorough explanation of
• 13:26
  the Word of God. This takes us right back to our
• 13:28
  critique of the Discovery Bible Study model.
• 13:31
  You cannot bypass explanation. The goal isn't just to get
• 13:34
  people to read the words, it's to get them to understand the
• 13:37
  words. And the source makes a really
• 13:40
  beautiful observation here that for these new believers,
• 13:43
  especially in pioneer fields, the church isn't just an
• 13:46
  appendage to their life. It's not just one more thing
• 13:49
  they do on a Sunday. No, for many of them, it is
• 13:51
  their life. It's their new family, their new
• 13:53
  community, their new source of truth in a world of lies.
• 13:57
  And faithful teaching is what equips them for every good work.
• 14:00
  It connects the doctor and they're learning to the life
• 14:02
  they're now called to live. OK, so teaching is central.
• 14:05
  Then Step 4 is cultivating leadership.
• 14:08
  And this is interesting. The leadership is supposed to
• 14:10
  come from within the new plant. Yes.
• 14:13
  The goal is not to have the foreign missionary be the pastor
• 14:16
  forever. You don't just import leaders
• 14:18
  from the outside indefinitely. The Holy Spirit raises up elders
• 14:22
  from among the flock itself, as Paul tells the Ephesian elders
• 14:25
  in Acts 20.28. But how are they trained?
• 14:29
  The training model presented is a mix of academic study plus
• 14:33
  real life on life ministry. It's not just an online seminary
• 14:37
  course they take by themselves. It's watching the church
• 14:39
  planter. It's suffering alongside the
• 14:42
  church planter. It's learning how to shepherd by
• 14:44
  actually doing it with them. It's an apprenticeship.
• 14:46
  It's messy and it takes time. It's.
• 14:48
  Very messy and it takes a lot of time.
• 14:50
  And that leads to the final step, Step 5 reproduction.
• 14:54
  Right. The goal of all this is to plant
• 14:56
  a church that is self governing, self supporting and self
• 14:59
  propagating. So it can stand on its own 2
• 15:01
  feet and then plant other churches.
• 15:02
  That's it. It's a biological imperative.
• 15:04
  In a spiritual sense. Healthy organisms reproduce.
• 15:07
  A mature church, by its very nature will have a desire to
• 15:11
  plant new churches. So that's the pattern.
• 15:13
  Commissioning, proclaiming, teaching, leading, and
• 15:16
  reproducing. It sounds solid.
• 15:18
  It sounds, well, biblical, but obviously it's hitting some
• 15:22
  serious resistance in our current moment.
• 15:24
  A lot of resistance. Which brings us to section four
• 15:27
  of our outline, which deals with the crisis of truth and
• 15:30
  authority. Why is this straightforward
• 15:33
  biblical patterns so hard to implement today?
• 15:36
  Well, the expert breaks this down into 3 distinct but related
• 15:40
  challenges. The 1st is the cultural
• 15:42
  challenge, and this is especially true in westernized
• 15:45
  societies. Which, let's be honest,
• 15:47
  influences the whole world now through media and the Internet.
• 15:50
  It absolutely does. The root issue is moral
• 15:53
  relativism. It's the rejection of the very
• 15:56
  category of objective binding truth.
• 15:58
  You have your truth. I have my truth.
• 16:00
  That's the mantra. And this isn't just some
• 16:02
  abstract philosophical idea. It trickles down.
• 16:04
  It starts in academia, it moves into pop culture and it movies
• 16:07
  into music, and eventually it leads to social disintegration.
• 16:11
  People have no shared story, no shared authority.
• 16:14
  And the source takes this all the way back to the very
• 16:16
  beginning, doesn't it? It does.
• 16:18
  It says. This is just the ancient lie
• 16:19
  from the Garden of Eden, repackaged for the 21st century.
• 16:23
  It's Satan's question to Eve. Indeed, has God said?
• 16:27
  That is the fundamental question of authority, isn't it?
• 16:30
  Is there a word from outside of me that I must submit to, or am
• 16:34
  I the author of my own reality? And that's followed up by
• 16:37
  Pilot's cynical question to Jesus in the praetorium What is
• 16:41
  truth? If a culture genuinely believes
• 16:44
  that truth is unknowable, or that it's just a personal
• 16:46
  preference, then a preacher standing up and saying thus
• 16:49
  saith the Lord is immediately seen as arrogant, offensive, and
• 16:54
  even dangerous. Which leads directly to the
• 16:56
  second challenge, the internal church challenge, the loss of
• 17:00
  authority inside the house, so to speak.
• 17:01
  This is. Where things get really painful
• 17:03
  because this is an internal problem and the source zeroes in
• 17:06
  on a critique of what's often called inductive preaching.
• 17:10
  OK, explain that term for us. Inductive preaching.
• 17:12
  What does that mean in practice? In practice, it's a style of
• 17:15
  preaching that tries to treat the sermon as a conversation or
• 17:18
  a journey of discovery. The preacher effectively
• 17:21
  positions himself alongside the congregation and says, here's
• 17:24
  this interesting ancient text. I'm not sure what it means.
• 17:27
  Let's explore it together and see what we can find.
• 17:29
  The audience is treated as a Co interpreter.
• 17:32
  Now, on the surface, that sounds really humble.
• 17:35
  It sounds relational. It sounds humble, but the source
• 17:38
  argues it's actually a profound abdication of authority.
• 17:41
  The preacher is called to be a herald and ambassador.
• 17:45
  His job isn't to speculate, it's to proclaim the King's message.
• 17:49
  This style shifts the weight of truth away from the objective
• 17:52
  text of Scripture and on to the listener, subjective intuition
• 17:56
  or feeling. And the result of.
• 17:57
  This the result, according to our source, is rampant biblical
• 18:01
  illiteracy. If the man in the pulpit week
• 18:04
  after week lacks authority and confidence in the text, why
• 18:07
  would the people in the pews have any?
• 18:09
  They start to think, well, it's all just interpretation anyway.
• 18:12
  His guess is as good as mine. And if they think that, they're
• 18:15
  not going to read it for themselves with any seriousness,
• 18:18
  and they certainly aren't going to be willing to die for
• 18:20
  something that's just, you know, a matter of opinion.
• 18:22
  Correct. And then we have the third
• 18:24
  challenge, which is the cross cultural challenge.
• 18:26
  This is the worldview issue, and it's massive for missionaries on
• 18:29
  the field. This is the danger of assuming
• 18:32
  common ground where there isn't any.
• 18:33
  That's it exactly. You, as a Western missionary use
• 18:36
  a word like sin. In your biblical worldview.
• 18:39
  Sin means rebellion against a holy and righteous God.
• 18:42
  It has eternal consequences. But if you go to a culture
• 18:45
  that's animistic, sin might just mean you offended an ancestor
• 18:50
  spirit and now you have bad luck.
• 18:52
  If you go to a shame on our culture, sin might mean you
• 18:55
  brought public disgrace on your family.
• 18:58
  If you go to a secular culture, sin is an outdated concept that
• 19:02
  just means you broke a social contract.
• 19:05
  So you're saying the words, but they are hearing something
• 19:07
  completely, completely different.
• 19:09
  The words are empty vessels, the world view is what fills them
• 19:12
  with meaning, and the source gives a chilling example.
• 19:16
  A culture that does not have a category for the absolute
• 19:18
  holiness of God cannot possibly understand the gravity of sin.
• 19:22
  And if they can't understand sin?
• 19:23
  They cannot see the need for a Savior if you just drop the
• 19:27
  message Jesus loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.
• 19:30
  Into that vacuum of understanding.
• 19:32
  You are not saving them, you are inoculating them against the
• 19:35
  true gospel. Wow.
• 19:38
  That brings us to the solution and I love this part of the
• 19:41
  discussion because it's so practical and rooted in
• 19:44
  scriptures own method. The source proposes what it
• 19:47
  calls redemptive narratives. Now you have to clarify this for
• 19:51
  us, because a little while ago we were critiquing the idea of
• 19:54
  storing. How is this different?
• 19:56
  That's a great and necessary distinction to make.
• 19:59
  The DMM CP/M model often uses storing, which means telling
• 20:03
  Bible tales in your own words, often avoiding reading the
• 20:06
  actual text to keep it simple and reproducible.
• 20:08
  The redemptive narratives approach that's being proposed
• 20:11
  here is the exact opposite. It is exposition of the
• 20:14
  historical text. You are opening the Bible.
• 20:16
  You are reading the narrative of the Old Testament out loud.
• 20:19
  And you were? Explaining what this history
• 20:20
  reveals about the character and plan of God.
• 20:23
  So it's not just telling a story, it's teaching theology
• 20:26
  through history. Yes, and this is the pedagogy of
• 20:29
  the Bible itself. Think about it.
• 20:31
  God didn't give us a systematic theology textbook first.
• 20:34
  He gave us Genesis. He revealed Himself through
• 20:37
  action in history. OK, so the source outlines a
• 20:41
  three-part theological curriculum using this method.
• 20:44
  Walk us through that. What's Part 1?
• 20:46
  Part 1 is Genesis chapters one through 11.
• 20:49
  This is foundational. You have to start here.
• 20:51
  This establishes God as the sovereign creator of all things.
• 20:55
  It explains the fall where sin, judgment and death came from.
• 20:59
  It shows the wickedness of man in the flood and at Babel.
• 21:01
  And it explains the meaning of atonement in seed form, why an
• 21:05
  animal had to die to cover the nakedness of Adam and Eve.
• 21:08
  So if you skip that foundation, the cross makes no sense later.
• 21:11
  On it makes absolutely no sense. Why did someone have to die?
• 21:13
  Genesis 111 answers that. Part 2 then moves to Genesis 12
• 21:17
  and goes through the rest of the Old Testament.
• 21:19
  This presents God as the holy Lawgiver.
• 21:21
  You look at the call of Abraham, the history of Israel.
• 21:24
  The law given at Sinai reveals God's perfect righteous
• 21:27
  standard. It functions as a tutor, as Paul
• 21:30
  says, to show us that we are sinners and we cannot save
• 21:32
  ourselves. It creates the need for a
• 21:35
  savior. It drives us to our knees and
• 21:37
  then only then do you get to Part 3.
• 21:40
  The goggles, the. Gospels, This is God as the love
• 21:43
  and Redeemer. Here you introduce the
• 21:45
  Incarnation, the sinless life of Christ, his substitutionary
• 21:49
  death on the cross, and his triumphant resurrection.
• 21:52
  But you see, by the time you get to Jesus in this curriculum, the
• 21:55
  people you are teaching understand why he had to come.
• 21:59
  They understand the holiness He is satisfying.
• 22:01
  They understand the sin he is bearing.
• 22:02
  They understand the law He is is fulfilling.
• 22:04
  Exactly. It's a complete worldview
• 22:07
  overhaul, built block by block, from the ground up, using the
• 22:11
  Bible's own narrative. It is.
• 22:12
  And this brings us back to the preacher stance.
• 22:15
  The source quotes D Martin Lloyd Jones, and I just love this
• 22:18
  quote. He says the preacher is an
• 22:20
  ambassador under authority. An ambassador doesn't get to
• 22:23
  write his own speeches. He doesn't give his own
• 22:25
  opinions. No, he delivers the message of
• 22:28
  his king faithfully and accurately.
• 22:30
  The source makes the point that our personal opinions carry 0
• 22:34
  weight. The moment a preacher strays
• 22:36
  from the text, his authority completely evaporates.
• 22:39
  He's just another guy talking. But the source also gives us a
• 22:42
  warning here. When you preach the truth like
• 22:45
  that, you should expect resistance.
• 22:47
  You should. 1st Corinthians 2.14 says the natural man cannot
• 22:51
  understand the things of the Spirit of God.
• 22:54
  The truth is antagonistic to the unbeliever.
• 22:57
  It confronts his pride, his autonomy.
• 22:59
  We shouldn't be surprised when people get angry or push back.
• 23:02
  So we don't change the message to avoid the push back.
• 23:04
  Never we trust the Holy Spirit to use the sharp sword of the
• 23:07
  Word to convict and to convert. And there's the great Charles
• 23:10
  Spurgeon quote that the source brings up.
• 23:12
  Let the lion out. The best apology for the gospel
• 23:15
  is to let the gospel out. Preach Jesus Christ and him
• 23:18
  crucified. Let the lion out and see who
• 23:20
  will dare to approach him. We don't need to defend the
• 23:23
  Bible with clever arguments. We need to unleash it through
• 23:26
  faithful preaching. OK, We have talked a lot about
• 23:30
  the theory that don'ts of DMM, the definitions, the biblical
• 23:34
  patterns. I really want to ground this in
• 23:36
  something concrete, and the source material provides this
• 23:40
  case study that I found so compelling, partly because it
• 23:43
  happened during a time we all remember so vividly, March 2020.
• 23:46
  Right as the world was shutting down.
• 23:48
  Exactly. The world is locking down
• 23:50
  because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
• 23:52
  And this is the story of the Iglesia Biblica de Monterey, the
• 23:56
  Monterey Bible Church, and two men, Eduardo Esquerdo and David
• 23:59
  Perez, And the context here is absolutely vital to
• 24:02
  understanding their story. So they're not in Monterey at
• 24:05
  this point, no. They're both from Monterey, but
• 24:07
  in March 2020, they're students at the Masters Seminary in
• 24:10
  California. They're training for pastoral
• 24:12
  ministry. And then suddenly the world just
• 24:15
  stops. I remember that feeling so well,
• 24:17
  everything just went to zoom overnight.
• 24:18
  It did. And for these two men sitting in
• 24:21
  their apartments in California, their hearts were back home in
• 24:24
  Monterrey, Mexico. They saw their home city dealing
• 24:28
  with fear, with uncertainty, with death, and they saw a
• 24:32
  profound famine of the Word of God.
• 24:34
  So what did they do? They didn't have a budget, they
• 24:36
  didn't have a building, they didn't have a big sending agency
• 24:39
  behind them yet. They just had the conviction
• 24:42
  that people needed truth. So they started a Bible study on
• 24:45
  Thursday nights online over Zoom.
• 24:47
  It started small, right? Just four or five families.
• 24:49
  Tiny. But here's the crucial contrast
• 24:52
  to the DMM movement we were just critiquing.
• 24:55
  When they gathered those four or five families on Zoom, they
• 24:58
  didn't start by asking, So what do you think God is saying to
• 25:01
  you in this passage? They didn't just facilitate a
• 25:04
  sharing time. What did they do?
• 25:05
  They open the text of Scripture and they taught.
• 25:08
  They did exposition. They explain the word verse by
• 25:11
  verse, even over a spotty Internet connection.
• 25:14
  That's incredible. And this went on for a while.
• 25:16
  It went on for nearly two years. Just think about that, patients.
• 25:19
  In the rapid multiplication world, two years is an eternity.
• 25:23
  You're supposed to have planted 10 generations of churches by
• 25:26
  then. But these men weren't building
• 25:28
  something fast. They were laying a deep
• 25:30
  foundation of truth. And the source highlights a
• 25:33
  couple of other really key things they did right from the
• 25:36
  start. First, they didn't go alone.
• 25:39
  No, the value of plurality. They modeled that biblical
• 25:42
  principle from the very beginning.
• 25:44
  They were a team. They could encourage each other,
• 25:46
  sharpen each other, hold each other accountable.
• 25:49
  As Ecclesiastes says, 2 are better than one.
• 25:52
  And they were formally sent. This goes back to Step 1 of
• 25:55
  Biblical church planting. Before they moved back to Mexico
• 25:58
  in 2022, they were formally examined and ordained by the
• 26:01
  elders at Greece Community Church.
• 26:03
  They went with the blessing and authority of ascending Church.
• 26:06
  OK, so they finally launched in person in Monterey in February
• 26:10
  2022. The source mentioned something
• 26:12
  fascinating about their logistics.
• 26:14
  They expected a small home meeting.
• 26:16
  They did, but their online group had grown so much that too many
• 26:19
  people RSVP. DA home was too small, so they
• 26:22
  had to scramble to find a venue, and God provided A rented hall
• 26:25
  at a lower price than they had even offered.
• 26:28
  A little sign of God's Providence on the work.
• 26:30
  The good hand of their God upon them, as Ezra would say.
• 26:34
  Now here's the part of the case study I found most striking.
• 26:37
  They didn't just open the doors and invite everyone who showed
• 26:41
  up to become a member right away.
• 26:43
  They were incredibly slow and deliberate about membership.
• 26:47
  This was just fascinating and so countercultural.
• 26:50
  In the religious context of Mexico, which is heavily
• 26:53
  influenced by a kind of nominal Roman Catholicism and generic
• 26:57
  low information evangelicalism, the concept of church membership
• 27:01
  was almost non existent. What do you mean?
• 27:03
  Well, it just wasn't a category people had.
• 27:05
  You just show up to a building, you maybe take communion, you
• 27:08
  listen to a sermon, you leave the idea of a formal covenant of
• 27:11
  mutual accountability, of submitting to elders that was
• 27:15
  completely foreign. So how did they handle that?
• 27:18
  Did they just force this foreign concept on them on day one?
• 27:21
  No, and this is where the wisdom of the biblical model really
• 27:24
  shines. They waited for a year and a
• 27:25
  half after their first public service before they formally
• 27:28
  accepted a single member into the church.
• 27:30
  Wow. A year and a half.
• 27:32
  So for 18 months, nobody was technically a member of the
• 27:35
  church. Correct, because they use that
• 27:38
  entire time to teach what a church is.
• 27:41
  They held four distinct membership classes walking
• 27:44
  through ecclesiology. They had every candidate read
• 27:48
  through their entire doctrinal statement.
• 27:50
  They conducted personal pastoral interviews with every single
• 27:54
  individual or family. So they were making sure that
• 27:57
  the people saying I'm in actually understood what they
• 28:01
  were getting into. They wanted to ensure that
• 28:03
  people understood the gospel, that they understood the
• 28:05
  Lordship of Christ, and that they understood what it meant to
• 28:08
  live in community and submit to qualified elders.
• 28:11
  It was a process of discipleship, not just
• 28:14
  recruitment. That is the polar opposite of
• 28:16
  the every head bowed, every eye closed.
• 28:18
  Just raise your hand and you're in approach.
• 28:20
  It is. And the result When they finally
• 28:22
  extended the right hand of fellowship a year and a half
• 28:25
  later, they weren't just gathering a crowd of
• 28:27
  disconnected individuals. They were cementing a true
• 28:30
  covenanted family. They were building that immune
• 28:33
  system we talked about earlier. It wasn't fast, but it was
• 28:35
  solid. And that, the source argues, is
• 28:37
  the difference between building a temporary tent and building a
• 28:41
  permanent temple. The case study mentions one
• 28:43
  other detail I thought was so wise they prioritized men's
• 28:47
  discipleship. Yes, before they launched a
• 28:50
  bunch of different programs, one of the first things they did was
• 28:52
  start of men's Bible study. They taught through passages on
• 28:56
  biblical manhood, headship in the home, the role of men in the
• 29:00
  church based on Genesis 2 and Ephesians 5.
• 29:03
  They understood that if you build strong godly men, you will
• 29:07
  have strong godly families and from that you will have a
• 29:10
  strong, healthy church. And then from that foundation,
• 29:13
  they added other ministries for women, youth, couples.
• 29:17
  But all of them were centered on the same thing.
• 29:19
  Careful verse by verse exposition of God's Word.
• 29:22
  That was the engine for everything they did.
• 29:24
  And they attributed their success, their endurance through
• 29:27
  the hard times. To the good hand of our God upon
• 29:30
  us. They knew it wasn't their clever
• 29:31
  strategy. It was God blessing His Word and
• 29:33
  His pattern. So as we start to wrap this deep
• 29:36
  dive up, let's try to summarize the main argument here.
• 29:39
  What's the big take away? I think it's this biblical
• 29:41
  church. Planting the kind that lasts and
• 29:43
  honors God requires first that we define the church correctly
• 29:47
  according to Scripture, not our cultural preferences or
• 29:50
  pragmatic impulses. Get the blueprint.
• 29:52
  Right. Get the blueprint right.
• 29:54
  Second, it requires prioritizing faithful, authoritative,
• 29:58
  expository teaching. We have to give people the
• 30:01
  actual Word of God, not just our thoughts about it.
• 30:04
  And 3rd. And 3rd, it requires that we
• 30:06
  trust the power of the gospel itself rather than trying to
• 30:09
  come up with our own clever modifications or marketing
• 30:12
  schemes. Fundamentally, it's about
• 30:13
  realizing that the work belongs to God.
• 30:16
  As Paul said, we plant, we water, but it is God who causes
• 30:20
  the growth. And if you try to manufacture
• 30:22
  that growth by changing the seed, by altering the gospel
• 30:25
  message or the biblical model of the church, we are not serving
• 30:29
  God. We are, in the end, just
• 30:30
  building a monument to ourselves.
• 30:32
  Here's the thought I really want to leave you with as we close.
• 30:35
  It's a question that this whole discussion has been pressing on
• 30:37
  my mind. If we truly believe that the
• 30:40
  gospel is the power of God for salvation, that it is the very
• 30:44
  voice of the Creator God calling dead people to life, then why
• 30:47
  are we so tempted to change the packaging?
• 30:50
  Why do we feel this constant need to soften it, or to hide
• 30:53
  the teaching, or to make it easier or more discoverable?
• 30:58
  Perhaps, and this is the uncomfortable part, perhaps our
• 31:01
  desire to make the message palatable is actually a sign of
• 31:04
  our own lack of faith in the Holy Spirit's power to
• 31:07
  regenerate a human heart. That is the question, isn't it?
• 31:10
  At the end of the day, do we trust the spirit or do we trust
• 31:12
  our sales pitch? Something for all of us to chew
• 31:15
  on. Thank you for listening to
• 31:16
  Reformed Thinking. We will.
• 31:17
  We'll catch you on the next deep dive.
• 31:19
  Grace and peace to you.