Dangerous Faith
Dangerous Faith is a ministry that strives to light a fire inside of Everyday Christians to live radically for Christ so that we can glorify God by advancing His Kingdom.
Dangerous Faith
Are Home Churches the Best Way to "Church"? #88: Dangerous Conversations with John Hobbs
Nate Williams is joined by John Hobbs, who is an elder of his house church. What are the pros and cons of this church structure? Let's dive in.
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Welcome to the Dangerous Faith podcast and, eventually, when I get to it, the YouTube channel that we have here and I'm honored to be able to welcome on to the show. Welcome on to the podcast, John Hobbs. He is technically. What are we, John? Are we cousins-in-law?
John Hobbs:Yeah, that's what I always say.
Nate Williams:Okay, there we go. I guess cousins-in-law is how we are, and honored to have him on to the podcast and the YouTube channel. And so we're talking about house churches, home churches I don't know if he has another term he likes to use but I thought it was always fascinating. We'd get together at various times throughout the year and I'd always love to hear just different things that is going on with his church, and so we'll get into all that, but before we do so, john, welcome to the podcast and YouTube channel. How are you doing today?
John Hobbs:I'm doing pretty good you.
Nate Williams:I'm doing wonderfully so for our listening viewing audience. Tell us a little bit about yourself and I'll let you go into whatever level of detail you would like.
John Hobbs:Yeah, sure. So yeah, my name's John, so I'm in my mid-30s, so I've been a believer as long as I can remember. And just since we're talking about churches and stuff, a little bit of my church background. I grew up in the same church. It was a church my dad helped start back in 1988 or 1987, sometime way back then Belonged to that church for the first 30 or so years of my life. It's a really great experience, especially when I was younger.
John Hobbs:Growing up, I mean just everything that you'd hope for in a church as far as just really tight-knit families. I mean really having multiple just older folks that really you know when you say they're like another father and mother. I mean I was blessed Lots of just excellent people to be around and friends that are more like brothers and mother. I was blessed Lots of excellent people to be around and friends that are more like brothers and sisters. It was a very, very good experience growing up. Anyways, as I got older, things changed a little bit. I don't know how much that was things changing or me changing. Time happens, but then around I guess four years ago, maybe a little bit more than four years ago, felt the Lord just calling in various different ways, calling us to step out from where we were going, which was never a huge church anyways I mean always had a building and stuff like that but maybe the biggest it ever got was 150 people, but usually probably more around the 100 mark. But then, uh, yeah, felt the lord's call to move on. Wasn't sure exactly what that meant. Um, because technically a small church, but it was not a home church and uh, in fact it was. Uh, I ended up on a beach trip with my, with uh valerius Valerius, and we were.
John Hobbs:I was reading a which is the only book of Francis Chan's I've ever read, but it was. I was reading letters to the church, or letters to the churches, and uh, very convicting there was some of the. Some of the stuff he was talking about in the book were just very personally convicting to me about my attitude. Had been kind of getting a little bit sour over the last couple of years of going to church and just felt a lot of conviction that I, my attitude was not right, cause I was like, well, why are things not changing here? Why are, why are things not changing the way I think they should change? And really felt the Lord saying it's like look, it's that this, this is my church, or these are my people, I you're not the leader here, and all these different things. It's like let me worry about that. What it turned out is like it was really was God was working on me, trying to lead me to change something, so and that's when it was like, okay, well, it's time to step out in faith, and so, and it just happened that I was feeling very drawn to the home church idea, partly because of that book. But that was not the beginning of why I was thinking that way.
John Hobbs:And then that just coincided with, you know happenstance, covid started, so everybody had to do some sort of home church or virtual church, and I mean for different reasons. I mean I think it's better to be in person. I think everybody would agree it's better to be in person if you can, and so, yeah, then we went through COVID altogether. Never, I mean we missed a few Sundays because literally everybody would maybe be sick with, like, I mean, a lot of little kids and stuff. So you've always got stomach bugs and stuff going around, but for the most part we didn't miss a beat. We broke all the COVID rules. I mean we had dozens of people in tiny rooms together, singing and having meals together. So we broke a lot of rules and I'm really grateful that we got to do that so we didn't miss a beat.
John Hobbs:So I I I'll be curious when my kids are older, because when people are talking about covet they didn't have to experience a lot of what a lot of people but experience because not only did we do um house church or started doing that at the beginning of covet, but we also homeschooled our kids already anyways. So in a lot of ways their life was not. I don't even know if they would really understand what happened, because it was so just, it didn't affect them that much and I think it showed a type of resilience to having that type of model of church and schooling as well. There's also challenges, but it's a very resilient way of doing things. But that's a little bit of where I'm coming from, I guess I don't know if you're interested in like just theologically kind of the tradition I come from, but it's more of a, I guess, a charismatic Pentecostal slash Southern Baptist feel. So you're kind of in your vein, of your standard non-denominational.
Nate Williams:But would you call it Baptocostal?
John Hobbs:Yeah, ish, I mean, it's not like so unfamiliar, like you could have somebody who's going to your standard kind of First Baptist Church wherever you're from, and it wouldn't be so different. But you could also have somebody from like an Assemblies of God church, it would be, it wouldn't be so different, they wouldn't be necessarily uncomfortable, so it's it's kind of in that vein. So I don't know, you're yeah, you're typical small Southern, non-denominational vein. You know a lot of, like I said, a lot of Pentecostal influence as well, gotcha.
Nate Williams:Okay, Well, that helps us to know where you're coming from. And so, John, what would you say at your home church? What would you say? Your current role is at the church?
John Hobbs:So I'm an elder, so we have three elders currently and we were. So that took a long time. We didn't, we weren't appointed for the first three, two and a half or three years, and partly because we were still, you know, you're still waiting to see what the Lord does. Actually, it was what was it? Watchman Nee? There's a story that he talks about where he was planting churches in China and his method of appointing elders was he would go plant churches, then he would leave for like a year or two and eventually he'd end up coming back around and in that meantime, lord willing, the leaders would arise and he'd come back and be like OK, obviously these people are the ones that the Lord has appointed as elders. So we took a while before we had officially appointed elders and we don't have a supreme elder, we don't have a pastor over the elders or a lead elder per se. So it is an equal, I guess, authority.
John Hobbs:And yeah, we've had a bout two years ago, so we outgrew the houses we meet in, so we had to do a church break. It is a breaking. People always want to use cute words like multiplying or planting, but it really hurts. So I kind of prefer the breaking terminology, because that's the way it feels. But we had to break into twos. So we have two churches now that we're still very close with, we do joint services every month, and they also had three elders appointed by their congregation.
John Hobbs:And as far as how we were appointed, it was A the Lord just kind of, you know, he kind of revealed who was going to be, who was already leading anyways, but then the congregation affirmed that and then we got a period of time where if anybody had any objections they could bring it up and said then that's how we got where we are now.
John Hobbs:I don't know if that's the way we would do it in the future, because I mean it would certainly have to be with the, the ascent of the congregation, I think. But we sent, since we were simply that we didn't have anybody who was officially planting us. We didn't have uh, uh, like a, like a watchman need, like a point, you know, laying hands on us. That was a tricky part, not that we didn't have other elders from other fellowships that were assisting us, but we didn't have like an official, like sending out from a particular fellowship. Gotcha, it's an interesting dynamic, just the different problems you face. I mean, I don't know, it's relatively unique, I feel like, but we muddled our way through it and, lord willing, we're doing the right thing.
Nate Williams:So let's talk about that a little bit, working your way through different issues that come up, and so we're going to address some of the positives about this. I guess. Church model I don't know if you like that terminology model I don't know if you like that terminology. You mentioned how sometimes you prefer the word church breaking or splitting. Splitting has a bad connotation to it, but it's more honest and open. So I know we get in the weeds about terminology. But your church model, the home church, talk about some of the advantages of it. Maybe scripturally you think it's accurate to Acts, Maybe just practically, it is very advantageous for various reasons. Talk to me about some of the benefits of having a home church model.
John Hobbs:Yeah, so, like since you mentioned Acts, acts 2.42 is really the foundational verse for how we structure our services, and it says I'll read it I got it open anyways and they were continually devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, the breaking of bread and to prayer. So there's those four elements and it says I think it was right before that or right after it it talks about how they're meeting, from going from house to house, and so that's, that's really like the, and not not saying that that's the only way. Obviously, it's not the only way that the worship should be. The Christians should join together for worship, but it's the most available way and it's, you know, if you think about. Francis Chan actually uses this analogy in letters to the church.
John Hobbs:Francis Chan actually uses this analogy in Letters to the Church. He talks about how, if you look at the largest hotel chains in the year 2000, you've got like Hilton, you've got Holiday Inn, all these different brands. They could not house everybody in the world. But once you go to modern day, airbnb and things like that, suddenly every housing unit in the world is available to be used. So it's like you, you instantly have the, the capacity to handle everybody, because, like if you were, they say I don't know if the stat's still true, but they it's true to a certain degree that your church will typically only minister to fill up with the number of people that can actually physically be in the church and and typically people once I think it was like 75 or 80 capacity that'll be. Seating capacity is typically when a church will stop growing, you know, for different reasons, like, people are uncomfortable sitting right next to other people for one thing. So it's like, even if you had like a church in you know, like Times Square, new York, and you have two services, thousand members, thousand seats, and you or three or four services, that's 4,000 people you might be ministering to on a Sunday, but there's what? 9 million people in New York City. So it's just small.
John Hobbs:But if it's like, okay, well, each of these apartment units is a potential house of worship where Christians can gather together, then all of a sudden capacity is not an issue at all. Resources are really not an issue at all. I'm already paying for my house. I don't have to have an extra fund to pay for my house. That money is already there and so you have capacity to do it. And, as we found out through COVID, you have freedom, a lot of freedom. I mean, if you look at the most closed societies in the world, the church is still there to some degree. It might have to be underground, but it's still there. So you don't have to limit yourself to just physical projects, building projects.
John Hobbs:To meet as a church, it's a fine way to join together and it's really convenient if it's not in your house per se, but that doesn't have to be the way you do it and I feel like, as Americans, it's a helpful lesson to learn. You don't have to. There's not just one way to meet together, because someday, as we learned during COVID, you might not be allowed to meet at your church building and so to have that resiliency to be like, okay, well, we can meet, we can still meet together, we can still be the church together, despite persecution, if that comes, despite regulations, if they come, despite distance, all these different things. So it's a really resilient model. And then also there's no overhead. None of us are paid staff, so that's a benefit in a lot of ways, because it can remove a lot of potential conflicts of interest. It removes the whole money. You don't have to wonder if somebody's in this, just for the money which is nice.
Nate Williams:Money never causes problems, John. Remember that.
John Hobbs:The love of money though. The love of money, so that's a good thing. And again it's like don't muzzle the ox while it treads out the grain. I have nothing against paying ministers, paying people that are doing the word of God, if that's what God has called them to and God is providing for them. But just like Paul said you know I forget which passage he's talking about how, when I was with you, I was, he was a tent maker. So he was, was he got a job mending tents, making tents? So just specifically so that nobody could accuse him of just grafting money from the people around him or being a grifter, so that. So it's uh, it's not that it's like something that you have to do, but it's something that prevents a lot of accusations and it's it's just and it's really simple. I mean, it's like you've already got your own house and life you have to run anyways, and then if you have a staff and a church building, all this, that's just a whole other ball of wax that you've got to manage as well. So it's a lot simpler and I think, generally speaking, the simplicity is a major benefit of a house church model. You could make it complicated if you wanted to. I would suggest not doing that. I honestly don't know why you'd want to. It's pretty simple.
John Hobbs:When you think about what church is, it's like what we just read. They devoted themselves continually to the apostles' teaching, to fellowship, breaking of bread and to fellowship. You can do those things, we can all, as Christians, do those things together and it's just good. And the little house when it's like 30, we actually get up to about 50 or 60 people together. But when it's that size group you can still know everybody well. So when it says fellowship, it's not like I have to see people, that I see but they don't know me.
John Hobbs:Like when it's 30, 40 people inside your house. You know them to a pretty decent degree. I mean obviously everybody you know. Every relationship can be better, but you know them somewhat. You miss them if they're not there. Like you can tell, like because visibly you know the faces and I think that's a benefit too, especially as a, as an elder and in a pastoral role. It's less to take care of. Like you can actually like I don't. I mean I like if you're at a bigger church you have to have a big team, Because otherwise it's hard to even just keep track of everybody. So this kind of takes a lot of that out. Just by making it simpler, it's an easier size to work with. There's a number of other things we can do.
Nate Williams:Yeah, that's a great answer. All these different advantages. And I like the way we can do. Yeah, that's a great answer, all these different advantages. And I like the way you phrase it. You're saying this isn't the only way to go about things, so you're not dogmatic, it has to be done this way, but you do say all right. I think this is very biblical. I think there are a lot of advantages of having a church structure like this and so, john, structure like this and so John. I appreciate you outlining all these things for us. Now we can keep on going with some of the positives or we can jump over to maybe some objections people might have to the home church model. Where would you like to go?
John Hobbs:We can jump over to the cons if you want. We can jump over to the cons if you want.
Nate Williams:Okay. So let's talk about some of those structural type of things. So, for example, you mentioned having three elders at your home church and you know, lord willing, you love one another, you serve one another, christ-like servanthood is just permeating your house, church, and Lord willing, right. But let's just say there are some disagreements. Let's just say, for some reason, doctrinally or practically, the three of you just don't agree on certain matters. For whatever reason, denominationally, there tends to be a next group of people, like another body, council of whatever you know, different terminology for each denomination, but you would take a dispute and then you would go up the chain and be like, hey, can y'all help us work out this dispute? If something like that were to arise in your home church, what would happen there? You know what I mean.
John Hobbs:Yeah, yeah, so I can't say from experience as far as a big dispute, because we haven't had a major dispute. We've had things we've had to work through, but we've typically come to a consensus or close to a consensus on it. So it's yeah, that is one of the parts that you know, the Lord has been gracious to us so far that we haven't had to deal with that. I think part of what we would do is because, like I said, we have multiplied or broken into two fellowships now, so we have another team of elders that is there that we all get together every so often to just consult with each other. If there's anything big that's pressing for both church the greater two churches together, we'll discuss. So I would imagine we would come before just the larger group of elders and that would probably be the first step and just get input.
John Hobbs:And we don't have this codified, but I think it is helpful to have an odd number of elders. That way, if you have a and maybe it's actually better to have an even number but if you do have a dispute, you can have a tiebreaker, and not saying that you have to have a tiebreaker. I mean, sometimes gridlock is the right thing. I think that's part of the problem with our political system is that some people think gridlock's bad. Sometimes gridlock is good it prevents you from doing things that maybe you shouldn't do. I agree, so that would probably be the first step. A number of other churches and actually older elders that we're friends with, that we're related with that could help us in a time of crisis I guess, or if a major dispute came up.
John Hobbs:But yeah, I'll have to officially say a TBD on that, because we really haven't crossed that bridge yet.
Nate Williams:And, lord willing, you never have to. Let's hope. But I do like that answer that, yeah, there might not be an authoritative body over you per se, but you can still involve other mature, doctrinally sound believers in your area around you, other elders of other churches. So I still think that is a good answer and, like we said, hopefully this just never happens, but we do recognize humanity. We do like to argue a bit, but okay, so that's a great answer.
Nate Williams:Something else that comes to mind is what about the, I guess, practical benefits of having a building? So, for example, if someone's getting married, it helps to have like a little chapel area. Or, let's say, teens want to get together for a party, a kickoff I'm just thinking like fall kickoff, because we're heading into school real soon, let's see what else If they want to have a pizza party, a lock-in insert, all the different youth activities, it just helps to have your own space for meetings and whatever bigger events. But I know at a home that might be somewhat limited, not everything will be off limits, but maybe larger type events. So just from a practical standpoint, having a building can be helpful. Any thoughts there?
John Hobbs:Yeah, having a building is. There's a lot of advantages to it. I mean, for one thing, it's not in your house. So we host church a lot. So we've had our share of holes knocked in the walls by my children running around and your carpet gets dirty. I mean, there's all the invasion of your private space, your personal space that happens, which is, I mean, honestly, you just get over it. It's not a huge deal, but it can be a really big deal to some people and it is like you know it's, it's just, it's different, it's it's you're dealing with.
John Hobbs:You don't have a nursery per se. You don't necessarily have a great outdoor space for the kids to play in. When it's raining, you know people get muddy feet inside. I mean, so all the just the domestic annoyances, I guess. I mean I look at it as just, it's a. It's a, it's a chance to die to self, to some of the more unimportant things. Anyways, you know, spilled milk things in life yes, lord will Thankfully like God is really kind of I don't. I personally don't really think about that much. I know some people it's still. It's still. You know it's not fun to get your household messy.
John Hobbs:But my sister, she made a good point. She, uh, because they host as well that every time we have, you know, church at their house, she says she feels like it's blessing her home. As you have, you know, the church is in your home just worshiping god together. So there's like a real blessing from that. That's true, yeah, but it's so. It's challenging, though, when we want to have our joint services with our sister church. You know, we, that's over a hundred people and it's hard to. We don't we have, like maybe one house that we can fit all a hundred people in. So we do.
John Hobbs:We do a lot of outdoor stuff. So, as far as, like, finding spaces to do things typically, we finding spaces to do things Typically, we'll try to aim for outdoor things. So if that's like a big gazebo or canopy somewhere that we can borrow, we'll do stuff like that, which is good. I mean, again, it's weather permitting, so it's, yeah, you kind of, I don't know it's, it's one of those things. It's like everything that's obvious. Those are the problems, yeah, obvious, those are the problems.
John Hobbs:Yeah, and we do certainly benefit from, you know, like, if somebody is getting married, like, and they and a church is willing to let them use their, their facility. That's awesome, it's a great blessing. So I think it's one of those things. That's it shows, uh, that there is a which I, I would, you know, I think for like larger churches, especially churches with larger, like large facilities. It's there's a big opportunity to really minister to smaller fellowships that don't have the buildings and stuff like that for those special occasions like weddings, funerals, things of that nature. So I think there's definitely a place for having the some kind of christian facilities around that the church can use.
John Hobbs:I mean, I will say I mean it's like part of the problem, though, something that's been a little bit disappointing. Maybe not super surprising, but churches are are very uh, they can be tight-fisted in some ways about lending resources like that, which is a little disappointing. I understand it, because you don't necessarily want just anybody coming and preaching in your facility. You don't know what they believe, you don't know what they're going to do, so you have to have some sort of just oversight over what's happening with the resources you have been given. But it's a shame to see so many places just basically empty 95% of the time.
John Hobbs:But that said, I mean we've been doing this for four years, so we really haven't had an issue with the stuff you're talking about.
John Hobbs:I mean we don't really do children's church kind of stuff because we don't have another space in the house that would be ideal for doing a children's church.
John Hobbs:So we do structure our services kind of understanding these limitations, of partly facility limitations, so we try to keep our services under an hour and I mean I grew up we did like two and a half hour long services.
John Hobbs:So I'm I'm not opposed to, yeah, to the long any stretch, but when you don't have a nursery and you got a bunch of kids and a lot we have a lot of kids it's like kids that have a very small attention span. I think it was amy carmichael, you know she had adopted all those children in india, but I think in one of her writings she talked about how they did church for about 20 minutes or so and that was basically all the kids could take. So we do about, you know, our services usually look about 20 minutes of of praise and worship, 20 minutes or so of a sermon, a teaching, and then 20 minutes of prayer and a communion and so we end up with around that the kids do great. If anybody's wondering, pretty much any size child outside of an infant can last for an hour without just losing their mind.
Nate Williams:That's true. We think we constantly have to entertain, entertain, entertain like tablet-wise, screen-wise, and that's not true. So I like several things that you said. One it's an opportunity to die to self, that some of the things we think are a necessity, some of the things that we just have to have, and oh man, we can't worship Jesus without all the latest technology, fog machine whatever, a nice fancy stage, a massive screen behind the preacher, whatever it is, and like you have to have those, otherwise it's not church. Some of those things you recognize Otherwise it's not church.
Nate Williams:Some of those things you recognize like those are very first world Western Christian mindsets on stuff, whereas if you you mentioned, mention Francis Chan, love him and you mentioned you know maybe there are some believers in other parts of the world that as long as there is a Bible and someone who is able to read that Bible, it could be on a dirt floor, they do not care and the worship, and so I will recognize that there's the two sides to that coin.
Nate Williams:Yeah, having a building is nice from a practical standpoint for certain reasons, but also the moment you introduce a building, you also introduce a potential for spiritual stunting because people think you have to have a building or idolatry like, oh, look at our building, it's just so beautiful and nice and big, I can be another source of idolatry and so you also introduce, you help in some areas, but there are also some problems that come with that and so, yeah, I think as Christians in America we are very spoiled.
Nate Williams:So I think you bring up some good points. You phrased it more nicely than I did, but I think you bring up some good points. The next one I'll bring up has to do with. The next one I'll bring up has to do with missionary work giving to missions, sending out missionaries, and the thought is, for example, in the Southern Baptist Convention, the SBC, they have their different groups that are responsible for mission work, either international or here in the country, and in a denomination you can potentially gather a whole bunch of money and you can support a whole bunch of missionaries, and maybe a bit more obviously than you can, by a single home church or house church. So the thought is, with a denomination you can do bigger things and send more people. What might be your thoughts there when it comes to mission work?
John Hobbs:I guess. Uh, I mean, as you're saying that I was just you know, it's like you know, money is not as fungible, right? So it's kind of doesn't matter how you you move it around. It's like a dollar is a dollar and, and so what we give is like you know. So we do support missions and thankfully, because we have no overhead, pretty much all of our giving is either to missions or directly to needs that are brought up before the church. So in that sense it's relatively efficient. So in that sense it's relatively efficient.
John Hobbs:Now, we don't have like the big network you know, like the mission board or whatever things like that or you know, have decades and decades of being worked out in these various places. But you know, the Lord just he just brings people across your path too. So like we like today we had a, we have a couple that's going to. The husband is from Sweden and the wife's an old friend of ours but grew up here, but they're moving to Sweden to plant a church. So it's like that's a pretty niche, kind of little small thing that you might not necessarily hear about and there may not be a big missions focus on sweden from like the your typical missionary board. So it's like the lord, just kind of he brings the needs in front of you and, like you know, we support missionaries who do work in the middle east.
John Hobbs:Again, people that we we know and I think that's that's a benefit to it being this size is it's typically when we're given to a missionary, we, we know them or somebody knows them personally, and so there's a little bit of uh, hopefully a little bit of built-in accountability with that. Anyways, uh, it's, it can be challenging, the just the actual figuring out how to send money around. That that piece is, um, maybe the the least practical or most, uh, practically inefficient part about it is just literally how to transfer money around without it being, uh, just incorrectly handled. So that's, uh, that's a challenge.
John Hobbs:That's something we're actually still working on how to, how to best handle, you know, essentially, you know cutting checks to people and things like that yeah because for a while we operated which, while we operated without being a state's recognized church, like for tax reasons, and part of that was we didn't know how to set it up. It's the first time we've done this, and part of it was I have a slight objection to the state having anything to do with what I do, for church or not.
Nate Williams:Yes, understood.
John Hobbs:I don't understand why the state has to be in the business of recognizing if you're a church or not. But you kind of have to for handling money, because you can't just have everybody send a bunch of money to me because then I'll have to report that on my taxes as income. Everybody send a bunch of money to like me because then I'll have to report that on my taxes as income. So it ends up you, the way the system is you, you really should set up a church account, or it's.
John Hobbs:It's not as it's not super, super complicated, but it's just annoying another step yeah, it's just the government's involved with it, which is, like you know, whatever understood it's like and what kind of pushed me over the edge of that not being a real problem is like, well, if we ever have to go back to not being like officially, uh, a church recognized by the state, you know, for tax reasons, we can always do that. That's not that hard. You basically just stop, yes, start doing this. There's no rules for that. So that's good, um, but yeah, so like getting the money out. That's probably the biggest challenge, I think.
John Hobbs:Um, but otherwise it's, it's pretty efficient, like we don't have. Like if I give to a missionary who's working in like Lebanon, it's like I know it's going to them, you know. And it's like I know it's going to them, you know. And it's like, insofar as I trust you know who I'm giving it to, I know that that's what's happening with it. So the first thing I give to just necessarily like a board, like I don't know what they're, I don't necessarily know what they're doing with it. I don't tend to think they're wasting money, but, uh, inefficient, it's possible. I mean, I, I don't know.
Nate Williams:And so I think you bring up several good points there that you send your money away to some third party. You're not sure you imagine some of it's going to get to a missionary, but you also don't know. You don't know how much is being paid for salaries, overhead, all those things, to where if you give a dollar bill, you don't know how much of that dollar is actually going to make it to its destination. So I agree with those things. So you might concede with. You know the overall amount of money. A denomination can give a lot because a lot of churches are together. But your strength with a home church is going back to other things. We've talked about relationships. You know people, you know where the money's going. There are fewer hoops to jump through. You can give directly and so you have a lot of strengths through a house church that a denomination doesn't have. It's slower, inefficient, all these things we're talking about. So it's kind of a give and take with that. So good points there, john, and okay. So I'm going to bring up one final objection people might have and it has to do with maybe leadership credentials training. To do with maybe leadership credentials training.
Nate Williams:So, for example, I went to Beeson Divinity School, part of a Sanford University. So at the end you get this you know the whole piece of paper that says you have these credits, these classes, stamp of approval. You have this degree and it's not perfect. It's far from a perfect system. A lot of money, people can jump through hoops and they don't learn anything. They're still immature, spiritually, sure, I understand Still flaws with it, but at the very least you can say to some degree you learn theology, you learn doctrine, church history, for example. You, like I am, you're a William Lane Craig fan. So for instance, there's philosophy, theology, apologetics. To some degree you're exposed to something you have to be because you passed some classes. So then you go and you take that piece of paper, you apply to churches and you hope you find someone good when you're hiring and they have a useful degree, they learn something and then they become your pastor, your elder, whatever. That is a process that happens.
Nate Williams:But with a home church training, raising people, maybe getting more broadly exposed to academic stuff it seems like that process of having a church leader training them, education, all that stuff. The steps are a little more unclear. Finn right now is behind the computer and he's about to jump on. You are on the channel now For those listening on the podcast. My cat Finn just hopped in and he gets a little noisy, so forgive me, but anyways. And so I think you get where I'm going the whole denominational seminary. There are some pros to that, some strengths to it, but also I know there are some weaknesses. When it comes to house churches and home churches, raising leaders, implementing leaders, hiring leaders what does that look like for y'all?
John Hobbs:Yeah, I certainly think there's a big place in the body of Christ for formal education. I think people like Dr Craig are invaluable assets to us as Christians. I mean, I've personally gained a ton for my faith from the work that these scholars have done, and I hope the church always has a place and emphasis and is able to fund. That's another good example of don't muzzle the ox while it treads out the grain. You can't do the kind of work that a Dr Craig does full-time or without being full-time. You have to be full-time. So there's certainly a place for that kind of work and so, that said, though it's the.
John Hobbs:The disciples were not, you know, highly educated men. They had a baseline level of education from from just their hebrew school, and they they understood the old testament scriptures to a certain degree, but their main teacher was Jesus, and then, when Jesus was ascended, it was the Holy Spirit. So I think, as far as Christian education within the church, the emphasis should always be on just discipleship, in the simplest terms of you're being taught to follow Jesus, you're taught the words of Jesus, you're taught what the scriptures say and you're taught to to follow Jesus. You're taught the words of Jesus, you're taught what the scriptures say and you're taught to listen to the Holy Spirit, and I think that really is when it talks about able to teach as a requirement for an elder. That that's the heart that it's coming from, is that you are speaking almost like Moses was speaking. He wasn't speaking because of his education, he was speaking through what the Lord gave him, and I would hope that our leadership in all the churches is educated, yes, but Holy spirit led, that they let the Holy spirit speak through them. So I think that it's like, as, as Christians, we need to be like Bereans, we need to search the scriptures, we need to see what the word says so that we're not deceived and, at the same time, we can't depend upon our, our just rote knowledge to save us.
John Hobbs:Because I mean, look at, you know, like harvard and yale are were originally seminaries. You know these places of learning that have been lost to the church, and so there's certainly a place for both, but I think, at the end of the day, the Lord's going to be really he's not going to be so much interested in what type of knowledge we had about, you know, preterism or paedo-baptism or whatever your isms and your niche, little Christian theology, things you want to talk about is really going to be interested in your relationship with the Holy Spirit and with Jesus Christ. What did you do when the Spirit was leading you? Did you ignore the Spirit? Did you walk in the Spirit and do you have the fruit of the Spirit in your life? And that stuff is going to be very powerful, I think, at the end, and it's like the people out there that are being led down a scholarly path. It's like, do it as unto the Lord. It's valuable in as much as it is unto the Lord. So if you're being led down that path, do it.
John Hobbs:But regardless, like the whole, this common denominator between all of these non-scholarly and scholarly paths is that the lord is leading you, that the spirit is leading you, so go down that way. That that, I think, is uh, I think that's what the you know when you look at the requirements for leadership and eldership in particular. That's what it is now practically speaking. If somebody has a in particular, that's what it is now practically speaking. If somebody has a bible college degree or seminary degree, you at least know they have studied something, something.
John Hobbs:Yeah, but at the same time, what I would suggest for house churches and things like this is that you, the people in the congregation, you get to know each other and you can tell who's in the Word, you can tell who's praying, and the Lord will reveal that. And they may be just a fisherman, but the Lord may be speaking to them and teaching them and they may be studious, and so I think it's a pretty broad, pretty big tent that the Lord can use as far as church leadership. But obviously you've got to go look at the passages that teach explicitly the qualifications of an elder and go by that.
Nate Williams:Yeah, I love that answer. So, yeah, seminary and academia has its place, and you mentioned William Lane Craig. We love him, he's great, and so it has its place. But you focused on something that I think the local church house, church or not needs to zero in on which is discipleship, in on which is discipleship Know your people, train one another, walk together, live together. And so, even in the absence of a degree or whatever the traditional credential is, or ordination, in the absence of that, someone can still be a good leader because you've lived life with them, you've seen them grow up, you've seen how they've handled trials and tribulations and the way they maybe have led Bible studies or they've done a devotional. You can see some of those things. And so, even without the traditional certification process, whatever that looks like for a denomination, a house church can still train up leaders who are mature in the faith, knowledgeable in the word and really the resources available to us online when it comes to classes and all the different topics philosophy, theology, apologetics, church history, all of it it's all there online as well. So, again, we have information at our fingertips like never before, and so, yes, I still think that's still not a defeater of the home church idea. You, just as we always, should you emphasize relationships and truly getting to know someone, and then you'll know off of 1 Timothy and Titus hey, does this person qualify as an elder or a deacon? So again, good answer there, john. I appreciate that. So that really was all for all of the objections I wanted to bring up.
Nate Williams:I do have a note on virtual church. I want to ask you know, is virtual church real? Can you have real church that way? We'll get there. But before I do that, pros, cons of home church or house church Did we cover the bases? Anything else we may have missed? Anything else you'd like to say about a home church?
John Hobbs:I mean, we talked about a lot of the, I guess, the main stuff that people would be curious about, the main stuff that people would be curious about. But I guess I would also add that the way we do our services in particular, just like the actual steps of our services, are based off of 242. But we set up chairs in our living room like we set them up in rows, so that's just the way it literally looks. So if anybody out there is just interested at all in what home church is, you don't have to have a closed mind view of it. It can be everybody sitting in a circle together. It can be two or three people. You know there's gonna be places in this world, in this country, that there's maybe only three believers believers in an apartment building or something like that. You can have church, whatever size it takes. I mean, obviously you don't forsake meeting together.
John Hobbs:But the way we do it, the way it just looks on a Sunday, is not the only way it can look and it's not the only way. That's God pleasing and that's the thing. You have to walk in humility, because there's a temptation of small churches and house churches like anything that's small, that seems like a select group of people to get haughty, be prideful, like, ah well, we understand it, we it? Yeah, we, we know what we're talking about and that is not from the lord, that is not what the lord is saying. Like the lord is not interested in you being better than everybody else. He's interested in your heart and he's interested in other people and he wants to see his church grow. So let jesus build his church, however he needs to build it. And if that involves, if, like you know, it's like we, we have a men who lead the church, you know we.
John Hobbs:But if you're in an area where it's only ladies that are believers, that are faithful believers, then I thought, by all means, god will use you, god will still use you. In a place like that, I think it's like we just need to let the Lord work and there might be an ideal way to do things, but it's his church. He's going to build it how he wants to build it. So don't force him to do. You can't force him to do anything anyways. But it's like, don't just thrust your own ideas at the forefront. At the forefront, like jesus leads. So I don't know. No, no, that's true helpful that is.
Nate Williams:But it is helpful because, yeah, we, no matter what church model you're a part of, we all have this tendency to think that we figured out the formula, we got it right, and so there's an elitism that comes with that, and so I agree that I love the way y'all do things and there are pros and cons that we've talked about but I also like how you're not dogmatically asserting that this is not just the best way, it's the only way, or not just a better way, it's the best way. We are trying to be faithful to scripture and you can come to different conclusions there. We are trying to be faithful to our calling in Christ. So I like the way you're phrasing things.
Nate Williams:Now, all right, john, before we head off, I have a question about virtual church. All right, people joining a live stream people. Now, I do know there are medical reasons. So, for example, some people just they can't travel. I know some people they might be injured, ill for a season and they just can't move. So, barring those reasons where you cannot move from your house or move from your bed, what do you think about people just joining live streams and they hear the sermon that way and they're broadly aware of what a local church is doing because of the service they watch. Broadly aware of what a local church is doing because of the service they watch and that is their primary way of. If you're on podcasts, you can't see the air quotes I'm using. Their primary way of attending church is virtual and they're healthy physically, they're able to go. They're just choosing to join a live stream. What are your thoughts on that? Is that church?
John Hobbs:Well, I think, first of all, I benefit tremendously from recorded sermons and teachings and things like that, like that is like you mentioned earlier. That is a huge benefit and blessing of the modern day, like, really, the last 15, 20 years, I mean, I remember my dad walking around with a bunch of cassette tapes from sermons and stuff, and what we have is so much more convenient than that. And 30 years before my dad had the cassette tapes, they didn't have anything really. So we have just a tremendous blessing of knowledge that we have available at our fingertips. So in that sense, I think recorded sermons and teachings are great.
John Hobbs:Now to your question, though, about the otherwise able-bodied person who's just not coming for what reason? And I would just ask that person, like, what is your reason? You know, if you're not limited by health or time, you know, like, if you don't have a shift work or something like that because you're just preventing you from coming, like why we have we have explicit passages to talk about. Again, not forsaking gathering together, meeting together. There's a benefit of being around people, but it's also we're human beings like we need to be around each other, to know each other.
John Hobbs:There's something about bodily being in the same presence as somebody else. That is important. It's not the. You know. The resurrection from the dead is not a bunch of ghosts coming up, and we were bodily raised from the grave. So, jesus, god, did not design us to be alone. I mean, he's explicitly said it's not good for man to be alone. So if you're alone by choice, it's like you need to really go before God and ask like, why am I doing this? Is this just because I am inconvenienced? Maybe is it just because I don't like the people I'm around, or I don't know.
John Hobbs:You have your reasons. If it's not a good reason and you have to be honest with yourself, then stop. You need to go and if the church is too far away, find something that's closer. Whatever the objection is, really think about it and I guarantee God is going to make a way for it to be. But, like you said, I think it's like you know, for the invalids, people that are unable to come, during COVID, when people were not allowed to meet together, at least we had virtual options. You know, like I said, for us we didn't. We didn't really miss a beat. We met in person anyways. But had it been like a, like a, like the black death or something like 20 of everybody was actually dying, we probably would have. I don't know what we would have done. We probably would have. You know, I don't know what we would have done. That's a hypothetical.
Nate Williams:Yeah, let's hope we never have to figure that one out.
John Hobbs:But but at least now we have the option like okay, well, we still can meet together, that's true. I don't want to like throw the baby out with the bathwater, but I feel like your question in particular is geared towards the people that are really just they're just not interested in going. They just do it because it's convenient just not interested in going.
Nate Williams:They just do it because it's convenient.
John Hobbs:Yeah, they feel like they just they're supposed to do it and they want to say they go to church somewhere. And it's again, it's like you've got to be honest with yourself. Are you really a member of this church If you never know? If you were to show up, would anybody know you? Yeah, and that's a that's a tough thing. And that's a tough thing.
John Hobbs:And, as a leader, do you have people that you've never met, that you've literally never been in the same room with them, that you can honestly say these are people that are part of the flock that I'm supposed to watch over? You wouldn't even be able to pick them out of the line in front of you at McDonald's. So it's I don't know. It's not good for men to be alone. I would, if you can, if you have the time, I mean if you're, if you're able, physically able to, and if your your work situation permits it, which, if your work situation doesn't permit it, I mean I would. It's a different topic, but you need to have some sort of sabbath rest in your life, so you need to. You know, maybe you can figure out something there, but it'd have to be a very good reason to have the community there. So anyways, yeah, so I'm, generally speaking I'm against virtual church membership, like like you were describing.
Nate Williams:yeah, I think I agree with you. It's almost like uh, for for those who are doing it out of convenience as opposed to necessity, it's like potato chip church, it can you know. It helps a little bit and it can be used here and there, but it's not really substantive. It's not substantial, it's not fulfilling, it's not enriching or any of that. It's just like, eh, it's something, but not really what you're looking for to aid, to help you spiritually. So I think you phrased that pretty well.
John Hobbs:And it's not just how much you're helped. It's like you have no opportunity to serve other people. Great point, you may be, you know so. You may be sitting in the, maybe you sit in the back row at church, whatever, and somebody walks up, sits next to you and they're. You know them because you've been going to church with them. You know something's wrong. You can ask them what's wrong and they'll tell you and you pray for them. But if you never saw the person I mean the cameras don't typically face on the congregation the live stream stops. When it stops, you're just cut off. It's a form of isolation that is unhelpful unfruitful for yourself and for other people, I think.
Nate Williams:Great point. Yeah, it's not just for you. You can't bless other people and think about the gifts of the spirit as you're talking about. They were made to be part of one body. If you are a finger, an eyeball, whatever, a foot and you isolate yourself from the rest of the body, there are so many people that you're not able to bless and serve and, you know, just share the love of Christ with, because you're off somewhere else and you're completely detached. So great, great point, john. So I appreciate you coming on to the podcast and eventually the YouTube channel when I get to that, and I appreciate that this has been John Hobbs joining me, and I hope you have a wonderful day. Thank you for doing this.
John Hobbs:Yeah, yeah, anytime it's fun.
Nate Williams:All right, y'all Dangerous Faith Podcast and YouTube channel. We'll have more for you as the weeks go by. Y'all have a great day, god bless, thank you.