Well, good morning. It is a real pleasure to be here with you guys. Thank you. I always love to come. You have a great family of families here. We so much enjoy coming. Whitney always loves to come. It's our pleasure to be here today. Thank you for inviting me. Well, it's hard to believe it's another year, isn't it? Another year starting January 1st, 2012. And we're so delighted that we get to start this new year fresh with the Lord as well. And you know, the great thing about God is that His mercies are new every morning. And I guess that would include every January 1st, the beginning of every year too, wouldn't it? So anyway, we're going to talk today about the topic that I have on the screen, as you can see, is the heart of Household of Faith Community Church. First of all, it's really not that important what the heart of Household of Faith Community Church is. What's important is what God's heart is. The point being that we want to follow God's heart. We want our church, both as the entity of Household of Faith and each of our individual churches, and hopefully every elder deacon, every family and every family member, all to have God's heart. The reason we use the term the Heart of Household of Faith, the reason I'm using it today, is because you're part of us. You're part of our Household of Faith family. One thing that I've never done is to come and present a little bit about the fellowship itself. This is going to be a a spiritual message. This is going to be about the word of God and following God. It's not just mechanics or business today, but we do want you to kind of have a little bit of an idea of how we, from the top of the movement, how we are as a board, what our priorities, what we feel and see about what's going on in the church, the dynamic, of what's going on in our culture today and how we relate to that, what our objectives are, and so just so that you'll have a better idea of just what Household of Faith is all about. Again, this is not just a business presentation, but we want to have the heart of God. That's our objective. That's our purpose. So we're going to just talk about a little bit of that this morning. You know, I haven't ever had an opportunity to have my whole family here. We're involved in worship and other things, and so I thought I'd just bring a picture of them here. Obviously, you can see Whitney there on the left. And then Alex in the center. He's this little scrunchy guy there. That picture is one year old. Now he's this big, big guy. He's grown quite a bit just since this last year. And Aubrey there on the right. And then, of course, my wife, Jerry. We've been married 37 years. And so we've got marriage all figured out. Not really, but we have learned to exist with one another with great joy. So, household of faith, fellowship of churches, equipping one generation to equip the next. I want to, before I even get into the text, just explain the term Father, so that you can understand here for the sake of, especially for our recording here. When we use the term father for the nuclear family, nuclear family is a father, mother, and children. So for the nuclear family, when we talk about the word father, it means a father or the male head of the household, the dad, as opposed to both parents or dad or mom. The term father with – in the case where there's a father and a mother with children, we do mean father being the male head of the household. Now, the father can also represent the idea of a single mother, whoever the head of the household is. If the father's not there, then that would be the mother. So when we say fathers teach their children, if there's no mother, then that would mean a single mom. And of course, the mothers teach their children as well, even if there is a father. Certainly mothers do teach their children. But so to simplify things, we use the word father, we mean the person who is the leader of the household. And we recognize the role of a single mom is maybe the most challenging role in the whole world because of the importance of raising godly children to take that role seriously, to be a good father and mother as a single mother or single dad. They think being a single mother is even more challenging. And so anyway, we certainly honor the people who have that role alone in trying to do it in a godly way. Certainly God is to be the husband of that woman. And then finally, the term householder would be whoever the father or mother is that is the leader of that household. So it could be a single mother or in some cases a natural parent or grandparent, an adoptive parent or a guardian. that is appropriate head of the household. So, father and householder are interchangeable and they mean whoever the lead person is for that household. So, let's go ahead and go to our text which is Malachi chapter 4 verses 5 and 6. And good job Mr. King on reading the text today. Thank you. Behold, I will send you Elijah, the prophet, before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest they come and strike the land with the decree of utter destruction. Lord, we come to you in Jesus' name, Lord, and we recognize that mere man is not capable of truly communicating the truths of God. Lord, we can stand here as your mouthpiece, Lord, but you must carry the words with the power of your Spirit, with the grace of your Spirit to the hearts of men. And so we ask you, Lord, for that favor today. Lord, that as we sit and listen, Lord, that you would speak to us through your Spirit that our lives, our hearts, Lord, would be transformed in Jesus' name. So God wants to bring the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to the fathers. Now, much of the heart of household of faith is to cooperate with his calling of Elijah. God said that he would send Elijah to come and prepare the way, and send Elijah to come and to turn the hearts of the children and the fathers to the children. We know John the Baptist played the role of being the forerunner of Christ, and in the text that Mr. King read there, we also see that he was part of the role of turning the hearts of the fathers to the children. But I don't think that ministry is completed. It's not finished. It's just like apostles. There's no apostles, certainly of the twelve left on the earth today, but there is still apostolic kind of ministry that takes place in the earth, even though maybe there's no actual apostles, depending on your doctrine on that. But the point is that we want to cooperate with this calling of Elijah to continually be turning hearts of fathers to children and children to fathers. And so we see three primary areas of emphasis in fulfilling this purpose as we look at this today as household of faith. So our heart is one, as household of faith, is to revere the gospel. The first area of emphasis is revering the gospel. And Christ is the center. He is it. Christ is the purpose of creation. His glory is the purpose of creation. And the gospel is the story that tells about Christ. But Christ is also His word. He is the word. And so Jesus is the center. Revealing the gospel is the beginning place for everything that we want to accomplish. Reforming the church. Is anyone seeing anything wrong with the church today, wrong in the church? Any challenges in the church today? Okay, so there's one or two anyway. And so there's some areas that need to be reformed. In order to reform, the idea of reform is merely to restore something to its previous good place. That's the idea of reforming. It doesn't mean to take something and then destroy it and then just rebuild something new out of it, like forming it again. But technically, reform means to restore something to its previous good place. And that's what we would like to see happen in the church. And restoring the family is a similar idea, but instead of reforming the family, restoring it to its previous good place, what we want to do is we want to restore the family to a place that is where it has the position in the minds and the hearts of the people of the church in the world that God intended for it to have. We want the family to have the proper place in the hearts of the people that God intended for the family to have. So any progress we make in the church is going to first be a matter of revering the gospel. So we're going to begin with that piece, revering the gospel. Any progress we make in the world, real progress in the world in any dimension, is going to have some aspect of the truth involved in it. Any true progress, any success that's true success, that has eternal value, is going to be from some aspect of the gospel. And the gospel has to be the guide and guideline for everything that we do as the Church. And so as we begin this idea of revering the Gospel, reforming the Church and restoring the family, we want to do it out of the basis of the Gospel, the truth, and that everything comes out of that. So, beginning here with revering the Gospel, just a preliminary statement is the Church of America is in crisis. There's a crisis in the Church today. There's a famine for the Gospel in many pulpits. Together for the Gospel is a conference that began in 2006 and gathers some of the most dynamic and well-known preachers in America and people come and they flock to this conference to hear the gospel, the truth as they stand up for the importance of the pure biblical word coming out of the pulpits of our nation. There's a famine for the gospel in many pulpits, creating a crisis of false doctrines. And some of these are swallowing up entire denominations. America's church is ordaining homosexuals. This is creating a crisis in the credibility of Christian leadership in the body of Christ. Entire denominations are purging out every reference to the blood of Jesus from their hymnals. Have you guys heard about that? It's pitiful. And this is creating for millions of people a crisis in even understanding biblical salvation. How do you really get saved? The incidence of divorce in the church rivals that of the world, creating a crisis in the bond of the Christian family and the promotion of Christian values in our culture. The church is absorbed, and I use the word addicted here, swallowed up in the culture. There used to be a time when abortion and pornography, adultery, divorce, addictions, alcoholism, gambling, and many kinds of vices and entertainment, these were all foreign to the church. There was a time when these were foreign to the church. These are right in the church. Do we see the church? Aren't these things in the church today? I always used to laugh when I was in Arkansas preaching back in the 80s, I can remember saying, you know, the church thinks it's really holy when it's 20 years behind the culture. And now I say the church thinks it's really holy when it's five years behind the culture, in terms of the vices and sins. Trying to live with one foot in the church and one foot in the world, God might say to the contemporary church today, I know your works. You are neither hot nor cold, or cold nor hot. He might say to us. So the church is in a desperate place. And these crises threaten the very disappearance of the evangelical church of America. Could the Evangelical Church of America disappear? Well, I don't think it will ever fully disappear, because God's church is always going to exist on the earth. And it's not because the devil is stronger than God, because God has a plan, and God is fulfilling His plan. We don't have to worry about that. But, this is our watch. We are responsible. The decisions that we make have real and eternal Consequences. Our devotion to God, be sober and alert. Scripture says, your adversary the devil seeks whom he may devour. He's walking around like a roaring lion and he's devouring people. We could be devoured. We don't want to be devoured. And we don't want the church to be devoured. And we don't want the church, the influence of the church, to disappear in America. And it has happened in the past. It's disappeared from Jerusalem, primarily. Antioch was a great city of 500,000 people. 100,000 Christians in that city. Where's the Christian church in there today? Probably one little dinky church where all the people have put on a disguise before they come. I mean, where's the 100,000 Christians in Antioch today? Where's the Reformation Church? Where's the great Puritan Church of England today? Churches is struggling. And we don't want to end up like Europe's church. We don't want to end up like Antioch. We don't want to end up like the church in Jerusalem. Now, have these things happened because God has abandoned us? Well, no. But these things have happened because the church in America has lost its reverence for and its dependence upon the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. We have abandoned God's Word in so many areas of both the church and the home. But when we remember His Word, His ways, and we again apply them, when we repent and appeal to God as in the days of King Josiah, may we rediscover of broad levels of revival in the church. And this is the heart of Household of Faith, calling America, calling the world back to the Gospel, calling the world back to remembering the way, the mandates of Scripture, and following Scripture, following the Gospel in the way that we worship and in the way that we live our lives. But before that we can have this revival, We must refound the church upon the rock of the gospel. May we, by God's mercy, experience a third great awakening. We're praying for, we desire the Lord to bring us a third great awakening. So with the gospel in view, we must, number two, reform the church. I put number one there, it should be number two. So with the gospel in view, we must reform the church and restore the home. So reforming a church, that's number two. So we've gone through reviewing the gospel, now we're on reforming the church. What we're doing today in the American church is not working. Albert Einstein says, and I love a lot of his quotes, he was certainly no believer. He was no believer in Jesus. He was a very intelligent person. And he had a lot of sayings that were very interesting. You can look up a quote of Einstein quotes and it's like Murphy's Law. Anybody seen a list of Murphy's Laws? I mean like it's long and Einstein has a list of quotes that are very stimulating. This is my favorite. The manner of thinking that got us into our current dilemma will not suffice to get us out. It's kind of like the guy that's trying to dig himself out of a hole. You're in this hole He's digging along, you know, and he's in a hole. And all of a sudden he realizes, you know, this is deeper than he is. He can't get out. He's trying to climb out. He says, man, I'm not going to get out. I guess I'll just dig myself out. And so the manner of thinking that got us into this dilemma that we're in in the church will not suffice to get us out. We're going to have to change our thinking. The way that we're going, going faster and harder that the same thing that we've been doing is not going to work. We've got to change the way that we think. We've got youth groups, and the kids are bailing out of the youth groups and going out into the world. They're leaving the youth group, they're leaving the church at an astronomical rate, and they're leaving Christ. And so we're putting more money into the youth group, and we're building gyms for them, and buying expensive entertainment centers, and video games, and doing all kinds of things, putting more and more money into keeping our youth, trying to make it funner and more interesting for them. Well, that's what got us into the problem to start with. A lot of people would believe, and I would be one, that we've changed the objective of our youth group from being Christ-centered to being Entertainment and all these other things. I have some other challenges with it as well, but we'll just keep it right there. So the manner of thinking that got us into our current dilemma will not suffice to get us out. Now the source of the problem is that we tend to operate and conduct church based on misguided purposes. And therefore we have developed misguided means, methods. which have resulted in householders, fathers, mothers, being equipped to neither perform the work of the ministry nor to sustain the future life of the church. And how could they do that? How could they sustain the future life of the church? By making disciples of their own families. So we've got this idea that the church is the place to disciple the families. The church is the place where the kids are discipled. It's not working. Millions of dollars will go into youth ministry to disciple kids, and they're leaving at a rate of 80%. So what is the misguided purpose of the church? The misguided purpose is making the church building the primary place of both evangelism and discipleship. Now we all know that while it's perfectly acceptable to bring unbelievers to church, there's nothing wrong with that. It's wonderful if they'll come. We really can't expect that to be the place where they learn about Jesus. We've got to be willing to tell people about Christ ourselves. Do you witness? Yes, I invite people to church. What if they say no? Well, I guess they're lost. Well, that's not the approach. And that is the approach that many people take. But we do the same thing with discipleship. We tend in America, fathers tend to see the church as the place where their children are disciples. And that is certainly not the biblical pattern. So we have a misguided purpose, the church being the primary place of evangelism and discipleship, and therefore we've developed misguided means or methods which designates the programs and the services of the church so that the professional and lay staff shoulder the responsibility for discipling all of its members. So now we're laden with programs and our services are all constructed in such a way that we have a person who is a presenter and kind of the center leading the show, but it's all oriented to the professionals doing the discipleship. Now, we don't question anyone's motives. We don't think that these are certainly bad people. I pastored for 10 years and I was totally sold to this model. And when we pioneered, we started with the church, Sunday school, youth group, all that. And when we left, we started a new church. And when we started the new church, it was very small. And we couldn't wait till we could start our Sunday school and our youth group. That was our goal, our vision. And that's the right way to do it. And the way we know is because that's what everybody else is doing. And so, you know, I'm not saying my motives were wrong. I'm not saying that all these people are bad people in any way, shape or form. What I am saying is that they have a noble undertaking to disciple. This is wonderful. But we've assumed a responsibility that is really not ours. Or at least we've assumed too much of it. See, there's a complementarian role between a husband and wife. Each of them have roles that are signed by God. For example, we don't find very many men bearing children. That just doesn't work that way. So, God has assigned that men protect the wife. We don't find too many wives protecting their husband. I have seen a few, but that's not the norm. So, the husband protects the wife, but the wife bears the children and nurtures the children. So, they can't both do everything, but together they get everything done. They have a complementarian role. And that's the same way between the church and the home. The church and the home are supposed to do, each one is supposed to do certain roles. Well, the church has assumed too many roles. In the home, their only role is to have the kids and bring them to church. And church does all the rest. And this is not the way that God designed for it to be. And so this idea that the church is the primary place of discipleship and that the professional, don't try this at home, is the key discipler. See, that concept. has paralyzed the home. Not on purpose. They've not intended to do that. But this is what the final shakeout has become. The home is paralyzed because the father is inadequate to disciple his own children. I mean, praise God for that youth leader. He has a master's degree in child psychology. He understands my kids. God knows I don't. See? So we're so grateful that God would bring these youth ministers in to parent the 200 kids in his youth group, and personally disciple the 200 kids in his youth group. Oh, come on. Do you really think that he can do that? Now, when you have a church that doesn't have a youth group, hardly, they're struggling along, got a pastor and maybe somebody's interested in the kids or a dad or a mom that's leading the youth or whatever, then we don't think, hey, you know what, nobody's really doing it. And the family doesn't think, well, I need to do this because it's the church's job whether they're capable of doing it or not. Let me ask a question, make sure we're all on board. How many people think that The average Christian father in America says to himself, discipling these kids in the way of Christ is my responsibility more than anyone else's, even more than my wife or the pastor or anyone else's. How many think the average American father thinks that way? I don't think we do. In fact, I don't think it's even a thought that has entered most of our minds until we get confronted with some of these things. It's not that we're being bad, it's the way that our culture's programmed us. And the church isn't being bad because it's assuming the responsibility for making sure, trying to make sure that these kids hear about Christ. So everybody's trying to do the right thing. But we've ended up creating a dynamic. that isn't working, that's unbiblical, that violates the mandates of both home and church so that they're not working in the complementarian way that God designed. Ephesians 4.11 and 12 says, And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors, and the teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry. for the building up of the body of Christ. We must reform the church where the role of the elder is not to put on a weekly show for the body and that he's the main person of the church. And there's a degree to which that happens. It happens in Vancouver. The elders teach most of the time and all of that. But this is not a one-man show. That's not the purpose of the church. It's to equip families to minister the glories of Christ to their own families, and then to the world. If Christian families are not directed, informed, equipped, and motivated to minister Christ to their own children, if they don't see the children that came out of their own union, if they don't see the children in their own household, that's in this infant, that's in this crib that has an eternal destiny. If they don't see their primary responsibility to disciple, if they're not equipping themselves and preparing themselves to be good disciples to help shape the eternal destiny of this child that's in their own house. How can they have a vision for winning the neighbor next door? If we don't see the importance of bringing this one up in Christ, then how do we connect with the importance of winning our neighbor, who we don't even know? If winning our neighbor that we do not know is the Great Commission, then surely winning our own children is the greatest God has given the family as an incubator of the gospel. It's a safe environment for passing the gospel safely and accurately from one generation to the next. To say it another way, the family is being created as the primary conduit of the gospel. What's a conduit? Who knows what a conduit is? Yes? Okay. Who wants to explain it? A tube? Okay, good. A connection? Okay. This is the first Roman aqueduct built in 312 BC, so 2,300 years ago, this was built. 2,300 years. And so this goes from a river over here to a city over here. And this aqueduct is still in, I think this is the one that's still in use. They have one just like it. I've seen pictures of several of them. But there's one that looks just like this one, if this one isn't. It's still in use, this old. They're still using it. Now this transfers water safely, inaccurately, from one destination to another. I mean, it's like, you know, There's no detour. There's no stop. I mean, it goes from here to here. It's like a bird that catches a worm and pokes it down that baby's mouth. It gets there safely and accurately, directly. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. I mean, it just goes from point A to point B. And the home is the conduit of the Gospel. From one family or one person, a husband and wife, to their children. It takes it safely and accurately. Moves it from this place to that place. And tube is a good description because the idea is that it is a safe, protected venue or avenue that is used for the transference of one thing from one place to another. This is a conduit. The home is the conduit of the gospel. So the gospel, however mom and dad see that gospel, is transferred safely and accurately to the children. And that's why it's important, moms and dads, that we see the gospel right. That we see it accurately. Because our kids are going to be under our influence, and they're going to know the gospel that we believe, whether we're right or whether we're wrong. The family is the God-designed conduit of the Gospel lived from one generation to the next. You see, it's not just the Gospel. The Gospel is words on the page until it's lived. It's the Gospel lived that makes a difference in our children's lives. Not the Gospel told. The Gospel lived. Telling the Gospel, the Holy Spirit, yes, can interact with the Gospel. And He can do miraculous things in the hearts of our children and our friends and our neighbors in the world through just the reading of the Gospel. But Christ Himself came and lived the Gospel for us because it is that living the Gospel before someone that has the power to drive that Gospel deep into the heart of the hearer. So it's not just the gospel told, it's the gospel lived from one generation to the next. So the church must be reformed to make a key objective of the church, the mentoring of men to disciple their families and reach their communities for Christ. This must be the reformation, is making a key objective of the church, discipling families, discipling dads, and moms, dads, as the responsible agent, the lead agent, to disciple their children for Christ. We reform the church by putting the emphasis on the right syllable. We say what God says. We use the Word of God to evaluate, are we doing things the way God described? Do we have this complementarian relationship here? Or are we trying to do the jobs we're not supposed to be doing over here, trying to do the jobs we're not supposed to be doing over here, and things are not getting done? Because we are not in our right roles. We bring the forces of the church to bear, restoring the home as the primary center of discipleship." Finally, restoring the home. Christian research statistics from George Barna, Southern Baptist Convention, and other places show, and in this one case polling 22,000 adults and over 2,000 teens, In over 25 separate surveys, six out of 10 of people that are 20 years old and older who were involved in evangelical churches as teens have already left the church. Research has shown that 90 percent of those in their 20s who were raised in evangelical homes Whether they are now active in the church or not, no longer have a biblical worldview. So even the ones that are in the church, who stay in the church, believe that evolution could be okay, abortion can be okay, divorce can be okay. They no longer have a biblical worldview even though they're going to church. Losing its youth to the world at a rate of 80% per generation, and the 80% comes from a bunch of different SBC and other studies, the Church is failing in its most significant role, making disciples to replenish the Church of tomorrow. The most important thing the Church can do is to bring others to Christ and disciple them, replenishing the church. And whether those others come out of the home, or whether those others are the neighbor across the street, or the people that are in unreached people groups around the world. Those are all good. A soul is a soul is a soul. They all need to hear about Christ. but we've got to make disciples to replenish the church of tomorrow. And our lack of success shows that we sidestep significant biblical principles. While the church does not prosper, benefit by controlling heads of households, the church must alert, equip, and affirm heads of households in their biblical roles. Now, we all, I think, pretty much agreed that most fathers today are not seeing their... Loving my wife. First, being intimate with the person of Jesus Christ is what I believe is my first responsibility. Loving Jesus. The person of Christ. Obeying Him. Loving Him. Knowing Him. Living for Him. Just loving Christ. I think that's my first responsibility. And next to that, I think my very next responsibility on this planet is to love my wife. Even before taking care of my children. Now, loving my wife includes providing for my wife. If I said I loved her and didn't take care of her, that would be a false statement. So it includes taking care of her, providing for her, protecting her, listening to her, caring about her. I can't love her without doing all those things. But that is my second responsibility. My third responsibility, I see, is loving my children and discipling them in the ways of Jesus so that they have a secure eternal destiny. I've brought them into the world. I owe them that. But if we all agreed that the average father is really not seeing that or not doing that, I would say the reason why is because the church hasn't told them to. How many messages have you heard in your life that has compelled dads to be the discipler of their children? I haven't heard very many until I came here. So we've got to alert dads of their responsibility and then help equip them and then affirm them in that role. because it can be discouraging. Do most Christian fathers in America here recognize and accept this mandate to teach the things of God diligently to their children? Have most Christian fathers emotionally passed this mandate over to their wives? Or, maybe not to their wives, to the church, or to the pastor, or to the youth minister, or to the Sunday school teacher. Believe me, this is easy to do. Man, I just like to know, you give me any project, I'll be glad to give it to somebody. I mean, mow my lawn, I'll give it to you. I'm putting French doors into... my two girls, Whitney and Aubrey, are in a bedroom together. And so we're taking our – kids are about out of homeschool, so we're pulling our stuff out of our den, and I'm putting French doors in there and making a bedroom for my son, and that'll give the girls their individual bedrooms. And so I'm over there. Anybody want to come do French doors for me? So, you know, I'm going to peddle my lawn mowing off, and I'm going to peddle that off to my son, obviously. I don't think I want to hand him the French doors, but somebody want to do my French doors for me. I mean, you show me a job. I love to peddle my jobs off to people. Anybody want to work for me and give me their income, I'll peddle that off to somebody. We want to unload our responsibilities. I understand. We want to delegate. And I understand this. We just don't see what we have indoctrinated the men of America, the Christian men of America, to go to sleep on their watch. Fathers must strive to become the primary shepherds and resident theologians. of their own families. The average Christian woman in America, she's sitting in church, and she hears the sermon, and a question pops up in her mind. And she says, well, I wonder about this doctrinal question. And she says, I know, I'll ask my husband. Well, some of them might think that, but I think the average one probably wouldn't, but lots of them They're going to go to the pastor. Or they're going to go to somebody else they respect. Or they're going to look it up in a book. Or they're going to go online. Ask my husband? Why would he know? I know more about the Bible than he does. And that's not true certainly of all men. But I'm just saying again, this just speaks to the idea that it's probably again, typically, Men don't tend to see themselves as the resident theologians of their own. But we should have it that when a woman or a son or a daughter has a question about the Bible, they go to their husband. And they say, hey, you may not know the answer. We're like lawyers, you know, in a good way. You say, you know, lawyers, all those lawyers, they really know the law. They don't. If you ask them, oh, is this legal? Is that legal? I don't know. They don't necessarily know the law. They know where to find the law. They know how to get to the law. They know what book to look at. They've been through all that training and it tells them how to discover and make a case for something based on a whole bunch of different laws that have already happened. They know how to find the law, but they don't necessarily know all the answers. And we don't have to be resident theologians that know all the answers, but we should be studying it. We should know as much as we can, but we should also know how to find the answers. And it's fair. It's legal to go ask an elder. It's legal to ask somebody that knows more than you do. But you want to do that as training wheels, more or less, to get you started. so that when you, as you're raising your family, that you truly know how to bring spiritual, scriptural truth and principles to bear in your own family. Autonomous heads of households are uniquely equipped by God to know and to minister to the spiritual needs of their families. And they are uniquely able to lead their families in the various activities of the church as the Lord would lead them. We don't see families as being... When a family of our church, Vancouver, walks in the door, I don't see seven people walking in the door, even though my eyes do. I see one unit coming in the door. I see one group, and that father or mother is the head. of that group. It's not all these little sheep are now all my little sheep. If I want to say something to a wife or I want to say something to a child or think that there's a challenge, I'm a watch over their souls according to the Scripture. I don't go to that kid or that wife and say, I think I want to talk to you about this. I go to that dad. And dads sit together and we worship together as a family. We take communion together as a family. We gather the family together. We sit as families together and share a meal. And when we do go camp outs, we camp as families. Because it models that father's role as leading that family. And we have an open mic. And that dad, if he decides he's got a five-year-old and he wants to come up and say something in front of the whole church, that dad makes that decision. Because that's his embassy, and that household is there to help minister to the whole body, however that dad feels like. We have certain rules and order and all of that, and you need to have that. And there's times when we have to talk to people about things, but we're here as families, families ministering to one another's families. And dads are uniquely able to lead their families in ministry, in evangelism, in being a household embassy, however the Lord would lead you to contribute to the body of Christ. We must abandon the notion that ministry is for the professional pastor, that church programs are the domain of church staff. We just don't have church programs at household. In Vancouver, for example, we have Leadership Institute, and Leadership Institute is led by the elders. That's the only thing the elders lead. in the worship service on Sunday. But we have lots of programs, lots of things going on, but they're led by the families. They're not led by the elders. And when a family says, I'd like to do this, I'd like to have this Bible study, I'd like to do this evangelistic project, I'd like to take on the responsibility for preparing communion, I'd like to be the person that oversees the kitchen for shared meals and runs the schedule for that. I'd like to be on sound, I'd like to do whatever. The fathers engage their sons or daughters, or some of the wives have ministry and engage their daughters in things. And we have a lot of different things. In fact, I'm going to share some with you here in a minute as we close. But we do these things, it is the families that are leading out in ministry and not the elders of the church. So we must see that regular men are able to envision and to assemble and to lead ministries on behalf of the church and that elders equip the saints for the work of ministry for the building up of the body of Christ. That's their job. So this idea of equipping families for the ministry is simply the process of building household embassies in each of our local congregations. The household embassy is a father or mother, whoever the householder is, whoever the leader is, that is dedicated to fulfilling the Great Commission in their family. discipling their children, living the gospel in their family, and ministering to the body as the Lord would lead. Not as the elder would lead, but as the Lord would lead. Ministering to the community as the Lord would lead. Being sensitive to God and what your ministry, what God would call you to do. Striving to engage every family member in living out the gospel, seeking to minister to both the body of Christ and to the community at large. So examples of community ministry from household embassies. These are things at Vancouver, for example. We have three worship teams, families, a father that's leading a particular worship team. and they gather different people around. We have people on sound. I have a daughter, 18, she's on the sound team. And there's several father-son guys that are on sound team. But these are people who rise up as a householder, a father, and this is a ministry that they want to lead. So we've got one father who's over the sound and over the worship, and so he leads that, and he has engaged other fathers and sons and the ministry. We've got a family that says we want to do the communion preparation. They don't do it every week, but they have a little roster they keep, and they keep people working on that, so the elders and deacons don't even know what's going on. Just magically the communion appears every week, and we're happy that it does, and that's it. I'm in this worship team sound and all that. I'm the elder of the church, and I have no idea how it all comes together. I have no idea what the schedule is for worship. and sound and all of that. If you ask me to go turn on the, I don't even know how to turn on the soundboard. You know, and for sure I don't know how to do worship. So, bookstore, we have a bookstore and we got a family that manages the bookstore for us and they sell things and they manage the inventory and all that and people buy things and they put it out every week and put it back and And it just gets taken care of. We actually have a deacon over the kitchen and shared meal helper roster. It's a roster. But every family on the church is on that roster that I know of. I know that we've got about 25 families on the roster. Missions coordinators, meal coordinators for new births and shut-ins, somebody that's taking responsibility for when we have somebody that either has surgery or a new baby, we'll give them meals for a week or two, and so somebody manages that roster. It's not an elder doing that. Actually, my daughter does one of those. She does the one for the new births, and then the ones who have surgery, a girl from another family does that. Productive fellowship coordinator, just a man in the church. We have productive fellowships go out and bless the families by doing work in their homes or something like that. If we have a need, like somebody's moving or something, we'll gather the men of the church. The guy who's doing that's not a deacon, it's just a ministry that he does. Facility care and maintenance. Different guys volunteer to come in and do things. Care groups. We've had all kinds of Bible studies and things like Larry Burkett. You know, how people change with trips and just a variety of different care group type things that we do that families volunteer to lead. Not elders, but just typical families in the church. all kinds of evangelism things that have been done out of the church, whether Vancouver or some of the other households of faith, pictures in the park. They came and they said, we've got a vision to do evangelism in the park. And so what we'd like to do is we'd like to show a movie in the park and then talk about Jesus during intermission. And so we'd like $2,000 to buy this big screen and projector and do this and we're thinking, oh brother, what a dumb idea. But you know what? These people come and they're going to invest in this. They're going to do this work. We have the $2,000. So OK, we'll do it. But you've got to promise to use it. So they take their $2,000, and they put it out there, and they do it all summer, and then they do it all summer. This is the third summer. We just finished the last summer. They put these little posters all out and everything, and then people come, and they make popcorn, and free popcorn, and Kool-Aid, and then they do a stop in the middle, did Toy Story 3, and Ice Age, and Monsters, Inc., and all these little things, and then they stop in the middle, preach the gospel for five minutes, no more than five minutes, and then they go back. Do you know how many people they had the last time? 800. 800 people there. I was kind of embarrassed when I thought back about that, because I'm thinking, this will never fly. And I'm a bird, and I never even thought about that. So, okay then, we have all kinds of street preaching ministries that have come out. A guy came and asked us to buy him a vest that he had a mic, and as he talks, it just broadcasts. And a couple of other families, he's gathered around, they made a brochure of his life. testimony and they'd go around and he'd be telling his testimony and they'd hand brochures around and talk to people about Christ down around Pioneer Square. Another brother goes to the farmers market with a literal soapbox, gets up there and stands up there and families go around, pass out evangelistic brochures and talk to people about Christ while he's standing there preaching at the farmers market. Skate Park Ministry, Vancouver has an evangelism team. Through county jail ministry, about 10 guys on a preaching roster has been going probably 8 or 9 years now on Clackamas County Jail. John Patrick, just a dad in the church, started going there to preach, engaged some other guys, now they have a regular roster, been doing it for Again, nine years nursing home ministry. My wife teaches Bible study to 14 ladies in Mongolia twice a month on Friday night. She gets up and it's 11.30 our time, and so she sits there in her pajamas and a nice blouse, looking really, really nice like this, sitting in front of this TV camera, Skype, and preaches the gospel. And so far she's had about 13 or 14 ladies saved from doing that. Anyway, there's just all kinds of things that we do. But she's not doing that as an elder or an elder's wife. She's just doing that as her own personal ministry. These are just ideas of things that we can do as household embassies. And God will inspire us. We have to get this idea that ministry is from the elders. and realize that God wants to use us. There are literally millions, millions of undiscovered ministries in America because the average Christian thinks that ministry is only about staff-led church programs. And there are millions of undiscipled kids because parents think the discipleship is the church's responsibility. So that's what we're trying to say today, is that the huge blessing, and this is just stuff on missions, all kinds of missionaries have come out of household of faith, but what we're just trying to say is that God When we violate or break away from what God's purposes are and how the Word tells us to think and live, we get side-railed into what Einstein's talking about. The manner of thinking that got us into this dilemma is not going to suffice to get us out. We've got to back up and look at the Scriptures again and say, what is this really? What are we really doing here? Is what we're doing working? No. We need to go back and we need to revere the gospel. We need to take the gospel for what it says. What does the word tell us? What does the word mandate the church to do? What does the word mandate the family to do? Oh, wow, we better reform the church. and we better restore the family to its original role. And it's going to take that in order for the church to survive, because the way that we're headed right now, the church is going down fast. So these three things, which I'm calling the heart of Household of Faith, really it's what we see as the solution to restoring the power of the gospel in America in the next generation. It's going to take some serious changes and this is one approach, maybe not be the only one, maybe it won't be the best one. But this is one paradigm, one way, one view of how we can bring revival and a third great awakening to America. So, that's really what I'm trying to present to you as we talk about household of faith in this context. Now, the reason why we have the Lord's Table, which we've come to call communion, which I think is interesting. The Bible doesn't call it communion. We call it communion. Because it's a time when we can commune with Jesus, just like the disciples were there with Him in person as He initiated that Lord's table to begin with. Now we have an opportunity to commune with Him, and one of the things that I have discovered that is one of the greatest things about communion is that it is, and as the Scriptures teach us, it's the time that we examine ourselves. Now, when somebody gets up and preaches a sermon, They can do it in the wrong spirit. They can do it with a spirit of condemnation. They can do it with a spirit of blame and pointing a finger. Or they can be so light-hearted that there's no conviction in it at all. They can abuse scripture and do all kinds of things. But the Holy Spirit is here to lead you into all truth. Everything I say isn't necessarily perfectly accurate. But the Holy Spirit, everything He says, is perfectly accurate. And God has given this institution of communion for the specific purpose of leading us into truth. For the specific purposes of leading us to truth, which is the heart of Jesus. To allowing the Holy Spirit to minister to our hearts, not in condemnation. but to see if these things be so. This is what the brains do. And so, I would say as we go into the community, just to encourage you to say, Lord, out of the message that we've heard today, where am I? Where am I? Young men, you're going to be married someday. You're going to have families. Today is the day for you to resolve That you're going to be a theologian. That doesn't mean you have to study the Bible every day all day. It just means you need to attend your heart to biblical principles. Search them out. Be interested in them. They are the way to life for you and your wife and your children. Young women, you need to embrace these truths just as much as the men. So that you can be that great executive officer. You can be that person there to help manage that household and keep your husband on the right track. My wife has kept me on the right track so many times when I would err. Because she's in tune with what thoughts work. We're a team. We're a team. I can't do without her helping me. and dads. Have I embraced this role? Have I seen this for what it really is? Have I accepted my biblical responsibility for discipling my children the way that you say? Not the way Eric says, but the way that you say. Take this communion today and ask the Lord to examine your heart in view of what we have talked about this morning. Lord, it is an honor to come and to replay the drama of being with you the night before you were crucified. And to realize, Lord, that you have died for us. What an honor, Lord, it is that you would invite us to that table some 2,000 years later. Lord, we ask you that you would speak to us just as you spoke to your disciples. Yes, Lord, we can commune with you. Yes, we're forgiven of our sins. But Lord, there's a mission. Those disciples were there because there's a mission. Help us, Lord, not to be apathetic. Lord, but to accept the commission that you would give us. Lord, to commune with you. Lord, undertaking this great adventure with You, not just receiving, Lord, but giving. Help us, Lord, to become all that we should. And we can only do that if You examine us, and if You show us truth in our heart, and You lead us in the way everlasting. In Jesus' name.