Can I just take a few minutes and talk about some of our resources? First of which is this American faith. This is hot off the press. Peter Bringe teamed up with us on this one. And the four of us worked together very hard on this interesting survey of American history. Probably one of the most interesting approaches to history I've ever taken. We did it for, we're doing curriculum for 6th through 12th grade. The reason we're doing this is because the junior high and high school years are the most worldview intensive years. Kinham did a survey and found 95% of kids leaving the faith leave the faith by 18 years of age. And the most worldview-intensive courses are literature and history. And so those are the areas in which we've seen very little in terms of Reformation, of thought, or a biblical worldview brought into it. So we wanted to do that, and there is history and literature primarily. But this, for about eighth grade or so, 27 sketches from American history from John Winthrop to David Wilkerson. David Wilkerson being the revivalist of the Jesus movement, who became a Calvinist by the end of his life, interestingly, largely because of the Puritan writings. He was able to read the Puritans and really reformed his way of thinking. And he's a very powerful man of God. But 27 great American Christians throughout history. And the neat thing about this is to study history in just a series of dates and times is rather boring. But if you can get into people's lives and go deep 27 times, you get some dates and wars and some of the things that are interesting, kind of interesting about history. But to actually go deep into these lives 27 times gives you more texture. to study history. So we're trying to find a better way to study history, and this is a very inspiring way to study history, to just get in the lives of great Americans, whether it be George Washington Carver, John Quincy Adams, Phyllis Wheatley, Patrick Henry, Noah Webster, Stonewall Jackson, David Wilkerson, Elizabeth Elliott, whose husband was killed on the mission field, as you know, in the 50s. She's in here. So 27 American lives. and uh... this is a really fun book to put together we also are trying to uh... bring uh... christian classics uh... this for sixth grade so we went into sixth grade and we we found uh... little pilgrim's progress uh... god smuggler brother andrews book god smuggler and this sweet story on the life of heidi or the uh... story of heidi and what i did it took me three months we went into ancient translations out of the German and found that a lot of the Christian stuff had been purged. Some of the initial hymns, some of the initial Christian material was never translated into English. So we went into the German and we found all the Christian content. We're trying to restore our Christian heritage. We live in a de-Christianized age. where your children get to study the transgender movement, they learn how to homosexualize their lives, and how to purge all Christianity out of American history and out of Western history, because we are in a post-Christian age. So the last Christians left in the Western world are going to want to find whatever Christian heritage Jesus provided over the previous 2,000 years and recover or re-Christianize the material. And so that's what we're doing by retranslating Heidi and putting a thoroughly Christian edition of Heidi into a six-grade curriculum. I did this one. We have Bible verses throughout it. We have lessons as well, the spiritual, biblical lessons to take from each chapter. So that would be sixth grade. And then we have the Christian classics. People say, they were always asking me, what are the books that you would have in your library? If you added down to one more book besides the Bible, you're on the sinking ship and you're grabbing a Bible in your left hand and another book in your right hand, what would it be? And that's a tough decision, but it would probably be this one. I would probably pick this one. These are the classic writings of Christian history, because I think we need to know who we are. We need to have some rootings besides our present day. We need to know what Christ has done throughout history. And we've also got taking the world for Jesus. we're putting world history in the context of Christ. We're not centering world history around Napoleon or around the great empires of men that rise and fall. Especially in a post-empire age, we need a new curriculum. That's what we're doing with our curriculum. It's a post-Christian, but it's also a post-empire age. And so when the empires fall, we need to maintain an optimistic education, especially in history. The most optimistic education we provide our children is an education that centers around the work of Christ and what he's done in every culture, in every continent, over every century. So that's why I've taken the world for Jesus. And then for 10th grade, the big doorstopper. We call it the doorstopper. It weighs seven pounds. Don't drop it on your foot. But a thousand page, 500 year history of America. Christian history from a biblical worldview perspective. And I encourage you to just take a look at what we did. We have thousands of Bible verses. So the word of God is a front lip before our eyes. And so we talk about war, but we also talk about the biblical passages concerning war. So this is the Civil War, Deuteronomy 20, 19 to 20, some stuff on scorched earth. Just what does the Bible say about all these different issues? So thousands of Bible verses also a lot of the backstory in history Roe v. Wade Roe and Doe turn pro-life Doe from Doe v. Bolton Roe from Roe v. Wade They turn pro-life before they die We have the story of Nathan Bedford Forrest the first Ku Klux Klan guy, he gets saved at the end of his life and formally apologized before the NAACP and provides a little African American girl with a, or she gives him a flower, he kisses her on the head before he passes away. What is Jesus doing in history? Now, the world is most concerned about the wars and the hatred and the lack of redemption. But we're excited about the reconciliation Jesus brings. So the back story in history, we need to be paying attention to what Christ is doing in history. The Torah, Torah, Torah pilot gets saved. My dad's very closest missionary friend handed him the track at Tokyo Railway Station in the early 1950s. And the lieutenant colonel that ran the bombing of Pora Harbor and signaled Tora Tora Tora back to the emperor was saved and became a great evangelist. Is that in your average history book? Is that going to be in your average public school history book? No, we got to know what Jesus is doing in history. He's doing amazing things in history. Tell the stories of what Christ is doing. Now, I probably have ten really amazing stories. I'm sure there are more. We're collecting them. But we want to be sure that we're getting Jesus' back story. Also, one of the most significant serial killers in history, Jeffrey Dahmer. was saved six months and baptized six months before he died. The story is amazing. I interviewed the pastor that baptized him on my radio program. That's interesting. That's interesting. I have segments on serial killing. I have segments on what the culture is doing. I just don't focus on politics. Politics is generally kind of boring, actually. Sorry, brother. I know there's a brother here that's involved. But if it's all elections, I mean, most history books, 80% on who got elected and how they got elected. I want to know what the pop culture is doing. I want to know what the church is doing. I want to know what the seminaries are doing. I want to know what the criminal situation looks like coming out of the Civil War. I want to know broader depth into the culture of the nation. So we put this into American God's Providence. And I was a little nervous it was 1,000 pages, but a pastor down in South Carolina, Matt Clark, he said his son, 12 years old, read it in two months, couldn't put it down. And so if a 12-year-old can read it in two months, I'm not as concerned as I used to be. So anyway, some of the resources we're doing, take a look at them. And, you know, we have some prices and things, but if you can't afford some of these resources, just let us know and we'll just give them to you. So, alright, let's talk about the subject at hand. You know, as we talk about the family integrated church, what is that? We started a church fellowship 19 years ago and at the time We didn't really know what we were doing We didn't see a need for Sunday schools simply because I Had been teaching my children and for the previous ten years in my home. And the other brothers that were in our small fellowship getting started were doing the same thing. So the reason we didn't have a Sunday school is because we had a Monday school, and a Tuesday school, and a Wednesday school, and a Thursday school, and a Friday school, and a Saturday school. So I don't think we started with the idea we were going to be a quote-unquote family integrated church. We just We're a church. We were a fellowship coming together and We took on the title eventually when you know we saw that that was what we were but Increasingly in my own heart and mind. I I knew that it wasn't enough that we can't Be labeling ourselves. We can't just go for the label. We can't just form a movement around a fairly single issue, shallow description of ourselves, what we want to do is penetrate towards what the more fundamental issue is. We want to identify the thing that matters more fundamentally. What is the problem? And I think a lot of us, when we look at our own lives, or we look at our families, we look at our churches, We realize that we encounter problems. We confront problems. And we begin to see that there is a need. That there is a concern and a need. that there is a matter of reformation that needs to happen. There's something that needs to be restored. There's some loss. There's something that needs to be redeemed. There's an area of repentance that is necessary in our lives. And we want to identify what that is. We oftentimes don't get it exactly. on the first blush, but we continue to cry out for the Spirit of God to open our eyes and our minds to what the fundamental need is. And the Lord, by His mercy, opens it up for us. And then we see the thing that needs to be redeemed, and we understand more of the salvation that Jesus came to bring to us. We know there's something wrong with us, but oftentimes we don't know what it is. And so we struggle through that. We pray through it. We seek the Word of God to convict us of these things so we can identify what the problem is. And I think we do want to see a restoration of biblical truth and relationships. And effectively, covenant with God is that relationship of love built upon God's truth and God's revelation. But we want to see that restored. We want to see our understanding of God's truth and God's law and our relationship with God restored. And then we want to see that filling out in our horizontal relationships as well. I think fundamentally that's what the Word of God brings to us. We have two problems. We've rebelled against God's law and God's truth, and we don't love God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength. That's pretty much it. And we don't love our neighbor as ourselves. That's the problem. That's the fundamental problem. And everybody can agree with that. I think the problem also is that we have fooled ourselves into thinking these things are already restored, but they're not restored. We are to love without dissimulation, without hypocrisy. And we begin to see that there's love, and this idea of love, and this encouragement to love, and this assumption that we are loving in our churches, but at the end of the day we discover that we're not. And we don't even have a context for it. When we say bring back covenantal relationship, or bring back community, We're not using biblical language. Relationship is not biblical language, and neither is community. It's better to put it into biblical language. The better way to say it is, we're just not doing 1 Corinthians 13. Relationship, as I see, is a context in which love can be experienced. And our problem is that in the modern world we have lost the context. And so the modern world hermetically seals itself off from each other. We're all sort of sealed into our own containers where we can't really relate to each other and so love doesn't really operate because the context in which what love might operate is non-existent or hardly existent so I think The thing we're striving for is to restore relationship. Let me give you an example We are right now in relationship with other pastors and churches in our small community of Elizabeth in Colorado and We have occasional meetings together. Our choir went to sing at this other church in our community during Christmas time over a Sunday evening. And the pastor told us later he was having a hard time locking up the building because the people from our church kept fellowshipping long into the night. And he was frustrated with, a little bit frustrated that he wasn't able to lock up the building because these people were engaging in a relationship for way long into the evening. And this is, our church is infamous for this kind of thing where they will be together in fellowship for hours upon hours after the final amen. But that's only the context. You see, there is something of a desire to restore the context, but then you get the conflict. And many don't survive the conflict. In truth, people enjoy the relationship in a sterile world in which relationship has largely been purged. But when they realize that the context of relationship will introduce conflict, Certain percentage a fairly large percentage do not survive the conflict Because there isn't love there to survive so just the fact that You have relationship doesn't mean you have first Corinthians 13 love that hopes all things believes all things bears all things and endures all things because oftentimes it just doesn't and That's the hard truth of the matter brothers is what we are dealing with is a supernatural need. And the reason we have been encountering so many failures over the last 25 years of attempt to restore the context is because this is something that's supernatural. It has to happen by a miracle of God. It's the only way to bring it about. Yes, we sense a need, but there's a solution here. There is a benefit to getting people out of the foyer within five minutes of the final amen on a Sunday morning. There is a benefit to it. I understand it. I watch my people fellowshipping for hours upon end, long into the night, sometimes in our home, until 10 or 11 o'clock at night. And I know that there's a drawback to this. Because if love, if there's no love, then we're just not going to survive. And this is one reason why family-integrated churches tend to have a harder time retaining their members. They have a harder time than other churches because we are daring to introduce hospitality and relational environments such that love might be a part of it. But often times it isn't. That's why it's important for us to come back again and again. Let love be without dissimulation. Let love be authentic, real, true. We've got to knock the watermelon of love, you know, to assure there's something there. We don't just create the context and say, it's all done. We don't say, we are the relational church. We have restored community in our church. We've got a website. It's now the Community Fellowship Church. No, we'll call it the Community Fellowship Relational Church. You know, people just love the titles. We are inferring that we are the most loving people in which the context is prepared. No, all we've done is created the website and the name. So don't be satisfied, brothers, with the context and the name. Don't say we're restoring relationship. Realize we're in this to restore, by God's grace, the presence of the Holy Spirit of God, who alone can give us a supernatural love and a unity in a world that lacks it. So, brothers, I think what we're talking about is people in search. People who sense a need. People who want something besides whatever we've seen in this watered down, shallow, relationship-less, loveless, cold world of institutions. That we are in search of something more. That there is a love that could be expressed in the church. There is a testimony that the church in Missouri could represent that would shock the world. That we begin to manifest to the world a testimony of a love that the world has never seen. Real life. Real body life. Real transformed life. Real restoration and real reconciliation of human relationships in a world in which a relationship with God was severed and then relationship horizontally is severed by Cain who kills his brother and wanders east of Eden like a vagabond. Because that's what defines and describes the world precisely. And this can only happen in Christ. That's it. It can only happen in Christ. And so we are never satisfied by context. We're not satisfied by, our church is about community. We're not satisfied about human pseudo relationships that come together for narrow interests. The program, Twice Divorced, children of alcoholics will move into this small group. or we are going to create a slotted group of 35 to 39 year old homeschool parents with 4.3 children, .6 on the standard deviation. a very narrow segmented group of human experience of human life in which all of those Christians who like golf are going to be over here, all the Christians twice divorced, children of alcoholics over here, all of the small group, support group who need encouragement in homeschooling because they have 4.3 children on the average, .6 on the standard deviation, are going to get along with each other until they no longer share the common interests And then they move on. That's not the church of Jesus Christ. Deal with it. That's not enough for me or for you. We want to see the miracle of love in a loveless world. Where self and narrow interests and pseudo relationships dominate. Will community survive the postmodern wasteland? I think that was the title that Peter gave me, roughly. And the answer is, of course the church will survive. And of course the real church will be a testimony. The world will see the body of the church. They will see the brothers and sisters laying down their lives for each other. And they will say, this is something I haven't seen anywhere. That the world may know. that you are one with us, the Father and the Son, as the Father and the Son are one as well. Psalm 127, unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late to eat the bread of sorrows, for so He gives His beloved sleep." This, I think, is the answer. The answer is, brothers, leaders, elders, pastors, fathers, the Lord has to build the house. After 25 years of involvement as a church elder, I can substantiate this. None of this is going to happen by the strength of man and by the creativity of man and by the genius of man and the programs that men provide. It's going to happen. It's only going to happen. It's only going to happen if the Lord builds the house Is there a recognition of the dire condition of the world and sin? I think that's where we all begin on the journey towards the reformation of the church. Is there even a realization of the trouble that we're in? Do they realize it in that church down the street? Do they realize it in this Southern Baptist church? In this PCA church? Are they recognizing the dire condition of the world? And do you hear that in the messages? Realizing how far we have wandered from God's law and God's standard of love. Is there a burden? Is there a sense of need? See, that's where we all begin. We begin with there's something wrong. Right? Amen? There's something wrong with us. There's something wrong with our family. There's something wrong with our churches. We have to begin with a sense there's something wrong. And the world has has demonstrated its bankruptcy in this area guys 80 million dead babies since 1960 By by the cold and heartless application of the abortifacient birth control pill of which what is it 73% of Protestant women partake in It's a cold world. It's a hateful world. It's a self-oriented world 80 million dead babies the the love of many has grown cold There's no question world the world has proven this John Steinbeck He gave us all of his books east of Eden and grapes of wrath, and you know it's just the isolation of mice and men It's the isolation What, in A Mice and Men, only two friends left. The dog, the old dog, he gets shot in the head, and the other guy's friend, he gets shot in the head at the end. That's it! That's, that is, that is, that's this world, that's post-modernism. You shoot relationship in the head. That's what you do. You wander east of Eden like a vagabond and you gain as many de-relationalized forms of entertainment as possible. Isolate yourself in your iPhone, iPad, all about me pad, me, me, me, isolated from everybody else. The most popular song of the last 60 years is Can't Get No Satisfaction. Mick Jagger said, I wrote it because it represents the isolation of modern man. Modern man understands his isolation. He relates to the isolation. He's climbed into the cage with the man in the iron cage to sentence himself to a hell forever with John Paul Sartre who says hell is other people. That is the modern world. The perfect picture of who we have become. And of course, 80% of young men addicted to pornography. Which is the final isolation. The final hell of isolation. In which young men are signing themselves up for the ultimate depersonalization. The ultimate derelationalization. With zeros and ones. Falling in love with zeros and ones on a screen. It's the saddest bondage. It's the worst hell that modern man, that perhaps any man in the history of the world since Cain, has ever concocted. Online pornography. The final hell. And God have mercy on men who have finally signed up for the ultimate isolation. 80% of young men, 18 to 26 they say, are addicted to online pornography on a weekly slash monthly basis. Does anybody sense a problem? Does anybody understand what we're dealing with? What the world has done and how the world has characterized itself in our age? Deal with it. Cain is destroying society. It's destruction. It's the destruction of sexuality, the destruction of marriage, the destruction of family, the destruction of community, the destruction of friendship, a la Facebook and all the defriending. It's destruction. The world is destroying itself. And 1 John chapter 2 says the world does destroy itself. It will pass away with its lusts. And that's happening in this generation. The only question is, will there be a church? Will there be any men in this room today who repent and say, yes, I believe there is a problem and I believe I need a Savior? It's a salvation issue. The loss of love and the loss of relationship has resulted in a need for salvation. And the church must, the true church that will survive and will have something of a society when we emerge out of the postmodern wasteland of a derelationalized life. The church will emerge and the church will appear radically different than what the world has given to us. So, what we need, brothers, is a sober realization of our need, an awakening. an awakening to three realities when it comes to this matter of covenant relationship and church community. We must soberly deal with and confront these three realities if we are going to restore covenant community in our churches. And here they are. We must realize these realities and God's salvation. Number one, realize the emptiness of scaffolding. I was at a conference Out in Korea, and we were walking into a gigantic building on this large engineering campus. Myself and a Korean pastor. And the building was completely surrounded by scaffolding. In which they were remodeling the building. The external part of the building. And I pointed out to this brother that the scaffolding is what man does. The building is what God does. Unless the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. The modern world has introduced professionals and programs and small groups and counselors and recipes and formulas It's all very professional. There's always the appearance that something is happening. Big things are happening over there. The procession for the emperor in his new clothes is always impressive. But they're really not doing anything. Scaffolding. Scaffolding. And brothers, the eyes of faith will press through this and say, this is not enough. It's ultimately the princes and horses. We don't trust in princes and horses. We trust in the Lord our God. It's the arm of the flesh, and I was shocked. Jeremiah 17, I was reading this several years ago, and it really stood out to me. It said, Cursed is the man that trusts in the arm of the flesh. It doesn't say, Disadvantaged is the man who trusts in the arm of the flesh. It says, Cursed is the man who trusts in the arm of the flesh. And when we, as the American church, turn towards the bodies, bucks, and buildings, and we focus upon the bodies, bucks, and buildings, we are trusting in the arm of the flesh. Remember a Chinese persecuted pastor coming into the Western world and says, man, you guys have so much money, you have so many buildings, you have so much wealth, but you can't tell somebody in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth to rise up and walk. That's what he saw in the churches. That's what he encountered. He saw that we had all the scaffolding. We have all the money. We feel like we've got all the riches. But we can't just... There's no power. There's no spirit. There's no faith. That was his experience when he saw the American church. spiritual eyes must see beyond the scaffolding. It is equating conferences, vacation Bible schools, Christian movies, professionally produced worship bands to getting the spiritual work done. Scaffolding does not require faith. You know, we're not the first ones to identify this. Martin Lloyd-Jones, if you listen to his sermons from the 1950s, he began to see these rallies, the programs. Now, of course, we have it on steroids today. With far more than they had in fact in the last 40 or 50 years If you do the analysis on youth groups youth camps youth leaders programs women's programs Etc women's pastors if you if you add all of that up and compare it to what they were doing in the 1950s 1960s We have seen so much more in terms of the investment into the programs so much investment to the youth ten times more money placed into these programs than we did in the 1960s or 1950s with one-tenth of the results. It is literally the worst return on investment in the history of economics. Not the history of the church, the history of economics. It's shockingly bad. And you know what the stats are the best that I've got so far is The percentage of youth that call themselves evangelicals 37% after the great Evangelical awakening of the 1970s so by 80 85 it's 37% Today, it's 19% for the Millennials and half of them believe in homosexual marriage So you're looking at among evangelicals in America, among the youth, 37% down to 9%, an 80% apostasy rate with the youth, and yet never have we spent more money on buildings, on youth groups, on youth camps, on mission trips. Scaffolding. Scaffolding. We're investing in scaffolding. It's not the building. The scaffolding has to come down, brothers. The scaffolding has to be torn down. You'll find this happening when professional church attenders come to your church. Okay, here's the way it works. Their marriage starts to crack up after about four to five years. Spend no real spiritual life. No real response to the preaching. And so, the elders come in and they try to do a little counseling. Where'd you get your diploma? Where'd you get your little certificate? I don't have a certificate. In fact, I've said this. What we decided to do is we're going to bring Nathaniel Bringey in here. The least of these. We're going to bring him in. We're going to have him counsel you. Nathaniel Bringi is, he's our best counselor, and usually what he says is, love. A little boy with Down syndrome. Most of you know who he is, you know who he is? You should, he's your brother. But you know what they say? They say, we're gonna go get a professional counselor. Oh, I've had this happen so many times. We want to pay $100 an hour And I kind of smile and think, well, if they invest a thousand bucks, maybe they'll show up, and maybe they'll do half the homework. Because they've got a little money invested in it. And then they leave the church, and they go off to some professional church, and then they're divorced four years later. Okay, that's the way it works. That's standard. And the scaffolding never does any good. Just a waste. It's just a waste. The scaffolding comes down anyway. The only way for relationships to survive in many churches is to silently agree that there will be no contact with each other. Or very little contact. Or people church hop every two to three years. You know how this works. Or they get lost in a megachurch. Or they schedule some small groups carefully to only last for six months, maximum a year, because that's about the longest a modern relationship could survive. We all know how this works in the postmodern wasteland, where it's all scaffolding. The scaffolding has to come down. You see, we bring people down to the Red Sea, we lift a stick. We bring our three-hander together. We hand out the torches and a few pots. We say, break the pots. And they say, so that's it. We say, that's it. They say, forget this. I'm going to professional counselors. And we say, we're in a wholly different business than what they're doing down the street. Completely different business. The scaffolding must come down. We stand in graveyards and we call the dead out of them. We don't rely on carefully honed methodologies. We don't sit there and critique the pastor who's standing up calling the dead out of these graveyards and say, if you would just open it up with a little humor. Just a little humor. A little more ethos. The pathos isn't where it should be. I need some rhetoric. Give me some rhetoric. If you're preaching at dead men and you're raising the dead, I need you to point, I need you to raise your voice a little bit and then speak your words better. Maybe that will help. It's ridiculous. And the world sees us preaching at dead men and they laugh and they say, you're fools. And we say, yes, that's what we are. That's what we're doing. But you know these things, the scaffolding comes down anyway. Ted Haggard, Bill Hybels, Mark Driscoll, the Harvest Bible Chapel guy, what, last week? The scaffolding always comes down. It's worthless. Don't invest your time and energy in the scaffolding. It's a waste of time. So what are we looking for? What are we looking to? We must wake up to this, brothers. The utter futility to jerking from this church to that church. From this method to that method. From this movement to that movement. The home church to the megachurch. I'm sorry, but our brother Francis Chan is still playing this game. I feel sorry. I played it too. I played it too. I know what it's like to try the megachurch, get burned out on that, try this new home church approach, and hope somehow the shift in movement and method is going to make a difference. Friends, it's the wrong mindset. You're adjusting the scaffolding. This is the utter futility of the whole church growth movement of the 1990s and 2000s. The sooner we get over it, the better. We stand in graveyards and we call on the dead to arise. Method doesn't really matter. God must build His church. If the Lord doesn't build the house, they labor in vain that build it. So in the failure of church relationships or the failures of whatever's happened, I'm sure you've seen many disappointments. But this is only proving the point, brothers. And God will do this in your life as He's done it in my life. He's proving a point. And His point is what? The church is a miracle. It's not what you do and it's not what I do. It's what Jesus does. It's so foreign to so much of the church experience in America. The church is not held together by cultic personalities. I can tell you that. I've tried to be a cultic personality. I have a little ability to speak. I can wave my hands around a little bit. It doesn't do any good. I can tell you that. I've proven it. It's just my personality. But it's not held together by top-down popes and pastors. You know, the intention is sometimes to centralize control over some large denomination, like a pope, or an Anglican archbishop, or if you're in a local megachurch, it's the executive pastor. It's just the size of your pyramid that's the difference. You have smaller pyramids versus the Roman Catholic pyramid. They're all trying the same thing, and they know that if you retain something of a top-down structure, then it's efficient, and we can kind of hold things together by a top-down personality or by control. And you can extend the life of your church for 10 years doing that. I understand this. But the elder driven church is a circle. It's not a pyramid. It's a circle of guys. And Jesus is over us. And there is a tendency for the circle to morph. See how that happened? A powerful personality on the session like me. getting all the yes men to say yes to me, and turning the eldership into what all the other guys are doing. I understand this, but you come back to me and say, this is impossible. This is impossible. Yes! I'm glad you figured it out, because until you figure that out, you're not going to have a church, or you're not going to have a faith to look up, and realize we are in the business of the impossible. So the scaffolding must come down, brothers. The scaffolding must come down. It's not held together by cultic personalities, top-down popes and pastors, or programs or agreement on a very narrow set of 1,000 distinctives. Of course, the problem there is you get 1,001 shows up three weeks later. And then you split the whole church over your thousandth-to-oneth distinctive. I understand how this works. But none of these things can hold together the real organic body of Jesus. What is the covenant community? It's the life of Christ. It's the body of Christ. It's the supernatural love of God that is entirely unknown in the world. And if you haven't seen it, and if I'm saying something, you say, I like this. I want this, but I've never seen it. Then you need to go up into the upper room and pray. And pray for the Holy Spirit to come again to your community and plant a real church, a real body of Christ. The church is the body of Christ. The church is simply a collection of those people who are confessing sins, walking in the light, recipients of the power of God to overcome sin, and to love one another. It's not more complicated than that. As for the function of the church, so what does the church do? This is easy. The church does 1 Timothy 2.2 and 4.2. It's pretty much what it does. The Bible just gives you a very, very, very simple recipe for the body. 2 Timothy 4.2 and 2.2 are the fundamentals. 2.2 says the pastors should be training the young men in order that they will be able to disciple others. That's what the pastor does. He invites one, or two, or three, or four, or five young men into his home. And for three, to four, to five, to eight, to nine years, he disciples young men. And that's what I've done for the last nine or ten years. It's been the most wonderful experience of my life. Peter Bringi was there. Josh Hueso will be ordained as a pastor, hopefully in two weeks from now. Chad Roach, ordained as a deacon last year. That's 10 years of my life. Praise God. It's not programs. It's discipleship. It's preaching, 2 Timothy 4.2. Preach the word in season, out of season. I charge you, therefore, before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing in His kingdom, preach the word, be ready in season, out of season, convince, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and teaching. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires. Because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers, and they will turn their ears away from the truth and be turned aside to fables." It is, brothers, the foolishness of preaching. It's not the professionalism of programs. What are we? We're not professionals. We're not programs. We're the unprofessional preachers. And why is preaching so unimpressive to unbelievers? because they can't relate to how somebody could become convicted about a truth that they don't understand and a God they cannot see. That's why people reject preaching. They're just, they don't feel it. They don't believe it. They see people preaching with faith and calling the dead out of tombs. And these are realities they don't relate to. They haven't experienced the power of resurrection. The people of God, hopefully, who are gathered have sensed the power of the Word. They've sensed the power of Jesus and the power of the Spirit of God. It's not boring to them. It's not foolish to them. But where there is no regeneration, where there's just deadness and coldness, and there hasn't been an experiential power of God working in people's lives, it's people yelling at tombstones. It's foolishness. It's just foolish. Send them off to a professional counselor at $200 an hour. So it's foolishness. We are into foolishness. And the foolishness is parents, as someone mentioned. Parents, not professionals. Parents, not programs. Parents, not recipes and formulas. Parents stepping out in faith to nurture children who are born in their trespasses and sins and need the resurrection work of the Spirit of God. Parents who step in there and in faith continue to teach and to preach and to gently exhort and not do you know, a controlling thing, where they're sovereignly ordaining the children's regeneration, salvation. No, just in faith, continuing to spread the word, and to water the plants, and to trust that the Holy Spirit of God is going to do this work on the inside of their children. And it may take 24 years. I was shocked with some of my children. I didn't see a lot of things happening until they were 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24. I continued to just patiently spread the word and be a good farmer and water the plants. And over time, God brought forth increase, and it's blown my mind how He has blessed my family. But it came about not through programs, not through formulas, but by patient parenting and teaching. Not seeing the fruit initially, but continuing to do so in faith. And God brought about an amazing change in our children's life. I remember a number of years ago, shortly after planting our church, I got a call from George Barna. I don't know if I ever told you this, Scott, but George Barna called me and said, one of his guys, they were surveying people, pastors, concerning their youth programs, and they asked me, what are you doing with the youth? They said, we're concerned about this 80, 90% attrition rate in the Southern Baptist Church and other churches. The attrition rate's obnoxiously horrible. And the children are apostatizing by the millions. And so we're just surveying you as to what you're doing. How are your Sunday schools going? I said, we don't have any Sunday schools. They said, well, how about youth groups? We don't have youth groups. How about youth camps? No, no youth camps. And finally we came down to Vacation Bible School. No, we don't have any DBSs. They said, what are you doing? What's wrong with you? Aren't you concerned? And I said, yes, I am concerned. Yes, I'm really concerned. that the attrition rate I've seen in our churches in the 1980s, 1990s, awful. Just horrible. Affecting pastors all over the place. Pastors oftentimes losing all their children to the world. No pastor down in Texas lost five or six children to the world. Another Reformed Baptist pastor in San Diego lost his sons to the world. And so, you know, I've heard all these stories. I've seen it in our churches. They said, well, what are you doing? And I said, well, we got desperate. We went to the Word. You know, we got really, really desperate, and we went to the Word and found Ephesians 6, 4, and found what the Apostle gave us. And he said, really, what does he say? And I said, well, he says, here's the youth program. You turn to the father and you say, fathers, tag, you're it. Raise your children in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord. And then you turn to the children and you say, listen, honor him. Listen to him. And they said, that's it. I said, that's it. He says, how's that working? I said, well, it is amazing. When the Spirit of God comes over a father and a mother, and the hearts of the fathers turn to the sons and sons to the fathers, because of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament age, it is amazing what happens. No professionals here. Just foolishness. Just fools. Parents. It's the foolishness of preaching, the foolishness of parents, and the foolishness of discipleship. And yes, discipleship is the most inefficient thing you can think of. I suppose I've spoken to 300,000 people around the world in the last 15 years. Most of it's just a waste. I'll just tell you guys, it's just a waste. But the time you spend with one or two or three guys over a period of seven years in your home will make all the difference. See, there are certain things we will do in our ministries that are not wasted. They will not burn. They will not be the wood hand stubble that burns at the end. They will be the gold, silver, and precious stones that remains after the fire burns. Praise God. And of all the things I've done in my life, I will tell you, the thing that matters the most is the most unimpressive thing possible in the world's eyes. I do average about 1,000 hours for each young man that comes into my home. In the case of some, like Josh Hueso, it's been probably close to 8,000 hours of time spent with him over the last 10 years. Praise God. You had a choice between discipling three people for 10,000 hours or speaking to 10,000 people about the gospel in just three hours. And that's all you could do in your whole life. Which would you choose? Well, let me say this. The Creator of the universe, the all-wise Savior and Redeemer of mankind came to earth for a three-year stint. What did he do? Naf said. So the first awakening is to awaken to the reality of the scaffolding and to tear down the scaffolds, brothers. Tear them down. Secondly, and this is something Scott alluded to, we have to awaken to the reality of sin. sin. We're all sinners and there should be no pretenses about that. We have to be realistic about our sins. Absolutely realistic. Painfully realistic about sin and our collective need for forgiveness from God and from one another. We must remember the dreadful, shocking, horrible reality of sin and our universal need for salvation. We are all sinners and we have all come to Christ and we have all come to the church needing the same thing. Salvation from our sins. And if we've come to the church with any other concept in our minds, we need to walk away and just go join the YMCA. This is who we are. We are sinners and we've come to Christ for salvation, for forgiveness. And we are in the fellowship of the forgiven and the forgiving. Here's one principle the Lord gives to us. Listen. If we are not forgiving, we are not forgiven. You know, Jesus doesn't have a lot of practical guidelines in the Gospels or even the Epistles. How much does He give us? May I say, I haven't done the calculation, but maybe 70% of the content relating to the Christian life has to do with forgiving each other. That is the warp and the wolf of the Christian life. I like to say, bus drivers drive buses. If you have bus drivers, I'm a bus driver. He's got it on his business card, bus driver. Kevin, bus driver. And I say, Thomas, I don't drive buses. What would you say? It doesn't make sense. You would say, well, then you're not a bus driver, right? If I told you I'm a bus driver, but I don't drive buses. Then you would say, you're not a bus driver. If you were to say, I'm a Christian, I just don't forgive anybody. How would you respond to that? Come on, how would you respond to that? You're not a Christian. Of course you're not a Christian. Christians forgive each other. It's just what they do. It's definitive. It's not prescriptive, it's descriptive. Now there's some prescription there, but Jesus presents it most often in a descriptive way, that we are the forgiving and the forgiven. So these things come concomitantly. The one isn't based on the other. We don't forgive others in order that we might be forgiven. No, no, no, no, no. Jesus says in Matthew 6, if you forgive others their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. I don't believe He's saying you have to forgive this much in order to merit this much forgiveness. He's not saying that. He's just saying these two things come concomitantly. They come together. So this is the basis for the Christian home. This is the basis for the Christian church, which means we absolutely need to take away the hermetic ceiling. We need to bring our children back into our lives. We need offense going on in the home. We need to have relationship with each other in order that there might be some offense. There has to be some offense in the home. In a Christian home, of course, there will be a fence in order that there will be forgiveness. There will be a fence if there's relationship. If you sent your kids off to boarding school, kept the sofa covered with plastic so nothing can contaminate the relationships in the home, then there won't be the opportunity for relationship in order that there might be forgiveness. Thus, bringing relationship back into the modern home with fathers and mothers and children and bringing relationship back into the church in, yes, a cold, institutionalized, programmed, small group, six-month-at-a-time sort of existence. When we bring relationship back into the family and back into the church, we create an opportunity to determine whether there are any Christians in the home or whether there are any Christians in the church. So, we absolutely need to realize the reality of sin and the constant reality of forgiveness and forgiving one another absolutely has to happen. Should be the warp and the woof. Should be the 490 times a day in the church. Should be constant in the church instead of this hesitation to offend each other. This standing just at the outside of the church one foot outside the church just in case somebody offends me not Christians Okay, not Christians No, no Christians forgive each other is expectation of sin and Forgiving and forgiveness. This is the church So We must be awakened to the reality of sin and forgiveness as the warp and the woof of the church. That's why the self-oriented Codependencies of the world don't work. The community of support groups, not enough. The community of narrow interests, not enough. They last just long enough for people to offend each other. Dietrich Bonhoeffer's book, Life Together, first chapter is the best chapter of the book. Let me quote just a little bit from Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Christian community. Christian community breaks down because it springs from a wish dream. In other words, people have this perception of we're going to do a family-integrated church, it's going to be relational, and we're going to bring in community, we're going to be a community fellowship church. He says, that is a wish dream. God's grace speedily shatters these dreams. The sooner the shock of disillusionment comes over the individual and to the community, the better. So in other words, kick everybody off the high dive into the cold water of sin and forgiveness and forgiving. The sooner they get over the shock of what Christian community looks like, the better. Hallelujah. Even when sin and misunderstanding burden the communal life, is not the sinning brother still a brother with whom I too stand under the Word of Christ? The very hour of disillusionment with my brother becomes incomparably beneficial because it so thoroughly teaches me that neither of us can live but under the one thing that binds us together, and that is the forgiveness of Christ. It's beautiful language. Okay, and then the final Third Awakening. You must awaken to the reality of the uselessness and the futility of the scaffolding. You must wake up to the reality of sin and the need, the universal need for us to be forgiven by each other and certainly, and most importantly, by God. And then thirdly, brothers, here it is, the third awakening is we must awaken to the spiritual battle, the spiritual realities of the church. About six years ago, before a lot of things began to explode in the homeschooling movement, this happened about maybe two to three months before that, I had a dream. It was the most demonic dream I've ever had. The intensity of the spiritual demonic presence in the dream was something I'd never experienced in my life. The demonic presence was in the room. And in my dream, my brothers and sisters in the church joined me as I was walking down this mall. And together we shut down the demonic forces. And we went to Country Buffet. And we had a meal together. And it was beautiful. I've never had a dream that was so evil and so incredibly wonderful at the same time. I woke up, tears coming down my cheeks, and I said, honey, I grabbed onto my wife and said, he prepares a table before us in the presence of our enemies. And I told my presbytery this last January, That verse has characterized my ministry and our church specifically in the last five years, unlike any other verse. I've seen God on a Sunday morning. I've come in and there's been spiritual attack going on with the brothers in the eldership room, with other brothers in the congregation. I could sense the spiritual attacks were so intense, unlike anything I've seen. The incredible attack that happened upon the homeschool leadership, upon the family integrated churches. I think Scott could say there has been spiritual attacks as well. It has been intense, brothers, over the last five years. But as the Word of God was preached, it's like crushing a Satan's head under our feet and getting a little serpent blood in your tennis shoes. It just feels so good. Amen? Amen. Yeah! spiritual attacks on the real church really happen. I just didn't realize this. This wasn't something anybody told me before I got into eldership 27 years ago. I didn't realize how intense the spiritual warfare would be. But brothers, it is real. I hate to say this, in our church experience in Colorado, in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church as well as in the Reformed Baptist Church, in my experience, at least 80% of the elders I have worked with had to leave the kitchen. They had to resign. In fact, of the elders that I've known for more than 10 years, I think only a couple have survived. Because I don't think most men are aware of the intense spiritual attack that goes on in the pastor's family, in the elder's families, in the churches. You can't run out there in your skivvies. in the intense spiritual battle we're in. I can remember coming back from my sabbatical five years ago. I took three months off. The first thing I told these guys is we're not talking about all these details about this or that anymore. If we're not doing word and prayer together in this room for 80% of the time, if we aren't into this battle and praying together as mighty men of God appealing before the throne room of Almighty God to come and intervene for his people and to rescue us from the attacks of the spiritual demon world, then friends, I'm going to be over there in the other room, and if anybody wants to join me, that's what I'm doing. The pastors, the elders, are going to be serious spiritual men, engaged in spiritual leadership, or we're just going to have to quit right now. And praise the Lord. Neil as well, a spiritual man. Our prayer meetings went from three or four to now we're at 40. Tremendous things have started to happen because we've woken up to this spiritual reality. The spiritual battle is intense. More than words can describe. Let me try. It's a heavy battle. Relentless. It can go on for weeks, months, even years without much of a break. It is a continuing battle. It is a joyful battle. Ephesians 6 speaks about us being prepared for the evil day, the onslaught of tempting thoughts. The accuser of the brethren comes. He's constantly accusing brothers of false motives, accusing ourselves of false motives, falsely judging, evil surmising, offering notions of false doctrines, doubts, discouragements, accusations, more doubts, more accusations, more discouragements, discontentment, lust, pride, faithless anxiety over this issue or that issue in the church, ingratitude, gracelessness, strife, gossip, quarrels over minor things, diversions, distractions, envy of another's gifts, competitions, comparing ourselves with other churches, fixation on gain, bodies, bucks and buildings, programs, the arm of the flesh, and above all, the temptation to quit, the temptation to just walk away, the temptation to stop loving, to not love, to leave the church, to refuse to grow in love, and on and on it goes. And if you've been involved for more than five to ten years in church leadership, you would have said amen to every single one of these, and you would have said, that's pretty much every day or every week for me. Brothers, this is real battle. This is real spiritual battle. And if we're involved in the true church, the devil will show up and he will go after you with everything he's got. He's not going after the scaffolding. He doesn't care about the scaffolding. He will come after you. And it's important, if you're involved in the true church, to awaken to the spiritual realities of these attacks. Well, I don't know how long I was supposed to go. I think we're done, aren't we? Oh, I have so much more to say. Well, what are the fruits of the church? Not just relationship, but love. We have the unity that Christ said He would demonstrate to the world. We're not going to be caught up in forms, arguing forever and ever about forms. Externals, music, entertainment, choirs. Bogus, bogus, bogus. We don't have time for these external scaffolding focal points. have these things as our focus. We're looking for the substance. We will have a perfect love that casts out fear. A spirit of love and power and a sound mind in all our relationships. This is the fruit of a godly church. We will have faith to expect God to do great things in our fellow church members and our children. Instead of this negative, condemnatory love that doesn't hope all things, there will be a faith-filled, hope-filled love that explodes onto the scene as we consider the struggles that our brothers and sisters are going through. We will be enamored by God. Our focus will be on what God is doing. Why? Because when you see the dead rising, and when you see the Red Sea parting, you're not going to be stepping back and say, Whoa! What a sermon! That pastor was amazing! Did you see how he raised the stick? Oh, the style of how he held the stick. Amazing! Whoa, dude! That's not your focus. Your focus is on God, and what God is doing. in raising the dead and setting the captives free. Guys who are bound in pornography for 20 years set free from it. Walking free as a man who has been touched by the supernatural work of a powerful God and the redeeming blood of the Son of God himself. We're going to be enamored by what God is doing and not what man is doing. That will no longer be the focus. I'm sorry I'm rushing as fast as I can. We will be a praying church. Professionals don't need prayer. I finally concluded what counseling is. Counseling is to take the ten minutes to figure out what the real prayer request is. Okay? That's it. You want a certificate for that? I'll give you a certificate. Okay? That's it. You're now certified to counsel, brother. Yes, elders, we have to take 10 minutes to ask a few questions. We want to know what the real prayer request is. Not the superficial sins, the real sin. So we can confess it and so we can ask for God's forgiveness, God's powerful cleansing, and his release for our brother, right? Isn't that it? That's what counseling is. Make it simple, you know. Maybe, okay, 20 minutes. If it takes 20 minutes, go for it. 20 minutes is fine, I don't care. But don't charge him 200 bucks an hour, amen? Amen. Fathers will be empowered not by a program or a label, but by the Holy Spirit of God and men will begin to show up in the prayer meetings We're not there yet Well, we have a few Neil God bless you But we need more men showing up the prayer meeting. We need more men to be desperate Sadly most men are asleep they have no idea how many orcs are coming down over Helms Deep and and are ready to destroy their families. I'm sorry. Most men are clueless. They're not awake. They're not watchful, and they're not prayerful. They're not attending the prayer meeting. They're not rushing in to raise their hands and appeal to God for His powerful work in their families. We need way more men in our prayer meetings. And then we begin to see long-term relationships developing in our churches, and our children will prophesy. And the hearts of the fathers turn to the sons, and sons to the fathers, and the Joel 2 Acts 2 prophecy fulfilled. And we'll do more of that this afternoon. Amen, let's pray. Our Father in heaven, oh God, you are the powerful Savior of the Red Sea. You are the powerful God who raised your son from the dead on the third day and established your powerful redemption and have enabled a redemption in your people and the establishment of your church in this nation and all the other nations around the world. Oh God, to you be the glory. Great things you have done. We simply look up to you. to trust that you will do great things today and tomorrow. Father, enough of the scaffolding. God, we need a miracle. We need a supernatural implanting of the life of Christ in our churches and the miraculous love of Jesus, the love of God in our hearts, shed abroad by your Holy Spirit in Jesus' name.