Why are we to plant churches?  Is it to make worship comfortable? Is it to show the world we have it right?  Is it simply to be able to rally the troops and be among others that have similar interests?  How one views the purpose behind planting a church will not only greatly affect one’s efforts, it will greatly affect whether the church is one that magnifies Christ, its head, or glorifies man.  We need to clearly understand the purpose of the church, His bride, if we are to start churches that glorify Christ.

Let me open us in prayer. Father God, we just come before you. We look at this topic of church planting and It fits into everything that we've been hearing, that I pray that as we talk about this, that we would always keep Christ at the center of everything, that we plant churches, that we go to church. We do all of these things to glorify God. And I pray that that would be first and foremost in our minds, that planting a church is just a way of spreading his name, his fame around the world to all the nations and so, Lord, I pray that you would speak through where I would fail but we would ignite people's hearts to see the church be what you would want it to be.

The glorious bride of Christ. Amen. So, why are we to plant churches? Is it to make worship comfortable? Is it to show the world we have it right?

Is it simply to be able to rally the troops and be among those who have similar ideas that we have? How one views the purpose behind planning churches will not only greatly affect one's effort, it will greatly affect whether the church is one that magnifies Christ, which is above all what we want to do because Christ is its head. Because if we don't glorify Christ, the other option is we glorify man. We need to clearly understand the purpose of the church, his bride, if we're to start churches that glorify him. So what we're doing in this sort of three-part session that I'm taking the first part which is called the purpose of church planting and many of these things you're going to say well I just heard that.

Well that's what I want you to do Because a lot of what you're hearing is the reason we plant churches. It's to proclaim God's name, to proclaim Christ's name. And so I'll give some biblical basis and some ideas. And depending on time, I was going through this, going an hour. It never happens at our church, just to go for an hour, but we'll see how this goes.

After this, in the second part, Jason Dohme will be doing what we call the practice of church planting. There's sort of three parts. Not only do you need to know the purpose or why we plant churches, There is a practice and some insights that they've gained and that Jason has gained in the implanting of a church. And then lastly, Steve Bragey will talk about the pitfalls, and there are many. Not just implanting family integrated churches, implanting churches because whenever you put imperfect people together, guess what happens?

You get conflict. If you're going to plant a church to get away from conflict, it's a different story. Don't even think about that. That's going to happen when you put people together. And so as I was thinking about this, how many people in here are part of a church plant?

How many people are looking at planting a church? How many are here by accident? I don't believe in accidents, so shut the door. You're providentially here by God's hand, so we're going to lock the doors if you're already in here. Let me give you a little background because you know you go to conferences and you go I know those guys names and I know some people in here.

I brought my family so that I can fill the room up a little more but I was a believer at 28 and in many ways I can look at that and go, you know, I would have been glad if I'd been a believer earlier, but there's some things I don't carry some of the baggage that many people do being in church their entire life. I grew up Catholic, an altar boy, but after that, about age 12, my family never went to church. I didn't go back to church until I was in my 20s, late 20s. I wasn't a believer until I was 28. There's a lot of things I can say that I can see that God has used that I don't carry a lot of the things that we may get when we go to church.

We say this is how church is done. As far as theological background and how I've been trained, I do everything backwards. I went to seminary at 40. I finished my bachelor's just after that. It's the hard way.

It's hard on your family if you try it that way. And I also would encourage you that I don't say anybody has to go to seminary to start a church. There's a side I would say that I would hope that you would spend time learning God's Word and then go to seminary if that's what someone wants to do. Because seminary can cause many a problem if you don't have a grounding when you go there. What happened was, as I went through seminary, I had to decide I was going to take the track of going out and being a pastor, turn your resume in, do this whole job hunting sort of thing.

But I decided you have to have a philosophy of ministry. You need to know what the church looks like. I took two years or more, a lot of writing, to figure out what does the church look like. Because if you start a church and don't know what it looks like, you're in for trouble. Because everyone has their idea, don't they, of what a church looks like?

Or everybody has an idea of what they want the church to look like. And so as I did that, I found, you know what, it's going to be really hard to be a pastor in an existing church. Because many of the things we talk about in here and I'm not going to use the word family integrated very much because there's a side of me that has problems with the word because it has connotations that people go ah so family is the center of everything you do here well family is important Christ is more important But Christ as the Bible shows Christ. You can't even and we'll try to mention this again you can't even have a church that unifies around Christ unless you agree on who Christ is. Because theology is important and by the way you're all theologians you know you ask and people go well I'm not a theologian that's for somebody else we all have theology the atheists you meet on the street has theology it may be wrong and it is but he has a theology And so a little bit of an overview of our church that we have started, Sovereign Grace Christian Fellowship, it meets in our home.

I always tell people we're not a home church. We're a church in a home. We meet in our house because it's prudentially the best thing of use of God's funds. If we met in a building it doesn't matter to me. We meet someplace that we can fellowship, that we can spread God's word and we can equip the saints to go out and do evangelism and to spread the word among where they work.

And so I'm in Anaheim, California and if you don't know where that is, Disneyland. We see fireworks every night they're on. They're just down the street. It is not a hotbed for churches that are centered around where everyone meets together. Multi-generational churches.

Everyone's happy to be comfortable to send their kids off somewhere else. They want someone else to take care of them. But even though I think that is an important part, that we keep everyone together, we still can't even make churches around that if we don't start somewhere else first. And so as we go through this and look at what we're gonna, I wanna start with the biblical basis for church planning. And you've heard these verses already, but I'd like to turn to Ephesians 5, 23 and 24.

In Ephesians 5, 23 and 24, it says, the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is head of the church. His body and he is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also Christ should submit to everything, in everything, to her husband. In Revelation 21, 19, 21, 9, then came one of the seven angels who had seven bowls full of the seven last plagues and spoke to me saying, come I will show you the bride the wife of the lamb. And I'm not going to exegete those passages but we need to understand that the church is the bride of Christ.

I mean everyone will take those Ephesian passages and talk about how the wife has to submit to her husband. That doesn't work if you don't know how yourself to submit to Christ. And then the church has to submit to Christ. And so before one seeks to start a church, one needs to understand the purpose of the church, both as to why it exists and to why one should plant churches. In truth, this is prudent.

All Christians should do this. If you have no idea of wanting to start a church, you should still know what the church looks like. Because How do you know when you're in one that's glorifying to God? You need to be able to better discern the direction of the church that you're in or the church that you may be seeking to start. It's also important to see the importance of the local church.

As far too often today in the professing church, the local church is sort of minimized. It's not put out there as what's important. It's just a sideline of what we do. We don't focus on the things of God. It's just something we do on one day a week.

And we may have other things that go along with that, but we need to understand what the church looks like. And so again, while a much-a-way I'm going to say is probably covered in many of the talks that you've heard or will hear again, The purpose is I want to relate these to church planting. I'm going to say if you've ever taken a seminary course or read a book on church planting, this is not what you're not going to hear. I laugh in my seminary classes. Our church would be a failure.

They would tell me to quit, get out. You don't have enough families. Where I went to seminary, it's baptism, bucks, and people, bodies. I think you can remember the alliteration. It's all about getting a number of people in there, getting the money, and the baptisms.

There's nothing about spiritual growth. We need to have that as a focus when we start a church. We need to be at our focus of promoting God's name and his word put forth. We need to do it not with the idea of increasing the number of heads, and that can happen, But having the hearts of the people grow, to see charts changed. And so what is our primary purpose for even having a church?

What makes a church different from any club you may join? And By the way, many professing churches, there isn't much difference. People often change churches as much as they change their shirts. It doesn't fit what they want. I can tell you right now, every church you go to, if you're looking for one that'll be perfect and have everything you want, you'll never find one.

If you're starting a church just because someone doesn't have something you want, you need to make sure you've looked at this closely. We'll talk a little bit about that. If you look at the word ekklesia and it's been mentioned before, the word means called out ones and truthfully the word ekklesia is a Greek word that was not inherently biblical in its essence. The Rotary Club is an ekklesia. The Boy Scouts are an ekklesia.

They're a group of people called out to do something. It's the Bible that makes the difference. So it's the called out ones that are called out to proclaim his name, his name above all things. So it's the Bible that gives the church its meaning. What we as believers are to seek in starting churches is to glorify God.

The reformers spoke of sola deo gloria, or God's glory alone. That's our focus. That hasn't changed. That's what we need to do. That's to be our primary goal in all we do.

Not just in starting churches but what we do in them. Because you need to understand that you can't suddenly decide to start a church and say I want to bring glory to God if you're not doing it beforehand. You don't suddenly have a mind change just because you want to do something. You have to foster that mindset now so that you can go with the mindset that I want to glorify God in whatever he has me do. And by the way, it's going to help you through those times when things don't look like it's going right because your sole focus again needs to be on glorifying God and so we need to have that mindset God's Word speaks much on praising God and why and I'm going to give you the passages because there's not enough time to read them all but in Psalm 148 13 it says we're to praise him to exalt his name in Romans 16 25 through 27 in bang being made known to the nation's his name is glorified and when you hear the word nations think of all other people this isn't just overseas but his name needs to be proclaimed among all people we praise him if you see in jude 25 that we give glory to the only God our Savior and his name is praise we make sure that is clear in Revelation 15 for we see that all are to fear and give glory to God don't hear much about the fear of God in most places today But that gives glory to God when we fear God.

When we plant churches, we need to have a fear of God. Because it's God's bride that we're dealing with. And we need to have fear that, and there's a godly fear. But I mean fear. We often take the word fear and go well that means reverence no we need to be fearful of God because it's his bride that we're dealing with we're also told many ways were to glorify God in Psalm 86 9 through 10 It's by all nations coming to worship him.

Another reason for starting churches. So that all nations would come to glorify him. Glorify and worship him. In Romans four nineteen through twenty-two, his name is glorified through belief. As we share the gospel and we equip the saints in our churches to share the gospel in the world.

And keep in mind, the church's main thing is to share the gospel but it's through the people. So often, we think of a program. We've got an evangelism program and If you have those, those things are great. We need to equip everyone to do that. The mindset of people is, well, that's for those guys.

It needs to be a thing we do every day at work that people see something different. I always tell people in our church that sometimes we read the, when we read in the Bible it talks about the saints. Well, the saints are the holy ones. I wish they would use that as the translation because it's a lot more convicting to hear holy ones than to hear the word saints. Saints sounds like, well, that's just Christians.

No, it's holy ones. There's something different. They're set apart. And so, we need to do that. In first Corinthians 620, we glorify god with our bodies and what we do.

We glorify god with good works in first Peter 212. In Ephesians one, eleven through twelve, his grace on us and salvation glorifies him. We glorify god when we proclaim the salvation that he has brought and in Ephesians three, eight through thirteen, the church is to glorify him. We need to keep that in mind. The Westminster Shorter and longer catechism says, man's chief end is to glorify god and enjoy him to forever.

That needs to be our mindset when we plant churches. We want to plant churches to glorify God. So to tie this in to why we are to start churches, it's so that we accomplish this goal of spreading his glory in a pagan world. In a dark world, we want to shed light. In a world that openly and unabashedly denies God, we're to be the ones that proclaim his name.

Understanding it's the proclaiming of his name, it's God has to open their hearts but we need to proclaim his name because God does it through the preaching of the word. We need to be used by God to bring others to do this as well. If you read in Genesis 12, you see that Abraham lived in such a way as to make a statement in his life. He went through and he put an altar out there. God had him place altars.

Now, you might go, okay, he just placed an altar. He placed an altar to a single God among a people that had altars for every God they could think of that stood out that made him stand out among people made him look different made him look peculiar but he worshiped God so that God's name would be proclaimed. That is the worship we are to do in proclaiming and proclaim to the world, not just with our lips, but with our lives, so that our primary emphasis and purpose in starting a church has to be to glorify God above all things. We need to keep that in mind as we'll come back to that, this idea of glorifying God in all we do. We need to make sure that's the question we ask whenever we say should I do anything we should ask the question does this glorify God or does it glorify man?

Does that what we do and what we preach lift up man or God? If we look at planting a church that's focused on the needs of men, man is glorified. Now as I say all these things, man will be needs need to be dealt with. But when that is first and primary, man becomes central to everything. The question will be as a an adage that sort of says what brings them in you need to keep doing to keep them in.

And if you do things to bring people in in a church that sort of meets their needs and we as churches need to meet needs We need to take care of the hungry. There's lots of things we need to do, but we need to first of all realize we glorify God first. And those other things will flow out of that. Because once you, I remember once we did a ministry to the Port, a church I was at, and we would bring food. Well, you know what?

They grumbled because the food wasn't as good after about six months. They wanted something else. You've got to do more because we weren't really meeting their need, I can look back. We fed their physical hunger, but there was no spiritual side to that, and they just got complacent with that. We need to make sure that we glorify God and don't miss the mark in doing that.

And so one of the ways we glorify God in starting churches is in a way we do it in discipling the nations. In Matthew 28, 19 through 20, which is so often used to speak of evangelism we need to understand there's a much fuller context in that passage that we're to plant churches to equip God's people to reach the nation's the nation started your doorstep and they can go overseas They need to be a place to disciple them all by God's Word. We need to make start churches that want to go out and disciple the nations not necessarily evangelizing as people will do that. We need to have a place to disciple them because the passage says we're to disciple, to make disciples. And so all of this revolves around God's Word.

And so in discipling the nations, his word is truly truthfully and fully proclaimed. And so the church is to be used by God to reach and teach his people. In our backyard and around the world, but again in the context of discipleship. In teaching obedience to God's word. Another reason we start churches and we have churches is for community.

Now, when I use the word community, we have to be careful. There's many a movement out there that has their idea of having community and getting fellowship. And we all make our little clans. And we put the walls around, and we all sing Kumbaya and have fun. I'm talking about Christian community.

You know Christian community is uncomfortable. Christian community says brother you're doing wrong. Christian community says let me know when I'm doing wrong. That's not what most people see when we talk about community but that's what the Bible speaks of as community. But it's community that's central and guided by God's Word.

The centrality of God's Word is important because otherwise it's just our opinion. And you know the truth is my opinion is not any better than anyone else's. It's God's word that matters. So again the word ekklesia is literally the called out ones or assembly and so it speaks of an assembly of people, a community of people, not as an organization but as a group of people desirous to glorify god. You know, we often think of the church as an organization.

It's more like an organism. As we grow and there's problems that happen there but we wanna make sure we have Christian community. Scripture shows that it's this is to be the group of people called to a holy calling in 2nd Timothy 1 9 the church is a group of saints called out by God for his glory to do God's will it's to be in the world doing God's work while not being in the world. They're out there doing but not of the world they should say. They're not out there being taken in but they're out in the world displaying his glory.

I've been highly influenced. I meant to say this before but my influence has not been so much the my past church history but reading church history. I love the Puritans and you know, the one thing that they brought about was the idea of vocation that we glorify god in whatever we do. That it's not just the pastor that does that or the elder or the deacon or somebody. Every one of us has a vocation and a place in the world to glorify him and we need to foster that in the churches that we start.

And so The church is also seen in Scripture not only as individuals, but again, we see this corporate aspect of working together. Hebrews talks of stirring each other up to love and good works in Hebrews 10, 23 through 25. This is an idea where we work together. Working together, again, sometimes you get this picture, well, we just put our arms around each other and do what's good. It can be uncomfortable, can it?

When someone says, you put that in the wrong place. It needs to go over here to make it correct. We have to go, you're right. And so we need to make sure that we understand that idea, the corporate aspect. In Hebrews 12, 12 through 15, it speaks of the community of faith working to make sure that all finish the race.

That we have a stake in everybody that's around. And you see that the reason we have community is such community that we're desirous to make sure that everyone finishes the race. It's also desirous to make sure that everyone is in the race. And so this is one way that sometimes getting churches too large doesn't work because we don't have the right community. I don't know what that number is.

I'm sure that people do it many different ways. But we need to be careful that we have real community, not the Bible study that everyone goes and says some platitudes and reads a few verses and goes home, but ones where we have true community where someone can say something and we go, ah, that's sort of tough. Do I really need to do that? And so we need to make sure that that's the churches we start that people understand what true community looks like. But another purpose and one of the greatest of starting churches is to spread his word.

Central to the work of the church is completely and faithfully proclaiming his word. We start churches to make sure that his name is known and his word is known. That we proclaim his word throughout the nations. And when we proclaim his word, we don't just proclaim the easy stuff. We proclaim the things that are tough, that we may have disagreements on.

And we need to make sure we know how to have disagreements. So often, I've heard people say, well, let's just agree to disagree. Well, that solves nothing. We need to make sure we know as Christians how we can have good conversation to work through things that are tough. Knowing that both people can't be right if they're on both sides of an argument.

They may both be wrong. We need to make sure that we go to his word for all of that. If the word of God is not what the church revolves around, I'd be hard-pressed to say that it's even a church because then it's just man's opinion if God's Word is not the final say. I remember once being in listening to a deacon in a church I was in there was an argument and the person actually said well I'm not so worried about what God's word says. This is what I think.

And the church didn't get struck down with lightning or anything. I mean, looking back, I wasn't bold enough at the time to say anything. Today would be a different story, I think. I hope it would be. We can't ever hear that.

It's God's Word that's the dictator, even if it's tough of what all we do. To not be focused around God's Word but some other extraneous aspect of life is wrong. First, it's not glorifying to God and secondly will lead to no end of issues. We're also called out to serve God. The Hebrews in Exodus 7 16, we're called out to serve God so that our purpose as a church is to serve him, which is also worship.

And I'd like to make sure it's clear. When I use the word worship, I don't talk about the singing. I talk about all that we do. I would say that if you have a fellowship meal after, that's part of your worship. It doesn't end.

We've sadly in the professing church have gotten to a place where we tend to use the word worship in the context of at best it may be Sunday at worst it's singing but worship in the Bible is much more it's all that we do it's all of life and we need to make sure that that's what we do because God has called us to serve him. Again a basic principle to keep in mind is that the church while benefiting people is for the purpose of doing as God desires in serving him. Again people will be benefited and people will be cared for if we do what God calls us to do. But the focus has to be on God first. We need to make sure that we're theocentric.

We're God-centered rather than anthropocentric, meaning man is the center of all things. I've always liked as we sort of applies to the starting of church and the idea of worshiping is John Piper in a book he's written on missions called Let the Nations Be Glad said that missions exist because worship does not. That wraps up church planting. We do church plant churches and we send missionaries out so that God will be worshiped. That we will help make those that know him worship God more fully and that they will be used to bring people in to worship God as well.

I broke this up into a couple things. I meant to mention that I'm not spending much time on how you would leave a church. There's things with that. I have some CDs that Dan Horn did that's on the NCFIC website, so you're free to take one of those. It's a good sermon that talks about how you would leave a church if you need to.

You'll be surprised that it's not an easy thing to do. No one's advocating to actually leave a church, just go start one and we'll get touch on that. That's a last resort. That's the last place you go. That's actually the easy way out.

The hard part is to stay there and try and see reformation. And so I start with why not to start a church. And we need to make sure we understand the reasons we want to not find ways and do this. We need to make sure our reasons for starting a new church are biblical. And so The first thing we should not start a church around is simply to avoid conflict where you are.

Keep in mind, every one of these things I'm saying may lead to one leaving a church and starting one. What I'm trying to advocate is this is not what you do first time it happens. And so simply because there's conflict we don't get up and start a church and leave. Conflict exists everywhere. You'll be starting churches endlessly if that's why you do that.

Next one should not start a church because you have found others that desire to unify around some aspect of church. We're not to simply unify around extraneous things. Now, extraneous things can be important. I'm gonna list them and they're all important things. They're all things I think I could argue for a biblical perspective on but I would never start a church around them.

Now may the church end up looking like that? Sure. If you preach through God's word and people see that's what God would want but we don't start churches around family now family is central to a church God works in the family those are important things but if you start a church around family you're destined for problems because I can guarantee you everybody has a little bit different idea of what family looks like. We don't start, churches around worship or how we decide the common usage of worship or what kind of music we like. Someone likes hymns and someone likes psalms and someone likes new music.

You start a church around that, that's going to change as the winds change. We don't start churches around a setting, whether it's at a home, or a building, or a field, or wherever. Again, those may be all places you go to, but you don't start them around that thing because that's not central. That's not making God glorified. That doesn't make God central to that.

We also don't start churches around homeschooling or some similar aspect. Again, you may start a church and you go through the Bible and you look at what the scriptures say in homeschooling that's what everyone does in your church. But you don't start there because I can guarantee you within the homeschooling community there are different ideas of homeschooling. You'll have arguments over those, and so you'll start the classical homeschooling church and the Bible-only homeschooling church. I don't know what you'll start.

Then you'll have a problem there, because what Bible do you use? You'll have all sorts of problems, And so we don't start church there. And so we need to make sure we don't look at these extraneous things. Now again, every one of these things may lead to you starting a church. You may be in a church that despises homeschooling.

And you've tried the change and you've spent the effort and you've done what you can, and sooner or later you may have to leave because you've done what God has led you to do but I would still say don't start a church around that next we're not to plant churches to be comfortable we're to start churches for his glory and let me tell you, so doing what god wants you to do is uncomfortable. The Bible says what god's commands are not burdensome. It doesn't say they are comfortable. They will be comfortable. Reaves Box Fox's Book of Martyrs.

They would all probably tell you it wasn't burdensome, but none of them would tell you it was comfortable. Because it isn't comfortable doing what God calls us to do. The truth is, church should have an element of discomfort if God's word is properly preached. I know as I preach weekly I step on my own toes more than probably anybody else's. God's word is uncomfortable.

It should be. That's what changes us. It's what God uses to change us. We should also not simply start churches because we don't like the preaching style of the pastor or the elder. Now if it's cold and you can tell that the person could care less and is just borrowing a sermon from some church down the street, face them with that and talk to them about it.

But again, it's not the first reason we leave, because you're calling if you notice something like that would be to talk to the pastor in a loving way. Maybe he has no idea, because no one says anything. Another reason we should not start churches is around a person or some figure. And so those are just some ideas of reasons not to start churches. Again, every one of those could lead you to do that.

But I'm saying You don't hear those things and jump ship. And Dan Horne talks about that on the CD a little bit. And explains what steps you should go through and how you should work through these things. But what I want to talk about, and this is what time has left, is that we want to talk about why to start a church. And there's a sense of this which it is sort of a repeat of the purpose of the church because that's why we start churches is to glorify God that's the purpose of his bride and so I want to get a little more specific and these are just some that I came up with.

You may think of others. I think most things will fall into this. But one reason we started church is because the church you are in is apostate. But to know this, you need to know God's word. A church isn't apostate because you dislike a doctrine.

A church isn't apostate because they don't do things exactly the way you would like. I'm talking actual heresy here. Now in today's professing church there's much of this. Whether it's the denial of the triune nature of God, the denial of the authority of Scripture, or the exclusivity of Christ, and there may be others, but I hope you get the idea that we're talking about serious issues when we talk about apostasy. However, even if you find these, your calling as a brother and sister in Christ is not to leave right away.

But you must first seek by God's leading and power to bring the church and its leaders back as best you can. In James 5, 19 through 20, he talks about that, this idea of bringing someone back. Now, how long one works at this may depend on a number of factors, even one's circumstances in their family. But the idea is we don't just leave because we say, you know, that doctrine is off. And it may be.

It may be apostate, but who's going to call them back? Keep in mind most churches don't go apostate overnight. You probably wouldn't have as many apostate churches if people would speak up. You may because God's providential hand has that, but the point is that usually those people that see the apostasy, first thing they do is leave and don't speak up. Now You may speak up and you may get kicked out.

God makes it clear then to start a church or do something. But you need to speak up. And so again, look, if your church you're in is apostate, you may have a reason to leave and start a church. Another reason is that there's no acceptable Orthodox Church in your area if you move to an area and you can't find an Orthodox Church and this is similar to the idea of apostasy but it says I move someplace and can't find a church It also may speak to ideas of something that's not quite in the apostate end, but their practices are not quite there and they're leading in the wrong direction. And so we need to make sure we know what we're looking at when we look at these churches.

We don't simply make a list of what I think is orthodox so that I'm the only one that can actually go to the church. Because we can all make those lists, right? We narrow it down and maybe I can't even go after a while because I changed my mind. But we make these lists. Let me add here because I think I've and I talked to many people that are in this boat and if you're in this boat I just speak to you that to look at how things go.

None of us are called to live outside the church. There are those I know that drive two and three hours to church. And I'd say for a season, that's what you have to do. That's what you have to do. I would be as firm to say that if that's what you have to do for a certain period, maybe there's a point when you have to leave.

There also may be times when you have to fellowship with your family. By the way, that's not church. That's not as church as the scriptures put out church. That may be what you do for a short time while you work things out. It also may be god's sign to say you need to start a church with some other fellow believers if they're around.

Now, I'm hoping if they're around, you're meeting together. But God in nowhere in his scripture talks about the idea of a lone ranger Christian where we're not going and meeting together. You may have to move, but you also may be being called to start a church. And so I mentioned the idea about how far we have to drive, because keep in mind, if you drive three or four hours, I don't think community is happening but once a week. And community is to happen.

And so again, it may be your call to start something in your area or to move to their area. I don't know how that works. Everyone has to look at their own situation and it's not easy. And I talk about a seasonal life that might be a year for somebody. But we don't want that to be the common thing we do, where we put off meeting together and having true community as believers.

Another reason we may need to start a church is that the church you're in doesn't see any need for reformation. And so this speaks to the church that you were in. It's not apostate, but the direction it's heading isn't what you see as most glorifying to God. But again, This is not something to get up and just leave. Reformation takes time.

We just celebrated Reformation Sunday on what everyone else in the world calls Halloween. You realize the Reformation didn't start in 1517. Started in the 1300s. Actually, it started before that, but you can say the 1300s. You can start seeing things happening.

That was sort of a landmark in time. That's 200 years, but we're usually pretty ready to leave a church they don't want to change right away. I can only give you personal testimony. The church that I was associate pastor in, I went at least two years talking to the pastor. Good terms, we ended up leaving.

They actually had a ceremony when we left, but they didn't want to change. We spent the time, and the pastor actually agreed in many ways that some of the things were good but he kept saying but and so we left on good terms. I mean, that's the goal. The reformation takes time. It takes energy and it takes some heartbreak and it can be tough but that's what we need to do.

And you've heard it already before but if you're looking for that perfect church and I didn't know Spurgeon said this but I've heard this before. Go don't go there because it won't be perfect anymore. You can't start the perfect church because we're imperfect people. So, we again need to remember that reformation doesn't happen overnight. And so often, God wants us to move through the trials so we understand what the church is to look like, what the goal of the church is, and the purpose of the church is so that we will sooner or later maybe end up having to start a church that glorifies God.

We as believers are called to reconcile and commune with one another. We need to understand the difference between being a commuter and a consumer. The world is full of consumers. Much of today's professing church is consumer oriented. What would you like?

I got a little bit of that, a little bit of that, and if I mix it all together, I'll get something that most people will like. But a communer is what we're called to be. To commune with God and glorify him in doing that. That's the kind of churches we want to start, and that's the kind of reformation we want to see in the church, are churches that commune with God, that aren't simply consumer based. Because keep in mind, if you watch TV, the latest thing today will be not the latest thing tomorrow.

When something, you're consumer oriented, it will change over and over, day in and day out. You'll never make anyone happy. Most of all, you won't make God happy. The one we're to please is God. All of these things we talk about, and we're going to get to the one that's where I pray we would all be, may cause division.

But God's word causes division. Jesus said he would come and bring a sword. His word causes division. His word causes problems. God ordained problems.

It makes us refine what we believe, makes us look more closely at what we believe. And so our goal is not to divide, but that may be the result. History shows us that that happens. If you read the history of the Reformation, Martin Luther, I know I could read the 95 Theses and go, he did not go far enough. He was not bold enough.

He was bold for his time and I probably wouldn't do any more than he did, but I can read it today and go, wow, He could have said a whole lot more. But his goal was not to divide. His goal was to reform, to change the church. And he took heed, and at the end of the day, they divided. But through all the heartache and the misery and the things he went through, his goal was Reformation.

And that's what our call to do is to reform, to reform churches to glorify God. And so we're called to fellowship with others that God has called to worship him. However, at the end of the day after doing all that can be done, this doesn't happen, God may be calling you to start a church. Now I said all of this in a really short time. This may take years to go through.

It's not what we mostly most of us like because doing it over years is uncomfortable isn't it to try and change something? It's hard in our own lives. We can get overweight we try and do trick get back in shape it takes misery and time and it doesn't work and we give up and we go back and forth but we need to seek to plant churches not simply just leaving churches but we need to seek to reform them and reform them to God's Word not what I like But what I see in god's word and we preach god's word so that his people will hear the same thing. We just need to realize that all things again need to be done for his glory. And that's why it's always important that we ask with much prayer for motives or for our benefit or for God's glory.

Do I want to start a church because it's what I want or do I want to start a church to glorify God? God may move you to plan a church and If he's calling you to do so, he will do this in a way so as not to defame his name. Even if you have to leave a church, it can be done in a way that glorifies him. We just need to make sure we do that. This is where I would hope we would all be.

That we want to start churches because our desire is to spread his glory. And that you're in a church that's maybe too big, or you've got people that travel a distance, and you want to start a church to spread his glory somewhere else. That you don't keep it in one area but you spread it around because that's what best glorifies god. That's what best strengthens and protects his bride. That we seek to start churches that seek not just to be a sole location or a community.

But a church that seeks to spread out so that god's glory is proclaimed and spread throughout the nations. That a true Christian community is fostered. That the goal of god's church being a multi-generational display of his glory. That when we meet together, people say, that's a people that worship god. And we worship by his word.

So, if anybody has an argument with what you do in your church, they have to argue with God. They have to argue with his word. Cuz we can argue all of our day again about opinions. But it has to come back to his word. And so, again, while you may have to travel for a time or you may not be meeting together as God would desire.

We need to understand that we need to create the communities that God desires, the community of his people. Not so spread out in disparate that there's no community, but we gather together to proclaim his name. To build a true fellowship. We use that word sort of flippantly, don't we, often? Let's go have some fellowship, and it usually means food.

And it can revolve around food. But we need true fellowship that, again, community and fellowship in a Christian context is uncomfortable Many times. Because we see each other's warts and blemishes and things that don't make us feel comfortable and then they show ours. And we need to make sure that we know how to do that in a true Christian way. That we're in a church that we grow not only as individuals but as a community of faith.

The one that has the most impact on our community. And so we want to expand the church. And when I talk about expanding the church, and that's what part of church planting is about, it's not necessarily making the church itself bigger. It's spreading it out to the area of your city or wherever you're at. Whether that's four families here and five over there, instead of 10 meeting Half an hour, 45 minutes away so they can't really have fellowship and community.

There's nothing wrong with that. You may use that central idea to start to get elders and to work things out. And Jason will talk about practice, and some of those things are important. Well, they're all important, But some of those things you would get to do that. But we want to expand his name across the nations and make his name known.

But expansion takes vision. It takes a vision to raise up men equipped to be elders from within your ranks. In our church, we just went through Titus, and as I read that, and you read the passages about your family and how you raise that up, where do elders come from? I know in our church, we struggle. We have one elder.

My goal when I started the church was to have multiple elders, because that's what the Bible says. Three years later, I'm the only elder. I got some men that are thinking about it now, so that's a good thing. But where do we actually raise up elders? Every one of you fathers that have sons have future elders that you have around you to disciple.

Elders don't show up overnight. When you read scripture and it gives like what an elder is to look like. You don't suddenly go, okay, we're gonna have elder training tonight because everyone of those characteristics is a character trait that you raise up in your family And so we should be planning on raising elders in our families so that some generation from now it will not be a problem finding elders. Because every church that has three or four boys in it that are now men can become elders and start churches and be elders in those churches. And so you need to have vision because planting churches doesn't happen overnight.

It doesn't necessarily take a seminary education, but it does take preparation. Vision is imperative. A vision for spreading his glory. A vision for equipping his people. We understand that the church is not meant to be stagnant but vibrant.

We don't just simply need to say well I got that out of the way. I've checked that off of God's list I met on Sunday. We did the Lord's Supper. Oh, wait, we had a Bible study. It's vibrant that we work with each other.

We stretch each other. And when we go in, I hope you're hearing that idea of spreading god's glory can be really uncomfortable. Cuz it will stretch us cuz none of us are really ready for that cuz we're so used to comfort. We need to have a vision for equipping his people. Equipping his people to spread his name.

This vibrancy that I talked about may look different in some areas. It may take longer than in others. But again, we need to expand God's glory by expanding his church. We start churches again to spread his name. To have people in many areas of god's creation.

As it says in Titus two fourteen, zealous for good works. But you know what's interesting is I went through Titus. It's every time he told someone that you need to do good works and you'll be zealous for good works. The next thing he said, it's all because of the cross. You can do all of this because of the cross.

We need to have churches that say it's because of the cross, we are empowered to do all of these things. And so we start churches so that people will get that vision. We need to have churches that are zealous for god's name. Zealous to disciple the nations. And keep in mind, the zealousness doesn't mean that someone's out every morning knocking on doors.

That may be what that person will do. But zealous is knowing God's word. Understanding God's word. Spending time in God's word so we can share it with others and sharing with others that don't get it. I don't know if you ever talk to somebody and you get something and they don't and you just can't figure it out.

To me, that's god testing that you're just not telling him the right way. And he may be holding back letting them understand so you say it in the right way but we need to understand god's word so that we can spread his name. We need to see whole people and whole communities changed by his gospel and that comes from planning churches that spread his name throughout cities. As changing communities lead to the changing of the world for God's glory. You know, we often talk about this idea of dominion and we go, well that sounds really good.

And that sounds like something we should do. But churches are part of that as a community of having dominion in the sense that we show how God's glory can be spread in the community we're in and people see a difference if you read the history of the first century church the Romans may have been stringing up Christians but you know what every one of them said and I've read some history and they go we don't get it but these people sure stick together. You know, we're going to burn them. They didn't like what they were doing but they could not understand how they could give their lives for each other. You know, the Bible says we show that we love god by loving his people.

That you cannot not love another believer and say that you love God. And so we want to again spread his glory by starting churches that show our love for his people. And so we want to have those churches that change communities. Again this isn't about gathering a throng of people waiting for Christ's return, sitting hobbled in their homes, or they're building fearful of what's outside. And no matter how foreboding, it might look outside.

And You watch after elections and you go, wow, that's pretty nasty outside. You know what? Jesus Christ still reigns. We need to spread his glory in that world. You know, the darker the world gets, the brighter our light should shine.

And so I've gone through this pretty quickly. But I hope you get the picture that our goal in life is to glorify God when we start a church. We need to remember that the church is the bride of Christ and that it exists to worship god in all that it does. As individuals and as a community. All we do from deciding to start a church to how we start what needs to revolve around this question.

And the question we need to ask is is this. Is what I am doing glorifying god according to his scriptures? Is what I am doing glorifying god or glorifying man? Losing that focus will lead to a focus on self rather than god. When we focus on man, it'll lead to making external, central, and doctrine secondary.

Keep in mind, doctrine is always central. Because if your doctrine is to make doctrine extraneous and secondary, that's your doctrine. Everyone has theology. And if your theology is to put it aside, that's yours but it won't work and I think you'll hear that with Jason and Steve as they talk about that because in today's world, doctrine is a four-letter word. But Jesus again himself divides as Christ speaks of in Matthew 10, 32 through 42.

So we need to make sure if there is division, it is around Christ and his word and not around our own sinful desires. All that we do needs to revolve around his word as it is the only thing that does not change. The methods of the world change, the desires of the world change, but God's Word does not and his desires do not. The church is God's. We need to understand that.

Lately I've been trying to get away from saying my church And that may sound silly to some people. But it's the church that God has put me to be a steward over. Because it isn't my church. It's God's church. I'm just a steward of it.

We need to make sure we get the grasp of that. That if we start a church, It's God's church. We need to start churches and lead them as stewards. Titus 1.7 speaks of it that way. Stewards of what God has given us.

We need to never forget that. Knowing the reason for the church and why we are to start them is just the beginning. We need to understand how we move forward from that. That's what Jason Dahn will be talking about. As well as we need to realize that even with the best intentions, there are pitfalls.

Steve will talk about the pitfalls. Don't think this is easy. Don't think there will be pitfalls. Won't be any. That you can avoid them.

Then we can talk about them and Steve's going to share some but you'll still find others because you're dealing with people. You know it says that Those who don't pay attention to history are doomed to repeat it. Well, those who don't listen to other people's travels in church planning are doomed to repeat those things as well. But we need to remember that this is not about us, but about God and his church. A church where his word is faithfully preached.

Where the full gospel is proclaimed. A place that is led and directed by his word and not the world. Where biblical community is sought after. Churches that seek to be used to further his kingdom work is what we should desire to be. And at the end of the day, that is what the church planting is about.

It's about the triune God and his church. Let us seek to plant such churches. Father God, I just thank you for this day and I thank you for these people that we would that if you're working on anyone's heart and starting churches that they would spend the time to truly see that it's about spreading your glory and your name and that in all that we do that would be what our central focus would be that as they would look at the churches we started and the churches we're in, they would say, what is God doing there? Not what I am doing there. And then again, that his name would be proclaimed above all else.

In Jesus' holy and precious name, Amen. Center for Family Integrated Churches, where you