How should Christians worship God? Or, more appropriately, how does God desire to be worshiped? While it is common today to orchestrate the church around the wants of the congregation, the regulative principle of worship says that as Christians we are to worship according to God's prescribed methods. For example, in church we are to preach the Word of God, we are to pray, we are to sing songs, we are to baptize, we are to do communion and etc... why do we do these types of things? Because that is what God has commanded us to. The regulative principle looks to scripture and seeks to be faithful to the commands, and the patterns and the principles that are found there.

So we're going to talk about a scripture and that can take the form of clear commands or necessary implications of scripture and on the other hand there is the and also the Regulator Principle states that we should worship God in the way that He is prescribed and that we ought not to make up our own ways of worship. The normative principle states that unless God has prohibited it explicitly, then it is allowed. Those who follow the Regulative Principle say, whatever God has prescribed, we will do and we will limit ourselves to it. You see the difference? One is open-ended and the other is closed-ended.

We're the closed-ended guys. We would like to present this thought. The Regulative Principle is really just another way of saying that Christ has authority over his church through his word. And if you take the doctrine of the sufficiency of scripture and the regulative principle and the doctrine of the inerrancy of scripture and bring them together, then you end up with the proposition that God has prescribed the way he wants to be worshiped and it's not for us to make up our new way. We talked earlier today about Uzzah who made up his own way and it was the wrong way.

We could talk about strange fire. We could talk about a number of examples in scripture where the people made up their own way and they departed from what scripture had prescribed. So the regulative principle was given its classical definitive statement in the reform confessions in the 17th century. The Westminster confession states it like this, the light of nature showeth that there is a God who hath lordship and sovereignty over all. He is good and doth good to all and is therefore to be feared, loved, praised, called upon, trusted and served, with all the heart and with all the soul and with all the might.

But the acceptable way of worshiping the true God is instituted by himself and so limited by his revealed will that he may not be worshipped according to the imaginations and devices of men or the suggestions of Satan under any visible representation or any other way not prescribed in holy scripture. So simply the regulative principle states that True worship is only commanded by God and false worship is anything not commanded. That was of course the Puritan view of worship and practice in the church. Practice in the church. So what we're saying is that the activities of worship in the church should be regulated by scripture and not the fruit of inventions or patterns of contemporary culture and that we worship God only as He has commanded us to do.

Now let me give you some examples of how this works out in church life. Now, It should be obvious to us that throughout the centuries there have been particular things that church has always done and they do it because of the Regulative Principle. They do it because They have desired to implement the thinking of God in church life. Like, for instance, the reading of Scripture. Why do we read Scripture in church?

Because we're commanded to give attention to the reading of scripture in the church. So that's why we do that. It's commanded. We should not stop doing that for something else. One of the beefs that I have with the modern church is that it has become content to replace the reading of scripture with movie clips.

That's wrong. It's wrong to take something out that is clearly prescribed and add something else that's not. The preaching of the Word. God has commanded us to preach the Word in season and out of season. That's why we have preaching.

No matter how clunky preaching is as a communication tool, who would ever dream that this is the best communication tool? Well, there are much more riveting, interesting ways to communicate than what we're doing right here, believe me. But God has prescribed preaching in the church. We will never abandon preaching in the church. You'll have to pull our dead hands off you know this practice because we believe that God has prescribed it we will never stop doing it no matter how unpopular or how clunky or or you know how poor it is in comparison to modern communication methods.

God has prescribed that people should receive the preaching of the word of God. So we don't stop doing that. We don't replace preaching with plays. That happens in the modern church. Prayer, why do we pray in the church?

We pray because God has commanded it. Why do we sing? We sing because we see that in scripture and God has prescribed it. We are to be making melody in our hearts to the Lord. Why do we take communion?

We take communion because the church is prescribed to participate in the Lord's Supper. Why do we baptize? Because we've been commanded to baptize. Why do we engage in evangelism and discipleship? Because we have been commanded to go into all the world and preach the gospel.

So that's how the Regulator Principle works out. Now, why are we advocating family-integrated worship or age-integrated worship? Why do we think that age-segregated discipleship, where you take the parents out of the mix, is wrong. The reason we think it's wrong is because the only thing we see in the New and the Old Testament is age-integrated worship, and the only thing we see regarding education is that the parents, the father specifically, is the primary teacher of the next generation. So it's an application of the Regulata Principle.

It looks to scripture and seeks to be faithful to the commands and the patterns and the principles that are in scripture so that's what we advocate uh... This this whole conference is based on that proposition that God has spoken clearly, He has given us instructions, and we should carry them out, and we should not take them lightly, we should not set them aside for the sake of our tradition, but we should be faithful in all of our ways with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our strength to get our arms around His ways and then implement them. At the same time, it's obvious to all of us how sinful we are, how blind we are, how slow our discipleship process is. It doesn't have to do with our salvation, but it does have to do with declaring the glory of God, that you might prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. God has set us out in this world to prove something, and that is to prove that God is wonderful.

That there's a God in heaven. He loves His children. He is a father. He sent his son and he desires to comfort his people through the Holy Spirit. And that's what we proclaim.

So, our encouragement is to trustfully, like children, Accept all the things that he has said to love them even though the world might despise them to love them even in the face of a world which might reject them and Then to continue on So I trust that will be the legacy of our time. We'd like to open up again for questions. And so if Don could you come on up and Kevin is, If we could get Kevin and if you could just join us here. When he walks in the room, let's everybody clap. Okay?

Okay? Standing ovation. Okay? All right. You ready?

There you go. I said that. Okay, let's see what we're... Okay, let's see what we've got. Hey, also too, earlier in the day I was talking about this Matthew Henry sermon that we just had the first copies of.

If anybody wants one of those, just tell my son David and he'll sell them to you. They're not going to hit the shelves at Vision Forum for a little while. But if you'd like to get a copy, they shipped me a small quantity and I can sell them. So just tell him and he can tell you all the details on that. Okay, questions.

Kevin, in your talk earlier today when you were talking about the radical, open, blatant autonomy that we exercise, That would be a form of idolatry, wouldn't it? I think so. I think so, yes. And that's because when you say you have a God, What does that mean? Does it mean we say, I believe in a God.

What is a God? A God is one who is ultimate over your reality, your metaphysic, your epistemology, your truth, and your ethic. Those three things. So if you come to me and say you've got a god that you worship, however, he's not my source of law, not my source of truth and not my source of reality. I'm going to say, wait a minute, you don't have a God.

That's not a God. It's the way I define a God. He's ultimate over man's ethics, which means he gets the right to tell us what is right and what is wrong. You had mentioned a book pushing for the, I guess you would describe it as a theonomy, total religious freedom. What's the name of that book and who is the author and is that, I don't want to put you on the spot, is that a part of I guess what is termed Christian Reconstructionism and do you see Reconstructionism as, it's like four questions, Do you see that as just simply a end result of somebody's eschatological view?

The book that discusses total religious freedom would not be Reconstruction. Okay, that would be a book called from Tyndale to Madison. It just came out. The author is Mike Ferris. Yeah.

Yeah, Mike Ferris. And I only say that because it's a public book, it's out there, and it threatens to be somewhat of a dividing point among home educators, at least those who like the Puritans and the Pilgrims, versus those who don't. Versus those who don't. So I'm hoping it won't. I hope it'll open up some discussions.

And you know, my guess is, if I really sat Mike Ferris down and said, now wait a minute, Mike, do you mean that you think it's okay for human sacrifice to be occurring down at your town square. My guess is you'd say, no, I really didn't mean to go that far. So the question is where do you draw the line? It's a tough question, it's a very tough question. The Reconstructionists, It just depends on who you're talking about.

Some of them are post-millennial, which means, yeah, their eschatological perspective is that the world is going to get better and better, to the point where there's a golden age. Not everybody is a golden age, but some people think things are getting pretty good now where I am with this is that I have an optimistic eschatology what does that mean that means that Jesus is absolutely sovereign over all things to the church Ephesians 1 25 I can't go wrong quoting scripture can I okay good I'm optimistic I'm optimistic Anybody ever thinks that things have gone downhill? I turn to my daughter Bethany and say, honey, how many disciples did Jesus have? 12, Good. Does he have more than that today?

Yes. Good. OK. If it ever comes to a point where the Christian faith is so reduced it's just me and my wife and I'm not sure about my wife, we got a huge problem, OK? So no, I really believe that Jesus has made tremendous progress.

You know, 500 years ago people were eating each other out here in Arizona and Colorado. They were having each other for lunch, literally, five, six hundred years ago. They're not doing that much anymore. Now, cannibalism may come back in America. At least the direction that some of the pagan movements are going would I think suggest that that may be the direction.

But suffice it to say there are more Christians today in Arizona than there were 500 years ago. Thanks to Jesus Christ and 2, 000 years of reigning on planet earth and sending his spirit and just pouring it out upon the nations. Tremendous things are happening. I just talked to a brother about what's happening in the mission movement across the world. It's a wonderful thing.

And by the way, I think there is a quality-quantity trade-off that happens throughout the growth of the kingdom. Okay? So, we, I think, right now are going through a 200-year period where there's great quantity increase as the gospel went to nations all over the earth from 800 to 2000. During that time we had a reduction in quality of the message. This is one of the reasons why I think the messages we're teaching in this conference are so important for the faith.

We're trying to find ways, we talked about a quality check, we're trying to find a way to just tweak the quality of the message. If the gospel gets watered down too much, we're going to have trouble. In fact, a lot of guys from Africa tell me that Christianity in Africa is a mile wide and an inch deep. A lot of guys are saying that, no matter who they are, what evangelistic or what denominational background they come from. Christianity is struggling in some of these nations.

China is the same way. We need some tweaks in terms of the quality of the faith in some of these places, now's the time to do it. So let's dial it in just a little bit better, which is I think what we're trying to do here. We're trying to dial it in theologically and orthoproxically and hopefully have a robust gospel that we can use to build the Church of Christ. So that's a long story.

I think Jesus can come back tonight if he wants to, or he can come back in another hundred years or five hundred years. That's where I am. I don't think he has to come back within a week. He has told us to occupy until He returns, He has told us to take the gospel to every nation making disciples of the nations, which means we want to build up Christian families, Christian churches, Christian cultures, Christian economies, Christian politics. We want to do that.

That comes out of preaching the faith and discipling the nations. And by God's grace that's going to happen in India, China, America, Zimbabwe, and everywhere else around the world. At some point Jesus comes home and says, okay, you're done. Done. It's been apparent to me from the speakers here as well as those involved in the family integrated movement, there's a variety of doctrinal and denominational positions that are involved and I'm just curious I guess what some of the essentials are and the non essentials that You deal with in having fellowship not only within the local church body but in the movement.

Are there family integrated churches that you don't associate with based on some doctrinal positions? You know, where do you kind of draw the line in that regard? Maybe I can just start answering the question. First of all, we at Vision Forum, at the National Center for Family Integrated Churches, our function is not to evaluate everybody. Our function is to cast a vision.

So that's why if you go to our website you'll see Presbyterian churches, Baptist churches. I don't know if we're in every one of the mainline denominations, probably not, but there is a doctrinal spectrum among those who identify with us in the area of family reformation. So Our function is not to evaluate everyone and to figure and to try to tell this denomination or that church what to do. That's not what we're doing. We're casting a vision of hope and we're trying to bring back particular principles that bear on church and family life.

We are, of course, reformed in our orientation, but all the family integrated churches are not reformed. But they understand scripture to be teaching the things that the reformers might have communicated regarding the family. So our desire is not to line up with a particular denomination, but To communicate the issues that we think are the most critical issues for the Church today regarding Church and family. Very narrow focus. What we're having to say is not what the Church, what the whole Church, It's not the whole message of what the church needs in terms of Reformation, but it certainly is a critical part that we felt it was right to concentrate on.

At the same time though, it gives us trails to many other issues in church life. This thinking affects church government, it affects worship practices in church, not just only the family issues. Any of you guys have any other ways to fill that out? You know what is interesting? I went to Japan a couple of years ago to preach at some of the first homeschooling conferences out there And I asked one of the guys that was coordinating the conferences so who am I talking to here?

I'm talking Presbyterians Baptist Charismatics. He says it's pretty much all of that. It's basically the same mix you're going to see when you get to heaven. And I think it's interesting that homeschooling and some of these reforming movements seem to bring together a real mix. I just think that's interesting.

Could it be the Spirit of God is working in other denominations Could it be now some of us that's a stretch, right? It's a little bit of a stretch I'm gonna suggest to you that the Spirit of God can do whatever he wants to do okay, And he is all over the place. And here's what I like to do. I like to say, I don't like to ask people if they're reformed. I like to ask them if they're reforming.

Reforming is the difference between past tense and present tense. And I guess era is tense. It's the difference, right? Past tense means it's all done, it's all gone. You're done, you're reformed, you're as good as you're ever going to be.

And I don't like that. I don't like that term very much. So I'm using the term reforming. Are you a reforming church, a transforming church? And I think what's critical is you measure the measures and minor the minors.

Measures are determined three ways. One is what the church councils did early on, the doctrine of the Trinity, the two natures of Christ. That's pretty important. That's early stuff. Secondly, it's where the devil's been attacking the last 500 years, which to me is humanism.

We have to address humanism, God-centered reality, truth, and ethics versus man-centered reality, truth, and ethics. And so again, you have to identify the present antithesis as best as you can and that is a measure and then what you ask is what is my brother struggling with right now in his life? Okay, and what am I struggling with right now in my heart, my life? That's a measure for me, that's a measure for him. So that's the way I would put measures.

If you're trying to figure out what the measures are, as you're getting together with others, you gotta look at what happened 1500 years ago at Chalcedon and Nicaea, and then look at what's happening right now. Where's the battle raging? Where is the world really infiltrating the church? And that was kind of my first message. I was trying to grapple with that a little bit.

Figure out where the antithesis was. And then the third thing is what's happening with your brother right now. I wouldn't add a whole lot to what these men have shared other than just to reiterate what Kevin said. We're talking about the folks that we expect to see in heaven. We're talking about within the realms of orthodoxy here.

We, I think, would not be concerned about laying that as a bright line test. We need to be seeking to evangelize those who are lost and so, but within that spectrum, I've had the same experiences as these men, seen a wide variety of Christian brethren who the Lord seems to be giving a heart for this message. It is funny, you know, one of the criticisms that people have of us is that they say that We claim that we are the only church, that we are the only way to do anything. I get a laugh a week out of that. Just go to our website.

There is an Armenian church over there, and there is a charismatic church over there. We are going to share heaven together as a big church before the throne of God. And that doesn't mean that we keep our mouths shut when we see the building on fire. Hey, the building is on fire. That's what we're saying.

And every once in a while, in every generation, or in tough situations, somebody has to stand up and say, the building's on fire, and that's what we're doing. Hello, the building is on fire. But we don't believe we're the only pure church. We believe we are not the pure church. And we have many problems in our hearts and in our homes and everywhere.

And in our churches too. Family integration is not the solution. The Lord Jesus Christ lordship is the solution. Are there any efforts made to reach out with this message to other churches outside of the Protestant faith? I will say it's going around the world.

My radio program reaches 60 nations around the world. We get feedback from places like Albania, China, Japan, New Zealand, etc. So it's going around the world. It's hard to say if like the Orthodox or the Catholic churches are receiving this message. I do know that the Catholics are discovering home education.

I also note there are some conservative Catholics out there that are seeing homeschooling as a way to preserve the faith. I'm thinking of Father Feschio, Joseph Feschio, who is a provost of a college in Florida. He was interviewed on the Hugh Hewitt Show two years ago and he was discussing a high level meeting he had with the Pope and other Catholic academicians and they were discussing the future of Europe, Western civilization. They figured it did not have a shot at survival because of what was happening in terms of humanism and certainly Islam and Islam's growth in Europe. Incidentally the lowest birth rate in all of Europe is in Italy, which I think is interesting.

What you have I think is almost an inability for the Catholic faith to exhibit itself anymore in life and works. It's very, very difficult for that sort of thing to happen. It's not happening in Europe. But anyway, they said Europe is dead. They looked at America and they said there's a shot at America surviving, Western civilization, even Christianity surviving in America.

And he said it's because there are some in America that are still having children. They have children. They obviously have some kind of a hope, some kind of a faith, some kind of a desire to see something happen in the future. So leaving some kind of a legacy, some kind of a generational future vision is happening in the hearts and lives of some people in America and they said it's happening among the home educators. Home schoolers are having children.

They're one group that are having more children and because of that and because they seem to have a desire to pass some sort of a faith on to their children. See there's something besides existentialism that just lives for oneself for the immediacy happening among home educators. And then they said there are way more Protestants doing this than Catholics. The last thing that this Feshio said was that he thinks home schools are the monasteries of the New Dark Age, which I thought was very interesting. We by the way have referred to that a couple of times on our program.

We did a show called the monasteries of the New Dark Age Comparing it to what happened with Patrick and and others that preserved the face some people say just preserve Western civilization They preserved Aristotle, you know, thank God they it preserved Aristotle. That's the book How the Irish Saved Western Civilization, you know. But what we say is they were actually discipling people in Europe for those six, seven hundred years. The humanist dark ages, there are actually some tremendous things happening. Not a perfect church, but there were some tremendous things happening.

By the way, Patrick is one of my very, very favorite people in all of history. I love his confessions. Very simple man, very simple faith, but man, that guy believed in the sovereignty of God. Beautiful. You need to read Patrick's confessions.

It's only about 20 pages long. But a wonderful, wonderful testimony of a great man. I think one of the greatest men in all of history was Patrick. But anyway, Are we preserving the faith? Yes, I think we are.

And I think it's happening largely with the Protestants. There may be some Catholics that are doing some good things too. Here's a question primarily for Mr. Brown. Where did you get all those writings from the Puritan writers?

I have a friend who, that's his whole life. So he runs into something and will tell me about it. The internet, though, is also a great way. There are Puritan books available on eBay. In fact, I just bought one that I've not read yet.

It's by Philip Dodridge. The title caught me. The Doctrine of the Education of Children by Philip Dodridge. So anyway, I haven't looked at it yet, but I got that on eBay. So there are different ways.

There are antiquarian book dealers around the country. Abe books, you can often find treasures for almost nothing on Abe books. There are millions and millions of books in this database. So I'm interested in particular authors. I'm interested in the Puritan communication of the doctrine of the family and the church.

Mr. Swanson, you referred several times to our messed up economy. Would you be able to describe what a godly economy looks like and compare that to what we have now? Godly economies would respect God's laws relating to economics. I think it's tied into the education system.

Where are we today? We're the most God blessed nation on the face of the earth. Let's not be ungrateful to what God has done for us. We are blessed, but we're not obeying God. We're blessed, but we're not obeying God.

What does that mean? That means roughly somewhere between Isaiah and Jeremiah, right? It's kind of where we are right now. I mean God has blessed this nation. I think of what is it the of the 12 trillion dollar gross world product we make up about 35% of it.

It's amazing. I mean God has blessed this nation tremendously. But we just are honoring God in economics. One of the things we've done is we turned over about 45 to 50 percent of the economy to the government on all levels. Local, federal, state levels, They take somewhere between 45 and 50 percent of the economy in government expenditures.

A lot of that, of course, is debt. If you take the expenditures divided by the GNI, you see a huge growth from about 1913 to 2000, an increase of about four to five times as a percentage of the GNI. That's one problem. Another problem is we're the most deaded nation on the face of the earth. And you know, you just can't get past what God says in his word.

The debtor is servant to the lender and Deuteronomy chapter 28 and 29 says you will borrow from many nations. You will not lend to many nations, you will borrow from many nations and that's a sign that you're a cursed nation, we've become that. We have borrowed a tremendous amount from China and other nations and these nations will be calling the shots. They will be owning us, governing us in many ways. So economically, yeah, I think we're in trouble.

I don't think we've built our economics on a debt-free system. The Bible sees debt as a curse, certainly ought to be limited, limited hopefully to six or seven years. God's people should not be in debt as much as possible. Now again, we're not saying debt is sin. Remember what I said, I said debt is an evil.

Like the measles are evil. Somebody says I really like the measles. I want as much of the measles as I can get. Would you be concerned? I mean I would be.

There's something wrong with this person. Debt is the same way. It should be something we don't like. I mean, we may have to go through periods of our lives where we are in debt because we are impoverished. Debt is for the impoverished.

I think if we saw children as a blessing and drywall as a little less of a blessing, we would have more children and less debt, okay? Rather than families that have shrunken in size by half while the drywall or the square footage of homes have doubled in size in the last 75, 80 years. So let's just keep embracing God's word and applying God's word. Certainly if we had more family integrated economic vision in the training of our children through K-12 and then college and through entrepreneurial training and other things, we would have a much stronger economy as well. So anyway, those are some of my thoughts.

What do we do? Should we fear what's happening in the economy? No. Let's just fear God and keep His commandments and we'll be doing just fine. The book of Proverbs is a treasure trove of economic instruction.

My son and I were just reading Proverbs 13 this morning. There were about six different verses that related to economic life, the poor, and different other problems in the world. The book of Proverbs has so much that it will give insight about what good economic principles are. What about poverty? What about wealth?

What about work? What does it all look like? The book of Proverbs actually ends with an amazing picture of economy written by a woman, the Proverbs 31 woman, a woman telling her son how to find a virtuous woman and this woman describes herself as an enterprising, entrepreneurial force in her home. So Godly Economy has many points to it and proverbs is a great source for it It's a really general answer But I think capitalism of all the world economies that we know about is the most biblical And I think what these men have described is capitalism engaged in with biblical principles. I think that's the best economic approach we can take.

What do you think is the best way to recover some of the usurped jurisdiction of the state? We talk mostly about education, But other things like welfare that are paid for by taxes. I mean you have to pay the taxes what is the best way that you think to gradually or systematically get rid of that usurpation? Preach the word of God and practice it. I can't think of a better idea.

In fact, there was this one guy who wrote a book on how bad the debt fractional reserve systems are. At the end he had a conclusion, I thought it was really interesting, it was a homeschool dad that wrote the book. At the end he said, just get your children around you and have family worship every day, that will fix the problem. I thought, that has nothing to do with the economics. Now wait a minute, maybe it does, maybe it does.

Because you know what, problems are solved from the bottom up, not from the top down. And I love Greenspan in some ways. He's written a book on what to do and so forth. He hates the fractional reserve system. He hates the Federal Reserve.

And yet he was there just trying to keep it going all those years. And yet he still is tied to the gold standard. He loves the gold standard. I don't know if any of you have heard or read any of his things, but it's it's amazing Well, see he is powerless to change it. He was powerless.

He couldn't change it could not why because there aren't enough families and Churchings churches loving God and keeping his commandments So the Granted there are a few things we can do in this little magistrate and praise God for those that are out there I think they've got their fingers in the dyke. They're trying to keep it from falling down the rest of us Well, we've got to be about 50 feet back building new dykes You follow me here. We got to be building new social structures and This is effectively the message of my book. Let's rebuild the family, let's rebuild Father as disciples, as heads, as godly heads of homes and let's get the churches building godly communities, taking care of the widows and orphans and in 20-30 years from now when the whole system comes down and I think I'm going to say when it comes down because it's not an if anymore, hopefully we've got much, much, much better systems for taking care of widows and orphans than this state of systems will have. The two structures that need to be rebuilt, I just want to emphasize this.

The home has to be rebuilt. There has to be repentance. There has to be a whole scale reversal of where family life is going and the church and it's the same issues in the church that are afflicting the family. Young man, we've really enjoyed your questions. What is your name?

Philip what? Last name? Philip Ormond. O-R-M-O-N-D. O-R-M-A-N-D.

A-N-D. Okay, great. Thank you. How old are you? Thirteen.

You're thirteen. Great. That's really my point. I guess in response to your question. I think you're the key.

Amen, Amen. And all these little ones sitting here. That's right. I think that's the key. If we run the numbers about who's having children, as Kevin just pointed out, we've got a lot of reason for optimism and for hope.

But let me tell you, parents, if we raise six, seven, eight, nine, ten children in homes where we're pragmatic about who we vote for and we support the lesser evil, guess what our children are going to do? Shame on us for being pragmatic and not trusting the Lord with our vote. And also, just to comment on that, I don't know if I said this earlier, but what's happening right now is a trust. Because here's what is happening, is gonna continue to happen. These children that we have are statistically going to reproduce what we're talking about.

They're doing it right now. 80 to 90 percent of the children in the homeschool movement are going to turn around and do the same thing. And they're believers and they're going to have a lot of children. If 75, 000 homeschoolers have six children for about five generations, it's about 575 million people. I don't know what God's doing in this world, and I don't know if anybody's really figured out what the, what the demographical issues are at play at having 2 million homeschoolers in America.

I wish somebody would really spend some time doing that. But I, I expect that in two or three or four generations, there will be a mighty army of independent, not autonomous, but under the government of God people in this nation. That's what I think is going to happen. You know, Dr. Bryan rated a study called Home Schooling Grows Up.

How many of you have heard of that study? Homeschooling Grows Up. It's a really interesting study. Looked at 7, 200 homeschool graduates. He found between 85 and 95% of homeschoolers will repeat their parents' vision.

They're planning to homeschool their own children. 85 to 90%, 95%. That flips the 80% walking away on the other side. Follow me there. There is something really happening.

When these kids stand on their parents' shoulders, even as I stand on my dad's shoulders, who homeschooled me 25 years ago, When this happens, over hundreds of thousands of children, brothers and sisters, you're going to see some generational leverage like you've never seen. This is how you develop kingdom leverage. You get that little guy standing on his dad's shoulders and he's going to be somewhere around 11 feet off the ground. It is going to be amazing what God's going to do with this movement. I don't think he's done with this nation yet.

I really don't. He's not done with this earth. He's got something up his sleeve. I just want to be in the front seat to watch this thing play out. Just to emphasize one more time the evils of thinking we control the result.

I so much appreciated your talk on that. And Support the guy who has no chance because it's the right thing to do before the Lord and leave the results in God's hands. Just live by faith. Do your duty and trust in God's sovereignty. And that's not a hopeless conflict.

Even though sometimes it's hard for us to process and really to understand, at least for me, and my human understanding. But maybe my four year old understands it better than I do. My mom was reading him, the Swiss Family Robinson, and he stopped her and he said, You know Nana, what I would do if I was in a shipwreck. And she said what? She was interested in his answer.

He said, Well, I'd pray and I'd swim like crazy. That may be the best understanding that I've heard articulated of understanding the sovereignty of God and the duty of man Gentlemen in in relation to I've heard it mentioned here and also in the past and some of the tapes or conferences I've been in, about, as it was briefly discussed here, The responsibility, what is the responsibility and to what degree do we aggressively as churches that are trying, that are reforming go after the responsibility of those orphans and widows? Taking back those things that may easily be provided for by a governmental system that's in place because I have been in a church that the first question they had was well have you investigated those those things are available to you first prior to the or prior to them discussing whether or not the church can step in and then take up its role because if we don't teach it, then I think it's probably still the knee-jerk reaction is to try to get the government to take care of as much as possible and then we'll take care of the rest kind of thing. It's not an easy question, but I will say that our hearts in our congregation are 100% directed towards caring for widows and orphans and getting them off the rolls of the state.

I mean we desire it, we love it, we long for it. But here's part of the problem is you've got to find widows whose hearts are going the same direction as you. And that is not automatic, not at all. Their hearts have to be desirous of relationship, of accountability, willing to establish trust, willing to work hard themselves. We're not going to put them on a dole.

They've got to be serving the congregation, serving the saints. We have a widow right now who is part of our congregation and she has been visiting for a year. We have not taken her under the rolls right away because We want to make sure we don't have a moocher here. You follow me? We want to make sure there's a relationship established.

We know each other, and she is willing to submit to the council of the eldership. And we're within about two weeks of bringing her in. She has been very responsive. This is actually, we're doing better than our first, our first widow, she was with us for about four to five years and kind of decided she didn't like the accountability anymore and also didn't need the support anymore and so kind of moved on. So again, the relationship was sort of tenuous over those years.

I think we did some good things and we probably put close to 60 to $70, 000 into that particular family. So we took it seriously, but it wasn't quite as good as the second round. We're doing better this time, even better. But see, this is not automatic, it's hard, it's difficult. We have to open up hearts, we have to be willing to be open with each other and accountable.

And this is somewhat of a challenge. But Nancy, who's our new widow, who we're working with, she's very responsive. We found a way that she can stay at home with her 14-year-old boy. It's beautiful. It's wonderful.

For a while she was working outside of the house. Horrible situation there. We brought her back into the house she's got a good position it's a phone deal as she can do out of the house she can be with her son we've got her son working with some of the guys in the church from time to time we took him down to the father-son retreat when vision form came out to Colorado for the Father, Son, and Retreat. So we're doing some things with him, need to do more things with him. We're seeing that the guys in the church have to be more of a father to him and provide him some leadership, some guidance.

But it's not easy, but God's showing us the ways to do this. And I think we are going to be helping her pretty significantly as she tries to get on her feet and maintain somewhat of a oikonomia for herself. I just had a sort of a comment maybe you can you talked earlier about principles and practice and I think one of the dangers we have is fallen humans we tend to see the practice so we talk about family worship we talk about family integrated churches but if you don't ground that in principle it gets lost and one of the passages that always comes to me is Judges 2 10 where it's a preview of what's going to happen in judges and it talks about the people living really well when Joshua was around and the elders that had seen what God was doing But it talks about a generation growing up that didn't know the Lord or know their work that He had done. And I think that we need to pass on our principles. Maybe you can comment on how that's done.

You were talking about the young man in the back. We need to pass on not just what needs to be done, but why it's done. Otherwise the next thing that comes up that looks good, everyone's going to run to that. I think there's tremendous value in the life of a family to be reading the Bible from cover to cover. So they see the whole counsel of God.

They see the principles, they see the practices, they see hundreds and hundreds of years of context and issues, because the issues and the context are really no different than our own today. Satan always works the same old way, and he's the step and repeat king. He just keeps doing the same thing in every generation. So I would just recommend as one way to deal with the problem of the principle and the practice so that a generation doesn't just get the practice and miss the principle is to be filled up with the whole counsel of God. This was Paul's objective when he went into the, in the office, is that I came and I delivered to you the whole counsel of God.

A family shepherd should exposit the whole counsel of God, front to back, over and over again as much as he can. That's one step to it. I'm sure these guys have some more to add to that. I think it's the connection of hearts and hands. Whatever's in the hands ought to be in the heart.

Whatever's in the heart, at least as far as it conforms to God, loves God, fears God, walks with God, needs to manifest itself in the hands. There has to be that connection there. One of the things that's helped us is the book of Psalms. The Psalms I consider to be the heart of the Word. Call it the heart of the Word.

I think Calvin called it that. It has all the emotions of the heart. And I'm trying to teach my children something about the heart of the Word, the heart of the relationship we have with God. It really is God's manuscript on worship. If you want to know how to worship God, go to the book of Psalms.

This is just like Proverbs, it's God's book on life. Song of Solomon is God's work on intimacy within the marriage. So Psalms is God's work on worship. And we really are working hard to teach our children how to worship God. I put together some what I call family Bible studies.

I put them on my website, kevinslonson.com. They're up there every week. And since the beginning of this week, this year, we've been going through the Psalms and we have these devotionals that I've written for families where we talk about the Psalms, how to apply them, how to use them in the worship of God. The sort of emotional fabric that make up the Psalms as God takes us by the hand and shows us how to love Him. How to show that emotion towards Him.

And the Psalms can help in that shepherding I think. I think our tendency as Christians is sometimes to want a formula. Maybe that's some of what's driving your question. We'd love to have five steps that if we just followed them would give a guaranteed result regardless of the attitudes of our heart. And God doesn't deal with us that way.

And so I think Kevin's exactly right. It's about the heart of the matter and it's being sure that that love for the Lord really does make whatever principle we may be seeking to lay down as His law a path before our feet that we delight in because our heart really is turned to the Lord and so His law is a joy to us. So we're not just looking for something to fix our problems as they come up, but we really desire a relationship and to walk with Him. And so I think we just continue, continue, continue to emphasize the most important things, loving the Lord with our whole heart and loving our neighbor as ourself and how Those are not instruments of our salvation. Those are the outworkings of our salvation.

That's the evidence of a heart that's turned to Christ. I've got a question back here. I'm Philip Orman's dad, by the way. For a question on covening together, I think it was Mr. Swanson talking about the church members covening together, and I wanted to get your input opinion on the importance of that, the stage that happens in the formation of a new church and how that compares with the difference between, is there a difference between membership and covening together?

I would say membership is covenanting together, it's it's understanding that we are a body And the Bible brings out this idea of being added to the number of those that are within and those that are without that shows up in 1st Corinthians chapter 5, there are those that are within, there are those that are without. And there really is a sense in which when you cross that boundary from being within to without, you are now in a real sense, a part of an organic body. To the extent that if somebody begins to sin in a vile way as the first Corinthians five man did he becomes 11 in the body in the bread in the loaf of that local church so if somebody is taking the Lord's Supper in our congregation who has been added to the number and therefore can take the Lord's Supper with the rest of the body and they are engaged in some kind of sexual immorality. Nobody really knows, okay? They're just kind of hiding out and they're engaging in this sort of behavior.

That's going to be a leaveness effect on the rest of the body. I can't explain exactly how it happens, but there is a very real connection here. So my life really does impact my brother's life as we gather around the table and participate in the Lord's Supper. So for that reason I think it's important to have some means of knowing when somebody crosses the line from being not a part of the body to being part of the body. Now the way that we do our Lord's Supper in our church is we have a little warning that we put in the bulletin that says only those who profess faith in Christ and have been baptized should partake of the Lord's Supper with us and we ask that you be part of some body somewhere that would be willing to practice 1st Corinthians chapter 5 type of discipline if that kind of discipline would have been warranted.

So we don't even say you need to be a member of a church because even the word membership isn't really a biblical word but num being part of the number I think is the idea of being part of the number or being part of a body so different churches do it different ways I say well how do you do it somebody needs to know when you join the body and when you are taking the Lord's Supper and when you are now part of the body and you are responsible for engaging the one another and you are now somebody to whom the shepherd will be accountable to the chief shepherd when he gets up into heaven and Jesus is up there going through the names of the people that we were accountable for while we were shepherding that flock at that particular city. So it is important to have a membership and what we call a covenanting together. Why do we call it a covenant together? Because that's what they did in Nehemiah chapter 10. We really believe that when the church comes together as it did in covenantal faithfulness to God there in Jerusalem, they had an oath, they had a vow, they took the vow and said we are together going to walk in Jehovah's ways and that's what we do as a congregation.

So when we add somebody to our congregation, which we will do tomorrow we have a young lady that is going to join the church and by the way she's living with another family she will stand up with the other family she's a single but she wants to be seen as part of a body so she's gonna standing up with his other family she she will be asking answering four questions yes I believe in Jesus yes I'm I accept him as my Lord I'm walking with him yes I believe the Bible is the word of God, and the fourth question, will you be accountable to this church, yes I'll be accountable to this church, et cetera, et cetera. When that's said, I say, and all of God's people say, amen, and as they say Amen, they certify. So we link arms with her now. See, we're now linking arms with her. She is part of us.

She has just taken the Nehemiah 10 vow with the rest of us. And now we're walking together. So that's the way we picture it in our church. Yeah, we're vigorous advocates of church membership for a number of reasons. This is one of them right here.

How does one carry out the relational and judicial aspects of church life faithfully without a church membership, for example. How do you carry out church discipline? If you're going to tell it to the church, what church are you going to tell it to? Who are the ones who are going to tell it to the church? Who is that individual accountable to?

Some kind of covenant, some kind of intimate relationship is required. Some kind of a connection with a local body is required even to carry out church discipline. You tell it to the church, oh do you email it all over the country? No, no, no, you tell it to the church, you tell it to the people who are involved. And church membership has a number of critical functions that help a church be accountable to one another, to agree together, to walk together in unity, and a number of things like that.

So we're, I would say, passionate advocates of church membership, or at least some form that acknowledges the relational aspects that we see in the New Testament. And church discipline is one of those. We could do a whole conference on why this is important, I think. If a shepherd is to know his sheep, then he needs to know who his sheep are. And it is so easy for a shepherd to spend 90% of his time on people who aren't even His sheep, while those who are His sheep go neglected.

And so we need to define as church shepherds who are our sheep for whom we're accountable. And there are a hundred ways why defining that relationship is really why should problems arise. As Scott has discussed, should a church discipline issue arise? All these different things. The first thing people want to do is say, well, you don't have any authority to do anything with regard to what I'm doing.

And if you don't have that established and You don't have agreement with regard to that. It's just an incredibly difficult situation to handle when you're trying to solve those problems down the road instead of anticipating them and coming together biblically. So I'd agree with what these brothers say about the importance of it. We can't begin to talk about all the reasons why it's important in the little bit of time we have here. It emphasizes the fact that there's two-fold agreement in a church family.

That there's a church body that agrees with someone who wants to come and be a part of it and there's someone who agrees that they want to be a part of that. It just spells things out and makes them clear. You ever walked up to somebody in Walmart and just excommunicated them on the spot? Couple of questions. What you just brought up is making me think, what do the three of you do then as shepherds to kind of like use as a winnowing process so that your time is not getting sucked out of you by the lookers or whatever so that you can really spend your time on those you're called to shepherd.

Do you have any guidelines there, any wisdom? Well, God has not just exclusively called us to ministry in our local church. So let's first of all say that one should be careful to be available to God to those whom God might send. So I think the first thing I would think of is that God, in many ways, God is in charge of some of this as He sends people our way. There are divine appointments that need to be paid attention to.

At the same time, you know, men and women must be wise in the direction of their energy. For instance, If you give yourself to every person that comes your way, you might not have enough time for your wife. That would be a sinful thing to do. It might not have enough time for your children or your church. So I would just encourage exercising wisdom, asking for help to discern about use of time.

I think that we sometimes do well and we sometimes do poorly at that. I'm thinking about myself. I can be overprotective of my time and I can be underprotective of my time. So I just think this is an area of wisdom before God that needs to be engaged somehow with a lot of prayer and crying out to God. This is one of the toughest issues I deal with as a pastor.

I will say that be careful of VDPs. One other pastor told me watch out for the very draining people that are just there to suck you dry but they really are never edified by anything you say so just be careful of those And then what I try to focus on is the core of the body. If you lose the core of the body, you lose the body. So your chief responsibility is to look out for the sheep that God has given to you and in my estimation the core is the eldership. That's the core.

If I've ever seen a fracture develop in the relationships within the eldership, there's ever a fracture there. You can pretty much just kiss the church goodbye. I've seen it happen too many times. You simply cannot afford there to be even a hint of a fracture in the eldership. Not even a hint.

So every week we have two, three, four meetings with brothers who serve as elders in our congregation. We're meeting with each other all the time, mostly one-on-one, sometimes as a group. So we're just protecting that, preserving those relationships as best as we possibly can. The second circle, think of the core as the elders. Second circle include the deacons.

Third circle are those that are very committed to the church. I call them the inner core of the church. They are committed, they will live and die with that church. The circle beyond that are those that are, have one foot in, one foot out. They're not quite in, they're probably moving towards the core.

But maybe they're not moving very fast. They come to some of the meetings. You can tell they're just still kind of not sure if they really want to be there. They're maybe talking about moving again or something. They're just not really committed so much, but they're still members.

And then you have long-term visitors, and then you have short-term visitors. So I kind of try to work my way out. I think I do like to focus on the core but provide about a 60-40, 60% on the core and 40% with visitors on Sunday. Now unfortunately for pastors, at least those preaching the Word of God, they're usually the first ones the visitors seek out. They just descend on you like a bunch of vultures.

Gotta talk to you, gotta talk to you. And you know what? God calls it to Phileozenia, right? Didn't I do a whole message on filet Ozenia Supposed to love the strangers. So if I'm sitting here saying well, I don't have time for the strangers.

I'm just focusing on core today Again, it's not enough. I turn to my children on Sunday morning I tell them you know what You need to pick one friend from within the church that you can encourage and edify today. But I also want you to step out and meet a stranger, a visitor to the church. I'd like you to really just extend yourself and just have a warm hug for one of the new folks that are attending the church. I'd like you to do that.

Would you do that for us today? So I kind of, I want it split. I want both sides attended to on a Sunday. I would agree. It's one of the toughest issues to work through in terms of allocating your time.

It really takes an awful lot of wisdom. The only thing I'd add to what these men have said is it again points to yet another reason why the covenant is important and why a need to define those things may be really critical. Y'all may not have experienced this, but there are people who will come and want to enjoy fellowship with your church and to drink in all the benefits that they can possibly get, but they don't want to commit. And they don't want to put anything back in. And they don't want to be accountable.

And we've emphasized being careful that we get to know people before we covenant with them and that we're sure that they know us so that they can't claim that we hit the ball on something that was important in terms of what we believed so that we know them as well. But at the same time, we won't let somebody just visit forever and enjoy sort of drinking in the benefits of being with us, but not really be committed and not really be accountable. And so that's just the flip side of that. We've had some experiences with folks who just really wanted to take and take and take and take but did not have any interest in accountability and really didn't have a heart to reinvest. And rather than being a member of the body, they really wanted to sort of be served by the body and enjoy the benefits with none of the responsibilities.

And so there's that other side of you don't go too quickly but you don't take too long either. Second question, not about this, so going back to the widows and orphans. And for me this is most helpful just because I don't have anything to draw from in my past as a, you know, even though I've been in evangelicalism for, you know, 28 years, there's so little there to draw from. So with the widows and the orphans, and I, the examples you've given have been with like, it sounds like ones that have come on in. Now I'm going to imagine though, especially if you're having this covenanting ideal though if there's somebody from within the fellowship if they have been their husband or whatever and the husband dies or or conversely that's a different situation.

Do you know of any books or literature out there where people have walked through this process that we might glean from it? Or have you guys had experiences and how is that different than where you're dealing with somebody who comes on in and you recognize they need help? Well, The only situation I can remember is a lady who lost her husband on the mission field out in Haiti. He was hit by a truck. He was on a motorcycle.

He was hit by a truck about two years ago. Homeschool family of five or six, missionaries in Haiti and lost her husband and the father. It was a very sad situation. She came back stateside. They really didn't have much support.

In this case the denomination really took up, took the whole thing up and within a couple of weeks they had a million dollars for her. That to me is pretty significant. So I think, yeah, I think that situation is different and really needs to be taken care of very closely. Now again, first thing you do is you go to the family. What can the family do?

You still go to the family. And what can those young sons do? For example, the widow that's with us right now, the son is 14, 15 years of age and we are pushing him really hard to step up his lawn mowing business. We have a deacon that's on his case constantly making sure he's working through the Bob Schultz book on created for work. And he better answer every one of those questions by Sunday or he's going to be in trouble with that deacon.

Okay, I mean riding this boy's case really hard because again he has a responsibility to be something better than an infidel, right? 1 Timothy 5.8. And we're training him hopefully to be that. So, yeah, I think we focus on the family first and then secondly the church steps in and helps out. So those are the only situations I can think of.

I have a question for you. Don, you mentioned a few things about accountability. God's word, there's some clear aspects of accountability that I think guide a lot of our activities. However, the application is what I'd like to address here. The application of accountability in your church, your model that you use based on the application of what you know about God's word, How does that look in your church?

And that would also be open to the rest of you. A whole lot of that works out of knowing each other and really having relationships within the church and the shepherd really knowing his sheep. And so we, again as Scott described earlier, we do seek to disciple and empower fathers as the heads of households to really Have lots of accountability within that family and if there are things that are handled there within the family We don't we don't need to know about everything We really invest an awful lot of trust in a father in the jurisdiction which the Lord's given him. And then we focus our communications more on being sure we're in touch with each of these fathers. We spend time praying together.

We meet together. We talk about areas where we may be struggling. We talk about sins where we may need to repent. We work through things in God's word where we're having issues. There are lots of different avenues of accountability that function all the time there.

But if you don't have those relationships and if you don't know each other and if you don't invest the time. And one of the things that's beautiful about the way the Lord's Day works in our church, It's a long day and we wish it were longer. And there's so much that can go on on the Lord's day when people really take seriously the fact that they're a part of a church. And if they're able to be there, they're there. And If someone's not, then it's very obvious and we know it.

When the shepherds in the homes take seriously their membership in the body of Christ, accountability works so much better. And when we can spend a beautiful day one day a week with the families in the church and see everyone and communicate with everyone and spend time together. That's just, that makes a shepherd's job so much easier than when the sheep are scattered and they don't really take seriously seeking to be a part of the Lord's day. I just encourage all of us to really take that seriously in our families. You know, don't miss.

If there's not a good reason not to be in church, be there. That's one of the worst generational sins that I see is families sort of taking lightly their being a part of the church. That just passes on to children so quickly. And it makes a shepherd's job so much easier when there are two families out and you know that they both had sickness and maybe there was one other family traveling and you know about the sheep because they're really serious about being a part of the church. So I'll let these other men speak to that as well.

Also too, I'll just say all the men of the church need to carefully nurture a culture of repentance and knowledge of one another. We are brothers, okay? There's a lot to that. But one thing about brothers is that they have to be willing to ask one another hard questions. So the culture in the church should not be an avoidance culture, avoidance of hard issues.

In our eldership, we believe that we need to ask one another and every man in the church how he's doing with purity. We need to ask him how he's doing in his work. We need to ask him how he's doing with his wife if he's married. And we need to ask him how he's doing in his, Did I say work? Work, his wife, purity, and family worship.

Those are three pretty big items of downfall for men. You know what? We live in an age where men need to be asking one another really pointed questions about the internet and different things like that. And we also need to just always not assume they're telling us the truth. That's the way we operate in our church.

Because we desire to have a repenting kind of a man in our church who is willing to say, I sinned. And we don't kick men out of the church for sinning. We might kick men out of the church for persisting in a bullheaded way in their sin. But, you know, because the head of the household is so strategic for everything in the world, we must have a ministry to men, and that means that we have to be honest men. And the shepherds have to be honest too.

If the shepherds are never repenting, I can just absolutely guarantee you, no one else will either. Kevin, a couple of times in your message this morning you used the term law. Can you qualify that because I think it's a safe assumption that every time the word law is used in the scriptures is not talking about the Ten Commandments. My use of the law was in the broadest sense of all and that is that God has a right to ethically determine what we do in life every moment of the day. God's law directs us.

Now it directs us on different levels. This is where it's complicated, right? The law is all summarily comprehended in one commandment, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, mind and strength, the Shema. That's the overarching, that rides with us all day long and if we did everything out of love for God with our whole heart soul mind and strength we'd be doing pretty good. We'd be running according to His law.

His law also gives us wisdom and light to our steps and helps us to direct our steps and to determine ethically what to do in all situations and and I would say that the law of God is is Is one there is a one law of God there is a distinction between principles and applications some call them principles and something else Practice that was it practice. I call them applications the same kind of thing What I would say is that there are principles in God's word and there are applications in God's word. I like to use the parapet law because it's the very easiest to understand. Parapet law required people to put a fence around their rooftop, especially where rooftop entertainment happened. They had flat roofs in that area and it's critical to know that because it's not like where we are, we don't get up on our roofs and enjoy a dinner as they did.

But the application is put a parapet on your roof. That is an application. The principle that we ought to draw from it are reasonable safety precautions should loss of life be imminent. So that's the principle. So we should be able to draw that.

We love God enough and we sit there and think about the application for a while we should come up with a principle like that. Now let's say you had a swimming pool in your backyard and you were right next to a preschool. I think I saw this in a far side one time. You know wondering why so many kids were getting were drowning or something because you know preschool right next to a swimming pool Where there's no fence around and see that would be an excellent application for the parapet law obviously imminent loss of life could occur because you a little two three year olds running in and drowning you know and So again, there's an application there that we ought to draw from an Old Testament principle. Now the application could again be applicable.

I think in some South American countries they do have flat roofs. In Mexico there are some flat roofs where they do have rooftop entertainment. I think there are some cultural circumstances where the Old Testament application could be applicable again. Now there are some biblical laws in the Old Testament that are applications, and those are the ceremonial laws. I see those applications to the principle, the overarching principle, without the shedding of blood there is no remission.

That's the principle. Without the shedding of blood there is no remission. Now there was an Old Testament application for that which involved the sacramental system. The New Testament application for it is undoubtedly the death of Jesus Christ, the one sacrificed once for all for our sins. So now you have a New Testament application that that effectively takes the place of an Old Testament application where those Old Testament applications will never again ever be needed because Christ fulfilled that law.

Okay, Jesus came not to abrogate the law but to fulfill the law and he fulfilled the law, this is without the shedding of blood there is no remission, he fulfilled that law forever and ever, Amen. And now the parapet law he did not fulfill. And that law will one day I think be fulfilled. Not sure exactly how, but my guess it's gonna be right around the time we're all glorified. Maybe one more, one more question.

Maybe one more question. This is just a real basic question, but I've been here and there's been a lot of really good things to really meditate on for a while if not all life but I have a burden to evangelize and to at the workplace and, you know, disciple my family and whoever God puts in my path. But what is your guys' application as far as in your churches about evangelism, not just in the homes, because that's essential, but I'm talking about outside in the communities, because I know that I've gotten together with my pastor and we've talked about going door to door, and that's essential, and that's something that's going to probably take place soon. I've been confronted with it in my heart with praying about it because I felt at times just a huge coward to even approach people. But I'm just wondering, in your guys' set over from where you're from and in your church practice, do you go out as a body and evangelize out into your communities?

Or is there, you know, I don't know how to really question it but I'm just... You know, we want the gospel to go everywhere and we want people saved and You take me to a street corner and if I can preach and people come to Christ I'll do it that way now. I've done a radio program the last three to four years We had a guy starting to listen to the program number of years ago He came to the church a year ago, and this is atheist Jew, okay? He came up on his motorcycle, and we could we could tell this guy had never been to church before he walked in here and He began listening to our sermons to my sermons there were times He'd come up to me and say I didn't like that sermon that was a bad sermon And then we wouldn't see him for another month or two and they come back and he kept coming back He kept coming back. We're baptizing him in two weeks from now The guy has professed faith in Christ.

He just loves it. And you know what? He just says I like being here because you're a very humble people That's what drew me. You're just very humble and your children. That was the other reason He's your humble and your children honor their mother and father.

That's why I came to this church And I kept listening because you have something here and he did keep saying that for the last year. He's saying you have something here and and praise God, you know, he's And here's the other thing my brother Tim loves to evangelize and he just goes everywhere He passes out tracts constantly every time he gets he gets us a slew of AIG videos and just passes them out by the hundreds, he's trying to get people saved everywhere he goes. He was a little hyperactive boy as a kid, now he's just hyperactive for Jesus. Everywhere he goes, the demons quake. But what I have noticed is that my brother was very successful because he was able once or twice, it wasn't much, but a couple of times he was able to get the ear of somebody for a long period of time.

And I've known a lot of guys who say they evangelize and They passed out so many tracks. We have so many conversations I asked one guy who had done it for the last three to four years I said so has anybody ever gotten saved, you know, they was actually walking with God going to church He says well, I had a gal break down in the parking lot start crying one time. Does that count? I Said no, I wouldn't include that on the list. You see, God doesn't require us to evangelize, he requires us to disciple.

And that's something We're just gonna have to get down straight and discipleship comes more often not one-on-one and when my brother What did disciples one guy I can't remember with Brian his name is Brian He discipled this guy met him in a coffee shop started a sibling two three years started cycling now Brian's whole family's getting saved You follow me here Because he's got some depth going on here. He's relationally discipling somebody. This is what we're doing with our neighbors as well. We're encouraging people to do this. Always target a couple of neighbors.

Keep a couple going at the same time where they're coming into the house and you're doing your fellowship with them. Somebody asked me, what if you're fellowshipping with somebody, a family whose children are sort of out of control and you don't really want them to have a bad influence on your own children, How do you handle situations like that? I just say, you know what? You have a very programmed, kind of restricted schedule. When they come into the house, you sit down, you have dinner right away, okay?

And then right away, you move right into your sing time, your Bible time, you read the word of God, you close it up, and then you say, you know, we really got to get going here, we got to get the kids off to bed. So thanks for coming. So, you know, it's a little bit of a program situation. That's okay. That's okay.

You got to be sometimes a little bit restrictive in how you do it. But there are, we have some terrific opportunities happening right now in our home, hopefully in seeing some folks coming to know the Lord. But we know it just doesn't happen overnight. Here's an example of a program opportunity. There's a guy in our church whose family, unbelieving family, some actually very terrible things had happened because of their faith and the parents lack of faith.

And a couple weeks ago they went to spend a week together at the beach. Now this was kind of a scary thing based on all the things that had happened. So this father sat his family down and all seven of them and he looked them in the eyeballs and he said children this is what we're going to do. We are going to pour out grace, service, happiness, love upon these people. If they curse, we bless.

If they ignore, we smile. This is what we do. So he replayed all these different scenarios. This was a man's man. He was rising up to pour love out into this world.

But it was a highly, he was highly programmed. He was, what do you call it? Choreographed. He was choreographing all the different scenarios. If this happens, this is what we do.

Here's the mountain. If that happens, go there. I agree with that that's a that's a great way hey I just do another thing to add to it family prayers can be a seedbed evangelism families getting together and praying for the lost around them is really a critical thing to do. I've never been in a church that evangelism wasn't a big problem, ever. Family integrated or not, it is an Achilles heel in the church.

The average evangelical leads zero individuals to Christ in their lives. And we are quiet often, we shouldn't be, And we should be filling our hearts with every good thing so that we cannot keep our mouths shut. That we just couldn't hold it back. That's the kind of, this is why we need God centered churches. This is why the gospel has to be the center of all Church life, not the family.

But I would just encourage, you know, urgent family prayers for the lost as well. We support some missionary families in Mexico in our church. A large number of us will go down there once or twice a year to help with different things. One of the things that came to mind as Kevin was describing his experience was where they have enjoyed really fruitful, Great Commission work in Mexico has been as they have been able to entice people to come study the Bible with them and that's their approach. They they invite people to come and study the Bible and then they establish a relationship and then they're building it on God's Word.

But their fruitfulness in seeing souls come to the Lord has almost invariably followed that track.