Church Planting Creating A MissionVision Statement

And these two strong opinionated families clash every time, and it's a war. It's a war. Why because if there's no clearly identified goal, then what is this? This is a war of opinions if there's no clear identified goal. And that's where a lot of people find themselves. You know, we're just gonna kind of be a fellowship and we're gonna get together and we're gonna do things, and everything is a clash. Everything is a war. Okay. Again, one of the things, just to take this on a macro level, one of the things that's really devastating our country today is the fact that our constitution has become a dead letter. Even people in politics don't know what the constitution says, don't know what the constitution means. So what matters. The only thing that matters is who can get their constituents out. The only thing that matters. Okay, Well, the only thing that matters is who can put judges on the Supreme Court? Why? Because the constitution is a dead letter. Who's the strongest, who can sway opinion? Okay? And that's what a lot of church plants end up fighting with because they have no clear mission. All right. Secondly, It rallies the troops. It rallies the troops. Everybody knows where we're going, what we're aiming at. Everybody's pointing in the same direction. Clear mission rallies the troops. And that's what we want to do. We want to rally the troops. It's hard for people to be passionate about something if they don't know what that something is. Okay, And if these folks over here are passionate about this, and these folks over here are passionate about that, you got a bunch of passionate people going off in a hundred different directions. You got problems, okay. Clear mission statement will rally the truths next. It eliminates the superflu us. It eliminates the superfluous. There are hundreds of things that we could do, but because we have a clear mission statement, a lot of those things we get to say no to and we don't even have to be bad guys. Man, that's a great idea. Doesn't really fit with our mission statement, but it's a great idea, you know, won't You go ahead? But you're not going to change the makeup of this church around your passion If your passion doesn't fit our mission. We can pray for you, support you, you know, we patch you on the back as you go out get after it, cheering for you the whole way. But we are not going to become that and we're not the bad guys. Here's our mission statement that really doesn't fit, that really takes us off task. Okay, can't say that if you don't have a clear mission. Can't say that, and all of a sudden you're the bad guy because here's this thing that I'm passionate about, and I can't belie believe that you aren't as passionate about it as I am. You must not be as good a Christian as I am. Did you see this? Okay? Or as they say in the South, are you smelling what I'm stepping in? Okay? Finally, it holds us accountable. It holds us accountable because sometimes we can still get superfluous and we have all these other things that we're doing. But if we're continually going back to that mission statement, after a while, we're gonna have to acknowledge that number one, we're not doing what we said we're gonna do. And secondly, we are doing a whole bunch of things that really don't fit with what we've identified as our mission. Okay, So this is why mission statement is important. Where do we start when you're talking about the mission and vision of the church, where do you start? Well, first of all, you start with the Bible. You start with the Bible. Now I say that, and then right kind of goes, well, yeah, of course, you know that's a Sunday School answer, right, yeah, of course we say we start with the Bible. No, no, I don't take that for granted because most people, when they start with the mission statement for their church, they don't start with the Bible. They go to another mission statement from another church. That's what they start from, not from the Bible. And so you get a mission shapment from another church that sounds good to you, and you build off of that. You don't know foundationally where they're coming from or why they got there, and you may be tweaking what it is that they've done, but you're not tweaking it according to the scriptures. You're tweaking it according to what sounds good. Next thing, you know, you don't have a biblical mission statement. We start with the Bible, okay. And when we start with the Bible, there's a couple of things that we need to do. Number One, read the Acts of the Apostles. Get together. You know, whoever's part of your leadership team, lay in the foundation. Get together. Read Acts. What's your New Testament church look like? Okay? Secondly, read the pastoral epistles. Read the pastoral epistles. You want to know what the church is supposed to be about. Church is supposed to be like. Read Acts. You'll see the formation of the church. Read the pastoral epistles, and you'll see the specific teaching that guided the church. Because here's what you'll find, all right, Because the last one is church history, all right, and we are going to look at the history of the church, especially if you come from a denominational tradition or whatever. Okay, and now he's that word denominational rather loosely. It's interesting at GFBC people ask us all the time what denomination we are, and you know, our people who've been around with us for a while the kind of smile because they hear from us all the time. We're Southern Baptists, which means we are non denominational Southern Baptist. The Southern Baptist Convention is a convention of confessing free churches. We are not a domination. There is no authority structure over the local church in Southern Baptist's life. Okay. That's why we're Southern Baptists, by the way, because we get to cooperate in missions, but we do not have to be part of a structure, a superstructure above the local church. We are an independent free church. Okay. But whatever tradition you come from, you look at the history of your tradition, and you do want that to inform you. I mean, if you're a Presbyterian and you're committed to being Presbyterian, well you might want to know what's distinctly Presbyterian about the mission of the church. Amen, you might want to take that into consideration. But beyond that, we got to go to the scriptures, and we got to go specifically to acts and specifically to the pastoral epistles. And when you read the pastoral epistles, you find out why it's very important to be careful even with church history, because early on, early on what is the New Testament of Psace was dealing with heresy in the first century. So just because you can go back and find someone well you know, early on in church history, so and so said, so, yeah, even the epistles were dealing with heresy in the first century, before the apostles were dead, they were dealing with heresy. So certainly we don't go to church history indiscriminately and just because something's from the second century or the third century, that means it's more authoritative. No, why do you think we have all these church councils Because there's been heresy all throughout church history. Okay, that's why they are church councils. Why do you have to have the Creed of Chlceton, Why do you have to have the Nicene Creed, Why the Afthenationian Creed? Why? Because there's heresy all throughout church history. So we got to be careful that we don't just go and grab something just because it's from the second century or the third century and say, well, you know, back early on, before we got all of this corruption, this is what they believe. No, no, no, there was corruption before the apostles were dead, and the apostles were addressing that corruption. Okay, So we gotta be careful even when we go back to church history. All right, And so we start with descriptions. I also put in her systematic theology. Systematic theology is very important, okay, because we have to make sure that we're consistent. So we start with the scripture, We're gonna read the Book of Acts, we're gonna read the pastoral epistles. But then we'll get us, you know, a good solid systematic theology, because there will be other aspects that are dealt with in a good solid systematic theology that maybe you didn't take into account. How these things work together, okay, what the different positions on these things are, and why where they come from. That's why I said, good systematic theology that actually interacts with these things, right, are very important. This was very important for us because I mean, we are Southern Baptists, but Southern Baptists are all over the map theologically, all over the map theologically. So it's very important for us to be consistent. All right. So you go to the scriptures, you go to good systematic theology, you go to church history, and you come up with things that you're committed to as a church. And we always talk about three different levels of commitment. Okay, And now I'm not gonna put anybody on the spot anybody from our church on the spot we have. Okay. Level one is a level of conviction. The level of conviction. Will part company over convictions? We will, We will lovingly part company over convictions because the conviction is something that we've looked in the scriptures and believe that the Bible teaches it clearly, it's a conviction. Okay. Level two persuasions. We're not necessarily going to park company over persuasions. The persuasion is something that's not necessarily black and white. There may be a preponderance of evidence and we're persuaded by the evidence that it's this rather than that, but we don't. We're not gonna part company over that. The last one is opinion. Opinions. A lot of times we just keep those to ourselves. I'm not convicted, I'm not persuaded. I have an opinion. Maybe it's something that the scriptures don't really address, you know, very much or all that clearly. And this is my opinion. And if my opinion may govern my household, but I can't let my opinion govern your household. And so I have an opinion that this is the way this ought to be. You have a different opinion about that, and you govern your household away from your according to your opinion. I don't then look into your household and say that your household is out of line because you don't line up with my opinion. Now, if it's a conviction, we need to sit down and talk. You see what I'm talking about there, Okay, Okay, So that's where we start. The vision statement. The vision statement is a proclamation of what you are striving to become. This represents the ideal. This represents the ideal. All right. When we talk about mission and vision, and we'll explain these as we go along, But the vision statement for your church, you're asking the question, what are we striving to become? It's not what we are, it's what ideally we believe we ought to become. As we look at the scriptures, as we look at sound doctrine and theology, as we look at sound history of the church, what ought we in our context in light of those things in our context? Okay? Just like all politics are local, all all theologies local. But when I'm doing the if I'm doing theology and thinking about things theologically that I'm not applying at a local level, That's where you get the term Ivory Tower theologian, Okay, I'm just talking about these things that are whatever. Is there a place for that? Sure, there's a place for that. Praise God for the Ivory Tower. Okay. But when I am trying to apply theology to the way that we do things, I'd better understand my context. Okay, I better understand my context. That's what your vision statement is all about. Okay, it's your vision statement is all about. And so a church that's planted, you know, we're partnering with some folks, for example, in Zambia, and one of the things that we're looking for in the future is perhaps assisting in plantings and family and grated churches in Zambia. Trey and I just spent two weeks there a couple of months ago. Well, the vision statement for family and a great church that we plant in other parts of Houston, and we have three that are in different stages of preparation. Even now at eight, at our eighteen month old stage, we're already right now contemplating three plants. One of them we'd love to have planted a boy, you know, the end of the year if we could. But you know, the vision statement for plants, you know, around this area would probably be very similar vision statement for a plant family or great church in another culture, in another context, it may sound quite different, you know, it may sound quite different. So what we're striving to become the ideal. Here's our vision statement you heard it earlier, to be a Kingdom minded Christ exalting multi generational community of faith. That's our vision, to be a Kingdom minded Christ exalting multigenerational community of faith. We put this on airthing, okay. I mean it's all over the place. There's all our worship guide every week. It's what. It's all over the place. We talk about this all the time. We go over and over and over and over as a matter of fact, in our in our new member orientation, we spend two weeks on our mission, mission and vision, and so we go over and over and over and over this ground to be a Kingdom minded Christ exalting multi generational community of faith. Okay, what does that mean? Kingdom minded? All right? Somebody h well, we don't have time really for all these passages, but we can read some of them, we know. Matthew twenty eight, nineteen twenty. What's that? It's the Great Commission, all right? And so the great commission is come on and all the world make disciples of our our favorite you know Greek phrase at gfbs. See. You know, folks in our church never taken a day of Greek before. Even the ones who have never taken a day of Greek before, they know one Giek phrase, one Greek phrase, Panta ta ethne every people group. That's the great commission. The great commission is that we would make disciples of Panta ta ethne every people group. All right, sixteen fifteen. We see the same thing there and then again here in Acts one eight. You will see power when the Holy spirits come upon you, and you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, all Judea, Samaria, even to the remotest parts of the earth or to the ends of the earth. Okay. And then of course we know Romans ten about the beautiful feet, and so we're Kingdom minded. And we thought that this was very important for us as a family integrated church because one of the problems with many family integrated churches or family integrated fellowships, because many of them aren't even churches. Many of what passes much of what passes for a family integrated church does not fit the biblical definition of a church. Okay. A lot of them are just reactionary cloisters of people who are running away from what the church is. They're not a church. They're a reactionary cloister of people. That's not a church. Okay. A church is kingdom minded, all right. The church is kingdom minded. The church is not escapist in its mentality. It's kingdom minded, all right. We're about something. We're not running from anything. The church doesn't run, Amen, Church doesn't need to run. Gates of Hell can't prevail against us. We have weapons. As a matter of fact, you look at Ephesis, chapter six, and the weapons that we have. You run. You're in trouble because your back is the only place you're not covered. Amen. Church doesn't run. We are not reactionary. We are proactive. We do not run, and we do not cloister. We are kingdom minded, okay. Which means that there's an emphasis on evangelism and missions. There must be an emphasis on evangelism and missions okay. Means that we must be committed to multiplication through church planting. Committed to multiplication through church planting. We believe a healthy church is like a healthy family. If you've got a healthy family, that family is going to be multiplied. It's going to be given birth. Amen, healthy church ought to be given birth. There are so many the overwhelming majority of churches in our country have never given birth to another church. Okay, at least not intentionally. Okay, So all right, So multiplication through church planting, strategic church planting. Next, concern for the widow, the orphan, the foreigner, and the poor. All right, if we're Kingdom minded that we're gonna have a concern for the whitto of the orphan, the foreigner, and the poor. Why well, have your radial Testament over and over and over and over again. We could spend our whole time in this session just reading passages of Scripture that have to do with God's commands to his people to take care of folks in these four categories. Okay, that's kingdom works. What the Kingdom does? Okay, So evangelism and missions, what does that look like for us? The Cooperative Program, Love it or hate it, This is what makes Southern Baptists Southern Baptists. The Cooperative program. It is. The Cooperative Program is the largest mission sending entity in the history of the church on the planet, not just in America and not just in recent history, but in the history of the church on the planet, there has been no more massive mission endeavor than the Southern Baptist Cooperative Program. Love it or hate it, Okay, we got issues with much of it, Okay, but hadn't found anything perfect. So, but the cooperate program. And part of what we do is through the cooperative program, and we participate in that because of the Southern Baptists through other missions giving. And again, we have a large portion of our budget that is evangelism, benevolent benevolence mission And depending on how you look at it, you know, I don't know what the percentages are, but it's a large percentage of our budget. Got our treasurer back here, you know, but it's a large percentage of our budget, more than anything else. When you say it's it's more of a percentage than anything else in our budget is you know, Yeah, So we don't have anything else in our budget that is a larger percentage than what we give to missions evangelism and benevolence, nothing in our budget. We do this through growth groups, growth groups. I should put hospitality in here. Hospitality is really our key outreach and expansion tool. We try to encourage our people. You know, once a month, have somebody from the church over, because that's the kind of tightest to hospitality. And in once a month, have somebody from the community over, because that's our evangelistic hospitality. And how did the church grow in the Book of Acts house to house, you know, house to house. They broke bread together, they shared meals together, they spent time in one another's homes, and they also ministered to their communities through their homes. And so the ministry of hospitality is incredibly important, and we model that even from the beginning. We have an eight week membership process. Week number one is the application process and week number eight is the interview process. Everybody has to interview to get out of the membership process. But in the middle of that, there's six weeks. Two weeks in my home we talk about mission vision strategy, two weeks in the home of Pastor Paul where we talk about our theology and doctrine, and two weeks in the homo Pastor Matt where we talk about our ecclesiology and covenant. Old church membership. Okay, And so everybody gets that and those happen in our homes because we want to model hospitality. We're trying to show our people from day one. And by the way, most people who come into our membership program, they've already been into the homes of members in our church anyway, if they've been around. Okay, it's who we are, it's in our DNA. Now you've been showing hospitality to some folks in your community, and you've got some people who are interested. Because one of the things that we've discovered is there is nothing that is more attractive in our day and age than well ordered, biblically functioning families. These families started having people over and they go, you gotta help us. How you do that? At a sixty year old man, sixty two year old man weeping in our home, weeping in our home. It's a neighbor of our, hey brother, a neighbor of ours from catacorner to where we are, first generation Italian immigrants. He and his wife have been here for over forty years. They've been forty two years the two of them have been here. They've been married for all but one of those years that they they too have been here, but they migrated from Italy and they were over. We had 'em over and we cooked for 'em. And after the meal was over, our our children they know what to do. They get up and they start clearing and cleaning and taking care of bringing coffee, this and that and the other, serving our guests, ministering to our guests. They know how to stay out of the way of adult conversation so that we can have that, but at the same time serve. And so they're seeing this in this sixty two year old man, he's sitting on my couch and he's crying, just kind of look at each other. His wife starts rubbing his back, and he goes, your children, give me a hope. And he says, I want my kids. I want my He got grown kids and grandkids. He said, I want my kids. I want my kids to come to your home. I want my kids to come to your home. You know. Well, so you get a couple of families like that, and all of a sudden, you say, hey, why don't we do like a four week class on child training, or a four week class on finances, or for we class on and get something non threatening. So you get one other GFBC family and you and three families from your neighborhood to come together for those four weeks. Now, other GFBC family is to help you because now you've multiplied the number of families who are gonna be coming over and you're gonna be answering questions and you're gonna be so they're they're there basically to work and to help you, so that you can minister to these people with whom you've established ties and that becomes a growth group. Okay, Evangelistic outreach and need this is a catch all all kinds of activities that in which we're involved to go take the gospel. Okay, they all fall under the category of evangelistic outreach and then mission trips. You know. One of the things that we've been doing since we started is because we're very purposeful about evangelism, we're very purposeful about missions. I've been several places scouting out opportunities for our church and we found a couple and the first one that we'll probably do en Mass will be in Zambia next year. Because there are several things that we can do. They're partnering with an incredible group there of Reformed Baptist churches that have been plowing the ground there and indigenous work plowing the ground there for almost twenty years, having incredible impact. And one of the things that we're going to partner with them and doing is in order for you to understand the significance of this, you got to know. For example, we have a prayergram that goes out every week, and on our prayergram, every week we pray for four specific categories. One of the categories we pray for is unreached people groups, So our people are praying for a different unreached people group every week. You know, so much for the family and the greater Church not being mission minded, you know, every week we're praying for an unreached people group and one of the questions that we ask is do they have the Scripture in their language. We have an opportunity now an eighteen month old church, to spearhead a project to translate the Scriptures into Yanja for the first time in the history of that language. And we're partnering with people reform Baptist churches in Zambia. You know, sixteen eighty nine London Baptist Confession churches with guys who speak Yanja who are now being trained to do this translation into that language of the New Testament, and as an eighteen month old church, we're gonna spearhead that project. Okay. And so again when we talk about mission trips, we're talking about whole families going together. Now I get chills thinking about little boys and little girls in our church who are going to grow up wanting to be linguists because they're gonna get to be a part of us putting the scriptures into the language of the people who've never had it before. And they're gonna get to go with their mom and dad and meet these people, get their hands dirty ministry in these people's lives. Now, can you get ready for that? Okay? All right? Come on, all right. So avangelism church planting, it begins with pastoral training. Unfortunately, there's almost nowhere that we can go to get pastors who are ready to plant family in a greater churches because virtually every seminary in the country is training pastors in such a way that is antithetical to what we're doing. And this is sad. What's really sad about it is there are churches out there that could go right now, and I mean they could just afford you know, churches that you'll pass by. In the Houston area. We got more gigantic churches in the Houston area than anybody ought to have. Just in the greater Houston area, we probably have fifteen or twenty churches that run, you know, more than ten thousand, more than ten thousands, fifteen or twenty churches in this city that run more than ten thousand, and they are not church planting churches. You know what they could do because they're indiscriminate matter then what kind of churches they plant. They could just go to our biggest seminaries and go, hey, here's the deal. Every year, we want you to give us get you want. We want you to give us your two sharpest graduates, and we will set them up and plant churches with them. They could do that right now, right now, but they don't do it because everything is about the kingdom that they're building. And unfortunately, we desire to do that, We love to be able to do that, but those guys are ruined. They're absolutely ruined. So first thing we have to just train them, deprogram them, train them because everything that they've been taught in their seminary training has been to decimate the family and to usurp the authority of the of the family. Okay, so that's for us. It starts with training, you know, intentionally targeting areas of the city, intentionally targeting key US cities, intentionally targeting key international cities, and partnering with like minded churches and agencies. True benevolence starts at home, our church, our city. It grows outward the what are the offer of the stranger and the poor? It our cerates biblically, and we spend a long time teaching our deacons what biblical benevolence is and what it is not. Not everything that we give to people in the name of benevolence is true biblical benevolence. Some of it's sinful. Some of the things that churches do and give to people, it's actually unbiblical. It's a violation of scripture. Okay. And finally it gives fish and teaches fishing. All right, So Kingdom, mind it. That's Christ exalting and again all these passages of Scripture that we read over. But I mean, for the second time, we're gonna have to run. Christ is ahead of the church. We are constantly reforming regulative principle, and we can communion and meal. These are some ways that we emphasize this idea of being a christ exalting church. Christ is a head of the church, which means we're led by the Word of God. That's what leads our church, the Word of God. We have multiple elders versus a single leader. We have multiple There is no man who's the head of this church. There's not Christ is ahead of this church. We have multiple elders, not one of us. It's more vote than another. We have multiple elders. Okay, because Christ is our head, No man is our head. We're committed to biblical leadership requirements. There's no guy out there, you know, who's sharp enough or talented enough for us to overlook biblical leadership requirements. We can't do it. And one of the things you'll find is that when you're talking about family any graded church, it becomes even more of a premium because of the things that you say you stand for. Constantly reforming our orders, are constantly referring our practices back to scripture, and there are things that we've changed because we had to constantly go back to scripture. We have to constantly be reforming. You know, some of those things people weren't happy about. You know that we've changed. I'm thinking one right off the top of my head, a communion. You know, communion. We've been in a situation before. We're communion was something that was done where the fathers gave the elements to their families. Well, we've just looked at First gridt Things chapter eleven, and we're convicted. Communion is not something that's given to the family, something that's given to the church. One of the commands in First Corinthian chapter or eldent, is that you wait for each other. So we don't do communion like that. And there are people who are upset. They thought, Oh, one of the things I love is that fathers lead out in that. Yeah, but it's great that you love that, But it's not scriptural. Our elders were constantly reforming our practices because we're led by the Word of God, not by a tradition, not by men. We're led by the Word. Okay, that which we cannot define biblically or defend biblically is always subject to change. Okay. Our orders admit their falliby fallibility and are not afraid to change when wrong. Regulated principle rooted in the principle of solo scripture. And this is something that the reformers, i mean, really had to hash out when you think about it in the context of the Reformation. Okay, we're gonna come out of the Church of Rome, but much of what the Church of Rome is it is in its worship practices. What things are we going to keep, what things are we not gonna keep? How are we gonna get to determine what biblical worship is? That's where the regular regulative principle comes from. Only employ those worship practices that are found in the scriptures. So don't look for us to do drama anytime soon. All right. Weekly communion and meal, all right, So a matter of conviction, not convenience. We believe, as we look at at Acts chapter two, that this was a part of the New Testament Church, the weekly communion and the meal. And so we deal that we do that, and the meal is a distinguishing mark of the biblical community. They they took their meals together. If there's nothing else that leaps out the Book of Acts about the New Testament Church that leaps out, these people took their meals together, you know. So we do that communion constantly points our worship to the resurrected Christ. And so we do that regularly, multi generational, kingdom minded Christ, exalting multi generational. And again for the sacond time, I'm gonna have to run through these so we can have some question and answer. Okay, rejoicing to give the children, train our children biblically, give onto the agent and to the young. And we embraced Tyus two ministry heard about that earlier today, Community of faith. What does that mean? And again all these passages of scripture here practice to one another's of scripture, meeting needs in the body again, you heard about that today. Enjoying biblical fellowship. Again, you heard about that today. Preserving unity through loving discipline. You know, we have our first annual church meeting coming up. It was supposed to be uh this past week, but with the conference and everything, we put it off. But one of the things we're going to do this your meeting is we purge our roles. We purge our roles regularly, and if people are not coming, then then they're not keeping up their covenantal commitment to this church. We remove them from the roles. Okay, And again not mean not harsh. Try to contact them, see what's going on. But you cannot be. We don't have non resident membership. We don't have non participatory membership. It just doesn't it doesn't exist. Okay. We purge our roles, and that's the that's the that's the easiest practice of church discipline that there is. Okay. The mission statement. The mission statement is a proclamation of what you are doing to fulfill your vision. All right. This represents the process. So the vision statement is what we see ourselves becoming. The mission statement is how we become that. So the vision statement is for us is to be all together now a kingdom minded Christ, exalting multi generational community of faith. All right, one more time, a kingdom minded Christ exalting multigenerational community of faith. That's the vision. That's what we're becoming. Okay, So here's the question. How do you do that? How do you become that? That's the mission. Here's what we do to become that, all right. Proclaiming the supremacy of Christ to all men with a view toward biblical conversion and comprehensive discipleship. That's how proclaiming the supremacy of Christ to all men with a view toward biblical conversion and comprehensive discipleship. That's our mission. That's the way we become the type of community that we desire to become. All right, and for the sake of time, I won't go through all the slides that we have on this, but again, that first week of our new members class, all we do in week number one is go over what you saw in the vision statement, and then we do the same thing for the mission statement. That's what we do the first hour and a half, excuse me, is go through these things so that everyone who desires to call themselves a member of GFBC knows that they know that they know that they know what we're becoming and how we're becoming. That so proclaiming the supremacy of Christ. That has to do with the proclamation of the Gospel. That's why we are committed to systematic exposition. That's how we teach systematic exposition. We started and we preach through Ephesians because again we wanted to lay the foundation for a church. And then after that, now we're preaching through Mark. And we're always finished with Mark. We finished with Mark. We'll either go to Deuteronomy, or we'll go to Genesis one through eleven. And so the idea is that there is that we need the whole counsel of God, and so we have an epistle, then we have a gospel. Then we'll go get some law. You know. After we do that, we'll probably come back and do one of the pastoral epistles, and then maybe we'll go get you know, Summon on the Mount, get back to some more gospel, and then maybe we'll go and do some wisdom literature. Again, we need the whole counsel of God. We're proclaiming the supremacy of Christ. If we were proclaiming the supremacy of men, we'd start with man and what man wants to hear. And we preach that ten ways to have a happy life, five ways to reduce stress, you know, four ways to reduce that's man centered preaching. We're not interested in that. Okay. We believe God smarter than we are. You know, we believe all scripture is God breathed. If all scriptures God breathed, we preach all scripture. So systematically we work through all scripture, and when we read, if you're not going to be there with us, tomorrow. One of the things that we do is we read systematically through the scriptures, so we have New Testament reading and Old Testament reading every morning. Right now. Systematically, we're reading through Joshua Old Testament. Systematically, we're reading through Acts and the New Testament. When we finished, we'll go to another Old Testament book and another New Testament book, and we choose those the same way we choose our preaching. So that our people are hearing systematic exposition and the systematic reading of the word Bible, Bible, Bible, Bible, Bible. They're getting it. Proclaiming the supremacy of Christ, all right to all men, Panta tathnae to all men. One of the mistakes we believe many family integrated churches make is they say we are going to be a church for homeschool families. We're going to reach homeschool families. What can we do to find homeschool families? Bless God for homeschool families. Only forty nine percent of homeschoolers or even jocals. That's a mission field. Amen, hollly, you praise the Lord. We want everybody, though, correction, we want everybody. Okay, We're not just about the already like minded. We want to change the world. We refuse to be about the already like minded. As a matter of fact, we have to hide from homeschool families for them not to find us. I'm serious. We don't have to do anything to reach home school families and praise God for them. So that's not even where we concentrate our efforts. Okay, that's not where we go. We want to change the world. We want to change the community that we live in, and we want to change the world for the glory of God. And so we proclaim the supremiu supremacy of Christ to all men, and we do so with a view toward biblical conversion. This is huge for us, huge for us. I believe the majority of people who call themselves Christian can't even define what a Christian is. Okay, so we have to we have to work toward biblical conversion. What is biblical conversion? We have to teach that. We have to preach that. And so you don't find easy believism around here. We can't, we can't. We can't. A lot of the people whom we've seen come to Christ have been people who've been in the church for a long time, but they never heard what biblical conversion was, you know, so we see much of that, much of them whose kids were baptized at you know, five six seven, and they're stressing over the kids and certain things. Well, they hear us talk about biblical conversion and they go light goes on. Huh, he's not converted, binging ing ing ding Right, So what you're dealing with is not behavioral modification. You're dealing with spiritual transformation. And all of a sudden, it's like that there's a weight of the world is off their shoulders. Okay, great, I know how to pray now, God saving, you know, God saving. But they got to understand what biblical conversion is, right and comprehensive discipleship. For us, this is where family integration comes in. We're a family integrated church not because we worship the family. We're family in a grated church because we believe that the family number one is the most biblical discipleship mechanism. And secondly, we believe it's the most effective discipleship mechanism. We believe that and that's what the family is. It's a mechanism for discipleship. Okay, that's what it is, and so we can't talk about comprehensive discipleship unless we talk about those practices in the home of family worship, Christian education preferably through the home. Okay, Biblical manhood, Biblical womanhood, family discipleship, catechism. All right, we're just a we're a church. We're a biblically functioning New Testament church. It just so happens that we've kind of been awakened to a specific area. Well, we've kind of blown it any area of discipleship, alright, questions, yes, question. The vision statement kind of. Can we get up? Can we email you and you' email us. I did pologize, Yeah, I didn't have any questions. Yes, uh, I guess from what you're saying that though, is that your statement and I mean your vision as well as your mission is not changing. But the way you you said. Something about you constantly constantly reforming. Yes, yes, but you with the same vision. Yes, Yes, that's that's that's overwatching. Yeah, that and and that's why we start with the scripture and with our systematic theology and with church history, so that we can come up with our conviction on the mission of the church. You see, and so yeah, yeah, right, right, right. N How long did that take come up with that? How long did it take us to draft the vision and missions to that? Boy? I wish the other guys were here. Uh yeah really in in one sense, really, I I mean a lifetime. It's it's like the culmination of uh of, of all of the training that all of us have received. But I mean together with us hashing this out, it's probably two three days. Yeah, I'm in church where you've been transitioning to an integrated family, integrated church. Yeah, can you hold off on that one until we do the panel discussion, because that's one that's that we're gonna deal with. If you don't want cause it is okay in the context of mission envision, you want to change your mission envision? Is that what you're saying? Sometimes here's yeah, sometimes you don't even have to do that. If you have a good mission envision statement, all you have to just go back to it and then you'll be able to point out, wow, large percentage of what we're doing doesn't fit with the mission and vision of the church, and then you're not the bad guy, you know. But again, if there's a need to change the mission vision statement, if that hasn't been one, or if it was just kind of a generic, borred one or whatever, then you do you go back and you as a as a group go through a study of ecclesiology and a study of you know, what what what what the New Testament church looks like? What the pastoral pistols epistles teach about the church. Yeah, you would go back through and you would look at that, and then you you know, maybe come up with with you know, uh a board with bullet points and passages, you know, pointing to what this thing has to be, and you kind of boil those down and boil those down and boil those down to their essence. And then that that vision statement is really you've you boil things down to its essence. You gotta put it in one phrase. You know, how do we put all of these things in one phrase? Maybe we can bunch all these together under this, bunch all these together, under this, bunch all these together under this, and then these three phrases are going to comprise that vision statement. So okay, we're gonna go back here. And then yes, I got questions, Yes, uh, I love the concept brother. Of uh of the hospitality and and Uh, my wife and I have a personal conviction to use our home as uh we call it the Lord. Yes, yes, And I heard the term a few years ago or a couple of years ago. Called hospitality time. And I really like that term in terms of, uh, you know, we give our we give our our God to our local church and beyond that kind of a hospitality tie where we we we when we have folks over at our home, we say, you know what, yeah, we're gonna spend money on extra food and extra meals. But that's that's our hospital right right anyway. Just like that term. Yeah. Second, I guess that's more comment than a question. But uh second question. Or or or our thought was, uh, you know. You mentioned uh you said, uh, we're not just about the already like minded, We're about everyone, and that was convicting to me. Uh Yet, if if I. Understand your your structure correctly, Initially, initially you got together with some like minded folks because it's hard for family to swim upstream in a in a quote traditional church. Uh So, but when you get two or three. Or four families together that are like minded, then that. Builds for your core group, for core group and fel yeah, yeah, great, yeah, great, great, great comment that this is what the core group does. This is what the core group comes together and and does so that people have something to be assimilated into. You see. So from that standpoint, yes, when you're putting together a core group, you have to have you know, go back to the family illustration, you know, my mom and daddy there before the kids come, you know. And so yeah, absolutely, you gotta have your core group together before you have something for others to be assimilated into. Yeah, yes, this is good stuff. Do you have anything else in your church, like official statements I'd imagine like a doctrinal statement, but maybe like in addition to this. Core values or on our website, all of that stuff's up there. Yeah, our our our core values Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, gore values there. Yeah, we'll go here and in here. Tell me a little bit more about the UH covenant that you have the members made, and then like, do you guys said roll each week or tell me more about into the members? Yeah, well we do have a covenant. At the end of y UH the membership UH classes, every every individual is interviewed by by one of the elders, and part of that process we go over and make sure they understand the covenant. They've had a whole class on it. Well, what is covenant membership? What is our church covenant? What are you signing on to? Should should you agree to you know, to to move forward with this? And should we agree to allow you to move forward with this? We don't allow everyone to become a member, you know. Uh? And so you know, I they do sign that that covenant. And our covenant is based in large part on a church covenant by jam Pendleton, old nineteenth century Baptist. And he has a little booklet and it's the the Manual of Church Order. JM. Pendleton's Manual of Church Order. Anybody ever seen the little the little Minister's handbook for funerals and weddings and stuff. It's about that size, Okay, it looks just like that, and it's a manual of church order. And he talks about membership and discipline and b you know, Baptism and all. He's a he's a Baptist. So y we we we kind of adapted the covenant that that that Pendleton has there, and everybody signs that and then we do we do keep track of you know, folks, when they come. And it's easy for us to do cause our deacons are assigned a certain number of families, and so if you're a deacon and you've got you know, eight or nine families, it's not difficult for you to see when you know families are not there and we hey, ever, everything okay, and usually we know what's what's going on or whatever. But when people start missing consistently, our d our deacons usually first ones that to to pick up on that. You know, so I said, we go here, yeah, r n no, no here here here, and then yes, go. To about your your cooperative program of put them into your budget. Last night we talked about the nevlins being twenty five percent of budget. Think your co op program, you're you're donating more than twenty five percent of. That to the co op? How there are the cops are just kind of involved blend together. The Netherlands, I think the. Number was actually fifteen percent. Uh. Kind of when we look at our giving, it's kind of easy to say giving is is giving. I think it's twenty five it's twenty five percent. Overall, but nevlance is a part of it. And in the corporate program, the corporate programs is part. Of all that together. It's five percent. Yeah, but we give a small portion new Cooperative program. We were a very small portion of New Cooperate program. Comparatively speaking, we spend a lot more of it on the things that we are supporting individually. Yeah, yeah, okay, yes, yes, we gotta go here. This two real best the key elements. Yeah, I I know that you changed and we talked about that. As things go on. Yeah, you're you're. Uh before you quote unquote launched, what were the what were the key elements that you had in place out of some of you had a vision. I'm sure you had a mission. Did you have your eight week programs that you have your. Yeah, but actually that that that eight week program, the the the six weeks class portion of it is what we did with our core group. Yeah, all that was in place before we even started a core group. So every person, even the first people who became part of the core group, went through that same things. The doors of your church and inviting. Yes, the blessing is to us the curse because I can't figure out another word to you is you're gonna have to figure out I think resources and you know there's some brought yeah, but I've also heard you know, we didn't borrow s. And because of that, we don't give our slides job right, and that we don't give our stuff out. We don't just because of that very reason, because we believe we be robbing people of an incredible blessing that we have received through going through the work of doing this our s. This is us. This is not this is not somebody else warmed over. This is us. Okay, no, no. Yes, but the struggling with exposing their kids, families to a model that they don't believe in. So that's what we're that's what we're. Oh yeah, yeah, that that that that's yeah, absolutely, and again I would ask that you bring that up during the panel discussion because that's that's one of the big issues. There are some of these things that are universal, and that's what we gotta find. That's what I try to do in Family Driven Faith and the last part the last couple of chapters in Family Driven Faith, I try to lay out what are the universal principles that regardless of where you are at a church, as a church, you not only can but have to employ. And once you start to do those other things are like dominoes, you know. I mean, once we start to employ the universal principles, other things are like dominoes. But you have to also understand that if we have one of the things clarity in vision and mission does, is it not only draws, but it repels. And we believe that's a good thing because if somebody comes and they say, oh, this is what you are and this is what you're about, we can't get on board with that. We would love to help them find some place where they can. We don't feel like we have to have everybody. We're not building any kingdom here, you know. You know, and if those things are are negotiables, will even help them plant another church? You know? So we we we don't. Yeah, yes, yes, I'm just. Curious because this question has times. How big is. You know? I don't know. I don't know if the first church could handle five thousand and do it exactly what I mean, they didn't have youth programs and they have, but you know, they have five thousand and they did it, you know, and they they had just a couple more diggings than we do. So yeah, yeah, we are in the performance. I don't know. But but but at the same time I say that, But at the same time, you know, God brought uh persecution to make those people leave, you know, because he did not want them all to gather together in that one centralized place. So for us, when we started, we did say we want to you know, two fifty. Let's lop a number off and then go back down, you know, and try to hover around to fifty. But here's the problem. When we are planting churches. We got a plant based on available biblically qualified leadership. And when you set a number, you compromise that. And so we're gonna we're gonna send off a number of people because we've reached this number. We don't have people who really meet the qualifications to lead yet. But because we've set this hard figure, we got to do it anyway. We can't do that, so we multiply as leadership becomes available, whatever that number is. So yes, yes, traditional study, yes, yes. Problem for this we all you know, all of them the same way the scripture and asking those question thought that's so helpful when we go, okay, is this conviction, you know, is this persuasion, is this opinion that it's amazing what that does even you know, among the elders when we having discussions about things, you know, cause his brother's over here and he's gonna and you just ask him, is that a conviction? And he knows that question means can you take me to book chapter and verse text in context and make that argument? Can you do that? Or is this something that you gotta be slick and pull together a whole bunch of concepts and different things. You know what I mean? Is this a c is this a conviction? If it's not a conviction, let's just move on, you know, uh yeah, right right, right right yeah, And a lot of that stuff, it's just you know, it's not it's not convictional, and that that helps so much. We hey, we gotta go, we gotta go. Okay, yeah, absolutely, bless you, thank you. We got it.