The Christian Chronicle Podcast
The Christian Chronicle Podcast explores the news and stories shaping Church of Christ congregations and members around the world.
The Christian Chronicle Podcast
Episode 122: Does the Restoration Movement need to be restored? (Matt Dabbs)
"The Restoration Movement" refers to the 19th and 20th century stream of events, people and thinking from which the Church of Christ emerged. Church of Christ folks of a certain age imagine that they are restoring the first century church as they find it in the New Testament.
But does restoration itself sometimes need to be restored?
If so, how do Christians restore restoration?
Matt Dabbs, a Church of Christ minister and scholar, offers his answers in his book, Restoring a Movement: A Hopeful Future for Churches of Christ.
In this episode, Matt talks about the powerful trends that fed the rise of the Church of Christ in its 1950s "golden age" in the United States. He also explores the powerful trends that worked against the Church of Christ and led to its decline in U.S. congregations and members in recent decades. Most important, he testifies to the power and work of God that is already making a future for emerging generations...if they choose it.
Links:
Restoring a Movement: A Hopeful Future for Churches of Christ by Matt Dabbs
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Family and friends, neighbors and, most of all, strangers. Welcome to the Christian Chronicle podcast. We're bringing you the stories shaping Church of Christ congregations and members around the world. May what you are about to hear bless you and honor God. I'm BT Irwin. It is an honor and pleasure to be your host.
BT Irwin:Over the last few years the Christian Chronicle has been covering Church of Christ congregations that give up their church buildings. The story often goes like this In the mid-20th century baby boom in the United States, a new congregation forms in what is often a rural suburb of a growing city. As the suburb grows up and its population swells, so does the congregation's membership. It builds a big building, hires a big ministry staff and runs all kinds of big ministry and outreach programs. But sometime in the 1980s members begin to die or trickle away, a few at a time. At first nobody notices, but as the decades roll by, the trickle becomes a stream and then a wave. The congregation hollows out. The auditorium is mostly empty on Sunday mornings. Education wings get mothballed, ministry staff gets reduced or cut altogether. Those who hang on are haunted by echoes of their memories, questions about what happened and the riddle of what to do now that the growth years seem to be over. In some cases, they have no choice but to give up their church building Church of Christ. Folks have reacted and responded to this trend in many ways, but perhaps the big question, the one that is so troubling and uncomfortable that many do not want to ask it out loud or even think it is where is God? Did God abandon us? Is God no longer able or willing to help us do the work that God made the church to do? You'll find that our guest today believes with all his heart that God is still very much active and present and very able and willing to grow the church for the glory of God and the salvation of earth. I think you'll find that he is brimming with hope and optimism for the future of the church of Christ. That being said, I think you'll also find that our guest believes that we in the church of Christ are at an inflection point in our movement. Those who pay attention know that it is not the first inflection point and it will not be the last, but according to our guest, what we choose to do now will determine how much we allow ourselves to enter and participate in the great things God is doing and will do.
BT Irwin:Matt Dabbs is a Church of Christ lifer and minister to local Church of Christ congregations for almost a quarter of a century. He holds the Master of Divinity from Harding School of Theology and for many years served as editor of Wineskins Magazine. The Christian Chronicle ran a story about Matt back during COVID when he and his wife were catalysts for the formation of a new congregation Backyard Church that meets in their you know backyard in Auburn, alabama. That house church grew and flourished and is now planting other house churches in its region. From that experience Matt formed Home Church Resources, which provides community resources and tools for those who want to make disciples for Jesus Christ through the planting and spreading of house churches. Matt recently published a book Restoring a Movement a Hopeful Future for the Make Disciples for Jesus Christ Through the Planting and Spreading of House Churches. Matt recently published a book Restoring a Movement A Hopeful Future for the Churches of Christ. From his backyard to the podcast studio, we welcome Matt Dabbs. Matt, thank you for being with us today.
Matt Dabbs:Thanks for having me. I really appreciate the chance to talk about some really important subjects with you, some really important subjects with you.
BT Irwin:We last heard from you in March 2021, when our CEO, eric Trigestad, wrote a story about your backyard church, which formed in the solitary confinement of the COVID years. What is the story since then?
Matt Dabbs:Bring us up to date on the backyard church and what grew out of it so we have started a second church because the first church kind of got to a point where, uh, you know, we were hitting like 50 people and we realized that you know, once you do that being in a home is kind of hard. Uh, we try to be outside as much as possible, so most of the year we're outside, but still participation starts to wane, just all sorts of things. It just kind of was the size as it grew began like kind of compromising some of the things that we were prioritizing. So we decided to try to figure out second church home church and prayed about that, prayed for a leader and got some wise words from somebody who knew a lot more about than I did. He said, yes, ask God for a leader. We prayed.
Matt Dabbs:The week that we started praying about that, I got a call from a guy named Jerry who said, hey, I want to start a home church here in Auburn and I need some help. Can you help me? I said, oh, my goodness, we just started praying for you. We didn't know who you were. I knew Jerry but didn't know it'd be you. But thank you, god, you know that's. That's been a consistent thing, we. So we started a second home church and a little bit of a crazy story with that one, if I can just work off of that just for a sec. So just because one of the things that I love sharing is just like God answers prayers and God is powerful and God is just doing some really great stuff. Like God answers prayers and God is powerful and God is just doing some really great stuff. So we we prayer walked Jerry's neighborhood and when we got done that was in February of 23. And when we got done prayer walking, I said, hey, jerry, just so you know, like when we enter into this we are kind of entering into like taking people from the devil right, like kind of Mark three, the strong man's house. You got to tie him up under the strong man and I said that you could get spiritual warfare, you could get just a big old bullseye on your back. So just be aware that stuff might start happening.
Matt Dabbs:And he texted me four days later and said I'm in trouble. And I said, oh, I called him. I said what's going on. He said I'm in trouble and I said, oh, I called him. I said what's going on. He said, well, you know, we prayer walked and then I helped a friend move and I went. He had a transplant some years earlier.
Matt Dabbs:He said I went and got my numbers ruined. My numbers were bad. I got a scan and I have a tumor on my liver and my pancreas. He said I think I have stage four pancreatic cancer. So we're going to go in deep real fast here. Right, I mean, I just about wept on the phone. I just said, jerry, I'm really sorry. I said I, I know I said what I said. I don't claim to know how this works, but I know God is good. And so we're going to fast and pray and beg God to heal you and we will tell as many. One of our prayers was God, if you, when you heal Jerry, if you will, we will tell as many people as we possibly can of your goodness. And so we fasted, we prayed and he was cancer free for about, I think, close to a year after stage four pancreatic cancer, which is not something you typically come back from. And he had a scan a little while back and had like a little spot on his liver he's now being treated for, so he's going to be under some supervision. But we just felt like man. God worked a miracle there. God's working in Auburn.
Matt Dabbs:We had a little revival here in Auburn. You know that happened with 200 students were baptized a little while back, wow. And we said well, man, who's going to disciple these guys? Right? And so I reached out to the organizers and I messaged them on Facebook and I said hey, who's going to disciple these guys? They never got back with me and I said wait a minute.
Matt Dabbs:We're like well, god knows the students and God knows we want to disciple them. So let's just ask God to connect us with these students, right. And so we prayed about it and we said God, just you want us to disciple some students, connect us. And so our second church, the church Jerry, started meets in a little neighborhood outside and we're praying about this and a young lady walked by and was one of the newly baptized people, asked what we were doing and connected up and started coming and I was getting some discipleship. And then she stopped coming and so we prayed for her to come back. And literally in the meeting we were praying for her to come back. And literally in the meeting we were praying for her to come back. She walked up again and she said I've been thinking about you guys all day.
BT Irwin:We're like we were just praying for you, right.
Matt Dabbs:Like, so it just.
BT Irwin:God is just good, those stories and I'm sure, so many more stories that that you don't have time to tell here that have formed you and shaped you and put you on the path you are now Surely inspired. The book that you recently published the title is Restoring a Movement, which is a play on words of what many call the Restoration Movement. That's the 19th and 20th century stream of events, people and thinking in which what we know as the Church of Christ found itself and grew into what it is now. If a movement claims that it has restored something or is restoring something, what does it mean? To restore the movement itself? How do you restore restoration?
Matt Dabbs:Yeah, that's a great question. So part of the and so part of the goal of the restoration movement. You know, the Campbells had come out of Scotland and they had the burgers and the anti-burgers and all these rifts and divisions and everything going on. And they said, man, you know all these creeds and stuff. And we said, man, let's, let's try to unite people by just going back to the Bible, just simple Christianity. Right, and they kind of had this effort to bring a unity movement going back to the Bible and restoring New Testament Christianity. But I think what that ended up being was trying to restore a certain pattern of church, trying to restore a certain pattern of like what we do when we assemble into the denominations and so in some ways, we kind of form some of our stuff around, not being like the other guy, right, kind of anti-Pentecostal I say rhetoric but like teaching or like anti-Baptist stuff or whatever.
Matt Dabbs:And a friend of mine named Eric Brown, who was a minister when I was living in Florida, is your friend and he made this statement. He said told me in 2013, we were preparing to teach at a lecture and he said co-teach. And he said you know Jesus was. He said the New Testament church was not trying to be the New Testament church. He said the New Testament church was not trying to be the New Testament church. He said the New Testament church was trying to be Jesus. Oh, okay, so if we're trying to restore what they were trying to do, I think that's the theory right. We're trying to restore what they were trying to do. That means we would be Christ-centered, not church-centered, and that takes us directly into discipleship.
Matt Dabbs:And so, you know, we kind of had that idea that we were like had succeeded in the mission in the 1930s, 40s, 50s, and so everybody wants to kind of freeze that moment in time and crystallize it and just kind of stick there. And we form this, you know, command, example, necessary inference, and so you know, we really formalize some things that I think it's good to look at those things again and just ask ourselves, okay, how did we get here and did it work, and did we unify anything? And you know, like we just got more and more divided, like the harder we tried to do this pattern, theology, like the command example, that's our differences, because people are people and we all have to interpret through our lots of different filters, right. And so the idea of simply going back to the Bible is a lot more complicated than it sounds. Because then you're like well, which inferences are binding and which examples are binding? And well, there's a. You know, we get all these rules and things made up around things that kind of help, support, things be in a certain way that I don't know, if a first century Christian dropped into one of our gatherings, they might be a little confused. You know it's very formalized and there's up and down and microphones and stages and lights and various things of who's where and who has authority and you know who's facing which way and all. When they're used to a living room, I just, you know, I think they might scratch their head a little bit, and some of that's out of necessity, due to size, dynamics of the room and and, uh, all those things we can talk about.
Matt Dabbs:But I I think the restoration has to go back to christ and the gospels first and foremost, before you can get into acts and the letters.
Matt Dabbs:But let me say it this way like you could be a perfectly good church of christ person and have all the patterns of worship right, but not be Christ-like, yeah.
Matt Dabbs:Or that you take it into acts and say, but not be led by the Holy Spirit, and this really stunned me as a young person. I would see these older guys who would teach these Bible classes and I'd say, wow, these guys know a lot of Scripture but they're mean, like they don't have the fruit of the Spirit. It doesn't feel like where's the joy. You know you would do something wrong. There was no patience. So I think we've kind of there's. There's been more affinity to church and less toward like reproducing christ, which is discipleship and the holy spirit's work in that has to be relooked at right. Because if you say the Holy Spirit, because I grew up a cessationist, I didn't think spirit did anything and I fought hard for that into my 20s. So those are some of the things that I think. If you begin restoring the work of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit, you're going to get the kind of church that needs to be got.
BT Irwin:I had coffee last week with a Church of Christ minister here in Michigan.
BT Irwin:He's half my age, he's a few months into his first ever job as a congregational minister and he's with a church that there are a few dozen members now but in its heyday had three or 400 members. And he he told me that they have some some some old timers there that are in their eighties and they tell stories of how things used to be back in the 1970s. And he was telling me over coffee how they they seem bewildered, puzzled about what happened to that congregation, what happened to the good times, and so you know we kind of riffed on that while we had our coffee. You know, was that congregation riding a cultural, demographic and economic wave that crested here in Southeast Michigan at that time? Did they just have better people and programs back then, or was God working in a powerful way that grew that church in the 1970s, which was an uncomfortable question because it implies God is not working to grow that church in 2025. If you were sitting there with us at that conversation last week, what input would you have had to that conversation?
Matt Dabbs:I think the first thing is that whatever gets said would have to be said through like a lot of humility, because I mean, I wasn't there, I don't. It's hard to speak toward people you didn't meet, you know, you didn't really see the lay of the land. So I mean I can speak in just broad generalities, and the broad generality is Church of Christ as a whole. Stan Granberg wrote in the Great Commission Journal 2018, I believe, the article where he charts out church planting numbers for churches of Christ, and almost all of them were planted in the 40s, 50s and 60s. And if you track a church life cycle on a human life cycle, a church is birthed out of excitement, enthusiasm, momentum, buy-in right, like a little baby just grows and grows and grows, and grows and grows, and then you hit a certain point where, as a human, human beings and churches follow a very similar lifespan, congregations a very similar lifespan. So everything starts with growth and then there's a plateau and then a church begins to decline. This is like robert dale wrote a book called to dream. Again, he charts this a bell curve, the bell curve of upward growth, kind of a plateau at the top and then a downward turn, and somewhere on that downward turn. You know, robert dale says if you don't dream again, if you don't re-inflect up a new dream, a new vision, you know, et cetera. You're going to just go into questioning nostalgia. These are basically saying these are the death signs of a church. Once you say the questioning is man, our best days behind us? Right, the nostalgia is exactly what you're explaining, man, remember when, if that's the conversation of the church and there's no vision, to dream again and to re-envision a brighter future and to reinvest into that, just like you did in day one, to almost relaunch into something new, it's going to die and no one should feel bad about that, because that's just Paul's. Churches are not here anymore, right? Somebody in Ephesus stop. I mean, like, at some point you're like, ok, we all moved away or whatever.
Matt Dabbs:But Todd Wilson and his book Multiplier says that 99 plus percent of churches do not make it to 100 years old. So if you take that and you say our churches are planted in the 40s, 50s and 60s, that means they're in their 60s, 70s and 80s, which means they're aged, they're tired. Um, there's just not the investment of energy to to dream again and our dna says there is no new dream, because we've figured that out in the 50s and we're supposed to stick with that vision and that dream, just like that. And so how do you dream again? But if the goal of your movement was satisfied 70 years ago, like and then there are cultural waves, there are demographic waves, the culture was more agreeable to Christianity.
Matt Dabbs:You could pop a church down in certain cities and grow it very easily, I think at that time it seems to me like but the big question is were we making disciples, you know? Were we discipling our own kids or did we silo them off into youth ministry Disciples, you know, were we discipling our own kids or did we silo them off into youth ministry? Matt Markins of Awana said that the number one predictor of longevity of faith in our kids is adult relationships of other Christians in the church. That the more you know adults in the church, they know they'll be more likely to stick around.
Matt Dabbs:But guess what if you silo them off into youth group, which happened in the 80s and the 90s and beyond, then these guys all felt fell off the ship because they weren't connected. Uh, but same guy, eric brown, said you know, you got. My friend said you got two churches meeting in your building. If you have a bible youth ministry, you know, wow, man, that's, that's something, yeah. And so when they hit 18, we we're like, hey, come build the relationships with people up into their eighties, uh, from you know, zero to 80.
Matt Dabbs:And uh, it's been beautiful, it's really been beautiful to watch nearly full inclusion in the life of the church. We do separate them out occasionally for some lessons and just you know, for various age appropriate things, but uh, the ministry is the ministry, the whole church ministry. So, yeah, that's a few responses, and again said in humility because I don't know those guys and you have to look at the specifics, but I think we can speak generally, which is more helpful maybe to this audience. Those are some of the factors involved to say most of our churches are aged and are going to probably shut their doors in the next 20 years or less, and that's just natural.
Matt Dabbs:And that's why churches need to be planting churches. We need to have what's called a living will. Right, like, what do you do with all this when it all goes away? There needs to be vision, but the problem we see with closing churches is there was often very little vision and the decline and dying, and so there's very little vision in what comes next. And so these churches just give their property away to all sorts of crazy stuff by the tens and tens and hundreds of millions of dollars are about to be given away to who knows what, and there's often very little plan for that, and that needs to be addressed in our fellowship.
BT Irwin:Thinking of a congregation that I visited recently and all signs point to that congregation being gone in 10 to 20 years. If they make it another 10 years I'll be surprised, and they have a glorious past. So many good stories in that congregation. But all the signs are there now when I visited. And so if someone from that congregation is listening to you right now and you say you need to be planting churches, I can imagine someone responding to that. You know, shouldn't we be trying to build up this congregation rather than start another congregation? We can barely do what we're doing here without investing energy and personnel in starting a whole new church. What would you say to that?
Matt Dabbs:They're exactly right. It is going to take time and energy to start something like that. Part of the issue is that when you have a facility like that that is aging and is large, it takes a lot of time and energy, which is time and energy that cannot be given to some of the most core things that we're told to do in Scripture, like make disciples, right. So here you have all these business meetings around what's going to happen to the building and fixing the parking lot? You know there's a hole in the roof and all. It's just such a distraction to the ministry. And so, yeah, you only do have so much time and energy and if you're all in your 70s and 80s that's going to be hard. But what some churches are seeing and I'm starting into these conversations with some churches that are your death you actually have the perfect size group to meet in a home. You're a home church. You know you can. You can sell the. The only reason not to sell the facility is the nostalgia. It feels like a failure. Right, we had this and, oh, we lost it. We were the ones who lost it. You know, after all those great years, well, goodness, unless a seed falls to the ground and dies, nothing new is born. Jesus says Right, the Gospel of John, so burn something new out of that. So so, like Heritage 21 works with this, my recruit works with this. Tombstones to Cornerstones is his book, that kind of reframes that you know, the death of this building, this congregation, doesn't have to be a tombstone. It could be the cornerstone of something new. So then you are very simply, meeting in the home, praying together in the word, together, very, very simple, the most basic stuff that everyone there knows how to do. They've been doing it their whole lives, right and without all the headaches of the bills and the stress of the money and what's going on with the hole in the roof and all that. You're already taking care of your house, so that's not a new layer of decision making, right? So I would say, yeah, you're right, there is only so much time and energy. But maybe you're putting it, maybe even putting it in the wrong place, which I'd say, let's be very honest, I kind of got to where you are. So if you keep doing what you're doing, you're probably it's probably not going to improve. So maybe you're the perfect size to birth something new. So maybe you're the perfect size to birth something new.
Matt Dabbs:And what Tom Rainer says, you know, he wrote Autopsy of a Deceased Church and then he wrote Anatomy of a Revived Church, which are two very small quick reads. And in Anatomy of a Revived Church he talks about, you know, somebody needs to be praying for revival. He says one of the best predictors that a church can turn the corner into something new is that somebody in that church body is praying for revival. And he says, even one person, he's seen it as just one person, right. So I'm like, well, that could be me, that could be you. So prayer is essential because, again, it's just surrender, looking Jesus. But that is a shift and I'm trying to help churches make that shift. So I mean, if someone wants to reach out to me and say how do we make a simple home church out of this?
BT Irwin:I'd be glad to help you. You devote a lot of the book to talking about church buildings and I just want to say for everybody listening to this I want to go on record as saying I love church buildings, even Church of Christ church buildings, which a lot of them are not pretty. But every time I go back to my hometown I want to drive by the old Steel Avenue Church of Christ. I want to see the place where my dad preached. I want to see where I grew up. I want to see where I was baptized and came of age. So I feel a real love and attachment to the buildings where so much of my life happened and I remember the people that met in that building.
BT Irwin:But you do devote a lot of your book to talking about how you know, in the Church of Christ we're raised to say that the church is the people, not the building. And yet in our imaginations that building really does become the church. It kind of morphs with the people and we just cannot imagine church without the building, and so that form, the building, kind of takes over function. Talk about some other ways that maybe church buildings. The way we have been doing church is maybe getting in the way of where God may want to take the church next.
Matt Dabbs:Let me tell you about a dream I had. I had this recurring dream that just bothered me for years, dream that just bothered me for years. And it was because, uh, before I was doing ministry, I was working on a PhD in clinical psychology and I decided after September 11th to go into ministry and I had a. I had a really good situation there, um, to work on the PhD. They had given me a full ride and assistantship and all this, and so it was really hard to let that go and I started to my grades started to suffer. I just my heart wasn't in it anymore. I felt called to ministry.
Matt Dabbs:So after I had left it was kind of a really bad experience, leaving the PhD program I had this reoccurring dream that I would be walking through that department at the University of Florida, in Shands Hospital, and just frantic, I mean, it was just an awful dream and I had that dream many times. And then I found myself in Shands Hospital a couple years ago in the waiting room waiting somebody who was there, and I thought to myself I need to go back downstairs in the dental building and walk those halls again because they had moved, the program had moved to a new building. I knew it wasn't there anymore. I thought, man, that might be just good for me just to walk those halls right, and so I went down there. I walked the halls. It was like a biology department or something, like posters on the wall, different professor names. I'm like, oh, there was the door where my our child study lab was. There's this, this, this. And you know, I never had that nightmare ever since I walked those halls and I saw everything had been converted to something else. It just let my mind just like let it go, Let that space go. I'm like, wow, that's pretty amazing that my mind was just trying to process that bad experience, almost trying to like, like, convert it into something good. I don't know what was going on, but I was able to release it. So every single meeting space we have will not be a church someday.
Matt Dabbs:There's a really well-known story from Harding grad school and it was in Memphis where the Harding mansion was on fire and Jack Lewis was standing. Dr Lewis was standing out on the lawn with his wife and his office was in the middle of the fire. And you know, if you know Dr Lewis, his papers everywhere he's in the middle of 15 books, you know, and he says to Annie May, there goes my life's work, or something like that. And then she says she says no, Jack, she's like your life's work is all over the world. You've trained these students, You've sent them in the missions field. You can't take away your life's work. Our church's life's work is not that building. Our church's life's work goes on. It's the children we've raised in there, the Christians we've sent out, the missionaries we've supported in various countries, the disciples we've made, the ministers who've raised up within our ranks. Here you are doing work with Christian Chronicle.
Matt Dabbs:I mean, whatever happens to that building does not diminish the life's work of that church, Because one day it'll be a parking lot, One day it'll be a strip mall, One day it'll be a movie theater, One day it'll be a different church. I mean, something's going to happen to that space, but there's something in us that just feels so defeated by letting it go. But if you change your paradigm to a people paradigm, a kingdom, a true kingdom paradigm, is man. That building, yeah, it's important to me. I've got so many memories. There's some nostalgia there.
Matt Dabbs:But it's not the kingdom. I'm not here to convert buildings. I'm not here to disciple buildings. I don't send buildings on the mission field, so we need to let that go. We can make an idol out of that building, right, and that's a scary thing. And not everyone who is caught up on the building is making an idol out of the building. I'm not saying that. But you can let your heart go so far that it begins taking away from other things that we should be focused on taking away from other things that we should be focused on.
BT Irwin:I want to talk about house churches a little bit, because you obviously you were a minister in what we think of as brick and mortar Church of Christ congregations for years, so what we all think of when we think of church here in the United States. You were a part of that. And then COVID came along, disrupted all of our lives and a group of people started meeting in your backyard and it grew into a congregation, and so one of the things you seem to be saying in the book is that house church may be more conducive to making disciples rather than just church members, to making disciples rather than just church members. If that is what you're saying, then tell us more about that now and how you found that meeting together in homes makes it I don't want to say easier, because discipleship is hard but maybe sets the stage a little better for the kind of disciple making that the Lord calls us to do.
Matt Dabbs:They surveyed a thousand churches and they are asking about disciple making traditional churches, brick and mortar and they asked them over 100 questions, maybe 200 questions, and what they found out was is that about 4% of churches, brick and mortar churches, were making disciples on any meaningful level. 4%, about 4%, and I would say just anecdotally that feels right to me, I don't know. So there are size dynamics at play, which is another. I hate to keep harping on this, but my friend Bobby, he wrote a book called Discipleship that Fits with Alex Absalom and they go through different size groups in the ministry of Jesus you got the 5,000. It's like a public space. You got the 70, ascending the 70 or 72 in Luke 10. You got the 12. You got the three and then you got just Jesus and God. And when you get down to the smaller numbers, the smaller the numbers you have, which is actually a plus for many of our churches, because a lot of our churches are rural and small. Yes, you're engaged in a more transformational space if you know how to leverage that, because there's less ears, there's less fear of sharing if you have room to share, and so it's just more relational the idea of sitting in a room with 500 people looking at the back of a head. One person's up here talking to us. What's the room called? It's the audit, the audiology, the audit, the listening, the listening room. We call it the listening room, right? So I'm going to sit here and listen. I'm not really going to participate much other than listen, maybe pray when you pray, give, sing. That's kind of what I come and do when I'm in a traditional brick and mortar. But in the home church there is participation, there's using of gifts, somebody's upset. We're going to stop, we're going to gather around them, we're going to put our hands on it, we're going to pray for them in the moment, right, like there's just connection, relationality. So if you say to me home church by and large is more relational, which is required for discipleship, the big room for discipleship is not really happening. It can complement discipleship, encouraging worship and encouraging message and some of that teaching like that can complement discipleship. But a lot of preachers think, oh, and when I preach my sermon I'm discipling people. You're kind of really not. I mean, it's not relational. That's one to 300, like a one to three hundred ratio. Like Jesus wasn't even that good. Like Jesus did one to twelve and lost one. You know like you're doing one to two hundred. This is not, it's not right. So it's relational Home church values, participation in these use of gifts which helps us develop as disciples.
Matt Dabbs:When two, three hundred people enter that big room, there's just not a lot of using of gifts which helps us develop as disciples. When two, 300 people enter that big room, there's just not a lot of using of gifts. You have a couple of people using their gifts for the masses and we receive that. But for me, to grow as a disciple like I need to do a Luke 10, I got to go, I got to participate, I got to say the things I use like you know that sort of thing. So it's relational, it's participational and it's intentional. So we have a lot more intentionality about our use of time.
Matt Dabbs:I feel like in the home church it's just more Holy Spirit led for us, more open to the movement of change and change in direction, change in what's going on.
Matt Dabbs:There are so many weeks where the worship and the message and all the pieces just tying together and I could share lots of stories on that. That would just be like, wow, you know, god just really did a cool thing. That when I was in traditional ministry I never got to see that because I was orchestrating every little piece because it has to go off without a hitch, because there's so much at stake, and I don't want to look like I didn't plan it, like there's a lot of stress in that right. There's a lot of performance, anxiety and stress over those things that just we don't have that at home. Church, I mean, people show up and oh, the prayer person's not here and like this and that's not. It's like it'll happen, like we're here just to encourage each other and worship God. Why are we stressed? So I think all that lends itself to easier discipleship because of the smaller numbers. It's more intimate, which is more transformational, which is more relational, which all those things more participational.
BT Irwin:You know, I hear people that are older than us rightly lament. They lament and they mourn what has become of church, and I feel it too, because you and I grew up we grew up, I think, in the 80s and the 90s and we remember the energy and the size, and those memories are very precious to us. You talk about it in your book, and so there's this lamentation, and it sometimes comes across as younger generations just don't care about the church the way they used to, or they just don't have room in their lives for this anymore, or their priorities aren't straight. And I'll say it right now I don't actually buy that. I don't buy that.
BT Irwin:I think that human beings are as hungry for God now as they've ever been and are searching for God like they've always been searching for God, and every generation has challenges and obstacles and distractions to overcome on their way to finding God. So when you talk about house churches, I hear you talking about forming relationships, like real human relationships and sharing life in a way that I think that emerging generations are hungry for, hungry for authenticity and connection, and so tell me if you think I'm right or wrong. I don't believe for one moment that emerging generations just don't care anymore, just don't have room for God anymore. I think they have just as much a hunger for God as any generation ever has. But perhaps the way we did church if I can put it that way is not connecting with them, and maybe the house church movement that you're describing is actually the way that we might reach and connect with people that have given up on the quote-un, unquote old way of doing church.
Matt Dabbs:I'll end with what you just stated on the younger generation and their hunger and desire for God, I think is very, very high, because they have grown up in the technological age, an age of disconnection, an age of high anxiety, all those things that not often you know deep relationships, so there's a lot of holes there that the church is designed to assist them with. Now I feel like you know people our age I mean I'm 46, you know where I'm at and up, I mean my 46, you know where I'm at an up, like I was, I was trained, somewhat self-trained, to have theological debate with people who were denominational, yeah, but I would have, no, I would have had no idea how to engage someone who, like a young person today, right, who just they don't care about that conversation, they don't care, they don't care about debating over those words ace and X, two, three, whatever, all that stuff, right, like do you care? Do you love me? Like can I belong? Are you going to be upset with me? Like there's a lot more big ticket items. You know that they're concerned about upfront, that we can really connect with, but I think we're just so in tuned with, we've been really trained to have a conversation that no one cares about anymore. That's right, right. So if this is one of my prayers, sometimes I'm like God. Sometimes I'm like God, please help me love the lost more, because I really like save people better. You know, like I really enjoy time with Christians, but you get off with the non-Christians.
Matt Dabbs:It gets messy, it gets deep, it gets dirty. I don't feel I'm prepared for it, sometimes like I may not know what to say, which I like, that control I like I like words and I like to know how to use them. But if I but it's like this okay, it's like the guy who has to learn the language because he's so attracted to that young lady that he's got to learn spanish to talk to her or something right, like he's going to go learn it. So go learn the language, go go learn what's got to learn Spanish to talk to her or something right. Like he's going to go learn it. So go learn the language. Go learn what's important to them.
Matt Dabbs:Do an X17 where Paul's like yeah, I've been around your city and I've seen all these idols and you got one of the unknown God. I'm going to contextualize the good news of Jesus to something you already know. Well, go find out what they know. No-transcript fail or if we goof up or if we say the wrong thing, because we love them and we're trying right. So I think it starts with love and discipleship starts with love love of Christ to us and then our love to other people. Incarnation God came in the flesh and showed us and loved us. Now we are here in the flesh with people, right.
BT Irwin:You know, somebody may be a member or a leader in a, in a congregation that's doing very well or hanging on maintaining, and they may say, well, what we're talking about here is just small groups. You know, our congregation can just do small groups. And then I reckon there are some people who are listening to this. Their congregation is plateaued or maybe declining, and they may think, well, I can't possibly say let's give this thing up, break the whole thing down and, you know, sell the building and let's meet in homes going forward, Like, as you imagine, the kind of folks that are listening to this conversation right now, and you're making a strong case for house church. How might a standard brick and mortar Church of Christ experiment with? Okay, God, is this something that you want? This?
Matt Dabbs:congregation to experiment with, to partner with and start praying about those things. If there's fasting and prayer, say like communal discernment, like put it to the congregation, ask for them to pray, ask for them to start sharing what's kind of bubbling up in their prayer life when it comes to, you know, praying over those things and when you start that intentionality of working towards something like that, there is no rhyme or mathematical formula to it. So I can't really illustrate exactly how that would go. But then we've seen things like we pray for partners and then I start getting phone calls from people who want to partner. We pray for people in a new community to come and we prayer walk and then you know, we had people walk in who I didn't even meet but I walked past their house and prayed for them the Saturday before the gathering and they walked over. They heard the worship and walked over and I didn't even get to talk to them the Saturday before but I stopped in front of their house and asked God that they would come to our gathering. So prayer like God, like what's our next chapter look like? And maybe it's to re-energize exactly how it was. I mean, I'm not God, I'm not anti-brick and mortar. You know it's like God's going to give different people different answers. He's going to give different situations, different sets of giftedness, different congregations different answers. Right, so he may start supplying things, bringing you some people who help you do certain things, who have certain skill sets. Listen to that, follow that. You know there's no one thing saying you got to just funnel it on the home churches or something like that. But if somebody like with us now multiple times, you start praying about home church and then somebody calls the church office or moves into town, it's like you know, hey, we grew up in the Church of Christ and we really love home churches, but we're looking for some connection to a local congregation. Would you kind of like like be our eldership or over us or whatever, to help us start this? You just don't know who God's going to send. So I just think, praying over those things very boldly and specifically like God, if you want us to start something like this, please send the people, raise them up, make them clear, you know, to start helping us connect the dots and then just start listening and watching and keep praying and just see what bubbles up. But that would be where I would start, you know, and then as those people come online, as the pieces kind of connect, you feel like God's answering that prayer. He wants us to do this.
Matt Dabbs:It's like the legacy of your church can be what the church births like. Like one day I'm dead and gone, but I've got two boys who are teenagers and I'm trying to develop them into, you know, spiritual disciples of Christ who are serious about their faith, spiritual disciples of Christ who are serious about their faith, and they're great young men and they're going to do far better than I've ever done in their life Right With with this, all this stuff and man, I'm so happy about that, like it wasn't all about me and it's not so. My point is we have to birth things. Like there has to be a passing on of the DNA and, and if we don't do that, uh, churches, churches. There's no verse in the bible. It's like church is one and done right, like we can start churches from churches.
Matt Dabbs:So I would just be in prayer about that. I ask god for help. Follow his lead wherever, wherever he takes you, uh, and don't be, be afraid about that. But you know, it could well be that you have a little group of people there that go. You know we've been praying about this and just us couple people, we really just are gonna go ahead and start that in our home. You know, will you bless that and just resource them, bless them, and we always have a prayer team for everything we do. So ask some people and say, would you devote yourselves to praying for this new thing from day one? Start praying for their neighborhood prayer walk the neighborhood. Start praying for their neighborhood prayer walk the neighborhood. Talk about that in the book. Have some resources on how to do that. There's a lot of QR codes in the book on resources.
BT Irwin:But that would be where I would start. I'm going to ask you one one follow-up question to that, and I touched on it earlier. I don't know, from my experience in our community over 49 years experience, uh, in our community over 49 years I don't know that we are particular. We are particularly good at discernment, at congregational discernment. Um, I don't know that that's a muscle that we have exercised a lot in our tradition and, uh, when we were talking about brick and mortar early and how, uh, how people uh imagine the church as a building or people who meet in a particular building and have particular programs together.
BT Irwin:I think we can tend to pray in such a way as we've already made up our minds what we think the outcome will be or should be. And so, when you recommend that we start with prayer, there are different ways to approach prayer. As a congregation, the elders can say we're going to go into a boardroom and we're going to pray about this together and we're going to come out and reveal to the church what we've heard from the Lord. There are particular things a congregation might pray for, like help us start a house church ministry. That's one way, but you're already telling God what you want to do, rather than saying God what are you doing, what do you want to do? So I want to offer you an opportunity to be a little more specific about the particular practices and posture and how a congregation might enter into prayer, seeking to discern and seeking to be completely open together, as an entire congregation, to what God may be doing.
Matt Dabbs:And and I'm going to- start with some presuppositions, some pre-beliefs that I think are necessary for putting ourselves in a posture to receive what God is doing. So the first one is that God is active in the world. If we don't think that there's no point in seeking any kind of guidance and we're pretty much on our own with our own logic and reasoning, right, and that's how I live, for quite well, I ministered that way for quite a while, not not a hundred percent, but like more than I should have. Um, so god is working. Second, god is loving. Okay, he wants the best outcome for the world. He's not malevolent, he's not out to get us, he's not going to take us down some awful path. If we seek his direction and we take it Now, that's not to say there couldn't be suffering or hardship.
Matt Dabbs:I mean, read 1 Peter. You know you could do the right thing and suffer for it, but you're suffering with Christ. So if you believe that God is working, you believe he is good and loving, he's active in the world and that he's able to communicate in whatever way he sees fit I don't have a formula for that, but he's able to get your attention, show you some things that will give you some direction. Then you begin praying into those things. God, we need your help. We want to work where you're working. We want to move where you're moving. Where you're not moving, we don't want to be there. We want to be where you are at, working alongside you. It's like that old african proverb. It's like don't get so far behind god that you can't see his face, or so far ahead of god that you can't hear his voice, but walk next to him where you can see his face and where you can hear his voice. We want to walk next to you, in step with you, all the way. So take us where you want to take us and wherever you send us, god, we will boldly go. If it's shut down this building, we will sell the building. If it's rent a storefront, if it's, you know, start, send five people over there and start prayer walking. That we'll do it, you know. But I think if you start with those presuppositions, if you don't have those presuppositions, it's going to be really hard, like really hard. It's kind of like orphans, right, like you know, and that's just not a good recipe.
Matt Dabbs:We'll have a leadership pipeline that's just dry and we've relied on the seminaries, which are doing fantastic work and they're some of my very dearest friends. But we've relied on the seminaries, to which are doing fantastic work and they're some of my very dearest friends. But we've relied on the seminaries to develop, to third-party develop, our congregational leaders and I have an MDiv it's over here on the wall and I love education. I could be in school every day for the rest of my life and I would love it.
Matt Dabbs:But the biblical thing is we raise up leaders from within. We disciple our own people. Churches should be leadership pipelines, congregations should be leadership pipelines, not the farm league of you know. The little church raises the guy up and we grab him after a couple of years and we put him in the bigger church and he is pretty good and he goes to the bigger church. It's like that's such a weird, not spiritual system. I mean I'm not saying god doesn't use it, god's got, but I'm just saying it's a little weird. Um so, but we got to get back to the discipleship and part of that's going to be okay. Jesus called them, he's called us. Jesus has equipped us. Let's get equipped and that means the everyday person, because we're not going to be able to afford the other guy because we're shrinking Every day. Person needs to learn this stuff. This is my mission right now is teaching the everyday person how to learn.
Matt Dabbs:How do you share your testimony? How do you share the gospel? How do you go on a prayer walk? How do you fast? How do you pray? How do you discern the movement of God? Listen for God. You know like that's one of the most important things. He said in John 10, my sheep will know my voice. They will be able to discern the difference between me and a stranger. It's like, do we know how to do that? Like, do we ever sit and listen and pray that God will guide us? It sounds crazy. I would have said 20 years ago you're crazy for saying that. This guy's a lunatic. He's a false teacher. Run away, you know. But man, he will. He will help you. He will help you and you will know. You will know it was from him.
Matt Dabbs:When you pray big and bold and stuff starts happening that's not in your control, that's beyond your power and ability, and it starts lining up, you're like, wow, he did that. There is no other answer than that. He did that. But you're going to need to believe big and pray big. Like he says in James don't believe in doubt, pray. You know, don't pray and doubt, Pray and believe, you'll do it. And so, man, learn the skills. And again in the book there's QR codes to all kinds of stuff to learn that.
Matt Dabbs:If the everyday Christian would learn these basic ministry skills that we farmed out to the professionals and third-party this for all these years, it's left us anemic, it's left us not using our gifts, it's left us not knowing how to do anything and we've been fine with it for all these years. It's like it's time to learn the skills Jesus showed us how to do it. If you want some help, I'll help you, you know. So let's, let's go. But I'm afraid that we are just so. We've become so comfortable and complacent with just sitting and listening and all that that it can. That deeply concerns me and I've been beating the drum for a while now and I don't get a lot back and I'm like man, only God knows, I can't say it's going to turn out poorly, only God knows, but I want to be where he's moving and I want to help.
BT Irwin:I'm confident that it's not going to turn out poorly because, it's going to turn out beyond what we can ask or imagine the question is will we be there?
Matt Dabbs:We'll be there. I want to be there, that's right.
BT Irwin:Are we going to get with God?
Matt Dabbs:That's it. That's it.
BT Irwin:And that's what I think your book is all about. We have Matt Dabbs here. He's the author of Restoring a Movement a Hopeful Future for Churches of Christ. He leads Home Church Resources, a ministry that supports those who want to make disciples for Jesus Christ through the planting, growth and spreading of house churches. Links galore will be in the show notes, matt, thanks for dropping by our homes today.
Matt Dabbs:Thank you for having me. I appreciate you being patient with me and for all the hard work you put into this.
BT Irwin:It's been a pleasure to have you. Thank you. We hope something you heard in this episode encouraged, enlightened or enriched you in some way. If it did, thanks be to God and please pay it forward. Subscribe to this podcast and share it with a friend. Recommend and review it wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. Your subscription, recommend and review it wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. Your subscription, recommendation and review help us reach more people. Please send your comments, ideas and suggestions to podcast at christianchronicleorg. And don't forget our ministry to inform and inspire Christians and congregations around the world is a nonprofit ministry that relies on your generosity. So if you like the show and you want to keep it going and make it even better, please make a tax-deductible gift to the Christian Chronicle at christianchronicleorg slash donate.
BT Irwin:The Christian Chronicle podcast is a production of the Christian Chronicle Incorporated, informing and inspiring Church of Christ congregations, members and ministries around the world since 1943. The Christian Chronicle's managing editor is Audrey Jackson, editor-in-chief Bobby Ross Jr and executive director and CEO Eric Trigestad. The Christian Chronicle podcast is written, directed, hosted and edited by BT Irwin and is produced by James Flanagan at Podcast your Voice Studios in the Motor City, detroit, michigan, usa. Until next time. May grace and peace be yours in abundance.