Speaker: [00:00:01] how was the church described in the Book of Acts? We are in the second part of a [00:00:06] two-part series. We started in Matthew, really understood the way that the Gospels [00:00:11] described the church from the perspective of Jesus, and then you turn the page to Acts, and all of a sudden now this [00:00:16] church, this new community, this new entity starts to come into shape.
Speaker: So before I [00:00:21] describe some of the foundational passages for us to get a really description of what the [00:00:26] early church was like, check out, uh, what John Mark Comer says to summarize [00:00:31] his take on what is the church
Speaker 2: What we call church is not an event on [00:00:36] Sunday. It's not a service. It's not a podcast. It's not a 501[c][3]. It's [00:00:41] certainly not a building. It is a new kind of family, not based [00:00:46] on blood, but based on apprenticeship to Jesus, [00:00:51] and through Him to the Father. The word Jesus uses here is [00:00:56] adelphoi in Greek. Can you say that?
Speaker 2: Adelphoi. Well done. This is a word you should [00:01:01] know. Uh, it basically just means brothers and sisters or siblings. Uh, [00:01:06] brethren is the old-school English translation. The writer Paul uses the w- just the [00:01:11] writer Paul in the New Testament uses the word adelphoi over 130 [00:01:16] times in his letters, not to mention all sorts of other [00:01:21] family imagery and language.
Speaker 2: No other [00:01:26] metaphor for the community of Jesus occurs more frequently in the New Testament than [00:01:31] family. The church is also likened to a temple, to a house, [00:01:36] to a body, to a city on a hill, but for the most part, those are one-off analogies. [00:01:41] The analogy used over and over and over again is [00:01:46] family
Speaker: All right, now going back to this image that I showed you guys. This kind of [00:01:51] demonstrates the foundational way to think about the church from the ground up. I love starting from first principles, [00:01:56] and we look at in the New Testament, the first time Jesus really [00:02:01] describes this new community that's gonna come into existence as the disciples are sacrificing.[00:02:06]
Speaker: It's as family. You see it in Mark 10. It's in the other Synoptic Gospels as well, when he confronts the rich, young ruler, [00:02:11] and then he tells his disciples that anyone who has left father, mother, brother, [00:02:16] sister, houses, fields, will not fail to receive in this lifetime 100 times more [00:02:21] mothers and sisters and brothers and fields And houses.
Speaker: So this idea of this abundant [00:02:26] multi-generational family is the absolute bedrock of the way Jesus saw this. And then you see [00:02:31] Paul using adelphoi, like John Mark Comer describes, 130 times in the epistles. [00:02:36] And so this is the way they saw each other. So that was the first foundational stone that we looked at.
Speaker: [00:02:41] The first time Jesus uses the word ekklesia in the Confession, that on this confession that Jesus is Lord, that [00:02:46] Jesus is Messiah, that Jesus is the Son of God, I will build my church, my ekklesia. What is the ekklesia?
Speaker: The [00:02:51] next foundation stone is Matthew 18, where we get the second and the only other time [00:02:56] in the Gospels where you see the word ekklesia or church.
Speaker: This is coming where Jesus is describing this parallel [00:03:01] government, this way of resolving conflict, this place of binding and loosing, this place where, where two or three are [00:03:06] gathered, there I am right there in their midst, that there's a really flat nature to [00:03:11] this government, that we're all participants in it.
Speaker: And this is actually consistent with the way that the [00:03:16] ekklesia was seen in the first century. It was a governmental word. This is the reason why Jesus is talking about a kingdom. And then [00:03:21] we look at the New Testament, the rest of the epistles, you start hearing all this church language. What happened to the kingdom language?
Speaker: It's [00:03:26] embedded in the word ekklesia, it just isn't there in the way we think of the word church. And then the last one [00:03:31] we looked at was Matthew 28, where Jesus describes the activity of the church as being creating this [00:03:36] apprenticeship movement of disciples making disciples on how they follow Jesus.
Speaker: So that's where we [00:03:41] left off. Now, you turn the page to the book of Acts and you start to see [00:03:46] the emergence of this incredible thing, and I wanna look at three different elements that you see emerge in [00:03:51] Acts 2. You see the emergence of the household church, and I wanna talk about the difference between a family [00:03:56] context and the household context.
Speaker: That's a very important [00:04:01] distinction that you see here in the book of Acts. Then the idea that the church is [00:04:06] like a body or is the body of Christ. We're gonna look at Acts 9. And then ultimately this [00:04:11] fascinating thing that happens in Acts 15 when there's a dispute there's this complex [00:04:16] hierarchy, this spirit of mutual submission, of debate.
Speaker: It's fascinating [00:04:21] how those things come into existence in the church. Now we're gonna run into major problems with all [00:04:26] three of these ideas because the modern Western person has a replacement for each [00:04:31] of these concepts, right? That we value more highly. So we [00:04:36] do not value the household. Instead, we value the nuclear family.
Speaker: We do not value the idea of being an [00:04:41] interdependent body. Instead, we value hyper-individualism. And we do not value mutual [00:04:46] submission. We value personal sovereignty. And these three things are radically different [00:04:51] Than the kind of church that was described in the Book of Acts, and this is why there's gonna be a constant [00:04:56] fight in values between the current culture, which is not really aligned with these [00:05:01] values, and the emergence of the church.
Speaker: And that's why we're constantly building these [00:05:06] strange sort of church structures that are avoiding or syncretizing [00:05:11] with the way that the things that culture value. Seeing are there ways that we can kind of compromise, we can [00:05:16] alter the vision of the church that you see emerge in Acts to better fit [00:05:21] the Western culture?
Speaker: And this has been a constant debate. So the first place you see this is in Acts [00:05:26] 2:42-47. So you have Peter preaching this sermon on Pentecost. [00:05:31] 3,000 people are coming to faith. They are being trained up. This is during a massive [00:05:36] festival in Jerusalem where you have people from all over the Roman world visiting [00:05:41] Jerusalem, and this is what it describes after these new believers come [00:05:46] into the faith.
Speaker: It says, "They devoted themselves to four things, the apostles' teaching, to [00:05:51] fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer." Those are the four things. I think Acts 2:42, that [00:05:56] four-part description is one of the most inspired verses in the Bible when it comes to [00:06:01] trying to understand the essence of what the activity of the church looks like.
Speaker: It's a [00:06:06] devotion to the apostolic teaching, to being in fellowship with one another, to breaking bread and [00:06:11] either having meals, including the Lord's supper, right? And to prayer. Then it says, "Everyone was filled with [00:06:16] awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were [00:06:21] together and had everything in common.
Speaker: They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had [00:06:26] need. Every day, they continued to meet together in the temple course. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with [00:06:31] glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who [00:06:36] were being saved."
Speaker: Now, there's a, a really important question that, that I think when we're trying to understand the nature of the church that [00:06:41] structurally needs to be asked, and that is why didn't they build buildings? Why didn't they start worship services? Why [00:06:46] is there so much described as they're meeting in these houses?
Speaker: And this [00:06:51] has caused an endless amount of speculation and conversation within the Church of the last 2,000 [00:06:56] years. And that is, were they doing this because of persecution? And it's almost as if we believe, well, Peter [00:07:01] and the apostles got together and said, "Hey, guys, you know, what, what kind of church model do you think we should go [00:07:06] with here?
Speaker: You think we should, you know, go with the megachurch, uh, maybe house church, maybe something in [00:07:11] between?" And they decided for some reason to settle on more of a house church model. But [00:07:16] every generation kinda gets to have that same conversation over again. What do you guys think? You know, what, what does our culture need right [00:07:21] now?
Speaker: Should we go with this model of church, that model of church? After all, this is just a description of what they did. [00:07:26] It's not prescriptive of anything that we're being commanded to do. So let's just endlessly innovate our [00:07:31] way into a model of church that might fit the culture. Now, this is very [00:07:36] unusual framing of what happened.
Speaker: Of course, that conversation never occurred. What so many people don't [00:07:41] understand, there's a couple of really critical elements that we have to really tease out. They don't understand the essence of the [00:07:46] first century Roman and Jewish household. It was a really fascinating thing.
Speaker: In [00:07:51] Greek it's called an oikos, or oikos. This oikos was the [00:07:56] foundation of the governing structure of both the Jewish and Roman world. If you read Roman [00:08:01] law, there was a lot about the responsibility given to the households. Everybody was a part of a household. [00:08:06] So you had your family, right?
Speaker: But your extended family was a part of that. There was a [00:08:11] particular leader over every oikos who was called the patres familia. This patres familias was [00:08:16] the man who was ruling over that household, and he wasn't just given incredible power, no responsibility. He [00:08:21] was held liable for things that happened inside of his household.
Speaker: He would be [00:08:26] financially accountable for things that, that occurred. He had to provide for every single [00:08:31] person.
Speaker: This was a huge responsibility to be given, and there were all kinds of laws that they did give him [00:08:36] privileges and responsibilities, but this household was a really important structure.
Speaker: Now this has been [00:08:41] completely destroyed. We no longer live in these multigenerational households. We live in these [00:08:46] nuclear families.
Speaker: Now, one of the reasons I'm really teasing this out is [00:08:51] because everybody existed within one of these households, and every household in the first century was [00:08:56] an economic engine.
Speaker: It owned businesses, it owned assets. It was constantly owning [00:09:01] and trying to acquire assets in order to expand, in order to provide for everyone in the [00:09:06] household, not just food, but jobs. That was not the responsibility of the government or some [00:09:11] economic system that was going around. This was the responsibility of that, that patres [00:09:16] familias.
Speaker: He had to provide income, or he had to use his connections to try [00:09:21] to provide for every person in his household. And so when the Holy Spirit came [00:09:26] on Pentecost, and it erupted and just exploded through, these [00:09:31] thousands of people... And the reason why it says there were 3,000 men saved, a lot of people think, "Oh, [00:09:36] my gosh, the Bible is so sexist.
Speaker: It's so, obsessed with men." It's [00:09:41] because it's counting the households. That's ultimately what really is important to understand from [00:09:46] a structural perspective, how many households were entering.
Speaker: Well, how do you [00:09:51] count the households? You count the patres familias.
Speaker: And so you, you're seeing 3,000 households come into the [00:09:56] kingdom, and then all of a sudden, what does it say? They were breaking bread in houses, right? [00:10:01] They, people were being invited into houses. They were constantly gathering every day inside [00:10:06] of houses. And so this, again, you have to picture these households, right, the [00:10:11] oikos, not a nuclear family, because they are so much stronger [00:10:16] and more robust.
Speaker: They're like a, a small business today, where you have [00:10:21] 20 to 30 people attached to it. So when you are leading a meal, [00:10:26] you'd have access to 20 or 30 people that would be all serving and providing and [00:10:31] hosting, and this really meant that you didn't really need to build churches you had this other [00:10:36] structure,
Speaker: And that structure was far more robust. It also allowed the church to grow at a [00:10:41] much faster speed.
Speaker: I mean, imagine having to, you know, send people off to seminary for years and years of [00:10:46] training so that they can pastor a church, and then trying to raise the money to [00:10:51] construct a building that it would use a couple hours a week.
Speaker: This would've slowed down the [00:10:56] explosive exponential expansion of the church had they embraced that kind of [00:11:01] idea. So there was no way they were going to do that.
Speaker: They had this infrastructure already in the households, in the [00:11:06] oikoses, and this is why you see, these different households constantly referenced.
Speaker: And the way they, they [00:11:11] are referenced throughout the rest of the New Testament is through the patra familias, right?
Speaker: So Philemon, [00:11:16] Crispus, Gaius, the Philippian jailer, Cornelius. You're [00:11:21] constantly encountering these men because they, they were leading households. And [00:11:26] there were a minority of women who also were over households.
Speaker: For some reason, if their [00:11:31] husband died, then there would be a, a, a woman that would step up, and that... This is likely what happened with Lydia.
Speaker: [00:11:36] There was a constant problem, of course, people dying prematurely in this day and age, [00:11:41] much more so than today, and so you did have female-led households as well.
Speaker: And [00:11:46] they were also a robust part of the infrastructure. But everybody belonged to one of these households, [00:11:51] and this was the way that they worked.
Speaker: So we have to understand that, and one of the [00:11:56] major collisions that I've spent my life really trying to decide is can we [00:12:01] experience the New Testament kind of church [00:12:06] without the reemergence of the household?
Speaker: Can we use [00:12:11] nuclear families, Western, fragile nuclear families that don't [00:12:16] own businesses, that are not used to working together as a team, that [00:12:21] are very fragile in terms of As soon as their children become old enough to actually be [00:12:26] of great help to the family in terms of the infrastructure, they all leave and start over [00:12:31] again.
Speaker: This would've been very, very strange, of course, in the first century. Can we experience a New [00:12:36] Testament ecclesiology without the existence of the primary structure that made that [00:12:41] ecclesiology, that idea of church work, practically speaking? [00:12:46] And my conclusion, very, frustrating for me, like I, I, I wanted to believe that [00:12:51] we could do it, was I don't think we can.
Speaker: We can't experience this without [00:12:56] reestablishing and reviving the idea of household. Now, I have since [00:13:01] come to believe that this is such a important thing to do for so many other reasons, for children, for women, [00:13:06] for men to know how they're designed and how God has made them, that [00:13:11] there's actually something I think extremely important about the multi-generational extended family [00:13:16] That we have just decided to completely ignore or eclipse with [00:13:21] the nuclear family ideal.
Speaker: And of course, this isn't working well for us.
Speaker: [00:13:26] So the first move that I wanna describe that you have to make if you really wanna understand the Acts church is you have to [00:13:31] understand these households. The, the oikos was a structure that was [00:13:36] critical for all of the things that we see them doing here, even selling property, selling fields.
Speaker: We [00:13:41] kind of maybe picture just an individual family or a person that was wealthy.
Speaker: That's not the [00:13:46] right picture. Everyone belonged to an oikos, and these oikoses were very [00:13:51] much trying to build assets all the time. And so they had acquired different assets, different fields, [00:13:56] different things, and so they could sell those things without completely destroying the economic [00:14:01] structure that they were creating.
Speaker: And it was really important that they create a lot of liquid money available [00:14:06] for the Church of Pentecost because so many people were staying for weeks and maybe even [00:14:11] months after this festival in Jerusalem in order to be trained in this new [00:14:16] way, the Way they were calling it. And so they needed a lot of money to feed these people because [00:14:21] there was no other way for them if they had this sudden desire to stay and be trained [00:14:26] as disciples of Jesus.
Speaker: They needed to be housed, and they needed to be fed. And [00:14:31] so the oikos was there to do this work for them, and it created this amazing experience you [00:14:36] see in Acts 2:42-47.
Speaker: Now the second thing we notice in terms of [00:14:41] understanding the church, and so you can see the household hubs is the next [00:14:46] foundation.
Speaker: Then we see the emergence of the idea of the church as a body, [00:14:51] and this is a really important, uh, thing to understand. One of the, one of the things I think I would disagree with [00:14:56] what John Mark Comer said in that clip, um, that the family is the only [00:15:01] foundational picture or analogy for the church.
Speaker: I would say the body is [00:15:06] also one that's used repeatedly and is more literal than it is [00:15:11] figurative. I think the thing that's unique about... Like, when you talk about the temple, that's more figurative, like some of the other examples he was [00:15:16] giving. Um, a city on a hill, right? I think it'd be great to build a city on a hill, but that's [00:15:21] probably figurative, uh, of the church.
Speaker: However, family, we are literally a [00:15:26] family 'cause we have one Father, and, um, we're all brothers and sisters. We've been adopted into a family, and [00:15:31] so there is a literal sense to the fact that we are, um, a family. And I've really [00:15:36] wrestled with this question for a long time. Is it literally true that we're a body?
Speaker: Now, the reason [00:15:41] why I think it's important to actually consider this is because of what happens in Acts 9, and I think it [00:15:46] shocked Paul, and he never got over it. So he's on the way to Damascus, and all of a sudden, a [00:15:51] blazing light. He's... You know, you guys remember the story. He's there- heading to D- Damascus [00:15:56] to imprison Christians.
Speaker: Um, and he's got letters [00:16:01] from the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem. He's a official [00:16:06] governmental, um, authority from Jerusalem. He's like an apostle. We're gonna talk about what the word [00:16:11] apostle means. It wasn't a spiritual word in the first century. It's a sent person. He's on [00:16:16] an apostolic mission from the Sanhedrin to Damascus in order to [00:16:21] imprison Christians, and on his way there, he sees a blinding light.
Speaker: His companions, see the [00:16:26] light, but they can't hear the voice, and all of a sudden Paul hears this voice, you know, "Paul, Paul, why are you [00:16:31] persecuting me?" And what shocks Paul, I think, [00:16:36] is the word me. He's like, "I'm not... Who are you, Lord? I'm [00:16:41] not persecuting you." "I am Jesus, who you are persecuting."
Speaker: In other [00:16:46] words, when you hurt these people, imprison these people, [00:16:51] kill these people, you are doing that to me. [00:16:56] Now, why is that important? When Jesus is saying, like, "I am experiencing that. [00:17:01] That is me you are hurting," I believe this is the foundation of where Paul gets his [00:17:06] idea that the Church is the body of Christ.
Speaker: And so in this sense, yeah, [00:17:11] there's a, there's a literary way in which this is true, but there's also a literal way this is [00:17:16] true. Like, there's something being experienced by Jesus in heaven [00:17:21] when the Church is undergoing things. And this not only [00:17:26] demonstrates a fascinating and critical connection between the Church and Christ, and [00:17:31] then you see this played out more and more and more as, as Paul talks about, that Christ is the head and we are the [00:17:36] body, but it also plays out in the nature of our relationships with each other.
Speaker: And so Paul then [00:17:41] describes this in 1 Corinthians 12. He says, "To each is given the manifestation of the [00:17:46] Spirit for the common good. For the body does not consist of one member," he says in verse 14, "but of [00:17:51] many. If the foot should say, 'Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,' that would not make it any less a part of [00:17:56] the body."
Speaker: In other words, there, you can't look at any particular part and say there's a, one part is a, [00:18:01] less a part of the body than another part. No, no, no. You can't do that. And then in verse 21 he says, "The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no [00:18:06] need of you,' nor again, the head to the feet, 'I have no need of you.'"
Speaker: Like, [00:18:11] that's, sort of a insane idea that you could say that some part of the [00:18:16] body is, is not a part of the body 'cause it's not this part, it's that part, or some part of the body can say to [00:18:21] another part, "I don't need you. I don't need you." And then he kinda summarizes. He says, "If one member suffers, all [00:18:26] suffer together.
Speaker: If one member is honored, all rejoice together." So there's a [00:18:31] sense in which in the same way that Jesus is suffering when his church is suffering, we as his [00:18:36] body suffer when another member of the body suffers. And so Paul is very interested in [00:18:41] this very hyper-interdependent life. Now, this is a huge problem for us, you guys, in our Western [00:18:46] culture.
Speaker: Like, this is not a strong value. We do not love interdependence. We [00:18:51] are, as sociologists have said, the most hyper-individualistic culture that's ever existed on [00:18:56] the face of the earth. We are so obsessed with individualism, and so the idea that I would [00:19:01] voluntarily become interdependent with another person or with a whole community of people, this is [00:19:06] crazy.
Speaker: We gain wealth in order to not have to depend on each other, to not have [00:19:11] to put up with each other's stuff.
Speaker: That's really the American dream. That's the Western ideal. [00:19:16] As David Brooks says, when Americans become wealthy, they purchase loneliness. Like, [00:19:21] the whole point for us of acquiring financial independence is to [00:19:26] become independent.
Speaker: It's all in that word, right? We declare [00:19:31] our independence from each other, and so this is just a constant problem [00:19:36] with our cultural values and the idea that Christ wants the body [00:19:41] to be like a body, like an interdependent entity. So this is the second foundation, and [00:19:46] you see it really in Acts 9. And then the last one I wanna point out in terms of just the foundations, the next one is this [00:19:51] culture of mutual submission to each other's gifts, including a complex [00:19:56] hierarchy that you see emerging in the early church between various groups of people, [00:20:01] elders, deacons, these fivefold ministers like apostles, prophets, teachers.
Speaker: It's really [00:20:06] interesting the way that this all works together and the people are submitting to various spiritual [00:20:11] gifts as well. You have lists of spiritual gifts, and so this is really a big deal. This is fascinating. [00:20:16] So you're getting kind of the mechanics of the way the body is working. You see a lot more of that in 1 Corinthians 12, [00:20:21] 1 Corinthians 13, where he famously talks about the importance that love be just the beating heart of everything [00:20:26] that happens in the church.
Speaker: In the 1 Corinthians 14 where you get a description of how they gathered, right? Where they come together and [00:20:31] it says, "What then, brothers?" In verse 26, "When you come together, each one has a hymn or a lesson or a revelation, [00:20:36] a tongue, interpretation. Let all things be done for building up." In other words, you could just get the body together, it's just [00:20:41] gonna naturally feed itself because there's so many different parts of the body that these parts of the body [00:20:46] are designed for each other, and there's sort of like the nutrients the body needs is in the body and can [00:20:51] be working as the Holy Spirit fills each person and gives each person the inspiration to [00:20:56] work out their part.
Speaker: And so he's describing this really fascinating idea, and This is kind of the final [00:21:01] step that we're gonna describe here. The family, the confession, um, the parallel government, the apprenticeships, these [00:21:06] household hubs, the body, and ultimately this mutual submission that happens in Acts 15. So we're [00:21:11] gonna walk through this fascinating thing that happens.
Speaker: There's a massive controversy that erupts [00:21:16] in the early church about whether or not Gentiles need to be circumcised in order to be a part of the people of God, which [00:21:21] was obviously a requirement in the Old Testament. Probably a majority of the church in Jerusalem felt like this was absolutely [00:21:26] necessary, and so Paul and Barnabas they're debating this, and they're coming down from Antioch to have this debate.[00:21:31]
Speaker: We read in, in Acts 15, "Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem [00:21:36] to the apostles and the elders about this question." And then verse six says, "The apostles and the elders were gathered [00:21:41] together to consider the matter, and after there had been much debate
Speaker: So everybody gets a chance to [00:21:46] speak You have apostles speaking, you have elders speaking. Man, I, I would love to be in that room. [00:21:51] And then there's this authoritative stance that both Peter and James seem to take. So [00:21:56] Peter stands up and says, " Then it seems good to the apostles and to the elders and the whole church to choose men [00:22:01] from among them and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas."
Speaker: So you've got Peter making the case that [00:22:06] Gentiles should be a part of the church without circumcision. James then agrees, "Wow, this is a burden that we've not been [00:22:11] able to carry." And then as a group it says, "It seemed good to the apostles And to the [00:22:16] elders with the whole church to choose men from among them and [00:22:21] send them to Antioch and Paul and Barnabas.
Speaker: So there's three different governmental [00:22:26] bodies mentioned. There's apostles, elders, and the ekklesia, the whole [00:22:31] ekklesia. The ekklesia was, again, it's a first-century word for when an assembly would [00:22:36] occur in order to make governmental decisions on behalf of the [00:22:41] people. And usually the, the various paterfamilias would be there to represent their [00:22:46] households because they're also a part of the government.
Speaker: And so they would assemble to help make [00:22:51] decisions on behalf of whatever we are going to do. And so that whole ekklesia gathered, and everybody was [00:22:56] listened to, various gifts. But you see a very complex hierarchy emerge between [00:23:01] apostles, elders, and the ekklesia as a whole. So I know this is kind of [00:23:06] complicated, but man, this is so amazing.
Speaker: What we're needing to see here, and If [00:23:11] you haven't had a chance to listen to part one, please listen to that, then listen to this again and really try to get [00:23:16] a sense. We need a much cleaner, clear, intuitive [00:23:21] sense of what was being created in these different foundational elements, the family, the [00:23:26] confession, the parallel government, the apprenticeship movement, the household hubs, the body, and ultimately this [00:23:31] complex hierarchy of mutual submission between various governmental parts of this parallel government [00:23:36] needed to have various officers, and they worked in conjunction with each other.[00:23:41]
Speaker: This, by the way, just I hope you guys see, is so different than the way that we tend to think about [00:23:46] churches today, which are mostly worship service ministries trying to really [00:23:51] live out, excellently that portion of what the Church needs to express, which is to [00:23:56] worship God, and to form some gathering on a regular [00:24:01] basis for teaching.
Speaker: Very important, but there's so much more to the way [00:24:06] that the Church functioned. But we need to have this sort of foundation of first [00:24:11] principles emergence of what the Church was designed to be by really understanding how both the [00:24:16] Gospels describe the Church and how the Book of Acts describe the Church and how that plays itself out in the [00:24:21] Epistles.
Speaker: So hopefully this is helpful. I'd love to talk to you guys more about this. If you wanna dive more into how to, like, [00:24:26] live out in ecclesiology like this, that's what we do at One Thousand Houses, 1kh.org. [00:24:31] You can go. We do cohorts all the time where we train households how to begin to [00:24:36] reestablish their life as households of faith, where they are becoming hubs of [00:24:41] disciple-making, a disciple-making hub, an outpost for the Kingdom of God to make disciples on behalf of their [00:24:46] city and to begin to really see these movements happen and then the reestablishment of a city church where you have these [00:24:51] various officers and people that can form this kind of government the ekklesia, the people of God, the [00:24:56] kingdom of God through the church.
Speaker: This is what we desperately wanna see come back [00:25:01] into into our lives in the Western culture. But man, we really do smash up against [00:25:06] some major obstacles. So please check that out. Go to 1ks.org and let me know if there's something that you or [00:25:11] we can do together to help bring about this for your city
