April 23, 2025 • 58 mins
"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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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
BT Irwin (00:03):
Family and friends, neighbors and, most of all,
strangers.
Welcome to the ChristianChronicle podcast.
We're bringing you the storiesshaping Church of Christ
congregations and members aroundthe world.
May what you are about to hearbless you and honor God.
I'm BT Irwin.
It is an honor and pleasure tobe your host.
Over the last few years theChristian Chronicle has been
(00:26):
covering Church of Christcongregations that give up their
church buildings.
The story often goes like thisIn the mid-20th century baby
boom in the United States, a newcongregation forms in what is
often a rural suburb of agrowing city.
As the suburb grows up and itspopulation swells, so does the
(00:46):
congregation's membership.
It builds a big building, hiresa big ministry staff and runs
all kinds of big ministry andoutreach programs.
But sometime in the 1980smembers begin to die or trickle
away, a few at a time.
At first nobody notices, but asthe decades roll by, the
trickle becomes a stream andthen a wave.
(01:06):
The congregation hollows out.
The auditorium is mostly emptyon Sunday mornings.
Education wings get mothballed,ministry staff gets reduced or
cut altogether.
Those who hang on are hauntedby echoes of their memories,
questions about what happenedand the riddle of what to do now
that the growth years seem tobe over.
(01:27):
In some cases, they have nochoice but to give up their
church building Church of Christ.
Folks have reacted andresponded to this trend in many
ways, but perhaps the bigquestion, the one that is so
troubling and uncomfortable thatmany do not want to ask it out
loud or even think it is whereis God?
Did God abandon us?
Is God no longer able orwilling to help us do the work
(01:51):
that God made the church to do?
You'll find that our guesttoday believes with all his
heart that God is still verymuch active and present and very
able and willing to grow thechurch for the glory of God and
the salvation of earth.
I think you'll find that he isbrimming with hope and optimism
for the future of the church ofChrist.
(02:12):
That being said, I think you'llalso find that our guest
believes that we in the churchof Christ are at an inflection
point in our movement.
Those who pay attention knowthat it is not the first
inflection point and it will notbe the last, but according to
our guest, what we choose to donow will determine how much we
allow ourselves to enter andparticipate in the great things
(02:36):
God is doing and will do.
Matt Dabbs is a Church of Christlifer and minister to local
Church of Christ congregationsfor almost a quarter of a
century.
He holds the Master of Divinityfrom Harding School of Theology
and for many years served aseditor of Wineskins Magazine.
The Christian Chronicle ran astory about Matt back during
(02:56):
COVID when he and his wife werecatalysts for the formation of a
new congregation BackyardChurch that meets in their you
know backyard in Auburn, alabama.
That house church grew andflourished and is now planting
other house churches in itsregion.
From that experience Mattformed Home Church Resources,
which provides communityresources and tools for those
(03:19):
who want to make disciples forJesus Christ through the
planting and spreading of housechurches.
Matt recently published a bookRestoring a Movement a Hopeful
Future for the Make Disciplesfor Jesus Christ Through the
Planting and Spreading of HouseChurches.
Matt recently published a bookRestoring a Movement A Hopeful
Future for the Churches ofChrist.
From his backyard to thepodcast studio, we welcome Matt
Dabbs.
Matt, thank you for being withus today.
Matt Dabbs (03:37):
Thanks for having me .
I really appreciate the chanceto talk about some really
important subjects with you,some really important subjects
with you.
BT Irwin (03:42):
We last heard from you in March 2021, when our CEO,
eric Trigestad, wrote a storyabout your backyard church,
which formed in the solitaryconfinement of the COVID years.
What is the story since then?
Matt Dabbs (03:56):
Bring us up to date on the backyard church and what
grew out of it so we havestarted a second church because
the first church kind of got toa point where, uh, you know, we
were hitting like 50 people andwe realized that you know, once
you do that being in a home iskind of hard.
Uh, we try to be outside asmuch as possible, so most of the
(04:16):
year we're outside, but stillparticipation starts to wane,
just all sorts of things.
It just kind of was the size asit grew began like kind of
compromising some of the thingsthat we were prioritizing.
So we decided to try to figureout second church home church
(04:36):
and prayed about that, prayedfor a leader and got some wise
words from somebody who knew alot more about than I did.
He said, yes, ask God for aleader.
We prayed.
The week that we started prayingabout 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 somehelp.
Can you help me?
I said, oh, my goodness, wejust started praying for you.
(04:58):
We didn't know who you were.
I knew Jerry but didn't knowit'd be you.
But thank you, god, you knowthat's.
That's been a consistent thing,we.
So we started a second homechurch and a little bit of a
crazy story with that one, if Ican just work off of that just
for a sec.
So just because one of thethings that I love sharing is
(05:19):
just like God answers prayersand God is powerful and God is
just doing some really greatstuff.
Like God answers prayers andGod is powerful and God is just
doing some really great stuff.
So we we prayer walked Jerry'sneighborhood and when we got
done that was in February of 23.
And when we got done prayerwalking, I said, hey, jerry,
just so you know, like when weenter into this we are kind of
(05:42):
entering into like taking peoplefrom the devil right, like kind
of Mark three, the strong man'shouse.
You got to tie him up under thestrong man and I said that you
could get spiritual warfare, youcould get just a big old
bullseye on your back.
So just be aware that stuffmight start happening.
And he texted me four days laterand said I'm in trouble.
And I said, oh, I called him.
(06:03):
I said what's going on.
He said I'm in trouble and Isaid, oh, I called him.
I said what's going on.
He said, well, you know, weprayer walked and then I helped
a friend move and I went.
He had a transplant some yearsearlier.
He said I went and got mynumbers ruined.
My numbers were bad.
I got a scan and I have a tumoron my liver and my pancreas.
He said I think I have stagefour pancreatic cancer.
So we're going to go in deepreal fast here.
Right, I mean, I just aboutwept on the phone.
(06:27):
I just said, jerry, I'm reallysorry.
I said I, I know I said what Isaid.
I don't claim to know how thisworks, but I know God is good.
And so we're going to fast andpray and beg God to heal you and
we will tell as many.
One of our prayers was God, ifyou, when you heal Jerry, if you
will, we will tell as manypeople as we possibly can of
your goodness.
And so we fasted, we prayed andhe was cancer free for about, I
(06:52):
think, close to a year afterstage four pancreatic cancer,
which is not something youtypically come back from.
And he had a scan a littlewhile back and had like a little
spot on his liver he's nowbeing 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.
(07:12):
We had a little revival here inAuburn.
You know that happened with 200students were baptized a little
while back, wow.
And we said well, man, who'sgoing to disciple these guys?
Right?
And so I reached out to theorganizers and I messaged them
on Facebook and I said hey,who's going to disciple these
guys?
They never got back with me andI said wait a minute.
We're like well, god knows thestudents and God knows we want
(07:34):
to disciple them.
So let's just ask God toconnect us with these students,
right.
And so we prayed about it andwe said God, just you want us to
disciple some students, connectus.
And so our second church, thechurch Jerry, started meets in a
little neighborhood outside andwe're praying about this and a
young lady walked by and was oneof the newly baptized people,
asked what we were doing andconnected up and started coming
(07:57):
and I was getting somediscipleship.
And then she stopped coming andso we prayed for her to come
back.
And literally in the meeting wewere praying for her to come
back.
And literally in the meeting wewere praying for her to come
back.
She walked up again and shesaid I've been thinking about
you guys all day.
BT Irwin (08:10):
We're like we were just praying for you, right.
Matt Dabbs (08:12):
Like, so it just.
BT Irwin (08:14):
God is just good, those stories and I'm sure, so
many more stories that that youdon't have time to tell here
that have formed you and shapedyou and put you on the path you
are now Surely inspired.
The book that you recentlypublished the title is Restoring
a Movement, which is a play onwords of what many call the
(08:37):
Restoration Movement.
That's the 19th and 20thcentury stream of events, people
and thinking in which what weknow as the Church of Christ
found itself and grew into whatit is now.
If a movement claims that ithas restored something or is
restoring something, what doesit mean?
To restore the movement itself?
How do you restore restoration?
Matt Dabbs (08:58):
Yeah, that's a great question.
So part of the and so part ofthe goal of the restoration
movement.
You know, the Campbells hadcome out of Scotland and they
had the burgers and theanti-burgers and all these rifts
and divisions and everythinggoing on.
And they said, man, you knowall these creeds and stuff.
(09:21):
And we said, man, let's, let'stry to unite people by just
going back to the Bible, justsimple Christianity.
Right, and they kind of hadthis effort to bring a unity
movement going back to the Bibleand restoring New Testament
Christianity.
But I think what that ended upbeing was trying to restore a
certain pattern of church,trying to restore a certain
(09:42):
pattern of like what we do whenwe assemble into the
denominations and so in someways, we kind of form some of
our stuff around, not being likethe other guy, right, kind of
anti-Pentecostal I say rhetoricbut like teaching or like
anti-Baptist stuff or whatever.
(10:02):
And a friend of mine named EricBrown, who was a minister when I
was living in Florida, is yourfriend and he made this
statement.
He said told me in 2013, wewere preparing to teach at a
lecture and he said co-teach.
And he said you know Jesus was.
He said the New Testamentchurch was not trying to be the
(10:22):
New Testament church.
He said the New Testamentchurch was not trying to be the
New Testament church.
He said the New Testamentchurch was trying to be Jesus.
Oh, okay, so if we're trying torestore what they were trying
to do, I think that's the theoryright.
We're trying to restore whatthey were trying to do.
That means we would beChrist-centered, not
(10:43):
church-centered, and that takesus directly into discipleship.
And so, you know, we kind of hadthat idea that we were like had
succeeded in the mission in the1930s, 40s, 50s, and so
everybody wants to kind offreeze that moment in time and
crystallize it and just kind ofstick there.
And we form this, you know,command, example, necessary
(11:07):
inference, and so you know, wereally formalize some things
that I think it's good to lookat those things again and just
ask ourselves, okay, how did weget here and did it work, and
did we unify anything?
And you know, like we just gotmore and more divided, like the
harder we tried to do thispattern, theology, like the
(11:29):
command example, that's ourdifferences, because people are
people and we all have tointerpret through our lots of
different filters, right.
And so the idea of simply goingback 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 theserules and things made up around
(11:51):
things that kind of help,support, things be in a certain
way that I don't know, if afirst century Christian dropped
into one of our gatherings, theymight be a little confused.
You know it's very formalizedand there's up and down and
microphones and stages andlights and various things of
who's where and who hasauthority and you know who's
(12:12):
facing which way and all.
When they're used to a livingroom, I just, you know, I think
they might scratch their head alittle bit, and some of that's
out of necessity, due to size,dynamics of the room and and, uh
, all those things we can talkabout.
But I I think the restorationhas to go back to christ and the
(12:33):
gospels first and foremost,before you can get into acts and
the letters.
But let me say it this way likeyou could be a perfectly good
church of christ person and haveall the patterns of worship
right, but not be Christ-like,yeah.
Or that you take it into actsand say, but not be led by the
Holy Spirit, and this reallystunned me as a young person.
I would see these older guyswho would teach these Bible
(12:55):
classes and I'd say, wow, theseguys know a lot of Scripture but
they're mean, like they don'thave the fruit of the Spirit.
It doesn't feel like where'sthe joy.
You know you would do somethingwrong.
There was no patience.
So I think we've kind ofthere's.
There's been more affinity tochurch and less toward like
(13:17):
reproducing christ, which isdiscipleship and the holy
spirit's work in that has to berelooked at right.
Because if you say the HolySpirit, because I grew up a
cessationist, I didn't thinkspirit did anything and I fought
hard for that into my 20s.
So those are some of the thingsthat I think.
If you begin restoring the workof Christ and the work of the
(13:40):
Holy Spirit, you're going to getthe kind of church that needs
to be got.
BT Irwin (13:44):
I had coffee last week with a Church of Christ
minister here in Michigan.
He's half my age, he's a fewmonths into his first ever job
as a congregational minister andhe's with a church that there
are a few dozen members now butin its heyday had three or 400
members.
And he he told me that theyhave some some some old timers
(14:08):
there that are in their eightiesand they tell stories of how
things used to be back in the1970s.
And he was telling me overcoffee how they they seem
bewildered, puzzled about whathappened to that congregation,
what happened to the good times,and so you know we kind of
(14:28):
riffed on that while we had ourcoffee.
You know, was that congregationriding a cultural, demographic
and economic wave that crestedhere in Southeast Michigan at
that time?
Did they just have betterpeople and programs back then,
or was God working in a powerfulway that grew that church in
the 1970s, which was anuncomfortable question because
(14:50):
it implies God is not working togrow that church in 2025.
If you were sitting there withus at that conversation last
week, what input would you havehad to that conversation?
Matt Dabbs (15:02):
I think the first thing is that whatever gets said
would have to be said throughlike a lot of humility, because
I mean, I wasn't there, I don't.
It's hard to speak towardpeople you didn't meet, you know
, you didn't really see the layof the land.
So I mean I can speak in justbroad generalities, and the
broad generality is Church ofChrist as a whole.
(15:22):
Stan Granberg wrote in theGreat Commission Journal 2018, I
believe, the article where hecharts 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 lifecycle on a human life cycle, a
(15:43):
church is birthed out ofexcitement, enthusiasm, momentum
, buy-in right, like a littlebaby just grows and grows and
grows, and grows and grows, andthen you hit a certain point
where, as a human, human beingsand churches follow a very
similar lifespan, congregationsa very similar lifespan.
(16:03):
So everything starts withgrowth and then there's a
plateau and then a church beginsto decline.
This is like robert dale wrotea book called to dream.
Again, he charts this a bellcurve, the bell curve of upward
growth, kind of a plateau at thetop and then a downward turn,
and somewhere on that downwardturn.
You know, robert dale says ifyou don't dream again, if you
(16:23):
don't re-inflect up a new dream,a new vision, you know, et
cetera.
You're going to just go intoquestioning nostalgia.
These are basically sayingthese are the death signs of a
church.
Once you say the questioning isman, our best days behind us?
Right, the nostalgia is exactlywhat you're explaining, man,
remember when, if that's theconversation of the church and
(16:45):
there's no vision, to dreamagain and to re-envision a
brighter future and to reinvestinto that, just like you did in
day one, to almost relaunch intosomething new, it's going to
die and no one should feel badabout that, because that's just
Paul's.
Churches are not here anymore,right?
Somebody in Ephesus stop.
(17:06):
I mean, like, at some pointyou're like, ok, we all moved
away or whatever.
But Todd Wilson and his bookMultiplier says that 99 plus
percent of churches do not makeit to 100 years old.
So if you take that and you sayour churches are planted in the
40s, 50s and 60s, that meansthey're in their 60s, 70s and
(17:27):
80s, which means they're aged,they're tired.
Um, there's just not theinvestment of energy to to dream
again and our dna says there isno new dream, because we've
figured that out in the 50s andwe're supposed to stick with
that vision and that dream, justlike that.
(17:48):
And so how do you dream again?
But if the goal of yourmovement was satisfied 70 years
ago, like and then there arecultural waves, there are
demographic waves, the culturewas more agreeable to
Christianity.
You could pop a church down incertain cities and grow it very
easily, I think at that time itseems to me like but the big
(18:09):
question is were we makingdisciples, you know?
Were we discipling our own kidsor did we silo them off into
youth ministry Disciples, youknow, were we discipling our own
kids or did we silo them offinto youth ministry?
Matt Markins of Awana said thatthe number one predictor of
longevity of faith in our kidsis adult relationships of other
Christians in the church.
That the more you know adultsin the church, they know they'll
(18:33):
be more likely to stick around.
But guess what if you silo themoff into youth group, which
happened in the 80s and the 90sand beyond, then these guys all
felt fell off the ship becausethey weren't connected.
Uh, but same guy, eric brown,said you know, you got.
My friend said you got twochurches meeting in your
building.
If you have a bible youthministry, you know, wow, man,
that's, that's something, yeah.
(18:54):
And so when they hit 18, wewe're like, hey, come build the
relationships with people upinto their eighties, uh, from
(19:18):
you know, zero to 80.
And uh, it's been beautiful,it's really been beautiful to
watch nearly full inclusion inthe life of the church.
We do separate them outoccasionally for some lessons
and just you know, for variousage appropriate things, but uh,
the ministry is the ministry,the whole church ministry.
So, yeah, that's a fewresponses, and again said in
(19:42):
humility because I don't knowthose guys and you have to look
at the specifics, but I think wecan speak generally, which is
more helpful maybe to thisaudience.
Those are some of the factorsinvolved to say most of our
churches are aged and are goingto probably shut their doors in
the next 20 years or less, andthat's just natural.
(20:02):
And that's why churches need tobe planting churches.
We need to have what's called aliving will.
Right, like, what do you dowith all this when it all goes
away?
There needs to be vision, butthe problem we see with closing
churches is there was often verylittle vision and the decline
and dying, and so there's verylittle vision in what comes next
.
And so these churches just givetheir property away to all
(20:25):
sorts of crazy stuff by the tensand tens and hundreds of
millions of dollars are about tobe given away to who knows what
, and there's often very littleplan for that, and that needs to
be addressed in our fellowship.
BT Irwin (20:39):
Thinking of a congregation that I visited
recently and all signs point tothat congregation being gone in
10 to 20 years.
If they make it another 10years I'll be surprised, and
they have a glorious past.
So many good stories in thatcongregation.
But all the signs are there nowwhen I visited.
(21:03):
And so if someone from thatcongregation is listening to you
right now and you say you needto be planting churches, I can
imagine someone responding tothat.
You know, shouldn't we betrying to build up this
congregation rather than startanother congregation?
We can barely do what we'redoing here without investing
(21:29):
energy and personnel in startinga whole new church.
What would you say to that?
Matt Dabbs (21:35):
They're exactly right.
It is going to take time andenergy to start something like
that.
Part of the issue is that whenyou have a facility like that
that is aging and is large, ittakes a lot of time and energy,
which is time and energy thatcannot be given to some of the
most core things that we're toldto do in Scripture, like make
(21:57):
disciples, right.
So here you have all thesebusiness meetings around what's
going to happen to the buildingand fixing the parking lot?
You know there's a hole in theroof and all.
It's just such a distraction tothe ministry.
And so, yeah, you only do haveso much time and energy and if
you're all in your 70s and 80sthat's going to be hard.
But what some churches areseeing and I'm starting into
(22:19):
these conversations with somechurches that are your death you
actually have the perfect sizegroup to meet in a home.
You're a home church.
You know you can.
You can sell the.
The only reason not to sell thefacility is the nostalgia.
It feels like a failure.
(22:41):
Right, we had this and, oh, welost it.
We were the ones who lost it.
You know, after all those greatyears, well, goodness, unless a
seed falls to the ground anddies, nothing new is born.
Jesus says Right, the Gospel ofJohn, so burn something new out
of that.
So so, like Heritage 21 workswith this, my recruit works with
this.
Tombstones to Cornerstones ishis book, that kind of reframes
(23:02):
that you know, the death of thisbuilding, this congregation,
doesn't have to be a tombstone.
It could be the cornerstone ofsomething 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 thereknows how to do.
They've been doing it theirwhole lives, right and without
all the headaches of the billsand the stress of the money and
(23:27):
what's going on with the hole inthe roof and all that.
You're already taking care ofyour house, so that's not a new
layer of decision making, right?
So I would say, yeah, you'reright, 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 whatyou're doing, you're probably
(23:49):
it's probably not going toimprove.
So maybe you're the perfectsize to birth something new.
So maybe you're the perfectsize to birth something new.
And what Tom Rainer says, youknow, he wrote Autopsy of a
Deceased Church and then hewrote Anatomy of a Revived
Church, which are two very smallquick reads.
And in Anatomy of a RevivedChurch he talks about, you know,
somebody needs to be prayingfor revival.
(24:10):
He says one of the bestpredictors that a church can
turn the corner into somethingnew is that somebody in that
church body is praying forrevival.
And he says, even one person,he's seen it as just one person,
right.
So I'm like, well, that couldbe me, that could be you.
So prayer is essential because,again, it's just surrender,
looking Jesus.
(24:30):
But that is a shift and I'mtrying to help churches make
that shift.
So I mean, if someone wants toreach out to me and say how do
we make a simple home church outof this?
BT Irwin (24:42):
I'd be glad to help you.
You devote a lot of the book totalking about church buildings
and I just want to say foreverybody listening to this I
want to go on record as saying Ilove church buildings, even
Church of Christ churchbuildings, which a lot of them
are not pretty.
But every time I go back to myhometown I want to drive by the
(25:04):
old Steel Avenue Church ofChrist.
I want to see the place wheremy dad preached.
I want to see where I grew up.
I want to see where I wasbaptized and came of age.
So I feel a real love andattachment to the buildings
where so much of my lifehappened and I remember the
people that met in that building.
But you do devote a lot of yourbook to talking about how you
(25:29):
know, in the Church of Christwe're raised to say that the
church is the people, not thebuilding.
And yet in our imaginationsthat building really does become
the church.
It kind of morphs with thepeople and we just cannot
imagine church without thebuilding, and so that form, the
(25:50):
building, kind of takes overfunction.
Talk about some other ways thatmaybe church buildings.
The way we have been doingchurch is maybe getting in the
way of where God may want totake the church next.
Matt Dabbs (26:08):
Let me tell you about a dream I had.
I had this recurring dream thatjust bothered me for years,
dream that just bothered me foryears.
And it was because, uh, beforeI was doing ministry, I was
working on a PhD in clinicalpsychology and I decided after
September 11th to go intoministry and I had a.
(26:28):
I had a really good situationthere, um, to work on the PhD.
They had given me a full rideand assistantship and all this,
and so it was really hard to letthat go and I started to my
grades started to suffer.
I just my heart wasn't in itanymore.
I felt called to ministry.
(26:48):
So after I had left it was kindof a really bad experience,
leaving the PhD program I hadthis reoccurring dream that I
would be walking through thatdepartment at the University of
Florida, in Shands Hospital, andjust frantic, I mean, it was
just an awful dream and I hadthat dream many times.
And then I found myself inShands Hospital a couple years
(27:11):
ago in the waiting room waitingsomebody who was there, and I
thought to myself I need to goback downstairs in the dental
building and walk those hallsagain because they had moved,
the program had moved to a newbuilding.
I knew it wasn't there anymore.
I thought, man, that might bejust good for me just to walk
those halls right, and so I wentdown there.
(27:31):
I walked the halls.
It was like a biologydepartment or something, like
posters on the wall, differentprofessor names.
I'm like, oh, there was thedoor where my our child study
lab was.
There's this, this, this.
And you know, I never had thatnightmare ever since I walked
those halls and I saw everythinghad been converted to something
(27:52):
else.
It just let my mind just likelet it go, Let that space go.
I'm like, wow, that's prettyamazing that my mind was just
trying to process that badexperience, almost trying to
like, like, convert it intosomething good.
(28:14):
I don't know what was going on,but I was able to release it.
So every single meeting spacewe have will not be a church
someday.
There's a really well-knownstory from Harding grad school
and it was in Memphis where theHarding mansion was on fire and
Jack Lewis was standing.
Dr Lewis was standing out onthe lawn with his wife and his
(28:37):
office was in the middle of thefire.
And you know, if you know DrLewis, 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
(28:59):
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'swork.
Our church's life's work is notthat building.
Our church's life's work goeson.
It's the children we've raisedin there, the Christians we've
sent out, the missionaries we'vesupported in various countries,
the disciples we've made, theministers who've raised up
(29:20):
within our ranks.
Here you are doing work withChristian Chronicle.
I mean, whatever happens to thatbuilding does not diminish the
life's work of that church,Because one day it'll be a
parking lot, One day it'll be astrip mall, One day it'll be a
movie theater, One day it'll bea different church.
I mean, something's going tohappen to that space, but
there's something in us thatjust feels so defeated by
(29:46):
letting it go.
But if you change your paradigmto a people paradigm, a kingdom
, a true kingdom paradigm, isman.
That building, yeah, it'simportant to me.
I've got so many memories.
There's some nostalgia there.
But it's not the kingdom.
I'm not here to convertbuildings.
I'm not here to disciplebuildings.
(30:07):
I don't send buildings on themission field, so we need to let
that go.
We can make an idol out of thatbuilding, right, and that's a
scary thing.
And not everyone who is caughtup on the building is making an
idol out of the building.
I'm not saying that.
But you can let your heart goso far that it begins taking
(30:28):
away from other things that weshould be focused on taking away
from other things that weshould be focused on.
BT Irwin (30:37):
I want to talk about house churches a little bit,
because you obviously you were aminister in what we think of as
brick and mortar Church ofChrist congregations for years,
so what we all think of when wethink 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 meetingin your backyard and it grew
into a congregation, and so oneof the things you seem to be
(31:01):
saying in the book is that housechurch may be more conducive to
making disciples rather thanjust church members, to making
disciples rather than justchurch members.
If that is what you're saying,then tell us more about that now
and how you found that meetingtogether in homes makes it I
(31:25):
don't want to say easier,because discipleship is hard but
maybe sets the stage a littlebetter for the kind of disciple
making that the Lord calls us todo.
Matt Dabbs (31:34):
They surveyed a thousand churches and they are
asking about disciple makingtraditional churches, brick and
mortar and they asked them over100 questions, maybe 200
questions, and what they foundout was is that about 4% of
churches, brick and mortarchurches, were making disciples
on any meaningful level.
(31:54):
4%, about 4%, and I would sayjust anecdotally that feels
right to me, I don't know.
So there are size dynamics atplay, which is another.
I hate to keep harping on this,but my friend Bobby, he wrote a
(32:15):
book called Discipleship thatFits with Alex Absalom and they
go through different size groupsin the ministry of Jesus you
got the 5,000.
It's like a public space.
You got the 70, ascending the70 or 72 in Luke 10.
You got the 12.
You got the three and then yougot just Jesus and God.
And when you get down to thesmaller numbers, the smaller the
(32:39):
numbers you have, which isactually a plus for many of our
churches, because a lot of ourchurches are rural and small.
Yes, you're engaged in a moretransformational space if you
know how to leverage that,because there's less ears,
there's less fear of sharing ifyou have room to share, and so
it's just more relational theidea of sitting in a room with
(33:01):
500 people looking at the backof a head.
One person's up here talking tous.
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 andlisten.
I'm not really going toparticipate much other than
listen, maybe pray when you pray, give, sing.
(33:22):
That's kind of what I come anddo when I'm in a traditional
brick and mortar.
But in the home church there isparticipation, there's using of
gifts, somebody's upset.
We're going to stop, we'regoing to gather around them,
we're going to put our hands onit, we're going to pray for them
in the moment, right, likethere's just connection,
relationality.
So if you say to me home churchby and large is more relational
(33:47):
, which is required fordiscipleship, the big room for
discipleship is not reallyhappening.
It can complement discipleship,encouraging worship and
encouraging message and some ofthat 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.
(34:08):
I mean, it's not relational.
That's one to 300, like a oneto three hundred ratio.
Like Jesus wasn't even thatgood.
Like Jesus did one to twelveand lost one.
You know like you're doing oneto two hundred.
This is not, it's not right.
So it's relational Home churchvalues, participation in these
(34:28):
use of gifts which helps usdevelop as disciples.
When two, three hundred peopleenter that big room, there's
just not a lot of using of giftswhich helps us develop as
disciples.
When two, 300 people enter thatbig room, there's just not a
lot of using of gifts.
You have a couple of peopleusing their gifts for the masses
and we receive that.
But for me, to grow as adisciple like I need to do a
Luke 10, I got to go, I got toparticipate, I got to say the
things I use like you know thatsort of thing.
(34:49):
So it's relational, it'sparticipational and it's
intentional.
So we have a lot moreintentionality about our use of
time.
I feel like in the home churchit's just more Holy Spirit led
for us, more open to themovement of change and change in
direction, change in what'sgoing on.
(35:10):
There are so many weeks wherethe worship and the message and
all the pieces just tyingtogether 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 traditionalministry I never got to see that
because I was orchestratingevery little piece because it
has to go off without a hitch,because there's so much at stake
(35:31):
, and I don't want to look likeI 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 havethat at home.
Church, I mean, people show upand oh, the prayer person's not
here and like this and that'snot.
It's like it'll happen, likewe're here just to encourage
each other and worship God.
(35:52):
Why are we stressed?
So I think all that lendsitself to easier discipleship
because of the smaller numbers.
It's more intimate, which ismore transformational, which is
more relational, which all thosethings more participational.
BT Irwin (36:09):
You know, I hear people that are older than us
rightly lament.
They lament and they mourn whathas become of church, and I
feel it too, because you and Igrew up we grew up, I think, in
the 80s and the 90s and weremember the energy and the size
(36:29):
, and those memories are veryprecious to us.
You talk about it in your book,and so there's this lamentation
, and it sometimes comes acrossas younger generations just
don't care about the church theway they used to, or they just
don't have room in their livesfor this anymore, or their
(36:51):
priorities aren't straight.
And I'll say it right now Idon't actually buy that.
I don't buy that.
I think that human beings are ashungry for God now as they've
ever been and are searching forGod like they've always been
searching for God, and everygeneration has challenges and
obstacles and distractions toovercome on their way to finding
(37:14):
God.
So when you talk about housechurches, I hear you talking
about forming relationships,like real human relationships
and sharing life in a way that Ithink that emerging generations
are hungry for, hungry forauthenticity and connection, and
(37:36):
so tell me if you think I'mright or wrong.
I don't believe for one momentthat emerging generations just
don't care anymore, just don'thave room for God anymore.
I think they have just as mucha hunger for God as any
generation ever has.
But perhaps the way we didchurch if I can put it that way
(37:56):
is not connecting with them, andmaybe the house church movement
that you're describing isactually the way that we might
reach and connect with peoplethat have given up on the
quote-un, unquote old way ofdoing church.
Matt Dabbs (38:18):
I'll end with what you just stated on the younger
generation and their hunger anddesire for God, I think is very,
very high, because they havegrown up in the technological
age, an age of disconnection, anage of high anxiety, all those
things that not often you knowdeep relationships, so there's a
lot of holes there that thechurch is designed to assist
(38:41):
them with.
Now I feel like you know peopleour age I mean I'm 46, you know
where I'm at and up, I mean my46, you know where I'm at an up,
like I was, I was trained,somewhat self-trained, to have
theological debate with peoplewho were denominational, yeah,
(39:16):
but I would have, no, I wouldhave had no idea how to engage
someone who, like a young persontoday, right, who just they
don't care about thatconversation, they don't care,
they don't care about debatingover 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 withme?
Like there's a lot more bigticket items.
You know that they're concernedabout upfront, that we can
really connect with, but I thinkwe're just so in tuned with,
(39:39):
we've been really trained tohave 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, pleasehelp me love the lost more,
(40:00):
because I really like savepeople better.
You know, like I really enjoytime with Christians, but you
get off with the non-Christians.
It gets messy, it gets deep, itgets dirty.
I don't feel I'm prepared forit, 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 usethem.
But if I but it's like thisokay, it's like the guy who has
(40:24):
to learn the language becausehe's so attracted to that young
lady that he's got to learnspanish to talk to her or
something right, like he's goingto go learn it.
So go learn the language, go golearn what's got to learn
Spanish to talk to her orsomething right.
Like he's going to go learn it.
So go learn the language.
Go learn what's important tothem.
Do an X17 where Paul's like yeah, I've been around your city and
I've seen all these idols andyou got one of the unknown God.
I'm going to contextualize thegood news of Jesus to something
(40:45):
you already know.
Well, go find out what theyknow.
No-transcript fail or if wegoof up or if we say the wrong
(41:18):
thing, because we love them andwe're trying right.
So I think it starts with loveand discipleship starts with
love love of Christ to us andthen our love to other people.
Incarnation God came in theflesh and showed us and loved us
.
Now we are here in the fleshwith people, right.
BT Irwin (41:40):
You know, somebody may be a member or a leader in a,
in a congregation that's doingvery well or hanging on
maintaining, and they may say,well, what we're talking about
here is just small groups.
You know, our congregation canjust do small groups.
And then I reckon there aresome people who are listening to
this.
Their congregation is plateauedor maybe declining, and they
may think, well, I can'tpossibly say let's give this
(42:00):
thing up, break the whole thingdown and, you know, sell the
building and let's meet in homesgoing forward, Like, as you
imagine, the kind of folks thatare listening to this
conversation right now, andyou're making a strong case for
house church.
How might a standard brick andmortar Church of Christ
(42:23):
experiment with?
Okay, God, is this somethingthat you want?
This?
Matt Dabbs (42:35):
congregation to experiment with, to partner with
and start praying about thosethings.
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'skind of bubbling up in their
prayer life when it comes to,you know, praying over those
things and when you start thatintentionality of working
(42:57):
towards something like that,there is no rhyme or
mathematical formula to it.
So I can't really illustrateexactly how that would go.
But then we've seen things likewe pray for partners and then I
start getting phone calls frompeople who want to partner.
We pray for people in a newcommunity to come and we prayer
walk and then you know, we hadpeople walk in who I didn't even
(43:18):
meet but I walked past theirhouse and prayed for them the
Saturday before the gatheringand they walked over.
They heard the worship andwalked over and I didn't even
get to talk to them the Saturdaybefore but I stopped in front
of their house and asked Godthat they would come to our
gathering.
So prayer like God, like what'sour next chapter look like?
And maybe it's to re-energizeexactly how it was.
(43:42):
I mean, I'm not God, I'm notanti-brick and mortar.
You know it's like God's goingto give different people
different answers.
He's going to give differentsituations, different sets of
giftedness, differentcongregations different answers.
Right, so he may startsupplying things, bringing you
some people who help you docertain things, who have certain
skill sets.
Listen to that, follow that.
(44:03):
You know there's no one thingsaying you got to just funnel it
on the home churches orsomething like that.
But if somebody like with usnow multiple times, you start
praying about home church andthen somebody calls the church
office or moves into town, it'slike you know, hey, we grew up
in the Church of Christ and wereally love home churches, but
we're looking for someconnection to a local
congregation.
Would you kind of like like beour eldership or over us or
(44:27):
whatever, to help us start this?
You just don't know who God'sgoing to send.
So I just think, praying overthose things very boldly and
specifically like God, if youwant us to start something like
this, please send the people,raise them up, make them clear,
you know, to start helping usconnect the dots and then just
start listening and watching andkeep praying and just see what
bubbles up.
But that would be where I wouldstart, you know, and then as
(44:49):
those people come online, as thepieces kind of connect, you
feel like God's answering thatprayer.
He wants us to do this.
It's like the legacy of yourchurch 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 todevelop them into, you know,
spiritual disciples of Christwho are serious about their
(45:11):
faith, spiritual disciples ofChrist who are serious about
their faith, and they're greatyoung men and they're going to
do far better than I've everdone in their life Right With
with this, all this stuff andman, I'm so happy about that,
like it wasn't all about me andit's not so.
My point is we have to birththings.
Like there has to be a passingon of the DNA and, and if we
don't do that, uh, churches,churches.
(45:32):
There's no verse in the bible.
It's like church is one anddone right, like we can start
churches from churches.
So I would just be in prayerabout 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 bethat you have a little group of
people there that go.
You know we've been prayingabout this and just us couple
people, we really just are gonnago ahead and start that in our
(45:54):
home.
You know, will you bless thatand just resource them, bless
them, and we always have aprayer team for everything we do
.
So ask some people and say,would you devote yourselves to
praying for this new thing fromday one?
Start praying for theirneighborhood prayer walk the
neighborhood.
Start praying for theirneighborhood prayer walk the
neighborhood.
Talk about that in the book.
(46:15):
Have some resources on how todo that.
There's a lot of QR codes inthe book on resources.
BT Irwin (46:23):
But that would be where I would start.
I'm going to ask you one onefollow-up question to that, and
I touched on it earlier.
I don't know, from myexperience in our community over
49 years experience, uh, in ourcommunity over 49 years I don't
know that we are particular.
We are particularly good atdiscernment, at congregational
discernment.
Um, I don't know that that's amuscle that we have exercised a
lot in our tradition and, uh,when we were talking about brick
(46:48):
and mortar early and how, uh,how people uh imagine the church
as a building or people whomeet in a particular building
and have particular programstogether.
I think we can tend to pray insuch a way as we've already made
up our minds what we think theoutcome will be or should be.
(47:10):
And so, when you recommend thatwe start with prayer, there are
different ways to approachprayer.
As a congregation, the elderscan say we're going to go into a
boardroom and we're going topray about this together and
we're going to come out andreveal to the church what we've
heard from the Lord.
There are particular things acongregation might pray for,
(47:33):
like help us start a housechurch ministry.
That's one way, but you'realready telling God what you
want to do, rather than sayingGod what are you doing, what do
you want to do?
So I want to offer you anopportunity to be a little more
specific about the particularpractices and posture and how a
congregation might enter intoprayer, seeking to discern and
(47:57):
seeking to be completely opentogether, as an entire
congregation, to what God may bedoing.
Matt Dabbs (48:05):
And and I'm going to- start with some
presuppositions, somepre-beliefs that I think are
necessary for putting ourselvesin a posture to receive what God
is doing.
So the first one is that God isactive in the world.
(48:27):
If we don't think that there'sno point in seeking any kind of
guidance and we're pretty muchon our own with our own logic
and reasoning, right, and that'show I live, for quite well, I
ministered that way for quite awhile, not not a hundred percent
, but like more than I shouldhave.
Um, so god is working.
Second, god is loving.
(48:48):
Okay, he wants the best outcomefor the world.
He's not malevolent, he's notout to get us, he's not going to
take us down some awful path.
If we seek his direction and wetake it Now, that's not to say
there couldn't be suffering orhardship.
I mean, read 1 Peter.
You know you could do the rightthing and suffer for it, but
you're suffering with Christ.
So if you believe that God isworking, you believe he is good
(49:13):
and loving, he's active in theworld and that he's able to
communicate in whatever way hesees fit I don't have a formula
for that, but he's able to getyour attention, show you some
things that will give you somedirection.
Then you begin praying intothose things.
God, we need your help.
We want to work where you'reworking.
We want to move where you'removing.
(49:33):
Where you're not moving, wedon't want to be there.
We want to be where you are at,working alongside you.
It's like that old africanproverb.
It's like don't get so farbehind god that you can't see
his face, or so far ahead of godthat you can't hear his voice,
but walk next to him where youcan see his face and where you
can hear his voice.
We want to walk next to you, instep with you, all the way.
(49:54):
So take us where you want totake 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, ifit's, you know, start, send five
people over there and startprayer walking.
That we'll do it, you know.
But I think if you start withthose presuppositions, if you
don't have those presuppositions, it's going to be really hard,
(50:15):
like really hard.
It's kind of like orphans,right, like you know, and that's
just not a good recipe.
We'll have a leadership pipelinethat's just dry and we've
relied on the seminaries, whichare doing fantastic work and
they're some of my very dearestfriends.
But we've relied on theseminaries, to which are doing
(50:35):
fantastic work and they're someof my very dearest friends.
But we've relied on theseminaries to develop, to
third-party develop, ourcongregational leaders and I
have an MDiv it's over here onthe wall and I love education.
I could be in school every dayfor the rest of my life and I
would love it.
But the biblical thing is weraise up leaders from within.
We disciple our own people.
(50:57):
Churches should be leadershippipelines, congregations should
be leadership pipelines, not thefarm league of you know.
The little church raises theguy up and we grab him after a
couple of years and we put himin the bigger church and he is
pretty good and he goes to thebigger church.
It's like that's such a weird,not spiritual system.
I mean I'm not saying goddoesn't use it, god's got, but
I'm just saying it's a littleweird.
(51:17):
Um so, but we got to get backto the discipleship and part of
that's going to be okay.
Jesus called them, he's calledus.
Jesus has equipped us.
Let's get equipped and thatmeans the everyday person,
because we're not going to beable to afford the other guy
because we're shrinking Everyday.
(51:38):
Person needs to learn thisstuff.
This is my mission right now isteaching the everyday person
how to learn.
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 movementof God?
Listen for God.
You know like that's one of themost important things.
He said in John 10, my sheepwill know my voice.
They will be able to discernthe difference between me and a
stranger.
(51:58):
It's like, do we know how to dothat?
Like, do we ever sit and listenand pray that God will guide us
?
It sounds crazy.
I would have said 20 years agoyou'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 willknow.
(52:20):
You will know it was from him.
When you pray big and bold andstuff starts happening that's
not in your control, that'sbeyond your power and ability,
and it starts lining up, you'relike, wow, he did that.
There is no other answer thanthat.
He did that.
But you're going to need tobelieve big and pray big.
Like he says in James don'tbelieve in doubt, pray.
You know, don't pray and doubt,Pray and believe, you'll do it.
(52:44):
And so, man, learn the skills.
And again in the book there'sQR codes to all kinds of stuff
to learn that.
If the everyday Christian wouldlearn these basic ministry
skills that we farmed out to theprofessionals and third-party
this for all these years, it'sleft us anemic, it's left us not
using our gifts, it's left usnot knowing how to do anything
and we've been fine with it forall these years.
It's like it's time to learnthe skills Jesus showed us how
(53:07):
to do it.
If you want some help, I'llhelp you, you know.
So let's, let's go.
But I'm afraid that we are justso.
We've become so comfortable andcomplacent with just sitting
and listening and all that thatit can.
That deeply concerns me andI've been beating the drum for a
while now and I don't get a lotback and I'm like man, only God
(53:28):
knows, I can't say it's goingto turn out poorly, only God
knows, but I want to be wherehe's moving and I want to help.
BT Irwin (53:39):
I'm confident that it's not going to turn out
poorly because, it's going toturn out beyond what we can ask
or imagine the question is willwe be there?
Matt Dabbs (53:50):
We'll be there.
I want to be there, that'sright.
BT Irwin (53:56):
Are we going to get with God?
Matt Dabbs (53:58):
That's it.
That's it.
BT Irwin (54:01):
And that's what I think your book is all about.
We have Matt Dabbs here.
He's the author of Restoring aMovement a Hopeful Future for
Churches of Christ.
He leads Home Church Resources,a ministry that supports those
who want to make disciples forJesus Christ through the
planting, growth and spreadingof house churches.
Links galore will be in theshow notes, matt, thanks for
(54:24):
dropping by our homes today.
Matt Dabbs (54:27):
Thank you for having me.
I appreciate you being patientwith me and for all the hard
work you put into this.
BT Irwin (54:33):
It's been a pleasure to have you.
Thank you.
We hope something you heard inthis episode encouraged,
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(54:53):
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(55:17):
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(55:37):
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The Christian Chronicle podcastis written, directed, hosted
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(55:58):
michigan, usa.
Until next time.
May grace and peace be yours inabundance.
Family and friends, neighbors and, most of all,
strangers.
Welcome to the ChristianChronicle podcast.
We're bringing you the storiesshaping Church of Christ
congregations and members aroundthe world.
May what you are about to hearbless you and honor God.
I'm BT Irwin.
It is an honor and pleasure tobe your host.
Over the last few years theChristian Chronicle has been
(00:26):
covering Church of Christcongregations that give up their
church buildings.
The story often goes like thisIn the mid-20th century baby
boom in the United States, a newcongregation forms in what is
often a rural suburb of agrowing city.
As the suburb grows up and itspopulation swells, so does the
(00:46):
congregation's membership.
It builds a big building, hiresa big ministry staff and runs
all kinds of big ministry andoutreach programs.
But sometime in the 1980smembers begin to die or trickle
away, a few at a time.
At first nobody notices, but asthe decades roll by, the
trickle becomes a stream andthen a wave.
(01:06):
The congregation hollows out.
The auditorium is mostly emptyon Sunday mornings.
Education wings get mothballed,ministry staff gets reduced or
cut altogether.
Those who hang on are hauntedby echoes of their memories,
questions about what happenedand the riddle of what to do now
that the growth years seem tobe over.
(01:27):
In some cases, they have nochoice but to give up their
church building Church of Christ.
Folks have reacted andresponded to this trend in many
ways, but perhaps the bigquestion, the one that is so
troubling and uncomfortable thatmany do not want to ask it out
loud or even think it is whereis God?
Did God abandon us?
Is God no longer able orwilling to help us do the work
(01:51):
that God made the church to do?
You'll find that our guesttoday believes with all his
heart that God is still verymuch active and present and very
able and willing to grow thechurch for the glory of God and
the salvation of earth.
I think you'll find that he isbrimming with hope and optimism
for the future of the church ofChrist.
(02:12):
That being said, I think you'llalso find that our guest
believes that we in the churchof Christ are at an inflection
point in our movement.
Those who pay attention knowthat it is not the first
inflection point and it will notbe the last, but according to
our guest, what we choose to donow will determine how much we
allow ourselves to enter andparticipate in the great things
(02:36):
God is doing and will do.
Matt Dabbs is a Church of Christlifer and minister to local
Church of Christ congregationsfor almost a quarter of a
century.
He holds the Master of Divinityfrom Harding School of Theology
and for many years served aseditor of Wineskins Magazine.
The Christian Chronicle ran astory about Matt back during
(02:56):
COVID when he and his wife werecatalysts for the formation of a
new congregation BackyardChurch that meets in their you
know backyard in Auburn, alabama.
That house church grew andflourished and is now planting
other house churches in itsregion.
From that experience Mattformed Home Church Resources,
which provides communityresources and tools for those
(03:19):
who want to make disciples forJesus Christ through the
planting and spreading of housechurches.
Matt recently published a bookRestoring a Movement a Hopeful
Future for the Make Disciplesfor Jesus Christ Through the
Planting and Spreading of HouseChurches.
Matt recently published a bookRestoring a Movement A Hopeful
Future for the Churches ofChrist.
From his backyard to thepodcast studio, we welcome Matt
Dabbs.
Matt, thank you for being withus today.
Matt Dabbs (03:37):
Thanks for having me .
I really appreciate the chanceto talk about some really
important subjects with you,some really important subjects
with you.
BT Irwin (03:42):
We last heard from you in March 2021, when our CEO,
eric Trigestad, wrote a storyabout your backyard church,
which formed in the solitaryconfinement of the COVID years.
What is the story since then?
Matt Dabbs (03:56):
Bring us up to date on the backyard church and what
grew out of it so we havestarted a second church because
the first church kind of got toa point where, uh, you know, we
were hitting like 50 people andwe realized that you know, once
you do that being in a home iskind of hard.
Uh, we try to be outside asmuch as possible, so most of the
(04:16):
year we're outside, but stillparticipation starts to wane,
just all sorts of things.
It just kind of was the size asit grew began like kind of
compromising some of the thingsthat we were prioritizing.
So we decided to try to figureout second church home church
(04:36):
and prayed about that, prayedfor a leader and got some wise
words from somebody who knew alot more about than I did.
He said, yes, ask God for aleader.
We prayed.
The week that we started prayingabout 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 somehelp.
Can you help me?
I said, oh, my goodness, wejust started praying for you.
(04:58):
We didn't know who you were.
I knew Jerry but didn't knowit'd be you.
But thank you, god, you knowthat's.
That's been a consistent thing,we.
So we started a second homechurch and a little bit of a
crazy story with that one, if Ican just work off of that just
for a sec.
So just because one of thethings that I love sharing is
(05:19):
just like God answers prayersand God is powerful and God is
just doing some really greatstuff.
Like God answers prayers andGod is powerful and God is just
doing some really great stuff.
So we we prayer walked Jerry'sneighborhood and when we got
done that was in February of 23.
And when we got done prayerwalking, I said, hey, jerry,
just so you know, like when weenter into this we are kind of
(05:42):
entering into like taking peoplefrom the devil right, like kind
of Mark three, the strong man'shouse.
You got to tie him up under thestrong man and I said that you
could get spiritual warfare, youcould get just a big old
bullseye on your back.
So just be aware that stuffmight start happening.
And he texted me four days laterand said I'm in trouble.
And I said, oh, I called him.
(06:03):
I said what's going on.
He said I'm in trouble and Isaid, oh, I called him.
I said what's going on.
He said, well, you know, weprayer walked and then I helped
a friend move and I went.
He had a transplant some yearsearlier.
He said I went and got mynumbers ruined.
My numbers were bad.
I got a scan and I have a tumoron my liver and my pancreas.
He said I think I have stagefour pancreatic cancer.
So we're going to go in deepreal fast here.
Right, I mean, I just aboutwept on the phone.
(06:27):
I just said, jerry, I'm reallysorry.
I said I, I know I said what Isaid.
I don't claim to know how thisworks, but I know God is good.
And so we're going to fast andpray and beg God to heal you and
we will tell as many.
One of our prayers was God, ifyou, when you heal Jerry, if you
will, we will tell as manypeople as we possibly can of
your goodness.
And so we fasted, we prayed andhe was cancer free for about, I
(06:52):
think, close to a year afterstage four pancreatic cancer,
which is not something youtypically come back from.
And he had a scan a littlewhile back and had like a little
spot on his liver he's nowbeing 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.
(07:12):
We had a little revival here inAuburn.
You know that happened with 200students were baptized a little
while back, wow.
And we said well, man, who'sgoing to disciple these guys?
Right?
And so I reached out to theorganizers and I messaged them
on Facebook and I said hey,who's going to disciple these
guys?
They never got back with me andI said wait a minute.
We're like well, god knows thestudents and God knows we want
(07:34):
to disciple them.
So let's just ask God toconnect us with these students,
right.
And so we prayed about it andwe said God, just you want us to
disciple some students, connectus.
And so our second church, thechurch Jerry, started meets in a
little neighborhood outside andwe're praying about this and a
young lady walked by and was oneof the newly baptized people,
asked what we were doing andconnected up and started coming
(07:57):
and I was getting somediscipleship.
And then she stopped coming andso we prayed for her to come
back.
And literally in the meeting wewere praying for her to come
back.
And literally in the meeting wewere praying for her to come
back.
She walked up again and shesaid I've been thinking about
you guys all day.
BT Irwin (08:10):
We're like we were just praying for you, right.
Matt Dabbs (08:12):
Like, so it just.
BT Irwin (08:14):
God is just good, those stories and I'm sure, so
many more stories that that youdon't have time to tell here
that have formed you and shapedyou and put you on the path you
are now Surely inspired.
The book that you recentlypublished the title is Restoring
a Movement, which is a play onwords of what many call the
(08:37):
Restoration Movement.
That's the 19th and 20thcentury stream of events, people
and thinking in which what weknow as the Church of Christ
found itself and grew into whatit is now.
If a movement claims that ithas restored something or is
restoring something, what doesit mean?
To restore the movement itself?
How do you restore restoration?
Matt Dabbs (08:58):
Yeah, that's a great question.
So part of the and so part ofthe goal of the restoration
movement.
You know, the Campbells hadcome out of Scotland and they
had the burgers and theanti-burgers and all these rifts
and divisions and everythinggoing on.
And they said, man, you knowall these creeds and stuff.
(09:21):
And we said, man, let's, let'stry to unite people by just
going back to the Bible, justsimple Christianity.
Right, and they kind of hadthis effort to bring a unity
movement going back to the Bibleand restoring New Testament
Christianity.
But I think what that ended upbeing was trying to restore a
certain pattern of church,trying to restore a certain
(09:42):
pattern of like what we do whenwe assemble into the
denominations and so in someways, we kind of form some of
our stuff around, not being likethe other guy, right, kind of
anti-Pentecostal I say rhetoricbut like teaching or like
anti-Baptist stuff or whatever.
(10:02):
And a friend of mine named EricBrown, who was a minister when I
was living in Florida, is yourfriend and he made this
statement.
He said told me in 2013, wewere preparing to teach at a
lecture and he said co-teach.
And he said you know Jesus was.
He said the New Testamentchurch was not trying to be the
(10:22):
New Testament church.
He said the New Testamentchurch was not trying to be the
New Testament church.
He said the New Testamentchurch was trying to be Jesus.
Oh, okay, so if we're trying torestore what they were trying
to do, I think that's the theoryright.
We're trying to restore whatthey were trying to do.
That means we would beChrist-centered, not
(10:43):
church-centered, and that takesus directly into discipleship.
And so, you know, we kind of hadthat idea that we were like had
succeeded in the mission in the1930s, 40s, 50s, and so
everybody wants to kind offreeze that moment in time and
crystallize it and just kind ofstick there.
And we form this, you know,command, example, necessary
(11:07):
inference, and so you know, wereally formalize some things
that I think it's good to lookat those things again and just
ask ourselves, okay, how did weget here and did it work, and
did we unify anything?
And you know, like we just gotmore and more divided, like the
harder we tried to do thispattern, theology, like the
(11:29):
command example, that's ourdifferences, because people are
people and we all have tointerpret through our lots of
different filters, right.
And so the idea of simply goingback 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 theserules and things made up around
(11:51):
things that kind of help,support, things be in a certain
way that I don't know, if afirst century Christian dropped
into one of our gatherings, theymight be a little confused.
You know it's very formalizedand there's up and down and
microphones and stages andlights and various things of
who's where and who hasauthority and you know who's
(12:12):
facing which way and all.
When they're used to a livingroom, I just, you know, I think
they might scratch their head alittle bit, and some of that's
out of necessity, due to size,dynamics of the room and and, uh
, all those things we can talkabout.
But I I think the restorationhas to go back to christ and the
(12:33):
gospels first and foremost,before you can get into acts and
the letters.
But let me say it this way likeyou could be a perfectly good
church of christ person and haveall the patterns of worship
right, but not be Christ-like,yeah.
Or that you take it into actsand say, but not be led by the
Holy Spirit, and this reallystunned me as a young person.
I would see these older guyswho would teach these Bible
(12:55):
classes and I'd say, wow, theseguys know a lot of Scripture but
they're mean, like they don'thave the fruit of the Spirit.
It doesn't feel like where'sthe joy.
You know you would do somethingwrong.
There was no patience.
So I think we've kind ofthere's.
There's been more affinity tochurch and less toward like
(13:17):
reproducing christ, which isdiscipleship and the holy
spirit's work in that has to berelooked at right.
Because if you say the HolySpirit, because I grew up a
cessationist, I didn't thinkspirit did anything and I fought
hard for that into my 20s.
So those are some of the thingsthat I think.
If you begin restoring the workof Christ and the work of the
(13:40):
Holy Spirit, you're going to getthe kind of church that needs
to be got.
BT Irwin (13:44):
I had coffee last week with a Church of Christ
minister here in Michigan.
He's half my age, he's a fewmonths into his first ever job
as a congregational minister andhe's with a church that there
are a few dozen members now butin its heyday had three or 400
members.
And he he told me that theyhave some some some old timers
(14:08):
there that are in their eightiesand they tell stories of how
things used to be back in the1970s.
And he was telling me overcoffee how they they seem
bewildered, puzzled about whathappened to that congregation,
what happened to the good times,and so you know we kind of
(14:28):
riffed on that while we had ourcoffee.
You know, was that congregationriding a cultural, demographic
and economic wave that crestedhere in Southeast Michigan at
that time?
Did they just have betterpeople and programs back then,
or was God working in a powerfulway that grew that church in
the 1970s, which was anuncomfortable question because
(14:50):
it implies God is not working togrow that church in 2025.
If you were sitting there withus at that conversation last
week, what input would you havehad to that conversation?
Matt Dabbs (15:02):
I think the first thing is that whatever gets said
would have to be said throughlike a lot of humility, because
I mean, I wasn't there, I don't.
It's hard to speak towardpeople you didn't meet, you know
, you didn't really see the layof the land.
So I mean I can speak in justbroad generalities, and the
broad generality is Church ofChrist as a whole.
(15:22):
Stan Granberg wrote in theGreat Commission Journal 2018, I
believe, the article where hecharts 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 lifecycle on a human life cycle, a
(15:43):
church is birthed out ofexcitement, enthusiasm, momentum
, buy-in right, like a littlebaby just grows and grows and
grows, and grows and grows, andthen you hit a certain point
where, as a human, human beingsand churches follow a very
similar lifespan, congregationsa very similar lifespan.
(16:03):
So everything starts withgrowth and then there's a
plateau and then a church beginsto decline.
This is like robert dale wrotea book called to dream.
Again, he charts this a bellcurve, the bell curve of upward
growth, kind of a plateau at thetop and then a downward turn,
and somewhere on that downwardturn.
You know, robert dale says ifyou don't dream again, if you
(16:23):
don't re-inflect up a new dream,a new vision, you know, et
cetera.
You're going to just go intoquestioning nostalgia.
These are basically sayingthese are the death signs of a
church.
Once you say the questioning isman, our best days behind us?
Right, the nostalgia is exactlywhat you're explaining, man,
remember when, if that's theconversation of the church and
(16:45):
there's no vision, to dreamagain and to re-envision a
brighter future and to reinvestinto that, just like you did in
day one, to almost relaunch intosomething new, it's going to
die and no one should feel badabout that, because that's just
Paul's.
Churches are not here anymore,right?
Somebody in Ephesus stop.
(17:06):
I mean, like, at some pointyou're like, ok, we all moved
away or whatever.
But Todd Wilson and his bookMultiplier says that 99 plus
percent of churches do not makeit to 100 years old.
So if you take that and you sayour churches are planted in the
40s, 50s and 60s, that meansthey're in their 60s, 70s and
(17:27):
80s, which means they're aged,they're tired.
Um, there's just not theinvestment of energy to to dream
again and our dna says there isno new dream, because we've
figured that out in the 50s andwe're supposed to stick with
that vision and that dream, justlike that.
(17:48):
And so how do you dream again?
But if the goal of yourmovement was satisfied 70 years
ago, like and then there arecultural waves, there are
demographic waves, the culturewas more agreeable to
Christianity.
You could pop a church down incertain cities and grow it very
easily, I think at that time itseems to me like but the big
(18:09):
question is were we makingdisciples, you know?
Were we discipling our own kidsor did we silo them off into
youth ministry Disciples, youknow, were we discipling our own
kids or did we silo them offinto youth ministry?
Matt Markins of Awana said thatthe number one predictor of
longevity of faith in our kidsis adult relationships of other
Christians in the church.
That the more you know adultsin the church, they know they'll
(18:33):
be more likely to stick around.
But guess what if you silo themoff into youth group, which
happened in the 80s and the 90sand beyond, then these guys all
felt fell off the ship becausethey weren't connected.
Uh, but same guy, eric brown,said you know, you got.
My friend said you got twochurches meeting in your
building.
If you have a bible youthministry, you know, wow, man,
that's, that's something, yeah.
(18:54):
And so when they hit 18, wewe're like, hey, come build the
relationships with people upinto their eighties, uh, from
(19:18):
you know, zero to 80.
And uh, it's been beautiful,it's really been beautiful to
watch nearly full inclusion inthe life of the church.
We do separate them outoccasionally for some lessons
and just you know, for variousage appropriate things, but uh,
the ministry is the ministry,the whole church ministry.
So, yeah, that's a fewresponses, and again said in
(19:42):
humility because I don't knowthose guys and you have to look
at the specifics, but I think wecan speak generally, which is
more helpful maybe to thisaudience.
Those are some of the factorsinvolved to say most of our
churches are aged and are goingto probably shut their doors in
the next 20 years or less, andthat's just natural.
(20:02):
And that's why churches need tobe planting churches.
We need to have what's called aliving will.
Right, like, what do you dowith all this when it all goes
away?
There needs to be vision, butthe problem we see with closing
churches is there was often verylittle vision and the decline
and dying, and so there's verylittle vision in what comes next
.
And so these churches just givetheir property away to all
(20:25):
sorts of crazy stuff by the tensand tens and hundreds of
millions of dollars are about tobe given away to who knows what
, and there's often very littleplan for that, and that needs to
be addressed in our fellowship.
BT Irwin (20:39):
Thinking of a congregation that I visited
recently and all signs point tothat congregation being gone in
10 to 20 years.
If they make it another 10years I'll be surprised, and
they have a glorious past.
So many good stories in thatcongregation.
But all the signs are there nowwhen I visited.
(21:03):
And so if someone from thatcongregation is listening to you
right now and you say you needto be planting churches, I can
imagine someone responding tothat.
You know, shouldn't we betrying to build up this
congregation rather than startanother congregation?
We can barely do what we'redoing here without investing
(21:29):
energy and personnel in startinga whole new church.
What would you say to that?
Matt Dabbs (21:35):
They're exactly right.
It is going to take time andenergy to start something like
that.
Part of the issue is that whenyou have a facility like that
that is aging and is large, ittakes a lot of time and energy,
which is time and energy thatcannot be given to some of the
most core things that we're toldto do in Scripture, like make
(21:57):
disciples, right.
So here you have all thesebusiness meetings around what's
going to happen to the buildingand fixing the parking lot?
You know there's a hole in theroof and all.
It's just such a distraction tothe ministry.
And so, yeah, you only do haveso much time and energy and if
you're all in your 70s and 80sthat's going to be hard.
But what some churches areseeing and I'm starting into
(22:19):
these conversations with somechurches that are your death you
actually have the perfect sizegroup to meet in a home.
You're a home church.
You know you can.
You can sell the.
The only reason not to sell thefacility is the nostalgia.
It feels like a failure.
(22:41):
Right, we had this and, oh, welost it.
We were the ones who lost it.
You know, after all those greatyears, well, goodness, unless a
seed falls to the ground anddies, nothing new is born.
Jesus says Right, the Gospel ofJohn, so burn something new out
of that.
So so, like Heritage 21 workswith this, my recruit works with
this.
Tombstones to Cornerstones ishis book, that kind of reframes
(23:02):
that you know, the death of thisbuilding, this congregation,
doesn't have to be a tombstone.
It could be the cornerstone ofsomething 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 thereknows how to do.
They've been doing it theirwhole lives, right and without
all the headaches of the billsand the stress of the money and
(23:27):
what's going on with the hole inthe roof and all that.
You're already taking care ofyour house, so that's not a new
layer of decision making, right?
So I would say, yeah, you'reright, 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 whatyou're doing, you're probably
(23:49):
it's probably not going toimprove.
So maybe you're the perfectsize to birth something new.
So maybe you're the perfectsize to birth something new.
And what Tom Rainer says, youknow, he wrote Autopsy of a
Deceased Church and then hewrote Anatomy of a Revived
Church, which are two very smallquick reads.
And in Anatomy of a RevivedChurch he talks about, you know,
somebody needs to be prayingfor revival.
(24:10):
He says one of the bestpredictors that a church can
turn the corner into somethingnew is that somebody in that
church body is praying forrevival.
And he says, even one person,he's seen it as just one person,
right.
So I'm like, well, that couldbe me, that could be you.
So prayer is essential because,again, it's just surrender,
looking Jesus.
(24:30):
But that is a shift and I'mtrying to help churches make
that shift.
So I mean, if someone wants toreach out to me and say how do
we make a simple home church outof this?
BT Irwin (24:42):
I'd be glad to help you.
You devote a lot of the book totalking about church buildings
and I just want to say foreverybody listening to this I
want to go on record as saying Ilove church buildings, even
Church of Christ churchbuildings, which a lot of them
are not pretty.
But every time I go back to myhometown I want to drive by the
(25:04):
old Steel Avenue Church ofChrist.
I want to see the place wheremy dad preached.
I want to see where I grew up.
I want to see where I wasbaptized and came of age.
So I feel a real love andattachment to the buildings
where so much of my lifehappened and I remember the
people that met in that building.
But you do devote a lot of yourbook to talking about how you
(25:29):
know, in the Church of Christwe're raised to say that the
church is the people, not thebuilding.
And yet in our imaginationsthat building really does become
the church.
It kind of morphs with thepeople and we just cannot
imagine church without thebuilding, and so that form, the
(25:50):
building, kind of takes overfunction.
Talk about some other ways thatmaybe church buildings.
The way we have been doingchurch is maybe getting in the
way of where God may want totake the church next.
Matt Dabbs (26:08):
Let me tell you about a dream I had.
I had this recurring dream thatjust bothered me for years,
dream that just bothered me foryears.
And it was because, uh, beforeI was doing ministry, I was
working on a PhD in clinicalpsychology and I decided after
September 11th to go intoministry and I had a.
(26:28):
I had a really good situationthere, um, to work on the PhD.
They had given me a full rideand assistantship and all this,
and so it was really hard to letthat go and I started to my
grades started to suffer.
I just my heart wasn't in itanymore.
I felt called to ministry.
(26:48):
So after I had left it was kindof a really bad experience,
leaving the PhD program I hadthis reoccurring dream that I
would be walking through thatdepartment at the University of
Florida, in Shands Hospital, andjust frantic, I mean, it was
just an awful dream and I hadthat dream many times.
And then I found myself inShands Hospital a couple years
(27:11):
ago in the waiting room waitingsomebody who was there, and I
thought to myself I need to goback downstairs in the dental
building and walk those hallsagain because they had moved,
the program had moved to a newbuilding.
I knew it wasn't there anymore.
I thought, man, that might bejust good for me just to walk
those halls right, and so I wentdown there.
(27:31):
I walked the halls.
It was like a biologydepartment or something, like
posters on the wall, differentprofessor names.
I'm like, oh, there was thedoor where my our child study
lab was.
There's this, this, this.
And you know, I never had thatnightmare ever since I walked
those halls and I saw everythinghad been converted to something
(27:52):
else.
It just let my mind just likelet it go, Let that space go.
I'm like, wow, that's prettyamazing that my mind was just
trying to process that badexperience, almost trying to
like, like, convert it intosomething good.
(28:14):
I don't know what was going on,but I was able to release it.
So every single meeting spacewe have will not be a church
someday.
There's a really well-knownstory from Harding grad school
and it was in Memphis where theHarding mansion was on fire and
Jack Lewis was standing.
Dr Lewis was standing out onthe lawn with his wife and his
(28:37):
office was in the middle of thefire.
And you know, if you know DrLewis, 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
(28:59):
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'swork.
Our church's life's work is notthat building.
Our church's life's work goeson.
It's the children we've raisedin there, the Christians we've
sent out, the missionaries we'vesupported in various countries,
the disciples we've made, theministers who've raised up
(29:20):
within our ranks.
Here you are doing work withChristian Chronicle.
I mean, whatever happens to thatbuilding does not diminish the
life's work of that church,Because one day it'll be a
parking lot, One day it'll be astrip mall, One day it'll be a
movie theater, One day it'll bea different church.
I mean, something's going tohappen to that space, but
there's something in us thatjust feels so defeated by
(29:46):
letting it go.
But if you change your paradigmto a people paradigm, a kingdom
, a true kingdom paradigm, isman.
That building, yeah, it'simportant to me.
I've got so many memories.
There's some nostalgia there.
But it's not the kingdom.
I'm not here to convertbuildings.
I'm not here to disciplebuildings.
(30:07):
I don't send buildings on themission field, so we need to let
that go.
We can make an idol out of thatbuilding, right, and that's a
scary thing.
And not everyone who is caughtup on the building is making an
idol out of the building.
I'm not saying that.
But you can let your heart goso far that it begins taking
(30:28):
away from other things that weshould be focused on taking away
from other things that weshould be focused on.
BT Irwin (30:37):
I want to talk about house churches a little bit,
because you obviously you were aminister in what we think of as
brick and mortar Church ofChrist congregations for years,
so what we all think of when wethink 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 meetingin your backyard and it grew
into a congregation, and so oneof the things you seem to be
(31:01):
saying in the book is that housechurch may be more conducive to
making disciples rather thanjust church members, to making
disciples rather than justchurch members.
If that is what you're saying,then tell us more about that now
and how you found that meetingtogether in homes makes it I
(31:25):
don't want to say easier,because discipleship is hard but
maybe sets the stage a littlebetter for the kind of disciple
making that the Lord calls us todo.
Matt Dabbs (31:34):
They surveyed a thousand churches and they are
asking about disciple makingtraditional churches, brick and
mortar and they asked them over100 questions, maybe 200
questions, and what they foundout was is that about 4% of
churches, brick and mortarchurches, were making disciples
on any meaningful level.
(31:54):
4%, about 4%, and I would sayjust anecdotally that feels
right to me, I don't know.
So there are size dynamics atplay, which is another.
I hate to keep harping on this,but my friend Bobby, he wrote a
(32:15):
book called Discipleship thatFits with Alex Absalom and they
go through different size groupsin the ministry of Jesus you
got the 5,000.
It's like a public space.
You got the 70, ascending the70 or 72 in Luke 10.
You got the 12.
You got the three and then yougot just Jesus and God.
And when you get down to thesmaller numbers, the smaller the
(32:39):
numbers you have, which isactually a plus for many of our
churches, because a lot of ourchurches are rural and small.
Yes, you're engaged in a moretransformational space if you
know how to leverage that,because there's less ears,
there's less fear of sharing ifyou have room to share, and so
it's just more relational theidea of sitting in a room with
(33:01):
500 people looking at the backof a head.
One person's up here talking tous.
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 andlisten.
I'm not really going toparticipate much other than
listen, maybe pray when you pray, give, sing.
(33:22):
That's kind of what I come anddo when I'm in a traditional
brick and mortar.
But in the home church there isparticipation, there's using of
gifts, somebody's upset.
We're going to stop, we'regoing to gather around them,
we're going to put our hands onit, we're going to pray for them
in the moment, right, likethere's just connection,
relationality.
So if you say to me home churchby and large is more relational
(33:47):
, which is required fordiscipleship, the big room for
discipleship is not reallyhappening.
It can complement discipleship,encouraging worship and
encouraging message and some ofthat 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.
(34:08):
I mean, it's not relational.
That's one to 300, like a oneto three hundred ratio.
Like Jesus wasn't even thatgood.
Like Jesus did one to twelveand lost one.
You know like you're doing oneto two hundred.
This is not, it's not right.
So it's relational Home churchvalues, participation in these
(34:28):
use of gifts which helps usdevelop as disciples.
When two, three hundred peopleenter that big room, there's
just not a lot of using of giftswhich helps us develop as
disciples.
When two, 300 people enter thatbig room, there's just not a
lot of using of gifts.
You have a couple of peopleusing their gifts for the masses
and we receive that.
But for me, to grow as adisciple like I need to do a
Luke 10, I got to go, I got toparticipate, I got to say the
things I use like you know thatsort of thing.
(34:49):
So it's relational, it'sparticipational and it's
intentional.
So we have a lot moreintentionality about our use of
time.
I feel like in the home churchit's just more Holy Spirit led
for us, more open to themovement of change and change in
direction, change in what'sgoing on.
(35:10):
There are so many weeks wherethe worship and the message and
all the pieces just tyingtogether 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 traditionalministry I never got to see that
because I was orchestratingevery little piece because it
has to go off without a hitch,because there's so much at stake
(35:31):
, and I don't want to look likeI 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 havethat at home.
Church, I mean, people show upand oh, the prayer person's not
here and like this and that'snot.
It's like it'll happen, likewe're here just to encourage
each other and worship God.
(35:52):
Why are we stressed?
So I think all that lendsitself to easier discipleship
because of the smaller numbers.
It's more intimate, which ismore transformational, which is
more relational, which all thosethings more participational.
BT Irwin (36:09):
You know, I hear people that are older than us
rightly lament.
They lament and they mourn whathas become of church, and I
feel it too, because you and Igrew up we grew up, I think, in
the 80s and the 90s and weremember the energy and the size
(36:29):
, and those memories are veryprecious to us.
You talk about it in your book,and so there's this lamentation
, and it sometimes comes acrossas younger generations just
don't care about the church theway they used to, or they just
don't have room in their livesfor this anymore, or their
(36:51):
priorities aren't straight.
And I'll say it right now Idon't actually buy that.
I don't buy that.
I think that human beings are ashungry for God now as they've
ever been and are searching forGod like they've always been
searching for God, and everygeneration has challenges and
obstacles and distractions toovercome on their way to finding
(37:14):
God.
So when you talk about housechurches, I hear you talking
about forming relationships,like real human relationships
and sharing life in a way that Ithink that emerging generations
are hungry for, hungry forauthenticity and connection, and
(37:36):
so tell me if you think I'mright or wrong.
I don't believe for one momentthat emerging generations just
don't care anymore, just don'thave room for God anymore.
I think they have just as mucha hunger for God as any
generation ever has.
But perhaps the way we didchurch if I can put it that way
(37:56):
is not connecting with them, andmaybe the house church movement
that you're describing isactually the way that we might
reach and connect with peoplethat have given up on the
quote-un, unquote old way ofdoing church.
Matt Dabbs (38:18):
I'll end with what you just stated on the younger
generation and their hunger anddesire for God, I think is very,
very high, because they havegrown up in the technological
age, an age of disconnection, anage of high anxiety, all those
things that not often you knowdeep relationships, so there's a
lot of holes there that thechurch is designed to assist
(38:41):
them with.
Now I feel like you know peopleour age I mean I'm 46, you know
where I'm at and up, I mean my46, you know where I'm at an up,
like I was, I was trained,somewhat self-trained, to have
theological debate with peoplewho were denominational, yeah,
(39:16):
but I would have, no, I wouldhave had no idea how to engage
someone who, like a young persontoday, right, who just they
don't care about thatconversation, they don't care,
they don't care about debatingover 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 withme?
Like there's a lot more bigticket items.
You know that they're concernedabout upfront, that we can
really connect with, but I thinkwe're just so in tuned with,
(39:39):
we've been really trained tohave 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, pleasehelp me love the lost more,
(40:00):
because I really like savepeople better.
You know, like I really enjoytime with Christians, but you
get off with the non-Christians.
It gets messy, it gets deep, itgets dirty.
I don't feel I'm prepared forit, 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 usethem.
But if I but it's like thisokay, it's like the guy who has
(40:24):
to learn the language becausehe's so attracted to that young
lady that he's got to learnspanish to talk to her or
something right, like he's goingto go learn it.
So go learn the language, go golearn what's got to learn
Spanish to talk to her orsomething right.
Like he's going to go learn it.
So go learn the language.
Go learn what's important tothem.
Do an X17 where Paul's like yeah, I've been around your city and
I've seen all these idols andyou got one of the unknown God.
I'm going to contextualize thegood news of Jesus to something
(40:45):
you already know.
Well, go find out what theyknow.
No-transcript fail or if wegoof up or if we say the wrong
(41:18):
thing, because we love them andwe're trying right.
So I think it starts with loveand discipleship starts with
love love of Christ to us andthen our love to other people.
Incarnation God came in theflesh and showed us and loved us
.
Now we are here in the fleshwith people, right.
BT Irwin (41:40):
You know, somebody may be a member or a leader in a,
in a congregation that's doingvery well or hanging on
maintaining, and they may say,well, what we're talking about
here is just small groups.
You know, our congregation canjust do small groups.
And then I reckon there aresome people who are listening to
this.
Their congregation is plateauedor maybe declining, and they
may think, well, I can'tpossibly say let's give this
(42:00):
thing up, break the whole thingdown and, you know, sell the
building and let's meet in homesgoing forward, Like, as you
imagine, the kind of folks thatare listening to this
conversation right now, andyou're making a strong case for
house church.
How might a standard brick andmortar Church of Christ
(42:23):
experiment with?
Okay, God, is this somethingthat you want?
This?
Matt Dabbs (42:35):
congregation to experiment with, to partner with
and start praying about thosethings.
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'skind of bubbling up in their
prayer life when it comes to,you know, praying over those
things and when you start thatintentionality of working
(42:57):
towards something like that,there is no rhyme or
mathematical formula to it.
So I can't really illustrateexactly how that would go.
But then we've seen things likewe pray for partners and then I
start getting phone calls frompeople who want to partner.
We pray for people in a newcommunity to come and we prayer
walk and then you know, we hadpeople walk in who I didn't even
(43:18):
meet but I walked past theirhouse and prayed for them the
Saturday before the gatheringand they walked over.
They heard the worship andwalked over and I didn't even
get to talk to them the Saturdaybefore but I stopped in front
of their house and asked Godthat they would come to our
gathering.
So prayer like God, like what'sour next chapter look like?
And maybe it's to re-energizeexactly how it was.
(43:42):
I mean, I'm not God, I'm notanti-brick and mortar.
You know it's like God's goingto give different people
different answers.
He's going to give differentsituations, different sets of
giftedness, differentcongregations different answers.
Right, so he may startsupplying things, bringing you
some people who help you docertain things, who have certain
skill sets.
Listen to that, follow that.
(44:03):
You know there's no one thingsaying you got to just funnel it
on the home churches orsomething like that.
But if somebody like with usnow multiple times, you start
praying about home church andthen somebody calls the church
office or moves into town, it'slike you know, hey, we grew up
in the Church of Christ and wereally love home churches, but
we're looking for someconnection to a local
congregation.
Would you kind of like like beour eldership or over us or
(44:27):
whatever, to help us start this?
You just don't know who God'sgoing to send.
So I just think, praying overthose things very boldly and
specifically like God, if youwant us to start something like
this, please send the people,raise them up, make them clear,
you know, to start helping usconnect the dots and then just
start listening and watching andkeep praying and just see what
bubbles up.
But that would be where I wouldstart, you know, and then as
(44:49):
those people come online, as thepieces kind of connect, you
feel like God's answering thatprayer.
He wants us to do this.
It's like the legacy of yourchurch 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 todevelop them into, you know,
spiritual disciples of Christwho are serious about their
(45:11):
faith, spiritual disciples ofChrist who are serious about
their faith, and they're greatyoung men and they're going to
do far better than I've everdone in their life Right With
with this, all this stuff andman, I'm so happy about that,
like it wasn't all about me andit's not so.
My point is we have to birththings.
Like there has to be a passingon of the DNA and, and if we
don't do that, uh, churches,churches.
(45:32):
There's no verse in the bible.
It's like church is one anddone right, like we can start
churches from churches.
So I would just be in prayerabout 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 bethat you have a little group of
people there that go.
You know we've been prayingabout this and just us couple
people, we really just are gonnago ahead and start that in our
(45:54):
home.
You know, will you bless thatand just resource them, bless
them, and we always have aprayer team for everything we do
.
So ask some people and say,would you devote yourselves to
praying for this new thing fromday one?
Start praying for theirneighborhood prayer walk the
neighborhood.
Start praying for theirneighborhood prayer walk the
neighborhood.
Talk about that in the book.
(46:15):
Have some resources on how todo that.
There's a lot of QR codes inthe book on resources.
BT Irwin (46:23):
But that would be where I would start.
I'm going to ask you one onefollow-up question to that, and
I touched on it earlier.
I don't know, from myexperience in our community over
49 years experience, uh, in ourcommunity over 49 years I don't
know that we are particular.
We are particularly good atdiscernment, at congregational
discernment.
Um, I don't know that that's amuscle that we have exercised a
lot in our tradition and, uh,when we were talking about brick
(46:48):
and mortar early and how, uh,how people uh imagine the church
as a building or people whomeet in a particular building
and have particular programstogether.
I think we can tend to pray insuch a way as we've already made
up our minds what we think theoutcome will be or should be.
(47:10):
And so, when you recommend thatwe start with prayer, there are
different ways to approachprayer.
As a congregation, the elderscan say we're going to go into a
boardroom and we're going topray about this together and
we're going to come out andreveal to the church what we've
heard from the Lord.
There are particular things acongregation might pray for,
(47:33):
like help us start a housechurch ministry.
That's one way, but you'realready telling God what you
want to do, rather than sayingGod what are you doing, what do
you want to do?
So I want to offer you anopportunity to be a little more
specific about the particularpractices and posture and how a
congregation might enter intoprayer, seeking to discern and
(47:57):
seeking to be completely opentogether, as an entire
congregation, to what God may bedoing.
Matt Dabbs (48:05):
And and I'm going to- start with some
presuppositions, somepre-beliefs that I think are
necessary for putting ourselvesin a posture to receive what God
is doing.
So the first one is that God isactive in the world.
(48:27):
If we don't think that there'sno point in seeking any kind of
guidance and we're pretty muchon our own with our own logic
and reasoning, right, and that'show I live, for quite well, I
ministered that way for quite awhile, not not a hundred percent
, but like more than I shouldhave.
Um, so god is working.
Second, god is loving.
(48:48):
Okay, he wants the best outcomefor the world.
He's not malevolent, he's notout to get us, he's not going to
take us down some awful path.
If we seek his direction and wetake it Now, that's not to say
there couldn't be suffering orhardship.
I mean, read 1 Peter.
You know you could do the rightthing and suffer for it, but
you're suffering with Christ.
So if you believe that God isworking, you believe he is good
(49:13):
and loving, he's active in theworld and that he's able to
communicate in whatever way hesees fit I don't have a formula
for that, but he's able to getyour attention, show you some
things that will give you somedirection.
Then you begin praying intothose things.
God, we need your help.
We want to work where you'reworking.
We want to move where you'removing.
(49:33):
Where you're not moving, wedon't want to be there.
We want to be where you are at,working alongside you.
It's like that old africanproverb.
It's like don't get so farbehind god that you can't see
his face, or so far ahead of godthat you can't hear his voice,
but walk next to him where youcan see his face and where you
can hear his voice.
We want to walk next to you, instep with you, all the way.
(49:54):
So take us where you want totake 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, ifit's, you know, start, send five
people over there and startprayer walking.
That we'll do it, you know.
But I think if you start withthose presuppositions, if you
don't have those presuppositions, it's going to be really hard,
(50:15):
like really hard.
It's kind of like orphans,right, like you know, and that's
just not a good recipe.
We'll have a leadership pipelinethat's just dry and we've
relied on the seminaries, whichare doing fantastic work and
they're some of my very dearestfriends.
But we've relied on theseminaries, to which are doing
(50:35):
fantastic work and they're someof my very dearest friends.
But we've relied on theseminaries to develop, to
third-party develop, ourcongregational leaders and I
have an MDiv it's over here onthe wall and I love education.
I could be in school every dayfor the rest of my life and I
would love it.
But the biblical thing is weraise up leaders from within.
We disciple our own people.
(50:57):
Churches should be leadershippipelines, congregations should
be leadership pipelines, not thefarm league of you know.
The little church raises theguy up and we grab him after a
couple of years and we put himin the bigger church and he is
pretty good and he goes to thebigger church.
It's like that's such a weird,not spiritual system.
I mean I'm not saying goddoesn't use it, god's got, but
I'm just saying it's a littleweird.
(51:17):
Um so, but we got to get backto the discipleship and part of
that's going to be okay.
Jesus called them, he's calledus.
Jesus has equipped us.
Let's get equipped and thatmeans the everyday person,
because we're not going to beable to afford the other guy
because we're shrinking Everyday.
(51:38):
Person needs to learn thisstuff.
This is my mission right now isteaching the everyday person
how to learn.
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 movementof God?
Listen for God.
You know like that's one of themost important things.
He said in John 10, my sheepwill know my voice.
They will be able to discernthe difference between me and a
stranger.
(51:58):
It's like, do we know how to dothat?
Like, do we ever sit and listenand pray that God will guide us
?
It sounds crazy.
I would have said 20 years agoyou'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 willknow.
(52:20):
You will know it was from him.
When you pray big and bold andstuff starts happening that's
not in your control, that'sbeyond your power and ability,
and it starts lining up, you'relike, wow, he did that.
There is no other answer thanthat.
He did that.
But you're going to need tobelieve big and pray big.
Like he says in James don'tbelieve in doubt, pray.
You know, don't pray and doubt,Pray and believe, you'll do it.
(52:44):
And so, man, learn the skills.
And again in the book there'sQR codes to all kinds of stuff
to learn that.
If the everyday Christian wouldlearn these basic ministry
skills that we farmed out to theprofessionals and third-party
this for all these years, it'sleft us anemic, it's left us not
using our gifts, it's left usnot knowing how to do anything
and we've been fine with it forall these years.
It's like it's time to learnthe skills Jesus showed us how
(53:07):
to do it.
If you want some help, I'llhelp you, you know.
So let's, let's go.
But I'm afraid that we are justso.
We've become so comfortable andcomplacent with just sitting
and listening and all that thatit can.
That deeply concerns me andI've been beating the drum for a
while now and I don't get a lotback and I'm like man, only God
(53:28):
knows, I can't say it's goingto turn out poorly, only God
knows, but I want to be wherehe's moving and I want to help.
BT Irwin (53:39):
I'm confident that it's not going to turn out
poorly because, it's going toturn out beyond what we can ask
or imagine the question is willwe be there?
Matt Dabbs (53:50):
We'll be there.
I want to be there, that'sright.
BT Irwin (53:56):
Are we going to get with God?
Matt Dabbs (53:58):
That's it.
That's it.
BT Irwin (54:01):
And that's what I think your book is all about.
We have Matt Dabbs here.
He's the author of Restoring aMovement a Hopeful Future for
Churches of Christ.
He leads Home Church Resources,a ministry that supports those
who want to make disciples forJesus Christ through the
planting, growth and spreadingof house churches.
Links galore will be in theshow notes, matt, thanks for
(54:24):
dropping by our homes today.
Matt Dabbs (54:27):
Thank you for having me.
I appreciate you being patientwith me and for all the hard
work you put into this.
BT Irwin (54:33):
It's been a pleasure to have you.
Thank you.
We hope something you heard inthis episode encouraged,
enlightened or enriched you insome way.
If it did, thanks be to God andplease pay it forward.
Subscribe to this podcast andshare it with a friend.
Recommend and review itwherever you listen to your
favorite podcast.
Your subscription, recommendand review it wherever you
listen to your favorite podcast.
(54:53):
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 ministryto inform and inspire Christians
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So if you like the show and youwant to keep it going and make
(55:17):
it even better, please make atax-deductible gift to the
Christian Chronicle atchristianchronicleorg slash
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The Christian Chronicle podcastis a production of the Christian
Chronicle Incorporated,informing and inspiring Church
of Christ congregations, membersand ministries around the world
since 1943.
(55:37):
The Christian Chronicle'smanaging editor is Audrey
Jackson, editor-in-chief BobbyRoss Jr and executive director
and CEO Eric Trigestad.
The Christian Chronicle podcastis written, directed, hosted
and edited by BT Irwin and isproduced by James Flanagan at
Podcast your Voice Studios inthe Motor City, detroit,
(55:58):
michigan, usa.
Until next time.
May grace and peace be yours inabundance.
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com