From Layman to Church Planter in 2020

Welcome to another edition of the Conversations That Matter Podcast. We have a guest with us today, Mr. Dirk Wahlstedt, who has been kind enough to join us to relay an experience

I want everyone to hear about. Many of you have heard me say over the past few months, perhaps even more than that,

I think it's been maybe a year or more that I've been saying a lot of people in situations that are very similar to Mr.

Wahlstedt here cannot find a church or they're in an area where the options just are not good options.

It seems like a daunting thing to plant a church yourself, especially if you didn't have seminary training.

There's a lot of things that, a lot of hurdles that we're supposed to go through before doing that or so we're told or so many of us think.

Here's the unique thing. Here's the story that we're going to be going over today. Dirk Wahlstedt has been in this situation very similar to many of you, and he has decided to take this step of faith and plant a church.

I think it's an inspiring story. You can find more about it in print form by going to the link in the info section at discerningchristians .com

slash blog, but I'm going to let Mr. Wahlstedt tell the story in his own words.

Thank you for joining me, Dirk. I appreciate it. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for having me on.

My pleasure. I want to hear from you a little bit. Start from the beginning because I know a lot of people are in your position.

You didn't start out with the intention of just planting a church. You were in a church, right? Then something happened.

What happened? Yeah. I'll just say background -wise to the church

I was in, in many ways, I liked it. I liked a lot of the people. It was a sort of evangelical, non -denominational, reformed -ish church, but there were just things that were concerning.

There were things that made me kind of question the direction the church was going in, question just the commitment to some of the things that I thought were important, just some of the resources that were being pushed.

One thing that was just huge alarm bells for me was just the amount of people like Tim Keller, for instance.

I read some of his stuff, and alarm bells are going off in my head. That didn't seem to be going off for the rest of the church, certainly not for the church leadership.

In fact, that was the book that was his book, Reason for God, was the book that was being pushed a year ago when we were doing an apologetics class.

You put a quote in your blog here. Tim Keller, I guess, had one of the ideas, and I'm assuming there's a lot more than just this, but he said,

Hell is therefore a prison in which the doors are first locked from the inside by us and therefore are locked from the outside by God.

This was something that you kind of had issues with and talked to your pastor about, and the response that you got, and I'm assuming this applies to a lot of other scenarios as well, just was not satisfactory.

Am I getting that right? Yeah, yeah, and I know I'd actually read previously because I had spent a bit of time looking into Keller and had concerns about him several years ago, probably four years ago,

I think now, and he actually openly talks about how you can't talk about hell with postmoderns the way you would talk about hell with more conservative traditional people.

I mean, with those, you talk about it as a punishment, but with other people who are more into their sort of autonomy, you have to talk about the fact that it's sort of you doing it.

You're, in some way, he's following C .S. Lewis in some of this, and he actually talks about Lewis in his chapter in that book, and I have real problems about that because once you start saying, well, it's basically you're the one who sends yourself to hell,

I mean, there's a sense that you can talk about that, but you might send yourself to prison, but the authorities put you in there and lock you up.

So when I voiced that to our pastor after, and this was in a class on apologetics, and I said, you know, the problem with that whole sort of thing, particularly getting it from Lewis, C .S.

Lewis, who I admire, but I said, he's not an exegete. There's no scripture here. It's just storytelling, and the response was, well,

Jesus told stories. I mean, that's just completely unsatisfactory to me. I'm sorry.

I'm not Jesus. I'm supposed to be, we're supposed to be teaching the Bible, not telling stories. Right, right, and stories teach a lesson, and you can tell stories to, you know, as Jesus did with parables, to lay aside something that's understandable in the temporal realm that makes sense of things in the eternal realm, but that's sort of a categorical error there that, you know, if someone's telling a story and it's just false, it doesn't relay the truth.

I mean, we'd never say that, you know, a criminal sent himself to jail, you know. It's the judge.

It's the police. It's, you know, the justice, criminal justice system, but somehow we switch, and I've heard this same line before, and we start softening hell for unbelievers.

We're playing around with doctrine, and I think you were right to have a red flag go up. I want people to understand something here as we go through kind of your story too, and you did not just kind of willy -nilly,

I don't like something I heard, and I'm going to just leave the church. There's a lot of people that do that, but it sounds to me like from your experience, though, that there was, you tried.

You tried to go through the proper channels to, you know, make your concerns known, and it was just over and over.

You were getting kind of failures of leadership and unsatisfactory answers, and it just became a place you didn't want, you know, to have your family under that authority.

Is that correct? Yeah, I think, and that's how, you know, like I'm sure the leadership there would want to say, well, you didn't come and have some big, like, sit -down meeting, but I think most people would acknowledge how this goes.

You know, you go to your pastor after an event or after Sunday service or special class or whatever, hey, you know, and you start interacting with them, and you get very rebuffed, and that happens over and over where you're sort of like, you just sort of start losing trust in the leadership.

You start losing trust in the direction that they're going. You know, you bring something up, and it's sort of like, oh, well, you know, that's just, you know, one point

I was told, well, that's just because you're a Baptist fundamentalist and can't get out of your own echo chamber, and, you know, and I think even in the context,

I was simply saying, I just was sort of thought that two of the pastors, their reading lists, it just seemed some stuff that I was kind of, yeah,

I don't know. I was like, well, I'm not definitely reading different books than you, and that's the kind answer I got, and so it's like, well, almost seems threatened to have somebody who who reads and thinks different, if you will.

Why don't you tell us a little bit about their reaction, and this isn't to bash anyone. It's just to relate to so many people out there going through similar scenarios,

COVID lockdowns, and then the social justice movement this past year. Were those issues brought up?

Did those kind of push you over the edge? Yeah, yeah, so I mean, the concerns that I had were concerns very much in the back of my mind.

There was some concerns about liberalism and whatnot, but those were very much in the back of my mind. I mean, I wasn't planning on leaving or whatever, and then 2020 happened is, you know, and like we were told specifically, the church was like, okay, you know, we're not really sure what's going on here, but we're going to close down every other program by Sunday, but we're not closing

Sunday down, and I was like, oh, good, okay, you know, like because they said, hey, this is sacred. We're going to continue to meet, and then three days later, they were like, oh, church is just closed, and they didn't give any answer.

They didn't say why or what the thought process was, which,

I mean, just on that, it's very unsatisfactory. Not only that, and in a way, I mean,

Sunday worship is a unique thing for Christians, but in a way, one of the things that was more upsetting to me is they actually said that all small groups were not allowed to meet either.

They had to be online, and at some point, that's where I, as a man, as the head of my family, that becomes very inappropriate, because now you're telling me, you're treating me like a child.

I don't get to make that decision of whether I meet with other Christians. There was two different Christian men who expressed to me that they were concerned they could actually be even disciplined if they met, you know, because it's like, well, you know, the elders explicitly said you're not to meet.

We're to do everything online, and yet several men I knew, like my small group leader, was very upset by a lot of this and several times voiced the concern that he felt like we should meet, but he wasn't sure if that would, you know, be a violation of what they had said, and those sort of things just seem to be more, in my opinion, at that point, about not wanting to get sued or something or get in trouble with the government than it is about protecting people, because you should be able to let grown adults make their own decisions, and that's not even in the church building.

That would be in their own homes. Yeah, it's outside the purview of what an elder would be responsible for, necessarily, if some group of Christians want to get together, and, you know, that's funny that you bring that up, because that exact scenario,

I've gotten so many messages about that exact thing, like, what do I do, John, when an elder specifically says,

I can't come into church unless I have a mask on, or I cannot, in the scenario you just said,

I cannot meet with my own friends who are Christians to worship God, because it's a violation of their imposing their authority and saying, you know, whether they're justifying it by Romans 13, or you're going to be a bad witness, supposedly, or it's not loving your neighbor, all bogus reasons, but in my opinion, but that kind of heavy -handed approach,

I think you spelled it out the way, well, that's the way that I've heard a lot of people describe it.

They feel like they're not adults, like they can't make their own risk assessment choices, and for something good, to worship the

Lord. So, this kind of, this bothered you. What about social justice? Was it after the

George Floyd thing? Yeah, so, and I think it's important to point out as well, because of the events that were going on, that I live in Washington State, south of Seattle, so after the death of George Floyd, you know, we had massive riots in Seattle, and there was a section of Seattle that was actually taken over by,

I don't know how many people in other parts of the country were following this, but what was known, both by conservatives and liberals were referring to him as a warlord, who had taken over a part of, they claimed it as an autonomous new nation.

So, we had that event happening, and the church we were attending is actually not in the town we live in, it's about 40 minutes away, but it's most of the population of the church worked for the

Navy, there's a Navy shipyard there, and so most of the people, blue -collar people, they work for the shipyard, or the naval base, and so when we have all this going on, people are concerned, our governor won't do anything, he won't send in any sort of help,

I mean, there's literally a part of our biggest city taken over, and apparently is no longer part of the

U .S., and people were being assaulted there, and all the rest, and my church decided to address, they didn't ever address, they never gave a sermon talking about how

Christians should view death, or disease, or sickness, or anything like that, they didn't address any of the stuff going on in Seattle, but what they did do is do a sermon on racism, and I'll say it was a, whatever you think about George Floyd, we have a major racism problem in America, and that was a direct quote, which

I think right there, you're begging the question, because that's the very question that's up for grabs, I think, and the worst part of that sermon too was the church was going through Genesis, and that was

Genesis 41, the Joseph story, when Joseph comes out of prison and speaks to Pharaoh, and that became, well, this tells us non -Christians are given insight by God, because Pharaoh got insight by God, so we need to listen to non -Christians, and we need to work together for the good of our city, and at one point, the phrase was made, we need to shut up and listen to black and brown voices, and I'm going, well, first of all, this has nothing to do with the text, like nothing to do with the text, and second of all, there was no gospel, it was long years of hard work to fix racism, and I mean, so we have all of the stuff going on with lockdowns and all the rest we have, we have, you know, all the stuff that's going on in Seattle, and here to a bunch of, again, middle -class blue -collar working families, you're telling them that we have such a racism problem, and almost indicting them in the racism problem, it's just frankly absurd.

Well, one of the things Jesus said about the Pharisees, right, was that they strained at a and swallowed a camel, so he went after their sense of proportion and priority, and that's one of the problems, it seems, with that kind of preaching is they're going after something that doesn't, it's not even really in the purview of most of your lives, and if it is, it would be certainly, it would be a minor issue at best.

I'm not even gonna maybe concede that, but then to ignore the actual questions Christians have, what's happening in their own backyard, you know, that's the something that's,

I think, happened all over this country, people, there's a separation, they don't relate to the leaders in their church, and it's in the same way they don't relate to the media elites, or really the elites in any other institution, it's like they're just out of touch with the lives that people are living, so you felt that way,

I mean, I'm assuming that there were ongoing conversations, when was the time, though, that you just said, you know what, that's it,

I need to get out of here, and either find a church, or plant a church? Well, yeah,

I had been asked, when the church was still shut down, I had been asked by my small group leader, an older gentleman that I'm good friends with, he didn't feel like he could articulate what was going on, and, you know, his wife was really concerned that she thought this is so serious, everybody's gonna die, because,

I mean, look at all the people she trusts, the way they're acting, right, so she was afraid, you know, her family, or whatever, her kids or grandkids are gonna die, and my friend was more concerned that, you know, he couldn't believe this was happening, so he pushed me several times to write a letter, and he said,

I can't explain it, but you could explain it to the elders, like, that just what's going on, and that, you know, this is wrong, and I tried to tell him, like,

I mean, I don't think, like, I don't think you quite know what you're asking, but I did eventually end up writing a letter, and, you know, and I talked about a bunch of stuff in that letter, issues that I had, but ultimately, my biggest issue was,

I said, you know, like, my concern, the thing that keeps me up at night is that my children and grandchildren will not be able to worship freely, you know,

I'm no prophet, I'm not a son of a prophet, but I saw back in March where this was going, and I said, specifically, when

I heard places like Grace Community Church and others, I said, the church must not close, because this will never end if it does, and I got rebuffed by people who heard that, they didn't, you know, oh, you know, that's just ridiculous, and so my biggest question was, you know, is this even a concern for you?

Are you, guys, concerned enough to lay your lives down for the sheep?

Because, I mean, honestly, like, if you go to jail, but you can protect your children's right to worship,

I mean, I think we take these things really for granted in America, and I'll just say, too,

I mean, it was that, and also, and again, you know, the head pastor was told, you know, very, expressed his fury at me, he was very mad, the letter really pissed him off, he said, that I had just attacked them, but the other thing

I'll say, the other thing that was sort of, and so my, when I finally did talk to him on the phone, then, that was sort of the final straw, he kind of made it plain that, you know, the opportunities that I'd had,

I'd had some teaching opportunities in the church, and whatnot, was, I think, respected there, he made it plain that those were in the past tense, and the other thing is that they took, while they had shut down, they took federal money, which, again, seems to me to be a massive hook for the government to control the church, and they didn't tell anybody, you can see the giving stuff, if you remember, giving was not down at all, and there was a

Q &A, I submitted questions to the Q &A, and asked, and honestly, the reason was, well, it's free money, of course, we take it, and so that wasn't brought, so I was like, well, wait a minute, you're locking their church down, and yet, at the same time, you're holding out your hand to the same federal government that is,

I mean, basically, the government is telling you, you can't meet, I mean, that is a very concerning thing, that seems like protecting the shepherds, not protecting the sheep.

Yeah, I remember that, and unfortunately, a lot of people took that money, and it's, yeah, anyway, borrowers slave to the lender, but so it reached the breaking point, and then you did something, some people would consider crazy, you decided to start a church plant, or church,

I'm not sure exactly what you're calling it, yeah, tell me, kind of went through your mind, and a little bit about your background, because you haven't been to seminary,

I mean, what kinds of hurdles and questions did you have, as you were considering this? Yeah, well,

I'll just say for myself, you know, yeah, I haven't been to seminary, I have had a desire to be a pastor for a number of years, and I've tried to do, you know,

I mean, I have a family, you know, I can't go to seminary now, at this point in my life,

I mean, maybe somebody would say I could, but so I have, you know, tried to get as much theological education as I can, there are great resources out there, so it's not like, it's not like I'm somebody who's just, you know,

I don't want to say pew sitter in a pejorative, but as though I have no clue about these things, but.

You've been a faithful layman. Yeah, exactly, trying to be a faithful layman, trying to read, trying to study, trying to learn all that I can, what was, what's so interesting about my story is, is that it isn't just the story of one individual who said,

I have this vision, I'm going to go start a church. There were actually two other faithful men who started to take steps, and this is what's so great, because I think sometimes people think, well,

I need to do all this, and if I don't have a vision, if I don't have all these kind of things, then

I just can't do it, and so the way it worked out in my situation was my younger brother, who'd been attending the same church, and pretty much made the same decision

I had, that this was not a place that he would be bringing his family to anymore. He actually made a

YouTube video about how the ultimate question comes down to whether the worship and the love of God is the, is the most important thing in our lives, and you know,

I watched the video, I told him, I mean, we'd obviously been talking about all of this, and then something really kind of out of the blue happened.

A friend of mine, who, you know, lives a ways away here in the state,

I don't see him very often, and I've never really had like deep theological conversations with him, but he's a, you know, committed

Christian man. He saw my brother's video, and he called me and said,

I feel so convicted about this, that I'm gonna hold a worship service outside, and he bought an old farm, old run -down farm, they're not living there yet, but he, he said, you know, would you come, and you know,

I'm gonna ask your brother to preach, and I said, yeah, absolutely, we'll be there, and then, and then he said, my brother was like, well, you know,

I'm just not sure, I've never done something like that before, so, and I've, and I've saw every, I personally have saw every opportunity

I have, I can get to preach, or to teach, or whatever, so I mean, it's something I've done a little bit of, and so he said,

I, but I told, I told the mutual friend, I told him that you should preach, and I just, honestly, at that point was like,

I, I, I don't, I don't even want to, I just kind of want to go hide somewhere, I mean, I don't know what this is going to be like,

I don't know, like, but I thought, you know, what, if my brother was faithful enough to, to, to say, hey, we need to take a stand, and, and, and worship

God above all else, which is what, what my heart had been, and if my friend was like, you know, I'm going to just take a steps, and, and, and call people to worship, then, then

I should be faithful to bring the word, and so I said, yeah, okay, we'll be there, and, and, and I'll teach, and we've been going through as a family on Sunday mornings, uh,

Daniel, so we were in Daniel chapter six, and I said, you know, I'll do it, but it has to be in Daniel, because that's where we are, and he said, okay, so, which,

I mean, honestly, is the perfect passage. I was gonna say that he couldn't have picked a better, yeah, yeah, it was, it was absolutely perfect, and, you know, there's people from different churches, and whatnot, and I mean,

I didn't know any of his other friends, and stuff from his town, and, and then, you know, people were like, what are we doing next week?

Um, I don't know, I don't know, and somebody opened up their home, and, you know, and there was some of my family, and other people, and, um, and so, since the middle of June, um, people have been meeting every week.

They said, well, you know, what are you preaching on next week, and I said, well, I guess Daniel chapter seven, um, and honestly, that was part of it for me.

I was just sort of, like, going, I'm not trying to start a church here. My wife was asking me, well, what do you, you know, what do you, what is, what is this going to do?

What do, what are we starting here? And I said, I don't know, but I just want to be faithful. I mean, there are people, there are families, there are families who drive, and have been driving since June, an hour drive or more to come every

Sunday, um, to meet in a house, to hear the word preached, and I don't know how to do any,

I have to honor that. Like, I, I can't, I can't just go, well, you should find some, some,

I don't know, church planner guy somewhere, and I'm honory enough. I said, okay, fine, but I'm going to keep doing

Daniel, and I knew that the second half of Daniel is not in the section to do, and I kind of thought in the back of my mind, probably nobody's going to want to hear this.

I mean, I'm not going to want to preach this. This is, this is hard sledding, right, and that second week, there was a family, another family that was invited.

She told me later, she said, I, when you said turn to Daniel, I was like, oh, no, like,

I just, what did I do? I brought my kids here, and, and then she said, but, you know, you just taught the

Bible, like, it was great. Yeah. So, and it's just slowly been growing. I think there's about 45 to 50 people that come.

Wow. Well, that's a church. That's a church. Yeah. Yeah. And most of the people, you know, I, I didn't know them before, um, you know,

I didn't know them that before the, all this, this last year before June. So, and it's just slowly kind of grown and.

So, you've sensed the Lord's leading in this with through circumstance and, and I mean, it's so organic the way that this all happened, where you weren't really planning it, but it just kind of the pieces fit together and, and all at the same time when they needed to.

Yeah. Yeah. And like I said, it's been my heart to, to be involved in pastoral ministry, not, you know, some of the full -time

Bible. I don't really care. I just, I have a passion to teach the word of God. And, and so at this point, like I said,

I can't turn my back on people. I can't, um, you know. What's your week look like, if you don't mind me asking just for people who might be considering,

Hey, maybe I should do what, what Dirk is doing. You work full -time, you have a family, right?

So where, how do you run a church or how do you preach and do these kinds of things?

Yeah. So, um, yeah, I, I have seven children, so, uh, my week is very busy. Um, and we have a small, um, we have some acreage, we have a small farm.

One of my passions, I love growing my own food and doing that. So yeah, no life is crazy, but, um, my week looks like, um,

I try to get into the text fairly early in the week. Um, in the evening, you know,

I, I've got, um, we do devotionals and stuff a couple of different nights a week. We do some study stuff as a family.

So after the kids go to bed, I get, I can get two or three hours and a couple of nights a week, um, just to get some initial work done.

I, uh, well, we finished Daniel and then we went through the book of Philippians. We just finished that actually.

So it was, you know, first by verse section by section through Philippians. So at least in that case, you know exactly where you're going to be next week.

Um, but, um, I've also tried to, uh, provide some other, other ways to give a little theological, um, help.

There's people coming from all sorts of different backgrounds. So I made a commitment to try to write an article every month that can kind of tackle a different subject or whatever.

And so that's awesome trying to work on that. So if I can get, you know, two, three nights a week, I can get a couple hours in,

I'm kind of a night owl, so I can get some time in. And then Saturday is my main prep day. And, um, so, you know,

I'm probably putting in a good 12 hours. Um, wow. The wonderful thing about doing it

Saturday is that it has to be done by Sunday. So, um, uh, you had a hard deadline.

Yeah. Yeah. So you're, you know, you're climbing the mountain and then Sunday morning you preach and I feel, um, kind of exhausted, try to get something done as do something with my family or whatever on Sunday afternoon.

And I, I, I honestly, you know, it's like, I'll, I guess I'll sleep when I'm dead, but, um,

I, I love it. And, um, I, I am so glad that all of this happened.

Um, I think that when people talk about burnout, I think a huge part of it is because they're not sure what they're doing matters.

It feels like I'm just treading water, but I am seeing the people who are coming.

And, you know, it's so funny. So many Christian leaders want to deal with all these big questions that are being asked, you know, whatever in the new social media, whatever the questions that Christian families,

Christian individuals are asking are about how to be a better parent. How do I understand how the new Testament fits to the old

Testament? You know, how do I talk to my friend who wants to become part of BLM and Christianize it? Like those are the questions

I got last Sunday. Yeah. They're practical. Yeah. Yeah. They're practical and their basic theology. And I think that's the thing, like sometimes we, um, it's funny earlier, you mentioned, um, the whole, the whole thing about, um,

I can be bigger, you know, the picking out Nats, you just talked about picking it out now. I don't know if you've ever read

CS Lewis has an essay called fern seed and elephants, which he talks about that there. It's about theological criticism.

And one of the things he says in there is that he says that the, that for shepherds, he's given to an address of, um,

English, uh, church of England, churchman. And he says in 1959, and he says that he says that the, the study of for shepherds is supposed to be the study of sheep, but, and only incidentally other shepherds.

But he's making the point that the problem is that shepherds spend all their time studying other shepherds, right.

Instead of studying the sheep, right. And obviously as Christians, it's a little different because we're supposed to be following the good shepherd.

But I think that there's way too much of that. How am I going to look in the eyes of all the people that matter? But honestly, all the people that matter are the people who

I'm preaching to. Amen. And those are moms and dads and kids, and they have just regular world problems.

They're not honestly all worked up about, I don't know, whatever. A couple of the men came to me several weeks ago, and they weren't doing this as a rebuke.

It was just kind of afterward conversation. But, but one of them said, you know, I don't come to church to hear about the latest news headline.

Another one, I'm so tired of hearing the five letter word, you know, Corona, like, or COVID or COVID, I guess.

I mean, it was just like, I just, I do not want to come to church and hear about that. I want to come and hear the timeless truths of the

Word of God. And it, like, like I said, we went through Philippians.

It's so intensely practical. And it deals with honestly, a lot of things that people are dealing with right now, but it does it in a timeless way instead of the headlines kind of grabbing way that a lot of people want to.

I think we're motivated too much by what the world's doing instead of what, you know. Let me, you know, a few observations from what you just said.

And by the way, amen. And I love to hear this. I think it's very inspiring for everyone who's listening.

Number one, one of the reasons, I mean, the main reason to be in a church, right, is to use your spiritual gifts to be ministered to.

That's the analogy of the body in 1 Corinthians 12. And it sounds like you were kind of hindered in that at the church you were going to before you had reached a point where you weren't going to be able to become an elder, which was your desire and exercise the spiritual gifts you have.

And so that's one of the barometers, I think, and it's a really major one that people should be looking at when they're evaluating whether they should stay at a church or start a church, go to another church.

Where can you invest the gifts that the Holy Spirit has given you to build up the body?

And that was just one of the things I noticed that you were talking about. The other thing is how this kind of all came together.

It wasn't you necessarily just going out on your own as a lone ranger and in a huff because you were angry.

It was more out of necessity. And there was a confirmation that took place with people around you being blessed by it, showing that you actually do have these gifts because it's ministering to them.

I mean, you were telling me before we started recording, you don't have an official name yet. I mean, there's probably a lot of things you don't have that most churches,

I mean, I've been through like NAMM church planning classes and stuff. And I mean, it's so strategic. I mean, don't ever go to one of those things, by the way, if you ever have an offer to go to like a

NAMM church planning seminar, please don't do it. It'll probably just mess up whatever you have going on. But there's like a whole formula for kind of what you're supposed to do first.

And you don't have like a hip cool website I can send people to. But a lot of the things probably that you do need will in time,

God will provide those things and you'll be able to kind of put them in place. But you have the simple things, the necessary things, the things that actually make a church a church, it sounds like the fundamentals

I'm saying are there. And you're getting back to kind of like the basics of just worshiping Christ and final observation here with everything you just said.

And I'd like to get your reaction to this. So it seems to me that the deck is being reshuffled because of all this, that it's not so much whether or not someone is maybe even a

Presbyterian or a Baptist or a Methodist, it's people are coming together, true

Christians are being kind of like separated from either false Christians or compromised churches, etc.

And there's a hunger for just simple things like worshiping God together, like we're supposed to as Christians, not going down the path of the

Orthodoxy. These things are so basic and fundamental. What does the Bible say about justice?

What does the Bible say about salvation? What does the Bible say about guilt and forgiveness? And it's transcending denominations, it seems like.

So I want to ask you, what do you think about that? Do you have people coming from, you said you have people driving for hours, are they coming from all sorts of backgrounds because they just hunger for that pure milk?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, that's the thing. Yeah, there's, there's people from all sorts of different backgrounds.

It's something I wanted to be sensitive to. Because I think sometimes, you know, you get in a particular context, you know,

I'm very much would identify as reformed, Reformed Baptist, probably be the best descriptor.

But, but I think sometimes we're almost like you get in this little echo chamber and and you start arguing about things no one else cares about.

You know, I mean, I've been in those. I know. Yeah. I mean, I mean, I have a friend who I have a friend who became a

Lutheran and suddenly in conversation with him, I'm starting to learn about all the Lutheran shibboleths, you know, and started listening to podcasts by Lutherans and stuff.

And I was like, man, it sounds exactly like the Reformed or the Presbyterian, whatever shibboleths and some of that, like,

I don't want to say those things don't matter, because I think they they do matter. There's a they can help shape the direction you're, you know, you're going in, you make certain observations or whatever.

But But I think like the, you need to have the core things right. And the core things like I'm absolutely committed to expositional preaching.

And if I'm going to be in any way in leadership, there's going to be a text, and the sermon is going to be out of that text.

And the main point of the sermon is going to be the main point from that text. Every week, I will die on that hill.

Amen. You can't do something topical, we're doing a slightly topical kind of a quick kind of overview of the biblical story from creation to Christ to consummation in seven weeks.

That, which I think is a good background, you just kind of good, like, what's the overall story of the Bible, but every week, there's a text, and we're working through that text.

So like I said, there's some things like that, that I'm willing to die on those hills. But I think, you know, ultimately, I don't want to say denominations, or denominational distinctions are not important, but it is something

I have thought about, I think that we need to keep the main ones and the important ones. You know,

I saw something recently that was talking about Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism and all the different forms of Protestantism, we all just need to band together, because we all love

Jesus, and fight against communism and the social justice movement and everything.

And I actually thought, I saw that this morning, and I thought, I actually think that scares me just as much as the current social justice movement, because we need to keep the things that are worth dying for, such as the gospel at the forefront of what we're doing, and maybe argue a little less about baptism, if you will.

Sure. Yeah. And I wasn't suggesting an ecumenical move. No, no, no. And I actually, I know you're not,

John, I just, I just think that that's where I think, I think, being clear to people, like, yeah, like, you know, an

Arminian and a Calvinist are brothers. But somebody who's a committed

Roman Catholic isn't, and why is that? And being able to articulate that. And I do think, I do think, like,

I do think there's a lot of Christians who are not looking for a particular denomination. They're looking for a solid church where they're hearing the

Bible. Exactly. Yes. That's kind of, you know, just a little tangent here. I mean, you have the beard.

You're a Calvinist. I'm assuming. I'm joking. But like, did you go through the whole kind of the steps, the cage stage, and then kind of,

I don't know, like, the Young Restless Reformed kind of thing back in the day? Like, was that you?

Or I'm just curious, if you're... No, I didn't. I didn't. And it's interesting to observe that.

And I'll tell you why I didn't. Because I grew up in a Calvinist home, in a sea of Arminians, like my dad, my parents were the only

Calvinists in any of the churches we went to growing up. And so I think he probably went through some of those stages.

And I've observed that people who grow up, people who grow up in those, in those contexts, don't tend to do that.

Like, I don't think that if you grew up in a reformed home, you tend to do that. But yeah, and I think all cage stage is because I've seen it with other things, other doctrinal beliefs,

I think all cage stage really is, is you think that this is the end all be all of reality. And as much as I am reformed,

I'm just trying to be consistent across all of my, my theology. I mean, I honestly,

I have put a major emphasis in my own study in the early church. You know,

I honestly think that people don't spend enough time on doctrine of God, doctrine of Christ.

Christology is woefully taught in our churches. And I would guess half of the seminarians who come out are very sketchy on a lot of details, and, and yet can tell you exactly why they're a

Baptist or a Presbyterian. Right. So I do. Yeah, I would rather focus on those kind of things.

And yeah, I hear you. But I would just say, like, that's where, that's why I didn't go through the whole cage stage thing.

You know, I mean, I and I, and the whole restless and reformed, I don't I don't really know. I'm, you know,

I, I watched the implosion of Mark Driscoll from afar. But actually, you were you were a lot closer than I was actually in most people because of where you live.

Yeah, to his church there. But, uh, I was gonna say, you know, I, I don't think

I fit the stereotype at all to a T, not not in the least. But there was a time that,

I don't know, 12 years ago, maybe where I had kind of a, you know,

I really liked john piper. And I liked some of these reformed guys. And I, and there was a sense in which

I thought, well, as long as you have that down, everything else just kind of falls into place, you understand, predestination.

And what happened, I think it was a few weeks ago, my brother and I were at a Pentecostal church, because we were doing this project, not attending there as a regular, you know, attendees or anything.

But we were, we were, we were there for the documentary, the Nini's Deli documentary, actually. And, and I'm standing there, and I'm almost weeping.

And that hasn't happened for for a while. And I'm in this church, I'm thinking these, they're just talking about this singing about the simple truths.

And I'm like, these are my brothers, these are my sisters. And, and they're, I don't know, they're just worshiping

God freely. People didn't really have masks on in there, it was in there very adamantly against the social justice stuff.

And I was like, you know, I may have like some theological disagreements with them on things, but these people, they have the gospel, and that was very clear.

And so, so anyway, that's just my little personal experience. But I sense that in the last year, because of those two issues, like the

COVID lockdowns, and then the Black Lives Matter stuff, it's pushed a lot of believers who just care about the basics together.

And, and it's revealed some things, cross denominationally.

Yeah, yeah. And I'll say, it has been an interesting thing. Because again, there's people coming from different churches, different towns, different churches, different backgrounds,

I have actually been amazed at how much of a reformed sort of, like, oh, man,

I started watching every Vodie Bachum sermon, like, you know, this is one lady started telling me, and I think she was watching mostly because he was talking about parenting and that kind of stuff more.

But, um, you know, and then I started watching Paul Washer, and then, you know, and so, so it has been interesting how many people

I would say, there's definitely a reformed ish vibe to most of the people that are there.

But I think that's mostly because they've been searching out for good

Bible teaching. If that makes sense. Yeah, right. Not because they checked particular boxes.

And, and I would want somebody to say, I would want them to be convinced of reformed theology, because it's what the

Bible teaches, not because it's, you know, part of their denomination or whatever. I mean, there's a lot of people who are part of denominations.

And if you ask them why, they don't hardly know. Yeah, it's just what they grew up in or whatever. So what advice would you have for people, whether they're

Methodists, or Baptists, or Presbyterians, or whatever, and they're in a church, and they're going through the similar scenario? I mean, what would you tell them, if they're having the same thoughts that you were having months ago?

Should I church plant? Should I, what should I do as a result of this? What I don't know if there's any specific questions that you'd want them to ask themselves or steps you'd want them to take?

Yeah. So, um, let me just first start out by saying, like, if it's something that you would, somebody is thinking of, of, you know, doing or, or, you know, because I heard other voices, other people saying,

Oh, you know, it was just gonna start a church in the area or whatever. But that's very flippant and easy to say for somebody, you know, you know, my sister in law, just Oh, we should start a church.

I'm not saying that she was being flippant about it. But it's easy for her to say, it's hard for, you know, for somebody who's going to Yeah, it's a lot of work.

I mean, even if you're not doing all the stuff that evangelicalism thinks is important, if you're just preaching and teaching every week, it's a lot of work.

But I would just say number one, if it's something that somebody is thinking about, they need to make sure they're actually qualified. And they need to be qualified, according to the standards of what an elder is, that's really important.

But also, they need to be theologically qualified. You know, it specifically talks about not, not appointing somebody who's a recent convert.

Right. And, and I think that applies to if you've just suddenly got into theological study in the last two years, and you're all on fire, you might need to assist somebody else for a little while.

I don't want to give anybody the idea that I just got, you know, a bug in my hair six months ago,

I have been studying and, and reading. And, you know, there's a lot,

I mean, there's some great online resources, there's, there's ways to listen to seminary classes. There's ways to do a ton of, of study that aren't in, in seminary.

And so if somebody thinks that they want to, this is something they would want to do, they need to make sure they're qualified, they need to make sure that they're actually able to teach, and that they're not going to be ashamed of what they're, they're saying.

You know, there's a, there's a, and that's, I'd say the number one thing, there's a great story about Isaac Watts, the father of English hymnody.

And he, he was walking home from church one Sunday with his dad, his dad was a minister, and he was complaining about the music.

And he was saying, the music is so terrible. And his father turned to him and said, don't complain unless you can do better. And so he set his mind to it and said,

I will do better. And I would just say that, like, it's really easy to make potshots and stuff.

But if you're saying, hey, this isn't really biblical preaching, this isn't this and that, then you need to make sure that this is something that you can actually do better, that you can actually teach, that you can actually provide direction.

It's not enough to tear down, we have to build up. So are you saying that most of the hymns in our hymn book are there because someone took a dare?

Well, he might have been the most brilliant hymn writer of all time. But I but that story really is something that I thought a lot about.

It's not enough to just simply, like I said, criticize, you have to actually say, let me set an example for what this looks like, for how you do texts and all that.

And then the second thing is, is that, yeah, you can't be some sort of a lone ranger. I mean, people ask anyone who's ever listened to or gone to any sort of pastors conference, the q &as are all full of, how do

I know if I'm called? How do I know if I'm called? And one of the things is that the word that I use,

I think I use it in the email. But the word that I have used, like, with my wife, and in talking about this is

I feel conscripted. I have not asked a single person to come, I haven't invited anybody.

I haven't, I haven't tried to put out any sort of advertisement or do anything.

Everyone who has come has come because other people have invited them. And because they just, they, they want to be there.

And so at some point, you know, other

Christians need to say, No, you should be doing this. Right? I mean, we've been meeting for about a month, maybe, you know, sometime in an open field.

And several people came to me afterwards and said, This is just going to end when COVID ends. I can't I can't go back to my, my old church.

Like, I can't like, we just want to take my family somewhere where you can hear the gospel. There was a family that had already been left their church because of liberalism and was looking.

Yeah, so so she was like, her and her husband were like, we, like, you got to keep doing this.

And so, so I think that's the thing is like, like, it'll become apparent whether, whether you, you know, are called to do it or not.

I mean, this didn't start out as something like, Oh, we're gonna start church. This was one Sunday. And, you know, and it went from there one

Sunday in a field. So, well, praise God, I'm so glad. And I'm assuming you're not in a field now. It's winter, right?

You got to like a place. No, we're very much. No, we're very much not in a field. Okay, good. But there's something people should try it on occasion.

Just being in. Yeah, you know, I mean, some of the you know,

I mean, one of the one of the wonderful things is you it just comes back to I think you said this earlier, church becomes what church is supposed to be about.

Yeah, I actually loved it. Yeah, when we first, you know, in COVID lockdown started there, you know, we attended church a few

Sundays that was in a field. And you're supposed to do like the driving thing. And like, he just like no one, hardly anyone actually honored it, you know, everyone gets out of their car, and they're hanging out anyway.

And it was just, I had the same sense you're talking about where I'm just like, wow, this is really stripped down.

But it just felt, I don't know, just something about it. That was refreshing. So yeah,

I get what you're saying. Now you're see the location again, I forgot where you are.

Gig Harbor, Gig Harbor, Washington. Okay, Gig Harbor. So if someone's curious, if they're just in your area, they happen to be listening to this, we put your your blog, or the email you wrote, we kind of reworked it into a blog.

And it's on discerningchristians .com slash blog. You put your email there for people to communicate with you any anywhere else you want to send people if they're interested in helping out with the ministry or?

Yeah, yeah. So we have a website with gosh, we don't even have a name yet. So I can't do any of those fancy things.

The church at Gig Harbor will be New Testament about this. Yeah, that's right. I personally, if they want to contact me,

I'm I can give my email and and I actually just got on gab about a week ago.

So what's your gab, your gab name or screen name, whatever. Dirk Wohlstedt.

It's just at Dirk Wohlstedt. Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, that is your name.

So I guess it's appropriate. So so I'll put that in the info section as well.

If you're on gab, you can go follow Dirk Wohlstedt on gab, you can email him. We'll put that in the info section.

And, you know, how can we be praying for you as you're continuing forward? Yeah, I mean, you know,

I'd say one of the biggest things that the biggest hurdles that the church has, you know, probably in the next number of months is just more defining the leadership.

I think that that's, that's, that's a hard thing, because a church is not a leadership of one. There's a plurality of leadership.

And and so that's something I've been praying for that, that the other men that would clearly be called and, and, and as elders, that would become clear.

And that would be clear to everyone. You know, I don't, I don't want to some sort of politics power move.

But instead, people go, No, these are the these are the men that should be leading this. And just, you know, it is a it is a grind.

So just pray for myself and the other people that continue to be faithful.

So, well, Dirk, I appreciate you being willing to take the time you have and give it to us to hopefully inspire some people out there, maybe to follow in a similar step or give them some direction of how they can be thinking about this.

You know, check back in with us, please, you know, let us know kind of how things progress. And, you know, maybe maybe it'll even turn into you being full time doing this.

I don't know. But sounds like the Lord has his hand on you. And in that area, you know, the church is still the church is still the church.

And that's a beautiful thing to me that believers are still gathering, they're finding ways to do it. And and you can you can find out more by going to the

Discerning Christians website in the info section. We have Dirk's blog there and as well.

We're in beta testing now, but I'm going to give some instructions at the end of this video for people who who want to get involved with that.

So are you on it, by the way, yet, Dirk? Do you have a profile there? Yeah, I don't I gotta

I gotta I looked at the other day, but no, I gotta create a profile still. So. Okay, yeah, well, it's it's real simple, obviously, if you looked at it, and it'll just basically have a map and it'll be here you are, you know, and other people who kind of agree with the statement of faith are in the same area.

But anyway, we look forward to that. So God bless and let us know kind of how things progress.

All right, we'll do. Thank you. All right, bye now. Well, as I stated in the video, I would really like to elicit your help.

And if you could register at DiscerningChristians .com, it would really help us out perfect this site. What I'm going to do now is give you a little tour of what we have and then explain how you can help us make this better.

So we're in beta testing now. Doesn't mean you can't sign up, though. I'd really encourage you to do that. If you if you're someone who just says,

I just want all the kinks worked out first, I want to make sure this is up and running and then I'll sign up. That's fine. But if you want to help us test this thing and get this thing off the ground,

I could really use your help. So here's the tour first. Let's let's just go through this. Here's the front page. Gives you a little information.

You can scroll down. We'll have social media and and up and running. I think you can already sign up for email updates.

We don't we haven't sent any out yet. Here's the important part, though. You're going to want to just make sure you agree with this. The terms and conditions and then the statement of faith.

Here's the statement of faith. It's basic Orthodox Christianity. If you're, you know, evangelical, charismatic,

Bible church, Calvinist, Arminian, whatever, you should be able to sign this statement. Now, here's the thing, though.

There's some language in here. And I'm going to read you the strongest part, perhaps, that rules out social justice stuff.

And it will rule out cults and that kind of stuff, too, with some of the other language. But here's what I want to focus on.

Here's article or section two, whatever, says, I believe in biblical justice and objective truth.

Now, I'm going to stop. You might think, well, what does that have to do? Why? That's not in most statement of faith, faiths that I read.

Well, no, it's not. But the reason that this is in there is because this is where we're being attacked. Biblical justice and objective truth.

Now, how is that related to the gospel? Well, if you get justice wrong, I mean, Christ died to satisfy

God's justice. If you get that wrong, if you don't understand justice correctly, if you understand it incorrectly, you can really warp the gospel.

And then objective truth. If you don't believe in objective truth, there is no gospel anyway, right? So these are important things.

So here's the, that's the positive. Here's the negative. I reject Marxist and postmodern inspired critical theories which contradict

Christian doctrine by undermining objective truth, inspiring division in the body of Christ, promoting inequality before the law, and corrupting the gospel.

I reject standpoint epistemology, identity politics, socialism, and works righteousness as elements of a social justice religion, which stands opposed to the gospel and teaching of Jesus Christ.

All of these elements are backed up biblically, including equality before the law. That's not a political concept.

That's something that came, you know, originally, it's something that came from scripture, came from a basic understanding of what justice is from the

Bible. This is, this is, as far as I'm concerned, locked tight. And there's more language to that effect in it.

So you're going to want to read that, make sure you agree with it. Then what you're going to do is you're going to go, and I can log in, but you're going to want to sign up if you haven't.

So sign up is very simple. You know, you're just choosing a password and a username. I'm going to log in.

You can put your denominational preference here. And then you can put your looking location, where you want to find a church, the area you're looking, and then where you live.

So I live in Lynchburg, Virginia. Type that in, Lynchburg, submit. It's there.

Now, I also added an organization here. I'm going to show you that if you wanted to add an organization, this is actually where some of you who are pastors or have authorization from your church to do this, make sure you get permission.

You can go to create an organization. And let's say, let's say you're doing a church plant. It doesn't come up on whatever this is leaflet or whatever.

You know, if you type in, let's say I type in Grace Bible Church. It's automatically going to start coming up with different Grace Bible Church as well.

Let's say you're not on there. Manual entry. Manual entry, you're going to put the name, Grace Bible Church, where it's located.

And then for create position, this is just going to tie you to the church. You know, I'm a layman. Let's say layman description.

I serve on the deacon board. You can you can put whatever you want here. It doesn't have to be specific.

You know, I just want to put this church on the map, you know, and then full time, part time. Now, if you're the pastor, you might want to on the pastor.

And here I'm a full time pastor there. So it'll tie you to the organization. Now I'm going to go to the map here.

And the map, as you can see, I'm in the middle of the ocean here. But if I want to put my looking location, it's going to take me to the

Hudson Valley region of New York, where I've already put a church. That's an organization. Boom, click on it.

There it is. And all you need is the contact info. You don't need anything else. How do you get a hold of this church?

They agree to that same statement of faith. Now, if I want to go to my looking location, I'm going to click that it's going to take me to where I live,

Lynchburg, Virginia. And let's see here. I think let's see,

I'm going to do the search feature. I'm not sure why other stuff isn't coming up. Here's another thing you can do that you go to the search feature here.

Lynchburg, Virginia, boom. I want to search for for people in Lynchburg. There's someone right there in Roanoke.

Steve, click on it. Oh, there's his email. I can connect with him. Let's say I'm traveling to South Africa. South Africa.

No, not that. Hold on. That's not South Africa. South Africa. It's gonna take me to South Africa.

I'm traveling there for the weekend. I want to find a good church. Oh, here's someone who can help me out. Let's say

I want to look for a church. I'm going to Keene. Just putting in the places I know their stuff. Keene, New Hampshire.

Let's see if there's anyone in Keene, New Hampshire. I'm going to be skiing for the weekend. I'm going to be staying at Keene. Yep, there's a church. Crossway Church.

Click on it. There we go. So this is how this works. And I think it's going to be very beneficial.

Now, we want your feedback. This is why we made this, is to be helpful.

So you can go to a map. You can go to a location and, you know, you can say, let me search in a location here.

I have no clue if there's anyone in California, in this area.

Oh, there's someone. No, that's... For some reason, you know what? I think that's why I was having issues earlier. I think my

VPN is showing up that this is where I am in Los Angeles. But let's say there was, you know, 30 people in this area and Burbank.

You know, 30 people in Burbank. We don't have a good church in Burbank. Now, I'm saying that hypothetically. They're probably is a good church in Burbank. But, you know, we want to form one.

You can start connecting with those people, if there really are that many people in Burbank. So what I'm encouraging you to do is to start populating this map.

And then you can connect with people. And here's the important part.

We're in beta testing. So what I want you to do is go to the info section of this video. And you're going to see an email there.

It'll be on the top for Craig. Craig's the one who's designed this website. He's the one that you want to thank, first of all.

Thank you, Craig, for taking your time, putting this together. Here's a suggestion I have.

And any suggestions or problems, kinks, things you run into, things that would make the website better, you think, let

Craig know. Again, we're not trying to do Facebook. We're just trying to connect people. That's what this is about.

Now, here's the last feature I'll show you. We are doing a little extra, I guess. We have a blog now. We're going to be wanting people to submit entries for this blog as well.

We have our first one, which is the story of Dick Walsted. You can send that to friends. Say, hey, have you thought about maybe planning a church?

Here's what a layman did. So we are in the process of forming this thing.

You can help us out, though. So if anyone wants to get in the beta testing mode here, put your profile in there.

Put your church in there or organization. And please don't put your business by the way.

I've thought about this. Don't put your business. I have a Christian plumbing company. No, we're looking for churches.

If you have maybe a seminary or a Bible school or something that you have permission to put in there, you could probably put that in there. But that's what this is for, just so you know.