Pastor Joel Webbon on Church Planting: Part 2

We are going to jump right into a conversation that is ongoing right now on church planting.

We started off, or we ended, I should say, yesterday with Pastor Joel sharing his story of planting two different churches.

Now we're going to get into the practical side. What about someone who might feel a burden for their particular area, wants to do church planting, doesn't maybe have formal seminary training?

How does that happen? How does that work? Should that even happen? These are some of the questions that we're going to dive into more.

We did talk last time a little bit about a conference also coming up, so I just want to remind everyone, in March, you can go to Right Response Ministries online, rightresponseministries .com,

and there's a sign -up for March 12th, a mini -conference outside of Austin, Texas, in Taylor, Texas.

And then if you would like to come out for the Lord's Day, I'm going to be preaching at Pastor Joel's church, which is actually, that's the next day, it's

March 13th, in Georgetown, Texas. And there's no sign -up for that. The information, though, is on my website, worldviewconversation .com

forward slash speaking engagements, and you can come check that out. So I look forward to seeing you, whether it's

March 12th or March 13th, A .D. Robles is going to be with me as well, and Pastor Joel, obviously, is going to be there.

And looking forward to some good fellowship. And I wanted to also let everyone know, we're going to talk a little bit in this episode about discerningchristians .com,

and if you go to discerning, in fact, I might be able to just do it right now. If you go to discerningchristians .com,

and all you have to do is log in, create an account, so I have my account already created, and there, you know,

I come up with all my information. You can go to the map and find, you know, places around you, or people around you.

So there's someone up here, there's someone down here, or a church down here, there's someone over here.

And this is a way of connecting people. So if you live in, let's say, in the

Nashville area, let's just see what comes up. So there's a couple things. There's some people that come up. I don't see any churches listed in Nashville at this point, doesn't mean there aren't any good churches.

There's one outside of Nashville. But these are places that, you know, you can start if you're trying to look for a church, or you can, if you're a church planter, like, find an area, communicate with the people there that are listed, and ask, hey, you know,

I see there's people there, but is there a church? You know, maybe I can come in and plant a church. So it's a tool.

And candidates is the main tab I want to show people. If you go to candidates, and you have to have a profile to do this, make sure that your ad blocker is turned off on whatever browser you're using, so this will come up.

There's 37 candidates listed here. You can click on any of these, you know, just click on the profile. There's a picture of someone, there's where they live, and there's their email address.

And I've told people on search committees, just, why don't you click on these, get the email addresses, you know, put them into an email, and then just let people know who are looking for a church, send your resume in.

We have an open position here. And just see who responds. So those are some of the tools.

I know that we're going to be talking about a little bit. So I wanted to mention that. And then if you go to the bottom of the page, you can find the statement of faith.

And it's pretty basic. So I know we're going to reference that as well. So hopefully, this will be a beneficial discussion.

I'm sure it will for many of you on church planning. We're going to pick Pastor Joel's brain on this topic.

And without further ado, here's Pastor Joel. I want to ask you some practical questions. So maybe

I'll just throw some scenarios out to you, if you don't mind. Things that I've heard, in general, from emails and messages.

So someone says, I live in an area, I can't find a good church. And I know some people are skeptical of that.

But there really are areas like that, where there just really isn't anything. And I'm a painter. I'm, you know, some blue collar worker.

I've never had any academic experience. I don't, I'm alone, I feel like. Maybe there's a few people that might feel the same way

I do. But like, where do I even start with this? Like, what would you tell someone like that? Where should they start?

Should they go to seminary? Should they, you know, that's okay. So, yeah, tell me what you think. Yeah. So I don't think you should go to seminary.

Because seminary is like everything else in our culture today. All the major institutions have discredited themselves.

Now, that's not to say there's not a single seminary. You know, you got like Owen, what is it?

The Strip Mall Seminary, what do they call it? Is it Grace Bible? Or I don't,

I know what it is. You know what I'm talking about, though. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to look it up real quick. How do you say his last name? Stratton? I think it's

Strand. Strand, Owen Strand. Yeah, I'll defer to you. I'm sure you're right. So I would go to his seminary, you know.

Grace Bible Theological, I think. Great, okay. Grace Bible Theological. So I really like what he's doing, you know, and the little bit that I've heard about that.

I would go to his seminary. John MacArthur, you know, I think he's super faithful, masters.

I wouldn't go there because I love John MacArthur and agree on a ton of stuff. But I am confessional.

I'm also, you know, John MacArthur is just leaky dispensational. These would be the three big pieces apart from not being confessional.

Leaky dispensationalism and then premillennial. And then also one of the biggest ones is

Two Kingdom. And I know that you and I, even John, would probably disagree on this slightly. But I, you know, those three pieces

I would struggle with. But I want to throw his seminary in the ring because guys who would agree with MacArthur, I think, great, go to MacArthur seminary.

I think that that's faithful. So there are seminaries to go to, but in large part, and John, you talk about this all the time, you know, with, you know,

Southeastern and with Southern and a lot of the SBC seminaries. It's just at this point, it's like you just don't know what you're going to get.

It's just so hard to trust institutionalized authority in every realm in our culture today, whether it be the news, whether it be the government, and sadly, whether it be the church and seminaries.

So, no, I don't think a guy has to go to seminary. And to be fair, that is my objective position that I would hold regardless of whatever providential season the church might be in.

I don't think a guy ever has to go to seminary in order to be qualified to be a pastor. What he has to do is be able to teach.

And I think that's one of the problems that we get into where I think that ironically is a form of tyranny where people are overstepping their authority, overstepping their jurisdiction.

When we look at a biblical qualification, and instead of just sticking with what the qualification says, we start commanding how it must be achieved, right?

A guy's got to be able to teach. But for us to dictate how he arrives at that bar of being able to teach,

I think that that's extra biblical. We cannot command that. You could counsel or encourage a guy to go to a particular seminary, but you cannot require that.

That would be an extra biblical qualification for eldership. He's got to be able to teach, but the Bible doesn't dictate how he gets there.

And if he can get there without going to a seminary, which I would argue guys can get there without going to a seminary, then it's permissible biblically for him to get there without going to a seminary.

And I think that's always been true. But in this particular, for lack of a better word, dispensation,

I would say that not only is it permissible, I think in many cases, it's ideal to get there, that they're being able to teach by taking a different route than formal seminary.

That's my thought. So, and I agree completely. In fact, a little tangent thought.

We might end up, if we keep going, we may have to make this podcast a two -parter, which is fine.

But, you know, I've been in circles for most of my life where there's a strong emphasis placed on elders rule or elder led, but more so elder rule.

And then sort of the biblicism, I guess, is the word that I don't know what else to call it, but we know creed, but the

Bible and we have elders and they kind of like, well, sometimes even get into areas that perhaps are past their own jurisdiction.

But the point I wanted to make is that hierarchy is inescapable. So is confessionalism of some kind.

And right. That's right. And what I've noticed is churches that tend to have this bent of really just strong elders, which is good.

I agree with that. I'm totally for plurality of elders, but the churches, at least I've been familiar with, they tend to build up sometimes a hierarchy that goes beyond and it's unstated, but it's like, hey, we have, you know, our elders, but then there's the seminary.

Then there's, you know, the conference circle we run in. Then there's the books that we like to read as elders and they end up sometimes building an extra hierarchy.

And you have to jump through those hoops, too. If you want to be in the club, right. And you want to like church plant, you have to kind of tip your hat to that hierarchy.

And then even if there's not a confession and it's, you know, where we're just biblical, right. There's kind of like this extra set of unspoken rules about what teachers to listen to, what theology to have, or maybe it's just shows up in the church constitution.

Like here, here's our theology. And it's basically a confession. That's so the only reason I wanted to say that is that, you know, people that want to plant a church, sometimes

I think, feel in my experience, a lot of pressure that they have to, they have to really go through this, this narrow channel to kind of come out the other side and be qualified.

And it takes a seminary degree. It takes, you know, you have to I've seen it where guys are just so hesitant about even becoming an elder because I don't know about this one eschatology thing that I'm still trying to work out.

And so I totally agree. We need theology. We need to understand what the word of God teaches.

We need, we need to have conviction. But but at least in the world that I come from there, it's very heavy handed.

It creates a situation where no one feels qualified sometimes, except the tyrants, right?

Who? Yeah, that's right. They would just sweep in anyway and take control. So I want to see if maybe you can address that some with maybe being a little more specific with someone who is in the situation

I just described, and maybe they feel this pressure. What things would you tell them? This is what you need to know here.

You know, and I know that every I've got some specific answers that go ahead. Sorry.

Yeah, that was it. Just every situation is different. But what what are just some general things? Yeah, no, it's a great question. And I think you're wanting to be very practically helpful to these guys who are just they're in an area where there's no faithful church and you're trying to help them out.

And I think I have some things that will be helpful. So one thinking of like Titus one, right? This is why

I, you know, I left you and create, you know, to put into order what still remains appointing elders in all the churches.

And so, you know, that's one place where we would say not just elders, you know, one elder per church, but elders, multiple elders in each of these churches.

So we would look at that and other portions of scripture to make our argument for a plurality of elders.

But one of the implications from Titus one that to me jumps off the page and is an encouragement is this.

You can have a church without an elder. Zero elders. And this is my position.

And you may feel free to push back. It's your show and I could be wrong. But what

I would say is you can't have an elder without a church, but you can have a church without an elder. I'll say it again. You can't have an elder without a church because if you're an elder and I view eldership with, you know, being synonymous with the word pastor or shepherd.

So you can't be a pastor without someone that you're pastoring. But I do believe that you can have a church.

I believe that, you know, the work of the gospel goes forward. And when the Holy Spirit does what he often is so pleased to do, working in conjunction with the word preached, the result is that some are saved.

Some are saved, right? Romans 10, 14. How will they hear, you know, believe without hearing? How will they hear unless someone preaches?

So when people are sent, you know, and how will they preach unless they're sent and, you know, and blessed are the feet of those who bring good news. So we live in a unique time where the sending of preachers is at a level that we've never seen before.

The only other time that would be similar to it was with the reformation and not just because of Luther, but as God was bringing reformation in the world theologically in the church world, he was bringing innovation in terms of technology, namely the

Gutenberg printing press. And now with the dawn of the internet and guys like me and you doing what we're doing and then you've got, you know, grace to you and you've got all these different, you know, things, ultimately what that practically means is that the word is going forth and being preached to people before churches can even get there.

And so what I'm saying is that there very likely could be a small town, for instance, an area, even within a, you know, an hour radius where there is not a single biblical faithful church, right?

Maybe there's some churches, but it's a Catholic church and it's a prosperity preaching church and it's a woke church, right?

And so there could actually be a large area, relatively large area where, you know, not within a reasonable driving distance where there is not one faithful church that you and I would with confidence recommend for someone to actually become a member at.

But the word of God, faithful, even though there's not a faithful church there, faithful preaching has reached there because of the internet, because of books, because of this, because of that.

And because faithful preaching, the word preached has reached there, the Holy Spirit does what he does and has saved people and is sanctifying people.

So there are Christians. So my point is there can be places where there are Christians, but not churches.

So what I would recommend is that these Christians first find each other. You got to find ways to find each other, identify one another.

Who are my brothers and sisters in Christ in this area? That's part of the reason why we're doing this conference, you know, is that people can find, oh, there are people within this radius, you know, who think the way

I think, who aren't woke, you know, and who aren't wearing four masks, you know, and 17, you know, boosters.

And so like, so one, you got to find each other in your vicinity, in a geographic, you know, location.

But then once you found each other, I think that you can begin meeting in a home on the

Lord's day. And what you need to do is you need to fulfill the biblical qualifications for church, right?

So I would focus on the ordinary means of grace, which is the public preaching of the word, the public praying of the word, the public singing of the word, and the public seeing,

I would say, seeing of the word as it were in the sacraments or the ordinances of which we only have to baptism in the

Lord's supper. Now, the beauty of Baptist theology, this is where Presbyterians love, you know,

I probably have more Presbyterian friends at this point than I do Baptist. I love my Presbyterian brothers, love AD, but this is where I think it pays to be a

Baptist in terms of, all right, there are always pros and cons on both sides. One of the cons is that Baptists tend to be less organized and, you know, you throw a rock and hit a

Baptist church and you have no idea what you're going to get. Whereas, you know, Presbyterianism, there tends to be a little bit more consistency throughout, you know, a

Presbytery. But one of the beauties, the pros of Baptist theology is that even with the 1689, you can preach, you could be confessionally reformed

Baptist 1689 and have someone preach who is not an ordained elder. So my point is, so for that guy, right?

So to your question, the painter, right? He's a layman. He hasn't gone to seminary and he's like,

I don't feel like I'm the guy. I don't, I feel like this work is beyond me. I don't feel like I'm qualified for it, but I got to do something because my kids need to be in church.

My wife needs to be in church and I've got four or five other families that feel exactly the same way that we do, but there is not one faithful church in town.

What I would say is that those guys without ordaining that guy, without calling him an elder before he's actually ready, don't do what

I did. Don't call a guy an elder that he's going to regret later and be like, oh man,

I should not have been calling myself a pastor. I really wasn't a pastor. Don't do that. Just get those four or five families together in a home.

That guy could preach and maybe even some of the other men alternating, right? Because they have jobs throughout the week, but doing their very best and using lots and lots of, at that point, they may not be great in their hermeneutics and their exegetical skills and so they may be using a lot of commentary.

Don't try not to plagiarize. Try not to be like Ed Litton. So don't just look at sermons, but look at commentaries, right?

One that I would recommend too, actually. Matthew Henry and John Gill, right?

They're both easily accessible, quick search on the internet and the nice thing is they have exegeted every verse in the

Bible. So it's full biblical commentary, every book in the Bible. John Gill was actually the pastor.

A lot of people don't know this, but he was the pastor of the church that Charles Spurgeon pastored, but a hundred years prior.

John Gill would be like a Baptist equivalent of John Calvin, meaning Baptist equivalent, not quite as good, but as good as we got.

So John Gill is fantastic. His commentary is fantastic. Matthew Henry, his commentary is fantastic and both of them are really easy to understand.

So you guys, you can have four families, take the men in those families and once a month, just say, we're going to preach through Philippians.

We're going to preach and take John Gill's commentary and divvy it up. That way you're only preaching once a week.

And are you qualified to be an elder? No. Are you apt to teach, gifted in teaching? This is a confirmed and obvious.

No, you're not there yet. That hasn't happened, but you're just going to do your best. And I'd rather you,

I would rather you painter, layman painter, look at John Gill's commentary and attempt to preach through Philippians once a month.

And then the other guy preaches and the other guy preaches. You guys doing that together with your wives and children in a home, then going to some other church with robes and tassels and a guy who has degrees, but is a water carrier for leftist politicians.

And not just that he's wrong on politics, but he's actually preaching another gospel.

I would rather you attempt to preach the gospel. Not super well, then go somewhere else where someone preaches another gospel with high and lofty words, right?

That's William law. That's high church. That's the church has been through this and throughout church history.

And that's one of the Puritans. One of the things they railed against was we want plain language and we won't be quite as lofty and we won't be quite as have the notoriety that some of these other guys have.

But I'll tell you what will be faithful. We will be faithful. We will be faithful. And I'd rather there be poor, faithful preaching.

I'm not saying that's ideal. We want good, faithful preaching. That's what we're shooting for. But better poor, faithful preaching than good, faithless preaching.

And so what I would say is you could do that as families in a home. And just you don't have to say, and this guy's the pastor.

Just wait on that. So have a church meeting in the home. And I think Paul addresses that in the New Testament, the church meeting so -and -so's home.

And I think that's what he's talking about with Titus appoint elders in these churches because the preaching had gone forth and the

Holy Spirit working in conjunction with the word preach, Romans 10 has produced converts.

And so there are now converts because of these apostolic missionary journeys. There are converts in areas where elders have not yet been put in place, where a church exists, but it's not yet formally organized.

And so I think a church can proceed in short. A church can precede an elder, but an elder cannot precede a church because by virtue of being an elder, you must have a church that has ordained you, that is affirming your gift and your call, your office of being an elder.

So you can't have an elder without a church. I do believe, although it's not ideal, I do believe that temporarily you can't have a church without an elder.

And that's what I would recommend. Yeah, and that's good. I was thinking about how this is a temporary kind of a holding pattern until you can get to that point.

Let's go to the next step then. You have families getting together. You have a

Bible study, I guess, that's formed for lack of a better term. And it's a church. It's the body of believers in that local area.

And there's a guy who just says, you know what? We do need elders. This is biblical.

How would he go about in your mind or generally? I know every situation is different, but what would you say would be the process for him to then become an elder?

Right. Great question. So one thing is you can do what I know that you have done, John, with DiscerningChristians .com.

Is it .com or org? .com, yeah. DiscerningChristians .com that you've got. Here are some good churches if you're looking for a church, but you also have here are some good pastoral candidates that are looking for employment.

They want to shepherd people. And I think this is such a unique time. So there was a time where it's like everybody's going to seminary.

Everybody feels called to be a pastor. And so you got really too many guys wanting to be pastors and not enough churches, which

I think is part of the reason why church planting became such a big deal. And church planting is biblical, but sometimes the pendulum over swings.

And so everybody's planting a church because everybody wants to be a pastor, and there really aren't enough currently established churches to oblige that call and desire for all these men to be pastors.

So you got to start some. But now we're in such a unique time where I actually think that the demand is bigger than the supply.

The demand of faithful Christians throughout our nation and throughout the world wanting a pastor who won't be woke, wanting a pastor who will be faithful.

I actually think there are more Christians wanting a pastor than we have faithful men to be pastors.

That is so unique. It was completely the opposite five years ago. And so what

I would say is, number one, do that family thing that I said earlier. And again, that's the beauty of Baptist doctrine is it's not saying this is ordinarily the or it should be indefinitely the case or ideally the case, but it can be permissible temporarily under unique circumstances, which

I would argue we are currently under. It is not only okay for a non -elder to preach, but it's also okay within Baptist theology for a non -elder to baptize.

So that's another thing that within different denominations, they can't do this. If you don't have a pastor, you can't have church.

And Baptist, because we so value the priesthood of all believers, you can baptize without being an elder, and you can also administer the

Lord's Supper without being an ordained officer of the church. Ordinarily, this would be done by the elders of a church, but temporarily

Baptist theology allows for administering both the sacraments and the word.

So what Calvin said, wherever the word is rightly preached and the sacraments rightly administered, their church of God exists, even if it swarms with many faults.

Baptist theology actually is tweaked in such a way that it can handle the current time that we're in, whereas Presbyterian theology can't.

And Presbyterian theology, again, love my Presbyterian brothers, and they're fantastic. Their theology handles a lot of other stuff better than our

Baptist theology, including Protestant resistance theory and John Knox and reformers like that. So I'm grateful for that.

We're learning from them with some of those things. But for the small town with blue collar guys and there's no elder,

Baptist theology allows them to have something to do in the meantime, where they can do church without having to go to some false church.

But now, how do we get one of these guys to where he actually is qualified to be an elder? Well, one, my whole point in saying that the demand has overwhelmed the supply is to say you may not have to get one of these guys to be an elder.

There may be a guy who, if you can get enough families, right? So if you can, instead of becoming a pastor, if you want to do that, you feel called to do that, that's another thing.

But let's say you're like, I have a business. I like my business. I don't feel particularly called to vocational full -time ministry or to even be an elder.

Well, then why don't you focus on just finding more? You've got four families, hypothetically, try to find four more, you know, and in your area that are like -minded and actually, you know, true

Christians and standing against social justice, standing against civil tyranny, standing against prosperity gospel, standing against all these things and take that little home gathering to eight families instead of four families and then hit up guys like John, right?

Or hit up hit up somebody like me or A .D. Robles, and we might be able to find, we may not, but we might be able to find a guy who is qualified to be an elder.

And if you got eight families already assembled and they're saying, we're all willing to tithe and give 10 % to this church and we're willing to continue to do it in the home until we find, you know, a cheap, affordable venue outside of the home.

So out of our tithe, we recognize it biblically. The first thing that a church's finances should be spent on is the one who labors in the preaching of the word.

So we recognize that is if there's anything a church should pay for, it's preaching, right?

And then, and then secondly, beyond that, I would say it's mercy ministry, primarily targeting widows and orphans, but it's first preaching and then second mercy.

If they have that kind of theology, that kind of, I would argue a correct biblical philosophy, and you got eight families and these don't have to be rich families, but if each of them is able to, if they're actually tithing, you know, 10%, let's say on average, it's about $500 and you got a month and you've got eight families, that's four grand.

That's four grand. And you're meeting in a home. There's really no other cost. A woman can bake bread, you know, for the

Lord's supper, you know, and you're figuring it out. You got $4 ,000. You can tell this guy, there might be a guy who has, you know, maybe he's got something he can take with him and do part time to come up with a little bit more income, you know, or whatever.

And that 4 ,000 would be enough. He'll move. He would be happy to move. I know guys like that are out there who would be happy to come to a small town with eight families who love the

Lord and love the scripture, love biblical justice, not social justice, and want someone to preach to them faithfully.

And so you could become that guy. But I think you also could just find more families to accommodate that guy coming to you.

Good point. Yeah, there's 37 names actually right now at discerningchristians .com. If you make an account, there's a tab that'll pop up on the upper right hand side.

It says candidates, and you'll find 37 names. You click on them, and an email address will come up, sometimes a picture, and their location.

And I've told people before on search committees, you know, why don't you use this? Just gather all the emails, your 37 addresses, and just send out a mass email saying we have an open position.

If you're interested, please send your resume. Maybe 10 of them respond, and you can find within that group.

Now, the thing is, you know, that doesn't mean that you'll find someone. This isn't all vetted or anything, but it's a place to start.

If you're, let's say that's not happening, or you haven't found someone yet, do you think there's a place for an organic formation?

You know, let's say you're meeting as four families, and hopefully it's growing, and eventually it comes to a point where it's been a year, it's been two years maybe, and haven't found, you know, a pastor to come in, but that painter, man, he's really grown.

And, you know, now everyone recognizes him as the leader because he's the one leading.

Yep, so you can find that guy, or you can become that guy. I completely agree with that. And so if you do the four families, and now it's eight families, and now it's 12 families, and it's been a year to two years, well, the beauty in terms of like, well, how, okay, if you can't get a guy to come in, if you can't outsource, how do you insource and have a guy rise up and become that?

Well, I think the way that you do that is you have those three or four men who are on a rotation, taking turns preaching the word, primarily, you know, using commentaries, you know, and stuff like that, and making sure that their exegesis is sound, but they're doing that on a once a month basis.

But now let's say you're two years in, and you've never been able to find a guy from outside and bring him in, but you're two years in, well, that means each of these four guys by that point have what would it be 20, 24, or 26 sermons,

I think each under their belt, a lot of practice, a lot of exegesis, they've got some reps.

And chances are, here's the beauty of those four guys. Always, I believe, always, one will be the best, right?

I believe that because I'm not egalitarian. I believe that you don't get participation trophies. I believe in godly competition, and not everybody's the same.

I don't believe in egalitarianism. I also don't believe in androgyny. Different people have different gifts. And so one will likely be better than the other guys.

And the church will recognize that. And that's not in a spiteful, mean, spirited kind of way. But the church will just be like, oh, man,

I really look forward to when so and so preaches once a month. He's my favorite. And if you have a majority of the church, now, if everybody differs, you know, and everybody split 25, 25, 25, 25 % on these four guys, well, then all right, well, you know,

I don't know what to do. But chances are, I've never heard of that happening. Chances are it'll just become obvious.

God will reveal to not just these four guys, but to the congregation as a whole, I've got my finger.

I'm using all of them in this time, but I really got my finger on this one. And so after two years of practice, one guy's, a man's gifts make room for him.

And so one guy will prove that, oh, man, I really was gifted for this. I was reluctant at first. I mean, John Knox, they basically had to force him to be a pastor.

You know, his ordination, like he didn't want to be a pastor. So there are reluctant guys. There are Gideons. There are, you know, guys hiding in the, you know, even that though was civil tyranny.

He's threshing wheat because he didn't want to get it taxed. But, you know, there are reluctant leaders.

And sometimes you're reluctant hero, you know, like your Frodo Baggins, you know, your Bilbo, like the reluctant hero often, not always, but often turns out to be the best hero because he's not the guy who's hungry for power.

He's not the guy who's tempted to be a leader for all the wrong reasons. And so I would say, yeah, just do what

I suggested earlier. And after about a year or two, hopefully the Lord will provide something. But if he doesn't, the beauty is that, that, that, that is the

Lord's provision, but just through another avenue, because after a year or two of the Lord, not providing a guy from outside, well, that'll be a year or two to train and raise up a guy from inside.

And I think after a year or two, like you said, John, I think it'll be obvious enough. You know what? I think this guy is qualified.

And just for the record, I think that the qualifications for eldership are both objective and subjective.

And I think some guys need to hear this. It's objective in the sense that you look at first Timothy three and Titus one, there is a minimum bar must be this tall to ride the ride period across the board must be at least this caliber of man in life and doctrine with your character and your ability to teach.

If you're below this bar, you're not an elder. However, that said, the subject of peace comes into individual local churches.

For instance, there may be a guy who is qualified to be an elder in, in the kind of church homegrown church that we're talking about, but who would not be ordained to be an elder in John MacArthur's church.

And that doesn't mean that he doesn't objectively meet the standards in scripture for eldership. But what it means is that there are varying degrees of the life of a church and the corporate spiritual maturity of an individual local church and John MacArthur's church that has existed for over 50 years.

Right. And, and just, it just the life stage of the church. A lot of elderly people, a lot of people who have, you know, they've raised their children to fear the

Lord. They now have grandchildren who fear the Lord. They already have 50 elders and John MacArthur is the senior pastor and you've got all this kind of stuff.

Yeah, that the painter may not, he may not be reaching that bar, but, but he may be qualified over here in this context to be an elder.

Again, don't take this too far. There is an objective biblical bottom line across the board, no matter what church you're in must be this tall to ride the ride, to be a pastor.

However, as you go to, as a church grows in spiritual maturity, as it develops in the providence and mercy of God over time, and especially over decades the bar does subjectively raise objectively.

It's always right here. This is what the Bible says. Got to be this to be an elder, but subjectively as a church matures the elders have to mature because part of being an elder is first Peter five, you know, so you're not domineering over the flock and you're getting, you know, shepherd the flock of God that is among you not domineering, but setting the believers in example.

So part of what a pastor does Ephesians four is is a pastor, you know, is training and equipping the saints for the work of ministry.

So the saints themselves are doing the work of ministry. The pastors training and equipping, and I would argue that training and equipping primarily happens on the

Lord's day through preaching and administering the sacraments. So there is counseling and things like that throughout the week, but that's the primary thing.

So you're training and equipping, but some pastors take that. They take Liberty with that and they say, hey, it's not my job to do this work of ministry.

I just train and equip. Well, first Peter five says, you know, not domineering, not lording your authority over those who are in submission to you, but setting the believers in example.

I don't know how to set the believers who are called to the work of ministry an example, but to also do the work of ministry myself.

So I think an elder, he trains and equips saints for the work of ministry, but he also does himself the work of ministry in order to set them an example.

And so my point is with all of that, as time goes on in the saints mature and get better at the work of ministry for an elder to actually be qualified in that subjective individual context, he has to be able to set the saints an example, set the believers an example.

So as a church matures, you could say as a church matures, so does the bar raise for what kind of man is required in order to set an example for these believers.

If you have really mature believers, then you've got to, I don't think an elder should be the least mature person in the church.

That doesn't mean you might not have one guy who's not an elder, but who's just really, really godly. But as a general rule,

I would say elders should be the most godly men in the church as a general rule. If the majority of the congregation, if you have a congregation of 100 people and 70 of the men or 70 % of the men in that church are more godly and more doctrinally sound than one of the elders, then

I would say that that elder is not, he's not qualified. He may be reaching, meeting the objective biblical bottom line, but the church has outgrown his eldership.

He should have been always in his own development and sanctification and spiritual growth outpacing the church, always a few steps ahead so that he might set an example for the believers.

So all that being said, eldership qualifications are objective in the first instance, minimum bottom line, 1

Timothy 3 and Titus 1. But there is a subjective sense. And if you've got eight families meeting your home, in the subjective arena, there's probably a little bit more grace for you not to, yeah, just not to have all the theological knowledge that an elder at John MacArthur's church might have.

So, yeah, that's good. Some of the pitfalls that I think people are scared of on the one side, where you have someone who doesn't have a formal theological education and what kind of heresy is he going to sprout?

What kind of potential for misrule is there? A lot of the time,

I don't think we see the pitfalls on the other side. There really are dangers to a professional class of pastors.

I've seen it in a seminary. I'm sure you've seen it where you have guys sometimes that'll go through their

Christian school, their Bible school, their seminary. They never really lived. And now they're going to go and they're going to help people that are battling the world every day to live godly

Christian lives. And it doesn't always work out too well. And so I'm not saying not to go.

I went to seminary, but there's pitfalls there as well. And so sometimes some really good godly pastors end up rising up from a situation like the one we've been talking about.

And they really care about the people. They're not power hungry. They're kind of, I think what you said about the reluctant leader really resonated.

And there they are. And they're just a great pastor, a great leader. And so biblical standards always better than the artificial ones that we like to create.

So that's good. Any other thoughts you have? So the scenario that we've been talking about is someone, they can't find a church and they start gathering families together, having a

Bible study. It sort of organically forms into a functioning church. Any other pieces of advice that you have from your experience in church planning that you'd want to offer someone in that situation?

Yeah. I would just say if it organically is starting to formulate into a church, go ahead and make it a church.

And in terms of making it a church, what I would suggest is you need three, arguably four, but for sure, three primary documents.

And you can do this. Don't be daunted or intimidated by this. You need a membership covenant. You need church bylaws or a church constitution.

And you need a general statement of faith. And so for Covenant Bible Church, for instance, all this is on our website.

You can look at ours. You can copy and paste. You have my permission to use our bylaws. Change the name.

Look through the bylaws and don't let it say Covenant Bible Church. But what you want is a general statement of faith.

A general statement of faith. This is my conviction. Not everybody will agree. So I am confessional, 1689. However, we have non -Calvinists who are members of our church.

We have continuationists who are members of our church. We have Presbyterians who are members of our church who disagree on the 1689's position on baptism.

So what we have is we have a general statement of faith that is intentionally so narrow that no

Muslim, no Buddhist, no agnostic, no atheist could ever affirm it. And further than that,

Benny Hinn could not affirm it. Further than that, it's something that could not be affirmed by a non -Christian or a false

Christian. So that's our general statement of faith. It is narrow enough to where you got to be a

Christian, but it's intentionally broad enough to where disagreements on secondary and tertiary doctrine would not knock you out of the race.

So it's narrow enough to where you must be a Christian, but not so narrow or broad enough,

I should say, to where it encompasses all kinds of Christians. So that's our general statement of faith. Our bylaws just talk about how we function as a church.

And all you'd have to write in there, you could use whatever guy you feel like, okay,

I align with this guy. You know, I really align with R .C. Sproul or John MacArthur, or maybe it's

Doug Wilson or whoever it might be. Most of this is public information. Look up their church's bylaws and then just edit them to fit your church and even the language.

Let's say you don't have an elder yet, like what we talked about earlier, then say, once we appoint an elder, we will, blah, blah. And so get some bylaws as a church, get a general statement of faith and have the bylaws reference that members must affirm the general statement of faith.

So you have the bylaws, you have the general statement of faith, and then you have the membership covenant. Bylaws, just as a general rule, that's going to be a longer document.

That might be 10 pages, might be 20 pages. The membership covenant, though, that's the bylaws, the membership covenant should only be a couple of pages.

And that just says, hey, to be a member in this church, this is what the commitment looks like.

You know, to be a member of this church, it means that you're baptized, you're a baptized believer, and that you are seeking to walk in holiness, to hold your brothers and sisters in this local body accountable, and to serve the

Lord in the context of this local church with your time, your talent, your treasure, things like that. And when you fail to walk in holiness and fail in any of these regards, you agree to confess your sins and to repent, because that's the mark of a

Christian is not perfect sinlessness. The mark of a Christian is that when they do sin, they actually apologize, which apply that right now to a lot of the institutional leaders in evangelicalism, it's scary.

Because that's the one thing they won't do is ever admit that they're wrong or apologize. So all that being said, like, so there's your little membership covenant, you got your constitution, you got membership covenant, and then you got your general statement of faith.

And if you guys could can agree on that as four families, five families, eight families, and then sign that membership covenant that binds you to this constitution that you guys have agreed on that, for the most part, is probably copy and paste from some other guy, you know, public minister that you guys all admire and agree with.

And then you got that general statement of faith to know this is what you must believe in order to be a member in this church. And then you can have beyond that, if you want, you can have a specific statement of doctrine.

So for us, it's the bylaws, it's the membership covenant, then we have our general statement of faith that elders, deacons, and members must affirm.

That's general statement of faith. And then we have our fourth document we call our specific statement of doctrine, which elders and deacons must affirm and members with the language in our bylaws say members do not have to affirm our specific statement of doctrine, but they must recognize it.

And we define that word recognized to mean that they acknowledge it and that they have a humble disposition and will not be divisive.

So for us, that fourth document, our specific statement of doctrine is, and our bylaws say this, the 1689.

So the 1689 is to be an officer of the church, an elder, a deacon, you've got to be 1689.

You got to be confessional reformed Baptist. But to be a member of the church, you don't have to be, but to be a member of the church, you have to affirm not the specific statement of doctrine, aka the 1689, but the general statement of faith, which again is much more broad and much more simple.

But the constitution that you're signing, when you sign that membership covenant, it does say that although you don't have to affirm the specific statement of doctrine, the 1689, you do have to recognize that this is the official position of all the officers of the church.

So when I preach the word of God and exegete it as a Calvinist, you can't be a member in the church, the non -Calvinist and say,

I am so angry about what, you know, that probably will still happen. But I would point that person and say,

Hey, look, this is a 1689 reformed Baptist church. And you knew that. And you didn't have to affirm that.

You didn't have to be a Calvinist to be a member of this church, but you knew that we are a Calvinist church and you agreed to not be divisive over this.

Anyway, so I think that helps to have a broad general statement of faith that everyone affirms, but then a specific statement of doctrine that everyone may not affirm, but the leaders of the church are going to affirm and you're going to recognize.

However, for this time, as you're just doing the homegrown thing in a living room, I wouldn't even get a specific statement of doctrine because you might turn, you know, find out later down the road,

Oh, we're actually, we're not reformed Baptist, we're Westminster, we're Presbyterian. So don't even worry about that specific statement of doctrine document.

That would be like a confession. Just get a general statement of faith, which again, just find a faithful church and download their general statement of faith.

That's just like the Trinity doctrine of the word doctrine of, you know, it'll be doctrine of last days, but it'll be intentionally vague.

It won't say, you know, it won't say pre -meal or all meal or post meal or pre -trib, you know, just be Jesus will return to judge the quick and the dead, you know, and righteousness.

So anyway, so find that general statement of faith, get some bylaws and get a membership covenant and then have all the families and wait on that specific statement of doctrine, an official confession, wait on that to form in the province of God over time, but then sign that membership covenant.

And then boom, now you've got a church. You have no officers, no elders or deacons, but you have a church of this many members and then take turns as men, the male members who have a desire to do it and show at least some gifting with preaching.

And likewise, with those same male members who are preaching, have them administer the

Lord's supper and then sing, make sure you're singing as a church. So have some hymns or some songs or, you know, to sing on the

Lord's day and then have some prayers, pray for those in government and pray for the persecuted church around America and pray that God would appoint a pastor in your church and bless.

So you're preaching, you're praying, you're administering the Lord's supper and baptism as needed as God saves.

And then you're also preaching, praying and singing and administering the sacraments without an elder, without a deacon.

But beyond just that, you also have a formal covenant. You've covenanted as a church with these documents and a church membership covenant.

And that being said, my final thing is at that point, I would say you are more legitimate of a church than a lot of these other churches with thousands of people showing up on Sundays and that own a building and property that are not faithful to the

Lord. You are a true church. Yeah. Well, Pastor Joel, this has been very helpful, I'm sure, to many people listening.

I wanted to just let people know if you go to discerningchristians .com, they're actually on the bottom of the page, there is a statement of faith that's very general.

It's only 11 points. And so that might be a good template. That's a great way. Anyone can take that. Yeah, I mean, this would fit whether you're

Presbyterian or Baptist or even honestly, if you're Pentecostal, you wouldn't have a problem with this.

It's just very general stuff. There is a statement against Marxism and critical theories and stuff with Bible verses.

But anyway, there's a lot of tools out there people can use. Where can they find you, Pastor Joel, if they want to ask a question?

What website? Is it RightResponse? Yeah. So yeah, go to RightResponseMinistries .com, RightResponseMinistries .com.

You'll be able to find all of our content. Also YouTube, that's where most people find us.

So go to RightResponseMinistries .com, YouTube. And then you can also email me. It's Joel at RightResponseMinistries .com,

Joel at RightResponseMinistries .com. Cool. And again, people interested, if you're in that area in Texas, if you're near Georgetown, come on out.

Come on out. You can go to RightResponseMinistries .com. And actually, I see it right there.

It's the conference tab. You click on it and there's a place you can fill out your information and it's all free.

So come on out. See me. See Joel. See AD Robles. We'd love to talk with you and get to know you.

And Pastor Joel, thank you so much for giving me some of your time and the audience here to pick your brain on this.

I know you're probably very busy as a pastor, so I do appreciate it. Thanks, John. I'm honored that you had me on the show.