The 5 Stages of Church and How To Use Them Effectively in Discipleship
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Hey friends, welcome to the 1000 Houses podcast, where we encourage and equip households to make disciples in and through the home. Every episode, you'll hear interviews, teachings, and conversations around what it looks like to turn your home into a hub for mission, community, and discipleship. If you'd like to learn more [00:01:00] about what entering into a season of coaching might look like for you and your household, visit 1kh.
org for more info. Let's jump into today's episode.
Hey everybody, welcome to the 1000 houses podcast. So I'm excited, uh, for this conversation. This is Steve and Steve, your last name, Jellic, Jellicose? Jellicorse. Course, Jellicorse. Okay. Steve and I were hanging out a couple of weeks ago with the mutual fan friend, uh, Paul Parnell. And we, uh, we found out we have a lot, a lot in common, a lot of.
Uh, talking about disciple making and church and just Steve's background in particular. I was like, wow, I just, I want to hear more of your story and also just bring it to all y'all who are following us at 1000 houses. So Steve, thanks for jumping on here today. And yeah, I would love to just start with talk to us about kind of like how, what has God done in terms of you, your family's path into.
Uh, kind of just trying to understand, [00:02:00] yeah, his, his blueprint design for, for church disciple making. I'd love for you to kind of take a big step back and tell us, yeah, how did, how did you encounter that? And, uh, you feel free to kind of take that wherever, but I'd love to hear, yeah, the backstory. Well, thank you.
Thanks for, I appreciate being on with you today. It's a, it's such a pleasure to hear. About people that are really trying to make the difference, uh, living their ordinary lives, uh, making extraordinary disciples of Jesus. And that's really what we've been called to do all of us, not, not, not just preachers or, uh, and that's really what happened is I, you know, uh, met Jesus in the Jesus movement, go see the movies.
You need to know more about that, but that, that transpired into, um, uh, getting me into college. Getting involved with, uh, college campus ministry and back in those days, there were not a lot of [00:03:00] spiritual fathers. There was a kind of spiritual zeal and, um, glory of young men is their strength. The glory of old men is their gray hair.
I, I, I used to think that was, uh, one of those, I didn't quite understand it. I go, you know, law translation say glory of old men is their wisdom, but that's not what the text says. It says gray hair. So one day I just looked up gray hair and it's gray hair is the inability to produce pigment into your hair follicles.
That's what it, that's what gray hair is from. And it just dawned on me, old men realize they can't really produce the works of God and they're all out of weakness. At least they, hopefully they, they do now just cause you're old doesn't mean you're wise. But I think what happened for us is, you know, there was the inevitable disillusionment with Church, kind of [00:04:00] the idealism of what I read in the New Testament versus the reality of the messiness of American church and, you know, just kind of, okay, I'm gonna hang onto the baby, but I'm about tempted to throw it out.
And so there was a, there was a journey of just being very immersed out at, so I was in ministry, uh, in my. 20s. And then I had four children. We, we, uh, had a son of a, kind of a ministry crisis that put us in a position where we couldn't be in the ministry anymore and we needed to take care of our family.
So I got totally immersed in business, which at the time it was just, it was almost like this tragedy of, and very painful circumstances around church and ministry, but it was not unlike. In some ways, uh, I didn't really study the Bible [00:05:00] stories well enough to know that this is kind of a process God loves to take people through, especially young, confident, arrogant, young men who think.
They have more abilities than they actually do. And, you know, the, the school of hard knocks is a school and, uh, sometimes they have to go through it. And those are the moments we can decide, do we, do we want to follow him or would, do we want to just chuck it all? And candidly, you know, I'm, I'm, uh, I'm, I'm running down 70 real quickly here.
And. I've met way too many people that met the Lord dramatically, powerfully, even had ministry out of the Jesus movement, and then they quit. And part of what happened is the Lord [00:06:00] just kind of, in his grace and affection for me, just, uh, grabbed me at the peak of success actually, and said, uh, I went through about six months.
Debate with the Lord about going back, quote, into full time ministry out of a successful business career. You know, by the time I was 40, I'd become a
CEO of a operating division of a developer builder. It was publicly traded and had had some, you know, some real success, so to speak in the business world. All of which was actually just training for, so, so after that six month period of just having a real encounter with the Lord, which I won't go into, but transpired during that time was him getting my deepest, yes, [00:07:00] my life is yours.
I'll go back in the ministry. I was like, fur rabbit, don't throw me in that briar patch. Please, please, please, please, please. There was no illusion about ministry. Okay. All that had gone, I'd gotten over that. And one of the things I learned here in those days is God's God will disillusion you because he's not into illusion.
And most of us have all cut. That's what the disciples, they had illusions about who Jesus was and his disillusionment wounded all of them. Uh, and they all scattered. And one of them actually got so disillusioned, he betrayed him. And so I think we all have that kind of opportunity in our lives because The church can be an idol just as bad as any pagan idol, uh, because he is the chief cornerstone.
There is no, nothing else supersedes Jesus. And what [00:08:00] happens is we, my correct doctrine doesn't, as important as it is, it doesn't supersede Jesus. And so what happens to so many of us is we, we allow our idealism. Which young people are 10 and want to do, but the Lord is, he is a very gritty savior. He's total talk about ultimate reality.
I mean, he, Stanley Jones says the kingdom of God is real is, and that was one of his great themes as a missionary and preacher. But I think for, for me, that transition out of the business world, which I thought, well, at least I know who my enemies are and they're, they're generally not stabbing me in the back.
Right. Or, you know, you know, there's, their speech was sweet as honey, but their words were drawn swords that famous David Psalm. So I moved from disillusionment [00:09:00] and cynicism to just a, a almost, you know, theologically, I'm not sure I agree with my statement here, but I felt like I was born again, again. And it was almost as if finally I got to a place where I, you know, Begin to, you know, you young men, you know, the father, you old men, you know, the father, what's the difference.
I think Paula, I mean, uh, John understood that there was this trans transition of maturity where you, you just get rid of your childhood fantasies, uh, as a, as a baby believer and a young believer and a teenage believer. So during that pot that during that season, we said, yes, we were involved in a big, big The kind of a mega church that was just such a wonderful experience.
But during that time, the Lord, I was starting to, you know, I'd finished up a master's degree in business. I had no intention whatsoever going back [00:10:00] to school. Uh, this really felt, well, the Lord said, go back to seminary. I was like that too.
There was a, for one simple reason I was to, uh, meet very faithfully, uh, uh, who was. I had to take this elective course in missiology, which I had no interest whatsoever in. And it was, of course, the one course the Lord had for me to change my life and upend me because I'm essentially an entrepreneur and mission.
Uh, is entrepreneurial just in its nature. And so it was captured by, and we, I worked with him to work with the underground church in, in, in China. And, uh, this was back in the late nineties and, and that thing was just exploding and it was, it was the untold story. It kind of [00:11:00] remains the untold story, but it's a phenomenon that it's, it's arguably the church in China is substantially bigger than the church in America.
During that time, I got fascinated with the house church, and I know that's something you're doing. And so back before it became fashionable, he decided to do it. And I went to our big mega church. I went to the pastors. I said, guys, I am so not into us and them. I am so not into doing my own little thing.
If you guys don't bless me, I'm not doing this. They were like, really? Because I, I'd become a very active volunteer staff member. And, uh, even though I was still running a company and they were like, we haven't had anybody do that. Well, yeah, of course. So I, because I really felt like, you know what, [00:12:00] just because you and I don't have the same assignment, we are in the same church and we're in the same kingdom.
and we. We have to love each other. And I got that conviction partly because we argue over so many things that are going to be disappointing to our father. So it's like when you, you have four kids, five, what is one of the most disheartening things as a parent when your kids fight, right? Yeah, it was pretty fun.
Yes. Kids are the least fun things about having kids sometimes. So anyway, yeah. We started doing the house church and it was a phenomena in a way. We started reaching out to North Carolina State University where my son, who was a freshman and a little distracted and [00:13:00] the Lord woke him up and he came to me and he said, Hey dad, would you disciple me?
Of course. And out of that, This whole group began to grow and grow. And, uh, that group includes who is now my son in law, my, uh, young lady, who is my daughter in law's sister. I mean, there's just, uh, just some of my son's, uh, roommates, best friends, and people that are like the guy who is the pastor of the church.
I've been pastoring the last several years that he's now stepped in as the lead pastor. He was. In that little group, and it was a, we were discipling people. We weren't big, we weren't significant, except we were incredibly impactful. And so I think [00:14:00] we did that experiment for about 14 years on just a house church level.
And I, I, I was very connected with pastors of bigger churches and traditional churches. I always said, you know, it's not us and them, it's just us. And we're kind of down here doing some skunk, skunk works, and maybe it'll help you guys, and maybe we'll learn what to do and what not to do. And that's really what happened.
That's really good. Uh, one of the things we kind of discovered is, uh, something we, uh, now embrace part of the mood and I'm part of kind of had a very strong missional emphasis to coincidentally, and we have a lot of, we have a Movements in unreached people groups like Muslim countries and Hindu countries and Buddhist countries where you can't actually have a box church like what we're used to here in America.
So the, the house church. It's actually the only [00:15:00] option they have all the time. So because we were very, so missionally minded, we, we, that, that really got integrated in our culture and then our founder, we're the Antioch Ministries International, which is a network of church. We got about 50. Plus churches here in the United States.
Uh, and then we've got countless house churches around the different parts of the world with that. We generally don't like to talk about it because some of them are heavily persecuted. It's funny and it's kind of dangerous to talk about where they are. That that's kind of the journey for me. I've eventually, you know, discipled my son, Daniel, in college, and that probably has been my favorite.
Person to disciple and my son in law, who's now father of five of my grandsons and my son, who's the father of two granddaughters and a son. So that was, [00:16:00] that that's, yes, that's my day. This ministry accomplishment. It seems like a lot of, I know that one of the things that is so different that people, I think encounter when we talk about house church is.
is for us very similar to what you're describing, Steve. It's, it's really, I think of it more as household church. It's like you're starting with your family. God's called you to disciple your, your family, especially when you, when you're adult children, like when I think about Cornelius's household or all the households that are described in the book of Acts, You know, it's interesting to me that they, they did, they don't sound to me like house churches in the sense that here are a random group of 20 or 30 people getting together that aren't really related or know each other.
It sounds like it's centered around a particular household, like, you know, Cornelius is probably the clearest example, but every one of them, it says, you know, like the Philippine jailer or whoever. And yeah, it sounds like in your case as well. It, And [00:17:00] what you experienced was not trying necessarily, it wasn't centered on just a model of churches.
It was centered on a particular, your family, right? Your family being discipled. Yeah. It was actually a family. I mean, I could get, there's so many amazing God stories in this, but I'll just share one of them because it's really germane to this whole conversation. And by the way, I, I've gotten an, I've You know, studied some of the stuff you've written and, and read.
Can't remember the title of the book. Yeah. Loved it. Uh, revision, revisioning family. I think it, because that's kind of been where we've, uh, our, our family is, and, and families are the anchor. Of this larger church. And really we see ourselves as a network of house churches or life groups, but they're very centered on strong families.[00:18:00]
And what was so phenomenal during those days in the early 2000s is our, uh, we had a son who graduated, so he was, he had moved out and gotten married. Our next three were at home and, uh, one of them was a freshman in college. And what emerged out of that was a. A movement that was all the friends of our children and then their families and it was just unplanned.
It was, there was not a, there was, there was no business plan. There was no church vision statement. We had no idea of what we were doing except we had this con, this conviction that we were to make disciples and I, and I would just say, I've been making disciples now on and off [00:19:00] for 40 plus years. 45 years.
And I still would say I'm an amateur. I'm an, I'm an, I just feel, I'm just totally ready to hear from anybody that's successfully discipling them, particularly Americans, because we have so many distractions. And so, yeah, so we, we, we did that for a number of years and there was a season when the Lord just began to say to us.
We, we all started out with all these young people who were like, let's do, let's do church on Thursday night. It was all college, so there was much, you know, some of them don't, apparently they don't have classes on, some of them would figure it out, whatever. And we, we would change the date of our meetings and we would gather in these homes and we would gather in these dorm rooms or these places on the [00:20:00] campus.
And then they started getting married and then they started having babies. Then one day. Two or three of them almost in two or three days in a row said, what do you think about us meeting on Sunday morning? Because, and I'm, I'm sitting there going, I've enjoyed sleeping on Sunday morning. Yes. And so
that's when I started to hear the Lord laughing. It was almost like the Lord goes.
And then, you know, six, five, five years ago, we, we found a building that are, I'm kind of skipping way ahead, but I walked into this building that was, it was a God offering building for our, our, our church meetings, our big church meeting. And I'm looking [00:21:00] at it and I'm going, Lord, you have to be pulling my leg because it was blue church pubes.
And you got to remember, this is, this is Jesus movement, coffee houses, sitting on the floor and beanbags. I've been doing house church. And so you say, well, why, why did you go back into the traditional church setting? I go, well, because when you actually look at the new Testament, you really see about five different formations of church.
If you can have them. And the first one is between you and the Lord. And that one never stops ever. That is the most central one.
Or is it because you can't, you can't do this by yourself, and he won't let you. There's no such that, that's, that's a fallacy and rooted [00:22:00] somewhat in our American individualism. The second one is two or three gathered in our mind. That's a legitimate form of his presence, and you can, and he, of course, each one of these, you can do the, the communion or Eucharist.
The, there's no limit on that. Then there's what I call the church that meets in the house, the coast, the, the household. Meeting of believers who are connected deeply. And then that's so I've got three spheres I've mentioned. And then, then two more. And the fourth one is what most of us Americans think of as church, which is the big meet, the celebration.
I call it the worship celebration, where we are gathered around worship, a word that is an exhortation and encouragement to [00:23:00] the body. And a place where Jesus, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are celebrated. And, you know, where we, we take communion together. And then finally, it's the church on mission. So though, you know, I don't want to go into the deep teaching on those, but what we're trying to do is understand that that is a healthy diet of singular devotion all the of public proclamation and everything in between.
And lo and behold, you find out that
that's exactly what Charles Wesley had instituted in his structure. That was so phenomenal. It's probably the reason England [00:24:00] didn't go into the same thing as the French revolution did, because he was preaching to the poor and to the masses and they were meeting in what they call band groups, two or three meetings, two or three brothers, sisters meeting together.
Real life on life. Yeah. Discipleship, real life on life, confession, Wesley was concerned that the Reformation had gone so far that we never were confessing our sins to one another. Well, you know, I can just confess my sins to Jesus. Actually, that's not what James teaches. You know, where is it? I don't think there has to be a priest class to do it because we're all the priest class.
So anyway, then there's the, so central is that Oikos house church life group meeting because You really can't fellowship with the back of each other's neck, [00:25:00] but what you can do on Sunday morning is, or whatever day you choose to do it, is a celebration meeting is a place where our focus isn't on the back of each other's neck.
It's on the basis of the father and the worship. And so, and then out of that becomes the, one of the things that I was constantly frustrated with, with the house church was. Our, the difficulty we were having in having external missional inputs and outputs and outreach. And part of it wasn't due to lack of effort from anyone, because we were training on it and encouraging it.
But what I discovered, and this was, you know, 2000 to 2014,
I don't care if you are [00:26:00] the world's greatest pagan. You know what church is and in that weird group of people meeting in somebody's house. So we were encountering that, uh, as an objection and it was, you'd have to tease it out of people, but they go, ah, it's kind of weird. What do you mean? That's a church.
I don't know that that's true today as much as it was, but I think we're, we're kind of in a transition where, you know, in some respects, um, that may be more acceptable. Well, I love your, just, just. Sort of breakdown of those five groups. I think that it seems like we're having a hard time doing is sort of, we need to work sort of from the small to the big, instead of from the big to the small, like, you don't, you never get to the small oftentimes when you, if you, that's, that's a good point, I agree totally.
And I, you know, that. Like [00:27:00] we've, our house, uh, our house group, we've been really adamant about the, those first two groups, like you and Jesus. And then the two or three, which, you know, we're really describing as that's, that's kind of where discipleship happens. Like you were saying, that's where you confessing sin, that's where you really get to know each other.
It's, that's where there's a life on life. I think one of the things I keep running into, especially with this generation, when it comes to the two or three. Is the idea that like, they, they always want to just be like a, I call them an orphan cluster. They just want to be friends with each other. They don't, they don't like the idea that one of them is going to take the responsibility to train and the others need to be apprenticing, you know, like, and it's not that anyone's better.
It's just that, uh, discipleship is a, you know, it's, it's sort of like parenting, you know, you're a flawed father and mother trying to raise sons and daughters, but it's, You, you need to know who the father or mother is though. It's like, you don't want to just all be, you know, uh, children. So, yeah, I'm, I'm curious in that, in [00:28:00] that group, you mentioned like, you know, you've been doing this for over 40 years and still like.
Americans are notoriously difficult to disciple, I think, because of that hyper individualism, that obsession around personal expression, that consumerism. There's, there's a lot of major, but yeah. What have you learned in that, that size of group? What, what are some of the things that you guys have practiced or tried that you're like, okay, here's what we try to do.
You know, the, the, the, that's a great question. And I would just say this, Jeremy, that, um, the key is dealing, making sure. And this is kind of a, I'm using this word from a New Testament, an apostolic assignment is you, and, and, and that's one of the things I love about our, our particular movement of Antioch Ministries International.
We got [00:29:00] started at Baylor University, a very, you want to use the word white privilege, you know, wealthy Texas kids.
The guy that started the movement, Jimmy Seibert was himself, just one of those. Kids, but he just got wrecked by hanging out with some missionaries whose life of consecration was so radical and so challenging. He, you know, it's like all these Moses is willing to forgo the riches of Egypt. And, you know, tons of these young people back in the nineties and early two thousands went to the four corners of the earth, to the most remote Afghanistan, to I mean, you know, think of the worst places you'd want to ever live.
How do you do that? Well, you, you're willing to be a disciple and it's a [00:30:00] mutual agreement and it, it, you, you lay out the cost and you do it so that it's volunteer, you know, it's not compulsive. You're not, there's no control. You got, you got to stay away from that. In other words, the way you stay out of control is you have people that are so sold out that they can't see any other way than I want to be like Jesus.
And you're, if you're just slightly ahead of, and, and the other thing too, and, and this is, you know, young disciple makers are often, you ever remember how your kids, when they were like the, the, the three and a half year old would look at the screen. Yeah. One and a half year old, if you had any that close or two, but one year old ago, baby.
They're a baby. Yeah. I think you're both babies. So, so, so you have to, part of discipling is you've got to make sure [00:31:00] there's some spiritual moms and dads around and, and you, and you have to limit those younger disciple makers
sense of I'm the boss over you kind of that, that thing that you're, you're not the boss of me. Well, that you, you provoke that sometimes. Um, and. But if you've made a disciple who understands humility, and I think that's a real, wow, what a, what an, here, here's part of the reason I love the whole Wesley band meeting concept is every person in that group was essentially accountable to the whole group.
Even if you happen, uh, in fact, when the Methodism began to go like this, instead of which it did for the first 75 years in America was when. In their [00:32:00] great wisdom, the Methodist hierarchy decided in the 1850s, their pastors didn't have to attend band meetings and confess their sin to their brothers. Oh, I didn't know that.
Well, that's when the, the slide began. Right? I don't you have that hierarchy. I don't think it's a spurious correlation though, because I think what happens is when you begin to. So we keep, you know, we keep hearing about all these great creatures who fall. Yeah. Oh, it's, it's to be expected. They're not, they're not in any kind of group where they actually have to confess their sin to one.
Yeah. And you go, well, you should, you should, you know, well, does that mean you're in a group with a bunch of college boys at NC state? No, but I do have some brothers that are mature men of God who aren't going to get shot if they find that like, I, [00:33:00] you know, lost my temper and cussed this week. Of whatever, I'd be whatever, like making a practice of every time you discover a gap between your life and the life of Christ, why not talk about that publicly?
I had a friend who said, look, when, when the leaders. Are the ones who are confessing, confessing and repenting most, it scares away all the wolves because wolves have this desire for, you know, uh, the platform and that distance you were describing that really, that really incentivizes that kind of wolfish behavior.
And so to constantly humble yourself and it just creates a culture, of course, it just gives permission to everybody. Hey, we're all, we're all on this journey to try to become more like Jesus. And that's to me, more, maybe the most, uh, like significant transition that April and I, my wife and I have gone through the last year is just this growing clarity around, around this journey towards [00:34:00] being Christ.
They, Jesus didn't come to like, don't become a Christian, become Christ. Like, like there's a huge distance between me and Jesus every, every week. I do a discovery Bible study, and then April also leads one where we just spend an hour looking at the Gospels with the group and try to just really stare at a very small passage, something that Jesus taught or did, and I'm just, there's a point in time in every one of those one hour sessions where I just, I see the gap.
I'm like, there it is. Oh my gosh, I don't practice that. I can tell you that right now. I don't believe that. I don't act like that. I don't live like that. It's so hard to follow Jesus. Like, I, I, I can't, I just picked the passage for our group that's happening on Friday, and I just was reading it this morning.
I was like, oh, this is gonna be, this is gonna be another hard one. Like, I can see it, I can sense it, I can, I'm reading this right now. I'm like, this, this is not, I'm already con Oh, why, why do I have to bring this passage? Do, yes. Yeah. Like, there's gonna be repentance. I, I, you know, I can see [00:35:00] it coming. Yeah.
So, well, I believe that's. I think what you're also talking about, you know, it's, it's really, uh, I'm, I'm really, as I've gotten older, I've fallen in love with Peter. Uh, if people say, well, I love Peter Cousins, this and that, I love Peter Cousins was so humble because at the end of his ministry, at the end of his line, the guy that kind of undressed in public in Galatians about his hypocrisy in his letters, he was defending.
Wow. That's a grave. Never heard that connection. He was here. He is arguably the leader of the church of the world. Right. And he's defending this young guy who's actually redressed him, uh, or reproved him publicly in a last minute posture. I [00:36:00] had this imagination that when we get to heaven, Paul's gonna say The Holy Spirit inspired me.
'cause it, it was in my heart, but it wasn't even in that letter. I mean, it's amazing. Uh, you read Galatians and there's some of these statements, Paul, very fiery. So let let him be a cursed. And yeah, Paul waiter says, bless and curse not. You can almost see that. No, I have nothing to do with John Mark. Later, he says, send John Marking, I had a meeting.
What's happening here is you're seeing him. This is, this is the problem. The Lord is willing to associate with the humble. And we think the humble are people that deserve to be admired, but the humble are the broken. And Paul was broken and you and you're broken and I'm broken. And just because we have a gift of leadership [00:37:00] doesn't mean we don't have a gift of humility.
Stupid. That's right. So, totally. And so what happens is we have to be able to receive proof from those who are in the kingdom. We've gotta receiver proof from those who are the, the newest young Christian. Yeah. The baby Christian in the room who goes, well, you know, the way you kind of said that to Brenda was, seemed a little angry to me, Steve, my wife's Brenda.
Yes. Oh yeah, I was, I was impatient. Oh, it seemed angry. Yeah, you're right. My impatience for that anger and I was unrighteous. Is it possible, Steve, that the Holy Spirit lets us do things kind of like exposed in order for us to be humbled? It's like, like if we, is that possible to be like trying, [00:38:00] trying to follow the Holy Spirit and then you do something and so that you can, and not, not necessarily I'm talking about sin, but certainly like tones or I, I've.
Like dumb ideas that I, I'm just, that are going to make me look really bad. I feel like, yeah, I, I need to be all goofy in one way or the other. That's why the Lord loves us. Yes. He loves the goofiness of us. I, I w yes. I. Part of humility, none of us like the idea that part of humility is often humiliation.
Yes, we, we want to, we want to be in control of our own humility. And sometimes the Lord going, right, you've been in control too long. Here comes the dose of humility that you did want and it's humiliation. And it, you know, and it's not, it's, it's never about shame. It's about gaining the right perspective of humility.
Yourself in relation to everyone around you. Yeah. [00:39:00] It's not about God trying to shame, you know, the Lord's never about shaming us. You needed to be humiliated because you're so arrogant. No, no, you didn't. You needed to be humiliated because you weren't learning the lessons. The Lord's trying to teach you today.
Because think about it. You've been a Christian. How long have you been a believer? Yeah. I mean, for almost. 40 years. 40 years. Okay. So you had, you're a believer. I've been a believer for 50 years. Yeah. This year I'm 50 years old in the Lord. And no, 51, and I can't tell you how many times I've been in a situation and this, the conviction of God comes on me and I'm just like, my Lord and my God, please depart from me.
I'm a wicked man. That's been there for 47 [00:40:00] years, Steve. And you go, was it, and it might not have been latent. Usually somebody will knock that one off. It's the, it's the inner attitudes, those little judgments, those little bigotries, those little Angers, those little hateful thoughts that the Lord convicts you of that you've kind of had all your life.
In fact, your whole family of origin had that tendency and you go, Lord, how come you didn't deal with this a long time ago? Because I'm dealing with it now. What do you think this being conformed into his image means? Yeah. And so he's in charge of the curriculum. He's, he kinda like you, you're still, I, I, I, as I like to say, I've had to take a lot of remedial courses.
Yes. I'm gonna go through that again. I am not, I'm not in [00:41:00] the, uh, gifted and cted group, you know? Yes. I didn't, I didn't, I didn't qualify either. So, we have a few minutes left. Steve, I, I wanted to kind of, uh, ask you a little bit. Grandfather to grandfather, you know, I'm a new brand new grandfather you've been doing this for longer.
So yeah. Tell me a little bit about your vision for this season of your life. I don't know. What do you feel? Yeah. What, what, what is, what does this, this role, uh, really consist of? What have you learned about being a grandfather? Well, it's so fascinating. Our whole movement every year, the leaders, the senior pastors, we'd get the missionaries.
We just seek the Lord on what is the word of the Lord for this year. And the word of the Lord for 2024, last, we were, we all met together in Slovenia, a whole bunch of us, and we just prayed and saw the Lord's face and we kind of gathered our word and the word was [00:42:00] a multi generational family on mission.
That was the word of the Lord. And the entire Antioch movement, a multi gen, so it, it's the thing that It's kind of become my obsession this year is when I, when I saw what you were doing, it was like, okay, this is one of the linchpins of what, what I'm assembling. And one of the things that I think we're seeing, and, and, and this is, this is kind of a recent development.
I talked to you about how many of the baby boomers that got whipped up and saved and they're, Jesus movement, and they're kind of, some of them are still licking their wounds. Some of them have abandoned the faith. Some of them just abandoned church and, and assembling together,
but the Lord's not through [00:43:00] with them and they've got a lifetime of experience and they know what a revival, the real last major revival, we need grandparents. And I, this is a scripture that I just wanted to, I mean, I want you to, the word grandparent is. Almost never used in the Old Testament, but it is everywhere.
And here's how it's everywhere. Uh, this is Deuteronomy 4:9 only be careful and watch yourselves closely. So who's he talking to? Well, you'll find out here in a second so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them fade from your heart as long as you live, teach them to your children and to their children after them.
So. On Labor [00:44:00] Day, we were with our children and our grandchildren, the whole clan. And what we, what Brenda and I both shared was our ancestors stories of God's stories that we'd heard that had been passed down to the generation. And not all of them, but just some of the key ones on both sides of our family.
And, you know, a lot of young Christians have these kind of harsh judgments of their It's Christian parents that honest radical and sold out as we are, you know, my mom and dad were incredibly godly. I never heard them use profanity. They read the Bible. They weren't out witnessing to everybody like we were in the Jesus, but you know, there's, it was that we were full of [00:45:00] fuor and excitement and sometimes not very good sense, but God used us anyway.
And we thought it was us. And what we didn't do was And, and the other combination of this, Americans are the only people group in the world totally separated from their family of origins and came here. And that legacy continues to impact us. And so, yeah, you know, Jesus, and this is something that I realized that a lot of people look at the New Testament and say, well, you know, Jesus was kind of radical.
He said, you know, these are my brothers and my mom and. You know, mom's Mary's, you know, he even put Mary in her place, you know, my brothers and my sisters, the one, well, why was Jesus doing that? He was doing the same thing that he would do in reverse today. [00:46:00] You know, Jesus made it abundantly clear that love for parents could not usurp their priority allegiance and love for God, the father.
Today the pendulum has swung in the complete opposite direction. I imagine that today Jesus would be teaching that if you do not love and honor your parents and grandparents. You can't be walking in the love of God.
Jesus always deals with the sin of the generation he's talking to. I mean, he always has, and that's why we need preachers. We need preachers to preach the word of the moment. And the word of the moment today is God's your father, and your image is him. And you get your identity from him. Because everybody's confused about their identity.
But I think what's happened, so for me, the greatest transformation that's happened in our, our family is the [00:47:00] idea that the
most important thing for our children to know the love of God and our love is not to tell them we love them, even though we should tell them we love them. But here's how you affirm the love. This is how they feel love is they feel enjoyed, delighted in, and when children and grandchildren
know they're delighted in that builds resiliency and it removes anxiety. I think one of the reasons, you know, this thing right here, you know, right. It's kind of like this. Hey, Jeremy, how are you doing, bro? Yeah. At least [00:48:00] they're cheering me. You know, if you see, if I'm like, Hey, bro, good to see you, man.
Or when you and I, me and. It's just like, come here, I gotta hug you. I'm okay. Yeah. I'm not really, you know, that was one of the things my, my mom and dad, I played college football after the game. My mom and my dad both would hug me in front of all my teammates. It was humiliating and I loved it. And you know, what was so funny
is when I talked to some of those old teammates, they'd say, are your mom and dad still with us today? Well, they remember. They remember my parents and if my parents had been gone for 20 years, [00:49:00] but yeah. Yeah. So the, yeah, the light, the lighting. Yeah. Then that, I think that part of, one of the things I experienced when my grandson was born was like.
I don't think I've ever had a relationship where there was so little, so, uh, little friction between me and delighting in a person. Just like, I mean, when you're their child, you're like, okay, I'm like, you know, I'm a dad now. And I got to like, think about when it was my grandson, I was just like, I love you and I, I feel like he sensed it immediately.
Like, you really, really, really like all these other people. They like me. But you, you think, I mean, so, uh, I, I, I love that so much and I think part of like my journey in healing has always, has really been centered on growing and emotional availability. Because there's a part of me that sort of doesn't want to do that.
I really like, you know, I'd love to, you know, do what you just described, like have the phone. [00:50:00] The only half present, like that, that is so in my flesh to not, not give myself my hope. Oh, we all do it. Yeah. It's that's a, man. Well, Steve, this has been super awesome. I got to let you go in a minute. I could talk to you for hours, man.
This is like, this is really good. I love it. I'm here, man. I'm so, I'm so I'm using this word more and more, even though Christians are supposed to be proud. I'm just so proud of all these. This, this generation, it's, you know, 15, 20 years behind me that are, Jess you're, you know, I'm, I'm one of these guys that believes that we have this joke in our family.
And I say this and our Our daughter, we were kind of joking with her one day, this is our youngest daughter that has five boys. And we said, you know, our grandkids are a lot better than our kids. And she looked at us very. Just as [00:51:00] quick as a whip. She said they had better parents and we just, I, we just love that because you know what, that's whole point.
That's the goal of discipleship, that you will follow Jesus better than I did. Yes. Yeah. We not that I, yeah, yeah. Our, our ceiling is their floor and we Yeah. If you've done that to me, that's the assignment. Like you're, you're saying like that's, that is. That's the thing to aim at. Well, Steve, let's keep this going.
I want to, I want to continue to connect. I'm excited to continue to, to hear. I want to, I have a whole rabbit trail that I want to go down with, with regard to Antioch and the missions movement that you guys are a part of. Oh, super interested in that. And I've been listening to some stuff from Jim Sybert and yeah, I'd love to hear more about that.
So let's connect again soon. Thanks so much for being on this today. Yes. Well, thank you for having me and God bless you brother.
[00:52:00] Well friends, thanks for listening to today's episode. If you'd like to learn more about a thousand houses or discover what a season of coaching might look like for you and your household, visit one k h. org. We'll see you for the next [00:53:00] episode.
