EP197: Jason Shepperd & Building a Microchurch Network

All right, so for this conversation audience, I need us to take the digital hat off. We are not getting technological in this conversation much at all. Instead, we're really dealing more into this idea of relationships. We're dealing more with this idea of networks. Hey, it's Jeff here with the Church Digital and also coming soon the Digital Church Network.

Now you've heard me talk a little bit about this. Dude, in many ways, I resigned from Stadia to go towards creating God. Open some incredible opportunities to open a Digital Church Network, a network of digital churches globally, really championing almost this idea of doing like micro church in digital space, micro church in the metaverse. And so what would that even look like? God opened this opportunity, gave me ways to connect with people, and just literally had this sense upon me: hey, Jeff, I need to create a network of digital churches.

The funny thing was, and I've said this publicly, I have no idea what church networks do. And so for this conversation, I actually sought out a guy that ran a micro church network that has been active in network ministry and asked the basic question: what is it that you actually do? Because ironically, I feel like God's leading me to do that. I just have no clue what I'm actually supposed to do.

And so for the conversation, I'm bringing in Jason Shepard. Now Jason runs Church Project, among other things. Church Project is a network of micro churches that are in the Texas area, and he's been doing this for a while. He's been having a lot of success with it. And honestly, I sat down with him and I was like, hey, I don't need you to explain digital. I really don't want to know your take on digital. It's okay. I just want to know. I want to learn. I want to gain insight on how to be a network, how to empower people to do ministry, how to empower laypeople, vocational, co-vocational, how to empower the average person to pick up the mantle of Christ and be that missionary in their neighborhoods in physical space. And that's the heart of this conversation: what does a micro church network do?

So for this conversation, once again, we're bringing in Jason Shepard from Church Project and myself, Jeff, with the Church Digital and coming soon the Digital Church Network, in a conversation that I'm so eloquently entitling: so what exactly does a micro church network do?

Okay, everybody, here you go.

Hey, yeah, so Jason, man, thanks for jumping on the show here. Yeah, maybe just even to kick us off, but tell us a little bit about yourself. Tell us about Church Project. What all this is about.

Yeah, Jeff, thanks for the invitation. I love what you're doing and excited to learn more from you and love to be a part of this today. Yeah, my name is Jason Shepard. I planted a thing called Church Project in 2010 on the north side of Houston, and then we started planting other church projects and we called that Church Project Network. And then we started planting churches outside of ourselves and we call that House Church Network.

I grew up in Tyler, Texas, east of Dallas, sort of medium-sized East Texas town, pretty isolated in my view of the church. And then God started expanding my view through just studying Scripture in college and traveling the world and working in churches and just a deeper dive into the study of ecclesiology. And so out of all of that, combined with the frustration of everything I had been perpetuating for fifteen or twenty years, I started Church Project. And we had no place, no people, no funding, no name, nothing. In fact, Church Project isn't the name of a church. We say it's sort of an idea. And now we have a church of thousands of people with no name, but we are what we would call a church of house churches. So we're one church made up of many house churches. And that's what we helped plant churches that are made up of house churches.

That's incredible. There is so much in that opening conversation that just right there, that one paragraph, I'm just typing questions over here, crazy, trying to remember everything. Okay, so like, you opened up your is what you spent time trying to figure out what is church? And so you're a network of house churches, which means that your view of church may be a little different than the, you know, the big building on the corner of every street in Houston, Texas. So tell me, like, what do you define as church?

Well, you know, that's a loaded question. And actually, I would say that's one of my biggest concerns or maybe senses of calling in my life is: what is the church? I mean, when we say church, what does that mean? You know, a guy, a PhD, brilliant seminary leader at Baylor University from Europe, he wrote a paper one time and he posited this idea. And he said, you know, most pastors would not be able to explain what the church is in a theological way. And I would say this too, Jeff: I think that the church is the carrier of doctrine to people, right? I mean, we're carrying all this theology to people, but the vessel in which we're carrying it, the church, I would say that doctrine of theology or ecclesiology, the theology by which we're carrying all theology, our ecclesiology is not defined or expressed.

And I will say I grew up in a place where I didn't even think about what the church was supposed to be. I mean, I thought about what do I believe about Jesus and sin and heaven and salvation and coming of Christ and mission and all that, but I really never thought about what is the church?

And so when I started wrestling with this, of course, I mean, we started in Acts and we see things in other places, but I will tell you Titus. For me, when Paul told Titus, the reason I left you in Crete, I'm like, okay, now here we're getting down to some empirical information, right? Paul plants a church on an island in Crete, a large island, and then he's leaving to go do what he does best, which is evangelize and start churches as an apostle. And then he says I'm going to put somebody else here. So Paul appoints Titus and he tells Titus three things. These are the three things you're supposed to do: the reason I left you in Crete was to straighten out what's unfinished, appoint elders in every town as I directed you, and teach what's in accord with sound doctrine.

And so I see this light centrality of Titus but distributed leadership in every town, because Paul wanted to make sure that people in every town had a pastor, elder, available to them, an overseer for them. He didn't want Titus being the guy to go to them because that would limit their access to Titus. And he didn't want them coming to Titus. That would limit their access to Titus. And so he said, look, you appoint leaders, distribute leadership to people. So he wanted to make sure these leaders had some doctrine. He wanted to make sure that they were living a proper life, all of these things.

So there is centrality of oversight, but there is distributive leadership. So that's what Church Project is. There is centrality of oversight, but it's light. As Alan Hirsch talks about a missional DNA, there has to be some centrality for a movement to happen, but it's gotta be almost invisible. And so we have centrality, but it's very, it's behind the scenes. It's almost hard to see. And we have distributed leadership.

I would say this: we're a church of thousands of people. We don't really know how many. I mean, you know, on a weekend four or five thousand people, fifteen or twenty thousand people call this their church on a regular basis. We have no phone number, no four-year. We do own a building, but we inhabit a very small part of that. Our team that is central for this, and the building is used by ministries in our city all the time. We can talk about space. I mean, I have a real passion and conviction and calling for actually what I would say is a theology of space. I think churches are projecting a theology of space all the time, whether they don't have it or they have incredible edifices. We're projecting a theology of space.

So the ecclesiology, so I mean, you listed out a very minimalistic, a basic, maybe more of an essential approach: straighten out what's finished, appoint elders, you know, teach the word. That's the view of the church. Does that, so an established church has a much more richer ecclesiology that they're used to. You're adapting it. May be a more simpler approach is that the ecclesiology of that house church network? Like, when you look at those, are the three functions of that? Is there more that you're adding to that ecclesiology of that house church? More expectations?

No, a house church here, they have house churches have a lot of expectations and clarifications of function, but essentially they function as a little church. They have an overseeing elder. So we have a group of elders who oversee all of our house churches, but our house church pastors are empowered, expected, identified to pastor this congregation of people. And so we may have seventy house churches here. Let's say it's Church Project the Woodlands up the road. We have Church Project North County, and they have however many house churches they have. We're starting one fifteen minutes west of us and another one northwest of us. And so we have house churches all over here, but every centrality has, every location, if you will, every central hub, we don't use the word hub much, but, has its own elders that oversee it. But the function of the house church pastors is different than the function of the elders or the overseers.

And the house church pastors are pastoring that. They're responsible for cultivating the culture and the community of discipleship and relationship. And so we say house church is the primary source of community and discipleship. So all benevolence happens in a house church. And so in a typical centrally located church, what we read about in Acts, can't happen. When we say hey, they were selling their goods and meeting each other's needs, that doesn't happen in a church. Most churches I worked at, from mega to medium-sized churches, was where I worked in traditional model churches before. Let's just put a real scenario together here.

A mom with three kids, her husband left her, he's not paying the bills, she needs some help. How does she get help from her church? She calls the office. The receptionist sets up an appointment for her with the executive pastor, who she doesn't know. She walks into the office, she fills out a form, she waits for the guy to come down the hall and get her. He's nice. Everybody's nice. It's a nice experience. Hi, my name is so-and-so. Please come in. She's had to fill out information: how much money she makes, what her bills are, all that. And the executive pastor says, well, our benevolence budget right now is this, and we can help you for a couple months with your mortgage, but we probably won't be able to do it after that. She's grateful, but eight weeks from now she's hopeless again. That I hate. I don't, I can't read about that in the Bible. I don't see it. And I built that for many years.

What I love now is this: somebody's in a house church. Real scenario. A man and a woman going to house church. Dude loses his job. They're very blue collar people. They live sort of paycheck to paycheck. He loses his job. They go to house church that week. And because they're a great community, at the end of the gathering, we're praying for each other and they share, hey, we've lost our job. People pray for them. And this guy says, hey, once you get with this person, they're going to help you on a job search. They're good at that. This person's going to help you with the budget. And the next week this family shows up. Real thing happened. I heard about it last week happening again. This happens all the time. Bag of money on the table. Hey, we all please.

Open the bag. Boom. Hey, we're paying, taking care of your mortgage for a few months and we're going to help you out. I mean, people buy people's cars, pay their hospital bills, watch their kids for them. I mean, it's just this is happening in every house. There's things that we don't know about.

We just, we work to hear stories, right? We just want to hear the stories. It's just happening automatically. And I think all of this is completely contingent upon the way the church is structured. And so I think much of ecclesiology is structured. And I think churches of different, you know, you can be complementarian or egalitarian or you can be whatever preacher approaches your midterm. That's great. Now I'm not saying those things don't matter, but that doesn't affect how your church functions. Um, I think the structure of the church is going to determine how your church is going to handle all these things: benevolence, pastoring, uh, front line of counseling, accountability, church discipline, community. All of that for us is happening in house church, whereas at other places, centrality was trying to make it all happen.

Is there any level of centralization? I mean, you were talking about centrality at some level, but then you really started talking more about the regional aspects and the elders that are leading, you know, some of these levels. Like, is there any uh, overarching central umbrella? What does that look like?

Sure, yeah, there is. And in fact, I think if there's not, that's why we've limited movements. I mean, people have retaliated rightly so, I think, against this mega central kind of church. And um, and so they've started gathering in isolated, individualistic. So I'll give you an example. A guy comes to our church gathering on a Sunday morning. I meet him. There's hundreds or thousands of people walking around. I just happened to meet this guy. "Hey, what's your name? What brought you here? Have you been connected to a church? What's your story with God?" And so he's like, "Well, I've been a part of a house church for the last five years." And I'm like, "Great. Um, let's talk about that." And I said, "Well, why are you here today?" And he said, "Well, the pastor of my house just got cancer. Uh, they had to quit. We were meeting in their restaurant. They had to sell their restaurant and move somewhere." And I'm like, "Well, where's your house church? She's like, "Well, it's gone. It ended." And I said, "I love that you're in a house church. I'm sorry that it ended. I'm sorry your house, your pastor got cancer." I said, "If that would have happened here, let me let you know we have overseers who would have cared for you. We would have cared for the house church pastor because he had no one to care for him. They had to sell the restaurant and leave. Um, and we would have raised up another house church pastor or this house church would have been integrated into another, the one closest to them. And so yeah, we have centrality because it keeps it going. And when you have a bunch of individual, disconnected house churches or microchurches in the city, it's really hard to get together to work toward, you know, the gospel spreading, saturating a city. And so we believe that a centrality is important for endurance and impact, um, and encouragement and accountability. So yeah, we have.

So let's say I have kids. I want my kids. I have an elementary school kid and a high school kid. We have kids in college. So I want my elementary school kid to have friends in elementary school and do things that elementary school kids do. So I want my high school daughter, she has her best friends are from her small group in church that she's been with for years. And I want her to go on a mission trip and go to camp. But my daughter also works at, she goes to two different house churches and she's like the little kids pastor at these two house churches. She cares for these kids. So but I do want her to have friends her age. And so we have, you know, a semi-traditional, if you will, student ministry so that junior highers and high schoolers can connect. We do believe in the Sunday gathering. And um, I think that is a point to press into here as well. And so some of our centrality helps make sure that these things occur, whether it be student small groups or, um, you know, together all 70 or 80 or 90 house churches, wherever they are, we're all focusing in on Malawi or Haiti, you know, and so together we have these things that we're doing missionally. And that also, um, requires some centralization.

That's really interesting. It's the centralization allows the critical mass for the areas that a house church may not have, um, you know, I know like, you know, one of the things the one of the challenges we talk about like with house church or micro locations through digital is like what do you do with the kids and what do you do with the students. Um, and to be honest, I didn't, it didn't even occur to me, "Hey, like creating a network like that and and maybe putting the ones and the twos together to create that critical mass to create something that's that's really interesting." So, um, talk to me about how this started. Like, did you, were there 20 house churches around people that were doing this? Was it casting vision and starting from scratch? Was there a gathering of established people and and rallying around? Like, what was day one as as you're growing this thing out?

Day one was scary and lonely. And, uh, you know, I so I worked at a great church by all standards. And, um, I just couldn't, I couldn't stay there anymore. I mean, I was in succession plan to take over when the 20-year-older pastor than me left. And you know, we had just built a 27-million-dollar new facilities. And so, but I just couldn't. I just knew I couldn't. This wasn't what I was going to spend my life doing anymore, although I loved the place and I still do. So I just designed a plan with the leadership there to leave. I didn't want to take anybody from that place. I didn't want to transfer culture. I didn't want to be divisive. And so I went underground. There was no way to contact me or find me. So for many months I was just invisible. I disappeared. And I didn't know what to do. Actually, at the end of 2009, I mean, I went away. My last day at this place was August 31st. I went away and just to the mountain. I just prayed, "Oh my God, I don't know what to do. You put some things in my heart, been cultivating things for years, but it surely wasn't formed as clearly as it is now." Um, and so I came back and I found a few people to help me that I did not know before. A couple of them maybe I'd met once somewhere. But, um, I found some guys who were also sort of discontent with church. They didn't have this calling, but they were willing to follow and support it and try something, you know? We had no money, but we had no people. I said, "Look, I'm going to pursue this idea with my life. And, um, you know, keep doing whatever job you're doing. Some of them were working at Apple or Starbucks or whatever. And I said, 'Look, I'm gonna, I'm gonna hope that this will support me financially so I can devote all my time to it. But if it doesn't or can't, I'll do something else.'" And actually, I think people need support at the beginning more than they needed at the end. I mean, I'm working to let the church support me less and do more things on the side now because I needed more time at the beginning. But we just started with, I mean, I had three guys help me. Nobody was being paid by the church. There was nothing. And I said, "Look, we can start having these conversations about this with people that we meet, but we can't invite anybody from any church we've been a part of." And so, uh, we had four little information gatherings. And so like 40 or 50 people somehow came to those. There was no marketing. We've never done a marketing thing, a mailer. We've never done any advertising at all, ever. I hate it. It makes me look like everybody else. And so I'm like, I'm not like everybody else, but marketing is going to make me look like everybody else. And it makes us look like the commercial organization of a church, and I hate it. I met somebody yesterday. They were in discipleship in this coffee shop in her city. And the person discipling them, I know well, and she introduced me to this person. And I said, "What brought you to our church?" And she said, "The fact that you don't do any marketing let me know that you're very different from every other church around here." And I just kept hearing about you. And so I, I investigated. Like, we're a little bit of a covert movement. Like, I mean, if you get to be a part of us, you had to do a little bit of work, right? There's no signage or billboards or advertising. And we started like that. And so somehow 40 or 50 people show up to a gathering. And I just said, "Look, we're gonna, we're gonna become a church of house churches. And if you come here, you're gonna live an intimate community with people." And I defined what house church is. I believe it's a diverse community. And we can talk about that in a minute. What what what are some of the definitions of descriptions of a house church? If I defined and described what a house church was, at least as much as I knew at the time, and, um, I said, "This is what we're going to pursue together. I said we'll have some common gatherings on Sundays, but they will not be shows. They will not be productions. They will be like, you know, plastic chairs, simple." I believe, I, I guess I need to digress into this. I do believe when I see an axe in other places, um, even throughout the Old Testament, it seems like God really valued uh people getting together to hear the word. I mean, you see Ezra, you know, building a platform and preaching the word and people getting together and singing. You see it Old Testament. You see New Testament. I mean, they're getting together by the thousands in the temple courts, but then they're distributing it at house churches throughout the week. And then I, I see it in heaven. And so I see it in historical movements too. And so I can't disparage the gathering, but I should protect us from becoming gathering-centric. And so, uh, we we can't disparage it. It's, it's biblically, I can't unsee the beauty of the gathering together. Um, but it has its function, and it's a small part of the whole thing. And so we keep it really scaled back. Like, our gatherings are very, very simple. We spend not much time getting ready for our gatherings. They're done well, but they're very, very simple, to let people know this isn't about this. And I would actually say our gatherings actually exist to support house churches. I mean, the fact that I or whoever we're preaching through a passage of Scripture, um, helps our, we're discipling our house church pastors because they're hearing that teaching. And it also helps protect doctrinally in the house churches because some people might hear something in a house church. Let's say a house church pastor's going rogue doctrinally. They got people in their house church that would say, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, we see a disconnect here from what we're hearing doctrinally that the elders of the church are teaching us and what you as a house church pastor are saying." And we've had one or two instances only out of 11 years now where people in the house church have raised a concern all the way up to the elders. "Our house church pastor is saying some things that seem incongruent with the doctrine of the church at large." And so Sunday gatherings really support house church. And people want an opportunity to worship corporately. I really believe that. And so that's why our Sunday gatherings exist: to teach sound doctrine, to uh protect it within the house church, and to give people an opportunity to gather corporately. So 40 people when we started, I knew like four of them. And so we said, "Look, we have," we had four gatherings out of that, we...

Had like 40 people stick, so we said, "Look, we're starting somewhere." We found a little bitty warehouse to gather in on a Sunday at a Sunday gathering. Then we said, "Look, you 20, you're going to this house church. You 20, you're going to this house church." I knew one of the men. I met one of the other men. I started discipling them every week, multiple times a week. I'd meet with them. I mean, they'd been walking with the Lord for a while, but I wanted to make sure their doctrine was sound and they understood what we were doing. So I said, "Rob, you're going to pastor on the east side of 45. Randy, you're going to be the house first pastor on the west side of 45." 40 people that were coming—if y'all want to be a part of this, you're in a house church. So go. And, uh, two house churches became four in about three or four months. And, um, they just grew. And again, people were just telling people—their friends, their neighbors. Somebody's cutting their hair, which I'm way overdue for a haircut. I get one today, thankfully. I mean, friends are telling their friends and neighbors, inviting people into this new little community they're a part of. And, um, year one we went from zero to about a hundred people—well, forty to a hundred people. Year two, a hundred to two hundred people. And again, we didn't change anything. Years two to four, we went from 200 to 800 people. And then, and again, we changed nothing—not even anything we do on Sundays, no marketing strategies, nothing. And then, you know, after that it just kept going and going. It's crazy. Is that multiplication like, is that intentional? Or you've got a process that you walk people through? Is it, um, laissez-faire where it just happens naturally through it? Like, what, what's the DNA on the multiplication piece within what you're doing?

It's intentional, but it's different now than it was. Because before, like, our intentionality early on was just my relationship with everybody. Had this conversation: we believe every level of discipleship should include multiplication. One-on-one, if I'm discipling somebody, our intention is that they will in turn disciple somebody else. A house church, and our church—we think that our church should be multiplying. We think a house church should multiply, and an individual disciples should multiply. And so, yeah, we are intentional about that. We're actually very intentional about that on the individual level. Um, we have—I met a guy last night. They moved here from Indiana. He's a pilot. Uh, he and his wife, they have three kids. Um, I just met them last night. They've been here for months. Uh, they're, they've both been through individual discipleship somehow. Our processes work, and they got connected to somebody. Boom. This person discipled them. Now this guy's already discipling somebody else in our body within a matter of months of them being here. Um, I meet people in there. They may—I, I literally will meet people who have been here for years, and I'm like, "Well, tell me about your house church." They're like, "Well, they're—we're in this house church, and we used to be in this one, but that one's planted us, and so now we're in a different house church." And so, yeah, I mean, it's intentional. But we've had to recalibrate it as we've grown. Uh, we've had to make sure that our systems actually, um, work because our systems when we're 100 people are very different when we're thousands of people now. But, um, you know, I hear some people sometimes when I say "systems," they're like, "Ah, now you're into an organization." For me, and I'm like, "Um, I, I think the most organic thing in the world, uh, is a system." I mean, I was pre-med, so I know about all of the systems in our body. There's so many ecological systems that we have. I think the difference between an organization and an organism is not that we have systems. It's that the systems for us, they're autonomic. They're invisible, and they're not the point. The point is the organ. The point isn't the system. And so for us, our systems are autonomic. They're simple. They're invisible. You can't even really see them. They just naturally function. And so we've had to figure out how those systems adapt as we have grown, and that's been difficult. I mean, I would say that in the last year, because we've grown so much during and since the pandemic, we've had to recalibrate some systems. And we want to make sure our systems are always people systems. They're never "click a button" system, and they're never, um, you know, they're never electronic systems. They're people systems. And so we don't have a system that doesn't immediately connect to people. And so that's, that's been the difficulties we've grown.

Yeah, like, I won't even pull that thread a little bit. So I am interested in coming to your church. You don't market, so like, it would a new person coming to a house church—would that person come through an individual? Is there a website with a listing? Like, what, what is what's that first step in into the house? Are we okay inviting complete strangers into the house? Is there any privacy or, or concern centered around that? Like, what, what does that early gestation look like?

Yeah, that, I mean, your questions are informed, and I love them, and they're important. I mean, the things that you're asking actually really matter. They matter to us, and these are the things that we care about too. Uh, so how does somebody find out about Church Project? Generally, they find out about Church Project because somebody told them about Church Project. I mean, we say, "Look, the, I mean, the early Christian movement happened from people telling people." And we say, "The more we love Jesus, the more we're gonna love what he loved." And so, so that our building was used by Lifeway one time to do this big, uh, video shoot. Somebody in our church is an author, and they asked to use our building. We said, "Of course." And then they brought in like a really world-famous speaker that was part of this video series. And so I just want—I won't use her name, but she's awesome. And so, um, I see this lady a few months later. I'm in Africa with her, and she says, "Jason, let me tell you about my experience in your city." She said, "I got out of, I got out of the airport, and I Ubered to you, to you, the area of the city where you live. And, um, I was getting a conversation in the car with the Uber driver, and the Uber driver starts talking to me about Jesus. Finds out I'm a believer, and I asked the Uber driver, 'Where, where are you part of a church community here?' And they said, 'Yes, a thing called Church Project.'" She's like, "I'm actually going there to shoot a video later to use their building." She goes into the hotel. The person who's the receptionist of the hotel has a conversation with her. "And what are you doing here?" "I'm going to do a video shoot." "Oh, cool. For what?" She tells her. "Oh, great. Where are you doing that?" "Oh, at a place called Church Project." Your reception says, "I, I actually am a part of that." And so they start talking. She goes and gets her hair, hair done at a salon. She's new here. Somebody recommended salon. She goes to this place. The person doing her hair is that the Uber driver on the way back to the hotel's merchant. All these people are talking about—I had a guy from Sydney, Australia, called me during the pandemic. We had a Zoom call like this, and he said, "Well, if, if the Sunday gathering is about discipleship and you're teaching the word and all that, he's like, 'What's your, what's your strategy for evangelism?'" And I said, "Evangelists." He's like, "What do you mean?" And I said, "Our evangelism strategy is our evangelism strategy is evangelists. Like, uh, is our evangelism strategy the Sunday morning show, or is it that we would actually take thousands of people and send them out into our community to be evangelists? That's our evangelism strategy." And that was Jesus's evangelism strategy, I believe. Discipleship produces evangelism. I believe that. And so most people come to our church because somebody invited them. Uh, you can Google Church Project, and then you can find stuff. And so some people do Google it to find out, "Okay, what's going on?" They want to do a deep dive on our website. "What do you believe?" or whatever. "What is this place about?" I mean, people are like, "Church Friday—is it a church?" We hear that all the time. "Is it a church?" Maybe it's different than the church you're thinking it is. So we sort of like that our name is a little different because it already—it people who are looking for something different are fine with that. Somebody who doesn't want something different, they're not going to come here. Um, so yeah, but here's the really wild thing, Jeff. People go to the house church closest to them. So most gathering in history of the church that we know it, um, is homogeneous gathering. But most gathering biblically, historically, and globally is not homogeneous. It's diverse. And so Paul's telling, "Have the older and the younger people disciple one another. Have the older people teach the younger people." This, uh, they're living in community together. Rich and poor—like the church in Corinth, the rich and poor were having issues. Well, that's because they were like living life together. And Paul had to help older, younger, rich, poor, married, unmarried, have the immature and the mature. Have, let's have the mature help the others come up to our level of maturity until we all reach unity in the faith, he would say. And so we, we don't have any distinction of where we gather other than geographically. And I know that that's really odd for people, but I'm telling you, are I think people's default—you would maybe agree—is our people's default is to the least invasive form of community. So I want to get around people who are just like me, sort of my socioeconomic status, my level of spiritual maturity. I really—we're creating in church friends, which is good. We need friends. But the description of church is more family in the Bible than it is friends. And so we've had to figure out, actually, not how to create family—we've had to create, figure out how to create friendship. Churches are structured for homogeneous friendship groups, but they don't produce discipleship like family does. And so now what we've had to do is say, "Okay, how does single mom in house church 2, 12, 22, 32, 42, 52 meet single mom in one of these other house churches? How do they meet each other?" So we'll have an event for a single mom. So house church pastors would say, "Hey, single moms, we're having a dinner for single moms," and there's no program. They're just going to get together and build a friendship. We'll do that with young adults. You know, we have young adults, and we have a young adult. Somebody will get out of college, move to our area, come to our place, and they'll be like, "Hey, where's the young adult group?" We're like, "We don't have one." They'll say, "You don't have any young adults?" "Oh, no, we have hundreds of them. Where are they?" "Well, they're in house churches all over." And then they're like, "I don't think that's gonna work," but they'll try it out. And now they have a house church pastor. And then, you know, six months later, they're engaged. I mean, that's a story that's happening here all the time. And so, uh, yeah, people can go to a house church. I can't picture a scenario anywhere in the Bible where they're like, "Uh, our group is closed. Can't come." What? No. If your group is too big and it needs to be closed, you need to multiply. So we don't close anything. We're going to keep somebody out? So the Holy Spirit's gotten somebody to the point in their life so they're where they're willing to walk into a Christ-centered community, and we're going to say, "Oh, sorry, it's closed"? Not good. We'll never close it. We've never closed anything. Nothing's closed. And a lot of people are like, "I don't like that because, you know, we have an intimate group, and we want to keep it that way." I'm telling you, that's why we're, we're not evangelistic. We're—

Not geared toward the gospel, we're selfish and we're putting ourselves in groups of people who are just like us. And really, I mean, that's why we don't have deep discipleship happening in churches because it's people just like us. I don't have older people, younger people, rich people, poor people, married and unmarried, mature and immature.

So yeah, so let me ask this. You're reaching for five thousand people. It sounds like connected. It's so broad. Your heart is hard to track. You're not actually sure what's happening. I love that, by the way. But now these are people that have like full-time jobs. Like you don't have like a staff person at every house church. What's your actual staff infrastructure to manage what's happening? Like, is it all centralized? Decentralized? Its elders? Like, what? Who's getting paid? Is anybody?

Yeah, they are. But we have about one-fifth, one-sixth the staff size that most people at church our size would. In fact, there's a church that I was looking at last week. They have four hundred people and they have as many full-time pastors as we do. So yeah, I mean, we have house pastors who are pastoring, you know, twenty, thirty, forty people, sometimes more, sometimes less. When it gets to be that big, we're hoping that we're in a process of multiplication already. But we don't want some, you know, another tension we can get into at some point is how do we launch a house church when we don't have a house pastor ready? And so the house church is too big, but we don't want to send them away to somebody who's not prepared yet. So there's a tension there that we're always having to manage.

So the house church pastor, really, I mean, there we have, you know, the fire captain for the city of Houston is a house pastor to a great medical doctor, to teachers and engineers and businessmen and all of that, counselors, whatever. But they have real jobs. That's why we keep their house churches small and manageable. But the centrality, yeah, we have a team and they're small. Like, and you really, the only people who can find us are house church pastors or the people in that team we're leading.

So for example, we have a global pastor who handles, he oversees all the things we do locally, anything with global people here in Houston, and all of our global stuff. So he's, you know, discipling and pastoring our pastors in Malawi or Haiti or Mexico or wherever we have stuff going on, and he's helping. He's working with all the things here, all of our refugees and all that. So that's more than a full-time job.

We have about forty or so ministries that we're a part of locally. And so we have a pastor who oversees all of that. I mean, one, we care for other local ministry leaders, non-profit leaders. So this pastor cares for them, sees how our church can support them, and then our whole goal is to get our people connected into these different elements of ministry happening in our city. So we have a full-time person for that, right? I mean, we have a student pastor for hundreds of students and their parents and supporting them and supporting house church pastors as they're caring for these families. So yeah, we have that. I mean, I'm full-time here. We have a person who oversees all of our finances. We want to make sure that we are really operating with integrity. And so yeah, so we have a full-time staff, but it's about again about a fourth or fifth the size and most churches are size, and we could grow two or three times as much right now with our current size staff.

Yeah, I've heard stats recently that forty to forty-nine percent of the average church budget goes towards building, twenty through twenty-two to twenty-three percent of the average church budget goes to payroll, and what you're describing, like, there's all that's gone. Is giving still at the normal, like, ten percent? I don't want to get like weird here, but where does the money go? Like, I heard, you know, the story of paying the mortgage, buying cars, things like that. Is the focus primarily within that? Within the house church supporting one another, are there other missional causes in neighborhoods that you invest in? Like, what is the tithing structure and scenario look like at the average house church?

Well, it's at both hands. I mean, people will give to the body corporately because together as a corporate body, a collection of house churches, we have ministries that we support. I mean, we have through, if people give to the church project, we will support our team. It's small, but they still, it still needs it. It's small on the ratio, but it still needs support. We have a building. It's used for ministries in the city, and we're very close to mortgage neutral. Actually, I could get into that at some point if you want. But we still have to pay our bills, pay the lights, and pay Wi-Fi, which we were having problems with earlier. So you know, we got to pay those things. But then I mean, the rest of our money goes to supporting ministries in our city.

So collectively, when people give here, they know I'm giving it. It's going to support the building that also was used for the city. I say we borrow a building on Sundays to worship here, and it's available for ministries in our city the rest of the week. And so we designed it that way. So yeah, but then the rest of it, I mean, we've given collectively millions and millions of dollars away to church planting, to ministry partnerships. I mean, I'm not in charge of, but I for accountability's sake, we have several people who will see where all of our wire transfers go, and that's generally to our international stuff. So yesterday I had like five wire transfers that come through, and I see where all of our giving is going, right? And I'm on our board. We have a board that handles all them. One person on the board and I see, I see all that.

Yeah, I mean, we're just giving, you know, so our people in Haiti got fed yesterday. You know, they're struggling. So collectively, people give to the church project, and we give to these things. We have local and global ministries that we support as well as church planting. So we believe, you know, the people brought the money and laid it at the apostles' feet, and so. But benevolence is happening in house church at rates that we have no way of knowing about. I will say some reasons why people wouldn't want to do this. It's just gonna make you vulnerable financially because if there's a need in a house church and people are like, we gotta get these people a car, we gotta pay their mortgage, not everybody's able to do both hands here. And so we know that a lot of times money's being given to that immediate need, and that week they're not going to be giving to us corporately. So we better be living within our means and living simply.

We have a saying here. I coined it as we began our church, and I just said, simplicity for the sake of generosity. So we're living with simplicity for the sake of generosity. I think it's a good personal practice. You know, whenever we make financial decisions of a new house or a car or whatever, we're like, is this going to allow us to continue to be very generous? And so we make those same decisions for our church corporately.

That's great. Simplicity for the sake of generosity. Very, very cool. With that, so you've got all these, you've got a bunch of bivocational, co-vocational missionaries, pastors, people running around, evangelists. You use that word earlier. Was it difficult moving from an established model church model to utilizing now people that have full-time jobs? What's that shift as you're moving away from the professional Christians doing the ministry to now empowering the laity and discipling them towards that?

Well, it's easier now than it was because we have proof of concept. But early on, I had so much resistance. And sadly, I had no encouragement from other pastors. I did have much resistance from other pastors. They hated the fact that I would call something a house church. And I mean, I was met with animosity and ridicule. They hated the fact that I would call someone a pastor who wasn't sort of clergy, if you will. But again, I mean, I've spent my life studying these things, and the one guy that was really had some animosity toward me, anger about this, not long after we had started, sat down with me and he said he sort of asked me these questions. And I said, I tell you what, I'm going to get my Bible and I'm going to open it and I'm going to answer your questions with an open Bible. And then I'm going to ask you the same questions you're asking me, and I'm going to ask you to answer your questions with your open Bible.

And he sat back for a minute and he calmed down and he said, I can't do that. And I said, well, I can use my Bible to tell you why we're doing what we're doing, why we're using the nomenclature we're using, why we're having the structure we're having. I can use my Bible to explain that to you, and you're using tradition to explain to defend your position to me.

And so yeah, it was really difficult. I mean, nobody was using the word house church around in Texas, as far as I knew, or anywhere. I know people were using it, but I hadn't heard of it. Yeah, I mean, there was a negative intention behind the word. Like, I was using it in twenty sixteen, and I just had so many people like, you can't, you can't, you can't do house church. What do you mean? Because, you know, and they were talking about stuff in like the seventies and eighties and the nineties, and I'm like, I wasn't even alive then. Like, these people weren't doing ministry then. But there was such a negative tinge on the word. And so to see you being, and you know, Rob Wagner and so many other guys, Casey Underground, I mean, there's this subtle underground movement, no pun intended, towards this, going back to house church. It's just fascinating to see this idea get rejuvenated. I love it, man. I love that it's happening now.

And we're actually still, I think a lot of people like Jeff are throwing the word house church or microchurch on something, and there are people in established churches who are now calling their groups house churches. And I'm like, look, you just changed somebody's name, but you didn't change any substance or structure or function. And so I think it's diluting the beauty of what house church is.

I'll also tell you that in conversations with a lot of the people that you and I know, I'm really wrestling with them about what is a church. Whether we call it a microchurch or a house church, do we have some empirical base for what a church is? I mean, is it just two people playing checkers and talking about Jesus? Is that a church? Or what is a church? And so I think a church does have some identifiers that we need to be clear on before we name something a church. But I've had plenty of people that have just changed their group name to house church, but it's still not a church. It doesn't have any authority. It doesn't have any individual identity, and it doesn't have any real functions of a church other than, you know, some very base functions of discussion, maybe, and some form of community that some small groups would have before. And so I, you know, not only do I love that we're helping define and illuminate what house church is and could be, I also want to protect that from being misused, if you will.

Let me ask this question, and this will be interesting. So I have a pastor friend of mine who called me up, and I talk to him every couple months. He's one of the Pauls in my life that I just, you know, check in with him every once in a while. I'll get going on, he gives me good advice. It's funny. He's not really a technological guy either. He's just, you know, one of the pulse.

And so he was talking to me. We're talking about digital, the ecclesiology of a digital church, and some of that, you know, that's some of the stuff that I'm wrestling with. And he made this statement. He says, "Jeff, you need to realize the ecclesiology of a digital church is going to take 30 years to develop." And I, to be honest, I hadn't even thought about that. Like, that wasn't out there.

I don't want you to get into the digital side of this, but with house church, do you see where there's a potential for the ecclesiology, the functions of this, continues to evolve and grow over time? Kind of, what's your opinion on what maybe even the ten years where you are now to where you might be at 2042? I'm doing bad math. Like, what do you think that's going to look like?

Well, I think it's a great question. I think we need to answer it now. What are some things that define a church that all of us who would be leading in the church, we have to be heading toward? What is a church? I mean, can a church be a house church? Sure. Can a church be a microchurch? Sure. Can a church be a megachurch? Sure. The first church was what we were aware of, and so, you know, what is a church? And what are some things that we should be shooting for? And what are some things that we have to stay away from?

So I do think some things will be looking very different. I mean, you know, some people would say, "Hey, we're not going to be gathering at all like we do on Sundays in buildings 20 years from now in 2042, as you said." I think that's possible. It's happened around the world. I think it could happen here. But I'm not trying to be doomsday. But I do think that our church structure should be set up to endure that.

I like to say the early church was built to endure persecution and pandemic, but the church in America and the West, maybe in the Western models of church around the world, wasn't built to endure the pandemic. I mean, that's why most churches have really, really struggled, and guys are quitting or they're depressed or discouraged, or now they're addicted to things. I mean, they've lost their identity. Their church has lost their identity. They've lost their function.

For us, it was natural. I mean, I often say, "Look, if our Sunday is taken away, great. You know, we'll either do it online, but all the other functions of our church will continue." And without a building, without a place, I don't think—again, I don't think gathering together is bad. I think it's good, and we should do it if we can. But when that becomes what church is, then I think we have a real problem.

So is church going to change? Yes, it is going to change. But I do think there are some enduring biblical principles that immediately with the early church—I mean, they—it wasn't culture. There were dozens and dozens of cultures and communities and languages represented in the early church. And I think the way they were structured was then sent out around the world globally. So I don't think it was just the explanation of the gospel that was sent. I think the construct of the church was also sent back to Egypt and to Libya, into Spain, and wherever people were from in Jerusalem. When they got the gospel, the way that they gathered was also taken back with them.

And I think that God was showing them not only discipling them in how to share the gospel and follow him, but also how to gather as a church. I think that was sent back too. I think that was part of the diaspora.

Hey, Jason, I want to thank you for this time. This has been incredible. We've been obviously talking a lot about house church, how this applies to a digital expression of church, and wrestling with that. Even so, honestly, some of the network things that you've been talking about, and that centrality piece—these are things that we're literally wrestling with in real time. And even getting insight on how you've been doing this and championing that has been really helpful. And I know many in the audience, honestly, many of the audience are wrestling with this.

It's been, yeah, I'll say it like it's been very surprising to me in the past month how many people that are doing ministry online. Jason described to me the way that you were talking about your first months of, "Hey, I'm going to get underground. I'm going to get away. I'm alone in this. I'm thinking different than everybody else in the world, and I don't have anyone supporting me." And seeing how you've built this structure to support people that are thinking that way, and it's growing, and it's different than the major movement, but it's still effective in doing things—that's encouraging. It's, I'm hoping it's encouraging to those that are out there digitally that are championing the way that they are. And it's encouraging for me trying to figure out how to build that centrality to kind of help them in that.

So I want to thank you for the time and the conversations, and we'll definitely be looking to Church Project, a house church network, to so much of the things that you're building out there towards it. But before we wrap it, anything else as we're landing the plane?

Thank you for having me, Jeff. And let me say, I actually feel really encouraged too by what you're doing because there's an online world that we haven't even begun to foray into, and it's overwhelming for me. But I know it's where the church needs to be. So the fact that you are leading out in this and gathering other leaders together with this, it gives me a lot of confidence for the gospel being spread around the world and disciples being made.

And I love your passion for the body and for the gospel. I love the clarity that you have and that you're pursuing. And I love the elevated importance that I hear from you of what we need to be doing to distribute leadership, but also what kind of centralization do we need, even online? I love it. And I don't think it's going to take as long as your friend said. I don't think it can. But I actually think we need it sooner. But from the questions that you guys are asking, the things that you're already doing, I think it's going to happen sooner than later. And I'm really excited to see these elements that you're pursuing, putting together in the beautiful mystery of online. I can't wait to see it.

So I'm encouraged by you. I'm following you. I want to link up together more with you and what you're doing because I think there's got to be some partnership there. And with what you're doing, we need to learn from you. So thanks for leading out. Thanks for inviting me here. And thanks for risking your life for the gospel like you do.

Nobody killed me, okay? But I do appreciate that very much. Thank you, Jason.

Hey, so we're going to land the plane here for Jason. This is Jeff with the Church Digital and Digital Church Network. Thanks for joining, audience out there, and we'll see you next time here at the podcast. You have a good day.