Open Your Home, Open the Bible

Erin: Our focus in this session is the power of what I’m going to call home ministry. And you’ll notice I’m not saying hospitality. Hospitality is an important topic for another time, but I’m talking about intentionally using your home for intentional discipleship versus ministry that might happen outside, like in churches or online. 

So the question for us to wrestle with is, what can happen in home ministry to advance the kingdom and winning the lost and discipling the saints that can’t happen in other settings. We’re going to look at what the Bible teaches about home ministry, and I’m asking the Spirit to give you a vision for what that might look like in you. 

We have to start with the Great Commission. So, go ahead and get yourself to Matthew chapter 28. We’re going to be in our Bibles a lot, which is important, because Erin Davis says something interesting about . . . well interesting, 100 percent of the time; true and helpful, a much lower percentage of the time. And so we’re going to lean hard on the Word. And I find that we need to remind each other of the Great Commission over and over. 

Okay, true woman seminarians, who is speaking in the Great Commission in Matthew 28? Jesus, right? And you know the story—He has already come to dwell with us. He has been crucified; He has been resurrected. And here, at the end of Matthew 28, He’s preparing to ascend to the Father. And so His small band of disciples are gathered around, but they’re not going to be small much longer. Pentecost is about to happen. And so He is commissioning them. 

I like to say that it’s called the Great Commission because we are on co-mission with Christ for the redemption of the world. And so these really are our marching orders. So let me read to you Matthew 28 verses 16–20. 

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” 

Now, I like to remind people that the chapters and verses in your Bible are put there by men to help you stay organized. And I’m glad they’re there, but there’s a reason why you can remember a verse and you go like, “Well, I can’t remember the address.” 

That’s fine. You have Google for that. You don’t have to remember the address. But sometimes what that does is it breaks up thoughts that were not intended to be broken up. And so here, when Jesus was about to ascend to the right hand of the Father, He left us the Church, which had not quite formed but was about to be formed, to push back the darkness. And He gave us a game plan—a two-pronged attack against the darkness: make disciples and teach them the Word. 

Listen to it again. It’s right there at the end: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”—no break—“teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age” (vv. 19–20). 

Both prongs of this attack are essential to the mission of building the kingdom until Christ returns. We’re seeing this in real time. Many are coming to Christ. I believe we’re seeing revival in our day. College campuses, many are coming to Christ. Out of professional sports, many are coming to Christ. 

I interviewed a woman a couple of weeks ago that has come to Christ out of the new age. She was deep into the new age, and she said, “Erin, we are coming to Christ out of the new age in droves.” And then she said, “Who will disciple us?” And as believers, all of us, we don’t look to the left or the right. All of us say, “We will.” That’s the Great Commission. That’s the assignment.

Now we don’t all do it the same way. What this looks like in your life is not going to be what it looks like in my life. That’s not the point. In this room alone, there are a variety of gifts. And not all of you are called to be Bible teachers. But I’m going to assume you all have a home, and you are called to use that home to fulfill the Great Commission. And what I want you to not be able to do at the end of this breakout is ignore the question of how. I want you to have to go like, “Oh yeah, the Lord’s given me a home, and He’s commissioned me into kingdom work. How do I put those two things together?” 

So, the way we’re going to do that is we’re going to look at three snapshots of Jesus doing home ministry, which He did a lot of. And we’re going to see what we can learn from Him. He’s our Master. 

Now, what I’m not saying is that home ministry is the only effective ministry. Don’t y’all go back to church and say, like “I went to this breakout, and this woman said we shouldn’t have church anymore.” No, of course. We need public ministry. We need church-based ministry. We need parachurch ministry. Those things are not wrong or less than, but what we’re going to look at in the text are: what are the things that can be accomplished in our home—particularly in home Bible studies—that cannot be accomplished by those means.

I want you to think of ministry outside of our homes, such as church service that I hope we all attend every Sunday morning, and activities and events and social media—all of those things. I want you to think of those as the top of the funnel. That’s what gets people in to hear about Jesus and His Word, to get them to want to know more. So that’s essential. But discipleship is often home ministry, and I want you to think about that as the inside of the funnel. 

Now, what happens in the inside of the funnel? Things are swirly-whirly, right? And so that’s fitting. It’s fitting, as we’re going to see in the text we’re going to look at that it is in the swirly-whirly of life that home ministries can really do a lot of good. 

Okay, three snapshots. First we’re going to turn to Mark chapter 2, just a little bit to the right of where we just were in Matthew 28. My favorite sound—Bible pages turning. All right, we’re going to read Mark, chapter 2, verses 1–12, and this is how we're going to do it. This is how we do it in my home Bible study: we read it one verse at a time. Somebody reads one verse, and then somebody else picks it up. 

It is the living and active Word of God. So I ask that if you read a verse, you do not read it like this, quiet and meek. That you read it with power, so everybody in the room can hear you. And part of the reason why we do this is because I am such a believer in the power of the public reading of the Word. And so since we’re pretending and we’re in my living room, we’re going to do it Erin Davis living room style. 

So Mark chapter 2, verses 1–12. I’ll get verse 1, then somebody else get verse 2. If two people say it at the same time, no big deal. Just defer to each other. We’re okay with clunky. We’re not going for perfect. All right, Mark chapter 2, verses 1–2:

And when he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. 

Somebody get verse 2. 

Woman #1: And many were gathered together, so that there was no more room, not even at the door. And he was preaching the word to him.

Erin: Nice. We had like double; we had surround sound. That was good. I liked it. Three. Somebody give us three 

Woman #2: And they came, bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men.

Erin: Nice. All right, somebody . . . I’m going to have to direct traffic a little bit. Somebody from this section, give me verse 4.

Woman #3: And when they could not get near him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him, and when they had made an opening, they let down the bed on which the paralytic lay.

Erin: Somebody from this section, give me verse 5.

Okay, so it doesn’t work with hundreds and hundreds of women. I want it to; I want it to work. Okay, you do it. You stand up and give it to us. Verse 5. Yeah, you got it.

Woman #4: And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

Erin: Get it, girl! All right, somebody from this section. Stand up; there you go. Give me verse 6.

Woman #5: Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts,

Erin: Ooh, you got a shorty. Go ahead and give us verse 7. 

Woman #5: “Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

Erin: That was so good. All right, that far section, somebody stand up and give us verse 8. They shy over there. You got it, all right.

Woman #6: And immediately Jesus, perceiving in his spirit that they thus questioned within themselves, said to them, “Why do you question these things in your hearts?”

Erin: So all right, oh, sorry, I cut you off. Okay, verse 9, this far section, somebody give it to us.

Woman #7: “Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’?”

Erin: Nice. Okay, I’m coming here. Somebody stand up and give us verses 10. You got it right over there? Yeah, blue shirt.

Woman #8: “But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the paralytic—“I say to you, rise, pick up your bed, and go home” (vv. 10–11).

Erin: Yes. “And he rose and immediately picked up his bed and went out before them all, so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying “We never saw anything like this!” (v. 12). 

Good job. Group. You did it! All right, let’s make some observations. Where was Jesus in this passage? It tells us right there in verse 1: He was at home. What had He been doing before this? It tells us right there again in verse 1: He’d been traveling from Capernaum. 

That’s enough for me. Jesus used His home for the teaching of the Word. And I want to be like Him, and so I want to use my home for the teaching of the Word. Now, to be fair, some scholars think that He might have been in Peter’s home. That’s because Mark 1 tells us that He stayed in Peter’s home, at least temporarily, and healed Peter’s mother-in-law. But either Jesus was in His home or He was in the home of a close friend, and that means that He was not in the synagogue. 

Now it doesn’t mean that Jesus never taught in the synagogue. We actually find Jesus teaching in the synagogue with some frequency in the Gospels. But again, I think this gives us enough reason to at least consider the difference in value between public ministry and what I’m calling home-based ministry. 

And so some of you all are my age. You remember those WWJD bracelets. WWJD. One thing we get from this story is that Jesus taught the Bible at home. Now that’s not usually the focus of this passage, right? We love this story because of those men who got their friend to Jesus by cutting a hole in the roof. But perhaps you’ve never asked whose roof. Verse 1 again: whose roof got a hole cut in it? 

Jesus Himself or maybe Peter. But either way, this was not some random house. Jesus was either in His own home or the home of a friend where He was staying. And what we learn from that is that He made sacrifices to minister from His home base. He knew they were going to cut a hole in the roof because He knows all things. 

So he could have been like, “Hey guys, let’s move this outside to save me on my homeowner’s insurance.” He could have chosen to teach that day when He knew the paralytic would be brought to Him in public spaces, as was His habit of doing it, and then a roof replacement would not have been needed. So, why? Why did Jesus choose to teach the Word at home in this moment? 

Well, I don’t know everything about what He’s doing, but I do know some of the things He teaches us about how to relate to each other. He tells us to be generous toward the saints in places like 2 Corinthians 9:11. He tells us to build each other up in places like 1 Thessalonians 5:11. He tells us to be devoted to the fellowship in places like Acts 2:42, and He gives us lots of other commands about how to live with each other. Galatians 6:2 kind of bottom-lines it for us: “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” 

So what Jesus commands, He certainly models. And so not only do we see Jesus modeling home-based ministry, even when He was likely tired. Right? He’d been traveling, and He was finite just like we were. Perhaps He would have rather hunkered down after traveling and recharged His social battery. My social battery is going to need a very long charge next week. 

But from this story, we get this picture of us bringing each other to Jesus in each other’s homes. I love my church. Green Tree Christian Church, Rolla, Missouri. You ever need a church home and you want to drive a long ways if you don’t live there, you are welcome. It’s the church where I came to Christ. It’s the church where I’ve served Jesus for decades. I love my church. 

I love conferences like this. I love Christian spaces online. But we simply cannot carry each other to Jesus in the same way in those spaces that we can in our homes. Burden-bearing ministry, which all of us are called to—we’re all called to burden-bearing. Burden-bearing ministry, for it to be sustainable and effective has to happen in home-based ministry. 

Now I have bad news for you. You cannot be at True Woman every week. You got some folks back home that are really wanting you to come back home. And the sloppy joes you put in the Crock-Pot yesterday, they are still in the Crock-Pot and they are burnt to a crisp. But you can be in each other’s homes every week. It’s sustainable that we gather in that way and that we burden-bear in that way. 

Living rooms tear down barriers. You can invite someone into a living room much easier and much more effectively than you can invite them to come to church with you on Sunday morning, or you can invite them to come to something like this with you. 

Two stories come to mind. One, my husband and I were in student ministry for many years. Don’t worry, we’re still married. We’re just not in student ministry anymore. And there was a student named Jeff who did not know the Lord. Knew actually almost nothing about the Lord. And some friends had been inviting him to come to church and youth group, and he was not interested. But someone said to Jeff, “Hey, do you want to come to Jason and Erin’s house tonight? They’re going to have brownies.” 

Now, Jeff did not know who Jason was. Jeff did not know who Erin was. Jeff did not think to ask, “Is it a Bible study?” Jeff said, “There’s going to be brownies?” Jeff’s friend Andrew called me that night, that afternoon, and said, “Hey, Erin, I need you to make brownies.” And I did! 

It didn’t happen immediately, but Jeff eventually surrendered his life to Christ. That was many years ago. Jeff is like an adopted son to us, who loves the Lord, serves faithfully in his church, and is now the daddy of two little boys who he is raising to love the Lord. And I promise you, every time Jeff comes to visit, I make brownies. Those brownies served in our living room are having a generational impact that no church service could have accomplished. 

That woman I told you about that’s coming out of the new age has a similar story. She would not set foot in a church. She was invited into someone’s home, and she was longing for meaningful friendship with women. And she came, and she says her immediate thoughts were, This home is so welcoming. I’ve never been anywhere like this.

Now we know that was the presence of the Holy Spirit in that home, but she didn’t recognize that. And she told me, “I remember thinking, These women are so warm. I’ve been waiting for friendships like this my whole life.” And then she said someone pulled out a Bible, and she thought, I’m in a Bible study! She told me that she wanted to run—that the rest of the time together that she could feel the blood pumping in her ears and feeling like, How do I get out of this? Why do they have Bibles here?

But she didn’t run. And it took time, but she, too, came to Christ and has experienced radical transformation. She never would have set foot in a church, never. She never would have signed up for a True Woman conference. She never would have followed a believer on social media. But we all want to be in somebody’s home. 

Of course, people can get saved in church, but we can bring our friends and neighbors to Christ through our homes. And through our homes, we can do the burden-bearing ministry that we’ve all been called to when we connect in smaller groups. 

Listen, you can love everybody who’s in your church on a Sunday morning. I’m in a church of about 1,100 people, and I love them. And you can love everyone who claims Christ online, but active love requires knowing each other. Burden-bearing requires knowing the burdens, and we just cannot do burden-bearing ministry in groups of one hundred or one thousand. But home ministry facilitates that. Just like those friends who brought their friend to Jesus, we can carry each other to Jesus in our homes. It provides a space for us to know each other’s real needs, so that we can meet them. 

That group of women that meets in my home every Tuesday night, we know. We know the pain points. We know the sin struggles. We know about the prodigal children. We know in ways that the greater church body . . . mine’s a community Bible study of people from lots of different churches, and actually lots of people that don’t know the Lord. But even if we were from the same church, we know each other’s burdens in a way that the greater body could not know. And therefore we are able to do, again, effective and sustainable burden-bearing ministry in our homes. 

All right. Snapshot number two. Turn with me to Mark chapter 5, not very far from where we just were. We’re going to try it again, because I believe in us. We’re going to read Mark chapter 5, verses 35–43. You helped me a lot by standing up. So we’ll do that again. Let's start on this far side. Somebody give us Mark chapter 5, verse 35. Somebody, somebody. Now you’re all scared. Okay, you got it. I’ll come to you in a minute. No, you pause, you got it. 

Woman #9: While he was still speaking, there came from the ruler’s house some who said, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the Teacher any further?”

Erin: You got it all right. You got it, brown shirt. You got it all right. 

Woman #10: But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.”

Erin: All right, let’s go to this section. Somebody give me 37. You got it, pink shirt. I know you have names and are valued by Jesus, but we’re going to go by pink shirt. Yeah, 37. 

Woman #11: And he allowed no one to follow him except Peter and James and John the brother of James.

Erin: That was so good. Give us 38 too. 

Woman #11: They came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and Jesus saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly.

Erin: Nice. All right, someone in this section, give me verse 39. You got it right here. 

Woman #12: And when he had entered, he said to them, “Why are you making a commotion and weeping? The child is not dead, but sleeping.”

Erin: Nice. We got some theater kids up in here. All right? Verse 40, somebody give me verse 40. I got you black shirt. 

Woman #13: And they laughed at him. But he put them all outside and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him and went in where the child was.

Erin: All right. Somebody from this section. Give me 41. You got it.

Woman #14: Taking her by the hand he said to her, “Talitha cumi,” which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise.” 

Erin: Nice. 

And immediately the girl got up and began walking (for she was twelve years of age), and they were immediately overcome with amazement. And he strictly charged them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat. (vv. 42–43)

All right, let’s make some observations. What does Jesus do in this situation? What do you see Him do? He heals, right? And where does He heal? In her home, right? If you’ve studied Jesus’ miracles at all, you know that He actually didn’t have to go into her home to heal her. He didn’t have to be anywhere near her. He didn’t have to touch her. 

If we keep reading in Mark 7, we’ll find another mother, a mother who begs Jesus to heal her daughter, and He does it from a distance. He doesn’t go into the home. He does the same thing for the centurion servant in Matthew 28, and in John 4, we find another father, another sick child, and again, Jesus heals from a distance. So, why did He choose to enter Jairus’ home? 

Well, I think one of the reasons is that our homes are where we do the real work of walking through grief with each other. And because they’re where we do the real work of walking through grief with each other, our homes are also where we experience real healing. If you’ve ever been to a funeral for someone you love, you know that that public expression of grief is meaningful, but the actual work of processing the grief happens at home when there’s no more casseroles. Right? 

And the same is true for the women in your community. Yes, they need to see us in public, but they also need to sit on our couches. They need to be invited to dinner. They need somewhere to go when they need to cry, week after week after week after month after year. 

There are a couple of really hard situations in my home Bible study groups. One woman has buried two young adult sons in the past two years. That kind of grief doesn’t get dealt with in an hour on a Sunday morning. It requires us to do the burden-bearing grief-sharing work over the long haul with our friend. 

Now we did go to the funerals of both of those boys. It’s a moment I will probably never forget. When her most recent son died, my whole Bible study group . . . she wouldn’t get far from the casket. What mother would? And we went, and we stood in line for hours, and we got there, and we just surrounded her, and she collapsed into us. And we had no chill; we wailed. and it was an important moment. But I got to tell you that wasn’t where the healing has been happening. 

The healing has been happening when, now, week after week, month after month, we still ask her about her boys. When week after week, month after month, we are not trying to get her to move through her grief quickly and move on. When she can sit on the couch and take all of the masks off and tell us how much she’s still struggling. 

That happens in intimate spaces in ways that cannot happen in public spaces. Yes, the grieving need to hear their pastor’s sermon, but they also need to have their Bible open and be knee to knee with somebody else, especially when they’re hurting. And I submit this question to you: who’s not hurting? There are varying levels, but we can do real grief work with each other in our homes. 

Healing is not a linear process. We’re terrible with grief in the modern West. We rush people through it. But it’s not a linear process, and it can’t be programmed. What women need when they’re hurting is the presence of someone who loves them and will feed them the Word when they cannot feed themselves. And our homes are where we do that. 

Now I need to acknowledge this, that it’s a sad reality that the women who are hurting the most are often the most avoidant of home ministry. And that’s because there’s nowhere to hide. Right? You can slip in and out of a Sunday morning church service with some degree of anonymity. You cannot do that in living room ministry. 

And here’s how I handle this in my group: I call it out. About every three weeks, I say, “Look at me. Look at me. We don’t run; we don’t bail; and if you do, we will track you down and find you.” I say to them, “The weeks when you least feel like coming are the weeks that you most need to show up here.” And I say to them often—and they say to me—“We are committed to each other, and we will keep coming when it hurts.” We expect commitment in our group, and I would encourage you to do the same. 

So, home ministry advances the kingdom through the ongoing work of burden-bearing and through walking with each other through grief, healing, and loss. 

Snapshot number three: Jesus and Zacchaeus. Let’s sing it: (singing) Zacchaeus . . . No, we don’t have to sing. 

(singing)

O and a wee little man was he. 
He climbed up in a sycamore tree for the Lord he wanted to see. 
And as the Savior passed that way
He looked up in the tree . . .

And He didn’t actually say what you’ve been singing. Let’s read it. All right. We’re going to go to Luke chapter 19. I know you want to sing it. It’s in you. Let me read us Luke chapter 19, verses 1 through 10.

He entered Jericho and was passing through. And behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector and was rich. And he was seeking to see Jesus who was but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was small in stature. So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was about to pass that way. And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” So he hurried and came down and received him joyfully. And when they saw it, they all grumbled, “He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.” And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.” And Jesus said to him, “Today, salvation has come to this house, since he is also a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.” 

Important question: where did Jesus want to meet with Zacchaeus? In Zacchaeus’ home. Another important question: how did Zacchaeus’ heart respond to having Jesus in his home? He repented. 

James 5:16 gives us this command as believers: “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power, as it is working.” These are two essential, nonnegotiable rhythms of the Christian life. We confess our sin, and we pray for each other.

I want you to imagine if your pastor on Sunday morning replaced that part in your sermon, which causes all introverts a slow death, where he says, “Turn and say hi to your neighbor. And instead on Sunday, he said, “Turn and confess your deepest sins to your neighbor.” We wouldn’t do it. We would lie. 

And second, we probably shouldn’t do it. Yes, confession of sin is mandatory for all believers, but it is not wise to confess all sin to all believers. And it’s really not wise to do that on online spaces. I get messages like that a lot. People will DM me and tell me things I don’t need to know. And I always say the same thing: I need you to go to your pastor’s wife or your women’s Bible study leader with this. 

It's not that I don’t care, but we need to look somebody eyeball to eyeball when we confess our sin. And the goal of confession of sin is not sensationalism or just sin vomit to just be like, “Here’s all my junk!” Actually, the end goal is accountability. 

And so yes, we can pray together in large groups, but we can’t pray for each other in meaningful ways. I would love to pray for you. I actually have no idea what your greatest needs are. And you probably have no idea what my greatest needs are. And so this happens in small groups. 

An amazing way to steward the gift of your home well is to make it a place of prayer. What did Jesus say to Zacchaeus? Did He say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”? No, He sometimes said that. Did He say, “Go and sin no more”? No, though He sometimes said that. 

Verse 5, He said, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” Jesus doesn’t speak the language of shame. That’s the language of Satan. Jesus wants to rid us of our sin, to free us, not condemn us. And so Jesus’ very presence in Zacchaeus’ home made him want to turn from his sin. 

I have long prayed that people would pull onto our property, and that whether they recognize it or not, something in their spirit would go, “Oh, that’s better.” One of my favorite stories is about my friend named June. She was four at the time, and her family was coming over for dinner, and they pulled in and she went, “Oooo, I want this place!” That’s the Spirit’s work. But you know what? It doesn’t just start with, “I love this place.” Then it leads to openness, and then we can burden-bear, and then we can pray about what really matters, and then we can be honest about our sins, and we can hold each other accountable. 

I’ve seen how Zacchaeus responded to Jesus. I’ve seen it over and over in my living room. We use our home for many things. We love to hang out. We love to have people there, but something happens special when our Bibles are open in our living room. So, because our homes are the spaces where we sin most often, it also makes sense that they are the spaces where we repent and ask for forgiveness most often. 

Part of the reason we often aren’t consistent in using our homes to fulfill the Great Commission is because it is messy work. Don’t let me put any rose-colored glasses on any of y’all. It is messy work. Just in the stories we looked at, property was damaged. Me-time became group-time. Resources got used up. A grieving family had to deal with an insensitive crowd, in the case of Jairus’ daughter. Jesus’ visit to Zacchaeus was unplanned, which is something we are totally allergic to in our culture. Do not drop by unannounced.

And we’re going to start wrapping up here. But all of this is another reason why I believe all saints are called to home ministry, not just because what it does for others but because of what it will do in you. What is going to be revealed in you when you have to show your house to the people you want to impress? 

I have four sons. The bathrooms in my house could be an episode of CSI at any moment—just like so many bodily fluids on every surface. Like, “Why, why on the ceiling, Lord? Why?” And so it forces me to deal with my pride and my perfectionism when people are in my home. What does it reveal in you when you are somebody who prefers Netflix and sweatpants at the end of the hard day, and you are forced to actually let people in at the end of a hard day? 

Then it becomes a means where we push back against our selfishness, and it becomes a way to fight this platform-building era of the church. Committing to home Bible study—if I never teach at another conference again, that’s okay. If I never write another book again, that’s okay. But until Jesus comes back, I will host Bible studies in my home, because it is my act of resistance against Christian platforming. 

I’m deeply concerned that if there were an eighth letter written to the American church in 2025 that what the Spirit would highlight would not be a letter of commendation. And so the goal becomes less “who can I impress” and more “who can I let in so intimately that I cannot impress them anymore, and so that we can do the real work of working out the gospel together.” 

The people who gather in my home every week, starting with my family, can tell you how utterly unimpressive I am. And if you want to, you can ask them, and they can tell you what sins have the greatest grip on my life, where I’m weak. They can tell you how dependent I am on grace. They can tell you the real answer to how well I love my husband and children, and those are the lessons worth teaching. You guys don’t know any of that. 

My in real-life friends, who will sometimes attend conferences with me, just laugh and laugh and laugh about it. They’re like, “Oh my gosh. People try to take pictures with you.” I know, I’m like, “I know it’s hilarious.” I mean, they think it is the funniest thing ever. It is, but that’s part of the miracle of home-based Bible study is what God will use it to do in you at the end of the day. This is all about stewardship. My time is Yours. My money is Yours. My gifts are Yours. My home is Yours. Use it all for Your glory. 

Home ministry is actually the norm for our brothers and sisters around the world. And the reality is that the more the institutions of a society reject Christianity, the more we are going to be forced to do our ministry in our homes. And I actually think that’s worth celebrating. 

We see that in the local church. We see that they did both. They worshiped in the synagogue together, and they gathered in homes. And they were devoted to the apostles’ teaching to prayer to breaking bread together and to forgiving each other. 

So that’s the model. Those are things that home-based ministry can do that other kinds of ministry can’t. Now, I know you want me to give you a checklist, because everybody loves a checklist. I don’t have one. You just do it. You just do it. 

You could have a neighborhood Bible study. You could have one for the ladies in your church. You could provide childcare or not. You could do it during the day or in the evening. You can feed them or not. You can do a Bible study book or just go through a book of the Bible. You can host and teach, or you can teach and ask someone else to host. Or you can do the reverse. Trial and error, make mistakes, but you stay committed. 

I’m convinced that when we stand before the white throne judgment, where our works are burned up, that one of the things that’s going to be weighed is how well we loved the saints with the resources we were given. When do you start? How about next week? 

If there are five hundred women in this room (I don’t do math, so that’s maybe a terrible guess), but if there are five hundred women in this room and each of you started a home Bible study next week and had ten ladies coming, that means in two weeks, there would be five thousand women engaged in Bible study. Like that (snaps fingers). And if just 10 percent of them decided in the next six months to start Bible studies in their home, and they had ten ladies coming, then that would mean ten thousand women engaged in Bible study in the next few months.

Now, start doing the multiplication on that. How would marriages change? How many prodigals would we pray back into the fold? How many people who are right now, today, walking through grief and think they’re totally alone would soon feel like, “You know what? This is terrible, and I’m hurting, but people are carrying this with me.” How many people who are deeply entrenched in sin and it is driving their lives would have a place where they could bravely say, “I am a slave to this thing.” 

Ten thousand women—that’s almost twice the size of this conference—bearing one another’s burdens, walking through grief and loss, confessing sin. This is the way that the Spirit has been working since Pentecost, and it is the way that He will work until Christ returns. And I’m simply inviting you to be a part of it. 

I’d like to end our time by commissioning you back into your communities to start home Bible studies. Now you might be on the fence. That’s okay. I trust the Lord to work that out with you.

So, stand up and I will commission us all back into our homes. You don’t have to adjust your shirts. You’re fine. You look good. You look nice. There will be no photo of this moment. In our house before you leave the house, I say put a hand on somebody. So put a hand on somebody. It’s not woo-woo; it’s straight out of the Bible. Do it. And let me pray a commissioning prayer for us as home missionaries.

Heavenly Father, we thank You for calling us Your servants to be heralds of the gospel. As these women go forth to share the good news, I pray for Your Spirit to empower them, fill them with Your presence, Your wisdom and Your love, that they may be bold in proclaiming the truth and compassionate in their interactions with others. 

Lord, grant them joy in their work of home ministry, resilience in the face of setbacks, and perseverance to continue faithfully until You return for us. Lord, may their experiences in the mission field of their homes spread Your kingdom to every corner of Your world. 

Help us to open our hearts to the needs of others. Help us to open Your Word, for it contains the words of life. Help us to open our homes for Your glory. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and the King and Head of the Church, we commend these missionaries into Your loving care. Amen. 

All Scripture quotations are from the English Standard Version of the Bible.