Emmaus Road

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Ministries. Welcome to engaging truth, the manifestation of God's word and the lives of people around us. Join us each week. As we explore the impact of his message of spiritual renewal from the lesson of forgiveness forged in the crucible of divorce, to the message of salvation learned to by an executioner from a condemned killer to the gift of freedom found in the rescue of victims of human trafficking. This is God's truth in action.

Welcome to another edition of engaging truth. I'm your host pastor John Kane broadcasting from the oldest town in Nacodoches oldest town in Texas, which is NADOs day with us on the program. We have a fellow who is a pastor. He is a, um, a missionary he's a church planner west of Houston, Texas, Reverend Mike weeder. Welcome to the program, Mike. Thank

You. Sure. Appreciate it have me today. So that's

A, a little bit different path to, uh, go into church being maybe something of an urban missionary. Tell us a little bit about, uh, your history and, uh, uh, what led you to go down this path? Yeah,

That's, that's a great question. I, I never actually wanted to be a pastor. Uh, you probably heard that from a lot of pastors over the years, but, uh, I, I went to Concordia, Nebraska, and I wanted to be school teacher. That's what I wanted to do. I wanted to teach religion to high school kids. Uh, my life had been transformed, uh, as a teenager, uh, when I kind of randomly joined a Lutheran church, I had no Lutheran background until I was about 14 years of age, and I decided I wanted to make an impact on teenagers, like somebody had made on me. And so I went to Concordia sewer to become a tea. And, um, my first call was to Baltimore, Maryland, where I was a high school teacher and choir director. And pretty soon I ended up giving chapel messages a lot. Uh, I just, I had a gift for speaking to young people about faith.

Um, the Dean of chapel left the school and they made me the Dean of chapel. So I became took on that role. Uh, took another call to St. Louis, uh, to be a high school teacher again. And within two years, I was the Dean of chapel at that school. Um, wasn't ordained, uh, but I was able to speak to kids about faith and, um, just kept landing in that role. Uh, and then I, we took the call overseas to, uh, actually a non Lutheran school, but with Lutheran church, uh, world missions, uh, in Jakarta Indonesia, and I, I taught religion at this. It was a Christian school, but it wasn't a Lutheran school. We had a partnership with them at the time, uh, ended up teaching religion there. And within two years I was giving chapel messages and speaking of retreats again all the time.

And so my wife and I kind of thought, you know what, we've been fighting this pastor thing for a long time, probably time to take it seriously. So we, uh, came back from overseas and went to Concordia. Seminary, became a pastor. And my first call was to a very traditional Lutheran church, uh, here in Texas. And I loved the ministry very much. Uh, I, I love the robes and the stalls and the liturgy and the hymns. It was it's good. And it's beautiful. I that's how I grew up in the Lutheran church and every church I attended. But one of the things I realized fairly quickly was that, um, although we brought new people into the church, uh, new members, new people joined the church, almost every one of them was already Lutheran. They were Lutheran transfers, or they had been confirmed and not attended church for 10 years and then came back again.

They were all Lutherans. And that bothered me a little bit, not because we were doing anything wrong, but it, I realized very quickly that basically what we were doing is just moving the chairs. We weren't actually adding any new people. We were just shuffling chairs from one church to another, or with one Lutheran group to another. And the kind of ministry I had always done in schools was talking to many non Lutheran kids. Many of the students at the schools I taught at were non Lutherans, overseas. Many of them were, uh, Muslims, Buddhist Hindus. And I love that kind of ministry talking to non Lutheran kids and even non-Christian kids about Jesus. And, and over the course of time, I found it incredibly fulfilling to take a non Lutheran and turn them into a Lutheran without ever using those words. I never told anybody I was trying to make 'em Lutheran.

I that wasn't, you know, some secret agenda, but when you teach our beautiful theology long gospel and the, the two kingdoms and, uh, the sacraments and justification by faith alone people, when, when they're able to live and learn that they become Lutherans and they may not even be aware of it. So my time at this traditional Lutheran church it's, I started to get an itch to do that kind of ministry. Again, I, I wanted to create a church for people who weren't necessarily Lutheran, who actually weren't even churched. Maybe they had a bad experience with church. Maybe they, um, had never really connected with church because I wanted to see, I think the thing that was most important to me, I wanted to see adults get baptized. And when Lutherans baptized an adult, we're not like the non-denominational or the Baptist churches. We only baptize adults if they've never been baptized.

Faith, and you're talking about Lutheran, uh, teachings. How, how are Lutheran teachings different from the Bible?

see, that's the, that's the beautiful thing, because that's what people wanna know. Like you're trying to make Lutherans, you know, Lutherans get this. If you studied theology or our church history, reformation history Lutheran never set out to start a Luther church. All Luther was trying to do, Martin Luther was trying to do was get back to the truth of the scriptures. And that's what we're doing. When we faithfully profess biblical theology, we call it Lutheran, but that's a bit of a misnomer. It's biblical it's, it's back to

The Bible, right?

It's not, we don't have a different trap. We're just going back to what the scriptures say. And I think when you introduce it to people like that and, and you don't couch it in terms of, I I'm going to teach you Lutheran theology. Now you just say, let's, it's biblical what the scripture say. And let's walk out with what Jesus taught is apostles what the apostle Paul taught you end up with Lutheran theology, and you don't even have to call it that. Right?

Right. That's, that's beautiful. So real quickly justification the apostle Paul used that word an awful lot of times in the new Testament. Give us a quick definition. What is justification by faith?

So this is the most beautiful and precious teaching we have, right? That, that we are so saved by grace alone, through faith alone, which means that we never ever come to God on the basis of our own works. The things we've done or the things we haven't done, God comes to us. And he rescues us based on what he's for us instead of what we've done. And that teaching alone is so fundamentally different from any other world religion and even many, unfortunately many Christian denominations. That is the precious gospel that we have to be faithfully proclaiming until Jesus returns. That's justification by faith,

Right? It's a tremendous gift, no better gift than to have God, uh, look upon us in our need and give us everything that we need that we can't do for ourselves. So exactly. It's, it's just wonderful. So Mike, there's plenty of churches around why start another

that's I've been asked that question actually a whole bunch of times. why would you start actually, in fact, in the area where we live, uh, in Katy, Texas, there it's called the city of churches because you there's churches everywhere in this town. I'd say every other block is a church on it. Why start another church, which is a great question. And, and here's something I learned, um, a long time ago, I stole everything you're gonna hear. That sounds good. I've stolen from somebody else. So no credit to me at all, I read a long time ago that the gravitational poll of every church is always towards insiders, which means that every single church will eventually cater all of its decisions and priorities towards the needs and cares of the people who are already there. And they will quickly forget about new people and people who are outside their church.

That's a NA that's, that's just natural. There's nothing, not even necessarily anything wrong with that. It's totally natural. The problem is, is if you're not an insider and you go to a church for the first time, you keenly feel your outsider status. You keenly are aware of the fact that you don't know what's going on in this service. People may or may not be friendly to you. It's like, you've just entered the middle school, lunch room in sixth grade all over again. And you don't know where to sit. You don't know how the line works. You don't know where to give your money and everybody's looking at you. A and so what we wanted to do was, was create the opposite poll. What if we created a church where we had the opposite poll, where our gravitational poll was focused on outsiders, and every Sunday, we were ready and prepared for new people who had no church background or limited church background.

What if we were prepared for them to walk through the door? What if we reversed that gravitational poll and church plants, no matter where they are, church plants are uniquely gifted in their ability to do that because you're starting for something from the ground up. It is much easier to create a new culture and environment. When you start something from scratch, then when you take an established church and try to change it, it is very difficult to change. An established church takes a long time, takes a lot of concerted effort. And many times it doesn't work, but a church plant a church startup, you get to start with a clean piece of paper and you can do some things that you never could do in another setting. So one of the reasons why church plants for, for the LCMS or any denomination are so critical is because they are so outsider focused.

They are so focused on reaching people who don't know Jesus, they're nimble. They make decisions more quickly. They aren't bogged down with that sense of we've never done it that way before. And you can just do things that you just can't do in an established church. They're hungry. Church plants are hungry to grow and reach people. And they're excited about bringing the gospel to people. So I would encourage and, and remain en encouraging to other churches. Every church should make its go to plant a church at some point in lifecycle. And if they're fortunate enough to do it multiple times, they should keep doing it because the group of people that goes to start that church are gonna be exactly the kind of people who are hungry, nimble, and ready to welcome on church families.

So how'd you decide on this name, AIS road for your congregation.

You know what, here's the funny thing if I had it to do over again, I'm not sure if I'd name it that because I didn't realize this I'm an insider. As I just talked about nobody outside the church knows what the heck in Mayas road is. They don't even know how to pronounce it. I get a mouse road constantly Emma road. Nobody knows what it is. I thought it was so clever, but I'm an insider, right? So there's a story at the end of the book of Luke, we read it most Easters, um, week or two after Easter, it's the disciples on the road to Aus. And I have always been captured by that story because it beautifully, um, encapsulates this, this dynamic that we're talking about. You've got these two disciples walking on the road to a mass away from Jerusalem. It's Easter morning.

They have heard that Jesus is raised from the dead, but they do not know what it means. Jesus appears, but they don't recognize him. And Jesus walks along with them, but they don't recognize him. They don't know what the resurrection means. And they have no idea what to do with their life. They're walking away from Jerusalem. And as the story unfolds of Luke 24, eventually Jesus engages them in conversation. And finally he breaks bread with them, possibly a communion reference and their eyes are open and suddenly they see him. And then he disappears. I mean, it's a, it's a beautifully crafted story about those who can see, but can't see. So he disappears and immediately they say their hearts were burning within them. They run back to Jerusalem. They're so excited to tell about Jesus. And I think that story captures kind of the modern struggle that many of our churches are currently engaged in that, that we have a dynamic in our culture in America, where there are many, many people who have heard about Jesus.

They think they know about Jesus. They have the most basic understanding of Jesus, but they do not understand their resurrection. They don't understand what it has to do with their life until Jesus begins to walk on the road with them and opens their eyes. And I thought that was a perfect name to encapsulate the kind of ministry work that we want to do. We wanna walk the road with people who have heard about Jesus, but don't know what he has to do with them. And then as they walk on that road with Jesus, that're, our eyes would be open by the holy spirit, as we share the gospel and live life together. That's what we wanted to do. And that's why we named the church am a road.

Yeah. There's a, a very interesting comment in that, uh, history of thes road where it says their eyes were held. Yeah. You know, I, I think there's lots of people today that have this, uh, spiritual blind or, or God, uh, waits until the right time for maximum impact.

Yeah. I think you're exactly right.

It sounds like what you're doing is, is, uh, leveraging that maximum impact and meeting people where they're at. So, uh, when we talk of church, do we mean the building?

Well as a church plant, we don't have a building. So I hope not. the, the, I preached about this a bunch of times, because it's fascinating that German word care cup that we get the word church from literally meant a location. It it's a building used for holy things or for worship. And so in the pod in kind of our modern concept, we think of church as a building, but that is not at all what Jesus meant or what Paul meant in the new Testament when they used the word ECLAC, uh, the, the ECLAC or the gathering of God's people is what Jesus was talking about when, and he said he would build his church and the gates of hell would not prevail against it. The word is, ECLAC see it, it's a gathering of people, which means wherever two or three are gathered there. Jesus is. And so no, the word church really has nothing to do with building. It has to do with the people of God gathered together around word and sacrament. Uh, so I, I certainly hope it doesn't mean building or we're gonna be in trouble.

So what insights can you share with us about, uh, maybe strategies for reaching the unchurched? Because that number is growing, uh, in the United States compared, you know, the ratio is, is changing versus insiders versus those who do not yet know Jesus.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you're exactly right. Um, I live in an area of Houston, west Houston, a rapidly growing suburb. There are about 300,000 people who live within 15 miles of the center of this area. And, um, if the Gallup surveys are correct about 20% of those people are actively engaged in church, which means that there's what 240,000 people who are, are really not connected to a church at all. Uh, that's a huge mission field and that's in a place like we said earlier with a bunch of churches. So the field truly is ready for harvest. If we are willing to do that work. Now, your question is a good one. The insights about strategies. Um, one of my favorite texts in the new Testament is acts chapter 17. It's the Jerusalem council. And, uh, the apostle Paul has run into some difficulty with a group of Pharisees who are Christians, but they're saying that in order to become followers of Jesus, you have to be circumcised and obey the Lord Moses.

Well, Paul disagrees with them and he says, no, not at salvation by grace. That, that that's not correct. So they have to go to Jerusalem and have a conference to settle this issue. And so for several days, Paul is sharing his opinions. Peter is sharing his, the Pharisees were speaking up and trying to figure out, do, do Jesus followers have to obey the Torah, the old Testament law or not. And finally, James gets up, James is we believe this is Jesus' brother James half brother. And James stands up at the Jerusalem council. He says, brothers, I've heard all the arguments. Here's my decision. And this beautiful line in act 17. He says, let us not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are coming to faith, let us not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are coming to faith. And that verse, if I could get that just written on every wall in my office, if I ever get an office, I would do that because that captures the goal of the modern church.

If you wanna reach unchurch people, we cannot make it difficult for them. Now, this is, this is tricky. I get this because I, I grew up, I, I, wasn't a real solid church member when I was younger, but I kind of grew up in a church world. And my concept of church members was people who basically had their life together. They weren't living together when they weren't married, they were living decent lives. They paid their taxes, they mowed their lawns. They were good people and they just needed a church. Well, and the word good of course, is in parentheses here in quotations. Cuz none of us are good as you know, but you know, on the outside they have their life together. But the truth is a lot of unchurch people. Well like a lot of church people , they don't have their lives together.

Their lives are messy. Their lives are, are very difficult. And I think we have to be ready for, if we wanna use the word Gentiles to kind of translate this act seven, we have to be ready for people with really messy situations, to walk into our church and be ready for them. Not surprised by them, but actually expect them to come in the door and then be ready to spend a long time walking alongside them. Like give you an example. The, the disciple spend more between year and a half to three years walking with Jesus, right? And we get to the resurrection and these guys still don't get what Jesus ministry is about. Right? now, if Jesus took two to three years with these guys and they still didn't get it, even after the resurrection, can we expect any less? When people walk in the doors of our church with no church background, we have to be ready for people who it's going to take years to get them to the place where they understand what it means to obey God's law.

What, what it means to quote unquote, whatever this means, get their lives together to, to, to sort out the messiness of a. So one of the things that is our focus based on that act 17 paradigm, I shared a little bit ago and Jesus taking so long with the disciples to figure things out. One of the things that we have decided to do is to make it as easy as possible for people to walk in the door and understand what's going on. In other words, something I say a lot is we try to keep the of cookies on the bottom shelf. if we want people to have justification by, by uh, grace alone. And we want them to understand the Lord's supper and baptism, and we want them to understand what it means to follow Jesus. Then we have to make it easy for them.

The service can't be so complicated that you have to have it memorized before, you know, what's going on. We have to design worship service that is faithful to Lutheran history and teachings, but also is understandable to someone who may not have that background. And we have to be patient with people whose lives may not look like ours. Um, I I'll give you a another simple way to do this, that, that in our church, one of the things we're constantly asking is what is the next step we want people to take. There's a series of steps. We want people to take. If they're not baptized, we want 'em to get baptized. If they're never understood the Lord supper, we want them to understand what, what the Sacrament's all about. We want them to be reading their Bibles. We want people to learn how to pray. What's the next step.

And then the second question we asked, once we figured out what the next step is, have we made it easy? Because if we haven't made it easy to take that next step, people won't take it. So we have to figure out what the next steps are. And then we have to make it really easy for them to take that next step. One of the things I found in some of the traditional, uh, kind of, um, I don't know, the traditional model Luther churches, I find myself saying this as a pastor, when a new person would come for the first time who had no Lutheran background, I would literally have to say this to them. I'm sure you felt a little uncomfortable today. You probably didn't understand what exactly what was going on liturgy and the service flow give if it's six to eight weeks and then you'll feel much more at home, but friends, unchurched people and people who are searching, they're not gonna give you six to eight weeks.

they're not gonna push through feeling uncomfortable, lost and confused for the next six to eight weeks. They'll just go find a church where they get it and where it's, where the cookies are on the bottom shelf. So what do we need to do to put with the cookies on the bottom shelf? What do we need to do to make it not difficult for Gentiles who are turning towards God and what do we need to do to get people, to take their next step and make it as, as easy as possible? That's the kind of things we think about.

We'll come back to our guest in just a moment. But first I wanted to invite you to our programs, website, Elm houston.org, and there on that website, Elm houston.org, you'll find podcasts or bar past shows. You'll find out more about us. You'll also find links to our Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube accounts. There's also a way for YouTube download, uh, to support our work, all of our, on the air hosts or all oners. So you can be sure that your tax deductible donations go far to help us purchase air time. We, uh, strive to interview people who are at the cutting edge of creatively sharing. The good news of Jesus Christ. And we're in that intersection where faith meets life. You may write us at Elm to six, eight cyst, Texas 7 7, 4 10. And now back to our guest, pastor weeder, pastor weeder, we've got about a minute, minute and a half. How can people find out more about a mass road, maybe visit you, uh, or check you out online?

Well, it's God's work and we thank you for doing it in Katie to our listeners. We hope that you'll join us again real soon. For another addition of engaging truth, God's been lessons.

Thank you for listening to this broadcast of engaging truth. Be sure to join us each week at this time to help support our ministry, contact evangelical life ministries, post office box 5 6 8, Cypress, Texas 77, 410, or visit our website@elmhouston.org, or find us on Facebook at evangelical life ministries. Thank you.