Questions Worth Asking
About the Movement.
What is Talmid, in a sentence?
A movement resurrecting the ancient rabbi-talmid relationship — real healing, real community, real discipleship — for anyone willing to walk close enough to be covered in the dust of it.
What do you actually believe?
Talmid holds to the historic faith as summarized in the great ecumenical creeds and takes the Bible seriously as the authoritative Word of God. We don’t believe our convictions are in tension with each other. We believe they are the full inheritance of the one apostolic Church, and we intend to live in all of it.
Why ‘beth ab’? Why ‘talmid’?
Beth ab is Hebrew for ‘the father’s house.’ In the first century, it wasn’t a metaphor — it was an actual architecture. A father’s house was a legal and relational structure; when his sons married, they built rooms adjoining the family home, not apart from it. When Jesus told his disciples ‘in my Father’s house are many rooms,’ he was describing something they already knew intimately. Talmid is Hebrew for ‘disciple’ — but not a student of ideas. A follower of a life, close enough to their rabbi to walk in his footsteps and be covered in the same dust. Jesus was born into the one narrow window in history when that relationship was at its peak. We think it’s worth resurrecting rather than admiring from a distance.
Is this a church? A denomination? A cult?
Not a church plant, not a denomination, and — we’d ask you to actually watch and see — not a cult either. A cult isolates you from outside relationships and asks for unquestioning submission to a single leader. We’re doing close to the opposite: rebuilding thicker relationships, inviting real scrutiny, and pointing every ounce of authority back to Jesus, not to any one person. Come to a Threshold gathering. Ask hard questions. That’s not what cults invite.
About the Approach.
Isn’t building a tight community just turning inward?
Jesus was specific about what would identify his disciples: not their activism, not their causes, but their love for one another (John 13:35). He didn’t say ‘if you love the poor’ or ‘if you love your neighborhood.’ He said ‘if you have love for one another.’ That love isn’t exclusion. It’s the foundation strong enough to hold anything you build on top of it — and history bears this out. Abraham’s hospitality in Genesis 18, the early church’s reputation for how it treated outsiders, Jesus sending his own disciples into Samaria and the Decapolis — places no good-standing Jew would go. A real beth ab has an open door, not a locked one.
Isn’t this just a ‘padded room’ — comfort dressed up as healing?
We hope not, and we’ve built against it on purpose. Too much of what passes for healing today is really just management — a padded room, medicated and insulated, safe. That’s not what we’re offering. Jesus led with healing in almost every encounter, but not to make people comfortable — to make them whole. Risk may be a four-letter word to the average Westerner, but in the Kingdom of God, it comes with the territory of following Jesus. We’re not building an asylum. We’re building a family that goes into hard places together.
Why does discipleship require so much? Isn’t salvation enough?
Not all Christians are disciples. Salvation in itself is a gift of incomparable worth. But that doesn’t automatically make you a talmid. Salvation is the gift; discipleship is the response. We think the modern Church quietly let the second one go, and we’re trying to give it back.
Why ‘courageous dissidence’? Isn’t that just picking a political fight?
The Church actually began as a Jewish dissident movement — one that cost many their lives, including Jesus and his own disciples. We’re not the first generation asked to choose between comfort and faithfulness, and we won’t be the last. Like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, we believe silence in the face of evil is itself evil. That’s not a political position. It’s the oldest one the Church has.
About Getting Involved.
I don’t live in Chattanooga. Is there anything for me?
Yes. The Threshold and The Talmid Way are rooted here for now, but the beth ab was never meant to stay in one city. We’re building a digital community for the remnant everywhere — join the waitlist to be first in when it opens. And if you’re feeling the same fire to build something like this where you live, we want to hear from you, too.
What does it actually cost — money, time, everything?
The Threshold is free. The Talmid Way is $190 for the full cohort. But we won’t pretend the real cost stops there. C.T. Studd, the famous nineteenth-century cricketer who gave away his entire fortune after reading a single (atheist!) tract, put it better than we can:
Did I firmly believe… that the knowledge and practice of religion in this life influences destiny in another, religion would mean to me everything… I would esteem one soul gained for heaven worth a life of suffering… What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?
That’s the actual cost we’re asking you to weigh.
What if I’m not ready for a full commitment?
Start smaller. Kitchen table gatherings are happening now — a meal, honest conversation, and prayer with smaller groups in a home. Practices become culture slowly. The first time, things might seem new, even difficult. By the tenth time, something starts to shift. By the hundredth, real patterns emerge. By the thousandth, a whole way of life has been formed. No pressure, no program. Just the beginning of a pattern.
How is my information used when I sign up?
Signing up gets you a short series of emails over two weeks, then our regular newsletter, Dust — named for the old blessing that a talmid walk close enough to their rabbi to be covered in his dust. We don’t sell your information or hand it to third parties.
About the Vision.
Is this really just about one building in one city?
No. We believe we’re on the cusp of another reformation — one even more consequential than the last. This building — wherever it ends up, whenever it’s ready — isn’t the destination. It’s the prototype. The vision isn’t a single storefront in a single city. It’s a pattern: beth ab after beth ab, each one raising up its own discipleship school, each one training rabbis who will go start the next one. Chattanooga, TN is simply where we’re starting, because you have to start somewhere.
Where does giving actually go?
Every gift goes directly toward what we’re building — the beth ab, the discipleship school, and the ongoing work of healing and community already happening through The Threshold and The Talmid Way. This isn’t overhead. It’s the foundation someone else’s healing will stand on.
Join the Remnant.
Build Your Tribe.
Follow Your Rabbi.
You’ll get a short series of emails over two weeks, then our regular newsletter, Dust.