Month: October 2004

I think one of the saddest dysfunctions in much of our church world today is the worship of pastors or other spiritual leaders. I know this dysfunction well from both positions: worshipper and worshippee. I ran into some wonderful friends today who attend a good, large church in the area. As so often happens when…

Here is a comment from a friend of mine (John) that he wrote in response to my post “How Do I Explain It To My Pastor“: About 7 years ago, my pastor asked me to go on a visit with him to give a message to a “house church”. We went there and worshipped awhile…

Rad Zdero has a book out this year called “The Global House Church Movement.” It’s a relatively brief (140 pages) yet comprehensive look at what is happening today with house churches and house church networks. Rad’s personal experiences involve planting and coaching an emerging house church network in Canada. He offers a chapter on Biblical…

On the topic of children and house church I have offered this quote before from Wayne Jacobsen before. I think it’s extremely insightful: But don’t our children need church activities? I’d suggest that what they need most is to be integrated into God’s life through relational fellowship with other believers. 92% of children who grow…

One of the wonderful things we have discovered in our simple churches is how much we learn from children. We want our children to see themselves as just as much part of church as anyone else. Each church works differently with children but in every way we value them and embrace them. We learn so…

I have a new friend, Brian, who recently told his pastor that God told him to leave that church and start a house church. I met this friend because he has been visiting one of our house churches to get a feel for what we are about before launching out on his own. He has…

I often like to remind myself (and others) that even though we talk about “house church,” that that’s really not the point at all. It’s not about house church, traditional church, institutional church, organic church, simple church, or emerging church. It’s really not about “how we do church.” The early Christians were not sitting around…

We like to do a “Family Forming” get-together in the early stages of a new house church. This is an “exercise” that builds community as we talk about what it means to live the spiritual life in interdependence. We build this get-together around three questions: 1. In what ways do we choose to be responsible…

I’m still unpacking some thoughts about leadership that are in seminal form. We all know that leadership is influence and that biblical leadership is based one hundred percent on servanthood. We also know that leadership in churches is easily transformed into manipulation and used to serve self-seeking ambitions (both conscious and unconscious). Yet, we recognize…

Here is an article posted on a site that I’ve been enjoying called CellChurch Info: House Church: A Bible Study by Dr. Victor Choudhrie Dr. Choudhrie is a prominent surgeon in India, whom the Lord challenged in 1993 to lay down his professional life to establish the church in Madra Pradesh. Starting from scratch, the…