Month: February 2005
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Just Having Church in a House Does Not Go Far Enough
John White comments on the need to understand what a "household" really is in Scripture. Just having a church in a house does not do justice to the scriptural meaning of 24/7 community life. John says, "moving church from a special church building into a home does not go nearly far enough." Here’s his entire…
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Stop Inviting People to Church
Here is an email/newsletter I received from Mike Lyons: I have made a promise to myself. I will stop inviting people to my church. Hear me out now. I spent nearly a decade with my well paid job in the church trying to get people to come to church. We would develop strategies, advertising through…
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House Church and Mission
I have just ordered a new book recommended to me by John White called "House Church and Mission: The Importance of Household Structures in Early Christianity" by Roger Gehring. Robert Banks wrote this review of the book: "This is far and away the most comprehensive survey of the role of the house – and household…
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Comments on “Kingdom Love”
My previous post on "That Which Has True Kingdom Value… Love" received so many excellent comments that I thought it was worth posting some of the highlights. I questioned the difficulty of living lives of Kingdom love within the context of the institutional/traditional church structures: "I believe there are better ways to live lives of…
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That Which Has True Kingdom Value… Love
A friend passed along a sermon by Greg Boyd who was on an indefinite leave of absence from pastoring a large church. He expresses his crisis of faith: My present crisis was precipitated precisely because the clearer I¹ve gotten about the profound significance of the kingdom, the foggier I¹ve gotten about the relationship that exists…
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Servant Led; Street Wise; Humble Hearted
John offers a straightforward comment on the previous post listing some of Robert Fitts "Trends": The amazing thing that occured to me when reading these "trends" is that these are the teachings of Christ that have been "lost" to a hierarchical, socially concerned, politically connected, professional and academically ingrained church principality since after the time…
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Rethinking Church
Robert Fitts has shared with me an early version of a manuscript he is working on called "Rethinking Church." He is the author of "The Church in the House." I’m not sure what his ultimate intention for this manuscript is, so I don’t want to publish much of it at this point. But here is…