Andrew wrote this as a comment to an earlier post. I love comments that shake us up and keep forcing us to THINK and RE-THINK. It is our western mindset that keeps wanting to take what God is doing and form a box around it. The result is never life in the Spirit.
Andrew’s comment:
We have an obsession for form. We find some new truth and we quickly create a form. In the past 41 years I have experienced every form possible, all of which is designed to replace the life and power of God. Today it is the house church form. Everyone is seeking some aspect of the New Testament to restore the church.
The Charismatic movement sought to restore the power. The discipleship movement sought to restore accountability to one another. The restoration movement sought to restore the 5 fold ministry. The Jesus movement sought to restore community and people living together and having all things common. Though all of these have there place in the NT, they do not come from life. All of these are from the knowledge of right and wrong (good and evil), correct and incorrect theology. We are stuck in the higher information mode and losing the life mode.
If there is a method in the NT church, it would be one based on life: humility, brokenness, love and faith.
Paul didn’t build house churches; he built the church in the city. He built a Jesus movement. He built unity. He built leadership and fellowship.
All of what I see today is only the American form of religion using different forms and arrogantly believing they are on the NT cutting edge. Go to a house church convention, it is no different than the institutional conventions. They have their big names, their book sellers, their graduates, their icons. Do you think they would let you through in your 2 cents? Do they recognize other leaders besides their little click of convention speakers? Every movement I have participated in the past 41 years and 30 years of that as a pastor and 6 years as a house church elder, has only shown me the same pattern. Clergy on one side and laity on the other.
We need unity (church in the city), we need leadership coming together (not conventions), we need the recognition of one another and we need to drop our names so we can meet in His name. We have named our organizations, and that is all they are… our organizations. Then we ask God to bless our 501c3, corporation.
Wake up Laodicea, shake your grave clothes and meet in humility calling on God to make us one. Let’s stop looking at what we are doing and let’s come together and hear what the “Unknowns” are saying; those who are not writhing books and are not a part of the spiritual elite.
I print this despite the fact that we are working hard on a "house church conference." Fortunately, not all "speakers", whether in institutional conferences or house church conferences, are looking to sell books or be in "the click." In fact, the very, very first thing I noticed when attending the House 2 House conference in Dallas two years ago was how UNLIKE these people were compared to christianese conferences I have been to before– lack of pretense, no one trying to put themselves forward as "the spokesperson," etc. Nevertheless, the danger is always there and Andrew’s challenges are worthwhile. We are, and must always be, a Jesus movement. Period.
Comments
2 responses to “It’s Not About the Form”
How then shall we gather together?
What is the outcome then, brethren? When you assemble, each one has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification…I Cor 14:26.
Audience Christianity and Priesthood Christianity can never really succeed, since it’s very nature is in violation of the reality of new covenant life. Each believer has an anointing, and gifts and a calling, but they are seldom, if ever, used for the purposes Christ gave them, for the building up of the Body in love. The “Each one” scriptural admonitition for the gatherings is routinely replace by “Only one”, or at best, “Only a few” almost every Sunday throughout the land, and we can only lament the statistics of the marginal Christian in the land of Audience and Priesthood Christianity. We try to fix our disobedience with Home Groups and prayer groups, but for the vast majority, “Sunday go to meeting” is still the meat and potatoes, and it doesn’t really fix our disobedience anyway.
I think form does matter, when it comes to how Christians are to gather. If there’s any truth to “The medium is the message”, then the message from audience and pristhood christianity is that “only one” hears from God, “only one” is led by His Spirit, “only one” is called and gifted. And we are surprised when the so-called Church lives that out in reality. We get what we model to a great extent. The insitutional churches simply haven’t chosen the New Covenant model. We seem to prefer nice, safe, great communicators, and great musicians and singers, you know, Starsearch Christianity. That has become the counterfeit to the gifts and the calling of the many, and the explicit command of “each one” to share in the gatherings.
Randy Allen
God can, will and has used any thing and anyone He chooses to at any time He chooses to do so. I’ve always said that if He can speak through a donkey, then surely He can use our messed up forms of Christianity.
Having said that, let me say this. I fully agree with Randy Allen. Form does matter. I believe that the Institutional Churches have been simply reaping the seeds they have sown for the past however many years. The seed that has been sown in most cases is a spectator’s Christianity. The church has overwhemingly reaped spectators. We train people to show up, sit, listen, throw money at something so they don’t have to personally get involved, and then come back and do it all over again next week or mid week.
A lady at one IC I was attending said during her testimony that she would ask God what more she could do. She said, “Lord, I pray, I tithe, I read my bible, I go to church, I try to be a good Christian, what more can I do?”
I remember as a youth hearing about how the older men of the church needed to help train up the younger generation, and so instead of having four grown men take the offering, they would have two grown men and two youth boys take the offering…and that was the training we received. I never even heard about spiritual gifts until after I was past college age.
Hopefully in all of what was just said, the point that was taken from it is that form does matter…what is modeled is what will be reproduced. I hope and pray that my children will grow up with a better example of Christ followers than what was modeled to me.