I recently received an email that led to a discussion of how to "re-train" Christians to experience participatory, Spirit-led gatherings in home churches and home church movements. Of course, it is always easier to avoid the re-training process altogether by gathering with brand new believers who are able to naturally enter into a participatory environment. Nevertheless, we often find ourselves trying to re-program ourselves and others who have been trained well in presentation church services.
There seems to be a two-fold paradigm shift that has to really take hold in our hearts:
- God's Word, by His Spirit, is capable of instructing people, and
- People are transformed when they discover that they have the ability, and primary responsibility, to hear from God directly and learn truth from His Word.
If people can catch the vision of this, then working toward a 1 Cor. 14.26 type gathering becomes very exciting and motivitating.
Home Church Movement: the Power of the Participatory Gathering
Having come from a "presentation service" background (in which I was doing much of the presenting), I LOVE participatory gatherings in which every person engages in the process of digging into Scripture and drawing out of God’s word His teaching and His living message for the moment. I so enjoy seeing people recognize that he/she is fully capable of going to Scripture, encountering God and truth, and sharing that truth with others. I love seeing this process take place within community and am constantly in awe of the way in which God’s word is expressed through every person present.
In discussions about participatory gatherings, the question is often raised about the need for "trained" teachers in order to avoid "error." In responding to this issue I recently wrote this emai:
Some would argue that we need “trained” Christians to do the teaching or believers will not learn what is needed, at best, or fall into error, at worst. However, there is much evidence that when God’s Word is preeminent and the Holy Spirit is present that God is able to work quite well. There are a couple of books that are very helpful in describing rapid church planting movements that have actually taken place (or are taking place) around the world: The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church, by Roland Allen, and Church Planting Movements, by David Garrison. Both books reference the ability of new believers to gather around the Word of God, learn accurately, and pass truth along to others who, in the same manner, pass it on to still others. The beauty of this is that it elevates the individual believer to the true role of priest and also allows God to rapidly pass His truth and life from one oikos to another. In other words, it works! There is an "oversight" that takes place via relationship from one believer to the next, but the heart of disipleship is the ability of every believer to hear and learn truth from His Word.
Comments
6 responses to “Home Church Movement and The Participatory Gathering”
One of the easiest things to do in a participatory gathering is to go straight through a scriptural passage, and simply ask the question, “What life issues does this raise for us, for me personally?” Has the Lord given me victory in this area? Is this a growth opportunity for me? What personal specifics regarding the challenge or the victories will allow others in the group to do some “One Anothers”. That is pray, encourage, teach, admonish, bear burdens, hold accountable, and love, etc. For example, the first five verses of James raises personal questions about our servant-hood, trials, testing of our faith, endurance, maturity, lacking wisdom, asking God, and hearing from God. That SHOULD provide more than ample opportunity for members to share, discuss, reflect, practice some One Anothers, and exercise their gifts. You know, do some real Church. Be patient. Folk Christianity has devolved to a place where we only listen to truth, give lip-service to the truth, experience it vicariously. We generally don’t meditate on the truth. That is, we don’t really read slowly, think deeply, pray for His direction, commit to His leading, share results for encouragement and accountability. There is a certain skill in leading folks away from merely being philosphical and theoretical about scriptural truth, and the pridefullness of being right about certain things, and into the personal experience of the truth. But it’s basically just an awareness of the difference between being in the Christian Philosophical Society where you simply learn about truth, as opposed to those who want to enter the real world of body life where we share our journey in Christ, and use our gifts to build up the body in love.
Our recent shift from “presentation” type church to participatory simple churches has caused us to deal with this very issue. You’re absolutely right in saying that, “it is always easier to avoid the re-training process altogether by gathering with brand new believers who are able to naturally enter into a participatory environment.” Our most dynamic and passionate “participators” are brand new Christians who find the Word of God exciting and alive. In our case, the line is being drawn where we are seeing more clearly who is truly hungry to pursue God and take responsibilty for their spiritual lives.
I used to think that the key to participatory church lay in how the gathering is facilitated. More and more I am convinced that it depends less on how a meeting is facilitated and mostly on how prepared the people are beforehand. When we transitioned and became a network of small, particpatory simple churches, we took Colossians 3:16 seriously and organized people into groups of 2 or 3 who read 20-30 chapters of the Bible every week. These groups of 2 or 3 became the basic component of our simple churches (in fact, a simple church of 10 people may well be composed of a couple of these groups). In this way, most of our simple church members are allowing the Word of God to dwell richly in them. These people have no trouble with sharing to the rest of the group when they meet.
Hi, Roger. Good thoughts, and thanks for sharing some real details about y’alls own practice.
Forgive me if this is dense, but do you mean to imply that ALL “participatory gatherings” should involve “digging into scripture”? I’m not sure.
And I’m curious, in practice, do y’all’s “pg’s” always involve “d.i.s.”? Or do you have variety? If variety, then what else have you tried? I’m always curious…
PS: I’ve got a DARE out this weekend that you might like, but I’ll let you see it on my site. Thanks for posting.
Hi,
Very interesting topic. I lately have been connecting the Old Testament and New Testament “temples” — God’s physical presence on Earth. In the OT it was in the tent of meeting or the temple in Jerusalem where people went to connect with God and to lay down their sacrifices. In teh New Testament, God dwells in the believer. That’s also where God is “physically” (where two or more are gathered, there I AM) and where we bring our sacrifices (I John 3:16), namely ourselves.
This kind of thinking forces one to consider that the Holy Spirit, being present in every believer, is the controlling factor in small groups or other participatory gatherings and not necessarily the knowledge or maturity of the believer. I think all of us have learned something or been encouraged on occasion by a young believer because the Holy Spirit is speaking through that person. All we have to do is give the Holy Spirit room to work and then listen adn watch for Him.
Thanks you for the discussion.
I am inclined to agree about Bible training. I love Donald Miller’s (author of “Blue Like Jazz” and “Searching for God Knows What”) perspective on Scripture… it’s basically a bunch of stories, with a lot of great advice (a.k.a. perfect advice) thrown in. Bible training can be a very good thing, but it can also cause students to begin to see the Bible as a textbook; an outline of formulas and steps and lists. It loses its heart very quickly. And honestly, you’d be hard-pressed to show that more heresies come from untrained teachers than from trained ones. Having the official authority to teach sometimes is just the ticket to getting people to believe your hairbrained ideas.
However, if you have an untrained teacher, surrounded by untrained learners, the learners feel more empowered to hold the teacher accountable, and as long as the Bible is preeminent and the Holy Spirit is in charge, I believe that groupthink can be a good thing.
I’m not so much bringing down the idea of Bible training as I am bringing up the idea of lay leadership. Bible scholars are still essential, and we should strive to learn from those who can parse Hebrew and Greek verbs. Their knowledge is irreplaceable.
I am one of the leaders of a budding house church network, called The Core, in Springfield, MO. I have a blog in which a lot of these topics are discussed. I would love to have you come over and check it out! The website for The Core is http://www.thecoredowntown.com, and the blog is http://www.thecoredowntown.com/thecoreblog. (Do hyperlinks not work in comments?)
Blessings.
Hey Bill,
Thanks for the comment(s) and the question. I could never say “always”, “all gatherings”, or “should” about anything that happens in the participatory gatherings that I take part in. We certainly have a bias toward God’s Word as the “expert” in our midst… but how this walks out can look very different from group to group and one gathering to the next. We probably have a “default mode” in the sense that, if God has not clearly led is in a different direction, most of our gatherings will open Scripture and dig into a passage at some point during the time together. However, other discussions, arising out of worship or out of the sharing of someone present, may lead a group into a “conversation” that indirectly revolves around Scriptural principles but does not necessarily involve “opening a bible.” Again, each group’s make-up and maturity level will call forth a different approach as God leads… and that is ultimately what we seek… God’s leading. At its best, a participatory gathering is a wonderful dance between God’s people (living in this world with real-life circumstances, struggles, trials, sorrows, and joys), God’s leading by His Spirit and Word, and the spiritual gifts given to His people through which He ministers to one another. I hate to put anything on paper that attempts to codify the wonder and mystery of this process.