I am looking for people’s stories of deconstruction from traditional church. What caused you to begin looking at the way you were doing church? What was the process you went through? What were the difficulties you faced? How was your thinking and understanding changed? What has been the result in how you understand and experience "church" today?
I am looking for more than "I was hurt by this church or that person so I decided to do a house church." I want to hear about how your paradigm, understanding, and values surrounding church changed and what catalyzed that.
I would love for you to share a link or reference to someone else’s story, or share your own story here in two or three paragraphs (comments below).
I suppose it is only fair that I re-share just a bit of my own story. The brief version…
I often tell people that I experienced the full cycle of traditional church life: I gave birth (founding pastor of a church in California); I helped build (buildings, services, and staff over a ten year period); and finally I completed the cycle– I burned out!
At the ten-year marker I suffered from a very severe burnout/depression that was so debilitating I was unable to continue in my role. Given a long-term sabatical, I was able to begin the recuperation process and the re-evalauation process. What had gone wrong? Why would ministry lead to burnout? How had I gone from being a simple pastor of a few families to a CEO of a business budget, a staff, a ministry team, building projects, and a vision for more and more of the same. I simply thought I was advancing the kingdom by building the church! Yet this type of church I had built just about killed me off! One thing I was able to grasp was that I was not doing what I had been designed to do.
There was certainly much to look at on a personal level: my own insecurities and need to build a bigger-is-better type of church, for example. But I also began to look at the whole package I understood as "church." What part of the organization and buildings and staff and structures and programs really are essentially church? If they are not essential, are they even helpful for truly advancing kingdom life? These types of questions got me back to the basics: church as people empowered by a living God. It is people filled with God who impact other people, not services and events. I began to see the potential of God’s people released to just be his people with simple, relational gatherings to support each other. I began to see the power of every person living missionally, relating authentically, and caring for one another in the process. To use an analogy I have used before, I began to see how much effort I had spent trying to build a beautiful fireplace to contain just a little bit of the fire of God when God wanted to unleash a wildfire.
That’s just the beginnings of what has become an awesome, freeing journey.
What I am really, really looking for here is to hear the stories of others…
Comments
20 responses to “Share Your Deconstruction Stories”
Roger — I’m in the first stages of deconstruction, but here’s how it started:
Christmas last year fell on a Sunday, and since we were visiting my in-laws, we went to their church. The service had already gone on for at least an hour when the pastor got up for the sermon time and invited all the kids up front. “I’m going to talk to the kids,” he said, “and you adults can listen in if you want.” We brought the girls up front, where a handful of school-aged kids had already gathered. The pastor started off well, with some interactive questions, but after about five minutes he was off into his regular 40 minute sermon. Meanwhile, our oldest had grown restless and my husband took her out. The younger girl, who was 2 ½ at the time, was amusing herself dancing around in circles there in the front of the church – until a woman in the front row leaned over to me and complained that she found her a distraction!
That morning I left church feeling like I’d been thoroughly set up – which I still believe, even if I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt and put it down to poor planning. If you’re going to welcome children, then you have to welcome them as children, not as pint-sized grownups. And if the pastor says he’s going to talk to the kids, then he ought to talk to the kids, and do it for no more than 10 or 15 minutes! And what’s with the woman who has been so trained to focus in on the sermon as some great educational moment that she’s “distracted” by the simple joys of a toddler delighting in Christmas morning?
When the emotions of that day cooled a bit – clearly they remain fresh in my heart and mind even now – I found myself asking questions about the nature of faith, discipleship and church that I’m still wrestling with. The average evangelical church service is organized on the pattern of an educational event, with some singing to get everyone in the mood to listen to the pastor’s dissertation. It’s the college lecture hall, with dutiful parishioners taking notes. Granted, that’s an environment I’m very comfortable in, but has my life ever been changed by a sermon? Do I even remember a single sermon I’ve heard in the past 25 years? Do I remember even one point of last Sunday’s? What does the whole sitting-in-church-staring-at-the-back-of-someone’s-head model have to do with the life of the Kingdom of God? Do I want my children to be socialized to be good church attenders, sitting quietly through the whole business, or am I raising citizens of the Kingdom who are out to change the world?
I found myself reading voraciously anyone who was offering a different vision of church, primarily from two camps: the house church/simple church movement and some from the emergent church movement (I’d say there’s about a 80% overlap in key ideas). There were many ideas that resonate deeply with me. First, a way of seeing the life of the church as fundamentally relational. House church folks talk a lot about church as family, and indeed, focus on the church as an extension of the family “being the church.” I was deeply impressed by David Fitch’s critique of the modern evangelical church in The Great Giveaway, where he points out many of the shortcomings of modernism’s gospel of individualistic salvation. Second, an emphasis on missional living – bringing the life of the Kingdom into the world around us, rather than trying to attract people to the church. This resonates deeply with my early background in missions and thinking in terms of cultural sensitivity. And on a practical level, house church requires so much less overhead that significant resources can be freed up for the work of the Kingdom. Third, there is a conversation within the house church movement about how we welcome children and include them as members of the family of God. Much as my kids love their Sunday School classes, I’m more and more uncomfortable with a model that segregates children (and adults for that matter) and then focuses on either entertaining them or making good “students” of them.
So a dream has begun in my heart and mind … of a way of being church that is small and relational, that takes the spiritual growth and formation of each person seriously and actually has a different quality of life to offer the community around us. Right now I’m still in the institutional church, somewhat reluctantly, often uncomfortably. I find myself agreeing with what I hear from the pulpit and then wanting to add either “yes, but I can’t do that alone without the fellowship of people who know me deeply” or simply “let me out of this box!”
Roger,
I’m new to your blog so forgive me if my comments seem out of place.
About 11 years ago we left a small, traditional, one-pastor-run church for the hip megachurch across town. The worship was vibrant, the pastor could preach down the stars, and sacred cows were slaughtered right and left. The church was growing, it went to multiple services, and then came the multi-million dollar building program. I was called out for lay leadership and spent five years serving in missions ministry when missions ministry wasn’t cool. Then, the pastor got dialed in to a recovery ministry and I felt led to participate in that where I quickly rose to leadership.
In the midst of that, one of the vocational pastor’s addiction was exposed and the church leadership offered a less-than-recovery-friendly response, invalidating everything the senior pastor had preached about recovery. Shortly after that crisis, another vocational pastor was called by God to plant a church in another state, and to watch him beg for and receive a pittance of support in the midst of campus expansion really broke my heart. The recovery ministry moved on down the road and my heart went with it.
My understanding of church changed dramatically with these two events. I saw in the recovery ministry James 5.16 lived out for the first time and how people found freedom in a community where they shared their struggles. I saw a perfect opportunity for a daughter church plant evaporate as we added yet another service rather than making a move off-campus. My passion dried up and I took a sabbatical from leadership.
Then I “stumbled” across a blog entry by Michael Spencer (http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/quit-and-see-what-happens#more-635) that gave me “permission” to detox from church. We are doing just that. I do not know where we go from here. I am planning to formally celebrate an advent liturgy of some sort with my family, which is really foreign to our backgrounds. But I don’t feel the pressure to do church, I feel freedom to just to be, and I’m not in any hurry.
Roger,
I don’t know what specifically lead me to the concept of “house church”. I’d like to think it was something I read in the Bible but I’m sure it was probably just the result of bouncing around the Internet one day. However, I can tell exactly what lead me to this point in my life.
I guess I what you would call me one of the walking wounded. I was raised as one Jehovah’s Witnesses. I always hesitate to mention the organization by name because like with all denominational titles it is suddenly gonna call a bunch of prejiduced thoughts into the reader’s mind – some true, some false. I would say that like all denoms it is a mixed bag of some good and some bad. One of the bad things about the organization is that it is a highly controlling authoritarian structure that enforces unity via threat of expulsion and loss of family.
It would be difficult to tell my story without dipping into JW theology but I’ll keep it simple and brief. The Watchtower Society (the mother organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses) teaches that the Body of Christ is limited to only 144,000 individuals who have received the spirit baptism and have been born again or “anointed” since Pentacost. They teach that this number has been filled since the early 1930’s and the only way additional individuals can become “anointed” would be if one of the remaining 144,000 died unfaithful thereby opening up a spot. Furthermore if so-called replacements need to be made they infer that certainly God would choose someone that is an older, long-time, faithful member of the Watchtower organization.
There are many unfortunate side effects as the result of this teaching. For starters it makes an unwritten caste system within the organization. The 144,000 so-called “anointed” ones are held in high regard with a certain amount of awe associated with them. It also opens the way up for organizational idolatry. There are only 8,000 “anointed” ones alive today and they compositely form what the Watchtower calls – “the faithful and discreet slave class”. This “faithful and discreet slave class” is represented by a 12-member governing body in Brooklyn, NY that dictates doctrine and organizational procedure for 6 million Jehovah’s Witneses around the earth. The “faithful slave”, more specifically the “governing body” is seen as the mouthpiece of God. To hold ideas contrary to their official teaching is viewed as Korah going against Moses. (For certain other religions have Biblically skewed authority structures but I think very few take it to the extreme that the Watchtower does.)
I was raised as one Jehovah’s Witnesses but my personal story begins two years ago when I had started to lose faith in the Watchtower Organization due to finding out about some of their recent hyprocisy in regards to certain political affiliations. Because the Watchtower was in fact my God to lose faith in them was to cause me to doubt the existence of God himself. Sadly I had a built a foundation of sand and suddenly it was washed away and left me with nothing spiritually. I continued to go to Witness meetings (services) out of habit and obligation though my heart was very far away. Mostly I would just use the time to read my Bible. Through this, I began to develop a love for God’s word and my relationship and faith in my heavenly Father grew immensely. (This is awesome to me how God is able to cut through all the religion and confusion to find a heart seeking him!)
Along the way I had a personal born-again experience that changed me in many significant ways such as teaching me how to love. It also opened up lots of persecution toward me. As I previously stated, the Watchtower teaches that only elite members within their ranks would possibly be baptised with the spirit (“anointed”). By claiming that this was the case for me they thought something was wrong with me; at best they thought I was crazy, at worst they thought I was apostate. (I should note that I didn’t go around the congregation claiming to be born again – this was something that I said in confidence to the local body of elders out of a perceived duty to inform them.) At this time I began to be monitored closely by the Body of Elders – particularly the Presiding Overseer who had a penchant for Internet searches on members of the congregation and a particular zeal for hunting down “apostates”.
At this time I was learning things in the Bible that was hard to square with what I had been taught during my life. I had began to see how the Organization despite its strong points was failing in very basic requirements of Christianity such as the need to care for widows. I was also beginning to see just how off-base the Organizational structure was when compared to Apostolic Christianity.
I had been keeping a personal blog where I sometimes wrote about scriptural topics though being cautious not to directly challenge the official doctrine of the Watchtower. Eventually the elders found out about this Blog and they monitored it very closely looking for some justification to expel me from the congregation. This opportunity came when I published a blog entry (http://amathenia.blogspot.com/2006/02/rock-or-sand.html) where I wrote, “We recognize that the brotherhood that we love so much does not belong to a legal body or any men taking the lead among us; but rather it belongs to Christ who is the head of the congregation. (Colossians 1:18; 1 Corinthians 1:12,13) ” It may sound crazy but it was that sentence which got the ball rolling for the process that would culminate in my be expelled from the congregation.
I was put before a tribunal for apostasy (heresy) and was questioned regarding my views. I spoke the truth and it was decided to disfellowship (excommunicate) me from the organization. At the last congregational meeting I attended they announced that I was disfellowshipped and the Presiding Overseer of the Elder Body gave a thirty-minute sermon whereas I was called Judas, Satan, and Child of Satan and the congregation told them I was a wolve leading them out of the sheep-pen to slaughter them and that I never loved them and was faking it. For certain I have never been spoken of so abusively in my entire life – it would have been brutal had God’s Spirit not been upon me in such a beautiful abundance; keeping me strong.
And with that suddenly I was out of the religion I had had spent my entire life in. I had no more friends, no congregation, and my family had disowned me. (Fortunately I had my wife and she was a great comfort for me.) When the smoke cleared I found myself looking around and wondering “What next?”. And much like the man-born blind I was walking around fresh from being expelled from the synagogue and disowned by parents and I found Jesus!
I guess “house church” was the natural progression for someone who had been abused greatly by religion. To say that I was totally burnt out with organized religion would be an understatement. I really just wanted to worship my Father and his son Jesus with spirit and truth – simply and without the trappings of religion. I felt that I continue my personal study and prayer at home by myself but as a Christian there is a strong pull to want to associate with fellow believers. Yet I didn’t want to get involved in another religion or church. So I stumbled upon the concept of house church and began meeting with a group near my home – which has proved to be a blessing.
Recently my wife and I have began holding meetings in our own home which is a joy. This has presented our recent trial. My old elders have continued to monitor my Blog and when I wrote about “house church” they are now using it as a basis for expelling my wife from their Organization. Her family has now cut us off because as her sister expressed it – “you are committing the worst sin possible”. The rumous is that I have formed my own religion which is hilarious.
This has been a crazy path for me and I despite the pain I wouldn’t get off it for a minute! Sometimes the road is scary. Sometimes it is confusing. It is always a joy. I don’t know what the future holds but I do know this I just want to follow Jesus wherever he leads me!
Yours in the Christ,
Anthony
(There is more to all this but I tried to condense it as much as possible.)
Roger,
I don’t think I have ever commented here but I have sniffed around several times.
My Christian background began in a traditional, denominational, Pentecostal church. I attended the denominational ministry school as a young Christian, zealous for good works. I read the KJV, and studied to be a missionary. I was stunned when no doors opened up for me for ministry, and God did not call me to a foreign field. I returned to my home city and joined a large charismatic cell church. I was finishing up a church planting course and reading for a paper. I felt a strong leading to house churches, but had no idea why. I had never heard of or seen anything like that before.
During this time I was actively seeking healing from various hurts and traumas. All I knew was that when I was around certain people (a handful of men at school for example) I grew in my faith and experienced a full inner life. At my cell church I noticed the cell was basically a pruned-down service, without the dynamics of intimacy, spontanaity or family life. I had read “The Never-Alone Church” by Ferguson, which is the best book on intimacy as the foundation of church I have read even though they do the building thing. I also read “Houses That Change the World” by Wolfgang Simpson.
At first I was angry at my church for not having New Testament attributes–love and eating together, for example. But then God opened my eyes to see my “church within the church.” I was receiving and giving real love, it just wasn’t happening in the “cell model.” My experiences of “real church” seemed to be commercials interrupting the “feature film” wherever they could. I think the inflexibility of the wineskin and our own religion have prevented us from seeing that where we give and receive love, eat together, pray for each other, and encourage each other from the scriptures, actually IS church. Before I was motivated to switch from the cell model to the home church model. Now I want to follow love, and see that I am to be in this place of giving and receiving God’s love all the time. I am ready to leave my cell church, just waiting and praying to see if it is time to “jump.”
Roger,
My journey to house church started when I became a Christian at age 25. I was introduced to a new church plant by friends in the town that I lived in. The pastor had a dynamic personality. The worship music was contemporary (vs. traditional) and I loved it at first and the people were so warm and friendly.
I became a Christian while reading Basic Christianity by John R.W. Stott in one setting. In the book he talks of the things that you “should do” after becoming a Christian. I jumped in with the suggestions with all my heart after reading them and that led me into what has become years of burnout and disappointment with “the church”. I followed all the rules and regulations and felt I had to do something!
I got involved in music ministry (played guitar for three services on Sunday). Did couples group Bible study and men’s Bible study. I helped with the capital funds campaign to finance our new church building. I was involved in youth work and eventually was the Worship Leader of our Monday night Post-Modern worship service with our Youth Director. Get the picture? Somewhere along the way I dropped out of Sunday services altogether.
At this point Joe (my friend and Youth Director) was feeling the call to be a Pastor and I was felt called to lead worship. Joe, I and our wives packed our bags and headed off to school. Joe eventually became a pastor and I eventually dropped out of school. From the time I had left home in California I attended church services on only a handful of occasions. Seeing that the churches either lacked Christ as their center or were just copies of what I had left back home I became incredibly discouraged.
This led me to where I am today. I made it back to California and about six months ago started a correspondence with my former pastor(the dynamic guy mentioned above in the first paragraph). He has since moved on to become a Super CEO Church Planter Dude! I told him of something that God had me moving on. God or so I thought, had planted in my heart the need for missions in the United States…..like Youth With A Mission (YWAM) for example, on our soil. I told my former pastor about this and he encourage me to go with it.
In one of my e-mails to him I mentioned that I needed a new devotional to read and he suggested two books by John Elderedge. One was called Waking The Dead which changed my mind about the mission idea. It turns out that God had a different mission plan in mind for me. A house church….a community of believers which John Elderedge touches on about 2/3 of the way through his book.
So, I am sitting here now with this idea and really don’t know what the next step is. I do know it is in a house church but really don’t know how to get it started. I am not sure if I need to start one “myself” or find one that already exists. If anyone can help me out feel free to e-mail me at illuminationsc @sbcglobal.net
Roger,
Tomorrow will be one year since I preached my final sermon as an institutional church pastor. We invited as many as wanted to join us in our living room, that night, following the final Sunday morning service. We have been walking in community ever since. Some didn’t like the transparency and left after a few months, but most stayed and a few new ones have joined us. I don’t think I could ever go back.
My journey has been different from most who have responded to your invitation to share their deconstruction stories. By in large, my 17 years in the professional clergy (counting seminary years) was a positive experience. Like everyone’s journey, there were a few bumps in the road, but most days were good days, especially the last eight years. I was the associate pastor of a mega-church in my region. I had/have a good relationship with the senior pastor, staff and members. In fact, the relationship was/is very good. I also had all the perks that go along with such a position. I had a large compensation package and ministry budget. I had the freedom to lead in my areas of responsibility without being micro-managed by a supervisor or committee. By all external appearances I had it all.
But, in January 2004, Jesus began to show me the church He is building. Jesus used five things to lead me out of the professional clergy/institutional church. 1) Some missions training I received from my former denomination’s career missionaries. 2) A mission church I helped to plant in a neighboring community. 3) Wolfgang Simson’s book “Houses that Change the World.” 4) A dear brother named Cliff James at http://www.theearlychurch.com 5) Several websites/blogs like yours.
I have formulated some of my journey/reactions/thoughts at http://www.brentdavis.blogspot.com if you want to read further. I haven’t posted since August primarily because I need to be more introspective about what all this means. I have said some things in my newfound exuberance that I probably could have said with a little more tact. So, I am being quiet for a while. It took three years for Saul the Pharisee to become Paul the Christian. And it took a while longer before he became Paul the Apostle. Deconstruction is a long process.
Your Brother,
Brent
Thank you Roger for your short story. I am excited about reading the others.
Just found your site!
In Jesus,
Maria in the UK
http://www.inshishands.co.uk
Just a very warm and appreciative “thank you” to those who have kindly shared their stories so far. I’m sure others will continue to write, but I wanted to tell you how much I am enjoying the responses. One of the best ways to help people walk through similar transitions is to share the stories of others. I plan to share your stories with as many others as I can!
Roger
I, too, collect deconstruction stories! Here’s mine:
While my entire walk with God was sprinkled with doubts about the effectiveness of the “churchianity” model, and wondering “When does the “each one has a message…” part come in?” it wasn’t until I spent 4 years in Japan that I was able to make the break.
It was seeing the Exact Same Things being done by Asians that it became obvious, “This is Very Weird!” 3 points and a poem sermons, buildings that look just like Colonial Era New England church buildings, “Shout to the Lord” and “Amazing Grace” being sung in Japanese, with not a touch of Japanese flavor anywhere! And after 50 years of unlimited missionary activity, the percentage of Christians was still the same! Sadly, it was evident that those who loved their country felt that it would be a betrayal of their national identity to become a Christian – to become a Christian was to become an American, or at least a globalist.
More importantly after four years of practicing hospitality and dragging people to church, I realized that it was the ministry that happened in my home that resulted in people asking, “What must I do to be saved?” !
My story is still a work in progress. I left the staff of an institutional church (my home church, in fact) where I served for four years, after returning from the mission field, where I had served for 15 years. I grew up a part of a very large denomination with a very large missionary sending agency. I felt God’s call on my life to be a missionary when I was thirteen. I went to a university owned and operated by my denomination, and then went to serve two years on the mission field with our missionary sending agency, only to return to go to one of our denominational seminaries.
While serving in Eastern Europe, I had the opportunity to become part of the church planting efforts going on. I was trained in this area to be a Stategy Coordinator. Later, we felt compelled to leave the mission field because of the nature of the politics errupting in our denomination and moving out to the mission field and resting in the laps of missionaries, themselves. I came home broken-hearted, feeling as if my life had been emptied of its joy. My home church welcomed me back as its minister of music and missions. However, my heart was given more to missions than music, and my church really had no desire to mobilize and move out in becoming a missional church.
While all this was taking place, my pastor was also dealing with his own issues concerning the institutionalized church. To make a long story short, he left the church, but remained in the community, becoming the manager of a local franchise of large hotel industry, and beginning a network of house churches across town. I thought he was crazy until I began to read some of the same books he was reading. I remember reading Bryan McLaren’s, “A New Kind of Christian.” When I did, I began to see myself in the character of Dan (for those of you who have read it). I knew then that my days within the institutionalized church were coming to a close. As my enthusiasm waned in serving on a church staff, my enthusiasm for church planting and starting organic churches has increased. I am now serving as an editor for a Bible Study publishing company, but am part of a very non-traditional church setting that is focused upon being simply the church. At the same time, my heart is still very missional and I have this nudging and urging within me to be a part of starting churches that will start other churches. I am dialoging with people in my workplace and praying about the possibilities. I believe that God is on the verge of something big, and I’m excited with anticipation of what He will do in the coming months and years.
I just had to realize that at 42, I had hit middle ground, and I don’t want to spend the next years of my life in an institutionalized church, which has made up its mind to die a slow and painful death, unwilling to share itself with the community or the world, seeking only to build its own kingdom, but having no desire of being part of building the Kingdom of God. Nope, sorry, but I believe God’s got better things to do and I want to do what He’s doing.
I don’t even know how to begin my story. I came across the posting, “Share Your Deconstruction Story” and wondered if I really wanted to share this story. Its still rather painful for me. Because it is painful, I assume that I am still in a “deconstruction” process.
My story started several years ago. I rededicated my heart to Christ during my sophomore year in college. It was there that my heart exploded for Christ. Peace, joy and personal fulfillment that I had never encountered, suddenly flooded my soul.
I started taking personal time daily reading, praying and worshiping the Lord in a private room, located atop the University library building. Within time I was discovered by other young believers, such as myself and we started to meet together for one person: to worship, study together and build each other. We had no designated leader. No one man ruled.
What would happen after leaving those sessions, would turn into personal period of witnessing and introducing the gospel of Jesus Christ to our friends. As a result families were born again, other students came to Christ and we actually experienced several miracles performed by Jesus Christ through us.
Eventually it became news worthy (something we never planned nor intended) and local ministers started coming to see us, under the disguise of “seekers”. We assumed that they were hungry for Him, just was we where. Our hearts were pure and its wasn’t ours turn anyone away….not to mention, we had no idea that we were under investigation by these local churches and assemblies.
One of the seekers started spending time with us, and we all eventually sensed and uneasiness about her. She began taking over our meetings, trying to teach to us and elicit teachings that we felt were being perverted, controlling and manipulative. It felt like someone from another sect had come to confuse us. Its reminded me of the book of Galatians.
Before long we discovered that she had deceived us. She had started brining in elders from her church, poised as college students from the neighboring university to convince us that we were in error and that we needed to be submitted to a local church. We were told that we were in rebellion. For what? For loving Christ and obeying Him? We didn’t understand that charges and we couldn’t understand there deception. Why weren’t they being honest with us.
While they validated the works, and saw our hearts as sincerely born again….plus that fact that they couldn’t deny that Christ was in us and with us, they were able to convince us that we were to continue, we needed to be in a local church and that we needed to submit what the Lord was doing through us, to a local Church Pastor, solely
We finally gave in and within a four month period, we were all “dry” was a fresh towel from the dryer.It began to bother me that we had become integrated into a building and a believe system that had hindered us. The church called itself a prophetic church and all they did was prophesy, preach, teach and dance amongst themselves. No souls being saved…no affect outside of the building. None…completely religious with no works.
We were commited to “cell groups” and it was there, that we were to learn of Him and the church doctrines. I was the most vocal of the group. I didn’t see scripture for what had happen to us and for the practice of the local Church. It simply didn’t add up.
One day I was called to the church to come an assist in the preparation of a surprise birthday party for one of the members of my cell group. Sounded innocent enough, but after the call ended, I was alarmed and felt this compulsion not to go. I went. I went because over time the compulsions that I was sensing, were being slowly eroded by church doctrine. I didn’t realize that the Holy Spirit was speaking to me. I wasn’t discerning His speakings to me anymore.
When I arrived at the house. My entire cell group was there.We would normally met at the elders home for our cell meetings. The room became emotionally dark and weird. I was asked to take my chair and put it in the center of the circle of chairs. What was to be a joyous occasion, became a “witch hunt.”
I was interrogated “left” and “right” about my actions. I was verbally corrected and humiliated before the entire group. I was told that if I were to ever leave the local church that I would be cursed. That life would never work out well for me.That the blessings of God would halt! That I would become a bastard.
My heart sunk. I couldn’t believe what was happening. At one point it was as if I was elevated above the room, watching this verbal, religious lashings from afar. I was told that I needed to repent….repent for what? I had done no wrong to anyone. I had not sinned. I simply wasn’t compliant enough.
Well, I never did repent. I stood up and told the leader of the cell group that her actions were ungodly. I began to question them about their deceit. “Why was I deceived into coming to this supposed gathering to prepare for a surprise birthday party?” I told them that were spiritually incorrect and that I would not be returning.
The leader began to weeping and crying and pleading that I not go. She began to repeat the curses. My student colleagues had become stoic, hardened and religiously brainwashed. They never commented, but they gave stares that would cut a steel vault in half.
In the beauty of genuine relationship, we had grown together. Experienced Christ together. Brought other people to a wonderful relationship of knowing Christ….and within a matter of one year, I was being eating alive by a Christian Church for refusing to conform.
I left that Church. I never went back. I tried to maintain my relationships with my brothers and sisters whom I had befriended in college, but they were instructed to “cut” me off and they did. It was my Senior year in college and it became the saddest time in my life.
The year was 1987. I never joined another church until 1992. That experience was worst than the one documented. Today I don’t belong any institutional church. In the African American community, if you do not belong to a church, you are on your way to hell and you never were actually born again. You are treated with a great deal of harshness and ridicule. At another time, I’d like the opportunity to account what happended in the other church. I eventually left that church as well. To
Hi Roger,
Well, since you asked, my long-winded account of my journey is here:
In Search of Church: A Journey, Not a Destination (http://www3.telus.net/here/ekklesia/)
I advise that you wait until you have insomnia before you attempt to slog through it! 😉
Shalom,
Paul
Hi Roger,
I’ll be as brief as possible … I grew up in an agnostic/atheist home and didn’t become a Christian til I was 28. My husband and I were led to Christ by the pastor and his wife of the church we then joined. They were our next door neighbors. We were members of that church for about 14 years. During that time we taught Sunday School and went on to be lay leaders in the youth ministry program for about 8 years. I also taught in the women’s Sunday School and women’s Bible Study programs.
I can’t point to any one thing that happened that caused us to begin questioning what was going on. There were a bunch of things. But they all added up to our church not acting like Jesus in the world. It was little things like turning away a poor migrant worker asking for a winter jacket because, “we don’t do that sort of ministry,” or only handing out invites for outreach programs in rich white neighborhoods and ignoring the poor mixed neighborhood right across the street, marginalizing the widows and orphans (single moms and divorcees) in our congregation, and things of that nature. My husband and I began to wonder just what was a church supposed to exist for? What is the purpose of church in the world? What does Jesus call His Body into being for?
I could not believe that He only called it into being for rich white folks who look like me. I could not believe that He called it into being so that we could get together and have a safe club where our children would be enshrined and kept holy from the outsiders. That just did not ring true with the Jesus I read about in the Gospels.
It took several years for all of this gestate and formulate. But we did leave that church. There were some very hurtful moments. And, yes, I/we have lots of baggage that we are recovering from. We are now in a church and helping to lead it where we are attempting to be the change we wish to see in the world. It’s not as easy as it seems. Everyone has different ideas and new perspectives. Putting them altogether in one pot and making a tasty stew has caused us all to become more graceful and creative. I think it’s causing us all to rely upon God a little more as well … which is never a bad thing 😉 . We’re growing in a lot of different ways and that can cause some pain too. But I like the direction and I like the fact that we try to not lose sight of Jesus while we’re on the road.
Thanks for asking the question …
It all started with a visit from an old friend that I hadn’t seen in many years. We were out of touch and I had moved a few times since we last talked. However, he shows up at my door with a couple of books on cell church.
This lead to an internet search from cell church to micro-church to house church. I was fascinated. I wondered how we (the body of Christ) had drifted so far. I finally asked my pastor, “If Paul came back today and attended one of our services, would he say, ‘This is exactly what we had in mind”?. He answered yes but I thought I knew different.
Still, at this point I stayed where I was. A good friend from my church, who I was sharing my new found knowlege with, decided to leave the “institutional church”. I still stayed put.
Our pastor left our congregation to become a professor at a Bible college. We called a new pastor who’s vision was Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven model. I thought this would be a good compromise between traditional church (because of the emphasis on small groups) and house church.
When the new pastor set a standard for leadership that I wasn’t willing to participate in (abstinance from alcohol) I knew my time there was over. I had been the worship leader and a small group leader for almost five years.
I finally realized that it was time for me to go. That’s where I am now.
There’s no doubt that it was the Lord’s hand that sent the books to me. I truly believe He was grooming me for the point at which I find myself. I am begining my journey into house or cell church. I am very excited at what the Lord is doing. I’m thankful there are resources such as this blog where I can see what others are experiencing and learn from them.
Wow! These are great personal accounts. Real, honest and sometimes heartbreaking. Thanks Roger. Here’s mine: first an old memory that’s a kind of set up. In my first church, after about a year or two I was very close to my Pastor and reading the Bible with fervor and just really on fire. There was a group of people in a neighboring town that were well known but had left their institutional church and were doing church in their house. Our pastor said he had a word for them and asked me to go along. We went and we worshipped and prayed. They played a guitar and sang beautifully. I remember thinking how simple and attractive it was. But my pastor delivered the word, which was that they were without cover and in danger and needed to return to the church. They eventually did and I have seen them since. I tried to tell them about our house church and I’ll never forget that. How ironic! God showed me something there I’m still learning about.
The real deconstruction came because after numerous attempts at making sense (that is biblical sense) out of the church encounters of the third kind, my wife and I were just totally without a clue about what to do (except pray). We had left a church we helped plant with a relative, which grew quickly but had too little room for gifts to flow. Our pastor wanted us to be on his church board, but it seemed to be a kind of rubber stamp forum, and we weren’t looking for organized religion. We really were wanting to be free of the baggage of institutions that we felt were stifling people. We didn’t really know how to express our feelings or identify a direction. We met with a few other families, who were like us, feeling lost and unheard. We complained and prayed and ministered to each other for a few months, hoping the Lord would lead us to some consensus. We got involved in the Healing Rooms ministry (which was a breakthough)and then my wife heard Roger being interviewed on the radio about house church. We called and talked and we began a small group right away. The other families weren’t interested. But the more I heard and read and experienced this simple church thing, I knew it was right for us. We finally found a simple existance with other believers that largely resembled the group my first pastor had admonished for doing the same. But I now knew much more and I believe God had led us to this new experience. What a turn about, what a journey! Now I see so much more possibilities, and simple work to be done. It doesn’t take a lot of resources, titles or money. It takes heart, determination and relationships. (Yes I still face problems in house church because wherever I go, there I am) It takes the Spirit of God and some of His vision. Now I see only a little…(but I see and am no longer blind).
Hi Roger
I became a Christian at the age of 20 through some friends who went to university with me and attended a house church of sorts. The time spent in this house church was incredible, we were all around the same age and did so much together and grew quite close. After a year i returned back to the town i grew up in and started attending a ‘normal’ pentecostal church. The people were friendly and i enjoyed the time spent there. 5 years later i made a very interesting discovery. Throughout the time i had been a Christian i had favored house churches, but i didn’t know why. Then i found Frank Viola’s book Pagan Christianity in a Christian book store and discovered the reasons. Also from this same book store over the next few months i bought Simson’s Houses that change the world, Barna’s Revolution and Rutz Megashift. Particularly Viola’s book caused my wife (who i had met in the house church and also attended the pentecostal church with me) and i to stop attending Institutional Church. We met up with some friends and have been meeting on and off with them since we no longer ‘go to church’. I feel in my heart that there must be more than just sitting and listening to a speaker. That there must be more than just speaking to a silent crowd. That Jesus is to invade and pervade every aspect of our lives, whether it be Bible study, prayer or recreational activities that would not be usually considered ‘spiritual’. That this thing we call church goes far beyond sitting in a dedicated building on a Sunday morning for a few hours each week. That we are the family of God and have been given permission and ability to minister to and help each other at all times, the young in the Lord as well as the old. At present i am studying the scriptures to find what it says about church and its practises. It’s incredible to discover how much the Lord places what could be called pastoral care (visiting people and counselling, comforting, teaching) not on pastors but on all His children. That Paul the apostle was so in love with the Christians he ministered to he would die for them and stated that he was persecuted for the sake of making them stronger.
We are still on the journey to meeting with Christians in a more intimate and spiritual way.
Peace to you all my brothers and sisters.
Hi Roger
I am an Anglican Vicar in transition. Part of my story is in this blog:
http://to-the-gentiles.blogspot.com/2006/06/paradigm-shift.html
I just found your blog yesterday and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it. I first heard of home churches 10 years ago and while it interested me, I wasn’t at a place in my life where I was ready to “be that drastic” – I still needed the comfort of a building and a leader. Over the last several years, my husband and I have become increasingly dissatisfied with the way modern America does church – even the more “progressive” church movements. We are tired of the pastor having to be everything – teacher, counselor, vision caster, etc – even our church that promotes “lay ministry” ultimately relies on the pastor as the head of it all. We are also tired of the waste of money that goes into the building, the phone, the improvement projects – how much better to spend it on people who are in need? The Emergent groups and websites have been very helpful to us and echo a lot of the same things we think and feel. But even then, a lot of the talk still revovles around a church building and church professionals, etc. So I have to say that when I read your section “The Basics”, I felt like I was reading exactly what we and 2 other couples have been talking about for months now. I am finally ready to leave the institutional church as a whole – we’ll see what happens over the next few months…
Dear beloved ones,
My names are Daniel Orina,
i am married, God has blessed me with four children, two boys and two girls, i love God and i am serving Him, i am leading agroup of bible study members who we normally meet and pray together, we have no denominational cover, okey today as i have visited the website and seen, learn, and read the work you for the Lord, i am really encouraged and blessed greatly, i am grateful for what you are doing for the Lord, i am hereby wishing to affiliate with you and your work, am from Kenya amessenger of the truth and the gospel,
Remain blessed as i wait to hear from you ,
Yours in the Lord,
Daniel