I have been reflecting, for some time, on the stages that I have seen and experienced in the simple/house church journey.
I would love to have your feedback on this to help clarify and further illuminate this subject.
When I speak of “stages” I do NOT speak of progressive steps. I am not suggesting that one stage is better than the previous nor that this is about a plan to follow. I am simply seeking to describe some aspects of the journey itself. However, since the journey is one of change and transformation, I thought it might be helpful to try to describe some of the experiences in that journey that may be common to most.
Also, these “stages” typically refer to those who are transitioning from traditional church to simple/house church NOT to people who are discovering church-life for the first time in their life.
1. Letting go of old paradigms of church life. This stage is described in a variety of ways from “taking the red pill,” to frustration with old wineskins to discovering what the Bible teaches about church life to… It is sometimes accompanied with periods of disorientation, wandering through valleys of confusion, or (alternatively) great relief and a new sense of freedom. People discover that they no longer want to “go” to church, rather they want to learn what it really means to “be” the church.
2. Exploring New Testament gatherings. Since our old paradigm of church life has often revolved around the Sunday morning gathering, we often find ourselves on a quest to discover what “New Testament” simple/house church gatherings might look like and feel like. In this stage, “the gathering” often remains the focus of our church-life as we seek to explore and experience small, Spirit-led, participatory, Christ-filled gatherings. Our freedom continues to grow and we become more and more enamored with the reality that we really are 24/7, kingdom-living, Spirit-directed believers. The dividing walls between secular and sacred continue to come down and we become excited about integrating our spiritual life with our “everyday” life.
3. Re-boot to Jesus. Using Frost & Hirsch’s term (from ReJesus), part of the overall transformation we walk through is the re-centering of Jesus in our life. This takes place as we find ourselves removing pieces of our religious life that have sometimes taken center stage alongside of Jesus or as mediators between us and Jesus: our church, our pastor, certain leaders, certain teachers, doctrine, our church’s culture (fitting in to the culture), religious rules for church life or behavior, etc, etc. The result is often a personal renewal of our own relationship with Jesus, a greater longing to understand what it is to be an uncompromising follower, to hear his voice, to respond to him, and to live out of a deep intimacy and love relationship with him that is truly center stage in our life.
4. A new missional heart and longing. It is inevitable that the process of re-booting to Jesus stirs in us a fresh desire to see his kingdom, his love, his power known and experienced by others. However, this stage is sometimes fraught with severe challenges because our background around “missional” has sometimes been so pre-packaged and programmed that we are challenged to grasp the unique and fresh ways that Jesus wants to make himself known through us. This is especially true for those whose spiritual gifts do not seem to fit into the “missional” spectrum. However, for those who are more apostolic and evangelistic in gifting, this stage often leads to an entirely new excitement and fervor for taking the “real Jesus” into the streets, neighborhoods, and unreached segments of the world. For those who have NOT seen themselves as “missional,” (in our previous church experiences) this stage can lead to some exciting discoveries of how God wants to embody himself uniquely through each of us (see stage #5).
(Side-note: It has been my experience that each of these stages may lead to changes in one’s own worship community and gathering. For example, stage 4 may literally lead to someone moving geographically in order to better fulfill his/her calling. Or, we may find that our own transformation draws us to connect with different people than when we started—or even NO people for a season as we become re-oriented.)
5. Fresh discovery of our own passions, spiritual gifts, and calling. As we are freed up from church/religious boxes, we are able to more thoroughly discover our uniqueness in the way that God shaped us (passions, gifts, and calling) leading to a new understanding of how he wants to work in and through our lives. I believe that, in some ways, this stage may lead to the most significant impact on the world as Christ’s church is renewed to walk in all of her splendor according to the unique way that each person is shaped. This may be considered a “convergent stage,” a coming together of several stages at once: our experience of re-booting to Jesus, our missional excitement about seeing the “real Jesus” shared among our neighbors, friends, and world, and our discovery of how we are uniquely created and gifted to serve and embody Jesus.
(A second side-note: transformational journeys are perilous in that they may lead to new directions in our life that we never imagined. My wife and I are spending much of our time traveling to developing countries which has come directly out of these converging stages. Of course, this process will lead in different directions for different people, but it should be noted that transformation always asks us to let go of our own life and allow Jesus to re-shape it.)
6. Integration of an organic, fruitful lifestyle with organic gatherings that support it. This is simply to re-iterate that gatherings may change as our life and lifestyle shift and that they ultimately support, synergistically, what God is doing through us as we experience stage #7
7. Our kingdom influence spreads and even becomes reproductive in its impact. Since organic life grows and reproduces, we will discover the life that God has shaped in us not only influences others but becomes a living, reproducing influence. For apostolic workers in unreached segments, this can lead to church planting movements. Although our callings and influence may differ from this (and from one another) I do believe that similar types of reproductive fruitfulness can and will occur as we walk out this process of re-discovery of life in Jesus. Ultimately, it is a transformational process that we are on. As we are fully renewed in Jesus and he draws out of us who we really are, the Spirit’s influence through us becomes more and more dynamic, natural, compelling, and living (i.e. reproductive in influence).
Please let me know how you relate (or don’t relate) to these stages!
Comments
11 responses to “Stages in the Journey of Simple/House Church”
This is a great post Roger!! I can totally relate to having gone through (actually still going through) these stages as the Lord has been taking me on this now six year journey from being a youth pastor in a traditional church to now focusing on the joy of moving to organic missional church movements!
Your post is an excellent summary of various stages of the journey. I think as long as we don’t crystalize aspects of any one stage we will keep moving forward knowing that we’ll never arrive. Since church is people rather than places, gatherings or methods, it will look different in various communities in as many ways as people are different.
Great post! As one who pastors a church on that journey from traditional to house-church we have definitely experienced these stages and continue to do so.
Thanks!
This reads like the work of someone who has indeed been praying for understanding and clarity! Terrific.
There is a lot of fear in moving away from tradition–some founded and some unfounded. Personally, my biggest roadblocks to moving to home church are:
1) accountability (it’s easy to become ‘lazy’ and to teach/learn/focus on one’s own thing, rather than to concentrate on what the Lord is sayng)
2) spiritual growth through teaching (having others teach helps each of the participants to grow; learning solely on our own limits our growth)
3) credibility (it has been my frequent experience that people in the Body and those who don’t yet know Christ won’t trust those who are not connected to larger church bodies; see #s 1 & 2)
Everything you’ve written resonates very strongly with me, both personally and with clients I work with as a life and leadership coach. I know in my spirit that the Lord is leading both my husband and me to teach and live Biblically, in some form or fashion away from bricks-and-mortar churches. I will keep these points in mind, continue to pray, and watch the Lord move!
Thank you for sharing this.
Nicole
Roger, I appreciate your work on this.
However, my sense is that what you’ve laid out is too often the exception than the rule. I believe a great many house churches have started up, struggled and then dissolved. In many cases, something seems to break down in stages two and three. The reason? My theory is that we have failed to think developmentally.
Children, as they grow up, need different things at different stages. Individual Christians, as they grow up, need different things at different stages (see “The Critical Journey” by Janet Hagburg). I believe the same is true for house churches and house church people.
People coming out of traditional church are often spiritual infants. They have been sitting in a pew their whole lives and have very little idea of how to hear God’s voice or how to function as a family. Some writers seem to imply that “rebooting to Jesus” means no human leaders and no structure. (This reminds me of Martin Luther’s comment that the church is like a drunken horseman. Prop him up on one side and he falls off on the other.) While this sounds good, I think it’s an overreaction to the abuses of traditional church leadership and it fails to take into account how God has designed us to grow. While well intentioned, it is actually a hindrance to genuine spiritual maturity.
The answer? In my opinion, it is to begin to think developmentally. That means not doing away with structure (spiritual disciplines) and leadership but providing the right kind that helps people grow to spiritual maturity. We need leaders who can discern what stage people (and groups) are in and give them the help they need to progress. We need leaders who, like parents, do as little as possible for their children but as much as necessary.
For three years, Jesus led like His Father. (“Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” Jn. 14:9) Paul did the same thing. (“I became your father through the gospel” 1 Cor. 4:15, 1 Thes. 2) To “reboot to Jesus” doesn’t mean no human leaders. Wise, spritual moms and dads understand developmental stages and help their children move through them. Children without these kinds of spiritual parents get stuck in a stage and rarely become spiritual grown ups. The same is true of house churches.
Hi Roger (i think that is the name?)
I am interested in what you are doing, or perhaps more accurately–not doing. We here in San Diego are still detoxing from traditionalitis. please post something about yourselves – answer the “W” questions– help us learn together.
pablo
SD. CA
Hi Pablo, you got the name correct (Roger). Perhaps the easiest way to get to know a bit more about me personally as well as what we are doing is to download the short online book that we offer free: http://www.simplechurchrevolution.com (see link also at top right of the blog. Blessings.
I don’t think roger was suggesting that suddenly we should have no leaders, or pastors, or elders, or any of that.
The problem with the organizational church model is that, like any organization, people have set tasks and roles and functions. These are applied by man, based on the skills and/or needs of the individual, as decided by the organization concerned. The desire of the organization is to keep the organization alive. This seems very good and straight forward, but its a crappy way to go.
These assigned roles (“Hi Im the worship leader” or “I’m a steward”) are usually decided by man, based on the individuals strengths (because they want the organization to survive – no one likes to lose a salary). Of course, God doesn’t not always select the obvious or apparently suited people for a job. In fact often the opposite happens. A conflict can arise very easily between the “sane” organizational direction (more people, more money, more buildings) and what God is telling the individual members. Many times the individuals whom have been assigned roles within the church find themselves stuck in them and like they have some obligation to them, and leave the “church” altogether rather then relinquishing their assigned role.
John, there always have been and will be, leaders, pastors, healers, evangelists. The move is away from labeling them, or caring how they are labeled, and onto the raw FUNCTION they were designed for -as decided by GOD and the individual, not what a certain organization decides. The pastor pastors, the leader leads, the teacher teaches. They don’t need permission from any institution, and we can call them “joe” and “robert” and “mate”, not leader and teacher and pastor and it makes no difference.
Roger, I actually do not relate at all to these stages. We are in the process of starting up a house church, but my starting point is entirely missional. I think Simple churches /House churches, done rightly, are a good way of reaching unbelievers, but I do not agree that it is the only right way of doing Church. What you seem to assume is that it some kind of reformation and return to a more biblical type of Christianity but, for instance, stages 3-5,7 do not require any type of Simple Churches to happen as I can see.
This seems to describe, almost to a “T,” what we have been going through…sensing a call to greater commitment to the Word of God…seeking a traditional church that had that same focus (difficult to find)…being providentially led to a small reformed denomination, thinking this was it, only to discover and become the victim of an abusive, authoritarian pastor and complicit session, to a more “loving” reformed baptist church but with the same “structured” environment and some similar legalistic tendencies.
We started meeting for fellowship (true fellowship around the word of God and ministering to each other from the Word, etc.) with a couple God providentially introduced us to at a bookstore a couple of years ago.
What is so interesting to me is that as much as I believe this is what we must do, it is also exciting that to do so would probably stretch my faith as never before and what keeps coming to me is that we would REALLY need to trust God, and to REALLY pray and to REALLY seek HIS WILL in each step of the way. Oh, did I mention in the recent past my husband and I have both become committed to equipping ourselves for either one-on-one and/or street witnessing/evangelism/preaching.
God has recently given me the “revelation” that he has planted us right in the middle of a 200+ apartment complex that is our “mission field” and I have begun seeking God about ways to begin making those contacts, etc., and reaching out to develop those realtionships that God may use us to disciple others right here.
So I see God at work in our lives and I also see the tendency you describe to be initially concerned with the “mechanics” of meeting, etc., etc., and the challenging, though exciting, move away from the institutional curch paradigm…as neither one of us have known nothing else for many years.
The prospect of being used by the Holy Spirit to do the Father’s will, just as Jesus did, is exciting and makes me want, even more, to “get out of the boat…” and trust God as we “walk on the water.”
Thanks for sharing this with us.
Hi Nicole,
I can appreciate the points you made. I would like to suggest that even in a traditional church setting the requisite accountability and growth does not necessarily occur, as it should, and when there are leaders who are not accountable or who will not hold others accountable it is a difficult situation.
Actually, I believe that the traditional church sets believers up to become comfortable in their particular state of sanctification, or even no sanctification if they are not even, in fact, saved.
What is so appealing to me is that in the simple/house/home church, if I understand it correctly, we meet with other believers and actually do what the Bible says about encouraging one another, confessing our sins to one another, singing and making melody in our hearts to God, praying to one another, etc., etc., and developing a true relationship with one another, not simply a “Hi, how are you? How was your week? How are the kids?” surface relationship.
It could be that your experience in church has been very different than mine but if it is you should know that there are many churches which are this way.
With regard to teaching, the media explosion has given us almost unlimited access to excellent Bible teachers from which to listen/watch/learn and then to recommend and/or share the insights with others. Of course we need to discern but we have the Holy Spirit and God’s promise that he will lead us and give us wisdom if we ask and are humble.
Credibility is also a concern of mine. But my bigger concern, for myself, personally, is that the credibility I am concerned about is my credibility before man…which, according to the Word of God, as I understand it, is not where our concern should lie. The Bible teaches against becoming man-pleasers. The only “credibility” we need to be concerned about is our credibility, as it were, with God. I’m not saying I’m where I should be on this. It is a struggle…what will my church say, what will my friends say, what will my family say?
So while I can relate to what you are saying, from personal experience, it simply point up the fact that to do this will put me in a position of depending on God and not myself…which, if I understand correctly…is God’s will to begin with and I must become, even more a doer of the word and not just a hearer(Phil 4:6,7).
Thanks for sharing. It is a great encouragement to know that others think about these things too.
Cheryl