Simple Church Journal

We like to say it this way.

Rather than:

1. A service or event I attend
2. A denomination or organization I become a member of
3. A program I fit into and help build

Simple church, real church, is:

1. A way of life (extravagant lovers of God engaging the world 24/7 with love, power, and word)
2. A simple community (a spiritual family that gathers with full participation
3. Natural, organic multiplication

read or add your own comments here

One of the best DVD resources to-date, is the newly re-made “Tidal Wave” produced by House2House ministries.  It offers an excellent introduction on the increase of simple/house churches around the world, why the movement is growing in this country, and then describes several of the key components of simple churches:

1. Real community life
2. Everyone is involved
3. Churches are rapidly reproducible
4. Church forms remain liquid and flexible
5. Leadership serves and empowers others
6. and more…

This is a wonderful way to introduce individuals or a group of people to key concepts.  It is available here.

read or add your own comments here

The following story is from Floyd McClung’s book, “Starting a House Church.”  It illustrates all of the basic principles of starting and multiplying simple churches: going, praying, reaching a person of peace, empowering that person to disciple others and to start simple/house churches…

A U.S. businessman named William was making $350,000 a year but was bored.  To alleviate his boredom, Bill decided to go and serve the poor in the Indian sub-continent.  During a time of prayer, Bill felt the Lord saying that he should invest his time in discipling a young man who was a paraplegic.  After a couple of years spend in training him, Bill encouraged this young man to start a church for his friends, many of who were also in wheelchairs.  These were people who nobody wanted—the outcasts (one of the lowest castes in Hindu society), the lepers, the homeless, and the disabled.

Bill, meanwhile, started businesses to employ the “unemployable,” giving life skills and training to people who otherwise had nothing going for them.  I (Floyd) attended their church, called Beautiful Gate, recently and witnessed 200 people crammed into a small room for a celebration involving seven of their house churches around Kathmandu.  All the elders were sitting in front, and all were wheelchair-bound.  During the worship time, I saw people with missing fingers raising their hands.  Others had missing noses and ears—all due to leprosy.  Despite their affliction, the joy of the Lord was there and the people were worshiping Him with all their hearts.  It was an absolutely moving and gorgeous scene to witness.”

Bill provides coaching and spiritual oversight from behind the scenes.  He told me, “We pray everyday, go to the poor, I disciple people and pour my life into them, we encourage them to gather in small home groups, and as soon as we can, we multiply.”

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Assurances about Feedblitz, Links, and RSS Feeds.  Let me say upfront that, despite the new look, there should be NO changes in functionality for your feedblitz subscription, for your links, or for your rss feeds.  Everything should work just as it did before.

Enhanced Newsletter Capability.  With the new look comes a better process for those who wish to receive the House Church Blog (now SimpleChurch Journal) in your email box.  IF you previously subscribed to this blog through feedblitz, then skip this part… you are all set.  You do NOT need to subscribe again.  However, if you have not subscribed before, then you can receive all of the posts in your email box.  AND, your email box will not be flooded with mail.  Instead, every 2-3 weeks you will receive ONE email with all of the posts you have not read (usually 2-4 articles).  Your email information will be kept confidential.  You can sign up for this here.

So, Why the New Look?  I started the House Church Blog early in 2004 as a place to process my own transitioning thoughts.  It provided a place for me to think, dump, and listen to others.  I have met and continue to interact with many wonderful “commenters.” It has been an invaluable meeting place for me as I have walked through this season.  At the same time, the House Church Blog also became a resource for others who are transitioning.  Without knowing anything about search engines, it turns out that Google likes blogs and that many people who google house-church topics end up at this site.  As a result, over the years, I have attempted to make it a useful tool for others.  One example of this is providing “The Basics” (right hand column) which many people read through when they first come to the site.

So… these current changes are about making the House Church Blog even more useful.  It seems that I receive more and more emails requesting “newsletter” type info that can be delivered into people’s inboxes.  In fact, several years after “blogs” became the in-thing, it turns out that only about 10% of all computer users make use of rss feeds (which is what makes blogs easy to access and read).  This means that most people are relying on info that comes into their email boxes to stay up-to-date.  So, rather than start a newsletter project, I am morphing the House Church Blog into a combo.  It will still function “blog-like” exactly like before.  AND, with the help of feedblitz (which I was already using), I can send out 2 or 3 posts at once (just like a newsletter) into people’s email inboxes.  This will allow more people access to the articles and community that make up this blog.  Again, if you would like to subscribe to this feature, check here.

New Name?  Well, that was just the icing on the cake for me.  All of this gave me the opportunity to go with a new name and look… just feeling like it was makeover time.

Let me know if you have any questions!

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One of the most difficult things to communicate regarding simple/house church is that we really, really do now want to just re-invent a new (or ancient) form of church.  Instead, we are seeking to re-capture the essential “church life” that Jesus taught—a way of life.  We are, at the core, radical Jesus-followers lived out in the context of everyday life, not church-goers.  The form (when and how we gather) should, simply and fluidly, support the dynamic life that Jesus’ lit-up followers are living and not replace it.

Andy Zoppelt wrote the following in an email:

"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…

"If there is a method in the NT church, it would be one based on life: humility, brokenness, love and faith."

Frank Viola stated the same thing:

"When we raise up a church, we rarely if ever talk about form. We do not talk about the wineskin. We give the people the wine. We preach Christ. We give them Christ. We show them how to know Christ.  Out of that emerges naturally the ekklesia."

We have been programmed in our mechanical culture to do just the opposite.  “Build the structure and the people will come.”  Planning, building, and organizing is so engrained into our way of life, that we are certain that if we put the externals in place then life will flow. 

The result is that when people want to learn about simple/house church, what they come wanting to learn is how to structure the thing.  They want to start with form.  They want to know how to get this thing “right”—referring to the external “how tos.”

I am not saying that we cannot learn a thing or two, from one another, about how to gather: letting the Spirit lead and releasing the spiritual gifts of the entire community.  But I am suggesting that we cannot start there.  I am suggesting that when these “how tos” become the focus, we are back to elevating form and we will snuff out the life.  Structures are meant to support life.  When they become the focus then we will soon find ourselves following an external form of religious practices instead of following Jesus.  Before long, the structure itself replaces the living relationship and power of the Christian life.

Let me ask it this way.  How much time did Jesus spend teaching on what to do when you gather for worship or prayer?  How to do a Bible study effectively?  What to do when the church gathers together?  Conversely, how much did Jesus spend on the “way of life”:

• Love God with your whole heart
• Love your neighbor as yourself
• Let your light shine
• Do what you see the Father doing
• Give (live generously)
• Go into all the world

Following Jesus is life.  Following Jesus is the way of life.  Want to know how to do simple/house church?  Do that: follow Jesus.  Make it a lifestyle.  Then find some friends who want to do the same thing.  Then find some friends who do not know Jesus and help them to do the same thing.  Then the rest will fall into place:

• You will learn how to share life with one another—building authentic community
• You will discover how to fully appreciate every person’s spiritual gift that you gather with
• You will continue to live missionally individually and as a group
• The dynamic life of a Jesus follower will multiply from one disciple (follower) to the next.

Voila!  Simple church is birthed.

Speaking of way of life… Shane Claiborne’s book describes a passion for living with and for the poor.  His commitment to following Jesus involves meeting “God in the sewers of the ghetto.”  His community, “Simple Way,” had its genesis when Shane and others moved in with a group of homeless people who were being evicted from an old cathedral they had found refuge in.

Regardless of whether or not you are called to join Shane in the inner cities of America, his book will challenge you to live radically for Jesus… and that this is the core of the Christian message.  His story lives out the article above that “life precedes form” and that we must, in a revolutionary way, capture the fullness of that life.

Here are a few quotes:

“Christians pretty much live like everybody else, they just sprinkle a little Jesus in along the way.”

“Don’t let the world steal your soul.  Being a Christian is about choosing Jesus and deciding to do something incredibly daring with you life.”

“There is a movement bubbling up that goes beyond cynicism and celebrates a new way of living, a generation that stops complaining about the church it sees and becomes the church it dreams of.”

“Little movements of communities of ordinary radicals are committed to doing small things with great love.”

“I once heard the saying, ‘God comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable.’”

“Christianity can be built around isolating ourselves from evildoers and sinners, creating a community of religious piety and moral purity. That’s the Christianity I grew up with.  Christianity can also be built around joining with the broken sinners and evildoers of our world crying out to God, groaning for grace.  That’s the Christianity I have fallen in love with.”

Here are a couple of practical tools.

Gatherings.  We sometimes like to dramatize certain passages of Scripture together.  Yep, actually act them out.  If this sounds Sunday-schoolish, well, perhaps.  In fact, it is a great way to involve children.  Everyone acts awkward about it at first, but jump in and people have a great time.  We have one person narrate the story, while others act out what is being described.  And… you will be amazed at the insights that come to people as they put themselves in the shoes of the people they are representing.  No, really!  It can be very illuminating.

Reaching out.  Whether or not you are familiar with Sjogren’s concept of “servant evangelism,” you might want to take a look at his book “Irresistible Evangelism.”  It is one of his more practical books with plenty of ideas for living out a “serving presence” in ordinary life.  The Gospel really is lived out one person at a time offering extraordinary love to others.  We will all do this in different ways… so we do not want to try to fit ourselves into some type of Christian “how to” mold.  But Sjogren’s book can provide some ideas and inspiration for those who flow with this type of daily serving.

Sally Morgenthaler, author of Worship Evangelism, has recently concluded that worship-driven churches, despite their best efforts, are not attracting the unchurched.  This is a complete turn-around from when she wrote her book.  Her article here is filled with wonderful honesty as she acknowledges that the worship culture is often self-absorbed and the unreached are not attending these Christian “parties.”

Here are a few excerpts of note:

By 2002 a few pastors of praise and worship churches began admitting to me that they weren’t making much of a dent in the surrounding non-Christian population, even though their services were packed and they were known for the best worship production in town….

As negative attitudes toward conservative Christianity among the unchurched increased in the late 90s and early 2000s, most large-congregation growth efforts became more focused on the churched consumer, even as their written and spoken vision remained focused on the unchurched…

The upshot?  For all the money, time, and effort we’ve spent on cultural relevance—and that includes culturally relevant worship—it seems that we came through the last 15 years with a significant net loss in churchgoers, proliferation of megachurches and all…

Sally goes on to describe her transition: “As culture has become incessantly more spiritual and adamantly less religious, we… have become convinced that the primary meeting place with our unchurched friends is now outside the church building.”

Yes, yes, and yes!

Imagine the millions of dollars that has gone into these worship productions with a net result of so little.

Nevertheless, lest we rest on our laurels as we smugly acknowledge that “we knew it all along,” Morgenthaler reminds us that the needed alternative is to live life with our neighbors and do the work of building relationships outside the walls.  Great challenge!!  Indeed, it is much easier to evaluate what is not working in church-dom, then to take steps toward “being” the living church where we live.

I really like a quote from Shane Claiborne that says it’s time to "stop complaining about the church we’re disillusioned with and become the church we dream of."

You can read Sally’s entire article here.

Video Courtesy of House2House Ministries

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