Just a note of thanks to all who participated in the last post by sharing their deconstruction stories. I have found it very, very fulfilling to get to know many of you in this way. It’s amazing the diversity of backgrounds and experiences, yet the similarity of how God is working in moving his people toward simplicity and freedom.
If you have not yet, feel free to scroll down to the previous post and join the story-telling!
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…
I still remember the joy and freedom that came from stepping out of the institutional/organizational world of Christianity. In fact, that sense of relief is still with me almost four years later. John White forwarded a letter from a pastor recently out of a traditional church staff position:
As of midnight Saturday night…I AM FREE! No more institutional church. I am no longer on staff at my church… Please pray for Kristie and me (and our kids) as we "detox" for the next three months (or so). We want to follow God, relax, and rest in His presence… Sunday morning we slept in–the first Sunday morning "sleep-in" in my adult life… Then at 4:00 PM we went to a friend’s house for a house church meeting… We played some horseshoes in the backyard before dinner. We enjoyed communion together and ate a meal together. I got my guitar out and played a few songs and then the host popped in a worship CD, passed around some song sheets and we sang a few more worship songs. One lady’s dad who lives in Oklahoma had recently been diagnosed with cancer (lymphoma) and she was really upset, so we spent quite some time laying our hands on her and praying for her dad. It was a very moving time… The freedom is almost overwhelming!
But what is life like after detox? I have noticed a few shifts over the past year or so that are probably worth noting. I do not want the institutional-church lifestyle now any more than four years ago, yet…
But hey… we can still sleep in on Sundays (perhaps)! The missional adventure is more exciting than I ever thought it would be! Authentic community life is worth all of the challenges that go along with it.
In short, life after detox is more challenging than I expected, yet I am more convinced than ever that God is unleashing his church… one person, one simple church at a time… and it’s awesome to be a part!
We have invited some folk from our community who are interested in learning a little more about the "house church movement" to join us for some coffee and discussion. It has provoked me to reflect again on the basics which I always find to be an invigorating and useful exercise.
So, if you do not mind, I will use y’all for a sounding board here by outlining some of my thoughts.
Well… that’s a basic outline! It’s a challenge to walk it out. Pitfalls and victories along the way. Stumbling and learning as part of the process. But at this stage in my Christian life, I would not want to be pursuing anything short of God lighting us all on fire for his purposes.
I want to follow up on the last post on leadership with some quotes from an article given to me by Mike Steele (Dawn Ministries). I must confess that Mike may (or may not) be the author of the article (I will be checking with him to find out). –NOTE: I AM ADDING THIS TO THE POST ONE DAY LATER– MIKE STEELE IS THE AUTHOR. This article offers one important perspective on leadership: Leadership as Fatherhood.
This article first looks at the business model of leadership:
Based on the success-oriented model of the business world, the "bottom line" is the motivation in this form of leadership and strategies and measurable outcomes are the rule… Everyone’s activity is measured against the bottom line and their promotion and acknowledgement is based on meeting or exceeding the goals. Great ideas and large organizations come forth but run the risk of missing the mark of focusing our efforts on people and their growth and relationships.
The author then takes a look at team leadership which he calls a step in the right direction because of the multiple leadership. However, the organizational goals are still the focus:
Team members are rewarded for their contributions to the effort. Outcome is the bottom line and relationships are built on the ability of each team member to perform. Acceptance and recognition is based on your proficiency in adding to the outcome of the team effort. While this has merit, it does not exemplify the type of mutual love and benefit derived from a commitment to people over task.
Finally, this article looks at "the heart of the Father":
From my understanding of the Scripture, this ideal can be expressed in the concept of "The apostle who is a father." I believe the answer can be found in the heart of Father God. It is embodied in the saying "A weeping father crying out for his sons to overtake him." It is the blessing of a father that is irreplaceable in the life of those who will lead the church in the next move of God. I pray this would become the heart of leadership in the Church in America.
It is exemplified by fathers who mentor, empower and release their sons. These fathers are not controlling, but with wise counsel and wisdom "that comes with age" they impart to their heirs the way of the Kingdom. Continuously willing to resource and support the emerging generation and their call from the Holy Spirit, they encourage them to step out further into the vast arena of those seeking to have an intimate relationship with the Father.
You can download the entire article here:
There have been a lot of comments on previous posts regarding leadership, so I thought I would initiate a couple of new posts on the subject. I did a workshop at the Denver house church conference called "Re-Thinking Leadership: From Leading an Organization to Serving a Movement." I suppose, since I facilitated this workshop, that makes me "the expert." Haha. Just kidding. In fact, you might notice the title is "re-thinking" as in current-tense-still-in-the-process. I think we are all in this process of re-envisioning what leadership of an organic movement looks like and, therefore, there are no experts. This is what makes this such a dynamic conversation for today!
The workshop I did was set up to be participatory. However, I did set the stage with some pre-suppositions which I will share here as a starting point for this discussion on leadership.
Presupposition #1: Church is a living entity. Church is an explosion of God’s life through people. It is, by definition, an organic life-force process that God directs. It is the life and power of God flowing under his sovereignty through people who are submitted to his authority.
We have so over-used and mis-understood the term "church" that we often lose the divine nature of it. Church is people, yes, but it is all about God’s divinity–in all of his fullness and life–flowing in and through people. We might want to say that word "church "and envision fire around it and rivers flowing through it just to see clearly the divine-life nature of it. "Church" is inherently God’s own life being transmitted to and through people. In this sense it is organic, a living entity, in the most full-of-life sense imaginable.
Perhaps a good visualization, then, of this "divine explosion of life through people" that we call "church" would be a living river that has intelligence–God’s intelligence–behind it. The importance of this is that first of all, it is– like a river–filled with life and power. Secondly, it is a river that is fully under God’s direction (and God alone). Thirdly, it is neither sensible nor controllable. It sometimes flows calmly and gently, and then, in a moment, it rushes over a cliff and becomes a wild onslaught of rushing water that overflows banks and cannot be contained. Just because God is at work in and through people, we must not lose sight of the fact that "church" is people who are infused with an overflow of heavenly life that comes from the throne. We are alive to God because he has filled us with his organic, power-filled life. It is a life-force that is transmitted under his direction and command. It is truly alive and it is a beyond-this-world entity!
As a side note to this description of "church" I would say that, at the very least, it helps us to approach the topic of "leadership" (facilitating this divine flow of life) with great humility. After all, the most we can hope to do is to develop a deep intimacy with the one who commands this explosion of life, respond to HIS leading, and in that way take part in facilitating the furtherance of this life-force.
Presupposition #2: Organizational leadership, as a model for facilitating church (as a living life-force entity), is inadequate at best and detrimental at worst. Our business/organizational/leadership models are simply not up to the task for facilitating a living, God-directed process.
By definition, our organizational leadership models are about human control: set understandable goals, develop mechanized strategies to reach those goals, implement, evaluate. If you look at this clearly, you can see that we are in trouble right from the start. How can one set understandable goals for something as beyond-this-world as the living church? I am not suggesting that a believer must never set goals. We do live in a world that requires a certain amount of control and order. I am simply saying that using these tools as a primary way to bring leadership to God’s church is wholly unsatisfactory.
Presupposition #3: God’s way of leadership is foreign to us and therefore difficult to understand and implement. Most of us have been schooled and trained in the type of scientific thinking that makes it relatively easy to embrace organizational/business-type leadership. It simply makes sense to us. So much so, that it is difficult to get our minds around what leadership looks like without that basic paradigm.
The fact is, what we call "servant leadership" is not just a "biblical way" to go about doing organizational leadership. It is a completely different paradigm and basic definition of what leadership is. It simply does not fit into business/organizational leadership models nor does it fit comfortably into the way we think of leadership at all. It is a different way-to-think-about leadership altogether that is both discomforting and challenging because it does not allow us to "do leadership" within the context of the roles we are familiar with.
Henri Nouwen says this about biblical servant-leadership: "The servant-leader is the leader who is being led to unknown, undesirable, and painful places. The way of the Christian leader is not the way of upward mobility in which our world has invested so much, but the way of downward mobility ending on the cross."
I would like to suggest that the reason we struggle with understanding the reality of this type of leadership is because we have not really walked out the discomfort of its calling!
Nouwen goes on to say, "the world in which we live–a world of efficiency and control–has no models to offer to those who want to be shepherds in the way Jesus was a shepherd…"
I think this shows the difficulty of this conversation on leadership. We cannot really put our finger on "the model" because it is so foreign to us and so little seen.
Presupposition #4: Leadership, in the way it is meant to be expressed in the church today, is in fact vital. All of this to say that re-envisioning, re-defining, and re-thinking leadership is not just an intellectual exercise. We need today, more than ever, to see the church led by those who "get it"– by those who model rather than preach, who impart it by lifestyle not by platitudes, whose laid-down life is the offering that influences others, and who do not require recognition because their reward is to see the divine-explosion of live, kingdom life, increased on the earth.
More to come… (I think)… This is meant to be just a starting point!
I have not heard Frank Viola before so I was intrigued to attend one of his workshops at the Denver House Church Conference. He has an intense personality (not unlike his books) and certainly brings to the table many, many years of simple church / house church experience.
He used this workshop to answer questions that he has been most frequently asked over the years. My personal note is that I am serving as more of a reporter here and will reserve my own comments for another time.
1. What are the reasons that people leave institutional churches? Frank suggested that the best reason for leaving the institutional church is because of a deep revelation of Jesus Christ and his purposes that is powerfully compelling and that causes the person to realize that these purposes can only be fulfilled outside of the institution of church. He acknowledges that most people leave the institutional church for other reasons: they are born rebels, they have been hurt deeply, they are not getting enough of their needs met, they want to be scriptural, etc, etc. But Viola’s hope is that these people would ultimately come to the place of seeking a deeper grasp of Jesus Christ as their core motivation.
2. Who can start a house church? Viola admits that he is controversial on this issue. He asserts that spontaneous expressions of church start up all the time by all kinds of people and in all types of settings. He believes, however, that most of these expressions of church will be short-lived. He believes that there is an apostolic calling to plant churches, that those with apostolic callings are needed to bring revelation of Christ to the church, to center the church properly, and to nourish it. He believes that church expressions that spring up spontaneously would do well to bring in outside apostolic guidance and input.
3. I feel called to plant churches; what do I do? Frank recommends three books to those who feel called to plant churches. Two books are by Watchman Nee: "Normal Christian Church Life," and "Release of the Spirit." The third is by Viola himself: "So You Want to Start a House Church."
4. What can we expect in the first year or two in house church? Frank suggest that you can expect to walk through four distinct seasons. If you make it all the way through the four seasons, then you can expect these seasons to re-cycle:
5. What is the average life span of a house church? Frank says that most churches survive from 6 months to two years. He points back to the seasons just mentioned. Unless churches can navigate through the inevitable conflics and crises, they will self-destruct at a fairly early stage. He again asserts that they might do well to bring in outside help to navigate through the difficulties.
6. What is your view on elders in a house church? Viola asserts that a house church should never start with elders. He points to scriptural examples of this precedent (Paul in the book of Acts). He suggests that those who fulfill the role of elder should emerge naturally and organically as part of the body life growth.
7. What advice can you give us about children? Frank did not have specific advice on this issue. He was concerned about children being cared for. He was also equally concerned about the difficulties of being in community with parents whose commitment to their children supercedes their commitment to the church community. In other words, children need to be neither neglected nor worshipped.
Frank Viola’s materials can be found here.
I’m off to more of the workshop.
I am at the Denver House Church Conference and just heard Barna share some of his latest statistics on "alternative models of faith communities" in the U.S. Some of you will appreciate this since several of you wondered out loud (i.e. in comments) at the large number of people he stated were attending house churches.
In fact, his previous statistic (20 million Christians involved in house church) changed a bit when he asked the question about house church involvement with a bit more clarification by adding the phrase "and consider this home-gathering to be a complete church on its own." This phrase dropped the number of people attending house churches to about 5 million people. Furthermore, at least 6 out of 10 people who are involved in a house church by this definition continue to attend a conventional church and consider the conventional church to be their primary church.
Okay… now the statistics start to match experience. Many people are, in fact, exploring alternative faith communities and the numbers are growing. However we are still dealing with a movement that is in infancy stage… which I see as a good thing as God continues to mold and shape it and we don’t yet see the handprints of man’s programs all over it.
Nevertheless, he still considers the movement a revolution that will continue to change the church landscape over the next few years.
Some additional interesting facts about those involved in house church:
He also reports that there is a high level of satisfaction with spiritual depth and connectedness among those involved in house church (higher than those attending conventional churches).
Barna himself is involved in house church because of his awareness that the calling of God upon the church is to see transformed lives. He believes that this can only take place one person at a time in a relational context. He sees house church/ simple church as an ideal setting for transformation that leads to biblical revolution and impact-the-culture living.
Perhaps Barna’s most profound challenge to the house church movement (and any church expression willing to listen) is that we are still not emphasizing sufficiently the importance of children. "The war is often won or lost by the age of 13." An important point… perhaps something to ponder more on a future post.
I will try to share on other conference sessions over the weekend as soon as possible.
I attended a wedding last weekend. It was a typical, in-a-church, down-the-aisle, light-the-candles, kiss-the-bride, very-nice wedding. But for me it was much more than that. I was stepping back into a church culture that I had been part of for many years. I’m not talking about one specific church. In fact, there were people from several different churches present. But it was the town that I formerly pastored in, people that I knew, and an overall culture that, I believe, is very representative of the culture that makes up most of our church world.
I felt very much like an outsider. Of that I was I very glad.
Before I offer my reflections on this church culture I want to qualify my critique with a couple of important comments:
One last qualifying comment is that I critique this culture not to put others down, which serves no purpose, rather to challenge myself and others to grow, strive for something more, and to do my part to walk in greater repentance and, if possible, to be part of a healthier church culture because of the lessons learned.
Okay, I know, I know, enough qualifiers. Having said all of that, I want to explore some of the more negative aspects of this culture. In fact, I was so overwhelmed by my past memories of total involvement with this culture that it was all I could do to sit in my seat and not flee.
Marks of the American culture that I want to be free of:
1. There is a religious arrogance that permeates much of our church culture. It is very subtle and hard to pick up on since the words spoken are always so "loving" and "sweet." But everyone knows that there are rules followed to be part of the church culture and that those that fit the mold are "in." And it is an "in" thing and an "out" thing. By that I mean we have a quiet smugness about having found our way "in." We are, in fact, just a little better, thank God, and the only way others can be "in" like we are "in" is to find their way, first to Christ and then into the cultural rules that declare one to be "wholly in" (or is it "holy in").
What is even more distressing to me is that within this religious culture there are those who are slightly more "in" and those who are slightly less "in" creating a certain caste system that keeps everyone in place and knowing who is who.
2. Related to this religious pride is an exlusivity about the church culture. It is not a culture that is seeking, generally speaking, to incarnate the message of life to others. In fact those who are "radical" in an outreach sort-of way are often labelled as those "missions-minded" folks and, incredibly unless they are a key leader or pastor, often seen as not quite as "in" as others. In any case, the culture has an air of exclusivity that is quite contrary to the apostolic life lived by Jesus.
3. This culture is mired in spiritual passivity. I walked into the "church" box building. I sat in one of several hundred seats facing forward. I faced a platform with microphones and special lights shining on the stage area. Once the "service" began there were perhaps three people who contributed out of that group of several hundred. Now, I understand that this was a wedding, afterall, but it was still reflective of the way we do church. We train people in passivity. We teach people that observing others and nodding heads in agreement is a top-notch spiritual experience.
4. The culture is dependent upon its superstars and is slightly condescending toward those who are not. While the average Christian has learned to be passive, we find those with the flavor-of-the-year spiritual gifts (music, teaching, prophesying, etc) and ask them to be our representative superstars. We sometimes take people with little proven character and ascribe status to them because of their abilities. In so doing, we teach people that character is not as important as giftedness and that those without flavor-of-the-year gifts are slightly less valuable and important as others. This is not a culture of equal value, regardless of the sermons preached on the subject.
I suppose I could go on. I am not interested in bashing but learning. But I do want to look critically at the cultures I am a part of and have been a part of. I don’t want to just blindly follow those around me because it’s "the way we do it." I do not wish, in any way, to be a subversive or a difficult person, but I do want to attempt to be part of Christian cultures that truly value one another, that call for responsible spiritual involvement of every person, that are apostolic, and that are more relational and authentic than religious. May we continue to learn and grow.
We are only weeks away from two House Church Conferences sponsored by house2house–one in Saint Louis (Aug 25-27) and the other in Denver (Sept 1-4). I am very, very encouraged by the number of workshops that are being offered this year–which should make these conferences even more stimulating than ever.
You can find general conference information here.
My friend, Ken Eastburn, in a recent house2house newsletter shared his experiences with the house church conferences he has attended while transitioning from a traditional church into a house church network. I thought it was worth posting:
In the summer of 2004 I was encouraged to go to the National House Church conference in Denver by a house church planter. I was new to the idea of house church and at the time I was the pastor of a small "institutional" church in Southern California. The house church concept was intriguing but seemed a little out there.
I decided to take the risk. I brought my wife and three of my church leaders to the conference. It’s not an exaggeration to say that it was an event that literally changed the course of my entire life. We left the conference wondering if the Holy Spirit would lead our little church into the house church movement. And that’s exactly what he did.
I returned in 2005. This time I did not bring my wife to the conference (a move I regret) but returned with five of my leaders. By now they were all house church leaders. In a years time we had transitioned our church into a network of five house churches. Again the event was filled with stimulating speakers, intense conversations and connections with people from around the world.
This year we will return to Denver for the House Church conference. I am bringing my wife this time and my three sons. We are also bringing nine additional leaders to the conference. Our network now consists of eleven simple churches. We are beginning to see the house church conference as a staple of our network. Once you come and are a part of what God is doing, it seals the deal. Even those who are still wondering how they ended up in the movement go away blessed and excited. The conference is an investment in the Kingdom for our house church community.
So, why go to the conference? What will happen this year in Denver? What will the Holy Spirit do when he shows up? We won’t know until we get there and experience it together. Like any simple church meeting anywhere in the world, that’s what makes it so exciting.
Ken works with a house church network in Orange County called The Well. Ken will be doing a workshop on transitioning churches.
You can see some of the workshops that will be offered here.
In many ways, what I look forward to more than anything is getting to visit with those of you who are able to come. Looking forward!
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