Simple Church Journal

Harold Behr shares some thoughts on building relational bridges:

“Listening”

Many people are looking for an ear that will listen.   The do not find it among Christians, because these Christians are talking where they should be listening.   But he who can no longer listen to his brother will soon be no longer listening to God either; he will be doing nothing but prattle in the presence of God too…   But Christians have forgotten that the ministry of listening has been committed to them by Him who is Himself the great listener and whose work they should share.   We should listen with the ears of God that we may speak the Word of God.     Life Together, D. Bonhoeffer, Harper San Francisco, pg. 98-99

“Refusing to bring Judgement”

As George Fox says “”And this know….though the way in which people are guided seems to thee diverse, yet judge not the way, lest thou judge the Lord, and knowest not that several ways hath God to bring His people out by; yet all are one in the end”

“Practices of Inclusion”, or “Welcoming the Stranger”

Recognizing we are called to the “Ministry of Reconciliation”, and this is done by calling forth “The Good, the Right and the True” (Eph 5:9)  in all that are invited.  Refuse the “modern” concept of secular versus “Christian”.  Recognize and act upon the fact that the ground is level for all of us at the foot of the cross, note Eugene Peterson’s expression “Insiders and Outsiders rejoice together (Rom15:120Rom 3:9 (Basically all of us insiders and outsiders start out in identical situations….”

In an emergent simple church gathering a leader might say something like “I’m more convinced then ever that we don’t have a clue about Christianity.  I’m not an orthodox Christian anymore, I’m not a protestant,  the kinds of questions we are asking are very different from the questions asked at other times and venues.  Is christianity necessary?  Whose religion is it anyway?  What does it mean to incarnate Christ, to live redemptively in a materialistic world?   Dwight Frieson, Quest, Seattle, from the new book  “Emerging Churches” Gibbs & Bolger  page 117.

Dan Kimball provides an excellent diagram of a typical reality: the longer we are Christians the fewer non-Christians we are around:

Kimball says: "The irony is that we are on a mission for Jesus, but the more older and mature we become as Christians (and hopefully wiser), the less non-Christians then get to see and experience Jesus in us. I am talking about actual relationships and friendships where trust and dialogue are built with people who get to know us personally, not just street witnessing type of a thing to strangers.

Instead of only circling in closer with all Christians as we get older and more mature in our faith, shouldn't it almost be the opposite as we grow older? Of course, provided we maintain Christian community in the midst of being on a mission for Jesus, as we all need Christian community. But it seems ironic that when we mature and know Scripture better, and Jesus better and are transformed all the more by the Spirit – that less and less non-Christians get to really experience that through relationships with us since we are more and more entrenched in the Christian sub-culture."

This is incredibly true… and incredibly sad… and incredibly upside down.

Neil Cole, Organic Church, suggests that, like any missionary, we need to identify a pocket of people who do not have a vital Kingdom witness and then enter into relationship with those people.  Thus, we intentionally develop new oikos connections with non-Christians.  I know this sounds easier then it is, but it has been my own personal prayer-longing to do just that over the past year or so.  I am not trying to "target" people and go after them.   Rather, it's about deliberately reversing the trend in my own life, of over 20 years, of self-entrenchment into the Christian sub-culture "compound" and attempt to "come out" and live life fully and relationally in the world.

How is this going for others?

In case you have not seen some of the reaction to George Barna’s book, Revolution, here is a sampling.  Written by Charisma Magazine editor Lee Grady in the January edition:

The well-known Christian researcher has gone too far this time: He’s advocating the demise of the local church…

The tempered sociologist has now become something of a mad scientist. By cooking the numbers, reinterpreting the data and injecting his own biases into this odd experiment, he has created a Frankenstein that is now on the loose.

We should all be concerned about this monster.

Barna’s theory is that large numbers of American Christians are disillusioned with the church and have quit the Sunday morning routine. He applauds this trend, and has labeled these church dropouts “revolutionaries” who—in his opinion—have more spiritual creativity and passion than stick-in-the-mud traditionalists.

He also believes that those who have left the mainstream church scene will overhaul modern Christianity, describing their mission as “a daring redefinition of the church as we know it.”

He offers a gloomy assessment of the future of the American religious scene, claiming that by the year 2025 (1) the number of churches in this country will dramatically decline; (2) church attendance will drop while at the same time the “revolutionaries” will be devoting their time to other “spiritual events”; (3) donations to churches will drop; and (4) fewer clergy will receive a livable salary while denominations are forced to make huge cutbacks…

But what Barna wants to do is reinvent the church without its biblical structure and New Testament order—and without the necessary people who are anointed and appointed by God to lead it. To follow this defective thesis to its logical conclusion would require us to fire all pastors, close all seminaries and Bible colleges, padlock our sanctuaries and send everybody home to be discipled by somebody on the Internet or at a “spontaneous” worship concert. (After all, who needs buildings? Megachurches are so ‘90s.)

The message of Revolution is not for Christians in the Third World, and it is not for us. With all respect to Barna, who has helped us in the past with his facts and observations, this flawed proposal needs to be recalled before it causes some serious damage.

You can read the entire article here.

I suppose this type of reaction is to be expected!

Thanks, John White, for the heads up.

"What is house church? At its most basic and intimate level, house church is the pursuit of God in the company of friends who are learning to dance . . . with God and with one another."

This quote is by Maurice Smith and comes to me via John White.  If you haven’t seen the article it is worth posting here in its entirety for your benefit and pleasure:

Fred Astair, House Church & Dancing In The Dark

O.K. I confess. I love old movies. I’m one of those afficionados who genuinely believes that the best overall movie ever made was (and still is) “Casablanca” (Yep, I have the 50th Year Anniversary Edition, just in case you were wondering – which you probably weren’t). When my wife and I are in the mood for a movie, we often turn to an old classic. And nothing is more classic than watching an old song & dance musical. Even as I write this I’m watching an old Fred Astaire movie (The Band Wagon) in which he dances with Cyd Charisse to the music of “Dancing In The Dark.” Talk about beautiful music combined with incredible gracefulness. It’s the story of two very different dancers who must learn to dance together, despite their differences. O.K., if you think that’s tough, in “Royal Wedding” Fred Astaire dances with . . . a hat rack, and he makes the hat rack look good and the whole thing look easy!

So, what’s all this got to do with house church you ask. (As my daughter says when we’re translating Greek together, “Wait for it, dad, wait for it!”) If you ask the question “What is house church?” among house church participants you’ll get a wide variety of answers, which reflect the varying interests and emphasis of the different house churches. If you were to visit on one particular evening devoted to prayer and worship, you might conclude (both rightly and wrongly) that house church was a prayer meeting. If you were to visit on a different night when teaching was being emphasized you might conclude (again, rightly and wrongly) that house church is all about teaching. On yet another night when a mature 5-fold prophetic individual is ministering, you might conclude that house church is all about a ministry of giving and receiving prophetic words. And on still another night when God is moving and all the gifts are functioning thru many people you might conclude that house church in borderline pandemonium (and you would be right . . . and wrong . . . again). By now you should be getting the point, namely, that house church is about all of these things, and yet, it is about NONE of these things.

So, allow me to return now to my dancing metaphor. House church, like our individual relationships with God, is about learning to dance with God . . . and then with each other. Dancing represents a very intimate relationship between two people. It requires communication, practice, allowing someone else to lead (control!) while you and I follow, and becoming so intimately acquainted with another person that you can sense (and eventually anticipate) their every move by looking in their eye or watching the inflection of their body. And it requires a deep level of trust. If you have ever watched ice dancers in the Olympic games, then you have seen the intricate moves which require each partner to trust one another, often at substantial personal risk. But when it comes together it is beautiful to watch. I still vividly remember Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean performing their intricate and intimate dance to Ravel’s “Bolero” at the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo (earning them 12 perfect 6.0s and a gold medal). Wow.

O.K., let’s go back to the question. What is house church? At its most basic and intimate level, house church is the pursuit of God in the company of friends who are learning to dance . . . with God and with one another. Is house church about more than that. Yes, of course it is. Revival, church planting, city-reaching, neighborhood and community transformation, and much more. But ultimately, all of those “other things” are dependent for their success upon people and house churches who have discovered, practiced and are learning the intricate and intimate art of dancing with God and with one another.

Several years ago blind Christian recording artist Ken Medema did a song that I’ll never forget. I don’t recall the title and have since lost the album (bigger than a CD and played on something called a “record player” – just in case you were wondering). But the words went like this:

He asked me to dance though I’d never tried dancing before,
I had visions of saints & angels laughing us right off the floor,
Although I protested it just wouldn’t be any good,
He gently insisted and finally I told him I would.
Unforgettable, he was the coming of Spring on a cold winter’s day;
Unforgettable, he taught this singer to sing in a whole new way.

So, tell me. How are your dancing skills, both with God and with other believers in your house church? This is a challenge for those of us who have grown up and spent most of our Christian lives in what I call the “rationalistic wing” of the church, where what little dancing that occurs is very carefully scripted and choreographed to make everyone look good. Unfortunately we want to bring this carefully rehearsed script into house church, and the results thus far have been , , , disappointing. As the coming season of spiritual awakening and outpouring begins, I believe God is once again going to teach His people the intimate and intricate art of dancing with Him and with each other. There is a certain degree of risk here, the risk of “saints & angels laughing us right off the floor”. But trust me (and I’m still learning this). If Fred Astaire can dance with a hat rack and make it look good and easy, chances are that Jesus can dance with you and make it . . . unforgettable.

Frank Doiron, in a previous comment, has challenged us to actually get out of our comfort zones and step out into living kingdom, incarnational lives.

He quotes Alan Roxburgh who wrote:

“We are in a moment when the deconstruction and critique of existing maps needs to be wedded to a company of people willing to risk forth upon the seas to discover the holy gusts of the Spirit pulling us to new lands and worlds that can’t be imagined yet.”

Frank goes on to say:

My wife and I are asking personal questions…. What do we (personally) need to do to serve others. Are we ready to count the cost? How do we re-order our priorities, etc. If we wait for others (as in our house group) to come along we will never get started.

[WE are] getting on our knees and asking for partners in this work. (Those who are really interested in mission)…

We have no interest in planting church services…

I think there is a place for discussion and opinion but I know those of us who believe in mission long for a group that is ready to risk. A group where discussion leads us forward and not freezes us. A group where we don’t have to convince most of them of the need to reach out.

Frank invites you to email him if you want to share ideas and encourage one another on living missionally.  Frank, put me on the list.

It seems in recent posts we have been pondering the issue of what it means to live the Jesus-life (with Him and in the world incarnationally) as the priority over getting caught up with the form that church takes.

This reminds me of a recent quote by Frank Viola in theooze.com:

Before we can truly understand anything meaningful about the church, we must first be captured by a consuming revelation of the Person for whom it exists. Therefore, we must always begin with the Lord Jesus. We must always start with Him.

If we start out with the church, instead of with the One for whom it lives, we will end up with something quite distorted. As one writer put it:

"The church is so important! Yet her significance fades away compared to the glory of our Christ Himself. We face grave dangers when we ‘major’ on the church and especially on its ‘structure.’ We should major on the Lord and minor on the church . . . at most . . . If Christ is not exalted, we are building on sand, using wood, hay, and stubble as materials. All will be burned up. Whenever Christians, throughout the age, have built on a foundation other than Christ, the storms have come and living churches have fallen into spiritual death."

Thus, I ask the question, what is really the goal here?

It sometimes seems that the assumption is that the goal is to plant churches.  We may word it in different ways: start new communities, reproduce organic churches, plant house churches, etc, etc.  In fact, I acknowledge that many, in the "house church movement" that I more-or-less-relate to, assume that this is the goal.  In fact, from my missiological "training," planting churches is pretty much the end-all: "a community of believers within reach of every person in every ethnic group."

But is this really "the goal?"

I, personally, would love to see a community of believers, who are gathering together and expressing kingdom life, within reach of every person on the earth.  I think God would love to see that.  But does that make it "the goal?"  What we focus on ("the goal") often takes on a distorted sense of importance.  Thus, Viola’s point: "If we start out with the church [as the goal]… we will end up with something quite distorted.

Is it even proper to think in terms of "a goal?"

I would like to suggest that Jesus did have "goals" in mind, but that they are very different than what we tend to consider.

He clearly had the goal (or at least the intention) to proclaim the reality of Kingdom life (the presence, reign, and life of God is now available) to many, many people within his assigned mission field (Israel).  Furthermore, he had the goal (intention) to touch people’s lives: healing, freeing, blessing, etc.

I think the reason we look past these "people-oriented" goals is that they are not functionally measurable–thus they do not really fit into our western method of intentional living.  We want to see a functional end-point and then we can strategize the steps to get there.  Thus we like to start by envisiong a functional-type goal such as the formation of a church community, or the planting of churches.

Despite Jesus’ desire (most likely) to see communities of believers supporting and loving one another, I think he was focused on something more basic as His priority: bringing life to people.  I suspect we know that this is the goal, but we (I) tend to default into a way of thinking that says: "the best way to bring life to people is to plant effective, simple communities that will thrive and thus support people’s spiritual life."  But, the moment I have done this, I may have turned my eyes off the real goal: loving, healing, freeing people.

Do I think communities are important?  Absolutely!  Jesus assumed that believers would support and love one another in community life.  I just sense (as I talk and listen to many, many people) that we so quickly move our eyes away from loving people into the more functional world that we are comfortable with: set functional goals, make plans, and move toward the objectives that have been set.  Without realizing it, our own goal-oriented agendas become the focus while the objects of God’s love and purposes (people) become secondary to our own functional plans and goals.

Can loving God, hearing Him, and loving the people assigned to me really be a sufficient goal?  I think it must be.  I think it’s difficult.  For me, it’s a challenge.  But I believe if I can remain free of my need-to-be-in-control-of-a-goal-oriented-process, I will be freer to be involved in the work of loving people that I am called to.  I believe the end result of this is that we will see the kingdom’s message and power spread to every ethnic group.  He will do it while I learn to stay focused on my part.

I just want to take this opportunity to express my gratitude for the community that gathers around these web pages.  The dialogue/discussion/community-life that takes place here has become one of the richest and most important sources in my life from which I draw an immeasurable amount of strength, encouragement, support, challenge, growth, chastisement (in the most positive, biblical sense of the word), and affirmation.  The ongoing conversation provides me with a constant growth-edge because of the diverse perspectives that are shared here with both honesty and love.

I feel a friendship and connection to all who take part, even the occasional readers, that I would not have thought possible in a "cyber" community.

The Holy Spirit, expressing Himself through the diverse Body of Christ as we commune with one another, is the miracle of the incarnation that we get to experience day in and day out–not just on Christmas.

Thanks so much for being a significant part of that expression in my life!

Have a Blessed Christmas, Roger

Eddie Gibbs (Emerging Churches) provides the insight that the "emerging church"  seeks to end the dualism between sacred and secular so that all of life becomes sacred.  Some of what I read in Gibbs’ book seems to hang on to the concept of church-as-a-service in which the worship service becomes more connected to the arts, creation, and natural beauty–thus bringing the sacred and secular together within the "church service" context.  However, I also see that Gibbs describes a focus on living authentic Christian lives "out there" within our culture.

Again, as with the last post, I don’t want to get into a discussion about the whole "emerging church" thing, I’m simply looking for the themes that I see God stirring in all of His people and moving us toward.  In this case, the theme is that many of us are seeking to live our lives, our whole lives, connected to the Source.  We desire to see Christ’s presence incarnated through us in every situation we are in.  We want to see our communities infiltrated with Christ’s presence by the way He is living through us.

Everywhere we go, we are His church, His Body, His life with skin on.  We are on holy ground everywhere that we are because He is with us, in us, and working through us.  In this way, there is no sacred verses secular because our whole lives, even as we are out in the cultures we live within, are organically connected to His kingdom life.

Therefore my focus is on how to bring the reality of the sacred into my everyday life and culture and world.  I believe that this is at the heart of what it is to emerge from churchianity into a living, lifestyle of Christianity.

The Lord spoke to Jim Montgomery, from DAWN Ministries, these words: "See to it that I, the Lord, truly become incarnate… in every small group of people on earth."  Jim suggests that what God wants to do is communicate His wonderful message of the Kingdom in a totally contextualized way in every small group of people.  This happens as born again believers exercise the gifts of the Spirit and function as the body of Christ out in the context of their world and culture.  In this way "Jesus Christ becomes incarnate in all his beauty, compassion, power and message in the midst…"

This, for me, is the heart of eliminating sacred/secular split.  Wherever we go as believers, God is present because we are incarnating His presence.  The form of church gathering that we use is simply a support system, an important community-family context, OUT OF WHICH we live incarnationally in the world.

Now, having said all that, I want to confess my shortcomings.  I am still very much wrestling with what this looks like.  Most of us were trained that, in order to "serve Christ" in the world meant that we had to give our testimony or share a gospel tract once a day.  This is NOT contextualized incarnational living.

Then, as we wrestle with what this means, we become servants to those around us.  We do not say much about our faith because we don’t want to "do it the old way" so we quietly "share our faith" with our deeds.  Somehow, this also seems to come short of living incarnationally when compared to the powerful impact that Christ had on those around Him.

So…  this post is open-ended.  It’s meant to be a discussion-starter.  I believe my heart is the same as every person who is reading this.  We long to see an entire region saturated with the presence of Christ so that, as Montgomery said, His "beauty, compassion, power, and message" touches every person.  We do not want to "do" church we want to be HIS people.

Do we have ANY idea what this looks like or where we begin?

I have NOT been walking a journey that fully identifies with what has been termed the "Emerging Church."  In fact, I have had a difficult time pinning down just what the term "emerging church" refers to.

However…  I have been reading Eddie Gibbs’ book "Emerging Churches" which has brought clearer understanding to me re "Emerging Church" and is allowing me to see that some of the more recent "Emerging Church Dialogue" (according to Gibbs) has many similarities to where God has brought me in my journey.

First the background:  According to Gibbs the emerging church "movement" first focused on developing megachurch type churches that were geared toward the postmodern gen-xers.  Then, there were attempts to develop a church-within-a-church model in which the "postmodern" church existed within the context of a larger "boomer-style" church.  Also, there have been attempts to develop small communities (house churches) as a style of church that would reach out to the postmodern generation.

BUT… says Gibbs… the shift now is AWAY from focusing on the FORM that the church should take and, instead, seeking to understand "what the life of Jesus means."  Gibbs quotes Zander Dieter who planted gen-xer churches in all of the previously-mentioned ways but now has no desire to pursue "church planting."  Instead, his desire is to "form communities of people that produce apprentices of Jesus who live in the gospel and communicate and draw others in a matter of course to the way they live."  He says, "I want to form apprentices in the life of the kingdom."

If this is where the "Emerging Church" dialogue has arrived, then I can readily connect with this aspect.  Gibbs offers an entire chapter called "Identifying with Jesus" in which he claims that this is now the key message of the emerging church.  I want to highlight this aspect with the following quotes from this chapter:

"Our commitment is to be a missionary at all times.  Everything we do in our lifestyle, in what we say, in how we treat people, that’s all our witness.  It’s all mission…  We are definitely all missionaries and evangelists."

"Emerging churches take up this challenge, creating 24/7 missional communities that seek to express the kingdom in all they do."

"It is not about church form but about the kingdom.  The kingdom transcends all forms…  The answer does not reside in church structure but in the way of life modeled by Jesus and what that life looks like in our context today."

"They do not seek to start churches per se but to foster communities that embody the kingdom.  Whether a community explicitly becomes a church is not the immediate goal.  The priority is that the kingdom is expressed."

I know there are many aspects to what is called "Emerging Church" and I don’t even pretend grasp all of it.  Nor am I interested in debating the various aspects of it.  But I, for one, have been "emerging" into the paradigm that has been described by these quotes.  It’s not about some church form (not even "house church" form), it’s about living a Jesus-life, all day, everyday.  Community life supports the Jesus-life-in-us, not the other way around.  We live with Jesus in the world as our primary calling–each and every day.  We gather with others to support that Jesus-life and to build up one another.  I believe in keeping community life SIMPLE (New Testament style) so that it SUPPORTS our life-with-Jesus-in-the-world rather than hinders it.

The key paradigm shift that I would love to see everyone emerge into is that it is not about living for the church (in any form) but simply living for the Kingdom–with and for Jesus.  Perhaps this is exactly what is happening!