Simple Church Journal

Alan Creech has a good post on what does it mean to gather with or be in community with others.  In other words, if we start with the premise that we are the church can this lead to an isolated approach to our Christian life: just be the church, fellowship here and there with whoever, no real part in a living community.

Alan says:

I’ll say first that there is a Holy We involved in being a part of the church. It’s not about just "me" and my relationship with Jesus. Have you heard that enough now? Well, it’s not. I don’t even think it’s primarily about that. I am not the Body of Christ and neither are you. WE are. And that Body as a whole takes the form of smaller pieces in which the Life of God is experienced and lived and through which His Grace to us flows for our transformation. That happens in a WE, not in an I. Those WEs are communities of faith (churches).

It’s easy enough to throw stones at the communities of faith (such as traditional churches) that are not working as well as we would like, but it’s a different issue to actually wrestle with the practical issue of what does it mean to live in community with others.

Alan goes on:

There has never really been a time in the history of The Church (as a whole) that being connected to Christ has been separated from being connected to a community of others who are connected to Christ. I’m not getting into exactly how that should flesh itself out right now. I’ve done enough of that before and probably will again at some point. The point for now would be that we all need to be a part of a community like this. I’m not sure it cuts it to just "be a Christian" at your house and hang out with people every so often. Yes, community is important. It’s like a greenhouse, like a garden, where we are planted and where we grow. The trouble comes in when we equate "needing the church" with needing a particular institution or maybe the kind of church that you "join" like a club. That wouldn’t be what I’m talking about.

Many churches use the "you need to be planted" line to tell you not to move around from church to church and to remain committed to "our" insitutional church.  In this way, the concept becomes abused.  Yet, it’s still an important concept.  We are meant to grow in community: in committed one-another relationships in which we know others and are known, in which we are loved and challenged, in which we are cared about and can care about others in practical ways.  We need spiritual mothers and fathers who will nurture us.  We need brothers and sisters who will stand beside us.  We need to be caring about people who are in need.

In other words, isolation is not the answer to "how to be the church."  Neither is institution.  Deep and real community is vital within the context of living organic worship gatherings.  I’m not sure anyone has "the answers" of how this looks, but the direction is there.  Let’s keep heading that way!  Thanks, Alan.

The Christian world, the entire Christian world, is permeated with a religious spirit.  It’s in me, in others, in traditional churches, in house churches.  It is such a pervasive dysfunction that it’s no wonder Jesus addressed it so forcefully.

The religious spirit is not just "them," it’s also "us."  We think, oh so subtly, that we are somehow better than "them."  We look at externals of some kind: how we worship, how we do liturgy or don’t do liturgy, how we view Scripture, our pet theological perspectives and we hold tightly to these things because on some level we believe them to be "right."  We lose our humility and our "rightness" becomes a judgment of others.  We are better than them.  We "do it" more correctly.  And there it is–a religious spirit.

We take on a religious spirit when we get focused on the way to live the Christian life rather than the Person that we live the Christian life with.  We turn relationship with God into rules.  A relationship is an ongoing, everyday, living thing.  When we are not living out of that living relationship, we begin to retreat into the rules of Christian living as a substitute.  We do, after all, know the "right" way to live.  It doesn’t take long before we are judging others because they are not living the "right" way like we are.  We quickly lose sight of the fact that the reason we are in this place of judging others is because we ourselves are unsettled.  We have lost our peace because we are no longer fully embracing the Person.  We try to repair our sense of unrest by setting up the rules, the structure, in order to live right and thus feel right.  We project that onto others.  We quickly become the pharisees who encourage others to live for God based on the letter of the law and in so doing we lead people away from vibrant relationship with God.

We take on a religious spirit when our theology becomes more important than the Person behind our belief systems.  We believe we know the truth; we often believe we know MOST of the truth even though Scripture affirms that we "see through a glass darkly."  Yet we base much of our personal security on knowing "the truth" and we leave little room for humility, for paradoxical theological positions, and for learning deeper truths.  Because our "truth" makes us feel secure, we judge the theological positions of others as being "less than."  We become the scribes and we miss the heart of the One from whom all truth flows.

We take on a religious spirit when we believe we are part of a "movement" of God that others have not yet experienced but "should."  Perhaps what we are involved in is NOT what God is calling someone else to be involved in.  Yet we take whatever God has done for us and judge others by whether or not God has done it for them or in them or to them.

We take on a religious spirit when we have been hurt or disappointed by other Christians.  Rather than heal, forgive, let go, set boundaries and move on, we become bitter.  We find reason to judge them and their "hypocritical" brand of Christianity.  We hold up a standard of "righteousness" that we judge others by (because we have been hurt).  We become standard-bearers of righteousness seeking to hold people accountable to what’s "right."  In the process we become the legalists.  We forget that we are all just humans deeply in need of the washing of the blood of Jesus Christ and His eternal mercy.

We take on a religious spirit when we fail to recognize God in each and every person that He has created and redeemed.  When we believe that we have something to teach others but fail to see what they have to teach us.  When we take something from our spiritual life or experience and imagine that we are, in some way, better than those who do not share exactly what we are "into."

A religious spirit robs us of our real spirituality.  We do not live out of the vitality of union with Christ, we live out of the push,the guilt, and the shoulds of duty.  We live out of a subtle pride; we lose the joy of first love.  We may feel good about "being good," but we lack the passion of a lover’s life.

Worse, we pass on this spirit into others.  We model a Christianity that lacks the zest and peace that comes from relationship.  We exemplify a dour, sober, lifeless Christianity.  We sometimes even heap the guilt and shoulds on others and, in doing this, keep them from finding the joy of the Person.  We take the religious burdens that we have put on ourselves, and we wrap them around others in a way that stifles their openness to a God of relational, creative, beautiful love.  No wonder Jesus said, woe unto you!

So, I say, woe unto me.  Woe unto us all.  To repent and break free of religion in order to experience the power of relationship with Creator-God… isn’t that the call of the hour?

From Brennan Manning’s Posers, Fakers, Wannabes:

"I would contend, physical structures of the church aside, the people leading the true growth of the body of Christ are not professionals but those who have been laid waste by a consuming and holy desire for Christ – passionate men and women for whom recognition and privilege and power mean very little, especially compared to knowing and loving Jesus."

I received this email from a blog reader in Singapore:

I’m from the East, Singapore and finding your contributions most worthy for our Lord Christ Jesus. In Singapore, we’ve yet to experience House Church modeling such as yours, only Cell Groups where the "parent church" lords over them.

I know only of the House Church that are in China and always believed that this is what Church is all about.

Together with 2 more brothers and their families, we are determined to just be Church.

I love that!  Just be the church.  That is the heart of it, isn’t it?  Just be who we are in God.  Just gather, worship, build community, and take life out into the world.  Just be the people of God.

I love his understanding of the control structures that "lord over" the small groups of our traditional churches.

Everywhere in the world there is the same thirst!  Just let the church BE what it is… the glorious people of God moving by His Spirit.

We have the website up and running for the West Coast Regional House Church Movement Conference: www.HouseChurchLife.com

Speakers include Tony and Felicity Dale of House2House Ministries, and Neil Cole of Church Multiplication Associates.  Robert Fitts, of OFI, will also be with us.

This conference is ideal for
• Introducing people to organic/simple church concepts.
• Equipping those who are already working with simple/house church models
• Networking and being encouraged by others who share this vision

Our vision for this conference is to provide an abundance of basic information and resources so that those who are “newer” can learn and have their questions answered.  At the same time, there will also be many opportunities for those who are fully involved with this movement to become better equipped and to network with others.

More information on the conference and accommodations are available at the website: www.HouseChurchLife.com

Gareth Williams mentioned this site that has audio messages by Dallas Willard on the Kingdom life.  I’ve just started them myself, but anything by Dallas is worth hearing in my book.

Jordan Cooper quotes from Henri Nouwen (one of my favorite authors) on creating intimacy and community (one of my favorite topics:

But whether through distance or closeness, fear prevents us from forming an intimate community in which we can grow together, everyone in his or her own way. When fear separates or joins us, we can no longer confess to each other our sins, our brokeness, and our wounds….

But when we are willing to confess both to ourselves and the other that we too are broken, that we too have a handicap, and that we too need a place to grow, we can build a home together and offer each other an intimate place.

I love living in the context of Christian community with brothers and sisters who share this kind of vision of intimacy…

I’m snowed in.  Visiting my son and his family near Reno, Nevada and we are experiencing the heaviest storm they have had in years.  The area has been declared a state of emergency.  It just keeps snowing and snowing.  I tried to catch my flight out on Friday but it was cancelled… as were the next three that they booked me on.

No problem.  More time to hang out, enjoy kids, and really have next to nothing that I can or need to do.  Undoubtedly I needed it!

It’s a wonderful thing to completely unplug from everyday life and just be with others, play games, take a walk in the snow (if I’m up to it), and watching the kids create the largest snowman I’ve ever seen.

It has provided me with a bit of perspective…

I have many projects that I would be working on if I was home: upcoming house church conference, a couple of couples who are church planting, end-of-year bookkeeping that needs to be done, etc, etc.

But I don’t want to back to a life that is just about doing and projects.  I desire that elusive kingdom/organic life.  I don’t know all that it means, but I am aware that Kingdom life, God-at-work organic life is seeded by prayer.  The soil in which God works is not prepared by my efforts, my planning, my going, my doing, my thinking, my flailing… it’s prepared for the activity of God through prayer.  Just prayer.  Period.

I’m not going to take the time to even elaborate more on this.  I’m not in a "working mode" after all.  I’m just leaving myself this note… I want to rest this year in the power of the Kingdom; I want to be working where the Kingdom is breaking forth; I want to operate in the life and strength of Kingdom life… I want to re-learn prayer… the simple conversations with the Father that draw me into HIS life.

Let it be!

It’s New Year’s Day and I am getting personal.  2004 has been a year of losses.  One year ago on New Year’s Eve my wife lost her spiritual mother to a rare lung disease.  Fast forward to last night: I get the news that a friend of mine was swept away in a flooding river the day before.  His body is not yet recovered but there is virtually no hope.  In between those two events has been a couple of other major life losses: adult step-children losing their father; a nineteen-year-old son losing his way in life.

This does, as I write it, sound pretty morbid.  And it is.  I don’t want to, in any way, minimize the pain of life’s losses.  It is immense and sometimes seems to be unbearable.

However, as I write today, I am well aware of the gifts that have come to me as a result of losses.  Not just these recent losses.  Sometimes the gifts that come take quite some time.  But as I reflect back over these and past losses, I am aware that losses I have gone through have given immeasurable gifts to me.

This does not mean that I smile in the face of life’s pain; that I put on a happy face knowing that God is working something good, therefore I don’t need to be sad, angry, depressed, or whatever else I truly feel as I walk through my losses.  Sometimes Christians try to be ridiculously non-human in facing the tragedies of life.  Losses and pain suck.  Period.  Plain and simple.

But what I’m reflecting on today is not the need to process all of those "sucky" feelings.  Rather, I do want to process what has come to me as a result of losses.

I am stronger, as a person, because of the losses I have experienced.  I feel less threatened by what might happen in the future because I am aware that I have weathered and walked through some stormy seas.  I have less fears about what life might throw at me.  I have tremendous confidence that I will be sustained in the midst of just about anything.

I know it’s cliche, but I have more faith.  I have seen situations and people reduced to ashes, and then I have seen beauty come out of those ashes.  I have developed a "bigger-picture" theology.  A theology that allows me to not fully understand how it can possibly all work out; an understanding that it’s okay to not fully understand; an understanding that there is One at work in all things who sees things that I don’t.  Period.  I believe that.

I have more love for people and less patience for non-essential b.s.  I don’t get nearly so worked up over projects, deadlines, events, programs, financial reversals, whatever, whatever, whatever.  I find that I have more time (and patience) to just hang out with someone who needs to be hung out with.  I used to have an ending time in my mind everytime I got together with someone so that I could plan in what I would get done with the block of time that followed.  Now, if possible, I don’t.  I’m willing to hang out and just be with people–in fact it brings me great pleasure to just hang out–because people matter more to me than they used to.

I suppose the list goes on and on: I’m more empathetic, more caring, less controlling, less pushy… In fact, it’s probably safe to say that losses are the great teachers of life.  They teach lessons that we remember.  They give us principles that we somehow internalize forever.  They put something inside of us that we will never get from a workshop, book, lecture, or church gathering/service.

I’m still not saying that I like losses.  I’m just appreciating what they do.

Please pray for my friend’s wife, Lisa.  She has a long, long road ahead of her before she will be able to begin appreciating any gifts that God may have for her through this loss.  In the meantime… it’s hard!

Finally, as I look toward the coming year, I want to express how important ALL of my relationships are: my friends, cyber-friends, family, close friends, long-distance friends, casual-reader-friends that are connected to my life.  I have experienced losses, yes, and I will experience more… but as I face forward to 2005 I am very, very much aware that I am not alone…  And that makes ALL the difference.  Thank you!

For information on the tsunami and how to pray and help, you can take a look at Tall Skinny Kiwi’s post here.

Also, Kevin, at HippieChristian, recommends the following two Christian organizations:

Gospel for Asia
1800 Golden Trail Court
Carrollton TX 75010
(800) 946-2742 | (972) 300-7777

AND

International Aid
17011 W. Hickory
Spring Lake, MI 49456-9712
(616) 846-7490 | (800) 968-7490

Kevin has more links here.