Simple Church Journal

I always find it interesting and fun to peek in on someone else’s house church gathering.  Following is from Rachelle at a gathering called thursdaypm:

Mike broke out his electric guitar and worked up a worship set. I asked him to only bring us songs that focused on praising God and naming God’s attributes. I’m kind of burned out on worship sets that spend most of the time asking for stuff. That could be just me, but there it is. The girls sang with us. Eden can read now so she loves having a song sheet to work with. Both of the girls sang “Glory, glory! Hallelujah. He reigns!” with great enthusiasm. It was a treasure for me to sit next to Catie and watch her little mouth form the words: “Gworry Gworry. Haley-woo-ja. He wains. He wains.”

After the music, we shared some stories ignatian examen style. That is, people shared their recent “high points” and “low points.” We set up a big bowl of water at the center of the living room floor. If you were sharing a high point you lit a white rose candle and floated it in the water. If you were sharing a low point you lit a rock shaped candle and floated it. For us the metaphor of the water is something we adapted from Taize. In a Taize service the music is designed to highlight the reality that at any given time, someone in the world-wide church is awake and praying. So the prayers of the many (the water) uphold the prayers of the one (the candle) and the prayer of the one adds to and infuses the prayers of the many. (In Taize this is done with the melody and harmony lines, as well as with instrumental and vocal solos which move over the chorus, which is sung repeatedly by the congregation.) Eden and Cate were especially into this ritual because we do the ignatian examen together a couple times a week – either around the dinner table or in the morning while we are all in bed having a “morning cuddle.” The girls love an audience so sharing their “high point/low point” in front of everyone was especially enticing. Add to that the thrill of lighting something on fire, and well, what’s not to love? Eden’s low point this time was that a girl at her school, Mackenzie, had been hit by a car and was in the hospital. So we lit a floating candle for Mackenzie. Earlier in the week, Mackenzie’s classmate, Alissa was at the house (she rides the bus with Eden) and she said she had been up the night before crying because of Mackenzie. So Alissa, Eden and I lit intercession candles at our shrine. I said a prayer for Mackenzie and Alissa opted to say a wish. Then I closed with an encircling prayer. I let Alissa take the candle home with her. (I hope her mom doesn’t think I’m wierd.)

After our “sharing” time, Rebecca led us in communion. Rebecca is really getting into the practice of silence right now. She brought us a quote to sit with and we gave it 5 minutes in silence. (We’re beginners. Five minutes seems like a lot to us.) To Rebecca, the quote was about being a part of the body of Christ, which seemed very in tune with the sacrament of communion. It was especially moving to me because I know it comes out of Rebecca’s journey to trace her family lineage as a Native American. It wasn’t just some random inspiration tidbit. It was lived, you know? Here’s the quote:

When you are a person who belongs to a community, you have to know who you are. You have to know who your relatives are, and as a tribe we have to know where we came from.
-Charlotte Black Elk, Oglala Sioux

We sat in silence with this, some of us scribbling in our journals. Then Rebecca broke the bread and passed the wine and we all ate of one body, becoming one body.

At the end, I closed us with a blessing. I’ve been giving the girls this blessing at night, so it’s the one I used with the group:

May the Lord bless you and keep you. May he make his face shine upon you and be gracious unto you. May God lift up her countenance towards you and give you her kiss of peace…

It was a good night — nothing fancy, just some off-key singing (at least on my part), some stories, some bread and wine. I think you could call it church.

Sometimes I need to remind myself… it’s not about big churches, little churches, mega-church, house church, or even having the "right" definition or understanding of church. It’s all about Jesus.

It’s not about how we worship, who we worship with, what kind of service we have or don’t have, or who is qualified to lead what. It’s just all about Jesus.

Really, this is more than a cliche. I really think we have difficulty understanding clearly a "Scriptural" definition of church… because it really is not that important–from a Scriptural point of view. The early church was just a gang of people living all-out for Jesus. Period. Nothing more. Church gatherings happened secondarily as a simple outcome of these Jesus-followers gathering to support and encourage each other. The logistics and structure that developed (i.e. servants to help serve widows) were simply practical accommodations to the needs of this gang of Jesus-followers.

Yes, I know, there were apostles… sent ones… who were often given the task of taking the church into new territories. But guess what?  Early on (Acts 8) the church was spread out all over the world without any apostles. Why? Apostles weren’t the point. Having the right people in a service was not the point. Who gathered where with whom just wasn’t that important in God’s economy. Jesus is the important One–people living the Jesus life is the point–the rest was expected to take care of itself. The "set up" of church was simply not that critical.

Oh, but, didn’t Paul appoint elders? So, now, we can begin to grasp exactly how church is to be organized. Yes, he did appoint elders… later on… when mature believers could be identified… in order to provide fathers and mothers in the faith. But, again, guess what? The churches were going along just fine being the church before Paul appointed elders. The elders were not the essential! They were a natural and helpful support to encourage mature followers to care for those who are less mature.

The point is, Jesus was the point. It was and is all about Jesus. Everything about how we "do" church or how the church is defined really must be placed in a less-important category. It just is not that big of a deal. In other words, love Jesus, serve Jesus, live for Jesus, give your life for Jesus, live in Jesus, live with Jesus, follow Jesus… and then wherever you, and others that believe, go and gather… the "church" is going and gathering. That part will happen just fine (and will take place quite naturally in homes, in cities, in wherever) when we get the first part truly in place. If city elders are needed, God will raise up people who will fill that role (not position) and they will communicate a vision that others will see and follow. If a small community elder/shepherd is needed, God will give that community a mature person who will serve and love them. When we realize that we are meant to be interdependent with other Christians and live in community and learn from those who are more mature, then we will do just that because we are putting Jesus first and following Him. We just don’t need to be all that concerned about how it’s all going to be put together. If putting it all together just right was so critical, wouldn’t Scripture put a little more emphasis on it?

Jesus is the emphasis. Living in Jesus is the focus. Following and walking with Jesus, our Beloved, is what most, if not all, of our instruction is about. It seems to me that if we really, truly get first things first, that secondary things will take care of themselves (i.e God will take care of them) as we follow the primary love of our life.

No, I mean really. We give lip-service to putting Jesus first as though it’s obvious and therefore obviously something we are already doing. The reality is, we don’t do it and end up, instead, trying to wrangle our minds around things like how church is supposed to look or what’s the best way to do this or that or a thousand other things that are truly, truly secondary to the point.

He really is the point! Can we just get back (I’m preaching here to myself) to simply, utterly, completely, only Jesus?

Every week I receive emails from people who are leaving behind traditional churches and launching out into simple forms of church gatherings and a desire to live kingdom-lives 24/7. Something is drawing us out of our traditional church backgrounds into unchartered waters. Something is compelling us to leave the familiar for the unknown.

Skeptics might suggest that people are leaving traditional structures because of hurts that have not been resolved. While I do see many people hurt by hierarchical church systems, and while this may be a good reason to seek something different, I don’t sense that most people I speak to are nursing old wounds and refusing to receive God’s healing.

So, what’s motivating this uprising?

The more “spiritual” answer is that it’s the Spirit of God Who is moving people out of old wineskins into the new. While I’m sure this is true, the Spirit works through our human hearts and emotions to move us. He causes us to become dissatisfied, to see new possibilities, to be no longer content with where we have been. So, in a sense, when I ask the question “What’s motivating us?” I’m asking to understand more thoroughly just what the Holy Spirit is doing in the hearts of so many.

“What is motivating us?”

I’m interested in responses to this.

Initially, I became grossly frustrated with a system of church that devastated me personally as I experienced a significant, personal burnout and as I became painfully disappointed with the lack of transformation in the lives of people. I saw the dysfunction of the CEO-type pastor, the control and personal agendas that are inherent in a power-centered structure, and the pain caused by an organization that valued some above others. I saw the lack of real relationship and therefore honest love within a group of people who truly wanted both but were too busy keeping the system going to experience either. I wondered how any of this church-activity-stuff fit into what Scripture described as “church.” But this frustration was only the initiation. It produced the longing that got me moving.

I suspect that these types of frustrations and/or painful realizations are the starting point for many people searching for something more. But I’m also wondering if we need to transcend these initial negative motivations into something more constructive?

I am hoping that I have other motivations that are now stirring me to keep moving toward organic Christian living. I want to live in spiritual reality 24/7. I want to be the church– the living, breathing, organic movement of God’s people who are living in the leading and power of the Spirit. I want raw reality-of-God living, not a mediated experience in which I follow rote activities in order to feel good about having done some spiritual “duty-thing.”

I want to hang out with a community of people who are charged up about this type of kingdom living and who also know me, stand with me, support me… and for whom I feel challenged to lay down my life in order to do the same for them. I want to see the Body of Christ, wherever it gathers, loving one another, healing one another, pouring into one another until “the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.”

I want to see God’s people unleashed. Is that too big of a dream or what? As idealistic as it may sound, this motivates me. I want to see His glory cover the earth through His people who are lovers of God, lovers of each other, and living compassionate, power-enhanced lives. These are people who go through the same problems and strains as anyone else, but they do it openly, vulnerably, and their dependence on God and His grace poured out in their lives shines through them. They are weak, but Oh he is strong! They engage their spiritual gifts and their compassion in everyday life. Through thick and thin, they live for Him, give for Him, and ultimately truly, really desire only the One Thing–more of Him.

I am motivated by the desire to see “the church” get out of the way so that the church can become what it really is: the living, breathing presence of Christ in a world that so desperately needs Him. I want to see a little more of Jesus expressed through His collective Body so that we reflect, in a greater way, His glory, His wonder, His love, His grace, His purity, and His transcendent beauty. I long to see just a bit more of Him shining through!

What’s motivating you?

I think one of the saddest dysfunctions in much of our church world today is the worship of pastors or other spiritual leaders. I know this dysfunction well from both positions: worshipper and worshippee.

I ran into some wonderful friends today who attend a good, large church in the area. As so often happens when conversation turns toward church or faith, they began talking about their pastor: the wonderful sermons he has been preaching, the way he has been dealing with a personal health issue, how much they appreciate him. Don’t get me wrong, I care about their pastor and I do think he’s a fine Christian brother. I don’t mind talking about him. It’s just that subtle adoration or veneration that one hears when talking to Christians. And why does the subject of “my pastor” come up so often?

Another woman came back from a Christian conference and was having lunch with my wife. My wife came home from the lunch knowing more about the speaker (“who was so powerfully used by God”) than the message that God had given him to share.

Believe me, I have experienced it myself, there is a status and reverence in the Christian world associated with “pastor” that is, in many cases, completely out of line. In the process of lifting up certain spiritual leaders, the rest of the Body of Christ, the beautiful awesome Body of Christ, is putting itself down by comparison. By insinuating that this person or that person is special, we are relegating the rest of believers to something that is a little less than special. How utterly tragic for Christ’s Body!

Not only that, we are creating an unwholesome expectation upon those that we have lifted up to the rank of “special.” No wonder so many pastors and leaders are burning out (my own story)… No one can live up to the regal-like stature that the Christian world seems to want their leaders to walk in.

When I hear these dear Christians talk about their pastors I just want to cry. I cry for their pastor who has to carry such a huge responsibility in order to live up to their expectations. And I to cry for these Christians who just don’t get it that they are as special, as gifted (in their own way), as important, as significant, as necessary, as wonderful, as anyone else in the Body of Christ.

Is it too much to dream of God’s people–the church–supporting each other, loving each other, encouraging equally the gifts in each other, and moving forward under the headship, the leadership, and the direction of the only One that truly deserves all reverence–Jesus Himself. What freedom would this bring and what possibilities might this open up if we would lift up only Him while mutually and appropriately esteeming one another.

Here is a comment from a friend of mine (John) that he wrote in response to my post “How Do I Explain It To My Pastor“:

About 7 years ago, my pastor asked me to go on a visit with him to give a message to a “house church”. We went there and worshipped awhile with these people and then my pastor proceeded to give the message. It was basically that the group was in danger “out on their own” and needed to get back into fellowship “within the church”. I was in total agreement then as a new Christian. I thought these folks were simply misguided and possibly hurt in some way.

I now think completely different! I too am trying to explain to Christians about house church. Somehow God has led me, through various experiences – a journey – to where my eyes are open to the fantastic realm of “real” church – that is, being the church. I don’t look for a traditional structure to “attend” nor do I try to fit in and compare doctrine and go through all that hand-wringing and dysfunction that I have seen in traditional churches. God bless them, they are part of the answer but incomplete at best. (Now I can do all my dysfunction in the relaxed confines of my own home!) Seriously, we have a long way to go, but there is a movement and it’s God, not me. People’s hearts are yearning for the “real” thing… not just churchianity, or Christian clubs. Only Jesus Christ can fulfill our heart’s desire. Will we yet follow? Will we yet see? This thing will take courage, strength and fortitude.

Rad Zdero has a book out this year called “The Global House Church Movement.” It’s a relatively brief (140 pages) yet comprehensive look at what is happening today with house churches and house church networks.

Rad’s personal experiences involve planting and coaching an emerging house church network in Canada. He offers a chapter on Biblical foundations, another chapter on historical perspectives of the house church movement, and an interesting chapter on practical considerations including how to get started, grow, multiply, and network with other churches.

Rad embraces most of the values that typify many house churches today: 24/7 shared community life, participatory gatherings, missional and reproducible churches. I like his network’s slogan: “Every Church, Start a Church Every Year.”

Rad is very intentional and, some might say, overly organized when it comes to leadership training and development. However, even if you feel this way, his approach is worth reading.

He makes a strong case for churches being networked within regions, cities, and nations: “So long as house churches choose isolation, independence, and inwardness, so long will they remain a mere novelty, a trend, a fad, without ever becoming a real movement that deeply impacts their city, region, or nation with the gospel of Christ.”

Finally, Rad acknowledges that while the house church movement has made a significant impact in countries like China and India, it remains more of a “trend” than a “movement” in the rest of the world. Nevertheless he, like many of us, believe that the simple organic church is the key to reaching our world. It’s Biblical, simple, able to saturate every neighborhood and apartment complex, easily reproduced, and led primarily by volunteers.

This is definitely a valuable read: much information and insight yet very readable.

On the topic of children and house church I have offered this quote before from Wayne Jacobsen before. I think it’s extremely insightful:

But don’t our children need church activities? I’d suggest that what they need most is to be integrated into God’s life through relational fellowship with other believers. 92% of children who grow up in Sunday schools with all the puppets and high-powered entertainment, leave ‘church’ when they leave their parents’ home. Instead of filling our children with ethics and rules we need to demonstrate how to live in God’s life together.
Even sociologists tell us that the #1 factor in determining whether a child will thrive in society is if they have deep, personal friendships with non-relative adults. No Sunday school can fill that role. I know of one community in Australia who after 20 years of sharing God’s life together as families could say that they had not lost one child to the faith as they grew into adulthood. I know I cut across the grain here, but it is far more important that our children experience real fellowship among believers rather than the bells and whistles of a slick children’s program.

One of the wonderful things we have discovered in our simple churches is how much we learn from children. We want our children to see themselves as just as much part of church as anyone else. Each church works differently with children but in every way we value them and embrace them.

We learn so much from having children around….

16-month-old Will, with bald-looking round head, comes running in to his mom with a whine and a scowl. She picks him up. Holds him for a moment. Feeds him a bite of a muffin. His countenance changes, he is satisfied, his needs are met and he runs out of the room with a smile and a skip. He’s so easy to please. We see in this how much God wants to meet every need we have. We are reminded to turn everything over to Him and remain childlike in our daily-life faith.

Moriah comes in and tells her mom that she has a song to sing for us. We don’t know what to expect but she has the charm of a bubbly 7-year-old and we encourage her to sing. She says she doesn’t know what it means but proceeds to sing a beautifully simple song about God sending rain in our midst. We all know exactly what it means and we are moved to worship by it.

Hannah is about Moriah’s age but very shy. She always sits properly and politely and says little. But on this particular morning she whispers to her mom that she wants to read a Scripture out loud. What a surprise! She reads to us a moving passage from the book of Job, jumps down when she’s done and runs out of the room. But we have heard the word of the Lord. We had no doubts about it.

We try to pay attention everytime a baby cries and every time a child speaks. Not that our gatherings focus only on children, we have a great deal of time that’s “adult.” But God is at work through each and every person… It’s so rewarding to learn how to tune into our children and their spiritual contributions whether intended or not.

I have a new friend, Brian, who recently told his pastor that God told him to leave that church and start a house church. I met this friend because he has been visiting one of our house churches to get a feel for what we are about before launching out on his own.

He has done everything he can to explain this vision to his pastor who is also a friend of mine. But, oh, how hard it is for many pastors to understand. Brian simply wants to launch out and start a house church, be the church, live for Jesus, gather with people in his neighborhood. No building, no formal “spiritual covering,” no defined denomination, not even a set of bylaws.

But, you see, this just doesn’t fit into our old pastoral paradigms. We can understand a church that has many small groups, or “house churches” that meet during the week and whose participants gather as one larger congregation on Sunday mornings. It’s amazing how many churches now use the term “house church” to define their small groups or cell meetings. But this is simply a small group church or a cell church. Nothing new. Same old wineskin. The church and the church’s control mechanisms remain at the center of the hub of these small groups as does the primary, weekly, all-church Sunday service.

Brian has done his best to explain to “his pastor” that God is asking him to do something different than this. He is not rebelling, he has not been hurt by the church… he has simply had his eyes opened to some of what God is doing today and he wants to jump in.

Brian is not looking to start another traditional church, he just wants to get out there and be the church in his neighborhood. He wants to live the Christian life relationally. He wants his family to be the focus of his spiritual life and he wants that life to touch and draw others. He wants to be in relationship with all other Christians. He wants to be in relationship with spiritual leaders, mentors, and fathers who will guide and care about him without some hierarchical structure. He wants to love God and teach others to love God. He just wants to be the church everywhere. It’s really quite simple! It really does not have to be complicated.

So, why is it so hard to grasp for so many who have been entrenched in our church system (I have certainly been there). That’s an excellent question! Is every church leader a control freak by nature? Not necessarily. Is it religious deception? To some extent. But let’s not throw stones… let’s acknowledge that we all see through a glass darkly. I think it’s just the religious culture that we have inherited and that God is only now beginning to break us out of. It’s a system of church that has come down from Catholicism right on through our Protestant heritage. It’s just the “way of church” we have inherited not from Scripture but from the last millenium of people trying to impose a structure on what is meant to be a living organism. We simply have difficulty seeing this because it’s just become part of our church culture. It’s like a fish that is born in a fish bowl being told about the ocean. He can’t imagine it. And if he tries to grasp it it would certainly scare him to imagine water without boundaries.

My point is this. God is doing something new. He is doing it and He is only just beginning. He is breaking people out of old and worn paradigms. He is calling people out of the cultural box that we have called church. He is helping his church to see the cultural structures that we have labelled “church” so that we can again become the living, breathing life-giving, everywhere-flowing people-of-God we are meant to be.

But let’s be patient with people. Especially pastors. This is a big leap. It’s hard to see beyond what we have known. It may be easy for some of us to see new possibilities, but that’s because God, by His grace, brought us through some things that have opened our eyes. If others do not see it it’s because, 1. It’s not time for them to see it yet and God wants to use them right where they are, or 2. They are in process. God is only getting started with them. Either way we want to be patient, humble, not condescending, firm about where we are headed, and humble about the fact that God is the one orchestrating all of this.

My new friend, Brian, is exemplifying this. He has patiently done everything he can to explain to his pastor what God has asked him to. His pastor, to his credit, is trying hard to understand. He is grasping bits and pieces and, fortunately, is sending Brian out with a blessing. This is a great step since this pastor really does not “agree” with what Brian is doing. So, both are in process. Brian is lovingly standing firm in what God has asked him to do. His pastor is learning some things (perhaps slowly) but he is also in process in discovering some of what God is doing today.

It’s all good. It’s all God. It’s all His plan unfolding.

All of us need to just keep learning, keep explaining, be patient, and let God continue to break his church out of the box into the wide open spaces of powerfully free and potent God-living– in His time and way.

I often like to remind myself (and others) that even though we talk about “house church,” that that’s really not the point at all. It’s not about house church, traditional church, institutional church, organic church, simple church, or emerging church. It’s really not about “how we do church.” The early Christians were not sitting around trying to figure out “how to do church” or “what church is supposed to look like.” They were just being Jesus’ people– followers and lovers of God. How or when they gathered… and what those gatherings looked like… all of that was just an outcome of living for Jesus in their world with one another.

Their focus was simply Jesus. Period.

We are called to be Jesus people first, last, and foremost.

We love God. We gather with other believers to love and support one another. We go into the world with His light and love. Period. It really is not more complicated than that!

But… what about leadership, what about children, what about discipleship, what about training, etc., etc., etc?

It’s amazing to me that we don’t have confidence in God to actually lead His people (the church). We imagine that we have to think up for Him what is needed to make sure that His church (His people) area adequately cared for. How prideful can we be?

If we are following Him in obedience then we will love Him with our whole heart, gather with others as He leads, and pour ourselves out for the sake of the world. In this process, as we are in obedience to the Head, all of the “what abouts” will be taken care of. God is actually able to do that! We don’t need to figure it all out for Him, we just need to love and follow Him.

If we love God with our whole heart, He will not fail us in any way. If we gather with believers wherever and whenever He leads us to, the right people will become involved with us in our Christian journey and our whole family (children included) will be ministered to and will be used to minister to others. We will build mutual relationships that will build up one another. We will be empowered to go into the world with His call and power present in us. We don’t have to define this or figure this all out, we just gather and then go as He gives direction.

Perhaps five years ago I was called to do this, to some extent, within a traditional church structure. Maybe this year, God is calling me to put my gathering energy into being involved with a small band of intimate allies–a house church of brothers and sisters who are becoming close family and learning to be a living church. Yet again, perhaps three years from now, God’s call will take me to Siberia where I will be sustaining my spiritual life with just a couple of other missionaries while the focus is on going into the world with His love. In all of these scenarios, I’m still fully part of “the church” even though the structure looks different in each case.

The point is: structure is not the point, figuring out all the “what abouts” is not the point, putting together the right kind of church is not the point. Living fully and freely under the Headship of Christ as lovers of God, lovers of each other and the world, and obedient followers is the point. He can and will take care of the rest.