Simple Church Journal

I was proud to be with a group of guys this week, in our mid-week hang-out-together, who provided a safe place for a “newbie” to come into the group and provided real acceptance for this “seeker.”

In fact, this “guest” felt so comfortable that he just told it like it was: He was seeking God, yes. He wasn’t sure where it was headed. He had some definite views that didn’t jive with what He understood the Bible to say on these issues. This caused him a lot of doubt and concern. He expressed a seeking heart and, at the same time, he talked honestly about his worldviews that were very, in our typical world of Christianity, “unChristian.”

But, our gang of guys “got it.” They saw the seeker and ignored the rest. They realized that he needed a place to come in where he could be honest about his doubts and concerns. He was testing the waters; he was testing our small band of Christians… and I believe we passed the test.

To me, this is Christianity. Providing a place where someone can come in with all their warts, troubles, questions, and confusions and lay them out on the table. They want to know if God will take them where they are at. Of course, He will. But they only know this after they look into the eyes of our Christian communities and see that acceptance there, in human form, first.

Steve, over at Deep Calls To Deep says it this way:

I believe that part of who God has asked us to be as a church is to be a place where people can come to us, whoever they are, and whatever they have going on, and find a place where they can simply be- and without pressure or expectation can learn what it means for them to be a follower of Jesus, and what it means for them to be themselves.

Amen. I believe we have provided a place for this “newbie” to learn what it means to be a follower of Jesus. Pray for him!

I love this article by Andrew Jones.

It’s not about going to a house church — It’s about living Kingdom lives all day everyday.

It’s not about house church worship — It’s about hearts that are burning for God 24/7.

It’s not about house church community — It’s about living with a band of intimate allies every day.

It’s not about reproducing house churches — It’s about displaying the life of Jesus everywhere we go.

It’s nothing at all about loving house church — It’s about loving Jesus passionately, outside of any box that dims or constrains that passion.

I have been working on an article for House2House magazine on “transtions.” This is a little lengthy, but I would enjoy receiving input from my blog readers on the content, flow, and overall read-ability of the article. Thanks!

Transitioning From Traditional Worship To House Church Worship

I Thought House Church Worship Would Be “Lame”

After years of leading a traditional church I knew God was directing me toward something totally new: a house church network.

No problem. I loved small groups, participatory studies, relationship building. I loved everything about the house church concept except one thing: I knew that worship would be “lame” by comparison.

After all, I love to worship. I love music. I love big music and big worship. I believe worship is the key to our hearts opening to the Presence of God, hearing the voice of the Spirit, and transforming our will to surrender. I enjoy the best music, the most gifted worship leaders, and the biggest conferences.

No matter how I tried to envision worship in house church, all I could see was a small, handful of folks singing “Jesus” songs. No worship band. No inspiring worship leader. Good, maybe at best, but certainly not great!

As I was inviting people to join me in this house church “experiment” I found it difficult to bring up the subject of worship. I would brush over it quickly, “Worship will be… uh, simple, yes, but…” In a rush of words I would say, “We will build strong, supportive relationships, and we will participate together, and we will develop an awesome community, and…” I tried hard to get the focus off of worship because I was certain that their image of house church worship was as “lame” as my own.

But, today, all of that has changed. As we start new house churches I find that talking about worship has become one of my greatest passions. I love this part of house church as much, or more, than any other!

Today, I actually believe that the house church setting is the key to an explosion of worship for this generation of believers.

Much to my surprise, house church is opening up, for me and others, a deep heart-felt expression of worship and a type of participatory worship that cannot be developed in a traditional setting. What a transition this has been! Let me explain.

Good Music Does Not Produce True Worship

I love music and I love worship that is driven by music. But I began to discover that we, as Christians, have often become dependent on music to move our heart. As we gathered in our smaller settings to worship, I saw Christians who couldn’t fully turn their hearts on in worship unless there was “great” music present. This just didn’t seem right. Why did we need great music in order to experience great worship?

I began to see that we have been training ourselves to allow music to drive our worship rather than our hearts. Our worship organ, the heart, has suffered from this dependency and lost, in some ways, its ability to nakedly cry out to God.

I realized that music does move the heart! As Christians, we have become immersed in high-talent, high quality music. The kind of music that is so good that it can move our heart for us. That’s why we enjoy it and that can be the problem. We can simply allow our hearts to be moved by the enjoyment of excellent worship music and we imagine that we are deeply stirred toward God. Yes, we are moved. Yes, we feel inspired. But I would encourage us to really pay attention to what is happening. We can have “good feeling” emotions without our spirit, our deepest inner person, really entering into a deep longing toward God. I’m talking about the kind of longing that David had when he said, “My soul thirsts for you… in this parched and weary land.” That’s real worship: the spirit and heart crying out to God with intensity, seeking Him with a thirst that is not easily quenched. When that kind of worship begins to grip us, it doesn’t fade when the music dies down. The heart is driving the worship, not the music.

The truth is, in many large, music-driven worship settings, you will notice that even our most fervent worship fades along with the music. Could it be that we have replaced a heart-driven thirst for God with good, worshipful feelings inspired by good music? In a sense, without fully realizing it, our worship is sometimes… shallow… masked by the emotions that good music creates.

Participatory “Naked-Heart” Worship

We began to use our house gatherings as a greenhouse to re-learn worship that is driven by our heart longings. No, we did not eliminate music. That would be both foolish and unbiblical. Music is a powerful tool for worship.

But… we did begin experimenting with times during worship in which music became background or not-at-all. We challenged ourselves to simply express worship, from the heart, with everyone involved, by taking turns offering naked cries to our God. We coined the phrase “naked-heart worship” to express what we were after: honest and authentic worship that comes from naked hearts without externals.

We wanted to train our hearts to simply encounter the Spirit of God and reach for God. We wanted to express worship in the most raw and basic ways: speak it, read it, declare it, sing it out (without any accompaniment), say it in verse, whatever God inspired us to do. We wanted to take time, without any pre-formatted aids, to just experience Jesus-in-our-midst and express our love to Him, or our need of Him, or whatever else was truly on our heart. We wanted to take time to exercise our heart “muscle” through simple, raw, honest, authentic worship.

When we take time for this “naked-heart” worship, it’s highly participatory. We believe that each person brings a unique longing and an expression of that longing. We want to hear from as many as possible. We remind ourselves that true worship springs from each of our hearts turning toward God and interacting with His wonder.

One person may express a simple gratitude, using simple words, for something God has done. The intensity of their emotion draws the rest of us deeper into worship. Someone else may speak out an awesome description of God’s majesty and glory. We are equally moved by this heart expression. Someone else confesses a longing to draw closer to God and repents for being distant. We all identify and find ourselves asking God to draw us closer. Someone else, with untrained voice, sings out a simple worship song that many of us don’t recognize. No matter. Their love for God is stirring us even deeper.

When these expressions die down, we may then go to some music or other more familiar types of worship… But we are discovering that these times of “naked-heart” worship are re-training us to look to our own hearts, and nothing else, for the essence of our worship experiences.

Furthermore, and this is probably more important… We are discovering that worship really is something that we can take with us into our world 24/7. After all, we cannot take music with us 24/7. But we do have with us, every minute of every day, our hearts and the Spirit of God’s inspiration upon our hearts. Thus, as our hearts become trained to carry worship “nakedly”, we realize that we have the capacity for the deepest, richest, most intimate, and most powerful worship any place, any time, anywhere!

We are finding that our hearts are growing in their ability to be the Temple of the Living God everywhere that we go… that our spirits are developing a greater ability to walk intimately with God more and more of each day… that when we gather, many hearts trained in passionate, raw worship, with Jesus in our midst, what an explosion can take place.

We are still in the early stages of this experiment. We still consider music to be a key element of our worship expressions. But, we are finding that our hearts are growing in enthusiasm and love for God. Our heart-worship organs are becoming stronger because we take time together to “exercise” them. And I am finding, as a result, that I am thoroughly enjoying all facets of simple/house church worship… much more than I expected.

Most of the time our gatherings are great. We seek God, He draws near, touches us, speaks to us. People participate, share together in the experience, minister to one another.

But, on occasion, we have a gathering time that is, plain and simple, lousy. At least by certain “human” standards. Everybody is tired, or someone dominates the gathering, or hardly anybody participates, or it is so disjointed that it seems like nothing happened at all.

Sometimes we try too hard, and sometimes we don’t put anything into it. Sometimes we gather and we are too full of ourselves. Other times we gather and we are too empty to bring anything to share.

No matter! These “lousy” times are rare exceptions. But even when they happen, it just doesn’t matter.

We have learned a couple of key things.

1. God is at work, even when we are asleep, disjointed, or out of sorts. He works in and through everything that we do in His name whether we realize it or not. Sometimes we learn much more when we have times together that aren’t “together.” Sometimes we are confronted with our own attitudes, our own shortcomings, and our own limitations when things don’t go well. We learn from these. God is teaching us. He is at work in all types of situations.

2. Secondly, we have learned that the “gatherings” are not all that important. We often have a traditional-church carryover mentality. We go to gatherings and evaluate our whole church-life experience based on how the gathering went. We are used to evaluating our church experiences based on how the sunday morning church service went. But, in the scheme of things, the gathering time is one of the least important parts of our community life together. It’s simply one small component of living a shared, community life with one another. We often have to remind ourselves to put less focus on the gatherings, just enjoy them for what they are, and put more focus on our own life with God and our shared life, day in and day out, with one another. After all, that is church life. Daily, weekly growing, relating, loving, with Christ, with others, in community, and out in the world. That is church life. Sometimes our times together that are “lousy” remind us that the gatherings are not the focus. They are just one part of a whole Christian life lived together, in His power and love.

John Eldredge will be speaking at the House Church Conference in Colorado Springs. Here is an excerpt from his book, Waking the Dead, in a chapter called Fellowships of the Heart:

Though we are part of a great company, we are meant to live in little platoons. The little companies we form must be smalll enough for each of the members to know one another as friends and allies. Is it possible for five thousand people who gather for an hour on a Sunday morning to really and truly know each other? Okay, how about five hundred? One hundred and eighty? It can’t be done. They can’t possibly be intimate allies. It can be inspiring and encouraging to celebrate with a big ol’ crowd of people, but who will fight for your heart?

Who will fight for your heart?

How can we offer the stream of Counseling to one another (a stream that our heart needs, which Eldredge describes in a previous chapter) unless we actually know one another, know one another’s stories? Counseling became a hired relationship between two people primarily because we couldn’t find it anywhere else; we haven’t formed the sort of small fellowships that would allow the stream to flow quite naturally. Is it possible to offer rich and penetrating words to someone your barely know, in the lobby of your church, as you dash to pick up the kids? And what about warfare? Would you feel comfortable turning to the person in the pew next to you and, as you pass the offering plate, asking him to bind a demon that is sitting on your head?

We hear each other’s stories. We discover each other’s glories. We learn to walk with God together. We pray for each other’s healing. We cover each other’s back. This small core fellowship is the essential ingredient for the Christian life. Jesus modeled it for us for a reason. Sure, he spoke to the masses. But he lived in a little platoon, a small fellowship of friends and allies. His followers took his example and lived this way too: “They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts” (Acts 2:46); Aquila and Priscilla greet you warmly in the Lord, and so does the church that meets at their house” (1 Cor. 16:19); “Give my greetings to the brothers at Laodicea, and to Nympha and the church in her house” (Col. 4:15).

Church is not a building. Church is not an event that takes place on Sundays. I know, it’s how we’ve come to think of it. “I go to First Baptist.” “We are members of St. Luke’s.” “Is it time to go to church?” Much to our surprise, that is not how the Bible uses the term. Not at all. Certainly the body of Christ is a vast throng, millions of people around the globe. But when Scripture talks about church, it means community. The little fellowships of the heart that are ouposts of the kingdom. A shared life. They worship together, eat together, pray for one another, go on quests together. They hang out together, in each other’s homes. When Peter was sprung from prison, “he went to the house of Mary the mother of John” where the church had gathered to pray for his release.

Of course, small groups have become a part of the programming that most churches offer their people. For the most part, they are short-lived… You can’t just throw a random group of people together for a twelve-week study of some kind and expect them to become intimate allies. The sort of devotion we want and need takes place within a shared life. Over the years our fellowship has gone camping together. We play together; help one another move; paint a room; find work. We throw great parties. We fight for each other… This is how it was meant to be.

I love this description of the early church: “All the believers were one in heart” (Acts 4:32). A camaraderie was being expressed there, a bond, and esprit de corps. It means they all loved the same thing, they all wanted the same thing, and they were bonded together to find it, come hell or high water. And hell or high water will come, friends, and this will be the test of whether or not your band will make it; if you are one in heart.

We now come to the last two life patterns of an “insider” from Jim Petersen’s book, “The Insider.” The first five life patterns are: taking little initiatives, praying and responding, serving others, conversing the faith, and partnering.

The sixth life pattern of an insider is: Letting the Scriptures Speak.

Petersen learned, early in his ministry, that his own arguments and clever exchanges with people did not move people. He had been attempting to assume something that only the Holy Spirit can do. He discovered that it is the Bible that reveals who God is. His job, then, was to bring people to the Word and allow the Holy Spirit to reveal God.

Thus, when we invite people to learn from the Bible with us, we are on the journey with them. We are still learning even as they are. God is revealing Himself to us and them at the same time. We do not have to be the teacher or the guru. We don’t have to dispense great wisdom. We simply become a fellow discoverer. All of us become engaged in trying to see Jesus.

Petersen has learned what it is to facilitate Bible discussions rather than preach sermons.

A common mistake leaders make is insisting on winning every point of discussion. You don’t have to get people to agree with you. You don’t even have to get them to believe the Bible. Your part is done when they have made some sense of the text. From there on, it’s the Holy Spirit’s responsibility.

The seventh life pattern of an insider is: Midwifing the New Birth.

Petersen continues to rely on Scripture itself to produce the new life faith, healing, and obedience of the growing disciple. We are to continue on sowing the seed as spiritual fruit is developed.

He cautions us that we must be patient. Reaping spiritual fruit often takes time. Conversion is more than just a decision, it is a heart-surrender and submission to Christ. This requires the development of faith, over a period of time, as the Word of God is sown. Conversion also includes a healilng process that takes place as the fellowship becomes a place where honest confession and vulnerability opens the heart to the healing God has for it.

I have found that the key to House Church or Simple Church is to learn to listen to the Holy Spirit– all of us. This is one of the many paradigm shifts that must take place for Christians to enter into a simple church expression or movement.

In my past life, as a pastor of a traditional church, I felt the responsibility to hear what God is saying and to pass that word along to “the people.” Of course, God’s word is always God’s word and it will always bear fruit. But how much more fruit is available when every Christian discovers his/her gifts and his/her ability to hear the “rhema”– the living Word through the written word– and to be able to share those gifts and His word with one another.

This shifts the responsibility for hearing from God to each person– to everyone— and that takes some getting used to. But what an explosion can take place as the church worships and listens.

Jack Deere (Suprised by the Voice of God) shares this:

The New Testament church was not only the dwelling place for the presence of God, it was also a learning center for the language of the Holy Spirit. People not only worshipped God in church, but they were equipped to hear him, and after hearing God, they were able to give something to someone that would build them up.

In preparation for this, Jack challenges to consider why we gather as a church. It’s not about tickling our spiritual ears or getting a little spiritual lift (though these may well happen), rather he suggests that we gather for four reasons: 1. To hear Jesus and be healed by Him, 2. To worship God together, 3. To be equipped to do the work of ministry, and 4. To be built up in Christ. He contends that all of this can take place only as every person gest involved– bringing something edifying to share, learning to hear what the Holy Spirit is saying, and ministering to one another.

If you lived in the New Testament times, you prepared your heart to come to church, you prepared your heart to worship, you came expecting to be equipped for ministry, and you asked God to give you a gift to bring with you so that you might be used to strengthen someone else. This was the New Testament way of going to church.