Simple Church Journal

If we are going to transition from church-as-we-know-it (a box) to a dynamic Spirit-filled movement, we will also have to transition from leadership-as-we-know-it to something else.

Alan Creech says the WHOLE thing has to be reinvented:

I mean full-time, paid staff pastors who preach every Sunday and do pretty much all the ministry and stress themselves silly over every little thing in the community – yada, yada. I think this will kill us if we keep this up. It’s beginning to happen, but we’ve really got to re-envision what it means to be a pastor, leader, elder, whatever in our new churches. I don’t think we can afford to keep the old pastoral paradigm alive any more. We can’t do that and expect to happen what we want to happen in these communities.

Fortunately, we don’t have to reinvent leadership. The early church, a dynamic people movement, was supported by dynamic leadership that is contrary to today’s models yet clearly outlined in the New Testament.

Unfortunately, as always, we have to unlearn all that we know about leadership in order to grasp what it can be.

The number one issue (in my thinking) is simply this: New Testament leadership had nothing to do with c-o-n-t-r-o-l. When this is fully digested then, and only then, can we begin to grasp what leadership is meant to be.

Leadership-as-we-know-it in today’s church structures has to do with taking charge of finances, buildings, and centralized decision-making processes that involve roles and organization. It has become a business-like “CEO” type of role. Almost none of this has anything to do with the New Testament church-movement.

In addition, leadership-as-we-know-it usually involves setting one class of people (leaders) above the rest (members, or laity).

Gordon Fee says this about the historical development of church leadership:

Historically the church seems to have fallen into a model that eventually developed a sharp distinction between the people themselves (laity) and the professional ministry (clergy), reaching its sharpest expression in the Roman Catholic communion, but finding its way into almost every form of Protestantism as well. The net result has been a church in which the clergy all too often exist apart from the people, for whom there is a different set of rules and different expectations, and a church in which the “gifts” and “ministry”, not to mention significance, power structures, and decision making, are the special province of the professionals. Being “ordained” to this profession, the latter tend to like the aura that it provides, and having such ordained professionals allows the laity to pay them to do the work of the ministry and thus excuse themselves from their biblical calling.

New Testament leadership, on the other hand, was clearly a servant role (didn’t Jesus say something about that?) that provided a support structure for the people-movement to take off, multiply, go crazy, and otherwise careen madly (by the Spirit) out of control.

New Testament leaders did not occupy positions on boards; they did not have control of buildings nor all-church finances; they did not have the limelight of admiration or attention (except by those who enjoyed physically beating them).

Their role was to facilitate, plant, nurture, release, build up, serve… not dominate, nor control, nor set the one-man-vision course, nor have all the answers. They were not set above, but rather, set below. The Holy Spirit, after all, works through and leads the entire Body of Christ.

The mentality of a leader is to travel alongside. The heart of a leader is to serve. The role of a leader is to support. This is not rhetoric. It must be truly walked out.

I love the way Eugene Peterson, in The Message, recounts Jesus’ message about religious leaders who seek to sit at the head table, who “bask in the most prominent positions, preening in the radiance of public flattery”:

You all have a single Teacher, and you are all classmates. Don’t set people up as experts over your life, letting them tell you what to do. Save that authority for God; let him tell you what to do. No one else should carry the title of ‘Father’; you have only one Father and he’s in heaven. And don’t let people maneuver you into taking charge of them. There is only one Life-Leader for you and them—Christ.

Do you want to stand out? Then step down. Be a servant. If you puff yourselves up, you’ll get the wind knocked out of you.

One of the ways, in our own churches, that we make sure this is walked out is that control, one hundred percent of all control, remains one hundred percent with each house church. The church is directed by the Holy Spirit through all the members. “Shepherds” facilitate, shepherd, support, equip, give spiritual direction—all support roles designed to release and empower the church to be the church. That’s it. It is a spiritual, supporting-cast role. Period. If anyone pays any attention it’s because that person, in that situation, is demonstrating the heart of God.

Yet, when walked out this way, how important is servant-leadership as a support structure for the church-people-movement?

Very!

It’s essential to the overall health and well-being of the collective church. It provides a valuable support structure for the movement to keep moving, thriving, and growing.

As Craig Pelkey-Landis says:

Leadership doesn’t have to be a matter of one person’s ego basking in the glow of a few or thousands of devoted congregants. Toss that model in the garbage can. But running away from leadership can be just as toxic.

Leadership must be re-defined and re-aligned, but not thrown out altogether. We need servant-leaders who are shepherds, planters, gardeners, cultivators, releasers, givers, and equippers.

We see from Scripture two primary leadership-servant roles. 1. The elder/shepherd: to shepherd, disciple disciplers, encourage evangelism and reproduction, give spiritual direction, and counsel deeper needs. Timothy and Titus, as examples, were shepherds of shepherds. The books written to them ring out with the importance of churches being under girded by true shepherds. 2. The church-planter and five-fold itinerant ministers (Eph. 4:…): to help found, support, and nurture churches. They did not run churches, they supported them.

Yes, true spiritually-minded support teams are needed to help equip, under gird, release, empower, encourage, build up, and call out to the church to be the church—in and of themselves—to keep gathering and going.

This support structure is like the hidden skeletal system. It provides strength so that everything else in the Body of Christ can find its place and fully function. Leadership is part of what God has placed in His Body for the overall health of the Body—hidden, yet serving a powerful purpose.

We have found that it is valid and Biblical (though not necessary) to provide financial support for both of the leader-servant roles mentioned. But these are decisions that are fully made by the house churches. They are the church. They need no one else to actually be the church. They support certain leader-servant roles only because and if they feel called to do it in the same way that they support other missionaries or ministries.

However, the leadership-support structure cannot become possessive of the fruit, organize the members, put a fence around the harvest, or take ownership of anything. This type of support lets go of everything but the desire to see others run with their vision, their calling, and their God-given destiny. This type of support structure does not try to become a kingdom, a business, or a ministry: it just does the servant work of supporting the ministries of others and the churches themselves.

Leadership: difficult to deal with, needed, yet it must be put in its place!

This subject, typically, elicits many responses. What’s yours?

Go to Part 6: House Church Networks

(If you are looking for the “House Church Basics” series, please scroll down to the next post.)

George, at WaterCarriers, is questioning whether even meetings themselves are necessary to the Christian life. He asks, “Is it possible to be a believer following Christ daily and not have a regularly scheduled gathering time?”

Before you shower George with scriptures and exhortations, at least hear him out.

I’m not personally wanting a “meetingless Christianity,” but I think stretching our presumptions is always a good thing. The bigger question for me is… what must I do to make this about Jesus… really about Jesus… everything I do about living for and with Jesus… rather than about the church or “going to church.” If any meeting becomes a substitute for living the Jesus life…

And let’s face it (I’m kind of warming up here) how often do Christians feel like they have somehow done the Christian life thing because they have “gone to church” or “gone to their house church.” The meeting becomes 95% of what it means to live for Christ. “I went to church, did the religious thing, now I go live my life.” Compartmentalized. “I did my church thing so now I can go do the rest-of-my-life thing.” Or how many Christians are locked into Christian lives that revolve around the vision of others, the vision of “their church,” or the subtle “understanding” of what it means to live Christian lives according to how “we do it” in “our church.” In this way we become followers of church rather than followers of Christ.

No, I’m not personally jumping into a “meetingless Christianity” mode for many reasons… but I appreciate the challenge to get un-comparmentalized in my life.. seeking what the Father has for me above my comfortable routines or the plans of others… and maybe focusing even more on the adventure of finding the Father at work in, around, and through me everywhere I go and everywhere I am.

The house church is a wonderful expression of family, friendship, and community life.

In my humble opinion, true community life, vulnerable relationships, and family-type support is not just a good thing but, rather, an essential for the Christian life. There are over 50 “one another” verses in the New Testament because we live, grow, minister, become healthy, and find support in the context of real relationships.

Jamie, at BeChurch, describes this well:

People were designed to need each other and rely on each other. People were designed to learn and grow from loving interaction with other people. That is why a safe and loving family is such an important thing for children. They need those relationships to develop properly. It’s the same with us as believers… we need healthy relationships with other followers of Jesus to experience all of the blessings and freedom that God has in store for us as His people…

When we find ourselves in a loving relationship with other believers we begin to live life in a new way, a more freeing way. We have people to encourage us when we need it; we have people to build us up. We have the awesome gift of having a support structure to rely on when things get tough. A man doesn’t have this freedom when he lives his life as a lone ranger. His life is spent chasing his tail trying to meet all of his needs or find some sort of support in other way. He is living in a way that is contrary to the way that God designed people.

True community is a biblical ideal. The church is spoken of in “family” terms frequently.

Yet… it’s not easy. It requires intentionality.

Scott Peck describes the stages that community life might go through:

For any group to achieve community in the truest sense, it must undertake a journey that involves four stages: “pseudocommunity,” where niceness reigns; “chaos,” when the emotional skeletons crawl out of the closet; “emptiness,” a time of quiet and transition; and finally, true community, marked both by deep honesty and deep caring.

I am going to share six components of developing community that I have found we must be intentional about:

1. Vulnerability and authenticity. Creating community that is safe and that reflects God’s own love does not just happen. Someone has to risk being vulnerable and saying, “This is who I really am.” We are spiritual and human, both. Our humanness is shared in common with all. Sharing our humanness does not make us weak—it makes us close to other humans. It allows us to fulfill the biblical command to “accept one another as Christ has accepted you.” Someone has to be deliberate about taking the risk to take the masks off. In this environment of acceptance, others will do the same and true community will develop.

2. Make room for people to share. There needs to be times during meals, gatherings, get-togethers where people have space to share their lives. This may seem obvious, but it’s amazing how quickly we can fill our times together with talk about everything except ourselves. We often wait to be invited before we will share our lives with others. Someone has to ask the real questions!

3. Someone has to model what it means to console others. Christians tend to fix and advise when others have needs. This can be helpful, but very often this is an attempt to do the job of the Holy Spirit. Many times, God is very good at leading Christians into the truth they need, what He asks of us is that we learn to console one another: weep with those who weep. This is our job. This is how we stand by one another in support and closeness.

4. Get involved in the threads of each other’s lives. We need to know, really, what is happening with one on a daily and weekly basis. What are the circumstances, issues, problems, and needs that are being wrestled with. There are many ways to communicate and we need to use them all: gatherings, prayer requests, phone, email, one-on-one get-togethers. Relationships don’t just happen. They are built one brick at a time.

5. Plan on conflict. Good relationships are built on the inevitability of conflicts that are faced and resolved to the point where the relationship is even stronger. Relationships are made to grow us. We must deal with the real issues of hurt, pride, anger, communication, and forgiveness. This is the stuff of relationship. To not plan for this is to settle for superficial relationships that blow away at the first hint of strain.

6. Be willing to let go. Not all relationships are going to continue to be close, even when they are good. We want to have great community. We will have great community. But it will sometimes be time to re-arrange. God does this. We don’t become so attached to community that it becomes our god. Community does not meet all our needs, God does. Community is meant to grow us up. Sometimes we have to let go of it being the “end all” that we thought it would be.

I love community. I love community life. I am called to be a builder of community life. Being part of a transformational family is, I believe, at the heart and soul of what it means to “be” the church.

But… it’s messy, difficult, demanding, sometimes wearisome and frustrating… as well as wonderful, fulfilling, and life-changing. It requires constant attention. As Scott Peck says:

A group of people never become a community and stay a community. They continually fall out of community, back into chaos or pseudocommunity. What character-izes a healthy, ongoing, sustained community is the rapidity with which it is able to say, “Hey, we’ve lost it. We need to go back and work on ourselves.

What’s your experience with it?

Go to Part 5: What About Leadership

(House Church Blog is an interactive forum for house church, church planting, and related topics. Feel free to post comments!)

Keys to missional community: 1. Go get’em. 2. People of Peace. 3. Living Kingdom lives.

One of the hallmarks of the house church movement is that it seeks to be what the church, in fact, is: missional. Jesus went everywhere proclaiming and demonstrating the reality, love, and power of the Kingdom (healing the brokenhearted, setting captives free, proclaiming God’s acceptance, etc.) The church (the people of God) goes and does the same.

This means that church, first of all, needs to transition from being a “come and see” place to a “go and be with the lost” movement.

From Reggie McNeal’s book (The Present Future: Six Tough Questions for the Church):

The Pharisees’ evangelism strategy sounds eerily familar. Their approach to sharing God was, “Come and get it!”…Jesus’ evangelism strategy directly challenged the Pharisees’ approach. Instead of “Come and get it!” it was “Go get’em!” p. 28

Jesus’ strategy was to go where people were already hanging out. This is why he went to weddings, parties, and religious feast day celebrations…Taking the gospel to the streets means we need church where people are already hanging out. We need a church in every mall, every Wal-Mart supercenter, every Barnes and Noble. p. 35

Bottom line: we’ve got to take the gospel to the streets. This is the only appropriate missional response to the collapse of the church culture. I am not talking about short forays into port off of the cruise ship. I am speaking of an intentional 24/7 church presence in the community, not tied to church real estate: (rather) office building, malls, school campuses, sports complexes, storefronts, homes, apartment buildings, and community centers. We need to go where people are already hanging out and be prepared to have conversations with them about the great love of our lives. This will require our shifting our efforts from growing churches into transforming communities.

They’re not coming to us. We’ve got to go to them.

This reminds me of the “church in the pub” that many of you are familiar with. If not, be sure to read about it here.

One of the fundamental potentials of the house church movement: churches can go where the people are, churches can start quickly anywhere and reproduce rapidly. In this way, the church becomes what it is meant to be: a “going” movement.

In our own churches we work hard to make sure that reproduction is in the DNA of each house church that we start. That means that they fully expect to grow and reproduce another house church within a year (at most). We want it to be a “going out” thing. But we are still too new at this to see if we are reproducing churches that are reproducing churches that are reproducing churches which is the key to true multiplication.

Secondly, we are trying to keep our focus on the “Person of Peace” principle. We believe this is vital. This means asking God to show us people of influence, whom He is working in, who will become gatherers for Him.

If you want to know more about this, Carol Davis’ article is excellent.

Also the Dales (house2house) put on a Luke 10 Conference each year on the subject.

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, is the realization that we are meant to live and be the church in every situation, in every part of life, in every way. We take Jesus where we go and we live Kingdom lives because it’s who we are.

Kingdom living includes demonstrating care for the poor, the needy, the brokenhearted, the sick… It means washing the feet of others… It means living upside down lives from the values of the culture… It means loving the least… It means letting God creatively and uniquely work through us (according to how He made us) in every situation we are in… It means relating and loving wherever we go.

Darren, at the Living Room, has an excellent article about two or more “Kingdom Christians” inviting a non-Christian into relationship: loving someone intentionally as a “collective group” of two or three. Good stuff to reflect on.

I’m writing all of this and my old tapes are screaming, “But there has to be more. There has to be a program, a plan, a strategy that will call the masses to recognize their deep need for a Savior and Lover and bring them into an awesome encounter.”

My “new” mind knows all the right answers to this: true kingdom disciples are developed through relationships not programs; a little leaven will leaven the whole loaf as God’s Kingdom works through sphere after sphere of influence.

But are we really on track with this? Is this enough? What are we missing?

Go to Pt. 4: Community Life

(If you are looking for House Church Basics Pt. 2: Participatory Church, scroll down to the next post).

Good discussions over the weekend at both churches. We ended up talking quite a bit about what “Kingdom Living” means.

Jesus lived for the Kingdom: healing, caring, giving, teaching, washing feet, living with upside-down values, and telling everyone the Good News about the Kingdom. He lived it, taught it, and demonstrated it.

We want to live Kingdom lives, but what does it mean in our context? Some are married, some have families, most work at jobs, and we live in our present-day context. Okay… but we are still called to live upside-down, care more for the needy, let go of our materialistic goals, love others, and speak of our faith in God’s Kingdom.

But where are the sick, lame, and oppressed that came flocking to Jesus because of their needs? In our discussions, I expressed frustration that people in our community don’t have the kind of desparate, obvious pain that a leper did, or others who were sick and thus unemployable. Most people, where I live, avoid desparate pain by taking a pill for it or by finding some type of bandaid solution. We have a quick fix for almost any hurt.

And where is the open marketplace where people come to hear the ideas of others? In short, where are the people who are looking for Good News?

Interesting how God directed these conversations. We began to talk about the many people who are around us in much pain… you just have to get to know them, really know them… Oh yeah… it’s about relationship. And where are these people? In our own marketplaces: our own spheres of influence. Oh yeah, it’s those who are right in front of us.

It amuses me how often I want to find my “ministry” somewhere other than where it is: right where God has placed me. It challenges me because I want to go “over there” and make some great “impact.” Sometimes God does send me “over there,” but more often it’s right here that I am called to live for the Kingdom, love for the Kingdom, and embrace others for the Kingdom.

(If you are looking for the House Church Basics Pt. 1, scroll down to the next post.)

Most of us will see The Passion movie over the next few days. I will be viewing it Friday night. I would love to have us weigh on this one question:

Will this movie have an impact on unbelievers/unchurched? What kind of impact?

WaterCarriers suggests that it will only have an impact on unbelievers who we, as Christians, are already in relationship with:

I believe that if you are living in authentic relationship with unbelievers then take them and this film will cause great discussions and maybe with God’s Grace some will come to truly know Him. But please don’t take those you are not living missionally among. This movie is about a relationship and friends. Take one to see it!

This is a house church thought. Impacting others is about relationship. Can a movie transform people without this?

Come back to this site after you see the movie. Share your thought on: What kind of impact will it have on the non-Christian?

(House Church Blog is an interactive forum for house church, church planting, and related topics. Feel free to post comments!)