SimpleChurch Journal aka House Church Blog

Church Planting Movements

David Watson presented a one-day web seminar on church planting movements.  Notes and links to this webinar are below.

Many feel, as I do, that the movement toward simple/house churches has the potential of paving the way for the rapid multiplication of churches, by the hand of God, often referred to as church planting movements.  This wonderful move of God has been referred to as “the spontaneous expansion of the Church…  It asks for no elaborate organization, no large finances, no great numbers of paid missionaries (Roland Allen).”  Yet such a move has the potential of seeing regions and nations transformed.

David Garrison, in his groundbreaking book on church planting movements, offers this hope for such a move of God in North America: “A surprising number of [North American] Christian leaders are adopting a radical new vision that looks surprisingly like other [church planting] movements that we’ve witnessed around the world.”  Garrison closes his book with this encouragement:

It can’t happen here.  This is what they said in Vietnam until they saw it in Cambodia.  It’s what they said in Cambodia before they saw it in China.  It’s what they said in Central America before they saw it in Bogota.  It’s what they said in Sudan before they saw it in Ethiopia.  Perhaps it’s what they are saying where you live.

Some Key Points from David Watson’s Webinar on Church Planting Movements

“Focus on the few to reach the many,” and “Go slow to go fast.”  David’s experience on the mission field caused his organization to question his methods because, in his first few years on the field, he was not producing the numerical growth of other missionaries.  However, David was systematically reaching and discipling a handful of believers who then began to reproduce themselves.  Several years later the result was thousands of churches and reproducing disciples.

“Find the fight people to invest your life into.”  David’s criterion in working with someone is whether or not they are going to invest in others.

“Let the lost lead Bible studies,” and “It’s about discovery not preaching or teaching.”  David has experienced a great deal of success at showing pre-Christians how to do a discovery Bible study that lead them into a process of discipleship.  “Disciple to conversion” rather than “convert to make disciples.”

“Buildings kill church planting.”  Though David is not negative on the overall usefulness of “brick and mortar” churches, he merely reflects on the reality that when God is moving in reproducing disciples among a people group, nothing will slow this process down like building-type churches rather than simple-organic ones.

These sessions are filled with nuggets that are worthy of reflection:

Session 1
Session 2
Session 3
Session 4

Who's In Your House Church?

J.D. Payne has done a study of house churches, specifically those that he calls “missional house churches.”  Many interesting tidbits are found in this study.  For example…

Payne identifies four types of people who are typically involved in house churches.  I think looking at these categories of people can be very informative and provoke some excellent conversations about our own simple/house churches.

1. Anti-Establishment Christians
Payne describes this type of believer as having separatist attitudes whose primary identity comes from being “not” like the others.  He quotes Andrew Jones who describes a house church he visited: “A group of disgruntles whose happiness came from the fact they met on Thursday and not Sunday.  In a living room and not a sanctuary.  On a sofa and not a pew…  And yet in all their freedom they managed only to move the church service from a building to a house.”

Payne predicts that the number of anti-established church believers (those whose primary identity comes from this) will continue to grow.  He questions whether this group will have any actual positive impact on the kingdom of God.

2. New-Experience Christians
This group is typical of the consumerism that pervades our culture as they are simply seeking out “the latest and greatest spiritual experience.”  Of course, when the next promise of spiritual experience comes along, they will move along to the next better thing.  “Many of these people will remain involved in house church life only until another novel experience captures their attention.”

3. Hurting Christians
“Many believers who have had significant involvement in traditional church life have been wounded psychologically, sexually, emotionally, spiritually, or physically, and many times a combination of these areas.  Many have been hurt by other Christians and have ‘given up’ on the established church.  Some see house churches as the answer to their problems, and many house churches see themselves primarily as a place for such hurting believers.  As many believers turn to house churches for therapeutic reasons, house churches will continue to increase.”

My own long-term experience with these type of church communities (traditional and non-traditional) is that it can be very difficult for them to avoid taking on enabling roles and provide a too-comfortable place for hurting Christians to continue to hurt.

4. Missional Christians and New Believers
Payne’s final category fits into the purpose of his book: to encourage house churches to be missional.  His hope is that house churches will tap into their incredible potential to be salt and light throughout the world.  He says Christians who fall into this category “are not satisfied with and… do not desire transfer growth.  Not only do they know the commands of the Lord, but they also go to the fields that are ripe for the harvest…  They will be on mission for Christ in their Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and the ends of the earth.”

Payne envisions these types of churches reaching new believers who follow the same pattern, paving the way for movements of reproducing Christians and house churches.

These categories may not be so clear cut.  Obviously hurting Christians can, even while walking through healing, have a wonderful missional impact on others.  New-experience Christians can “grow up” and find a new level of mature living for Christ in the world.  Nevertheless, I think it can be instructive to evaluate where our groups or gatherings are at and where we would like to see them.

Church Arises From the Heart

A picture sent to us from our daughter-in-law:

Re-Thinking House Church

The process of thinking about, practicing, re-thinking, re-imagining, and re-experimenting is exactly where the church needs to be today as it struggles to shed some irrelevant outer garments and seeks to uncover the shape it is morphing into.

I have seen the benefits of moving away from more traditional structures and into church forms that are simpler:

• Small, so that community and family can be experienced
• Participatory, so that every person’s gift is valued and developed
• Non-positional in leadership status, so that submission is mutual and leadership is situational and gift-based
• Non-programmatic, so that mission, discipleship, and leadership training is relationally-oriented
• Simple, so that it supports a 24/7, Jesus-following way of life

Yet, I have also noted the many downsides of working with simple/house churches:

• Community/family life in small groups is challenging.
• Despite good intentions, the consumer attitude of “what’s in it for me” can still be the prevailing attitude.
• We can talk a lot about a 24/7, Jesus-following lifestyle, but the reality is often that the only real change is that we gather in a small, participatory gathering rather than a large, stage-oriented one.
• Participatory gatherings, that seek to have the Holy Spirit lead, often fall short of such an ideal.
• Simple/house churches can become a place for Christians who are done with traditional church, for whatever reason, but who are not really ready to move forward into something truly, substantively different in terms of lifestyle.

Does this mean that I am ready to abandon simple/house churches?  Not at all.

But re-think?  Always.  I believe that God is on the move at this time like no other season I have been through in a long time, and the challenge is to keep moving with Him.

“Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.”
(Bob Dylan—whew… where did he come from?)

Keeping First Things First: How Hard It Is

I have spoken and written about the following statement over and over in many different ways:

“Simple church is not about ‘doing church differently,’ rather it’s about a way of life, the Jesus way of life, and supporting that way of life through simple, organic gatherings.”

In other words, the “way of life” really is the primary focus while the structure, format, or type of gathering is completely secondary.  Our communities/gatherings must consist of people who are living or learning to live dynamic, purposeful, intimate, prophetic, missional Christian lifestyles rather than just being house-sized containers for passive Christians to gather in.

Tom Sine, in The New Conspirators, comments: “We are concerned that fewer than 10 percent of the believers we work with in North America have any time outside of home and church to work in ministry with others.”

I am concerned that meeting simply and in houses has not actually changed this.  We are spending less time in church meetings and programs, but has this really translated into more ministry outside the walls?  Has our way of life changed?

I am concerned that we fall into the “downsides of working with simple/house churches” (mentioned above) precisely because we sink into the habit, once again, of just “doing church” rather than living out the type of ministry and lifestyle that Jesus modeled.

My confession is that I fall into this far more often than I choose to admit.  My intentions for living as a radical, whole-life disciple dissipate into a few weekly Christian activities.  I begin just “doing church.”  I begin to look at my Christian friends and the church communities I gather with as though they are the problem when, in fact…

• I am the one who is no longer purposefully engaging with God in His intentions to bring His Kingdom to earth all around me and through me.
• I am the one who is trying to replace a lifestyle of listening and following Jesus’ voice and footsteps with a pre-formatted, Christian routine and a simple/small gathering.
• I am the one who is hesitant to fully explore with God what it means to lay down my life in order to allow His compassionate, missional heart to beat in me and change the way I live.

Re-Imagining Church With a Whole-Life, Missional Ethos

So, I am once again seeking to re-imagine what “church” can be.  Or rather, what it means to be the church in a way that actually reflects who Jesus is.  It is certainly about pursuing a constant intimacy with Jesus developed through practices, both personal and corporate, which nurture and develop that relationship with Him.  It is certainly about doing life with others in community which, for me, means small, participatory, shared-life communities.

However, I also see the need for a clear missional ethos that actually challenges my comfortable, North American lifestyle and propels me more often into the world of people’s hurt, pain, need, and lost-ness that Jesus engaged daily.

The Praxis Church offers the following as a partial definition of their church family: “As a Missional Church we value the time you spend in the world and so instead of filling your life with a variety of church events we would rather send you into the culture equipped with the Gospel.”

This type of statement is a good start.  However, I also sense the need to bring this type of ethos into the discipleship process so that I am being discipled into a radical, missional, Jesus-following life and discipling others in the same vein.  I believe a healthy, fathering/mentoring discipleship chain is essential to Christians living full-of-life, dynamic, intentional, intimate, purposeful, kingdom lives that propel us out of our cultural sloth. 

I am re-imagining simple church that places a whole-life, missional, counter-cultural, Jesus-following ethos at the very center of its gathering and intentional discipleship processes.

There is, obviously, much more to explore together so consider this an invitation to think, re-think, and re-imagine with me.

Books, Books, and More Books

I just want to mention a few books of interest.

Pagan Christianity, by Frank Viola and George Barna.  This is an update of Viola’s former book that is receiving mainline attention despite its hard-hitting message of God’s original design and intention for his church.  The thesis: “Most of what present-day Christians do in church each Sunday is rooted, not in the New Testament, but in pagan culture and rituals developed long after the death of the apostles.”  A must read because of its well-documented message and broad circulation.

The New Conspirators, by Tom Sine.  Sine takes a look at what he calls “a new generation of conspirators that won’t be satisfied with anything less than an authentic faith that makes a real difference in the lives of others…”  He gives many examples of people (mostly young) who are re-imagining the form and shape of today’s church dividing them into four categories: emerging, missional, mosaic, and monastic.  Sine challenges us to become creative in “giving imaginative expression to God’s new creation in the here and now.”

UnChristian, by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons.  This book looks at the negative perceptions that are commonly held of Christians.  “The primary reason outsiders feel hostile toward Christians… is not because of any specific theological perspective.  What they react negatively to is our ‘swagger,’ how we go about things and the sense of self-importance we project.”  The authors document the most common perceptions of present-day Christianity: judgmental, old-fashioned, too involved in politics, insensitive, boring, confusing, and more.  This book is an excellent mirror for anyone who wants to engage our culture in a way that allows people to see the real Jesus.

Helping the Kenyans in Crisis

In case you have not heard from some other source, we are involved in a group effort to bring relief to some of the victims of the violence in Kenya that broke out two months ago.

My wife and I were there 9 weeks ago, so the tragedies have been very personal and upfront, involving several of our friends.

If you have not done so, please take a look at the following website set up to bring the latest reports and to coordinate giving that is going directly to Kenyan leaders who are ministering to critical needs.

www.simplechurchescare.com

Music is Not Worship

Dave Wainscott has put together some excellent quotes around the topic of “Worship is not Music.”

“It would be true to say that during the last twenty-five years or so amongst those churches which would own the label 'evangelical', a significant change in understanding has taken place over the meaning of the word 'worship'. If a few decades ago the person leading the service had said, 'We are now going to have a time of worship', most people would have looked on in utter bewilderment. Now everyone would know exactly what to expect: a lengthy time of contemporary Christian songs, maybe interspersed with a few prayers and exhortations, perhaps with hands held up in the air and a far-away look in the eyes.”

We have, first of all, limited the concept of worship to an event that takes place for twenty minutes rather than a life that is devoted in love and surrender to a compelling God.

Even worse, we have reduced corporate worship to times in which music must be present.  Further, we have become so dependent on great-sounding music to drive the worship times that very little true heart-worship is needed.  In fact, some would say, the result is a steep decline in actual corporate “worship” and an increase of music-moved emotion.

I share this only because simple/organic churches have the opportunity to re-capture the heart of worship.  We want to re-affirm that the Christian life of worship is one that is not segmented into times of worship and times of non-worship.  Every day, and every gathering (whether at home, or with friends, or with nonChristians, or with community) is an opportunity for worship of many different kinds.

AND, when we do gather together and find ourselves expressing love-sick worship toward God with our hands, lips, body, soul, and spirit… we can recover heart-driven worship.  We can learn the wonder of a small group of believers who have developed the daily discipline of turning their hearts toward God in adoration coming together to do the same corporately.  In that time, music can be good but it is not essential.  Spoken praise works, psalms read works, silence works, spontaneous non-professional singing works, poetry works.  When our hearts are driving worship the external forms become far less important than the inner longings that truly do usher in a deep conscious sense of God’s presence.

I love worship.  And I love music.  But I long to see our gatherings re-capture the numinous awe of God simply around the fact that a group of Jesus-lovers have gathered who are in awe of Him.

When the music fades / All is stripped away / And I simply come / Longing just to bring / Something that's of worth / That will bless Your heart
I bring You more than a song / For a song in itself / Is not what You have required
You search much deeper within / Through the way things appear / You're looking into my heart
I'm coming back to the heart of worship / And it's all about You / It's all about You, Jesus

Participatory Gatherings and the Need for Deep Spirituality

Ian Mobsby posts a talk that begins with the following quote from the theologian Voot suggesting the need for a deep spirituality among those who enjoy simple, participative church structures:

A participative model of the church requires more than just values and practices that correspond to participative institutions. The church is not first of all a realm of moral purposes; it is the anticipation, constituted by the presence of the Spirit of God, of the eschatological gathering of the entire people of God in communion with the triune God. Hence the church needs the vivifying presence of the Spirit, and without this presence, even a church with a decentralised participative structure and culture will become sterile, and perhaps more sterile even than a hierarchical church. For it will either have to operate with more subtle or open forms of coercion. Successful participative church life must be sustained by deep spirituality. Only the person who lives from the Spirit of communion (2 Cor. 13:13) can participate authentically in the life of the ecclesial community.

7 Obstacles to Engaging in Mission, Deb Hirsch

(Following are my notes on Deb Hirsch’s talk at the CMA Organic Movements Conference earlier this month.  This is the abbreviated version.  You can download my longer notes here: 7_obstacles_to_engaging_in_mission_deb_hirsch.doc )

The fall away rate for people who continue to be really involved in mission is very high.  People get older and become church attendees, but lose their enthusiasm for mission.  What's the motivation that keeps me going?  "Once I was lost; once I was blind."

There are obstacles that stop us from being engaged in mission.  Some are about external circumstances and some are internal.

7 Obstacles to Engaging in Mission:

1. Distorted view of Jesus.

I fear that a lot of Christians are not seeing Him clearly.  We see Him in our own image.  We try to tame Him or domesticate Him.  We try to keep Him behind the stain-glass walls.  The Jesus of the Gospels was quite unruly.  He didn't care much for social graces; often impolite or outright rude.  He always seemed to be hanging out with the wrong people at the wrong time in the wrong places.  We have made Him meek and mild, polite, never offensive, and always at the right place, in the right time, with the right people.

We have cleaned these images up because they offend us.  But when we follow a sanitized, cleaned up Jesus, then we become like that: tame and sanitized.

2. Distorted views of self

The foundational identity that we need to live out is that we are disciples.  Churches are full of Christians, but there are not a lot of disciples.  Christians believe, but disciples follow.  A sacrificial motif.  No sacrifice, no disciple.  If we see our self with this identity, we will walk out our purpose: "to go out and be missionaries in the world."

3. Distorted views of others

I started in ministry with a "worm" theology.  We are all bad people.  We end up focusing on people's negative behavior.

We need a paradigm shift.  The primary truth is that people are created in the image of God.  Look at other people I encounter and recognize that this person, no matter who it is, in some way reflects my God.

4. Distorted views of love

We are totally saturated in romantic notions of love.  But Christians are called to a sacrificial love.

C.S. Lewis says that self-giving love is the most fundamental of all loves.  "For in self-giving, if anywhere, we touch a rhythm not only of all creation but of all being. For the Eternal Word also gives Himself in sacrifice."

Romantic notions of love do not cut it in the mission field.  It's "fun" to get out there and have a romantic notion of the being out there.  But real love is what is needed to sustain mission.  "To know love one must know pain."

5. Distorted views of the world

Where you stand determines what you see.  Too many of us keep ourselves cocooned in our safe lives and houses.  How can we respond to the needs of the world if we are not out looking for them.  To understand the pain of a city, you have to go to where the pain is.  We have to move out beyond where we are to see the pain.

We bought a house with five people in a red-light district.  Every time I walked out of my house I could see a prostitute on one corner or another.  We have to place our self where we can see the needs and the pain or we become lazy.

6. Distorted views about money, consumption, and status

"No one can serve two masters…"

Martin Luther said three conversions were necessary--heart, mind, and wallet.  Money has the capacity to ensnare us like nothing else does.  For western Christians money is our greatest blindspot.

We have also been seduced by consumerism-- the alternative religion of our day.  Sociologists say consumerism has become the "new religion."  This is the greatest competitor to Christianity, yet we don't see it because we live amongst it.  We have to repent of the idolatry.

7. Distorted views of the family

We have become captive to the construct of the nuclear family (mom and dad and 2.2 kids) as the ideal family structure.  We have set this up as an idol.  We have ministries based upon this as the ideal.

This is not a biblical notion of family.  In fact, nothing like it.  This notion of family has only been known for the last 40-50 years with industrialization.  Prior to that, people lived much more in a village-type family structure.

The biblical notion of family is very inclusive-- households-- many, many uncles, brothers, sisters, parents.  The kingdom is a big inclusive family.

(Note: These are only my notes and do not convey the impact of her total message.  But I thought the bits and pieces of wisdom were powerful enough to pass along.)

An Underground, Insurgent Movement

Perhaps the church is neither emerging nor re-structuring so much as re-claiming its true nature as an underground, insurgent movement.  By that I mean that the truest work of the Holy Spirit always seems to be initiated among the least and the unseen bringing forth true kingdom life that is contrary and even subversive to the surrounding culture.

Tom Sine, in his new book (not yet published) “The New Conspirators” talks about “joining the conspiracy of the insignificant”:

In spite of the fact that our world is changing at blinding speed and the church is going through some very tough times God is still at work in ways that aren’t always immediately apparent. For some reason, God seems to delight in conspiring through the small, insignificant and ordinary to renew the church and transform the world. Eugene Peterson wrote, “The metaphors Jesus used for the life of ministry are frequently images of the single, the small and the quiet, which have effects far in excess of their appearance: salt, leaven and seed.”

He goes on to say:

Changing the world through the conspiracy of the insignificant has always been God’s strategy. God chose a ragtag group of Semite slaves to be the insurgents of a new order. God sent a vast army to flight with three hundred men carrying lamps and blowing horns. God chose a shepherd boy with a slingshot to lead his chosen people. And who would have dreamed that God would choose a baby in a cow stall to turn the world right side up?

Perhaps the real emergence of today’s church, the primary re-structuring that needs to take place, is in our own hearts.  That we would be willing to be the unseen, unheralded ambassadors who heroically refuse to walk in the ways of this world for the sake of demonstrating a love that throws money-changers out of temples, embraces sinners, and forgives those who nail us to a cross.

Maybe, the moment we are no longer underground (unseen) nor insurgent (counter-cultural), we are no longer really the church.

Maybe, the moment “our movement” is recognized, written about, or even blogged about, it no longer has the characteristics of the true church.

Maybe, the moment we receive an accolade or an applause for what we are doing, it is time to look to see if the recognition has come because we have begun to agree more with our culture than the radical kingdom that Jesus preached and demonstrated.

Perhaps it is the underground, insurgent nature of the church that needs to be re-claimed above all else and maybe, just maybe, all of the “emerging” and “re-structuring” will take care of itself.

The first chapter of Tom Sine’s yet-to-be-published book can be found here.

Read or add your own comments here.