The following is an email sent to me from John White... It's regarding John Arnott's term: "Supernatural Church"... and it's regarding two predictions that John makes... read all the way to the end:
A recent email from Felicity Dale pointed me to an article by Arnott in the recent edition of the "Spread the Fire" magazine which is put out by his church www.tacf.org. The article, entitled "Let's Get Back to Supernatural Church", clearly articulates many of the basic concepts of simple church (see the John Arnott post below). By "supernatural church", Arnott means "one that depends on "the foundation of Jesus as the Anointed One, rather than on structure". What a concept! House church...simple church...organic church...supernatural church. This may be the best name of all for what God is doing. This article is especially significant because Arnott is the Sr. Pastor of a megachurch and also gives leadership to an informal network of traditional churches. These are the kinds of churches that have traditionally been built on "structure" and they are beginning to call all of this into question. Amazing! This certainly is God! The article is also significant because it reminds us in the house church movement that meeting in a home (or Starbucks) is no guarantee of "supernatural church". We also must be alert to the danger of becoming "structure dependent" instead of "Jesus dependent". At the recent House Church Conference, John Eldredge warned us that if Satan cannot stop the house church movement, he will attempt to "co-opt" it by tempting it with "Churchianity". This is what Arnott describes as "man’s attempts to organize and institutionalize the Church". My predictions: 1. In the next year, we will see a growing number of traditional church and parachurch leaders embrace simple church concepts. 2. At the same time, as these concepts become more and more accepted, we will see a growing number of attempts to "organize and institutionalize" the house church movement.
