SimpleChurch Journal aka House Church Blog

Strong Words Re Institutional Church AND House Church

Chip Brogden, at Watchmen.net (thanks, John for pointing me to the article), has some strong words to say about "organized religion."  This is a short excerpt from a much longer article:

What is Babylon? It is the marriage of church and state, religion and government; or to be more direct, it is allowing the leaven of the world to spread via Organized Religion and Institutional Christianity. As an example, consider how pastoring a church has become more of a profession than a calling, and how church government has digressed from a theocratic, Spirit-led consensus to a "Spirit-led" democracy, or worse, a "Spirit-led" benevolent dictatorship of a single pastor or a church board. This is the result of the spirit of Babylon. Whereas the True Church is to be "in the world, but not of the world", Babylon is that which is both in the world and of the world - it is by, for, and of the worldly system, yet it retains the outward appearances of godliness and spirituality. It is a synthesis of God and man, taking the best that each has to offer and fashioning a golden calf with it.

He also has some strong words to challenge those involved in house church:

The clarion call of recent years has been the Scriptural injunction to "come out of Babylon", and when applied to the Institutional Church, it is interpreted to mean have nothing at all to do with the present religious system as represented by the clergy / laity distinction, the hierarchy of leadership with the pastor at the head, and the platform-based, event-oriented programs and church building projects. Invariably the trend has been towards informal small groups and home churches. We believe this to be a partial but incomplete solution. We see Babylon not as a political or institutional state, but a spiritual state. To truly come out of Babylon requires something more than deciding to meet in homes or resolving to do away with the external trappings of Churchianity. Many claim to have come out of Babylon because they no longer attend church services, but Babylon has not come out of them. They have only exchanged one sophisticated form of religious bondage for a less sophisticated one, perhaps creating an Institutional House Church in the process.

More than changing a few external rituals and adopting a so-called New Testament pattern to the exclusion of all others, coming out of Babylon requires an attitudinal adjustment on the part of the believer, a genuine paradigm shift and seeing the Lord and the Lord's Church; it cannot merely be a reacting to the obvious wrongs perpetuated in the name of God by Organized Religion. It is quite possible to be out of the system but still be bound to Babylon, still chained by bitterness and fixated with all that is wrong with the Body.

I like the way that Chris points to the importance of a genuine "paradigm shift."  In my experience this is crucial, otherwise people are just exchanging one form of external Christianity for another.  I also like his challenge to leave "organized religion" for the right reasons:

There is only one right way to leave Babylon, and that is by way of Christ. To leave because of hurt, bitterness, dissatisfaction with the status quo, rebellion, or anything short of seeing Christ is to be in a precarious situation. Certainly hurt, bitterness, and the like are compelling reasons to leave, but only when they drive us to Christ do they help and not hinder. If our experiences drive us into a quagmire of depression and unforgiveness then all meaning and purpose for the experience is lost. On the other hand, if our disenchantment, disillusionment, and despair drive us deeper into Christ, we will find healing through Him and we will be enabled to extend grace to those who persecuted us. Then the experience is meaningful, the pain had purpose, and the lesson is learned.

This is why we do not command all Christians everywhere to stop attending church services. To leave, or to stay, apart from revelation, apart from seeing Christ and His Body, and based only upon the word of some man or group, no matter how true, is not sufficient to escape from Babylon. Others may bring us out of Babylon, but they cannot bring Babylon out of us. This is the Lord's work. And this explains why we find some who have left Organized Religion but are not better off spiritually than they were before leaving. In fact, after several years they have become cold, aloof, distant, critical, and suspicious of others. Their world has become smaller, whereas the one who leaves Organized Religion because of revelation lives in a much larger world as entire new vistas of opportunity appear. With an awareness of the Body, fellowship is no longer restricted to time, place, church, or denomination, thus opportunities for fellowship abound.

Too Much Focus on "The Gathering"

I find myself falling into the trap of putting too much focus on the church as a gathering and forgetting that the church, in its fullness, is more about going and being than about gathering.

Yes, the church gathers to fellowship, break bread, and pray. But there is much more written in Scripture about the church going and being than gathering...

"the apostles were performing many miraculous signs and wonders among the people..."  (Acts 5:12)

"Stephen... performed amazing miracles and signs among the people..." (6:8)

"But the believers who had fled Jerusalem went everywhere preaching the Good News about Jesus." (8:4)

"Philip, for example, went to the city of Samaria and told the people there about the Messiah." (8:5)

"As for Philip, an angel of the Lord said to him, 'Go south down the desert road that runs from Jerusalem to Gaza.'  So he did, and he met the treasurer of Ethiopia..." (8:26-27)

"Meanwhile, the believers who had fled from Jerusalem during the persecution after Stephen's death traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch of Syria. They preached the Good News..." (11:19)

"Sent out by the Holy Spirit, Saul and Barnabas went..."

I think the point is made: we are not just a group of people that gathers.  Who we are is much more than that.  We are a group of people, with power from above, who take the message of God's Kingdom and love everywhere that we go because that life and power is with us and in us.  He is where we go!

This is important because we still are in an identity crisis as a church. We define who we are incorrectly. We are still defining ourselves as "church" by how we do church "meetings": "house church," emrging church," etc. In doing this we are placing, still, a lot of focus on the gathering, where we gather, and what we do when we gather. This continues to cause us to mis-identify who we really are: Spirit-empowered believers who collectively and individually carry the presence of Christ into our world.

I need to continually remind myself that the church is a people-movement, a Holy Spirit infused and led avalanche of God's people going and being sent, with His Spirit, into a world that needs His life.

My friend Tammy recently grasped this while participating in one of our house church gatherings. She suddenly felt stifled, smothered, and uncomfortable. She began reflecting on all of the people "out there" who need the life that Jesus Christ has for them. She has been "attending" a house church for a little while, but the light suddenly dawned: it's not about a different type of church, it's about going out there and being the church. She caught the vision of finding a lonely woman on a park bench and taking church to that woman; being led to a homeless person and taking church to that person; asking God to lead her to wherever it is that He wants her to go and be the church there.

Yes, yes, and yes. This is what I so hope people will grasp. We are not seeking to just set up a different way to "do" church, i.e., a different way to gather. I long to see the whole church just going and being, taking the presence of Christ everywhere and letting the gatherings be truly secondary. They will take care of themselves quite naturally and powerfully when the church is being itself--the glory of Christ--in the world.

The primary reason that I seek simple expressions for church gatherings is so that we do not expend all of our time, energy, and resources on these gatherings and miss the point of who we really are and how we are to go and be in the world!

House Church Conference in California

We are firming up plans for a House Church Conference on May 6-7 in Santa Maria, California with Tony and Felicity Dale and Neil Cole.

I will keep y'all posted, but if you would like to receive details by email send me a note.

How Sinful are the Institutional Church's Structures?

I would like to provide some context for the previous post's discussion.  It seems to me that, in some ways, we are debating the question: "just how sinful are the institutional church's structures" and thus "how harsh should we be in judging it?"

I suggest we look at how we deal with "sin" on a personal level and the stages that we go through.

In our process of growth, there comes a time when God awakens us to the ugliness of a particular "sin" in our life.  We suddenly become aware of how destructive and diabolical that area of our life has become.  At this stage, as we begin to emerge from the lifestyle involving that sin, we see that sin everywhere, we are convicted by it, we are horrified by it.  We become people who rant and rave at the sickness and terribleness of that sin.

Then, as we find freedom in that particular area, we find ourselves no longer in that "reactionary" place... in fact, we simply begin to go on with our life and don't concern ourselves as much with that "sin" area because we are free of it and we are now busy building new and healthier patterns.

Finally, we get to the stage where we realize that we are not, and never will be, completely free from that sin.  We have come out of some of the most destructive elements from it, but we humbly recognize that the "bentness" of that sin is within us and we know that we walk in a measure of freedom only by the grace of God.  We are freed up, to a degree, from the sin but we don't feel superior or prideful... simply grateful.

I suggest that, as we discuss the "sinfulness" or the "ugliness" of the institutional church, we may need to recognize where we are in the stages, and perhaps where others are.

When I first began to emerge out of the institutional church I saw the sinfulness of it everywhere: in me, in every church, in every gathering.  I was horrified by the pride, the arrogance, the control, the systems that perpetuated greed, the mis-use of power, the pulling down of the dignity of the "lay" Christian.  To me, it was and still is horrible.  I needed to rant and rave... not to tear anyone else down... but to help free myself from the quagmire I had lived in.

Yet, I have also moved into the stage of a certain amount of freedom from some of that yuck and I am finding myself spending more time trying to build healthier patterns rather than trying to tear down or deconstruct what I came out of.  However, I still find the voices of those who are ranting and raving against to be helpful.  They remind me of those things that I do not want to return to.  These are important prophetic voices.

I hope that I will come to the final stage of both humility (recognizing that the sin is still within me and that I will always struggle with the greed, pride, and control that plagues God’s church) along with the clarity that sin is sin and that freedom comes from turning from it.

My point is that we need both voices still. We need the prophetic voice that says “Sin is sin.  Those sinful structures are horribly sinful.”  We also need the forward-looking voice that says, “Let’s move beyond tearing down and let’s re-construct, by the grace of God, something that reflects Him in a greater way.  Let’s remember our own sinfulness and walk in humility lest we fall into the same trap as before."

An Interesting Controversy

Chris Miliken comments (with some enthusiasm) on a recent post in which I quoted a short excerpt from Tony at theoblogy.  I thought the original quote was worth repeating along with Chris' comments... for the sake of dialogue...

Tony said:

"More and more of us are now convinced that something new cannot happen within the existing organizations and institutions. They are irredeemably reified into patterns of institutional conservatism and survival; they are irredeemably sold out to market forces and have thus commodified the radical, liberating message of the gospel."

His complete post can be found here.

Chris replied:

"I mostly disagree with Tony. I appreciate that he can see the problems of the heirachical, man-honoring system of the establishment and its sometimes stifling effect on the Message of Jesus. There are problems. I agree. But his blanket statements using words like "irredeemably" are misguided. His tone is harsh and blinded by his own judgement of his narrow experience. I sense he thinks he is following Jesus in doing something like overturning the money changer's tables in the temple. I've heard a lot of this kind of thing. But to say a group of people are disqualified from God doing anything new among them is base ignorance..."

His complete comment can be found here.

Chris added to his comment here.

Anyone else want to chime in?

Tips on Reading Blogs

Here is a tip (not a yahoo promotion) to stay in touch with a handful of your favorite blogs.  Yahoo now has a blog reader (RSS) that can be personalized at www.my.yahoo.com.  You can subscribe to the blogs you follow and the current posts, along with summaries, will appear on your yahoo home page.  I use this for a few blogs that I read, however it's not useful if you follow many.

I continue to use www.bloglines.com (also a free service) for most of the 40+ blogs that I like to stay in touch with.

Church Planting Conference

Notes from an Anabaptist church planting conference:

We may agree church is people rather than a building, but we need to remember it is not just people in services - it is people dispersed as well i.e. people both gathered and scattered. This requires a more holistic attitude. Church planters should not be aiming at just planting worship services. Meetings in themselves are not church.

For notes on the rest of the conference click here thanks to Prodigal Kiwi Blog.

Sold Out Church Institution

Tony at theoblogy just out and out says it...

More and more of us are now convinced that something new cannot happen within the existing organizations and institutions. They are irredeemably reified into patterns of institutional conservatism and survival; they are irredeemably sold out to market forces and have thus commodified the radical, liberating message of the gospel.

His entire post is even more direct.  You can read it here.

On Parenting

I delete most "forwarded" stories, pictures, etc. before even looking at them.  But the following came from a friend and I couldn't help passing it along for the sake of a little levity:

Most of America's populace thinks it's improper to spank children, so I have tried other methods to control our kids when they have one of "those moments".

One that I found very effective is for me to just take the child for a car ride and talk.

They usually calm down and stop misbehaving after our little car ride together.

I've included the photo below of one of my sessions, with our son, in case you would like to use the technique.

Its very effective!

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Impartational Mentoring

Next Wave has their November issue out.  Always good reading.  Here's an excerpt from an article called "Incarnational Mentoring":

Learning the ways of Jesus is more like making pickles than listing the fruits of the Spirit in a classroom using a PowerPoint presentation. You cannot diagram or sprinkle salt on a cucumber to get a pickle—you have to soak them in salt water. To look like, and then leak the life of Jesus one must “soak” in a mentoring relationship, absorbing the things you are unaware of at the moment until one day you become conscience that you are a “pickle,” a different kind of person with a new serenity and love, a different kind of mercy and grace, a different kind or humility and openness.