SimpleChurch Journal aka House Church Blog

A Tale of Two Voices

A friend of mine, Daniel, has been emailing me about the struggle he is having in his own mind (aided by some traditional-minded friends) as he attempts to walk out a more organic, Jesus-following lifestyle.

He writes of the “voice of the traditionalist” (my own term):

With the handful of families we are developing a relationship with, we are being told that we should put a name to what we are doing and call it something and that we need to think about leadership structure etc, etc. We are told that our church should look like this or that.

It feels like there are two paths to go down. One path is called church and it makes you want to have a meeting, set up structures and a church name and define who is in and who is out…

A friend who has planted a church phoned me the other day and basically told me that unless I make what we are doing like every other form of Church (get a name, write a big vision document and see who is in and out) then what we are doing will fritter out and accomplish nothing…

Everyone around us is looking to what kind of meeting we are having and how many people come to it. We are sick of meetings and longing to share our lives with people......So it is hard not to slip into the meeting=success idea and get discouraged.

Daniel also writes of the voice that is leading him believing this is the Spirit’s voice.

So where we are at is looking to share and love people. We open our home at every opportunity and it is all about sharing our lives with people…  We are planting the gospel and believing that Jesus will grow the church…

All we want to do is follow the Spirit's direction, live by the word of God, and love people. We are always asked about how many people come to our meeting on a Sunday! It kind of doesn't register because we are asking ourselves the question, "Lord who do you want us to share our lives with?”  Discipleship means sharing your life with people - not an hour here or there while we sit and sing songs with our eyes closed. 

Yes we believe in the church, leadership, and the fivefold ministry but how we get there is not as simple as just appointing, planning and programming. I told one friend, during a conversation, that I wasn't really too bothered about seeing who is a leader as we just want to help people be obedient to Jesus. I told him I believed that my heart (and more importantly God's heart) to see leaders raised up will be realized as people grow in their obedience to Jesus not as a result of our plans or programs. 

It feels like I want to totally let go of trying to build something and just do what we love - build up people. But everyone is saying that we need to have meetings and structures… The Spirit is saying build people, pour yourself out into people, and love people…

Today I feel encouraged again because I genuinely think that Jesus would be doing what we are doing. And that is all we seek - not a big church - just to be doing what we see the Father is doing every day...

Use Your Imagination With Me

As I listened to Daniel express these two competing voices in his mind, I could not help but imagine what the Church-of-the-future might look like as it follows one or the other of these voices.  

Imagine a world in which the “voice of the traditionalists” is the primary or only voice.  Oh, wait a moment.  That is the church-world that we already live in for the most part.  So that does not require much imagination to see.

Now, imagine a church-world in which every believer gets their focus and energy off of the meeting/structure/program treadmill and begins to hear the voice that Daniel is listening to: looking to share with and love people; opening their home at every opportunity; following the Spirit’s direction daily; wanting to help people be obedient to Jesus; discovering and following his/her unique calling to live as salt in a flavorless world; seeking to see and do daily what the Father is doing.

Some might say that it is possible to do both: traditional church gatherings and a lifestyle of people-loving with real-life sharing/caring.  Perhaps, but my experience is that the demands of sustaining the traditional church programs often make this difficult.  Therefore, please allow me to dream of what could happen if every believer began to step out, as Daniel is attempting to do, and live the 24/7 lifestyle as the primary focus of their Christian walk and life.

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A New Way to Do Life--Not a Way to Do Church

My friend Tobias Valdez suggested I re-post this article from five years ago. (Have I been writing that long?)  The original article is here.

A New Way to Do Life--Not a Way to Do Church

I'm concerned that we are trying to re-structure church instead of re-learning what it is to live the Christian life. House churches, simple churches, organic churches can easily become just the "new way" to do church, the next-wave model of churchianity. It's easy for us, if we have been doing church for years, to want to simply come up with a "better way to do church." But that really misses the whole point. Instead, we need to be talking about the way to live our Christian life. We are privileged to have been given a whole new life: a lifestyle. We have the privilege of living passionately for God. We have the privilege and calling of living Kingdom lives: we journey with God, walk with Him, experience Him, know Him and express Him wherever we go. We have the joy of having a purpose and mission that comes out of the heart of the eternal Father. We get to live in His love, surrounded by His love, empowered by His love, and motivated by His love. Our life lived with a wondrous God is awesome! This is vital because the Christian life becomes somehow confused with the concepts of "going to church" and "being involved in church." While those may be very wonderful things to do, they are not, in and of themselves, the equivalent of living life in Christ. Yes, when we live the Christian life full on, we do gather with others. But that's a result, an outcome of living all out for God. The "gathering with Christians" is not "the life"-- it's just a part of it. It's one piece of what we do while we are living all out for God. Let me suggest an analogy. I love to ski. I am passionate about skiing. I enjoy skiing anywhere there is a slope and some snow. I may be involved in a ski club, I may go to a ski school, I may have skied at many different places. But none of this replaces what it's all about: just skiing. If I tell people that I ski here or there, or that I'm part of this or that club, it's not because I'm enamored with the club, the school, or even the ski resort. These are all peripherals to the real experience that I love, what it's all about: skiing. In the same way, none of our churches, nor "how we do church", should be equated to living the Christian life. They are peripherals to the Christian life. Church gatherings support us in living the Christian life. But they are not "the life" itself. It's great to gather and be part of, but let's get skiing! It's living for and with God that we are excited about, that we are talking to others about, that grips us with passion and excitement, that we are focused on. Just living full on for God. Just doing it. Going after it. Faithing it. Loving it. Losing ourselves in it and Him. Aren't churches and gatherings important? Yes, but let me be repetitive, they are peripherals to the Christian life. The church will always gather in a variety of ways. But imagine when the church gatherings are made up of a group of Christians whose primary focus is living full on for God. Imagine what church is like, whether we gather in a home or in a stadium, when all the full-on-passionate-alive-people-for-God gather together. Yeah, that's church! I admit, I like to gather in a house. I like it simple. I like it participatory. I like house church. It helps me remember that life with God is life with God and not an institution or event. But that's just me. Where we gather is really very, very secondary. The central issue is, let's live the Christian life... full on... with all that we have. Then when we gather... it will be good!

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Movements that Change the World -- Addison

Steve Addison’s book, Movements that Change the World, is filled with stories that keep the pages turning with a message that is both simple and profound: the church—in it’s essence—is a movement.

Jesus did not come to found a religious organization. He came to found a missionary movement that would spread to the ends of the earth.

Steve offers five characteristics of missionary movements and illustrates each of these points with wonderful story-telling.  He brings to life Wesley and Methodism, Patrick and the Celtic missionary movement, the Moravians, as well as many other known and not-so-known movements and movement-starters.  From these stories he brings clarity to the five characteristics of movements that the book focuses on:

1.    White-hot faith

Church history is not made by well-financed, well-resourced individuals and institutions. History is made by men and women of faith who have met with the living God.

2.    Commitment to a cause

The approach of targeting Christian leaders did not work because early Christianity was a mass movement with a highly committed rank and file who were active in spreading the faith.

3.    Contagious relationships

Christianity conquered the Roman world without an organizational structure, without access to significant resources, without academic institutions, and without a professionalized clergy. Ordinary people, on fire with the love of Christ and empowered by the Holy Spirit, told their families, friends, and casual acquaintances what God had done for them.

For a movement to grow rapidly it has to spread both within social networks and between social networks.

Jesus turned individual encounters into opportunities to touch whole social networks. The Gerasene demoniac begged Jesus to be allowed to join his band of disciples. Instead, Jesus told him to go home and tell his family what God had done.

4.    Rapid mobilization

The Baptists and the Methodists developed strategies that made it easy for gifted and committed laypeople to take up leadership and go where the people and the opportunities were. Deployment was rapid because very little upfront investment of resources and education was required. Methodist preachers, many of whom were teenagers, were trained on the job as “apprentices” by more experienced workers. They were expected to be continually studying as they traveled. They practiced lifelong learning and graduated the day they died.

5.    Adaptive methods

Adaptive methods enable a movement to function in ways that suit its changing environment and its expansion into new fields. A movement’s commitment to both its core ideology and to its own expansion provides the catalyst for continual learning, renewal, and growth. Dying institutions display the opposite characteristics— willing to sacrifice their unique identity, conservative in setting goals, and unable to face the reality of their mediocre performance.

I give this book a “highly recommended” not just for the rich story-telling and inspiration.  It puts the spotlight in the right place by examining the core of what the church really is:  something that is powerfully and organically alive; something that loses its very essence when it is no longer a Spirit-led movement.

Re-Boot to Jesus

In June I wrote about the need for discipleship to focus entirely on Jesus rather than "Jesus +" the many religious behaviors/customs/theologies that often become part of the "package."  In keeping with this theme I wanted to point to Alan Hirsch's post entitled: "Jesus is my disequilibrium."  Alan writes: "Why do we need to constantly reboot back to Jesus?  It seems to me that the problem is that his people have a nasty habit of pushing Jesus out of his own community. Of displacing him."

You can read Alan's post here.