SimpleChurch Journal

Natural Disciplemaking

An excerpt from the Simple/House Church Revolution book:

”The clergy-laity distinction removed personal discipleship from the hands of common Christians (Dennis McCallum).”

The greatest joy of the Christian life is being used by God to bring whole-life, spiritual transformation to another. We have removed much of this joy by not understanding that true “disciple-making” is about everyday life and everyday relationships—and that it is for everyone. By making it a program that is part of our churches or a process that people are specially trained to do, we are holding back Christians from stepping into their true destinies and their greatest sense of purpose. By presenting disciple-making as something we “do” to others, as opposed to something that God does (which we can invite people into), we become performance-oriented and manipulative rather than contagious as we naturally influence others toward their own relationship with God.

Disciple-making flows naturally out of the relationships we are building through reaching and loving people.

Catching the Vision of Church-As-It-Can-Be

An excerpt from the Simple/House Church Revolution book:

Many people, today, are catching the vision of what the church is meant to be as she throws off the hindrances and becomes the Spirit-filled movement of Believers she is destined for.

We are catching the vision for living life, 24/7, with and for God without one moment or place being more holy than another. It is a vision of every believer contributing to one another through the spiritual gifts that reside in each one. It is a vision of every believer, using his/her gifts, to take God’s love and power into the world we live in. It is a vision of no longer thinking of the church as an event or place to go, but realizing that we, his people, really are the church everywhere and every place that we go.

Wolfgang Simson describes his vision of what the church, unhindered, is becoming:

[I dream of a] church, which does not need huge amounts of money, or rhetoric, control and manipulation, which can do without powerful and charismatic heroes, which is non-religious at heart, which can thrill people to the core, make them lose their tongues out of sheer joy and astonishment, and simply teach us The Way to live. A church which not only has a message, but is the message. Something which spreads like an unstoppable virus, infects whatever it touches, and ultimately covers the earth with the glory and knowledge of God.