Doorways
I sat with some new (and in someways old) friends last night talking about how the Lord had led us to start house churches in our city in Iowa. One of the ideas that came up at least a few times throughout the night was this: The doorway into any situation defines very much defines what normal looks like to us.
For me personally, it was when I began to share about my mom being healed of cancer at a church that many of us in the room had used to attend. We all remembered those days and were encouraged by my mom being healed, but for me as someone who wasn’t yet a believer, that healing defined what living for Jesus would look like. Living for Jesus meant seeing the power of God heal people. I don’t always see healings when I pray for people, but my paradigm of the Kingdom will always include God’s power to heal.
We talked as well about how we’ve seen people come to know Jesus in the midst of our house churches, and for those who have, following Jesus has always been about relationships and community. They don’t carry the same kind of preoccupation that some of our other Christian friends have with worship or preaching or leadership. They are part of a family and this is what Christianity looks like for them.
I had a mentor in my life who would regularly preach that those early days, maybe up to the first one to two years of being a new believer were a season where your life was like wet cement. Whatever was impressed into a believer’s life during those early days would harden and set the course for the rest of their life. If there was a mistake, it could be corrrected, but it required a lot more work than writing the right thing in the cement in the first place.
I write all of this to say this: Remember that whenever you have the opportunity to bring a new believer to Jesus, you are bringing them into the Kingdom by a certain doorway. Make sure it’s a good one. Bring them through the door built with the costly stuff: Gold, silver, and precious jewels, something that will stand the test of time and give them a vision for truly being surrendered to Christ and His Kingdom.
You won’t regret that decision.
I Want You…To Plant A House Church
Maybe I haven’t said it before. Forgive me for not being more up front.
A major reason that I write is I believe God is calling many, many more people to the front lines of the harvest. It starts by leading unbelievers to Jesus, discipling them, training them to reach others, and in the process organic churches are formed.
Think of all the people that don’t know Christ. I know in the West we think everyone is a believer, but they’re not. Not even close. And the more relationships you build outside of the church, the more you realize there are more broken people far from God than you could count. But many of these people want Christ, they just have a misunderstanding of who He is. The harvest is gigantic.
The church as it exists cannot handle the harvest that could come in if the lost truly did come to Christ. Imagine a church of two hundred that meets in your city or town. Now imagine that church growing by another two hundred new converts. It would be chaos! The nets that we currently have aren’t strong enough to hold the catch.
But imagine a church of ten or fifteen disciples who have their hearts fixed on Christ and are growing as disciples. That church can add ten or fifteen new converts and become two or three house churches quickly without much difficulty. And as those new converts grow, they have the ability to start a house church just like the one they are part of now.
But the workers are few. I’ll tell you even though the harvest is great, the number of people actually following Jesus into the harvest, working among the lost, and discipling new converts is small. And if the harvest is truly great, we don’t have enough laborers.
So, don’t be surprised, if every once and awhile I look around at my followers on the blog and say, “Why haven’t you started a house church yet?”
There might be some good answers. But there might be some good excuses, too.
Ministry Lessons from A Wash Basin
Yesterday I had a brother write in with questions about offices, ordination, and titles because of my article about how we embraced shepherds as a house church network. And it deserves a better response than I can give today.
The problem when we start talking about any kind of ministry is our heads have been clouded with hundreds of years of historical context that tell us a ministry is a position of privilege. Ministers are the known, the great, the ones with clout in our eyes.
But Jesus has a much different definition of ministry than we do. In fact, in the Greek that the New Testament was written in, a ministry was a position of service. Some uses of the word minister refer to someone who serves at a cost to themselves.
Nowhere is this more evident for me than in Jesus’ lesson to the disciples in the upper room in John 13. Jesus gives the disciples and us an example to follow by getting down on the floor and washing the filthy feet of those in the room. This was a job reserved for a lowly servant. And then he says this:
After washing their feet, he put on his robe again and sat down and asked, “Do you understand what I was doing? You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and you are right, because that’s what I am. And since I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash each other’s feet. I have given you an example to follow. Do as I have done to you. I tell you the truth, slaves are not greater than their master. Nor is the messenger more important than the one who sends the message.
-John 13:12-16
Have you ever washed someones feet? It’s not a glorious process, even today, where at least in the West our streets are much cleaner. It’s humbling, both to wash feet and to have your feet washed. And if Jesus calls us to any kind of ministry (re: service) it’s this. To humble ourselves and get lower than others and do what no one else would be willing to do.
Hundreds of years of church history has taught us that ministry is being the smartest man in the room, having the most honor, or being paid to be spiritual. But at it’s core, ministry is service, humbling service, in the same style that our Master modeled for us. Until we get that idea right in our heads, our hearts, and our spirits, all ministry will be wrong, whether it is titled or not.
Photo Credit: psk-footwash-small by peterskim
Cluster Map
Pursuing Glory 