It’s Not About The Meeting!
It’s a conversation I have a hand full of times every year. I meet a saint who truly wants understand what a house church is and how one functions. And part way through a conversation I stop.
And instead of telling them about the meeting where we gather to edify one another, I start telling them about my life and the different ways my life has intersected with different people in our church in the last week. The prayer meeting. The child’s birthday party. An intentional discipleship time. Dinner at another couples’ home. The list could go on.
And it’s at this point that I drop the bomb on them: Churches that work to perfect their meeting time and “make it biblical” but whose members only see each other once a week are missing the point.
Because it’s not about the meeting! It’s about a life with God that includes other believers. And so much of that life that you have with God happens outside of the meeting. For you to expect two hours (or even four hours!) of your life to affect the other 164 hours of your week is a bit unrealistic. But for you to live life together with a group of people whose hearts are bent towards loving God and others 24/7, that’s transforming!
Now I’m the last person to be described as “anti-meeting.” I’ve found that if a meeting doesn’t happen, the connections tend to be so loose that people are never built up the way Scripture describes it.
But somehow I’ve seen the human heart think that all we need to do is show up at the meeting and participate. This is so much less than what the New Testament describes. It describes a people who–yes meet together to encourage their walks with the Lord–but also live together throughout the week, sharing with each other, supporting one another, and learning how to follow Jesus in the day to day. Most of this happens outside of a meeting.
My encouragement for you this morning, friends, is to check your heart about the church you are part of–even if it’s not a house church! Is it just about the meeting for you? If it is, look for ways for your life to intersect with other believers in your church. Be intentional about it.Seek other believers out. Share the life of Jesus with them, not just during the meeting, but over coffee, at the bar, at the sporting event, wherever!
Because when church becomes about more than a meeting, we begin to be the people of God the New Testament actually describes. And that is transforming.
Mutuality and Calling One Another Forward
Today I met with a cross section of men from our house church network to talk about and work through issues that are affecting our churches. The discussion was great and one of the things that I loved about it was the mutuality. Quickly it became clear that there was no guru in the group and that everyone could learn from each other. And it was this back and forth, giving and receiving that allowed for hearts to open up, ministry to happen, and for us to be able to rely on each other a little bit more.
I’m continually amazed how much humility and not lifting yourself up above another allows for more ministry to happen, not less. So often the church thinks it needs to be the other way around. Most of the time we are caught up trying to prove we are at least as spiritual, if not more so, than the person next to us. When I try and prove how much better I am than others, not much ministry happens. And yet, when I humble myself and live from the place of being as weak or weaker than everyone else in the room, that’s when people become vulnerable and real service to each other happens.
During my day, I had the opportunity to share with a brother about some limits he was artificially putting on himself. And because we were listening to each other, I was able to hear his heart and he was able to receive when I gently pushed on him to reconsider some of the limits he was placing on himself.
Friends, we desperately need brothers and sisters like this in the body of Christ. We need people who know us, can see us better than we see ourselves, and can help us get out of the ruts that we sometimes find ourselves in. The body grows itself by learning how to speak the truth to each other in love. This is so hard to do but its one of the main ways the Bible describes us growing into the image of Christ.
Beloved, find friends who will tell you the truth in love. Find brothers and sisters in Christ who will call you forward into who God has called you to be. It’s a way forward in an age that wants to deceive us and isolate us. Don’t give in to the shallow relationships that are only about competition and vanity. Don’t settle for relationships with brothers and sisters in Christ that are only an inch deep. There’s transforming relationships out there that are rooted and Christ and they are worth pursuing.
It’s worth it. I don’t promise it, but Jesus does.
Photo Credit: Discussions by Boris Baldinger
The Kingdom of God is 24/7/365
When I was in college, it was normal to stay up late. People stayed up late partying, studying, playing practical jokes, and all sorts of other things. So it was natural for me as I was following Jesus and reaching out to college kids for my nights to be late. Ministry happened at weird hours.
Then I moved to Kansas City. Remember that I moved to Kansas City to go to a Bible college that was part of a 24-hour, 7-day-a-week house of prayer that has been going non-stop since 1999. That means you could (and still can) walk in at 3 A.M. Christmas morning and there would be people there singing their hearts out or praying over the city.
The culture of a place like that changes you. You loose a little of your American preoccupation with holidays as you watch people you know faithfully interceeding for the end of abortion on Labor Day. When you commit to one thing being important above all else, even your American break in the calendar, you begin to see how much time you’ve truly built in for yourself in your calendar.
While we were in Kansas City we joined a house church network where the leader continually emphasized that the Kingdom of God is 24/7/365. And we tried our best to live that out. We led early morning prayer meetings for the house churches that forced us to get out of bed, trek to the agreed upon spot, and then pray for an hour or better. We connected relationaly all the time and any time. We agreed that if there were sacred times and spaces it was because every time was a sacred time and everywhere was sacred space. The type of community we were aiming for didn’t allow for closed off spaces in our calendar.
The same has been true for our house church network in Iowa. We certainly have borrowed from certain elements of these communities. Our house church has a prayer meeting that starts way before sane human beings should be up. I just finished with a meeting of some folks from each of the house churches and it ended at 11:30 P.M.
But I don’t say this to brag. I tell you all of this to say God’s Kingdom touches every area of our lives. Sometimes we like to think when God becomes King of our lives, He leaves alone certain areas of our lives like the schedule or the budget. But when God comes as King He wants everything. And because we are incredibly busy Americans, many times that will mean we need to make adjustments to our calendars so we can do the things He’s calling us to do.
There are verses that talk about using your time wisely. But instead of quoting those, I’ll leave you with this:
If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it.
-Matthew 16:25
How we use our time is a reflection of whether our life is surrendered to the Lord or not. How we spend our minutes, hours, and days determines how we spend our years. We can use them for ourselves—”me time,” excessive entertainment, etc.—or we can lose our life by giving of our time for the things that are truly most important. This will include time for prayer and reading the word, but also meeting with others, discipling them, and serving them.
How are you using your time for the Lord?
“…making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.”
-Ephesians 5:16
Cluster Map
Pursuing Glory 