Don’t Waste Your Life Sitting In A Pew
It’s a conversation that will resonate with me for a long time.
I had just moved back to Iowa after spending a few years in Kansas City. During my time in Kansas City I had been infected with a vision of Christianity as an organic lifestyle lived out with a spiritual family. Moving back to Iowa had been a step of obedience for me and my girlfriend (now wife) because we were leaving a group of people who were pursuing something near and dear to my heart.
I had a friend who also happened to be my pastor in Kansas City. He was a year older than me but he always felt 100 years older than me because of the amount of wisdom and experience he walked in. I was expressing to him the conflict inside of me about whether to permanently plug into our old church that we were part of or to pursue the dream God had infected me with during my years in Kansas City. He looked at me and said something that changed the trajectory of the rest of my life:
“Whatever you do, don’t waste your life just sitting in a pew.”
That statement resonated with me in a way I didn’t expect it to resonate. He didn’t give me a direction. He didn’t tell me what to do. But what he said was wisdom. Don’t spend the rest of your life being a spectator, consuming what is given from a pulpit but never putting it into practice.
We do that so easily. It’s so easy to get comfortable where we are at with good sermons, godly people, great worship, and a thriving church. It’s easy to consume all of that stuff and feel like we are part of something great. It’s harder to go where the Gospel isn’t, share it with people who may or may not respond, and be a part of starting something that could affect people for generations or come to nothing.
These words launched me into organic church planting. But they could be said both of traditional churches and organic churches alike. Just change out pews for couches. The point is we shouldn’t be content just to consume our church life. We have to mature into people of faith who participate in what God is doing, not just observe it.
I get it. There are some people who need to stay where they are in the season that they’re in. If that’s you, great. But the church, organic or traditional, is full of people who should be advancing the mission and serving others instead of sitting around watching.
So I say to unto you the same thing that was said to me: “Don’t waste your life sitting in a pew.”
Or, maybe a better way to say it is “I want you to plant a house church.”
Related: Wasting Your Life on Seashells
The Napkin Test
Now, if your friend can take your notes on the back of that napkin and with the help of the Holy Spirit, do what you do, congratulations! You have a simple enough ministry to reproduce.
If you can’t write out everything your friend will need on that napkin, go back and simplify things. You might be making followers of Jesus, but they may not be able to pass on the complicated strategy that you have. This is why you don’t see seminaries popping up all over the place or Christian Television Stations multiplying. They’re too complicated.
Simple is reproducible. Reproducible spreads. If you want to see the Gospel spread, make sure you can explain how on the back of a napkin.
Reason #4 We Started a House Church
[This is part of an ongoing, irregularly published series on the reasons we started a house church. Reasons #1-3 will be listed at the bottom of the post.]
Christianity has a dirty little secret: The people within the church often live with significant parts of their life hidden and unchanged.
Much of this is due to people within the church only knowing each other as participants in events. Our modern church experience, for the most part is busy, full of events to be a part of and then left. There is very little lingering afterwards to build relationships where we know each other and are able to help each other with our weaknesses.
Which is exactly part of the reason we started a house church. The Christianity described in the New Testament is a relationship with Christ and a relationship with the people who follow Him, not an event people came to. This is why most of the New Testament descriptions of the church are about how Christians should relate to one another, not how a meeting should work. I’m not against meeting together but the emphasis is not on the meeting.
In fact, when we started our first house church, we decided that we would have meetings, but they would support relationships. We would focus on Jesus and the people who were meeting together, not just singing the right amount of songs or having a certain type of teaching happen. This frees up time both inside and outside the meeting to love one another well, to hear the stories that inform so much of each others’ lives, and to be with one another in everyday situations where we can truly see how each other live.
Here’s a brief, made up example: We allow our children to participate in our house churches. This presents a tremendous challenge as a house church if kids are too loud or distracting in the meeting. But suppose a parent disciplined their child too harshly during a meeting or didn’t correct a child who was being too unruly. This would rarely be addressed, let alone seen, in a large event but would be open for everyone to see within a house church. If a brother or sister takes up the issue with the parent in question, other issues might come up, including how the Gospel applies to parenting, the parent’s past issues with their own parent’s discipline, or even issues in the parents’ marriage.
House churches have the time and space to love one another and walk through these issues together. They don’t have a specific agenda which needs to be followed. They exist for moments like these, where the issues of the life come to the surface. Will the issue be resolved within one meeting? No. But it will come to light there. It may get some resolution there. It will be walked out with the believers who are there over the days and weeks to come.
Relationships are some of the keys to both recognizing issues in peoples’ lives and helping them resolve those issues. House churches can’t stop people from hiding their lives, but they do allow us to live close enough to each other to recognize where Jesus is touching issues and to be part of the process of bring healing to them.
Which is why we started a house church….
Reason #1 We Started a House Church
Cluster Map
Pursuing Glory 