Ten Years
I’m a little late to the party, but in the middle of January we turned the page on ten years since we started meeting as a house church.
The first time we gathered, there were four couples, each with one child a piece. The kids slept the entire time. I told everyone that was in that first meeting that if we could just handle being dissatisfied and look to Jesus and not give up on each other, that we would be a success.
Ten years later those families each have four or more kids and are scattered across three (or four, or five) house churches in our city. We’ve learned a lot, made some mistakes along the way, and grown as we’ve pressed towards the disciple-making movement we believe Jesus is calling us to be.
There’s two errors you can make with an anniversary like this: To feel like you’re an expert and to feel like you don’t know what you’re doing. But the truth is somewhere in the middle: We’ve learned some things but we still are learning, growing, and changing. At this point I feel like we are just getting to the place where we can ask better questions…pursue Jesus more…and really become a source of personal and societal transformation.
There are depths of God and many more labors in the harvest ahead. We just need to remember to ask more questions.
In tandem with our ten year anniversary (but not planned in anyway at all) Dan Mayhew of Summit Fellowships in Portland, Orgeon asked me to join him on his podcast Church of the Heart to talk about how the Lord has led us to this point. You can hear about our story by clicking here.
…We Invite Existing Christians Into Mutual Discipleship…
A few years ago we started inviting existing believers to meet with us and develop relationship before we just thrust them into a meeting and along the way we started to invite them to consider the cost of meeting as an organic house church. But there is another facet of our lifestyle that we also invite them into intentionally and that is the process of mutual discipleship.
Most of you are probably familiar with the idea of discipleship. It’s the process of becoming more like Jesus through regular interaction and encouragement of other believers. While it’s possible for a person to become a disciple of Jesus from a direct relationship with Christ, God’s design is that we learn from the strengths and weaknesses of each other and help each other see beyond our blind spots.
Mutual discipleship is where people gather together to learn to follow Jesus together without having a top-down structure. For many of my friends in the evangelical church, top-down discipleship is the only form of discipleship that is ever known. Paul actually asked believers to follow him as he followed Christ, so I do believe that there is a place to learn from people further down the path of following Jesus than you. Mutual discipleship is important, though, because without it, we will never multiply at the speed needed to sustain the harvest.* The only way to have everyone being discipled and discipling at the same time is mutual discipleship.
This process of everyone becoming a disciple and making disciples of others is crucial towards Jesus’ goal of discipling the nations. But I find in many of the places existing believers come from, Christianity with discipleship is for the committed…not the ground floor of believing in Christ. So we encourage (but do not require) people who are joining our house churches to consider joining two or three other believers in our midst for reading the Bible, accountability, and prayer for the lost.*
While this is may seem artificial, I think it’s helped us set the tone for the kind of people we want to be. Not everyone has joined one of these groups and some who have joined have continued to remain a part of our fellowships but not a part of our groups of 2&3. But everyone knows they are welcome and the groups are important. Everyone gets the opportunity to be a disciple and a disciple-maker. These groups have built relationships and helped us learn how to love and serve each other without control.
Believers, living together, digging into the Bible together, confessing sins to each other, and praying for the lost together is such a beautiful reality. I don’t want believers to miss out on the opportunity to be a part of that process. So when we meet with existing believers and discuss joining our house churches, we share the beauty of discipleship and ask if they are interested in participating.
And I believe we are better for it.
Are you inviting people who are new to your church into a lifestyle of discipleship?
How do you help believers understand discipleship as the lifestyle of every believer and not just the committed few?
I’d love to hear your thoughts.
*I will write more about this process of mutual discipleship more in an upcoming series. See? I told you the footnotes are often a springboard for more blogs in the future.
…We Invite Existing Believers to Lay Down Their Lives…
Recently I wrote about how we meet with existing believers when they express interest in joining our house church. Today I want to talk about one other conversation that we have in that process. We also ask existing believers to count the cost of joining a house church.
The immediate question is why would we do that?
Well, the best answer is always because Jesus asked us to count the cost of following Him, especially in regards to the cost of following Him on His mission (see Luke 14:28-30). This isn’t only a requirement for joining a house church, or our house churches, this is something Jesus asks all of us to do.
However, I’ve found it wise to invite believers to consider the cost of joining our house churches. Part of the reason is the cost of living on mission in our house churches can be higher than you would expect in a traditional church. I tell them stories about the lost people who have damaged things in our homes. I talk to them about the different times we’ve served friends in high crime areas where the potential to be harmed is real. I talk to them about the scary moments when fights have almost broke out at some of our gatherings. Certainly we try to be wise with what we do, but there’s a measure of mission that can never be controlled. So we ask folks to count the cost.
But there is another type cost that I invite existing believers to consider. It’s the cost of laying down a controlled church environment. I try to let them know that being part of an organic church means that everyone is responsible to bring what the Lord has given them, but sometimes that doesn’t work out and a meeting is bad. I share about the fact that we allow the kids to participate in a meeting with us and that means a lot more interrupted everything. I share about how community won’t just happen in a meeting, but will require us to rearrange our schedule to make time for the kind of relationships house churches have the potential to provide. Everyone says they want real community, but some like the rich young ruler have found the cost too high and walked away.
Is all of this worth it? Of course! Jesus is amazing and just knowing Him is worth all of the cost described above and more. Add on top of that the ability to get to be part of His body and stand side by side with brothers and sisters who love you and are committed to you? That’s easily worth any price we have to pay. But Jesus still asks us to consider it.
And so when we meet with believers who are interested, I invite them to think about the cost. Not because they’ve never considered the cost of following Jesus before, but because I want them to consider the cost of doing it a different way than they may have done before. All of this is done out of a heart to help, mind you. I don’t want to scare anyone away or needlessly critique someone. Over the years, this just seems to be the best way to help outsiders into the life we’ve found. It’s not for everyone, but it’s worked for us.
So, I’ll leave you with this. Regardless of where you are or what type of church you are part of, there is a cost to following Christ. Are you counting it? And are you helping others to join Jesus on His mission regardless of the cost they may have to pay? It’s worth considering.
Cluster Map
Pursuing Glory 