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
How I Became A House Church Guy
….so this is a story all about how my life got flipped, turned upside down….
Ok…so, no, I didn’t become the Fresh Prince. But I did go from being a very traditional charismatic evangelical to meeting in homes with other believers, forsaking many of the things people think are “normal,” and generally causing a ruckus among unbelievers and believers alike.
It started when I moved to Kansas City. I had always felt called to plant churches and that pursuit took me to a small bible college in Kansas City known as the Forerunner School of Ministry*. However, the bible college, at the time, was not connected with a local church. Because of that, they encouraged us all to seek out a local church to become a part of.
My roommate, my girlfriend (now wife), and I took that challenge seriously together (we had one car…it was college!). Because of my love for church planting and the things of the Spirit, we settled on this crazy little church plant in downtown Kansas City. They met in the basement of this old church building that also hosted indie concerts several nights of the week.
One of the leaders told us that they wanted everyone in their church to be a part of a “house church.” When we asked what that meant, it mostly sounded like a small group. So we joined. And that first house church was mostly like a small group. The members interacted once a week outside of the Sunday service. But we got closer to the church through the process.
The real changes came in the following waves:
Wave #1: I heard the senior leader of the church tell someone else that if they wanted to understand where the church was headed, they should read a book called “Houses That Change the World” by Wolfgang Simson. I picked up the book very shortly after hearing that conversation.
I didn’t immediately fall in the love with the book, but over time it became the book I recommend to anyone who is interested in the subject of house church. One other thing to note: This is a house church book not written by an American and I value it for that reason. It doesn’t carry the same stain of the emerging church angst that color many of the other books written during that season. Houses That Change the World opened my eyes to what the Bible says about being the Church.
Wave #2: As we began to grow closer and commit to this church for a longer period of time, my roommate, my girlfriend, and I felt like it was time to strike out and start a house church in our part of town**. Mind you we weren’t ardent house church people at the time. Quickly we gathered believers from around the area we lived in and a house church was born.
All I can tell you was that quickly we became family. The presence of the Holy Spirit would meet us powerfully, multiple people began to function in their giftings, and we saw each other almost daily. Shortly after starting this house church, the leader of our church called to tell me they felt the Lord calling us to discontinue the Sunday service and begin to meet strictly as house churches. Do I need to remind you we weren’t ardent house church people again? This wasn’t a change I wanted. But we were in love with these people, so we said “yes” and went along for the ride. And I’m glad we did.
There was a specific moment when this all clicked for me. One of the women that met with us was a divorced mother of four girls. Our network was hosting a retreat an hour away from Kansas City and our whole house church came. It was a great time. But at the end of the retreat the leader asked us to share about what the Lord had been doing in our lives. The mom stood up and said it was her second oldest daughter’s birthday this weekend and over the course of the weekend she had asked her daughter if she was sad she couldn’t be with her dad. Prior to that year, they had always been together on birthdays. The mom recounted her daughter’s story: “At first I was sad mom that Dad wasn’t here, but then I realized that….” and she began to name the names of the men in our house church… “John***, Steve, and Travis were here, and they’re like dads to me.” There was pretty much no dry eye left in the place by the time she was done. Everyone was in awe of how God was healing and restoring a sense of oneness and family through a simple thing like a spiritual family.
That one event, more than anything else has solidified my view of house churches as a vehicle for spiritual family brought to its rightful place in the body of Christ. There should be moms and dads raising up spiritual sons and daughters. Daily contact and exchange of the life of Christ should be the norm, not the exception. Being part of a house church helped me see the beauty of a simple, organic expression of church in real life.
Wave #3: After a year and a half with the church that we had fallen in love with, we felt inexplicably called back to Iowa. We had a few dreams that had lined up with our previous plans and so my girlfriend (and now soon-to-be wife) packed our apartments and headed back to Iowa. We left the house churches we started (ours had multiplied) in the capable hands of my roommate and another trusted friend.
We rejoined the church we were part of before we left. We got engaged. We got married. I took a year off from anything ministry related in order to pursue Jesus more intently. And during that time, I noticed something. I was back in my home church, which I loved, but I felt like a fish out of water. And it was this fish out of water stage that was truly convicting. In Kansas City, I was just going along for the ride with someone else’s ministry. But now, it was clear, this spiritual family thing, this every member ministering thing, this simple, reproducible gathering thing was in me.
I began to talk with my pastors at the church. I also recruited a few trusted friends that began to share my vision for how church could be different. All of this required me to be an advocate for this vision I had in my heart.The pastors of the church, in incredible humility, gave me the green light to start something very different than the church we were all part of. We’re good friends with a number of the brothers that are still there to this day.
Obviously, after that I was a house church guy. But it was the process of understanding that house church wasn’t just a strategy, but a life to live that was the final straw. I was jealous to live that kind of focused, Acts 2 life with other believers again. So much so that I was willing to advocate for it. It took being out of that environment for me to realize it had become who I was.
And so, now, I’m a house church guy. We have a small network of house churches that we love. We’re still working out the kinks on various parts of the process. We’re not good at certain aspects of what we’re called to (yet!). But it’s been worth the journey.
How about you? If your a house church guy (or gal) I’d love to hear your story as well.
*The Forerunner School of Ministry is now known as IHOP-University or IHOPU, a division of the International House of Prayer. I walked away from my time with IHOP with a respect for many of the people and having learned a great deal, but in the end I did not start a prayer center nor did I stay there. If you have issues with me respecting people who pray a lot but not starting a similar ministry, then you have permission to ask questions or give commentary.
**At this stage of my life, I do not endorse many of the ways I’ve started house churches in the past. Early on for me it just meant gathering seasoned believers and hoping unbelievers would show up, but I’d steer you away from that strategy now.
***Some names were changed, to protect the innocent. 😉
The Cloister, The Harvest, and Where the Laborers Are (Part 2)
Yesterday I wrote about how the church (predominantly in the West) has been cloistered.
I see this regularly in our attitude toward the unbelieving world. Most of the church believes either consciously or unconsciously that unbelievers don’t want to follow Jesus. Don’t believe me? Ask someone to go share the Gospel with you on the street. The responses will be telling. Our cloistered attitudes tell us the world has no interest in following Jesus.
But this perception of the harvest comes more from our experiences than from Jesus. Jesus told his disciples, “The harvest is great, but the workers are few.“Jesus never seemed to have a hard time finding people so broken they didn’t need healing. Jesus never had a problem finding people who were outcasts that needed love. He never had a hard time finding those marginalized by society and telling them God has a better Kingdom, a better family where they would be welcomed.
In fact, from Jesus’ perspective, the problem wasn’t the harvest. He actually saw so much untapped potential for harvest that he told them the problem wasn’t with the harvest—it was with the laborers! They didn’t have enough laborers to accommodate the harvest that was coming.
This is a massive perspective change for the church today. Rarely do we spend time praying and raising up laborers for the harvest because we don’t really believe the harvest is that great.
Oh if we only had Jesus’ eyes.
Friends there is a sea of humanity, not just across the seas, but across our fences and streets and cities that have no answers. The John 3:16 sign held up at a professional sporting event wasn’t enough to reach them, nor was the chick tract they found in the bathroom at Walmart. But a living, breathing expression of the gospel that has a testimony of transformation is something they’ve never seen. And while I agree with the church that the world at large doesn’t want traditional religion like they’ve seen, they do want the Kingdom of God. They do want Jesus.
And if you begin to touch this realm just a little, you begin to understand how big the harvest is. One year our house church began to serve food at a local park and play sports with the kids in our neighborhood. Word got out and quickly our house church was filled with people from the neighborhood that had barely ever darkened a church. One of the lessons we learned from that season was that there was no shortage of people who had interest in what we were doing.
The problem with that season was we didn’t have enough laborers. The needs they brought to the table were overwhelming. The amount of discipleship each person needed was more than we were used to. We weren’t ready for the harvest that came in. I think most churches are in the same spot.
One of the lessons I took away from that season is it’s not the harvest that’s in short supply. It’s the laborers.
Photo Credit: Wheat Field by Dennis Behm
Cluster Map
Pursuing Glory 