The Pitfalls of Organic Church (Part 6)

Rotate Locations Early and Often.

For the first 4 years of our house church life, our family hosted every meeting together. That’s twice a week for four years! Today we only host twice a month (on Sundays) and other families take turns hosting in their homes the other weekends.

The reason we decided to rotate our meetings wasn’t because we felt burnt out, however. Not at all. In fact, we really love hosting the house church in our home and it’s very convenient for the kids on our street to join us on those Sundays, which makes it extra special for us. So, why did we decide to rotate our Sunday morning meetings? Well, it all started with a trip to Alaska. At least, an imaginary one.

As I’ve already mentioned, our house church group has been quite large for some time now. Over the last few years I’ve been pretty vocal about the fact that our group was too big and I really felt that there were plenty of mature people in our group who were more than capable of hosting and even leading a house church group in their own home. However, after a series of conversations and meetings with different people, what I learned was that none of those people saw themselves as ready, equipped or capable of doing this.

My epiphany came one evening when one of our brothers in the group asked everyone else this question: “If Keith and Wendy suddenly moved to Alaska next month, how many of you would even continue to meet together as a church every week?” To my surprise, and heartbreak, no one said that they would continue to meet together without our direct leadership in the group.

I think it was at this time that I recalled the words of wisdom shared by my friend Alan Knox who said that any church that cannot continue to function without the direct leadership of the leader isn’t a church under the headship of Christ. (Or something like that. I share this exact quote in my book, “This Is My Body: Ekklesia as God Intended”).

So, right then and there Wendy and I knew that we had failed to make disciples of the people in our house church. We wanted them to understand that they were all following Jesus – not us - and that He had equipped all of them to be the Church, and to be practicing members of the priesthood of Christ. That’s when we started asking everyone in the group to step up and to start taking some of the responsibilities away from us and to start owning the group themselves. Sharing the weekly hosting duties was just one of the things we started to intentionally give away to the group. We also started not showing up to these meetings at all on occasion to underscore the reality that they could be the Church without any help from us at all.

The good news is that, about a year later, we asked some of these same people that question again about our mythical trip to Alaska and every one of them said that they would most definitely continue to meet with the house church family even if we were not there. I have to believe that hosting the house church meetings in different people’s homes, and allowing everyone to experience the meeting apart from us made a difference. People got to see that there was nothing especially holy about our den, or about us as leaders, and that they were all called by God and empowered by the Holy Spirit to be the Body of Christ no matter where they gathered or who was in the room – or not.

-kg

The Pitfalls of Organic Church (Part 3)

Let Jesus Be The Leader.

For the longest time, our house church family struggled with the idea of leadership. First, everyone looked to me because they considered me to be the pastor. Eventually I withdrew myself from this title and position and functionally encouraged everyone to step into their gifting and to take spiritual responsibility for one another as members of the priesthood of believers. But still, we weren’t quite sure what it meant for Jesus to be the Head of our Church family.

I think every Christian would affirm the notion that Jesus is the head of their Church. However, in practice, the leader of the church is functionally the senior pastor. Of course, the assumption is that the senior pastor is hearing from Jesus and therefore the Church is being led by Jesus. But, according to Jesus himself, every believer is capable of hearing the His voice and responding to him. So, if all of us are able to hear the voice of Jesus, and if Jesus is capable of speaking to us directly, why would we limit ourselves and allow only one specific person to hear the voice of Jesus on our behalf? Maybe we should all come together and practice listening to Jesus together each time we gather? Maybe Jesus is actually serious about leading us into all truth through the indwelling Holy Spirit? Maybe Jesus really can lead our times of worship, and prayer, and bible study if we actually ask him to? Maybe Jesus is powerful enough to teach us Himself? Maybe He actually wants to direct our time spent in His presence? Maybe Jesus actually does show up whenever two or more are gathered in his name?

If so, it makes a lot of sense for us to collaborate together as an organic body of disciples to surrender ourselves completely to the Lord Jesus Christ and allow Him to speak, and move, and minister, and touch, and encourage, and edify everyone in the room. How? Through us! We are his hands, his feet, and his children. We are filled and gifted by His Holy Spirit. We are empowered and called out to use our gifts to bless our brothers and sisters in the Church. But, it’s not us doing the blessing, it’s actually Jesus doing it as we surrender our will and our lives to His control.

Now, this isn’t easy to do. It will take practice. It will involve praying together as a church family and asking Jesus to not only show up and lead you this way – but to help you as a group to learn how to respond to Him properly.

I can guarantee you that there will be times when someone speaks out of turn. There will be times when someone tramples on the Holy Spirit and does something, or says something, that is off base. Get used to that. But, don’t give up! The more you submit to one another, and to Christ, in this process, the better you will get at learning to hear His voice and respond to His leadership and headship when you come together as a Body.

Have any of you had any experiences like this? I’d love to hear about them in the comments section.

Peace,
kg

The Pitfalls of Organic Church

My wife and I started an Organic Church in our home about five years ago. It's still the best thing I've ever done in over 20 years with the word "Church" on it, but the process hasn't always been smooth.

After wrapping up a recent blog series, (What's Wrong with Organic Church?), I thought a natural follow-up to that would to talk about the Pitfalls of Organic Church. So, here goes:

*Break your liturgy. Embrace spontaneity and freedom.
*Draw out the wallflowers and reign in the soap boxers.
*Let Jesus be the leader.
*Rotate locations early and often.
*Practice brutal honesty and shocking truth. No masks allowed.
*Plan to multiply into new groups from day one.


I'll take each of these over the next few weeks and write a bit about each one. If you've been participating in an organic or simple church for a while now and you see that I've left some things off my list, please feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments.

Looking forward to this series.

Peace,
kg