The Pitfalls of Organic Church (Part 5)

Practice Brutal Honesty and Shocking Truth. (No masks allowed)

One of the things I’ve loved the most about house church is that the home setting allows people to be themselves and communicate with one another without fear. At least, as long as you create an environment where people feel safe, that is. When people know that they can share doubts, fears, failures, and inconsistencies without being jumped on, attacked, treated differently, judged or pitied, they will eventually start to tell you the painful truth about themselves. This is where organic church really starts to get interesting.

Frankly, I have not been the first person to lead this trend in our house church family, but thankfully we’ve been blessed with a few people who just will not sit still for bullsh*t – and I love them for this.

One gentleman is constantly telling us how he doubts his faith or how he’s not sure he really loves Jesus the way he should. This sort of thing makes most of us uncomfortable, and we will often spend some time trying to “fix” this person, but really this isn’t why the person is sharing the truth with us. It’s simply because he needs to speak the truth and he needs to know that there are people who are willing to hear it from him and still love him just the same.

I can remember leading a home group in our previous traditional church setting. Everyone in that group admitted that we didn’t want to wear any masks. But in practice we all kept ours on and waiting for the person next to us to go first. Sadly, none of us really ever did. It wasn’t until we got to the house church level that people felt comfortable admitting their sin, their weakness, their inadequacy, their fears, their doubts, their lack of faith, and their pain.

Several of my friends have come through the Twelve Step program at Alcoholics Anonymous, and from the conversations we’ve had about these kinds of meetings I can see that they’ve been practicing this kind of honesty for long, long time. I think I’d love to go with some of my friends when they go to their next meetings just so I can see for myself what a totally honest and open meeting is really like. This is how all of us should come together as a Body each week; we should show up admitting that we are weak and that we need help; we should confess to one another often just how screwed up and helpless we are to overcome our sins on our own; we should listen to one another without offering unsolicited advice and try to find ourselves in the other person’s story without thinking of ourselves as being better or superior to them in any way.

If your group is still in the habit of pretending to have it all together, I must humbly suggest that you need to be the one to go first and take off your mask. Or, talk with your house church family about why your group doesn’t feel safe enough to share what’s really going on in your lives with one another. Ask some hard questions. Maybe even make a game out of it at first and go around the room sharing with one another your biggest doubts about your faith, or the most difficult thing about your walk with Christ. The goal isn’t to bring everyone down, but to take off the mask and get real enough with one another to start building one another up in the faith. We cannot do this if we never admit that we need building up. We cannot heal if we never show each other the wounds. We cannot comfort one another in our suffering is we never let anyone see us weep.

Get real.

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The Pitfalls of Organic Church (Part 4)

Plan to Multiply into New Groups from Day One.

For a very long time now I’ve been of the opinion that our little house church is just too big. We’ve been hovering at around 28 people or so for the last few years now and this is just too many people to have a healthy and productive organic church, as far as I’m concerned. However, our house church is not a dictatorship, so I don’t get to be the one who decides what we do or when we do it. I try to leave all of that up to God, and so far He’s done a pretty good job of it.

For example, when we first started out our group only met on Thursday evenings. My family got together in our den every Sunday morning and shared together, but everyone else was at their home church on Sundays. After a while I really wanted to draw a line in the sand and force everyone on Thursday evenings to either come with us and commit themselves to us as a church that gathers on Sunday mornings, or hit the road. Luckily, God in his mercy gave me a very wise spouse. Wendy advised me to wait and to pray and see what God wanted to do. She reminded me that Jesus said that He would build His church and that He didn’t really need my help doing it. Of course, if He did I would know it. Until then, we waited and we prayed.

Eventually, without any help from me, someone suggested that we start meeting on Sunday mornings, and suddenly people started calling the Mission their home church.

I share this because it reminds me that God really is in charge of His Church, not me. So, whenever I get antsy about the fact that our house church family feels too big I can remember that God can take care of these things without my intervention.

About a year ago two families left our group to start house church groups of their own. Again, without any help from me, both families decided that God was calling them to leave and start something in their home. Both families independently decided this on the same weekend. One went to Indiana, the other just up the road from us. Neither group asked for our permission but we all certainly gave them our blessing and we prayed over them to send them out.

Still, one thing that I wish I had done differently in our house church family was to communicate from day one to everyone that our hope and our plan was to keep the group small and to plant new house churches out of this one whenever we got too large to function properly as a family of believers. Not necessarily to create a benchmark number of people for this multiplication process, but simply to remind everyone involved that one of our goals as a church is to plant more churches out of this one. How we go about this, and when, is still up to God, but if your group starts out from the beginning with a clear understanding that this multiplication is part of the process, the easier it will be to actually plant new churches out of your group when the time comes.

Thoughts? Please share them in the comments section.

Peace,
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The Pitfalls of Organic Church (Part 2)

Draw out the wallflowers and reign in the soap boxers

In a truly new testament house church, no one person (or persons) do all the speaking and teaching. I do know of some organic churches who rely on one person, or sometimes a couple of people, to do all the teaching for them. However, it’s my understanding that everyone in the Body of Christ has the freedom to share with everyone else in the gathering based on all the “one another” verses in the New Testament, and Paul’s admonishment that “when you gather together one of you has a hymn, a tongue, a scripture,” etc.

The challenge with the open share model of house church is that some people (like myself) have no problem talking at length about the Scriptures or their experience with God, while others are more shy or prefer to let others take the spotlight.

As a facilitator in our home church, my role has shifted from being the guy with all the answers to someone who limits themselves to no more than two soap box moments per meeting and spends most of the time trying to allow others to share their gifts as directed by the Holy Spirit.

In short, the less I talk the more opportunity I create for others to share from the heart and operate in their gifting to be a blessing to the rest of us. But, this takes practice and intention, and one of the most important exercises in this process is to start paying attention to those who are not talking. Look around the room and see if someone seems to have something on their mind, but isn’t jumping into the conversation. Sometimes these people just need a little nudge, or an invitation from the group to share what’s on their heart. Often in our group we’ll stop and ask if there’s anyone who wants to share something, especially if they’re someone who hasn’t spoken up in the group yet.

I believe that in every house church group there are those who are naturally teachers, some who are adept at providing color commentary to whatever someone else might share, and then there are those who rarely, if ever, speak, but when they do it’s profound. Do whatever you can to draw out those who tend to hide in the shadows of the room and allow them to share more with everyone else. The more you demonstrate your love for their insight and appreciation of their thoughts and ideas, the more they’ll feel comfortable sharing the next time you gather together.

There may even be times when you need to go privately to one or two individuals who seem to do most of the talking. Ask them to help you involve those who are on the sidelines more. Work together to wait before you speak and allow the uncomfortable silences to be filled by someone other than yourself once in a while. The results will be worth the effort, I believe.

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The Pitfalls of Organic Church (Part 1)

Break Your Liturgy

Early on in our house church experience we took the opportunity to embrace the boundless freedom of being the church together with our friends. Sometimes we would just eat together and share testimonies, other times we would plan to sit together outside on our patio and create a giant work of art on a shower curtain to express our passion for Jesus.

However, over time, we slowly settled into a more familiar groove that has now become our liturgy. We meet for a meal. We talk and eat. We eventually gather around and sing worship songs together. Then we have our open share time. We discuss the scriptures together. We pray for one another. We share communion. We dismiss. This is our liturgy.

My suggestion is that you do all that you can to upset the apple cart as often as possible in order to remind yourselves that you are free in Christ Jesus. You can meet anywhere – under a tree in the park, in a coffee shop, around the swimming pool, at the beach. You can do anything together – pray for an hour, sing spontaneously, create artwork, let the children lead the meeting, sit quietly and listen to the Holy Spirit, play games together, take turns sharing your testimony, invite an outside teacher to lead you through a book of the Bible, or wash one another’s feet.

Whatever you do, the point is to escape the rut and to embrace the spontaneity of being church together. God always does something amazing whenever we put ourselves in a position where none of us really knows exactly what might happen next. That’s where we’re outside our comfort zones and the unexpected moment can catch us by surprise.

Some of the most memorable and powerfully profound gatherings we’ve ever had have been because we took one of these detours outside our liturgy.

One of the most wonderful things about meeting in your home and sharing life with your friends and family in Christ is that there’s no “right way” or “wrong way” to be the Church together. All of your times together are sacred because Christ is in each of you and discovering Jesus in one another is actually more likely when you’re not going through the familiar motions and rhythms of liturgy.

Step outside your comfort zone. Take a path less travelled and rediscover the thrill and joy of exploring your identity as the Body of Christ off the beaten path. You’ll be glad you did!

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