If you were in a Sunday Service, and the preacher/expert brother (or sister) was communicating up there, and their message was muddying the waters of the truth for the Body, what would you do?
Send an email?
Stand up and shout from the back?
Write a letter?
Start a blog?
Start your own church?
In a lot of places on Sunday mornings and other times during the week, the truth and encouragements that God wants to speak to us are put on the line. Saints all over the place cry out to God to please please please use their pastor or preacher to bring a word of instruction or encouragement to the body. Wow. that's true, and that's sad. Many of those people are constantly disappointed.
Pastors across the country are too isolated, with their degrees and "expertise" elevating them to an unrealistic higher plane. They are expected to the modern-day Moses. But in Numbers 11, Moses bewailed the reality that not everyone was a prophet, yearning for the day when the Spirit of God would be poured out on the whole community of God.
As I've seen it, housechurch, or "family model" ministry produces a profoundly effective sense of ACCOUNTABILITY in terms of teaching and the Word. What I mean is that in a big church that puts an unrealistic trust in the credentials of the minister, you get this inability to challenge, or complete thoughts and ideas that they're teaching. In house/family church, you can raise your hand and ask or add! Everyone is trusting the Holy Spirit to speak through Anybody. The entire gathered community is recognized as a vessel for the Lord to minister through.
There are leaders, and there is authority, but leadership and authority are turned toward equipping others to minister and serve... during preaching, there's a sense of the teacher "drawing" the Word out of the people listening... it is common for someone to be identified as "Loaded" with a word, Bible open on their lap, eyes bright. They are asked to share, and almost always have a clarifying addition that brings the message more fully home...
That's how it commonly fleshes out in our community, and I can't wait to help other house groups to mature in the boldness of recognition that the Holy Spirit, our teacher, is working through "anyone", as we gather in the Name of Jesus.
Now sure, there'll be flakes and fakers. But at least they'll be clearly evident to all, as they share in the vulnerability of intimacy in a small family-style meeting. They are easily identified by rank and file christians who read the word and live in obedience to God. In bigger church settings, these folks can embed in the community for years, without being challenged or helped out of their deceptions.
Beloveds let's get cracking on getting the saints equipped to minister house to house in the tri-state. This will equip them to serve in their neighborhoods in radical, ordinary faithfulness unto Christ. That will do the trick. Joy ensues.
Anyone want encouragement to start a home meeting? I'd love to help.
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Lew;
ReplyDeleteafter reading your blog for years, it’s clear that you are frustrated with the contemporary church’s large group meeting…. and when you compare that to a house church (a healthy house church) it’s hard to argue. But really you should compare a house church to the “small group” ministry of a church… which is pretty common in today’s contemporary church.
My church has ~1200 folks on a weekend come to worship (sing corporately to God, take communion, hear & respond the Word)… but the key is the groups (home groups, home church’s, whatever you call them) that meet during the week that then dive into the Word that was presented and apply it in terms of how it’s playing out in individuals/families.
We have 14 adults and 11 kids every Thursday night at my house for a meal, prayer, worship, and then we talk about how we are living/responding in light of the message the Pastor shared the previous weekend… that’s where the “accountability” really takes root in a large church.
Now, don’t get me wrong, … I’m still on the fence as far as which “model”…. I get so frustrated with the large church/small group model; but then again we baptized 88 folks this past summer, and we are really seeing folks starting to live with a kingdom perspective (which is sometimes messy; of course that can be a good indicator as well)…. God is really doing a neat thing…
Of course, there are many things that I can point to that says bag the large church model and go to home church’s…..
Ok, there is my scattered thoughts (nothing process, all raw) after reading this post.
I love reading and being challenged by your writings and life!
Keith
brother thanks for sharing. solid stuff. thank you for that. all of us profit from it.
ReplyDeleteI'll keep sharing from here, but I'm really rejoicing at the goodness and grace flowing in your experience of the church, over there! Praise God.
that is a balm to my heart. i hope i can visit sometime. i really do believe you. and i praise God.
I'm going to comment again, not wanting so seem overwhelming. This is a place where I expand my thoughts in public. I hope it helps some of you. I hope it hinders none.
ReplyDeleteKeith, I continue to appreciate your readership. And I continue to thank God for all He's doing in and through the congregations over there.
You probably have me nailed, there as "frustrated". I would wish something else. I would wish that I were captivated by Jesus, and the narrative of the New Testament to the degree that I grow intolerant of degrees of compromise that hinder and hurt the ones Jesus came to save...
I know that many of my readers feel the same.
I would wish I were "captivated" to a great degree, not with comparisons of models, but of OUR LIVES, corporate and individual, with the life that Scripture holds up to us.
In such a comparison, made just this week, we found that our little band over here closely resembles the church of first corinthians. In this regard, a comparison to the small groups of your church may reveal that we are immature and still struggling too freshly with immoralities and clingies from our past...
next week may seem much better...
these are just some more thoughts. Hopefully, i will graduate from comparisons and frustrations into the mature helpfulness that could come with wisdom.
again, keith, thank you for commenting. blessings.
"that meet during the week that then dive into the Word that was presented " (ie, the leader's message is re-thrashed)
ReplyDeleteThat is just controlling. How is the HS supposed to step in there?
-sam
(sorry if this was a double-post, please discard if so)
Brother Sam, your zeal for the prominence and purity of the Holy Spirit's ministry among us is a blessing.
ReplyDeleteThankfully, the practise that Keith is describing isn't necessarily done to the exclusion of the Holy Spirit's ministry.
Sure, there are churches where the leaders prohibit any teachign other than the pulpit ministry to be done in small groups, but we guys "out here" must consider the fact that what we're doing is almost exactly the same at what Keith's church is doing.
We have teaching and teachers, don't we? And they ask us to take notes and discuss them, don't they? yes we do.
and the discussion that the Holy Spirit is guiding is often an extension of the teaching ministry's direction in the congregation...
The Holy Spirit DOES step in in these smaller fellowships... the question is always for the leadership:
"will leadership not only tolerate or encourage with 'openness', the emergence of the Spirit's ministry, but EQUIP the saints to be led of the Spirit, and be submissively and discerningly listening to the Word emerging from the Body?"
There is too often a control issue in the prescription of discussion materials, but let's don't let that keep us from walking out the reality that "they were devoted to the apostles' teaching" and that their congregational manifestation was often in Large groups...
The question isn't at all about models, here. It is about LOVE, actually.
Love for Jesus.
Love for Jesus by loving one another.
Love for Jesus bleeding out to loving neighbors...
so, I think the sense of guarding against the kind of control that will hinder the Spirit's ministry and not equip the saints to minister in the Many ways they will...
...that sense of apprehension is good.
Thankfully, it is likely that the fellowships at Keith's church are being faithfully equipped and encouraged to Body ministry in the word...
I am hopeful, and if you guys met each other today, you'd LOVE each other. I look forward to that.