New Blogsite

After I started blogging one of our good friends looked at my site and thought it needed some work.  He went about creating a new site for me to blog on.  This is the new site.  If you I will no longer be posting on my old site so if you were following the conversation, it has moved.  Thanks and I look forward to continuing the conversation.

Jared

House Church books

                A couple people have asked me what books have really guided me on the journey that Lara and I have been on for the past year.  It is impossible to name them all because I have read more this year than any year in the past.  God has used many different authors to reveal truth to Lara and I.  Countless times I have read something and thought to myself that I wished I had written it or I read something and what it said resonated in my heart.

                Organic church by Neil Cole; This is a new classic.  It is all about how the church is supposed to be small, less structured and led more by the Spirit and the Bible than by rules and systems.  He rightly points out that we have made it far too difficult for churches to reproduce and he seeks to show us ways to correct that.  Neil is not afraid, not afraid of churches where people are able to lead out of their brokenness, churches where people work through difficult theology together.  He holds deeply to the idea that experience is the best teacher.   Neil is by far the best writer on this topic from a North American perspective if you are ever considering doing a house church here in the United States this is a must read book. 

                Church Planting Movements by David Garrison; This is a book that looks at numerous church planting movements (cpm) around the world and seeks to learn lessons from them.  A cpm is where a large group of people begin to embrace Jesus in a rather short amount of time.  This book more than any other gives some hard and fast rules while at the same time showing just have fast and powerfully the gospel can spread in places that we would not expect it too.  He also gives a list of warnings, things that the evidence has shown have prevented church planting movements from taking place in various places.  This book is a most read, it shows the power of simplicity and causes us to think about the things we are doing and if they may be holding back a movement.

                The House Church Book by Wolfgang Simson; Wolfgang has done some lectures that absolutely inspire me.  His book is no different.  He is quick and to the point.  He is passionate about small reproducible gatherings of Christians.  In his opinion Christians who are stuck in their mindset are the biggest hindrances to cpms taking place.  It was through him that I developed a passion to pray that people would see visions of Jesus as a means of them coming to him.  Wolfgang believes that in small committed relationships we grow fastest and healthiest.  This book is great for learning some ideas about how your house church should look.

                There are many other books that I am sure that I should mention but am a little to lazy right now to review.  These three though are the key ones in my opinion and while I do not agree with them completely they are provocative and thought provoking and worth a read.

House Church - Week Five - Flexibility

                House church, because of its size, has a natural flexibility built into it regarding meeting times.  This past week was a great example of that.  We met on a Thursday night for the first time.  When we originally set this past week’s meeting time we knew that two of us were going to miss it because of retreats we were on.  As a group though we were still going have the rest meet on Saturday.  Well, two weeks beforehand it became obvious that four of our group, in addition to the other two, could not make it on Saturday…so we changed.  Subsequently, this meant that two others could not come.  But the decision was made that we would change. 

                Changing the day allowed the majority of the group to participate in church without staying fixed to a schedule that would have prevented four people who were involved in an outreach project from serving.  The smaller a group, the more flexible it can be.  Communication is easier and there are fewer schedules to try and coordinate.  Get-togethers are easy to change and adapt over time or within a week when the Spirit leads.  Sometimes it helps when pragmatism is needed and other times it helps when people need to respond to a genuine leading by God. 

                At Ward, it would be difficult for us to ever change the day or the times when we meet.  Hundreds of people come to each service, they plan on it, we have classes that run in conjunction with our services and local restaurants depend on us getting out at certain times.  All of this would make it very difficult for us to change the time for next week or to elongate the service.  Structure within our worship services is not a bad thing.  However, it can at times make it more difficult to respond to the prompting to the Spirit.  Of course, we do seek to plan our worship at Ward by listening to the Spirit, and I’m not saying that God is not in our services.  What I am saying is that institutional church does not have the flexibility in this area that house church has.

                Being forced into a certain meeting pattern makes it difficult to reach out to people.  Many people have jobs that have flexible hours.  Nurses, police officers and others cannot meet at the same time every week.  One week they may be able to make a service and another week they may have to miss it.  With a house church, there is a built in flexibility that allows the group to adjust with life change.

Retreat Review

             I have taken groups to FaHoLo camp for the past seven winters.  I have had more great conversations there with students than any other place besides Ward Church.  As a retreat center, it’s a place with above-average facilities, reasonable prices, a great staff, and an indoor pool and hot tub - all which make the place awesome.

            Two things really help to define how a retreat will go.  The first is facilities, and like I said, FaHoLo is great.  The next is the speaker.  This retreat, we hit it out of the park with the speaker.  We had Jason Raitz and he was amazing.  Jason had to speak 8 times; this is because we do both our middle school and our high school retreats on the same weekend, with the same speaker (just at different times).  Jason was able to communicate in such a way that all students, from high school seniors to sixth graders, were challenged to find their identity in Christ.   He was fun, biblical and someone that helped set our small groups up for success.

            One of the greatest things that can happen in student ministries is when the students get up and thank their leaders.  On Saturday night at winter retreat, we always have a time for our seniors to share advice.  The line that continued to be shared throughout the night was that our volunteers are amazing.  It has been a dream and a goal of mine that our students would see their small group leaders as the key people in the spiritual development at Ward.  It is impossible for me to have a close relationship with every student.  But with great leaders, it happens that the student has someone in their life that loves Jesus and loves them.  Saturday night was a testimony that that was happening, and I am so thankful for the leaders we have in Epic.

            Lastly, I love retreats for the conversations.  I had a number of great conversations with students this weekend.  Retreats are times where our students connect with God, whether it is through the music (3union did a great leading worship), the talks from Jason, or their small groups.  In those moments, their hearts are open and we can share with them at a time when they are open to God doing something in their lives.  I love those moments! 

House Church Week 4 - Hosting House Church

                Hospitality is not a spiritual gift of mine.  I prefer to teach, lead or do just about anything else, but when house church is at your house that week you have to learn some hospitality.  For us, hosting house church means preparing the meal, having a dessert and making sure that there is space for three separate groups to break out for prayer and accountability.

                Ideally, members of a house church live in close proximately with each other and frequently spend time with each other.  This proximity makes it much less an event when people come over because it would happen so naturally.  We are still in our training and so we live all over metro Detroit, from Dearborn to Livonia and Farmington to Ann Arbor.  For us, that means when someone host shouse church it is a little bit of a bigger deal than it should be. 

                With that in mind, Lara and I spent a lot of time thinking through how we were going to host.  We planned two different menus and finally choose spaghetti over breakfast for dinner.  We thought about the dessert and bounced from muffins to Rice Crispy treats to finally Root Beer and Vernor floats.  Lara and I also spent a lot of time cleaning the house and organizing things so people would have plenty of space.

                House church this week had one incredible moment and numerous good ones.  The good moments included small group prayer, discussing together Philippians 2, and just generally being with each other.  These moments tend to remind me that our lives, our relationships, our goals are all meant to be built upon the Love of Christ and our relationships with him.  We are not trying to judge how house church went according to how well we thought the lesson went.

                What was incredible though was a moment that we as a group got to share with one of the kids present.  See, in a traditional church it is possible for a family to have all of their spiritual moments apart from each other.  They each go to their own rooms and have their own lessons.  Not in all churches, but in many they don’t even have to spend any time together.  In house church, kids come in and out.  During prayer a diaper needs to be changed or two kids push each other.  Kids are there when we sing or at least some of them, or they are there when we talk about seeing God.  This week, one of our kids gave us the highlight when he shared some verses that he had memorized.  We as a group cheered for him and I hope he felt loved and encouraged.  It was a moment that a Sunday school teacher would get at an institutional church, but for us we all got to celebrate a fiee year old who is just really beginning to learn about Jesus.

Student's being a blessing

The past few weeks we have been challenging our students to be a blessing to the people in their lives.  This started when Reggie McNeal spoke at Ward a few weeks ago about being a people of blessing.  Below are a few of the stories I have received.  I have changed names and some other possible identifying features of the stories, but nothing that impacts the story itself.  Enjoy and be inspired…

I asked one of my teachers today… she was completely surprised. I asked if there was anything I could pray for her about specifically and she started tearing up. She said her brother just died from cancer a few weeks ago, and her sister just relapsed (breast cancer) and her other sister has just been diagnosed with lymphoma. She said she has been really struggling because she doesn't want to lose any more family to cancer. Then everyone sitting around me (even the people who don't necessarily like her) started comforting her. I told her I'd pray for her and her family, gave her a hug and all that. Just thought I’d let you know!

I told a teacher in Language Arts class about what our church is doing to bless people.  I asked if I could pray for something for her. She asked me to pray for a family whose father had died. When I was talking to her, I felt God was there. She was really positive after we talked. She seemed encouraged. She said their family was also on her prayer list.

Truth be told, not every story worked out so well.  But, it’s not so much the result that I care about, it’s the willingness of our students to take a step… Here is a story of a ninth grade girl being faithful.

I asked my 3rd hour teacher if I could pray for her, she made a startled sound, said "Oh. Yeah sure." gave a nervous laugh and walked away.

Yesterday the students did not have school in Livonia or Northville districts, so we had them at the church for pizza and dodgeball.  I asked one of our ninth grade boys what he had done this week to be a blessing and he told me that he shoveled his neighbor’s driveway and sidewalks.  He told me he did it on his own, and he didn’t tell his mom, he just did it. 

I could tell you stories of students praying for waitress esand co-workers and stories of students stepping out in faith.  In my six years and counting in Ward student ministries these two weeks of watching our students learn to become people of blessing have been the most inspiring that I have ever had.

House Church Week 3

                One of the fundamental truths about our house church is that depending on who is leading the group that week it will be different.  This week was the best prayer time I have ever had in a church setting.  This was the case because of the way in which the leader chose to structure our time.  Each week we pray, a lot.  I mean up to an hour, which is longer than some whole church services I have been a part of.  Because I loved our prayer time this week I’m excited to share, but seeing as how prayer closed our time together you’ll have to wait till the end to see what went on.

                House church has one constant - food.  This week we ate at a table, which was a first for us.  Usually we eat wherever we can find space.  But this week’s host had enough space at her table for the nine adults to eat together.  It felt a lot like a family meal, except my sister and I weren’t fighting.  The meal and the conversation at the table are a key part of house church.  We genuinely want to know how everyone is doing.  We talk about our jobs, our families, and all that life stuff.  Woven into that are discussions about our faith and what God is doing in our lives.  It’s important to note that in the institutional church there are usually specific times to talk about God.  In our house church, we want to see all of our conversations as being about God. 

                One item we each tried to talk about with the whole group are these things we call Curriculums for Christ-likeness.  These are areas in our lives that we feel as though we need to grow closer to God.  We have different things that we want to work on, but we celebrate with each other when we are succeeding and encourage and give grace when we fall behind.  In house church, an obvious truth arises - that we all grow in different ways and that God is working on us according to his plan and will for our lives.

                After we finished sharing, we spent time as a group looking at Colossians 3:1-17.  We talked about how we see God in this passage and what this passage tells us that God expects from us.  It was really cool to see how people brought other passages into the discussion or how various verses sound in different translations.  Because we affirm that each person around the table has the Holy Spirit, we believe that each person has something valuable to share.  This and all the previous activities took place at the dinner table, much like a family would gather together and share.  It is important to note that the church is referred to as a body and a family in scripture and the house church seeks to model that.

                Next, we sang together.  No glitz, no glamour, just nine people who love Jesus and want to worship him.  It was our first time singing and it was fun to watch each other worship God in song.  Two of our members played guitars and we had some song sheets that we shared.

                Finally, I will explain this amazing prayer time.  Our church has nine people - six women and three men (and four awesome kids).  For prayer we had two girl groups and one guy group.  Our group barely talked before, we just prayed.  We prayed scripture and blessings on each other.  We sought to hear from God and what he wanted to communicate to each other.  The three of us prayed for, I bet, forty-five minutes together.  It is amazingly humbling to have people you love pray a blessing over you, people you respect say kind words about you, and to hear them thank God for you.  It is incredible when you hear in their voice a deep desire for you to receive what you and your wife are begging God for.  I love spending time with people who believe in God so deeply and have such a deep faith that they expect him to hear their cry.

                If there was one element of house church that the institutional church needs more of it is prayer.  Honest, heartfelt prayer.  Prayer that trusts God.  Prayer that asks the impossible.  Prayer that expects God to speak back.  Prayer that is not limited to one person and instead includes the entire community of people seeking to unite their hearts to God.  Prayer - deep, holy, inspiring.  Prayer that changes you.  And when you experience it, you will never be okay with weak prayer again.

Reggie McNeal

This past weekend we had Reggie McNeal at Ward Church.  It was Reggie’s book, The Present Future, which began the process of me moving down the path that Lara and I have embraced for church planting.  He put words to my thoughts about the church, about people and why we are unfortunately so ineffective at reaching people who have no church background.

On Saturday, Reggie addressed several shifts that the church needs to make.  On Sunday, he talked about how we as people can make these shifts in our own lives.  Before I review his weekend I would like to say something that Reggie presupposes when he speaks; he is addressing people that he believes are passionate about Jesus and being in relationship with Him.  He believes that this passion for Christ is the foundation from which all of our love for others must flow.

So, back to Saturday when Reggie shared three of the six shifts he thinks the church must make for the future.  The first shift would take the church from an internal focus to an external focus.  In Reggie’s opinion, the church in North America spends a disproportionate amount of its time on itself.  God called the church to be a people that share Jesus with the world around them in word and deed.  If we hold to the attitude that people must come to church to encounter Jesus and His grace we are flying in the face of overwhelming biblical commands.  Reggie pushed us to think about how we could take the love of Jesus out with us intentionally into the places where God has already placed us.

The second major shift Reggie presented would move the church from a program-driven model to a people-development model.  When the church runs programs they tend to become an end in themselves.  The goal is the continuation and success of the program.  The question becomes: How many people attended the program and did they enjoy it?  Leaders focus on what is being done in the programs.  Reggie encouraged us to think about how to change trajectories and focus more on people.  We were challenged to focus on what kind of people we want to produce, not on what type of program we want to have them participate in.  This thinking does not presume that what we are currently doing is correct or erroneous.  Instead, it sets that whole question aside and asks how we can achieve what God would have us to achieve.  Do keep in mind though that this new paradigm does take into account the uniqueness of everyone, the fact that people grow in different ways and at different paces, and that people have their own callings.

The last shift Reggie put forward was the idea of moving from leading an organization to leading a movement.  An organization is somewhat predictable and controllable.  Movements, however, have dispersed leadership and multiple directions and goals.  With one, we want people who can lead within our passion, and with the other, we free them up to lead in the passion that God has given them.  Within an organization we typically hope for growth by addition.  Movements are usually characterized by explosive growth through multiplication, which doesn’t necessarily lead people back to our organization.

For an institutional church like Ward, these are major shifts.  In a sense, all organizations are concerned with self-preservation and continuity.  These shifts may mean that people connected with the church start movements that are not connected to that church any longer.  These shifts will probably also mean that we coach people to hear what God is calling them to do instead of pushing them into the things that we want them to do.  It can be scary to embrace this new paradigm.  But I deeply believe that these shifts will allow our people to impact their communities and natural relationships in ways that they wouldn’t be able to otherwise.

House Church Week 2

            I have to say off the bat that I love house church!  It is so me.  I am really connecting with people and with God.  House church this week was a perfect example of how that happens.  We began by eating dinner.  During this time we shared about life, celebrated with each other and just enjoyed who God has placed us with. 

            This week was my week to lead, so I had a semi-detailed plan.  The plan was to move from food to sharing what God had taught us this week about himself through the scriptures.  That didn’t happen.  The sister-in-law of one of our members had had surgery and we prayed for her.  We were concerned because of some relational issues.  So, we as a group prayed before we did anything else.  After that we shared what God was teaching us.  Each person shared and it was awesome to see some common themes emerge.  One great thing was that one of the kids shared what he had learned about God during the week.  Through this time of sharing an issue of theology came up, and we had a spirited discussion about the scriptures.  Our differences though did not keep us from loving or being with each other.

Next, we prayed corporately for at least half an hour.  We prayed for people to fall in love with Jesus.  We prayed for healings and miracles for people.  We prayed for God to move in our own lives and we prayed scripture and claimed promises.  It was moving prayer.   We then moved on to talked about a passion for Jesus found in John 15.  I led the discussion but almost everyone contributed.  Passages from all over the Bible were read and thoughts about what is meant by fruit were shared.

Following this discussion we prayed for one of our members.  This person didn’t ask for it, we just did it.  As a group we took turns praying for him and what God would have for him.  We listened to God; we asked Him to impart words for this member and tried to hear what the Holy Spirit was saying to him.  It was amazing.  We probably prayed for him for twenty minutes or so.  Lastly, we ate dessert.  What can I say?  We eat a lot in our house church.

Overall it was what I hoped for, the spirit moved, we changed agenda items, we studied together, we prayed together, we debated each other and we shared our lives together.  While there is a different leader each week it is our goal that the Holy Spirit would be our guide, that He would show up and mess with us and make us more like Jesus.

Ward January 9, 2011

                The thing that I love about attending worship at Ward is that feeling you get when you’re in a room with over 500 other people.  If you’re like me you find energy contagious.  You find it exciting when people are singing and praying together.  An institutional church (meaning a church that has regular Sunday meetings and would be easily recognizable to a North American as church) like Ward has some differences from a house church and this Sunday showed them off.

                In the institutional church the congregation hires a pastor to bring a professional message and he usually prepares extensively each week.  Ward is no different.  Our pastor Scott is an amazing communicator.  He knows what he wants to say and says it in a way that grabs people’s hearts.  Scott’s teaching in content and delivery is worth the price of admission, as the saying goes.  People aren’t bored hearing him and they almost always have a practical life application in hand.  House churches don’t usually have a paid speaker or even someone who can devote the better part of a week to honing a message.

                The worship music is also a big difference.  We may or may not sing in our house church, but at Ward in Knox Hall we worship in song together.  Today with Josh on the violin and the acoustic set it was powerful.  When we sang IN CHRIST ALONE I was moved.  This is definitely something I think the institutional church does very well.

                Lastly, there is the feeling of being together with so many others.  Ward had over 2000 people today and more than 500 in the service I was in.  At times following Jesus can feel a little lonely, or isolated.  But when you look around the room and you see people that are living out their faith all over the region it inspires you.  You want to do better because those people are counting on you and you on them.

House Church Week 1

                Last night was the first night of our new house church.  The nine of us gathered together to pray and discuss what we thought we wanted our house church to look like.  The conversation amongst us was incredible.  We settled potential issues very easily, we discussed difficult theological questions about the church, and we shared and prayed as a group. 

Many people have asked me what a house church is, what it looks like, and what our group will be doing together.  Let me first say that I think 'house church' is a less than ideal term.  We are going to be in a church that meets in an intentionally small group (small enough that it could be in someone’s home) and have chosen to meet most regularly in homes; however, as a group we will also have times when we meet outside in public places.  It seems that by calling it a 'house church' it somehow makes it seem as though it is not a complete church or that it is somehow lacking in validity.  Most churches around the world are less than 20 people.  In fact, China went from 1 million Christians to approximately 100 million through the growth of house church movements.  We believe that all the things a church is supposed to be and do can be accomplished with this small group of people outside a typical church building. 

What our church will look like is a little harder to express.  House churches each have their own feel and methods.  Some are structured in such a way that they feel like 'micro-traditional' (what people think when they think church in North America) churches; having an order of worship and a message.  We have chosen a more organic route.  Each week we will have a guide to move us into prayer collectively, accountability (maybe as a whole group, maybe by gender, maybe in pairs, it’s up to what that person thinks the spirit is leading them into) and some time in God’s word.  There is not a leader in the traditional sense, and we have chosen not to follow a curriculum but to be intentional about sharing what God is saying out of our individual times in communion with the Trinity.

Each week I plan on telling what we did and why.  Many of the things will seem odd at first and not part of what is normally done in church.  I will seek to explain in the best way I can why we did certain things.

This week I plan on blogging about Ward’s service on Sunday.  Scott is in week two of the book of James and I think it will be incredible for our congregation to hear.  Also, I'll have a post about being a leader versus being a servant.  Next Saturday, Reggie McNeal will be at Ward and I am sure a post will come out of that...

House Church

Over the next 5 months Lara and I have a unique opportunity; we get to be part of a new house church while remaining at Ward.  This house church is a result of a training program that Lara and I are in along with seven others.  Together the 9 of us will meet and discover how to be the church when you strip away the money, the titles and the traditions.  (A house church is a term for a small church usually 8-15 people that gather together without paid staff and a building and operate more like a family than a traditional church would ie everyone participates, everyone is needed and everyone knows each other.)  It will be a stretching experience to say the least and we are so excited to be a part of it.

I am also going to remain at Ward through this time.  Because of my position at Ward and that it does not conclude till the end of summer I will remain beyond active at Ward.  This juxtaposition of Mega church and House church is what I will be writing about most frequently.  I am sure that there are things that I will learn in the house church that will cause me to rethink all that I have learned.  I am also convinced that there are things about being in a mega church that will shine brighter to me as a result.  It is my deepest hope that Lara and I grow to appreciate both of these forms of church in a new way as a result of this new endeavor.