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.
I like reading your thoughts JDill!
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