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.