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.

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.

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.

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.