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Commune-ity Values (or Redefining “Church” Yet Again….)

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Oy vey!

That’s all I can say after reading The House Church Blog’s post on what the Bible really says about house churches.

As someone who has even considered whether a house church was the “church of last resort” for a couple of square pegs like my wife and I, this semi-new definition of what constitutes a house church should have even Robert Fitts throwing a few of his namesake (minus a “t”—of course.)

A distressing—for all those house church proponents, at least—excerpt:

The implications of Gehring’s insights about the importance of oikos [Greek for “household”—Ed.] are huge! For one thing, it means that moving church from a special church building into a home does not go nearly far enough. The churches established by Jesus and his disciples were not mere weekly meetings. They were literally households—ongoing, 24/7, family-like communities.

Consider 1Cor. 16:19 – “Aquila and Prisca greet you heartily in the Lord, with the church that is in their house (oikos)”. If we read this from our 21st Century Western context, we would (unconsciously?) conclude that once a week a group of Christians met in this couple’s home for church. However, if we read this verse from the 1st Century context, we would conclude something quite different.

To say that we have a “house church” because we meet in someone’s home at 7 pm on Tuesday nights, falls significantly short of the New Testament concept of “house church”.

Yikes! Are we back to the redeemed hippie communes of the 1970’s Jesus People era? Well, from this assessment, it seems we are.

St. Chapelle Stained Glass by Dan EdelenThe perpetually moving target that is the method of some to capture the exact mode of meeting of the first century Church is bothersome. Methodology is great and I applaud those who are going for as pure a methodology as can be understood, but at some point we just need to get on with doing what the Lord commanded: making disciples. If every couple years we rip down the idea of what constitutes a “true” church meeting, then we are only forcing our churches through ever-finer strainers. Who or what comes out of that in one piece is debatable.

Perhaps we are asking too much of people. In the midst of a resurgence in house churches, this is an acid test that few can withstand, I suspect. “Now we have to live in the same house with these people!” is asking too much too early on in this nascent movement.

My wife and I have wondered if the best model is to get a group of six or seven committed Christian families to purchase about fifty acres of land near a smaller town and build a home for each family on that land, along with a larger building that can provide a centralized meeting place. One or two of the families can work the remaining land as a source of food and revenue for the community, not to mention a source for feeding the poor. A portion of the income of each family would be pooled and used to support the community, especially during times of duress (such as medical expenses or job losses), and for basic outreach benevolences. Childcare and homeschooling would also be provided in this model, with every family chipping in. Group meals could also be planned, as well as allowances made for private dinners devoted to the needs of each individual family. The items that many families duplicate (yard care, basic tools, even vehicles) could be pooled in order to save money, while time can be saved not having to work and shop for duplicated items, freeing folks up to spend more time in devotion to the Lord.

Despite this idea of ours, I’m not completely ready to give up on the current model we have used for so long. It may not be perfect, but that imperfection may lie more in our inability to stay true to the Gospel message than in our lack of replicating the Book of Acts’ style of church meeting to a “T.” There is much to be said for the synergy a church of two hundred or more can bring to a locality when all two hundred souls are on the same page spiritually, right with God and with each other. You just can’t get that with any other style of church meeting.

That’s what I am hoping for now in the church we just joined, at least. Should we grow that into something more “organic,” then great. But for now, I’m not going to get flustered by yet another (somewhat) new direction in ecclesiology. You shouldn’t, either.

The Curse of Monasticism Reborn

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No sooner do I get done writing a far-between post noting how my posts have been far-between while I work on finishing up my novel, and offering up a link elsewhere to ponder just to prove the point, God grabs ahold of me and makes me write this.

I wonder if we are creating a new monasticism.

The Reformation drove a stake into the separatist mentality that is the core of monasticism, proving that the Gospel belongs out among the people, out in our communities, villages, towns, and cities. It was a call to leave the ivory towers and get one's hand dirty out in the "real" world. And not only that, it called Christians to be pillars in their communities, villages, towns, and cities, to have a real presence that brought Christ into the marketplace of ideas.

The True Light cannot be hid in us who cherish Him, so the Reformers told us to get out from under our bushels and shine. They taught that Christianity was not to be a religion of disconnection, but a relationship with Christ who gathers us in a Body and dwells amid that Body—a Body centered in our local communities.

This is why I wonder about the current moves going on in the American Church. There is a gung-ho attitude toward small groups, house churches, and select meetings of a few outside the large church assemblies. It is good that we think about those types of groups and consider their impact.

However, in a day and age when fractionalization and withdrawing from community are the norm are we Christians missing the bigger picture by de-emphasizing large assemblies while heaping praise on smaller groups?

My wife and I spent much of this year searching for a new church. More than three years ago, we moved an hour's drive away from our old church while continuing to go there. The outcome of this was that we did not plug into the village we lived in because our church was fifty miles away. Having one foot in the community we lived in and one in our community of faith many miles away meant that neither found a connection to the other. In the end, both were diminished.

Yet it is more than just a distance issue. It may also be a numbers issue. The church that we have landed in near our home has about four hundred people in it. That winds up being four hundred connections into our local village. That's four hundred reinforcements to a presence in town AND four hundred reinforcements to our community of faith.

A small group cannot do that. A house church cannot do that, either. When we wonder why we feel disconnected in our own communities, perhaps this is why. Neglecting our presence in our towns and villages in numbers that reinforce rather than divide is ushering in a new monasticism. We find ourselves cut off from the world at large and also cut off from the Church at large. Dwelling in this limbo, we gut our effectiveness not only to reach new people with the Gospel, but to enjoy relationships with a wide variety of people, relationships that have Kingdom potential ranging from a simple "God bless you!" to the clerk at the local grocery store to a deep discipleship relationship with a new believer at our church.

Synergy is also lost. It is one thing to cast the seed everywhere we go, but how much more effective can we be when we repeatedly cast it right where we live? The compounding of this synergy repeated four hundred times every day by the folks in our new church can also not be overlooked. A new monasticism cripples this kind of synergy, diluting its effectiveness.

One of the first verses I ever felt God illumined in me is this one:

As the rain and the snow
come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,
so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.
—Isaiah 55:10

God's word does not return void. In some people it is like rain, soaking into the soil of a barren heart, that rain finally giving nourishment to the seed there. In others, it is like snow, piling up and up until something warms it, causing it to melt and seep into the soil.

When we Christians spread ourselves thin or withdraw into little groups, the storm is lost, and the blizzard is reduced to a mere frost.

There is something to be said for churches between two hundred and a thousand people. A church that size allows us to know the ones with whom we fellowship. It also can take a people of one mind and cause a storm in the towns and villages in which we live. And lastly, it affords us connections into those same towns and villages that allow us to be a vital part of their livelihood rather than just listing them as a place where we get our mail.

People wonder why we feel disconnected from the people who live right next door to us. They ask why our churches seem to be so ineffective, too. Perhaps our monastic mentality is the cause.

God helps us break out of our ivory towers and get out among the people, both those who know the Lord and those who hope one day to know. Let us be a vital presence in our local communities, bringing the Gospel Light into all we do. And let us also be the beneficiaries of the connections we forge immediately around us, to our neighbors, and to the community at large. Always for Your glory and Your Kingdom. Amen.

I Want to Be a Clone

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Is it just me or has nearly every church in this country been cloned?

In the last few months, my wife and I have visited about a half-dozen different churches. Just a decade ago, the differences between those churches in their musical choices, sermon styles, liturgy choices (including no liturgy at all), and the like would have been profoundly different. Even their emphases on particular doctrinal aspects of Christianity would have been prominently on display during a worship service, and uniquely geared to the denominational beliefs of the church. Today, though, it doesn’t matter if you go to a Free Methodist, Friends, Vineyard, Baptist, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, or any other denomination because what they show you on Sundays and through the week is identical. Say what you will about the worth of denominational factionalism, but if our churches are all aspiring to a lowest common denominator sameness, is that an improvement?

Now you can make a claim for ecumenism here, but I think it goes far beyond that. Evangelicalism is enmeshed in the church growth movement to such a degree that denominations are jettisoning their cores in order to embrace the flavor of the week. I continue to be astonished at the rate with which The Willow Creek Association is consuming churches, asking them to ascribe to Willow Creek’s ministry models without question. But is anyone asking the pivotal question: What if Willow Creek’s ministry model and philosophies are wrong?

This is not going to be a diatribe about Willow Creek or Saddleback or any of the other churches out there like them. Well, maybe I’m not being honest here, because I’m commenting on the fact that so many church out there are exactly like Willow Creek and Saddleback. Honestly, is there a church out there in the evangelical ranks that has not done 40 Days of Purpose? Does a men’s group exist in an evangelical church that has not read through Wild at Heart? Is it possible to attend a worship service in an evangelical church today and not sing a worship song that isn’t copyrighted by Vineyard Music?

What is with all this sameness? I know some would argue that this is great and that the techniques used by many megachurches are filtering down to everyone; the churches that go this direction certainly do enjoy the growth.

Yet the numbers show a disturbing issue. About 42% of Americans attend church on the weekends. This has remained fairly steady for more than seventy years. If the megachurches and their Willow Creek and Saddleback models are truly bringing in unchurched Harry and Mary, then why is this number not increasing like crazy? Or are the “church growth” churches merely cannibalizing the congregations of churches around them who haven’t signed up to be a Willow Creek Association member?

So if the overall number of people in America who are at least attending church on Sunday (and I’m not even going to attempt to determine how many of those are actually born again) is not increasing, then what have we gained in the church growth movement by embracing these ideas? Even more alarming, by embracing these ministry models, did we lose something instead?

That latter question should bother us all. I get the feeling that the baby has been thrown out with the “new ministry paradigm” bath water. Have we sold out the Lord for a trend?

I am seeing an increase in the dissatisfaction levels of Christians who have been so for many years who witnessed their churches being “cloned” right out from underneath them. I know that I am struggling mightily just trying to find a church in my area that isn’t a church growth clone. Where do you go to get back to that “Old Time Religion?” Are we in danger of forgetting how well that served us?

Now there are some out there who think this is an End Times creation of an apostate church. I have not signed on to that view just yet, but it is something to keep an eye on. The ease at which this trend is spreading is truly astonishing. It seems like every church leader is mouthing the same church growth gobbledygook no matter where you turn. And churches are adding “Community” to their names faster than they can take down the cross in the sanctuary. It seems like madness.

Or is it just me?