Video about House Church (aka simple church)
March 5, 2008 at 3:11 pm | In simple church | 8 CommentsTags: Christianity, Church, home church, House church, House2House, Jesus, Karis publishing, simple church, when you come together
I posted a few days ago about House Church, talking about Larry Kreider & Floyd McClung’s new book, Starting a House Church. Here is a video talking more about house churches, or ’simple churches’ that I found interesting. I’m not going to give my thoughts about it right now, just kind of “throwing it out here” for you to watch.
This is linked to YouTube
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I’ve really been wanting to put down my thoughts on this, but haven’t found the time yet. Stay tuned…
Comment by joel — March 7, 2008 #
I’m holding my breath!
Comment by Heidi — March 7, 2008 #
Hope you didn’t pass out.
Okay, aside from being occasionally distracted by video segments that were mirrored/reversed from previous shots of the same people…
I can see both pros and cons to this sort of approach, along with some potential dangers. On the pro side, I can definitely see the benefits of getting people more actively involved in “doing church”. Make it real, make it personal. When you’re only talking ten people sitting around a living room, it’s a lot easier and more practical to have everyone engaged and participating. It’s easier to develop deeper relationships with the others in the group, so that it becomes a more tightly-knit, functioning, supporting body. It’s easier to be more flexible in terms of “schedule”, if you will, or in any case with whatever it is you’re intending to do, to reflect any particular needs of the moment. I could go on, but it all really boils down to getting people more actively involved in being parts of the body of Christ in a smaller group setting.
The cons I see offhand mostly come out of losing the “economies of scale”, if you will,, afforded by being a part of a larger body. A larger body is much better positioned to organize and pull off larger ministry efforts. Running a soup kitchen. Taking work teams and mission trips abroad. Facilitating orphan care and adoption ministries. Maintaining facilities for training seminars. It’s not that these kinds of things couldn’t be accomplished in some form without a larger body, but they would be much more of an organizational and resource challenge, often prohibitively so. The things that could be accomplished for the kingdom by the organization and resources provided by a larger group, it seems to me, could potentially be vastly more than the “sum of the parts”, if you will.
Now, the danger I see isn’t unique to the small-group-church model, but I think its potential is magnified. I’m going to state it outright, and then try to explain why that’s not quite what I mean.
Basically, you lose the availability of trained, learned leaders. Now, I’m not saying that only pastors who have been to seminary have any business leading a church — God can and does use whomever he wants. But I get a picture in my head of, say, four or five couples who decide to start their own house church, and rely on themselves for teaching and understanding scripture. And maybe they don’t avail themselves of study resources, and they haven’t had any training themselves in Hebrew and Greek, or any knowledge of how the scriptures came to us, or why God gave the Israelites certain instructions at certain points in their history. How easy would it be for them to have or form incorrect understandings of scripture and of God, or to only focus on the parts of the Bible that fit their ideas of who God is and ignore the parts they didn’t like as much, or…do you see where I’m going? Again, this isn’t unique to the small-church model — it’s obviously a danger even in a larger church to have leadership that is poor or worse (as proven by your most recent post). And it’s perfectly possible to have regular folks who are good teachers or at least group facilitators, who make sure that research gets done and teaching is from reputable sources, etc. And maybe my concern is addressed in some way by the approach in the book you mentioned, since I obviously haven’t read it. But that’s the main concern that occurs to me, that any given small group might not necessarily have any solid grounding or accountability.
Really, I like the combination approaches I’ve seen, where a larger church functions as a large body for group teaching and worship but has a strong emphasis on smaller groups meeting in homes for the fellowship and personal ministry that’s needed. When larger needs arise in the small group, the leaders/facilitators then have a line back up to leaders at the church level who can bring more resources to bear as needed.
Okay, enough jabber. Just my thoughts off the top of my head…
Comment by joel — March 7, 2008 #
Phew! I can breath again.
Yeah, I see what you mean, and a lot of those same thoughts have gone through my head also. Some of the things I’ve read talk about the need for networking for accountability and encouragement and also for training, and assistance. Like a lot of house churches belonging to the same network, similar to traditional churches belonging to the same ‘denomination’ or whatever you want to call it. I can see where this model could work best if there were a lot of house churches linked together and could pool resources, or perhaps even where there was a larger church offering to help with that.
I think anytime you have a church that is independent and/or isolated, there is danger. But that opinion comes from my personal experiences. I love the way that Larry in his book talks about the need for all the church models, and that God can use each one.
I do like the idea that every person can step out and try to be what they feel they are called to do… if that makes sense. But I absolutely see your point about trained/learned leaders. Kind of a catch 22.
My personal preference for a church to attend is the combination churches where the small groups are emphasized and important within the church, and there is still a Sunday service, and like you said there are resources available as well. But hey, that’s just me.
Thanks!!!
Comment by Heidi — March 7, 2008 #
Ok, I’ve had time to think about it, and I’ve decided that it is worth the risk. I’m talking about training and releasing people for ministry in the house church type of setting.. Discipling and letting go.
I think what we were discussing would be correct (fear of untrained leaders) if starting a house church was a random decision, an independent spirit, or because of an isolationist attitute…or especially if it was out of a desire to not be accountable to anyone… but at least in the information I’ve been reading on spiritual parenting, there is a real emphasis on training and then releasing… and then networking and staying accountable. If there were accountability and connection, I think it would be a very good thing.
On the other hand, your argument becomes even more valid if there is isolation or independence. However, even if these 4 couples go ahead and start their church, and perhaps they are the first in their community to do so, it could possibly become a network of very healthy small churches. Everything starts somewhere I guess.
In many of the churches I’ve been a part of there is no release. The average person is not released into any sort of ministry because only the Bible school or seminary graduates are qualified to do any of the ministry work. That is more difficult for me to swallow as a parishoner than the idea that someone might make honest mistakes while doing.
How wonderful if we had spiritual mothers and fathers that would mentor us, and then allow us to fly.
So, in a perfect world, with the safeguards of network and oversight, this would be a wonderful model. But even with the risks of allowing people to stretch their wings, I think it is still a very interesting way to do church, and a way that every person has the potential of becoming a minister.
Just my 2 cents worth of thoughts for today…
Comment by Heidi — March 8, 2008 #
Yes, true accountability is key if you are in a church of 5 or 5,000. Leaders need to be accountable, trained, ministered to, and in fellowship with other leaders outside their “congregation” as well as those in the group.
Joel makes some good points and the ministries like soup kitchens and missions organizations are essential and efficient. In these cases the economies of scale are directing a lot of resources at a focused point. Unfortunately often it gets switched around and the economies of scale are using a few resources, mainly people, to attempt to minister to a large congregation. This can leave a lot of people not quite knowing what to do with themselves.
As for making mistakes, it is certainly going to happen, but as Heidi says, I think it is worth the risk. Hey, it has been happening since the earliest days of the Church. Otherwise the epistles would all have gone something like:
To the churches at Ephesus, Corinth, Galatia, etc.
Keep up the good work.
Blessings,
Paul
We should do everything we can to prevent the messes, but we need to be willing to clean them up when it happens, because the only way to keep them from happening is to quit doing anything or to only let a few people do anything.
When we moved from a large program based church into a cell based church that had a heart for multiplication I kinda wondered what the point was. The Lord brought back to my memory a high-school geometry lesson (ya ok, I’m a geek) about surface area. If you have a block of wood say 1 foot by 1 foot by 1 fot, the surface area is 6 square feet. If you cut the block in half the surface area is 8 square feet. Cut those two again the other way and you have 4 blocks and the surface area is now 10 square feet. (anybody still awake?) The surface area is the part of the material you can see. The part that faces out. The more faces you get out there is more of Jesus that is exposed to the world.
Just 2 more cents
Great discussion!
Comment by Steve Wilson — March 9, 2008 #
[...] known as Church of the Nations. He also was a speaker on the video I posted on this blog about “Simple Church” or, house church, and we didn’t even realize that until [...]
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[...] it here. He is a person who believes in Simple Church (aka, house church) and is interviewed on a short video clip I had here awhile ago. He was really an amazing speaker, and I would love the chance to hear him [...]
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