Monday, August 08, 2011

A novel approach on starting house churches

Felicity Dale had an interesting post on ways to start a house church/simple church fellowship. Here are some of her ideas:

We have started several simple/organic churches over the years. Here are some of the things Tony and I have done:
  • We pulled together a group of not-yet-believing businessmen to study business principles using the Bible as our textbook. They all found the Lord--a church was born.
  • We started a kid's Bible club--on a Sunday morning so that we reached the kids from non-Christian families because the Christian families were in church. When some of the kids found the Lord, some of their parents asked to join in too.
  • I started a couple of churches in retirement centers. (I didn't use the word "church" when approaching the management). Fairly soon, they were led by the residents.
  • We have started several churches with our kids and their non-Christian friends.
  • A new-Ager was led to the Lord by a friend who asked us to follow up with her. She pulled a group of her friends together and they too became believers. Right from the start it was led by the new believer (who we mentored).
  • We followed Luke 10 principles to start a church in the low-income housing projects.
  • We have started church at work.
What do you notice it that list that is different from traditional church plants?

As she pointed out, most of them involve starting a new church with unbelievers rather than luring existing believers away from their current church.

What do you think of that? I like it, making disciples doesn't mean shifting current believers around, it means seeing new belivers come to Christ and become disciples. I do wonder if it makes sense to have a core of committed, more mature Christians who act as the catalyst. Other than that I am curious to hear your thoughts. This is something I have been noodling over for some time now.

2 comments:

Swanny said...

One thing I always struggled with is the term "church planting".

To me the church just IS. How can you plants something that already exists.

I have always felt if we try to plant something we are going to make it what we want and not what God has already created.

I am confused, so i am sure this post is confusing too.

Swanny

Arthur Sido said...

Swanny

I dont like the term either. We make disciples and the church forms. Most church planting seems more interested in making a particular kind of disciple (Baptist, Presbyerterian, Reformed, etc.) than just making disciples and "being the church" together.