The Cage Stage: Not just for Calvinists Anymore!

There is a well known phenomenon that occurs when a generic evangelical discovers Reformed Theology/Calvinism. It even has a name: the cage stage. I will turn to R.C. Sproul, Jr. to explain in more detail. From the article Cage-Stage Calvinism: What Is It and What Causes It? :

“Cage-stage” describes an all too common phenomenon wherein a believer comes to embrace the doctrines of grace, and for a time becomes an obnoxious lout in defending the doctrines to all comers, whether they are interested or not. It suggests that such a newbie should spend some time in a cage until they calm down. If you are a Calvinist, you likely have been through this stage. If you are not, you surely have encountered those who were infected.

Yep. I remember that stage. Like Sproul, Jr. says, what causes it is a lack of belief in Calvinism. Read the whole article if you are interested.

I can go back to my earlier posts when I was even less wise than I am now, which is hard to believe, and a newer Christian and you can see the cage stage pretty dramatically on display. I even used to spend a lot of time arguing with other Calvinists about what constituted legitimate Calvinism!  Get a couple of younger Christians who hold to the Five Points and they will find something to argue about. As I grew older, I grew (mostly) out of that stage. That doesn't mean I hold less firmly to the five points or Reformed theology proper, if anything I hold to it even more firmly. It just means that I don't wander the back alleys of the internet looking for a fight. Again, as stated above, the cage stage is not a flaw in Calvinism, just a somewhat understandable overreaction when someone is introduced to an alternative to the easy-believisim, semi-Pelagian hokum that passes for theology in most of evangelicalism.

As I travel this life I have noticed that while the cage-stage Calvinist is still a thing, although the fervor seems to have cooled a bit as I have mentioned previously, it is not unique to Calvinism. While most people who embrace Calvinism sincerely find the tenets in Scripture, it also seems to attract people who are exceptionally bookish and prone to arguing over minutiae. I have also noticed a disturbing trend in my own past writing and in the writing of a lot of others who are part of the "house church" or "organic church" or "simple church" movement. Perhaps being in a sub-movement in and of itself is a problem but there are a lot of advocates for a simpler, participatory church that are fixated on that over anything else. Again my past writing demonstrates some of this and a lot of people out there still do. That doesn't mean that striving for a simpler, more participatory model of ecclesiology is wrong, no more so than being a Calvinist is. It does mean that while this group is full of lots of great people that I call friends, it is also home to some serious egos, a disturbing amount of bad theology and some flat out false teachers who seem to get a pass on damnable heresy because they say the right things about ecclesiology.

I guess my point here is that it might be a good idea for more mature and wiser heads to help talk down some newly awakened folks who feel betrayed by the institutional system (probably with cause). Perhaps a little time in the cage to work out what this all means and ask some critical questions like "What do I do if I can't find exactly what I am looking for?" and "What are the boundaries of acceptable theology?". Like newly minted Calvinists, new house church types need some time for reflection before canonizing the works of Frank Viola and singing the praises of other house church advocates, many of whom are involved in a disturbing number of ego and power driven squabbles. Take what you have learned brothers and sisters and let it percolate for a while before you decide to conquer the world under the banner of 1 Corinthians 14:26 and assume everyone you meet is dying to hear why the way they do church is wrong.

A Great Idea In Theory But No So Easy In Practice.

Eric Carpenter raises an issue that a lot of people who are yearning for a simpler, more faithful expression of the church have encountered, namely that it is a lot easier to theorize about "simple church" than it is to practice it. He writes in his recent post,  Where Are All the Simple Church Folks?...

Where are all the simple church people? I know they are out there;many are seeking fellowship with other believers. And yet, they are difficult to find. 

More and more Christians are done with the institutional model of church. I'm one of those Dones. If you are reading this blog, chances are fairly good that you are a Done, too (or are at least considering it). For your sake I hope you have close fellowship with other believers because it can be very difficult to find. If the institution does one thing well, it's that it makes it obvious both when and where meetings are taking place.

I know precisely what Eric is saying. There are lots of people who read the New Testament, specifically what it says about the church, and compare it to the traditional church setting and see a huge disconnect. The insatiable appetite for money, the focus on self-preservation, the anonymity it provides (and encourages), the professionalization of elders, the muting and neutering of the "laity", the need in general for the term "laity" in the first place, the jealous guarding of the pulpit and the pulpit in general, the reliance on monologue sermons. On and on. Yet for many of us the sort of fellowship is hard to find or nigh impossible. In conversation here and elsewhere I have heard from a lot of people all over the country that want something simpler but they can't find it or start it. There are lots of great simple fellowships around and if you live near one it is great. If you don't, it can be awfully hard to interest others in a start-up.

I agree that part of it has to do with the overwhelming dominance of the institutional model. It is all a lot of people know and if the truth be known it is all they want. I used to work with a guy, a pretty smart and decent guy, who attended a very large church. I asked him once if it bothered him that he was essentially anonymous and nobody knew if he was there on a given Sunday or not and his response boiled down to this: he liked it that way. He liked to show up, get his church fix and then go about his business. A lot of people are just like that. The other issue, and one that is more troubling to me, is that the simple church/house church crowd is home to some pretty sketchy people. Not like shoplifting sketchy but dangerous teaching sketchy, even at (or especially at) the most visible and prominent level.

As I have written before, the longer I spend seeking out the house church ideal, the more concerned I have become with the entire movement. Like many "movements", the house church movement is full of wonderful Christians. It also has attracted a lot of people who have egos and agendas that put megachurch pastors to shame. Of even greater concern, many of them are pushing heterodox and dangerous doctrines. The only house church type group we found in driving distance was mostly led by women who seemed to see the gathering as a way to highlight themselves along with lots of squirrely "visions" and "revelations" that were never challenged from Scripture. If I have to choose between a particular format of a church and sound teaching, I will choose sound teaching 100% of the time. Better a rigid Reformed institutional church with paid clergy than a simple church that teaches error. If I am honest, it seems like the simple church ideal attracts a lot of great and sincere people but it also attracts a lot of perpetually aggrieved people with a chip on their shoulder, kind of like how the Reformed ideal seems to attract people who like to feel superior and live to argue with other people.

Like others I find myself having to choose between fellowship in what is most certainly somewhere along the spectrum of a less than Biblical manner or having little to no regular fellowship at all. I know others struggle with this. It is easy to be bitter and blame the "sheep" who trudge off to work all week to make money so they can trudge off to church on Sunday and give part of their earnings to ensure they can do it again next week. It is also true that a lack of meaningful fellowship is a slow poison to the Christians soul. No one who is a serious teacher among simple folks types advocates for a solitary existence for the Christian individual or family, although that accusation is often made. I worry that a lot of us are, to paraphrase the old aphorism, making the perfect the enemy of the good. On  the other hand I never would suggest that the church should just shrug our collectives shoulders and soldier on in the status quo. All of our traditions need constant refinement and reflection against the mirror of Scripture. So I don't know what this all means. For a variety of health related issues I am not in a place to start a fellowship. I also am seeing pretty clearly the damage that a lack of fellowship is having on my family and especially to my own spiritual health. We periodically attend a super-conservative Mennonite fellowship and while they do a lot of things I question, they also know us and love us and welcome us, albeit in a somewhat limited way.

So that is a lot of words to basically say I am stumped and not a little worn out.

(***addendum: Eric posted a follow-up piece you should also read: Wandering in Church Wasteland)

What is the essence of Anabaptism?

I continue to read a lot of early to mid-20th century books written by Anabaptists (well Mennonites mostly as the Hutterites, Amish, Old German Baptist Brethren, etc. didn't write many books). What constantly sticks out to me is how very different historic Anabaptism is from the later 20th century to contemporary period Neo-Anabaptism. That is not in and of itself a bad thing, just puzzling because it seems to me that a lot (not all, so please save your angry retorts) of what calls itself Anabaptism today is completely unmoored from the historic reality of the people who stood for the truth and suffered for it. For example, one author who would be (in my mind) associated with the contemporary Neo-Anabaptist movement is Stuart Murray, author of the book The Naked Anabaptist ( see my review here). He wrote:

In many nations, then, not only in Britain and Ireland, there are growing numbers of 'neo-Anabaptists' and 'hyphenated Anabaptists'. Neo-Anabaptists identify with the Anabaptist tradition and are happy to be known as Anabaptists, but have no historic or cultural links with any Anabaptist-related denomination. Hyphenated Anabaptists find inspiration and resources in the Anabaptist tradition, but do not identify themselves as Anabaptists. They might be Baptist-Anabaptists, Methodist-Anabaptists, Anglican-Anabaptists, Pentecostal-Anabaptists or various other combinations.

In short, a lot of the "Neo-Anabaptists" and "Hyphenated-Anabaptists" use the word Anabaptist but don't mean Anabaptist as it is historically understood and don't really care what the historic Anabaptists thought, taught or practiced.

What seems to be the essence of Neo-Anabaptism is a combination of social justice and modern militant pacifism with a sizable dose of rejection of tradition. This combination has led to some pretty squirrelly positions and an embrace of a lot of heterodox teaching and teachers. It is a pretty big tent, a tent big enough for just about anything except conservative doctrine and practice. My point here is not to simply rail against the errors of a lot of Neo-Anabaptism, well-intentioned though they may be. Rather I am interested in, to use corporate speak for a moment, level-setting. Anabaptism is a deeply historical movement with roots that run quite deep and are simultaneously sad and glorious. Anabaptism, at least the name, is experiencing a sort of renaissance but I am afraid a lot of people don't even get what it was and continues to be all about.

So what is the essence of Anabaptism if not social justice and pacifism? It is the issue of baptism, right? That is where the name comes from and what caused the friction with the Reformers and Catholics alike.

Not really. I ran across this quote in a book I am reading, The Recovery of the Anabaptist Vision, in a chapter titled Anabaptism and the Reformation by Frtiz Blanke (p.60), emphasis mine:

They wanted a church free from the guardianship of the state, accepting such members as joined out of an uncoerced decision. They sought a free church in the double sense: a congregation free from the state and based upon voluntary membership. This was the first goal of Anabaptism. Their real interest was not in baptism, but in the church. They sought a fellowship of those who by God's grace had come to faith, who desired earnestly to be Christians and to testify to the Gospel in word and work. The baptism of believers was simply the most striking external manifestation of this new kind of church.

The basic essential of Anabaptism is therefore not "social justice" or pacifism,, nor is it the issue of believers baptism (or as I like to call it "baptism") . The essence of Anabaptism is the church, not an institutionalized version but the church as a fellowship of disciples. This basic fact must be viewed in light of the contrast to the state churches of Catholicism and Protestantism alike. The break between the Anabaptists and the Protestants did not really happen over baptism, baptism was the most visible manifestation of a fundamental and irreconcilable difference in the way the Anabaptists understood the church and the way that the Protestants did. Ironically there are many ways that the Protestants are closer to Rome than they are to the Anabaptists and baptism is one of them along with a coercive state church. Likewise I would argue that "infant baptism" only makes sense in the context of a state-church with a coerced membership that operates in tandem with a clerical system that makes the act of baptism and the Lord's Supper into "means of grace" to control the laity. That is a topic for another day.

That is so important to understand if we are to understand the Anabaptists. If Anabaptism means just anything you want, then it no longer means anything at all. We can get too caught up in dwelling on history, much as the Reformed tend to do with their Protestantized ancestor worship, but trying to lay claim to Anabaptism un-moored from actual Anabaptism is foolish. The very name Anabaptist, once a slur, has very specific historical meaning. Using the name today because it makes you sound all groovy and radical and hip might make for lots of blog hits but it is bordering on dishonest. If you ignore the importance of a regenerate church made of disciples in favor of emphasizing a flavor-of-the-month economic-political cause, you miss the essence of Anabaptism and in doing so neuter their historical and current (sadly diminished) witness, replacing it with yet another iteration of "progressive" mainline Protestantism. We already have too much of that going on.

To change course a bit, I see the Neo-Anabaptists a lot like the house church/simple church movement and I harbor the same concerns. I have to say that in spite of its current popularity I am very skeptical of the long term viability of the house church/simple church movement, as well as the "Neo-Anabaptists", precisely because of the tendency of the movement's leaders and by proxy their followers to reject historical orthodoxy based on its acceptance by the institutional church on the one hand and their acceptance of and even embrace of both heterodox teaching and teachers alike on the other. If you make the right statements against the institutional church you are automatically granted a certain level of credence no matter how unscriptural your doctrinal positions are. The history of religion and the witness of Scripture tell us that this is not a recipe for faithfulness.

If you are interested in the Anabaptists, stay away from most contemporary Neo-Anabaptist writers, at least initially. Read the early Anabaptists, read the mid-20th century Anabaptists, study the church and the contrast between a church of disciples and a religious group made of up people who share a zip code. You will find that  things like non-resistance (very different from contemporary militant and political pacifism) and caring for the poor (also very different from "social justice") flow naturally from the church explained in the Bible and manifested however imperfectly the Anabaptists. Get the order reversed and you get a moralistic social club where hipsters and political liberals remake the church to fit their political agenda. There are some good and profitable thinkers who fall under the umbrella of Neo-Anabaptism but there are also on the fringes (and moving closer to center every day) some out and out heretics, wolves and false teachers. Establish a baseline first, a firm foundation in the historical Anabaptism and you will be far more prepared to distinguish between wannabee Anabaptists who subvert the movement for their own purposes and profitable teachers who apply Anabaptist teachings to a contemporary setting. 

A Taste Of Simple Church: Unity Within Diversity

Here is a little taste of what can be found in Simple Church: Unity Within Diversity, taken from my chapter on A Church That Is Composed of Peacemakers:

What exactly does it mean to be a “peacemaker”? The Scriptures,

taken as a unified whole, give us a far more comprehensive

vision of peacemaking that goes beyond “Don’t shoot

people or beat them up.” The vision for the Church as a

community of peacemakers is nothing less than a living out

of the Gospel: loving our enemies; service as the highest calling;

humility, love, and self-denial as the most precious attributes;

counting others as more important than ourselves.

All of these notions run completely counter to our prevailing

culture. More often than not the Church reflects the “me first”

attitude of the culture rather than the “enemy love” attitude of

Christ. Setting aside our own safety, preferences, and wants

in favor of others is an otherworldly manifestation of the as

yet to be culminated rebirth of all things under the direct eternal

reign of Christ. Something so supernatural can only result 

from the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit.

Pretty good stuff right? Maybe not but I kinda liked it. The book is chock full of excellent writing and you ought to check it out whether you are into "simple church" or not because it really gets at some of the most fundamental questions of what it means to be the church and how we live as the church. Buy your copy at Amazon!

Book Review: Simple Church: Unity Within Diversity

I have posted a few times about a writing project I have been involved in and I am excited to say that Simple Church: Unity Within Diversity releases tomorrow! It was a project a long time in the making and unlike other books from the simple/house/organic church system, Simple Church: Unity Within Diversity is intentionally focused on what we are for rather than what we are against, where and how we find agreement on critical principles of the church.

I can say I agree in principle with almost everything written and in practice with most. Certainly there are places I disagree, some pretty strenuously, but even though there are some portions that I found disagreement that is sort of the point of this book. We don't all agree on everything but on many issues, some of the most critical, we do agree and seek unity in spite of those other differences. The church as it exists right now suffers from an overabundance of homogeneity. The Reformed huddle together with the Reformed, the Pentecostals with other Pentecostals, the Lutherans with one another, etc. We tend to lump actual Christians we disagree with in almost the same category as people who don't believe at all and at the same time lurk around in echo chambers where we all talk about how much we agree about the things we agree on. Theological in-breeding is unhealthy and dangerous. It is good and healthy to examine what others think and to reexamine our positions. While I didn't find much that really caused me to question any positions I hold, it was still a profitable exercise to read and hear from others.

An honest and open discussion of the church is long overdue but too often these conversations devolve into accusations over disagreement. It is my hope that this book and other conversations like it serve as a baseline for substantive discussion. As we exit, and not a moment too soon, the era of Western Christendom, we find ourselves desperately in need of a new way to talk about the church, a way beyond more of the same and into the simple expression of community we see in the New Testament. I encourage you to give Simple Church: Unity Within Diversity a read and even if you don't agree with everything (or perhaps especially if you don't!), add your voice to the conversation.

You can also order Simple Church: Unity Within Diversity directly from the publisher, Redeeming Press!

Simple Church: Unity Within Diversity Now Available For Pre-Order!

As I have mentioned a time or two, I am one of 24 collaborators on a new book titled Simple Church: Unity Within Diversity. The author list is pretty diverse and a good representation of the spectrum to be found in the simple church movement. It is not a monolithic movement by any measure! I found out today that the book is now available via Amazon for pre-order and will be released in early December, plenty of time to get this book wrapped and under the tree for Christmas. I think it will be worthwhile to check this book out and get a good perspective on how focusing on what unifies us is better than focusing on what divides us!

Multiplying Instead Of Poaching

As my wife and I have been working through questions about the church, it has been painfully obvious for some time that the traditional church is not where we want to be. It isn’t like we haven’t tried but again and again we run into barriers. You can’t teach if you aren’t a “member”. You can’t join in our ritualized Lord’s Supper if you aren’t a “member”. You don’t hold to all of the same set of secondary doctrines that we do so you and you are new so you end up feeling like an outsider for years. So starting up a house church seems like the obvious step for us. We believe in the basic tenets of simplicity, community and fellowship, participatory gatherings, etc. To date we still haven't because it just seems overwhelming and we aren't sure where to start. I was encouraged by something I read this morning that touches on that very topic.

Felicity Dale is a pretty well known name among the simple church crowd so as you might expect she gets a lot of questions from people looking for house churches because they can't find what they are looking for. In a guest post at Alan’s blog today she writes about her response to these questions and it might not be what you think. Here is a taste of her typical response:

“There are various tools that might help you discover a simple/organic church in your area, (I usually point them to the “find a church” feature on www.house2house.com) but I’d like you to pray about a different approach. You’ve been a believer for a number of years. Why don’t you start something? Work with those who don’t yet know the Lord or the unchurched—it’s much easier. We’d love to help you.”

That sounds great but it is kind of scary. It is so much easier, at least in theory, to just form a simple/house/organic church from existing Christians, refugees from traditional churches. I believe this is due to our understanding of “church planting” being derived from traditional church planting methods which seem to mostly involved finding a likely spot, setting up shop and then filling your pews with Christians from other local churches. I don’t think that church planting should operate in this way. We should be planting new gatherings because of growth, not because of disgruntlement and dissatisfaction. I have seen more than once what happens when a church is formed by those who are primarily driven by dissatisfaction and it isn't what I am looking for.

On the other hand, the church needs each other to encourage and edify one another and to occasionally exhort or even rebuke each other. I think there are potential problems with being all disciple making without being built up at the same time. I certainly need to mature, a lot, in my walk and my witness but I can’t just hide behind that forever. So I know we as a couple and a family need the support of other mature believers as well as to reach the unchurched and the lost so some combination of the two is probably the right balance.

We certainly have plenty of people around us that either don’t know the Lord or are generally unchurched. My wife has had the opportunity to witness to a couple of Amish women, one from a family that sounds like they are definitely having some real issues with their religious upbringing with the Ordnung that they are required to follow. There are quite a few former Amish in our area who have come to Christ but they are also viewed with suspicion by current Amish in the same way that former mormons are shunned and avoided by current mormons, so I think we have an opportunity to effectively witness to them in ways that fomer Amish don't. It is an exciting mission field!

So we still muddle along in our walk with Christ among His people. I like what Felicity has to say in her guest post. My friend Kevin who lives in the area does the same thing in making disciples and planting house churches from the new believers. We certainly as a family need the support of other Christians but we also need to get out from the church culture, no matter what style, to be more active in making disciples. Multiplying is quite different from shuffling the same Christians around and that is where our efforts need to be. It is times like this that I am glad that God is sovereign over everything, including and especially the salvation of lost sinners and the sanctification of mediocre Christians like me!

The Name Game

Felicity Dale has a series of posts up looking at some terms used synonymously to describe a similar thing: organic/simple/house church. I confess I often use them interchangeably as well. Felicity looks at all three in order:

What’s in a name? House church

What’s in a name? Simple church

What’s in a name? Different uses of the term, “organic”

I appreciate that Felicity is not as fond of the name "house church". As she writes:

Of the three interchangeable words used to describe churches–house, simple and organic, for various reasons, house church is the one I like least. Here’s why. Firstly it implies that these groups only meet in houses whereas they can meet anywhere–restaurants, parking lots, college dorms–anywhere life happens. The second reason is that  for historical reasons, people associate the term “house church” with an insular,  inward looking group of people,, reacting against the establishment, and convinced that house church is the only Scriptural way to meet.

That is quite right. While we plan to meet on our property, we are not going to meet in our house but our meeting can still be simple and organic. What is important is what happens and how the gathering occurs more than the specific location. Certainly location matters. Traditional church architecture is designed, and succeeds, in creating passivity by means of pews lined up facing a pulpit. Really though organic, family meetings of the church can happen anywhere. Check out all three of her posts, they are worth the read!

I think it is time

We have been resistant to going fully into the organic/simple/house church thing. I have been very leery of leaping into something out of concern that I am doing so out of pride. My preference has been to try to work from within existing groups that are more open to asking the hard questions and changing where necessary. That is has unfortunately proven futile again and again, leading to frustration and often contention that is not healthy for anyone. Most local churches, like any entrenched organization, are very change averse and religious traditions have an even deeper hold on people than other groups. After our most recent experience, a pretty bitter disappointment although not a surprising turn of events at all, we find ourselves ready to take the plunge.

If you read here at all you will know that my study of Scripture has clearly left me desiring something very different from what our religious culture has to offer. All of the different denominations and movements offer slightly different versions of the same basic thing. We have tried a number of iterations of more traditional churches but none have really captured the spirit of what we see in the New Testament and further none have really seemed interested in going down that path. In every group we have tried there are barriers, places they would not go, traditions they would not challenge, entrenched interests that would not budge. This far and no farther seems to be the motto.

You might be reading this and thinking that I am just a perpetually discontent person who needs to quit searching and just settle. Actually as I type this I sort of feel the same! Perhaps this is just a personality flaw on my part. Regardless I feel like this is where we have been heading for a long time.

What are we going to do on Sundays? I am not sure. I don’t really have an order of service and that is kind of the point! I would expect that sharing a meal and breaking bread would be the centerpiece of the gathering. Maybe a study and discussion of the church from the New Testament to draw together the pieces. I suppose some singing and definitely prayer. Really wherever God leads. That sounds scary. What happens if no one has anything to say? That might happen but that is also OK. We have this almost pathological need to fill silence with something no matter what that filler is. It seems to me that sometimes silence is OK, the whole be still and know that I am God kind of silence. I wouldn’t even have a problem if the church gathered and nothing super religious went on, just spending time talking and praying together would be fine as long as the end result is that Christians are encouraged, loved, edified and equipped for the work of ministry.

Practically speaking, we have a number of outbuildings on our property including a pretty nice workshop that I think will be perfect for a gathering of the church. It is a decent size with a heater when it gets colder and good lighting. I can easily see 6-7 families able to gather together without much trouble. If God blesses this work and it grows past that, we simply will have meetings in two locations instead of one. I never intend for this to be “The Arthur Show” or for us to meet in the same place or the same way every single Sunday (or even for certain on Sunday at all!)

I really believe that there is a desperate need in our area for a simple church gathering that permits people the room to mature in Christ and that still maintains good relationships and cooperation with other more traditional groups. Our area has a lot of people that are very gun shy about organized religion having come out of the Amish or other heavily authoritarian religious groups, fundamentalist or legalistic or “conservative” backgrounds. We need a gathering where people from different backgrounds can come together without preconceived barriers and grow together in Christ. We have made a lot of contacts with other local churches and feel quite comfortable in reaching out to them as needed. I am not sure how receptive they will be but that really isn’t up to me.

In the final analysis, the main reason for making this move is that I just don’t see an alternative. I don’t believe I can be a part of perpetuating a system that I think is unbiblical and harmful to the Kingdom mandate but I also don’t believe God is calling us to be a force for division and conflict. Our best option in my estimation is to seek to work with other Christians from more traditional contexts in the work of evangelism and mercy ministries here locally wherever and whenever we can while gathering in a simpler context. I have no idea what this is going to look like. We might be sitting around in a couple of weeks by ourselves.

House church simple church northeast Indiana fort wayne Hicksville Ohio Harlan Indiana spencerville st. joe butler auburn Indiana organic church participatory meeting woodburn home church

Not A Monolithic Movement

Like almost anywhere else in the church, the house/simple/organic church is not a monolithic movement although it is sometimes stereotyped that way. There are Arminians and Calvinists, home schoolers and public schoolers, complementarians and egalitarians.

For example, Frank Viola posted today on the topic of women in ministry, Rethinking Women in Ministry. Ironically it seems he views "ministry" in the same way that the traditional church does, namely as the person "leading" from "up front". His essay is being widely read and cited today. I found it pretty lacking in persuasion if not in volume but then again I already have a pretty firm position on this issue. While Frank's position is the majority report among simple/house church types (notably also Jon Zens, another prominent leader in the house church setting that holds to egalitarianism), it is by no means the only view.

A Facebook friend, who seemingly disagrees with me and agrees in part with Frank, sent me a great link to something written by Steve Atkerson writing for the New Testament Reformation Fellowship, has a very different and far more traditional understanding of gender relations and functions in the church. His essays, Correctly Interpreting 1 Corinthians 14:33b-35 (Part 1) and (Part 2) come to a very different conclusion than Viola. No surprise I find Steve's essay far more compelling and a lot better interaction with the text rather than appealing to external sources to override the text in favor of a culturally palatable interpretation. I especially appreciate that Steve makes the obvious point, one that is missed by many who quote 1 Cor 11: 2-16 as a defense of women teaching/speaking in the gathered church, namely that those passages in no way refer specifically or even infer that they are directed at church gatherings.

Anyway, these are great essays on both sides and they demonstrate that far from being a simplistic, lowest common denominator movement, many proponents and practitioners are in fact serious Biblical exegetes who take the Word of God and its study quite seriously. If you have a fair amount of time, give both of them a read and let me know what you think!

Throwing out the theological baby with the institutional bathwater

I was reminded this morning of a post I wrote back in December of 2008, one of the earliest posts about my concerns with and journey out of the institutional church. It was my way of trying to tie together some of the swirling thoughts that I was trying to reconcile in my head. One thing that I wrote in this post 3 1/2 years ago struck me this morning. Here it is:

I am trying to be cautious so that in my looking askance at the institutional church I don’t fall into the trap of throwing the theological baby out with the institutional bathwater.

That is still a concern for me, perhaps more now than back then. In so many places people tend to swing between the extremes. In abandoning, and rightly so, the institutional church some seem to at the same time chuck anything that the institutional church has ever believed. Just because the Reformers failed to reform the church doesn't mean we should ignore what they recovered regarding the Gospel. I see this tendency to chuck everything in a bunch of places but especially in places like gender roles, boundaries on human sexuality and the exclusivity of Christ. A serious study of the Scriptures will lead to a very different understanding of the church but that same study should lead to a deeper grasp of the Gospel. We just need to be consistent. You can't take Paul at his word in 1 Corinthians 14:26 and insist (correctly) on a participatory gathering but try to ignore or explain away what he said a few verses later in 1 Cor 14: 33-35. The same Jesus who cared for the poor and healed the sick was also preoccupied with the Kingdom of God and unequivocal in needing to be born again.

Below is the entire post, So where is this all going? It is interesting that I am still asking some of the same questions years later, indicating that finding all the answers has been harder than I thought it would be.

------

So where is this all going?



Should I stay or should I go now?
Should I stay or should I go now?
If I go there will be trouble
An' if I stay it will be double
So come on and let me know...

Should I Stay or Should I Go? - The Clash

What is up with the meandering, sometimes smarmy, sometimes angry, sometimes resigned ramblings of late on this here blog?

Weary but wary

Fortunately my wife and my children are very flexible and adaptable, so they are being pretty understanding through all of this. I have grown increasingly weary of the institutional church, but remain somewhat wary of the house church. I need to think , study and especially pray my way through a lot of this stuff that is rattling around.

Institutional versus house?
If we recognize that the institutional church as it exists and has existed for hundreds of years and all of American history is not a Biblical model but instead is a cultural model does that mean we must reject it in total? Burn the whole thing to the ground?

I have concerns about the all or nothing model. It can sometimes seem that there are two factions that have drawn lines, planted flags and declared victory. “The house church people are heretic and have abandoned the historical fellowship of the saints, rejected the authority structure of the New Testament church and the proper ecclesiastical structure”. Or “The steeple house people are clinging to a cultural Christianity. It is in the house church that true Biblical worship and gathering of the saints is found, not in programmatic institutional Churchianity”. Both of these extremes seem a bit off. Not that one or the other is not the proper mode of worship. One has the benefit of the Biblical example of house worship. One has the full weight of centuries of church traditions.

Is a hybrid possible? A small church that meets on Sunday for worship, teaching, preaching led by the men of the church? Frequent and meaningful fellowship in the homes of believers or other communal activities?

Ecclesiology versus soteriology?

I am trying to be cautious so that in my looking askance at the institutional church I don’t fall into the trap of throwing the theological baby out with the institutional bathwater. I am and pretty much always have been a “T”ruth kind of guy. Properly gathering together is important, proper worship is important but it should not be at odds with the great theological truths of the Bible.

Can you be Reformed in soteriology and yet question the validity of the institutional church? Many would say no. For many in the Reformed camp, the visible church IS the church and the legitimate church cannot be found outside of the visible church. That is where the Word is rightly preached and the ordinances are rightly administered.Reformed theology is inextricably linked to classic Reformed ecclesiology. But it doesn’t seem to me that there is a contradiction between a high view of the sovereignty of God, especially in salvation or holding to the Five Solas and yet questioning the validity of the institutional church. While some, perhaps many, have strayed that way, it is not an inevitability.

Part two of a different look at house churches

I linked to a blog post yesterday looking at house churches from the perspective of a missionary to Peru (see here for original post). Today Steve Bremner gives his observations of the 5 Things The House Church Movement is Getting Wrong (in his opinion). I have to concur with a lot of his observations although it has also been my experience that many house churches are far more evangelistic and outward focused than more traditional institutional churches. His fifth, and longest point, was the one that resonated with me. Steve is concerned that many house church advocates exhibit a certain amount of arrogance, an attitude that we have it all figured out unlike the ignorant/deceived/evil institutional church types. I slip into this mindset a lot and in some ways it reminds me of the culture that surrounds Reformed theology, a culture that is often far too condescending and ugly that contributes to a divisiveness in the church on both sides of the debate.

While I don't agree with some of what Steve wrote, I do recognize the inherent dangers of becoming too focused on "the movement" and not enough on the mission of the church. A "house church" that is insular and focused on meeting "the right way" but not going out to reach the lost is no more Biblical of a gathering than an institutional church just because they meet in a house instead of a "church". There is a fine line between being a prophetic voice asking hard questions and even using hyperbole to stir people up and challenge traditions versus just being a jerk who is always pointing out what the institutional church is doing wrong.

However I do firmly believe that the way we meet matters. That is why I write about it so often and clearly I think that the traditional way of "doing church" has serious, dangerous and debilitating flaws that generally hamper rather than enhance the purpose and mission of the church. There are undeniable advantages, all else being equal, to meeting in a smaller, more intimate setting. The same with having a meeting where those who feel led are able and encouraged to share and edify the group within the guidelines of Scripture. Meeting in homes or inexpensive rented space or even older, "paid for" buildings with volunteer leadership frees money up to meet the needs of the poor and support those on mission. How we meet matters but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be constantly on guard to make sure we don't get so caught up in the "how" that we forget the "why".

Repost: Gospel Grocery Stores

I put this up last year and I think it helps to get at the way different "forms" of church function in either helping or hindering the intent of the church gathering....
------

An interesting story recounted in Total Church:

The Bible calls the church a family. It describes the church as a community that shares together. The church is a body whose members perfectly fit together. We belong to one another. Our friend's church was neither a family or a community. It had no vision for involvement in its immediate community. The truth is, it was not really a church according to any New Testament definition. It was a preaching center. You drove to their large parking garage for your weekly dose of religion just as you traveled to the out-of-town supermarket for your weekly groceries.

(Total Church, pg. 194)

That definition describes an awful lot of churches, big and small. We have had a similar experience in a large Baptist church in northern Kentucky. We sat in the same place every week, down to sitting in the same pew, and we sort of recognized the people around us. The people on the other side of the "sanctuary"? Not a clue. They were anonymous people in their Sunday best. We kind of knew the people in our segmented (younger married adults w/ kids) Sunday school class but virtually everybody else was just an anonymous guy in a suit or woman in a dress we jostled with in the foyer while collecting our kids from the nursery. We went there because they had a big youth and childrens program and because the preaching was consistently decent (unlike our prior smaller church where the preaching was poor at best, the fellowship was sketchy and the only kids in the church were ours and the pastors).

Why do we go to grocery supermarkets? Why is there a new Super Wal-Mart springing up daily? Because it is easy, quick and convenient. We go to a supermarket instead of raising our own food because it costs us less, it is predictable and it takes less time. Rather than work all week to grow, harvest and prepare our own food, we go to the store and get what we need in one fell swoop. I can walk into a store right now and in half an hour get enough food, in sufficient variety, to feed my entire family of ten for a week. I don’t know the other people shopping and I don’t need to because knowing them is irrelevant to what I am there for.

The church is treated much the same. We can get all of our religion in one stop and it only costs us some time and a check in the offering plate. I can go to one of dozens of local traditional churches on Sunday morning and drop my little ones off in a nursery to have a little activity but more importantly keep them out of my hair so I can “worship”. My middle school kids have classes, my high schoolers get classes with a hip youth pastor. My wife and I can go to a prepared Sunday school class and then sit in a pew for an hour, sing a few songs, listen to a prepared talk and then head out in time to be home for lunch.

Many (most?) institutional churches are grocery stores for religion. Quick, easy, in and out and plenty of different ones to choose from. This one makes you mad? Go shop somewhere else. Your only attachment is selection, price and service or in the case of a local church music style, preacher and denomination. It makes little difference to me if I go to Wal-Mart, Meijer or Krogers for my groceries. It impacts the store but only a little. There are lots of local churches I could go to that would be the same way, ranging from hip churches with cool music to somewhat more traditional, orthodox churches. No one would notice us if we were careful (although with eight kids, when we show up at a church it is like chum in shark waters and it is hard to blend in). We could show up a few Sundays at one church and then go somewhere else for a few weeks. We could maintain a great deal of anonymity beyond a smile and handshake.

The church should be more like a community garden and less like a supermarket. That might mean we need to spend a lot of time together. We might get a bit dirty in the process and there are going to be disappointments. Things might not turn out like we hope. If you have a garden and plant tomatoes, sometimes some of the tomatoes will have bugs in them or turn brown or fall off the vine before they are ripe. Sometimes it rains too much and sometimes it rains too little. If you go to the grocery store, you can pick just the best looking tomatoes and pretty much know what you are getting. It may not taste as good as a home-grown tomato and it might have been soaked in pesticides before it was shipped from California to Michigan but it is predictable. We demand too much predictability in the church, we want to know when to show up, what to expect and in what order. Deviate from the “order of worship” in the bulletin and people will be in mass confusion. Lots of people defend the institutional church by pointing it out that it is full of imperfect people but we try to make the gathering of the church as homogenous and easy as possible.

Gardening is hard work, dirty and unpredictable but the rewards are often wonderfully and immeasurably better than “store bought” produce. The church works in much the same way. Unplanned and unscripted is scary because you don’t know what you might get but I would much rather have somebody stumble over a thought or endure periods of silence than sit through another carefully scripted service designed to deliver the maximum religion for the minimum cost. The church is not something we can cram into a couple of hours a week and the goal of church should not be to get in and get out as quickly and efficiently as possible so we can mark a check box on our religion shopping list. Sermon? Check. Singing at least three songs? Check. Shaking the preachers hand? Check. Out at noon and lunch away from the rest of the church by 12:30? Check.

The church is not a list to be completed, it is a life to be lived with one another.

Why Trumps How

Swanny has penned a very good post on how we gather and why it is less important than why we gather, (warning, some of the ways he expresses himself won't pass muster among certain people in the church but if you can't get past that to see his point, well you need to get a grip). His post, Im Not a Model… You Know What I Mean?, really hits at a weakness in many of the conversations about the church that circulate around the blogosphere among those of us who reject the institutional church as proper and normative for Christians. The assumption is often that if we reject one form of church model, the institutional model, we must therefore advocate for a different form, the house church model. Swanny says "not so fast!"

People rightly assume that I believe the institutional church system is downright destructive, causes separation among the people, promotes individualism, has a disease called “Jesus-Deficit-Disorder”, and breeds legalism. If you read my other posts among this blog, you will see where I am coming from. However, many of you I speak with or chat with online seem to assume that if I am against the institutional church model, then I must be for the “organic church model” or the “house church model” or some other “model”.

If I am honest, I need to say that when I first started down this path, I assumed that a “house church” was, if not a silver bullet, at least a step in the right direction. I am not looking for a house church model or organic church model even though I think that comparatively it is far more conducive for an environment of mutual edification. I am also not looking for a “Reformed” church even though I am largely in agreement with the tenets of Reformed theology nor am I looking for an “Anabaptist church” although I see much that I admire in the Anabaptist tradition. I am looking for God’s church, His people living in community with one another. That means that I am looking for community among God’s people where His people are in an environment of mutual edification, loving support, rebuke and discipline where needed and a sharing of lives that goes beyond Sunday meetings whatever the form. It also means that it will look different in different contexts.

You can’t force this. Having a church that meets in a home but functions like an institutional church is not going to bring us closer to community. Nor is forming “community” via cloistered communes that are largely cut off from the world we are called to be ambassadors to like the Hutterites the answer. Perhaps worst of all, if we arrogantly assume that we are smarter than those dumb sheep that go to institutional churches we are engaged in outright sinful and divisive behavior, we are actually being counter-productive. My posts often stray over that line and I am trying to avoid that.

If we are living our lives together for the right reasons, getting the “why” right, and submitting ourselves to the Scriptures even when it is uncomfortable and runs contrary to our traditions and the culture we live in, the form will naturally take care of itself. That doesn’t mean we don’t study it and discuss us and think and pray through it but we need to be sure that we have the focus on the main thing: living lives in community with other believers as a witness to the lost and edifying environment for the redeemed while we are all equipped and sent to take Jesus Christ to the world.

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.

The church puzzle

It seems sometimes that the study of the church is like a giant jigsaw puzzle. There are so many pieces, all that fit together to form a picture of the Bride of Christ. A few pieces for elders, a few for fellowship, some for community, others for prayer. You put them in place and seem to have a complete picture.

Then, once it seems like you have all of the pieces in place and have it figured out you realize that what you thought were the borders are actually places where more pieces fit in. The puzzle keeps getting bigger and more complex and the more you think you have figured out, the more you realize just how much you have left to learn.

Here is an example from my life.

I came into the church after a lifetime of atheism and five years of mormonism so my knowledge of the Bible and what it says was pretty limited. Our first experience with an evangelical church was First Baptist Church in Walton, Kentucky. I quickly embraced most aspects of Southern Baptist doctrine and polity. This is how a church should look, like a Baptist church! I had it figured out! Ta-da! Puzzle complete!

Well before long I ran into some Southern Baptist material put out by Founders Ministries. It was my first introduction to Reformed theology and while skeptical at first because it didn't match what I was hearing from the pulpit, I gradually through study began to recognize in Scripture what Reformed theology was talking about and started to embrace it, within the context of a Baptist church congregation of course. I had it figured out!

A few moves and a variety of experiences later, I was firmly entrenched in a traditional church setting with a Reformed and Baptist doctrinal stance. As I continued to study Scripture and look at books and writers outside of the Reformed camp, I started to question the traditional church model and found pretty quickly that asking those questions was not popular. What I saw each Sunday (and the fact that I looked almost exclusively at Sunday in the first place) seemed to not mesh with what Scripture says. That was pretty jarring and the more I studied, the more of what I thought I understood about the church started to unravel. I used to think that expository sermons were a crucial mark of a “real” church. As I studied Scripture, I found that there was no example of what we would call an expository sermon to be found. I used to think the local church was functionally “pastor-centric”, while Scripture is more “servant-centric”. Church in the Bible seemed to be far more than the Sunday morning meeting. As I continued to study, I started reading guys like Alan Knox and Dave Black and lights started coming on. A simple church gathering with a focus on participation and edification was the way to go. I had it figured out!

As I explored options in simpler, more participatory meetings I found more and more people who had come to similar convictions, many out of backgrounds that we awfully similar to where I was coming from. That was an enormous blessing and support to me, and reinforced what I was coming to understand. I also started looking around and realizing that there were many, many Christians who were (not in a rapture kind of way) left behind in the institutional church. These poor folks needed to be rescued from religion! I was just the guy to do it! So not only was I going to move out of the institutional church and into a simpler church gathering, I was going to lead the rest of my wayward brethren out as well! I had it figured out!

Huh. A lot of those people didn’t want to move. They liked where they were and they were still my brothers and sisters in Christ. What should we do about them? Tough luck Chuck, you can come to our proper, Biblical simple meeting if you want on Sunday morning instead of warming a pew! That doesn’t seem in keeping with the spirit of community and unity among believers and counting others as more valuable than myself. So what to do with all of my fellow believers who are not convinced by the arguments against institutionalized Christianity? Is insisting on my way or the highway (even when “my way” is actually right) better than organized religion in the Body of Christ? That is where I find myself today and it turns out, I don’t have it figured out. I am seeing my church puzzle as more complicated than I ever imagined back in the days when the “complete” puzzle was a nice Baptist church with a steeple on top and plenty of parking.

Here is the thing. That doesn’t mean that each successive new piece removed an existing piece. I don’t think we should baptize infants even though I don’t attend a Baptist church. I don’t think that the doctrines of grace are wrong just because I am not part of a confessionally reformed congregation. I don’t think the church should meet in a traditional setting because a simple/house church model is incomplete. The pieces are being added, not replaced. Now some of the pieces that represent the traditions of man turned out to not have fit after all, I had just crammed them into place and now I cheerfully feel free to pluck those out and discard them. I have also noticed others removing pieces that do fit and replacing them with ill-fitting pieces. By and large though, I am seeing the puzzle expand and as it expands it should be doing more to foster community among believers

I think I may be at a point where I am finding some additional pieces that should reconnect me to the rest of the church that I and many others have “left behind”. More about that in the next post.

Putting our greatest effort and energy in the wrong place?

In most of the church, I would daresay nearly all of the church, the Sunday morning meeting, whatever the form it takes, is the focal point. Whether it is a traditional “worship service” or an organic house church meeting or something in-between, we seem to spend a lot of time and effort on those meetings. I get that. The Sunday morning meeting is the one time when the church gets together with any sort of regularity. I wonder though if we are not missing something important by focusing so much on the “official” gathering that we miss the simple and profound fellowship found in sharing meals.

The emphasis on the Sunday morning meeting is problematic all around but especially so in the traditional evangelical gathering. We never see Jesus or the disciples in any sort of setting that looks like our traditional Sunday morning service except in the most tortured of linkage. What we do see a lot of is Jesus and His disciples in fellowship, often during a meal. Think of some of the most profound teachings of Christ and His disciples in Scripture:

The feeding of the five thousand after which Jesus declared Himself the Bread of Life

The dinner at the house of Martha where Mary wept at His feet and anointed Him with oil

Of course The Last Supper

Eating with the men on the road to Emmaus before revealing Himself

Peter eating with the Gentile Cornelius

Paul breaking bread with the church in Troas

The Wedding Feast of the Lamb

On and on...Meals specifically and hospitality/fellowship in general seem quite prominent in Scripture. There are a lot of reasons for this, many of which are explored in some detail in the book I am reading A Meal With Jesus. As I have written several times, this is one of those paradigm shifting books for me, even beyond what the author perhaps intended.

Traditional church settings might not be so bad....if....we placed less emphasis on them and a lot more on hospitality and fellowship in the church alongside Kingdom activities outside of the gathered church whatever the form. As I said, I would say that this would at potentially be true of many house church groups as well. In our zeal to get things just right during the house church meeting on Sunday, are we missing out on many wonderful and perhaps more fruitful opportunities for ministry, evangelism and community throughout the rest of the week? I am starting to wonder if I am not fully guilty of this. While there are serious issues with the traditional worship service, am I missing the forest for the trees?

Let me lay out two scenarios, both of which I have personally experienced.

One is a house church/simple church. The meeting is unscripted. Anyone is welcome to share a song, prayer, Scripture, teaching, etc. On the surface everything about the actual meeting itself seems quite in keeping with Scripture even though Scripture itself plays a very minimal role during the meeting. Yet the people who meet on Sunday do very little together outside of the Sunday morning gathering, either in fellowship with one another or as a group taking the Gospel to the lost. Cohesiveness starts and stops by and large with the Sunday morning meeting.

The other is a more traditional church. A building, albeit a simple one. Pews. A lectern/pulpit. There are a few elders that are bi-vocational but the men of the church take turns teaching. Each week includes several outreach activities: nursing home visits, going to see shut-ins, outreach to the lost. A huge percentage of the people in the church have been out of the country or at least out of the immmediate area on mission trips in the last six months: Canada, Mexico, Haiti, including many (most?) of the youth and young adults.

One looks more like the New Testament in form, the other looks more like the New Testament in function, i.e. the mission of the church, the equipping and sending of disciples into the world to make disciples and love their neighbors. Which is more in tune with the Great Commission and Great Commandment? I get that there is a wide range of styles in the house church movement and likewise within more traditional meetings. What is the role of elders? How are believers best equipped for ministry? Etc. But speaking in general, are we too worried about the gathering of the church, as important as that is, and missing the value of life lived together the rest of the week?

It seems to be the case that within the church, ideas like hospitality, community, service, etc. that take place outside of the church meetings should take precedence. Sure we see that the early church was meeting in the temple and homes “day by day” (Acts 2:46-47) but doesn’t it seem more likely that these meetings were pretty informal? Perhaps a few families meeting together in their homes and just sharing a meal? Did these daily gatherings look anything like a church meeting, whether traditional or house church or somewhere in between?

We should all be striving, no matter the present manner of meeting, to see our meetings more reflective of Biblical commands and examples as well as more edifying. We should likewise be very careful to not overemphasize the Sunday meeting to the point that we deemphasize the mission of God’s people that takes place outside of our scheduled meetings, even the most organic and participatory of meetings. If we meet in a perfect manner on Sunday morning but fail to exhibit hospitality to believers and non-believers alike, if we have things just so on Sunday but fail to exhibit true community Monday through Saturday, how does that profit us and advance the Kingdom?

All or nothing

Alan Knox posted something interesting this morning Church: Impossible. When we look at the church in the New Testament and then the church as we traditionally understand it, the gulf can seem so enormous that real change does seem impossible. Making matters worse, it doesn't seem like a lot of people (although the numbers grow seemingly daily) seem to recognize or care that there is this gap between our practices and understanding of the church and what the Bible seems to be portraying.

Here is something I was thinking about as well. In our fervor for a "New Testament church", are we guilty of an "all or nothing" mentality? It seems so frustrating that the pace of change is so slow. People are so resistant. Progress is miniscule. I think we need to remember that this situation has taken hundreds of years to create and has an enormous amount of tradition and inertia on its side. Change, if it is to truly happen, is going to take time. Lots of time. In some ways I think that true change is not likely to happen in my lifetime and that rather than focusing on changing the church into a perfect model right now, we are instead laying the ground work for future generations, preparing the church that our believing children and future generations of Christians will inherit.

That is frustrating. I want it now! It is quite unlikely that in my lifetime, or at least in the foreseeable future, we are going to see the crumbling foundations of institutional Christendom come tumbling down: church buildings sold and the money given to the poor, clergy getting tent-making jobs and the savings used to fund itinerant evangelists and missionaries, the divisions in the church by race, denomination and class broken down, etc. In addition, many or most Christians are not comfortable with something “different” even if that difference is more Biblical. Change and discomfort makes people resistant. That means that change we see is likely to be incremental.

I think the impulse and the one that I have been following is to shake the dust off of our sandals at the door of the institutional church and go our own way. That seems very noble in our eyes but it means that we are dividing ourselves from the rest of the church, the vast majority of which is comfortably cocooned in the institutional model of the church. Sure we are meeting “the right way” but we are also cutting ourselves off from the rest of the church. I vacillate on this issue a lot because it is so often an all or nothing proposition. There must be a way to be in fellowship with the greater church and yet still be seeking after a more organic fellowship, Kingdom cooperation and community with other believers. I am growing concerned that the ‘all or nothing” approach is a great way to cut ourselves off from the church and that ought not be our goal.

What do you think? Where do we draw the line or should we not be in the business of line drawing at all?

House churches and heresy

Felicity Dale answers this oft asked question about simple/house/organic churches: Aren't house churches susceptible to heresy and false teaching without a trained clergyman to protect them?

For some reason people seem to think that a hierarchical institutional church is some sort of defense against heresy but you don't have to look very hard to see that is not true (see: Protestantism, Mainline). Check out her answers in her post Heresy in the house (church) . I agree with her, the best defense against heresy is a body of believers that are equipped and empowered to study the Scriptures for themselves and who are willing to raise their hand and ask questions when something they hear sounds squirrelly.

Another point to make is that when people ask about "heresy" I wonder what they really mean. Denying the trinity? Rejecting justification by faith alone? Or is it more likely a disagreement on a secondary issue that doesn't rise to the level of heresy by any rational or reasonable measure. I think we are a) too soft on actual heresy in the church and b) too likely to label something heresy that doesn't rise to that level.

A broken heart trumps a church bulletin

A lot of us write about simple church, about why this form of gathering is more Biblical, healthier even, than the traditional meeting. There are lots of posts full of assertions and copious Scripture references that make a compelling case. By and large though it is all theoretical. Last Sunday I saw an example of what a simpler, more familial gathering looks like when someone is in need. This is where it becomes real, when a brother or sister is in need.

One of the sisters that gathers with us is a native of Syria. If you have been watching the news closely you will know that Syria is having protests like those happening all over the Middle East as part of the “Arab Spring”. In Syria the news has been less frequent, partly because of government control and partly because people have grown tired of the stories. This sister is still paying attention and ran across a video shot from her home country. She described what she saw to us and broke down as she shared. The video showed a young boy who was part of a protest, taken from his father and brutally tortured and murdered on film. The brutality and horror of what she saw led my sister to come before the church and share this experience.

This sister was brokenhearted, just pouring out the hurt she was feeling. We heard what she had to say, let her speak what was on her heart and then prayed for her. We ran over the time we normally stop by almost half an hour but that was OK because one of us needed the rest of us. As she wept and told us what she had witnessed, we listened and then one person after another encouraged her, asked us to sing hymns of praise for our Lord, prayed for her and turned to the Word of God for words of encouragement. Not everyone spoke but everyone could have. Rather than bottling up her anguish and putting on a happy face for “church”, she was able to expose her broken heart to her family and be lifted up and loved.

If she was in a traditional church, how would this have looked? Would she have been able to share her anguish with the church? Perhaps she could have spoken to the pastor and had a special prayer request made from the pulpit. Not quite the same thing as hearing her making herself vulnerable because she knew that she would be loved. Would she have been encouraged, prayed for, had Scripture quoted by the entire gathered Body? Probably not. She would have likely been like so many others in churches across the world on Sunday, sitting in her pew in her Sunday best, putting a smile on her face, telling people she was fine while being broken hearted inside. I am NOT saying that people don’t love one another deeply in traditional churches but I am suggesting that the structures and rituals we have put in place in those traditional gatherings make it difficult or even impossible for the church to function like a family.

When we treat the church as family, the needs of one another take precedence over the performance. There isn’t a schedule or liturgy needed to love one another and it is more likely that those structures prevent us from being encouraged and edified in the way the church was intended. Anyone who has a family knows that you cannot schedule, control or contain family. Family is family even when they annoy or hurt you and especially when they are hurt and need you.

Our group is not perfect. There are lots of personalities, lots of people coming from all over the place in terms of background, doctrinal stances, traditions. We need to intentionally find ways to be more in community with one another beyond Sunday morning. Coming from a pretty conservative viewpoint there are things that concern me with where some people are doctrinally. I sometimes wonder “where is this going?”. But I also see God at work and I see His people starting to function as a family. Most importantly I see people who love one another more than they love their traditions and that means we are generally as willing to be as flexible as we need to be. For example one sister offered to help with our little ones on Sunday so that my wife could just relax and be part of the group. This sister normally plays the piano for the group but this week we went without the piano. That would be unthinkable in most traditional churches. It is the little things like that that give me hope and encouragement for what God is doing.

If you are so led, please pray for this sister that God would lift her up, comfort and strengthen her and give her peace in her heart. Also I would ask you to ask yourself. What if she had come to your gathering of the church? Would she have been able to pour herself out and expose how wounded she was or would she have shaken your hand and replied “Fine!” when asked how she was doing?