Simply Church: A House Church Perspective

How can we become more missional?

The question I have been asking since we came home from the House Church Summit in India is, "Which of the factors that have produced the incredible results in India are transferable to a Western culture?" 

Perhaps the biggest contrast I saw between what happens there and the typical church (whether legacy or simple church) in the West is their emphasis on reaching out and the Great Commission.  They genuinely believe that being a disciple is all about going and sharing the good news with others.  Their training is all geared towards this truth; I did not hear a teaching that did not include some aspect of it. ("Apostolic teaching is the teaching to go."  "All the commands of Jesus lead to the fulfillment of the Great Commission.")  Disciples bear fruit, and the assumption (unlike here in the West where we tend to think "fruit of the Spirit") is that this fruit is new disciples, who of course, in turn are trained to make more disciples.

The effect of this emphasis over there is that people are becoming disciples in incredible numbers in a situation where persecution of Christians is common.  Curtis Sergeant, who has extensive experience with both countries, reckons that what is going on in India could be even more amazing than the China story.

So what do we do here in the West where everyone has at least had a chance to hear the Good News?  I sometimes wonder if the gospel we preach is a "Santa Claus" gospel (come to Jesus and he will give you a wonderful and problem-free life) that enables us to live a passive life of being blessed.  However the gospel of the Kingdom (a new covenant experience where our side is obedience--not done out of legalism but out of love for the One who has rescued us from our old lives) leads to an intentional intersecting of the Kingdom with the world through our lives.

Huge numbers of people are moving into house/simple/organic churches all over this country.  It is clearly something God is doing.  There is no central organization or some charismatic guru who is propagating these ideas.  It is the Holy Spirit himself who is whispering the same thing to people all over the country, and as they obey him by moving into their homes, they are finding each other.  I believe this is a movement orchestrated by the Lord.

Some of these new churches are very outward looking.  However, there is a tendency for them to be more focused on community and going deeper with God.  Don't get me wrong.  Both of these are vital.  But there may be too great an emphasis on our lives together (John 13:35--Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples) and not enough on telling others (Romans 10:14-16--But how can they call on him to save them unless they believe in him?  And how can they believe in him if they have never heard about him?  And how can they hear unless someone tells them?).  It costs something in terms of convenience and comfort to deliberately go out of one's way to reach out to others.

What will it take for us to become a Kingdom focused and outward reaching movement.  Clearly it is something that ultimately only God can do--and there are many stories of individual simple churches where He is doing this.  But we have a part to play in cooperating with God.

What will it take for us to have a missional DNA?

How can we become a people for whom the Great Commission is an over-riding passion?

So what did I learn from India?

India is seeing a remarkable move of God.  We met several people from India at the World House Church Summit who have more than 100,000 new believers in their networks.  I interviewed a middle-aged housewife who is responsible for seeing more than 6,000 churches.  I know that numbers are the world's way of judging success, and that God is more interested in our faithfulness and obedience than anything else.  I also know that you cannot manufacture a move of God. But are there principles that they are applying that translate across cultures that help to produce such a movement?  

As I have meditated on what we have seen in India over several visits, the first thing that strikes me is their commitment to prayer and prayer walking.  We have an Indian friend who tried an experiment.  He picked two villages.  The first he prayer walked regularly before trying to reach out to the people who lived there.  The second he did not.  Forty-five families became believers in the first village.  He was thrown out of the second one. 

A similar experiment was tried in Phoenix, AZ, as documented in the book, The Praying Church Idea Book by Douglas A. Kamstra.  The church randomly selected 160 names from the phone book and divided then into two groups.  For 90 days they prayed for one group while they ignored the other.  At the end of 90 days they called all 160 homes, identified themselves and offered to stop by and pray for the family and any needs they might have. Of the 80 homes that were not prayed for, only one person invited them in.  From the 80 homes that were prayed for, 69 people invited them to come over and of those people, 45 invited them into their homes.

David Watson, who has seen more than 40,000 churches start in North India and more than 5,000 in Africa, surveyed his top 100 church planters to see if he could identify any common characteristics in the methods they used.  The only one he found was a commitment to prayer.  Even though these people mostly had jobs, they prayed 3 hours per day on their own and then 3 hours per day with their teams. Fasting was also important to them.

How does this translate into a Western culture where we are so busy and so preoccupied with many things?  The last thing we want is some kind of legalistic "ought to" duty praying that somehow seeks to earn God's favor. 

I remember when our business was seriously struggling a few years back. There was no sense of compulsion about praying for it.  We wanted to pray for hours every day, initially out of desperation because we knew it was the only hope our business had of surviving, but it became an adventure and delight as we watched as the prayer produced results.

What will produce that kind of desire to pray for this nation and the nations?

Gems from India

 

The following are some thought-provoking one liners from the pre-conference sessions at the World House Church Conference in India.  They are from talks given by the leader of a church planting movement that baptized more than 300,000 on the Day of Pentecost in 2009.  Worth taking note!

Jesus never said, "Be baptized."  He said, "You baptize." 

You disciple--you baptize.

Jesus baptized Peter--but only his feet.

You will not see a movement without signs and wonders.  Ninety five percent of our house churches have signs and wonders.

Apostolic teaching is the teaching to GO.

There are 19 commands of Jesus to be found in the New Testament.  All lead to the fulfillment of the Great Commission.

Hospitality is the secret to precipitating a movement.

Sit and soak, and you stagnate.  Eat and chat and you will multiply.

Goat prayers are "meeee" prayers.  They focus on me and my needs, my family and my situation.

Use the newspaper headlines as your prayer list.

Theologians think, not from Genesis to Revelation but from genetics to evolution.

We need a problem-based theology.  In our house churches we solve problems--finances, sickness etc.

A Declaration of War

Teachings from India (13)

Matthew 16:18 is a declaration of war:  "Upon this rock I will build my church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it."  Building the church is a declaration of war because it involves a transfer of power.  The responsibility for this transfer of power belongs to the church, and she has been given the keys of the Kingdom to effect it.

It is the business of the chuch to destroy the gates of hell and to bring about the Kingdom.  When Jesus cast out demons, he could say that  the Kingdom of God had come among them (Matthew 12:28-30).   There are different levels of hierarchy among the powers of darkness (Ephesians 6:10).  According to 1 John 5:19, the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.  The strongman is territorial, and we are to bind him and plunder his goods (the people and the land).

The primary battleground is in our minds.  According to 2 Corinthians 10:3-5, there are strongholds of human reasoning and false arguments, proud obstacles that keep people from knowing God.  These strongholds in the mind are our mindset, ideologies and traditions, logic and worldview.  We fight these things with spiritual weopons that include the Word, the armor mentioned in Ephesians 6, and truth and righteousness. 

In a nation like India, there are many idols.  Demons are invited to inhabit the idols when they are installed. It takes binding the spirit behind the idol to loose the people who are in bondage to that idol.

Jeremiah 10:11 says "Say this to those who worship other gods: “Your so-called gods, who did not make the heavens and earth, will vanish from the earth and from under the heavens.”  This is a powerful verse to use in dealing with idols.

Why Did Jesus Come?

Teachings from India (12)

There are four statements in the New Testament that specifically describe why Jesus came.

1. John 10:10  The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.
2. Luke 4:18-19  The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free, and that the time of the Lord’s favor has come.
3. Luke 19:10  For the Son of Man came to seek and save those who are lost.
4. 1 John 3:8  But the Son of God came to destroy the works of the devil.

Can we say the same?  For this reason I have come...

Jesus said, "As the Father sent me, so I am sending you (John 20:21)"

Know your vision and write it down (Habakkuk 2:1-3).

How Jesus Changed the System

Teaching from India (11)

Jesus Christ changed the system:

• From a temple of stones to a living temple
• From a Levitical priesthood to a royal priesthood--the church is an assembly of royal priests where the sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken and contrite heart
• From a Sabbath day to every day
• From incense to intercession
• From an offering of sacrificial animals to an offering of repented and baptized people
• From a Beth Midrash (literally a study hall) to learning on the streets and in homes

Taking our Inheritance

Teachings from India (10)

Every Christian has an inheritance from the Father.  God gave Adam the Garden of Eden for his inheritance, but he lost it all for one piece of fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  Esau sold his inheritance as firstborn son for a bowl of lentils.

We sell our inheritance too--to our job, or busyness, to the TV or the pursuit of more possessions.

God gave Abraham a territory from the River Euphrates to the Nile.  Abraham circled the land and built 7 altars around it.  God gave him the land plus ten nations.  The covenant was for the people and the land.

We need to ask God for people and land.  What territory is he giving us?  We need to know our inheritance in order to take possession of it (Josh 1:3-9). 

The territory is currently under enemy control.  We need to dislodge the enemy in order to take possession of our inheritance (Luke 11:22).  First we have to destroy the strongman, then we can plunder his possessions which are both the people and the land.  A farmer destroys weeds before planting a crop.  We need to get rid of the enemy's weeds (Romans 16:20) before taking possission of our inheritance and planting a church.

What is True Worship?

Teachings from India (9)

In the Old Testament, worship was always accompanied by sacrifice. Solomon once offered 22 thousand bulls and 120 thousand sheep and goats (2 Chron 7:5).  The temple was primarily a place of sacrifice (2 Chron 7:12). When a person in the Old Testament sinned, he confessed his sin and took a bath of purification.  Then he took an animal who was a substitute for his sins, and the animal was slaughtered as a sacrifice. A person was not allowed to offer his own animal as a sacrifice, but the priest did it for him.  One of the main functions of the priest was to offer sacrifices. 

According to the New Testament, we are now a royal priesthood (I Peter 2:9).  The blood of Jesus has made us priests and kings (Revelation 5:9, 10).  Again the function of a priest is to offer sacrifices.  Paul offered the Gentiles as a living sacrifice (Romans 15:16)  It was on offering of 2-legged animals who had a broken and contrite spirit (Ps 51:17).  Our worship is not complete without an offering of repentant souls; it is the main business of the church. 

When Abraham offered Isaac as worship to God, his main instruments of worship were a sword, fire and a sacrifice (Genesis 22:6).  Today, our instruments of worship are the same:  a sword--the Word of God (Eph. 6:17, Heb 4:12), fire--the Holy Spirit, and a sacrifice--an offering of repentant souls.

Are Networks Important?

Teachings from India (8)

House churches should be neither independent, nor permanent.  If they are they will not multiply, but will only have shifted people from the pew to the sofa.  Instead, they should be an interdependent network.  Each house church is a debriefing center and a sending center that sends people out.

A starfish has no brain or head.  If you cut off the arm of a starfish, it will grow into a new starfish.  A house church does not require a CEO or a commander. Any of the people in it can multiply it out.  The leader is more of a facilitator that cares for the household.

Different ministries can function across a network of churches.  No single person has all the gifts that are needed, but across a network those leadership gifts will be present.

Church planting is a process.  Jesus stayed a few days in Samaria (John 4).  Philip, the evangelist, preached the gospel powerfully there and many sick people were healed and baptized (Acts 8:4-13).  Then Peter and John (apostles) came and worked with them too (Acts 8:14-25).  Different people used their different giftings to see the church there come to maturity (Acts 9:31).

What are the qualifications for leadership?

Teachings from India (7).

For an official report on the World House Church Summit, see http://bit.ly/6I8PAq 

God chose new leadership for Israel after Saul failed.  Psalm 79:70-72 says:

He chose his servant David,
      calling him from the sheep pens.
 ⁷¹ He took David from tending the ewes and lambs
      and made him the shepherd of Jacob’s descendants—
      God’s own people, Israel.
 ⁷² He cared for them with a true heart
      and led them with skillful hands.

• God himself called David for leadership.  David didn't decide he wanted to be a leader.
• David was shepherding ewes and lambs.  God called him because he was caring, not because he was brave
• His calling was for a purpose--to shepherd Israel.  As a shepherd he cared for the weak
• He was skilled (competent) and had a true heart (character).

David had calling, character, caring and competence.  If any of these are missing, a person will not be a good leader.  These same characteristics come out in the Titus and Timothy qualifications for leadership.  Paul told Titus to appoint elders (calling) They were to be the blameless and the husband of one wife (character), to be hospitable (caring), to be sound in doctrine, able to show those who oppose the Gospel where they are wrong (competent).