Dig in Deep

It’s official – as if blogging about house church for the past five months doesn’t prove that I’ve been drinking the house church Kool-Aid, I’ve had to defend my comments against the pastor of a megachurch from a neighboring state.

Being a worship leader at a somewhat small conventional church (100-150), over the past two years I’ve been asking a lot of questions about how conventional churches approach things. I had been struggling with implementing things that I knew would help the church grow, but the culture of the church wouldn’t accept certain changes easily. Further, even at our size, I saw that we had many of the same problems that plague churches that are much larger. So while I’ve never been on staff at a church, I have some insight into some of the same problems that people are struggling with at larger conventional churches.

I still read many of the blogs that I have been reading over the past couple of years, where they ask a lot of the same questions I had been asking as I was struggling with what God wanted me to do. On these blogs, I now tend to comment about what I have found is the answer – greatly simplifying the church and stripping it down to relationships and discipleship – two things that worship services at conventional churches are, quite frankly, pathetic at achieving.

I’ve noticed that people on staff at megachurches, and to some degree, those that attend megachurches, are the ones who have the hardest time “getting” the idea of a house church. To them, a church simply isn’t successful unless it’s reaching thousands every week. In many ways, that is their experience and that is their standard. So when you try to communicate the benefits of house church, they can’t comprehend it.

In this particular case, this pastor said that “the house church model has ONE problem – they neglect the great commission. If Jesus would have wanted us to sit around and suck thumbs… He would have commanded it.” He later tried to smooth things over, but the fact is that he just couldn’t accept the house church as legitimate.

In contrast, I get a completely different reaction when I talk with people who are not really connected with a church. This includes people who have never gone to a church, people who used to go to a church but walked completely away (for various reasons), and even people who attend church irregularly. They appreciate the idea that we can put a huge amount of our time and money, into helping other people. They understand the concept of focusing on spiritual development outside of a presentational atmosphere, and why this is preferable to what conventional churches focus on. They can view the gospel without all of the extra stuff – they can see that we’re not selling a church brand, a product that comes with a lot of earthly fringe benefits. They can appreciate that we’re not trying to entice them to the gospel with beautiful buildings, angelic choirs, huge pipe organs, rock bands whose members sport spiked hair, and huge video screens so that we can see the famous pastor preaching the message in another building miles and miles away.

People who are not Christians that I have talked to about house church tend to say things like, “that makes a lot of sense.” People who are Christians that I have talked to about house church, if they attend a conventional church, tend to tilt their head to the side and say things like, “huh.” People who are on staff of large conventional churches tend to tell me I’m wrong.

It’s strange, but it seems like the religious establishment disagrees with what Barna calls a “Revolution.” Are there any other religious figures you can think of who did things that rubbed the religious establishment the wrong way? It’s good to be in the company of God’s prophets.

Whether or not unbelievers get it doesn’t really affect my decision to follow Christ in the context of a house church, but it is a great testimony to the simplicity and accessibility of the format. Churches are struggling, trying to figure out how to reach the post-modern generation that is rising. Many conventional churches even struggle to figure out what “post-modern” is. The very group of people the church has the least capability of connecting with, those with a post-modern worldview that for the most part has no background in Christianity, are much more receptive to the idea of a house church than they are to a conventional church.

Remember, in 380 AD, bishops Theodosius and Gratian, operating with the full authority of the Roman government, required all Roman citizens to be members of the single, state-recognized, orthodox church, and banned all other churches, including those meeting in homes. Less than 350 years after Christ’s death, the exact form that Christ himself used to disciple the twelve was banned from the church.

I pray that our brothers and sisters in conventional churches will pray for our success, and not be threatened by it. I pray that they will not choose to follow the path of the Jewish council, Roman government, and even Martin Luther, who all chose to persecute those who believed that following God did not include following professional clergy, but included simply meeting together, studying scripture, confessing their sins, and praying for one another.

The reality, though, is that if persecution is to come, it will come with the blessing of the established religious system. It always has.