Dig in Deep

As I shared on this blog a couple of months ago, we recently tried to start hosting a house church in our home. At the time, a previous house church that we were a part of was dissolving because the leader of it was moving away. Amy and I decided that we should try to start hosting one ourselves, and pull from the people who had been a part of that house church as well as try to get others involved who we thought might be interested.

Our previous “house church” was pretty much just that – a church that met in a house. It’s not like there was a “sermon,” but in reality it didn’t move beyond the concept of clergy any more than a traditional church would. Most people called the leader the pastor (though I specifically did not refer to him as such), and looked to him as that kind of a role. He led it more like a bible study/discussion time, so it was in reality more open than a typical church would be. It was a good step for Amy and I when we joined that group, but I felt, over time, more and more God’s leaning to do things differently.

Then the leader of that group moved away, and we were faced with whether or not to try hosting a house church ourselves. But without someone filling the pastor/clergy role, we did not really know if it would stick with a group that had been, for the most part, been passive in gatherings. But we felt called to give it a try. My brother, who leads a fully organic meeting at his house, agreed to help us get started.

In the end, it really came down to not having people who were really interested in doing something different. I’m not upset about it, as I didn’t want to have any regrets about not trying it. We also learned a lot through the process, and will be better prepared next time God calls us to do this – and we are confident that there will be a next time. The main thing we’ve learned is that in order to try hosting an organic meeting, you need to do it with a least a couple of people who totally “get it” and are committed to church gatherings led by the Spirit alone. While my brother was helping us, he and his wife were still hosting their own meeting and I didn’t feel right relying on them for that role indefinitely.

So Amy and I will be doing some exploring and asking God what He would really like for us to be doing right now. We have some schedule concerns with the other house church groups that we’ve been networking with – it’s not easy to do late evenings with young kids, especially when they get up really early for school and get very cranky early in the evening. (That’s one of the reasons we really liked Sunday afternoons.)

There’s also a “traditional” church that I’ve been somewhat connected with over the last couple of years (I’ve led worship there a few times and played guitar/bass a few times also), that we’re considering checking out some of their smaller groups and see how open they are and how their small groups currently function.

So pray for us in this regard. We might not get totally settled until March or so — I’m having a major jaw surgery in January and it’ll be a few weeks before I’m really up for much, anyway. (I’ll post more about that later.) I may have a difficult time compromising my ecclesiology, but I’m willing to do that if God is calling us somewhere and wants to use my restlessness to stir things up there.

The interesting thing is, literally a day after we made this decision God placed something into our laps that our hearts have longed for, something actually a little more extreme than organic house church (in many people’s opinions, anyway). That deserves its own post, so stay tuned.