Meeting Expectations of Others Is Not Transformation

"Following ritual and rules that others demand of you is still following law, even if we call them “New Testament principles.” God doesn’t transform us through obligation or meeting the expectations of others. The reason why many of us grew frustrated in religious settings is because they made promises they couldn’t fulfill. The harder we tried, the emptier we felt. God has been inviting you to live in a new creation where his love transforms us in the deepest part of our soul."

- Wayne Jacobsen. Beyond Sundays 

What Elders Really Are About

"There are elders, teachers, prophets, and apostles who are gifts to help us know God better and learn his ways. Just know that the real ones don’t carry the title on their business cards and are not building an institution in their name. At almost every stage where God has shifted my thinking, he put me alongside some older men and women who could encourage his work in me and provide warnings when I was being sidetracked. Those who are wise, gently honest, and without the need to control your response are great gifts. We need more of these genuine elders scattered in the body of Christ who are courageous enough to walk alongside others and encourage their growth without controlling them."

- Wayne Jacobsen. Beyond Sundays. 

The Real Question We Should Be Asking

"The most important questions become not what should I do, but how do I get to know him?"

- Wayne Jacobsen. Beyond Sundays 

Only If It's Helpful Community

"Some people find connection in other established groups. If they do, I encourage them to go for the relationships, not the program. Any structure is helpful only to the degree that it equips people to live in the Spirit and to share community. When it subverts either mission, ignore it."

- Wayne Jacobsen. Beyond Sundays

Truth And Time

"Truth has its time. We don’t so much learn it in a classroom as it unfolds in us out of our growing relationship to God. Growth and transformation are a process that takes time. It would be nice to recognize truth out of the clear blue and just embrace it, but it rarely works that way. Mostly truth works its way into our heart over time as God wins us more deeply into his affection for us."

Wayne Jacobsen

We Dont Need Church "Movements"

Everywhere I go now, people ask me about the ‘house church movement,’ hoping it will provide the answer to their hunger for real body life. While I greatly prefer relational environments to institutional ones, every time I hear the word ‘movement’ my heart sinks. I’m convinced that the day we call what God is doing a movement is the day it has already begun to die. I’ve seen many movements come and go —Charismatic, discipleship, deliverance, healing, intercession, spiritual warfare, prophetic, worship, and apostolic just to name a few. All of them came up hollow in the end, not because God wasn’t in some of it, but because people hijacked his work to serve their own needs and ambitions.

Calling something a movement inflates our own sense of importance and separates us from the multi- faceted working of God that transcends any particular way of doing things.

Wayne Jacobsen

Intriguingly Church

"I discovered that I could have a more fruitful connection with people and share Jesus’ life more freely without all the accoutrements, political intrigue, and routine that our institutions force on fellowship...

Unfortunately, however, an entire industry has emerged in trying to make them just another system. Sometimes called house church, simple church, or organic church...

I’ve been in home groups that had more hoops to jump through than many congregations...

The problem is not the venue; it is our preoccupation with anything other than him...

My counsel is always the same : Avoid starting something. Once you start some “thing” your focus will shift from connecting with people to ensuring that the “thing” goes well."

(Finding Church. Wayne Jacobsen)

Religious Obligation Enforcers

"The undercurrent to a life of obligation is the belief that God is not endearing, and life in him is not engaging. Until we see that the life of Jesus is the most engaging invitation we’ve ever been extended, we won’t find our way into its joy. Knowing him will make all he wants for us an
irresistible reality."

- Wayne Jacobsen

Wanting It To Be Something Other Than What It Is

"God has a way to nudge you into life.....To know this, God is at work in the world, He's at work in your life. If you don't see it right now, it's not because he is not doing it, it's because you want it to be something other than it is. And If you relax into this, and let it be what it is, he will lead you into a bigger space than you ever dreamed of, or would ever find on your own. "

 (Wayne Jacobsen​ The God Journey​ Podcast, April 17, 2005))

Is Church a Meeting?

There are so many problems with a question like, “Is Church Attendance Mandatory?” Why is church about attendance at all. It’s a family not a meeting and there are many ways to assembling with others in our hearts is far more important than sitting in a meeting together.  (Wayne Jacobsen)

The Church Is The Fruit Of Something Else

"Jesus’church is not a human creation. Rather, it is the fruit of the relationships of those who are part of a new creation—the redeemed race of humanity that relates to him as the Head."
(Finding Church. Wayne Jacobsen)

The Church Can't Help But Be The Church

"Anyone who beats with God’s heart yearns to engage this family. Granted, you may not have seen that reality in the groups you have been part of in the past, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t exist. This community is growing to trust him and the way he works, and they are learning the simple joy of living in the Father’s affection and sharing it with others. You’ll find it where people lay down their lives for each other, where they don’t fight to be first or thought more spiritual, and where they would rather be defrauded than push for their own way. As they relate together under his leading, this church is the most exciting, functional family ever!"
(Finding Church. Wayne Jacobsen)

THEY LEFT THE CHURCH! No - They Left Your Congregation.

"I know what they mean, but the language still jars me: “They left the church.”Or, “I left the church ten years ago.”Since they have continued to passionately follow Jesus, I want to correct them. You may have left your congregation, but how did you leave the church? Do you think you can belong to him and not be part of his family? It’s one of the tragic consequences of using the term to describe the myriad of religious institutions that dot our landscape instead of the tapestry of his people Jesus is weaving together." (Finding Church.  Wayne Jacobsen)

How Church Growth Books & Libraries Kill Your Pastor's (Priest, Minister and Leaders) Soul.

Reminds me of the day, about fourteen years ago,  I walked up to my bookshelves and began hauling books off the shelf forming a pile on the floor. When finished, I sorted through the four foot high mountain and made a pile to give away, another to burn. I gave away many thousands of dollars worth of books. The burn pile had almost $3000 worth of "Church Growth" and  "Discipleship" books. I began hauling them up the upstairs and out into the back woods. After several trips my wife came down and asked me what I was doing. I explained... My wife suggested I might give these very "popular" church growth and discipleship books to some other minister or leader who would like to have them.  I replied, "Why would I heap a burden on another young minister,  a burden that even I myself could not bear?" I burned them in the woods over that fire promising God I'd seek him instead.... and promised that I would not read another such book for ten years, and only then to see if the conversations had changed yet........

"Even as i sit at my desk writing this chapter, a ravenous monster lurks not more than 12 feet behind me. He is big— ten feet across and eight feet high. His name is library. In small doses he can be very helpful, but when he lines up all his resources against me, he can be quite formidable even though he can’t move an inch.
He has eight shelves full of books of every size and description. Most I've read, some I've skimmed, and some are there because I still hope to read them. But each one calls to me with its own agenda. Here are five books with detailed blueprints for deepening my spiritual life. I have nearly two dozen books on the definitive church structure, none of which agree with the others except on one point— my church is doing it wrong! I have a dozen books on human relationships and family life. I’m amazed that marriages even stayed together before the invention of the printing press. And i have 12 different slants on eschatological events, each using the same scriptures to prove widely varying points of view.
I have workbooks that offer me ten easy steps to anything I want— but most of them don’t work. ......
But my selection of books on current issues is the most intimidating of all. I have 15 selections cheering me on to more activity than I can produce in six lifetimes. Sell your home and live among the inner-city poor! Get rich so you can send money to God’s evangelists so they can help the poor! If God hasn't specifically told you to stay in America, go overseas as a missionary! We must stop abortion now! The list goes on and on— antipornography, new age movement, politics, Latin America….
Sometimes I want to rip this monster from my wall. It’s not that i don’t enjoy books, since my wall wouldn't be full of them if I didn't. But I get this nagging feeling that we've made Christianity far more complicated than its Founder intended. And i get that same feeling whenever i look at a church calendar or my own schedule, or attend a pastor’s conference.
When our hearts cry out for an intimate fellowship with God that seems to escape us, maybe we ought to look at how complicated we've made a very simple gospel."
(Wayne Jacobsen. The Naked Church)

Religious Institutions Do Not NEED To Change

"We’ll learn how to embrace his presence and walk in his glory, without our religious institutions having to make any change at all. I hope these words provide the impetus for some of the institutions we call church to make significant changes and embrace relational christianity, but it is not necessary. To God, ‘church’ is not a building down the street, or a name brand denomination. His church is made up of every person who walks in friendship with him. He came because he loved people, not organizations. he desires to change you, not them."
(Wayne Jacobsen. The Naked Church)

Church Is Nice and Helpful..... But.....

"I’ll warn you that this will not be easy. All of us can point to wonderful, even lifechanging moments, that organized religion has provided for us. Who doesn’t enjoy the aesthetics of a beautiful worship service? Who has not been enlightened by the teaching of God’s Word? Who doesn’t have friends there whom we enjoy? No, church life today is not all bad, and that’s what makes it difficult to recognize its deficiencies. But the larger question must still be asked: Does it lead us to the fullness of an intimate friendship with Jesus? and if not, why not?....
Such talk is not any more popular in our day than it was in Luthers. His contemporaries thought he wanted to destroy the church, when his motives were quite the opposite. He offered the church healing and spoke out not because he loved it less, but because he loved it more than did the others of his day, who cared less what God wanted than what they did." (Wayne Jacobsen. The Naked Church)

Would We Hear Luther Or Wesley Today?

"Could Luther and Wesley speak in our pulpits? As long as their words apply to another generation, we revere them. Would we tolerate them if they spoke the same about things we hold dear? Let’s try it! Luther spoke out passionately against Rome’s practice of selling indulgences— offering spiritual forgiveness and status for money that was put into a building fund at the vatican. Here’s what he said: 'The revenues of all christendom are being sucked into this insatiable basilica. the Germans laugh at calling this the common treasure of christendom. Before long all the churches, palaces, walls and bridges of rome will be built out of our money. First of all, we should rear living temples, not local churches… he— the pope— would do better to sell st. Peter’s and give the money to the poor folk who are being fleeced by the hawkers of indulgences....'

What if Martin Luther were alive today? Do you think he would look on our fundraising techniques or our opulent buildings with any less disgust? We may not be so crass as to sell forgiveness of sins for those who contribute to our cathedrals, but most fundraising appeals contain a nearly identical mixture of guilt and glory.... Would we listen any better if Martin Luther used those same words to cry out against our favorite tv pastor, or the megachurch being built on the outskirts of our city? Care to try it?"
(Wayne Jacobsen. The Naked Church)

What Produces Luthers, Wesleys, and Bonhoeffers?

Wow... what produces the Luthers, the Wesleys, the Bonhoeffers?????

"All the people who have walked closely with God throughout history were stirred both by a vision that burned in their hearts and by their ability to look at the status quo and admit that it did not live up to that vision. That dichotomy alone creates hunger— to see what God has promised and to be real enough about our lives to admit when we’ve fallen short of it. This is what produces the Luthers, the Wesleys, the Bonhoeffers. They saw a great disparity in their day between biblical promise and cultural reality, and they set about to narrow the gap in their own lives."
(Wayne Jacobsen. The Naked Church)

Hungry Fanatics. ....

"In such a climate, hungry people are regarded at best as fanatics and at worst as rebels. 'Sensible' people accept the status quo for what it is and use it as advantageously as possible." (Wayne Jacobsen)

Abandoning The Institutions False Priorities

"Structures will only change when enough individuals abandon the priorities they service and discover again the simple joy of knowing the living God."
(Wayne Jacobsen. The Naked Church)