House Church Is Biblical Church

Acts 2:46 - Breaking bread in their homes.

Acts 5:42 - House to house taught and preached Jesus.

Acts 10:2,24 - Feared God ith whole household, invited all relatives and close friends.

Acts 12:12 - Houseof Mary wheremmany were gathered to pray.

Acts 16:32 - Lydias House.

Acts 18:7 - Tutius Justice house? Family and many others there.

Acts 20:20 - Taught house to house.

Romans 16:5 - Greet the church at their house. Prisca & Aquila.

1 Cor 16:19 - Together with the cburch in their house.

Col 4:15 - Greet Nymoja & church in her house.

Phil 1:2 - Philemon & the church at your house.

Why Churches Can't Release People To Grow.

“I’m convinced that we clergy have an unconscious but vested interest in not teaching people true contemplation because, frankly, it makes our job unnecessary. Job security is [dependent] upon [people] coming back on Sunday morning. I’m fine with church. I have mass. I’m a good priest. But we’ve made it into a business whereby we need the people to keep relying upon us.”

- Richard Rohr

Church Ain't What It Used to Be?

"There was obviously flexability about the order of service in the Early Church which is now totally lacking. There was clearly no settled order at all. Everything was informal enough to allow any man who felt that he had a message to give to give it. It may well be that we set far too much store on dignity and order nowadays. It may well be that we have become the slaves of orders of service. The really notable thing about an early Church service must have been that almost everyone came with a sense that he had both the privilege and the obligation of contributing something to it. A man did not come with the sole intention of being a passive listener. He did not come only to receive, he came also to give. Obviously this had its dangers for it is clear that in Corinth there were those who were too fond of the sound of their own voices: but nonetheless the Church must have been in those days much more the real possession of the ordinary Christian. It may well be that the Church lost something when she delegated so much to the professional ministry and left so little to the ordinary Church member; and it may well be that the blame lies not with the ministry for annexing those rights. but with the laity for abandoning them, because it is all too true that there are many Church members whose attitude is that they think far more of what the Church can do for them than of what they can do for the Church. and who are very ready to criticize what is done but very unready to take any share in doing the Church's work themselves."

(William Barclay. Letter To The Corinthians)

Churching The Church Right Out Of Me.

“I guess the church just sort of churched the church out of me.” (youth)

(Josh Packard. Church Refugees)

Rediscovered Jesus Springs

What is more foundational that all this talk about the church suffering from a lack  "leadership" and "vision".  Those are the easy things....

<blockquoye>"Those who desire holiness must learn and relearn to play with God. God-pleasing and Godplaying replace goal seeking and vision casting. Does your church life revolve around goals? Do you go through a vision-casting process every five years? Or do you seek to be quick to fall on your knees and spring fast on your feet to be the people of God in every walk of life? Participation in God’s nature is the true goal of human life"
(Leonard Sweet. The Well Played Life)
</blockquote>

Right or wrong, and not suggesting that making plans is evil, but for a long long time i have felt the real issue is not lack of vision, nor lack of leadership from people like me, or a lack of leadership toward me from others...

There is something deeper, more guttural we are not addressing with the bows and ribbons we are constantly playing with... Well the bows and ribbons I played with for 15 years.....  Anyway, How do you measure transformation? The only thing Jesus said is "by their fruit you will know them."   How do we lead, and vision cast a people who lost their "spring" and their "fall"? - that Leonard writes about...

If they have a living "spring",  "fall",  and "walk" my experience is they have no lack of vision and no need of my leadership.  
The book of Collosians may have the only answer. When the people are off track, there is immorality, false teaching, a loss of love for others and  for Jesus.... Paul's solution in Colossians was simple... to unfold a greater revelation of the person of Jesus.   The only one who gives "springs", fixes "springs", and invented "springs"... no reason to spring without him. Can't  help but "spring" with him....

Crowds Lie, Make Us Spectaculars And Slogans.

Sigh..................      "In crowds the truth is flattened to fit a slogan.... The crowd makes spectators of us, passive in the presence of excellence or beauty. The crowd makes consumers of us, inertly taking in whatever is pushed at us. As spectators and consumers the central and foundational elements of our being human— our ability to create, our drive to excel, our capacity to commune with God— atrophy.
(Eugene Peterson, "Run With the Horses)
Thanks Karl Ingersoll

The Holy Ghost does not flow through methods, but through men.

"What the Church needs to-day is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more and novel methods, but men whom the Holy Ghost can use —men of prayer, men mighty in prayer. The Holy Ghost does not flow through methods, but through men. He does not come on machinery, but on men. He does not anoint plans, but men, men of prayer."

(E.M. Bounds)

Oh What We Learn From The Despised Ones

Yes..... Oh what we learn from the despised ones...... "Those at the edge of any system and those excluded from any system ironically and invariably hold the secret for the conversion and wholeness of that very group....

Only as the People of God receive the stranger, the sinner, and the immigrant, those who don’t play our game our way, do we discover not only the hidden, feared, and hated parts of our own souls, but the fullness of Jesus himself. We need them for our own conversion." (Richard Rohr)

Abolishing The Laity....

"We don't seek to abolish the idea of clergy, we want to abolish the idea of laity." 

(Christopher Dather)

21 Mistakes l Made As A Senior Pastor:

21 Mistakes l Made As A Senior Pastor:

Putting church over community.
Putting orthodoxy over love.
Putting certainty over wonder.
Putting teaching over conversation.
Putting polished over real.
Putting answers over questions.
Putting membership over friendship.
Putting Christianity over Christ.
Putting knowledge over action.
Putting style over substance.
Putting appearance over authenticity.
Putting functionality over beauty.
Putting religion over spirituality.
Putting numbers over faces.
Putting holiness over humanity.
Putting accountability over acceptance.
Putting heaven over earth.
Putting reputation over risk.
Putting charisma over compassion.
Putting the Afterlife over the Herelife.
Putting thinking over feeling.

- Jim Palmer

A Finely Tunes Bull-Shit Meter For Church

Jonathan Merritt:  "You say that the way to stop the exodus of millennials from churches isn’t cosmetic–better music, sleeker logos, more relevant programming, etc. Why are these methods ineffective in your mind?"

Rachel Evans: These aren’t inherently bad strategies and some churches would be wise to employ them. But many church leaders make the mistake of thinking millennials are shallow consumers who are leaving church because they aren’t being entertained. I think our reasons for leaving church are more complicated, more related to social changes and deep questions of faith than worship style or image.

If you try to woo us back with skinny jeans and coffee shops, it may actually backfire. Millennials have finely-tuned B.S. meters that can detect when someone’s just trying to sell us something.  We’re not looking for a hipper Christianity. We’re looking for a truer Christianity. Like every generation before and after, we’re looking for Jesus—the same Jesus who can be found in the places he’s always been: in bread, in wine, in baptism, in the Word, in suffering, in community, and among the least of these. No fog machines required."

Link

A Second Reformation Is Hitting The Church

"I think the change we’re seeing around us might one day be viewed on the same level as what happened to the church after Constantine’s conversion or after the invention of the printing press. Whatever the change looks like when it’s done, it will register as a seismic shift from what we’ve known." (Carey Nieuwhof)

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)

The Desperately Empty Church

"I believe that once a person truly experiences the conscious, manifest presence of God, he will lose interest in everything else in this world. No longer will the cheap choruses satisfy. The flood of entertainment that has swamped the Church will leave him with a desperately empty feeling inside. And the cult of personality, which has gripped the Church these days, will no longer draw his admiration. All those things he once reveled in no longer interest him. He has discovered something far greater in God’s presence."

-- A.W. Tozer "Experiencing the Presence of God"

What Is Our Real Position In Church?

"Instead we get hung up with other questions of hierarchy, gifting, and finding our own little molehill on the mountain of the Lord. When this happens, the church becomes its own personal proving ground. It is in this dastardly place that we see the simplicity of life together replaced with the all-too familiar scenario of human striving, ambition, and organizational strategies. It’s here, when the Body of Christ becomes all about personal achievement, approval, and self-actualization, that so many lose heart. The good news is, when we finally learn that our place in the family of God is simply “in Christ,” we begin a new journey— one that makes the Lord Jesus central so we can look to him for leadership, guidance, comfort, and love."

( STEPHANIE BENNETT in the forward to Finding Church by Wayne Jacobsen)

Church is not Bricks And Boards.... But the Blood And Bonrs Of Peoplem

"The Church is not the bricks and boards of the building but the blood and bones of people in a growing relationship with each other with Jesus as the head."

(Nick Sembrano)

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)

Billy Graham On Rejecting The Institutional Church To Find Spiritual Food

"Multitudes of Christians within the church are moving toward the point where they may reject the institution that we call the church. They are beginning to turn to more simplified forms of worship. They are hungry for a personal and vital experience with Jesus Christ. They want a heartwarming personal faith. Unless the church quickly recovers its authoritative Biblical message, we may witness the spectacle of millions of Christians going outside the institutional church to find spiritual food."

-- Billy Graham (1965)