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Houses That
Changed The World
By Wolfgang Simson
Madras, 1998
Comments:
A far more significant book than I expected. It challenges many
sacred cows, demonstrates remarkable biblical, theological and
strategic insight. The whole church needs to hear what Wolfgang Simson
has to say in this seminal work."
Prof. Kenneth B. Mulholland, Dean, Colombia Biblical Seminary
"A monumental and marvelous piece of work! It is going to be a very
important contribution to the present situation faced by the church."
Ralph Neighbour, Author of "Where do we go from Here"
"Great Book! I was a Pastor in the Reformed Church in Switzerland
for six years, and can agree with a lot from my own experience."
Matthias Schuurmann, Theol. Teacher, Windhoek, Naimibia
An excellent book, which goes to the heart of the structure problem
in our perception of the church. I completely agree with the analysis
and much appreciate the book and it's message."
Patrick Johnstone, WEC, London
"Housechurches seem to be tailor-made for today's Generation-X".
Ulrich Salvisberg, Former Pastor and Coordinator, Explo 97
This is one of the most significant books that I have seen for a
long time."
Peter Brierly, Christian Research, UK
"To be honest, I have given up on all those new church fads and
Christian waves. But this thing about housechurches excites me deep
down. I have hoped for this type of church to become a reality all my
Christian life. I can't believe it might come true! I am so excited I
could cry."
Computer Programmer, Switzerland
"Something simple, yet dynamic. That is what I have always hoped
the church to be." Medical Doctor, Switzerland
God is changing the Church, and that, in turn, will change the
world. Millions of Christians around the world are aware of an
imminent reformation of global proportions. They say, in effect:
"Church as we know it is preventing Church as God wants it."
Fifteen Theses towards a Re-Incarnation of Church
1. Church is a Way of Life, not a series of religious meetings.
Before they where called Christians, followers of Christ have been
called "The Way". One of the reasons was, that they have literally
found "the way to live." The nature of Church is not reflected in a
constant series of religious meetings lead by professional clergy in
holy rooms specially reserved to experience Jesus, but in the
prophetic way followers of Christ live their everyday life in
spiritually extended families as a vivid answer to the questions
society faces, at the place where it counts most: in their homes.
2. Time to change the system
In aligning itself to the religious patterns of the day, the
historic Orthodox Church after Constantine in the 4th century AD
adopted a religious system which was in essence Old Testament,
complete with priests, altar, a Christian temple (cathedral),
frankincense and a Jewish, synagogue-style worship pattern. The Roman
Catholic Church went on to canonize the system. Luther did reform the
content of the gospel, but left the outer forms of "church" remarkably
untouched; the Free-Churches freed the system from the State, the
Baptists then baptized it, the Quakers dry-cleaned it, the Salvation
Army put it into a uniform, the Pentecostals anointed it and the
Charismatics renewed it, but until today nobody has really changed the
superstructure. It is about time to do just that.
3. The Third Reformation.
In rediscovering the gospel of salvation by faith and grace alone,
Luther started to reform the Church through a reformation of theology.
In the 18th century through movements like the Moravians there was a
recovery of a new intimacy with God, which led to a reformation of
spirituality, the Second Reformation. Now God is touching the
wineskins themselves, initiating a Third Reformation, a reformation of
structure.
4. From Church-Houses to house-churches
Since New Testament times, there is no such thing as "a house of
God". At the cost of his life, Stephen reminded unequivocally: God
does not live in temples made by human hands. The Church is the people
of God. The Church, therefore, was and is at home where people are at
home: in ordinary houses. There, the people of God: share their lives
in the power of the Holy Spirit, have "meetings," that is, they eat
when they meet; they often do not even hesitate to sell private
property and share material and spiritual blessings, teach each other
in real-life situations how to obey God's word—dialogue- and not
professor-style, pray and prophesy with each other, baptize, 'lose
their face' and their ego by confessing their sins, regaining a new
corporate identity by experiencing love, acceptance and forgiveness.
5. The church has to become small in order to grow big.
Most churches of today are simply too big to provide real
fellowship. They have too often become "fellowships without
fellowship." The New Testament Church was a mass of small groups,
typically between 10 and 15 people. It grew not upward into big
congregations between 20 and 300 people filling a cathedral and making
real, mutual communication improbable. Instead, it multiplied
"sideward"—like organic cells—once these groups reached around 15-20
people. Then, if possible, it drew all the Christians together into
citywide celebrations, as with Solomon's Temple court in Jerusalem.
The traditional congregational church as we know it is, statistically
speaking, neither big nor beautiful, but rather a sad compromise, an
overgrown house-church and an under-grown celebration, often missing
the dynamics of both.
6. No church is led by a Pastor alone
The local church is not lead by a Pastor, but fathered by an Elder,
a local person of wisdom and reality. The local house-churches are
then networked into a movement by the combination of elders and
members of the so-called five-fold ministries (Apostles, Prophets,
Pastors, Evangelists and Teachers) circulating "from house to house,"
whereby there is a special foundational role to play for the apostolic
and prophetic ministries (Eph. 2:20, and 4:11.12). A Pastor (shepherd)
is a very necessary part of the whole team, but he cannot fulfill more
than a part of the whole task of "equipping the saints for the
ministry," and has to be complemented synergistically by the other
four ministries in order to function properly.
7. The right pieces – fitted together in the wrong way
In doing a puzzle, we need to have the right original for the
pieces, otherwise the final product, the whole picture, turns out
wrong, and the individual pieces do not make much sense. This has
happened to large parts of the Christian world: we have all the right
pieces, but have fitted them together wrong, because of fear,
tradition, religious jealousy and a power-and-control mentality. As
water is found in three forms—ice, water and steam—the five ministries
mentioned in Eph. 4:11-12, the Apostles, Prophets, Pastors, Teachers
and Evangelists are also found today, but not always in the right
forms and in the right places: they are often frozen to ice in the
rigid system of institutionalized Christianity; they sometimes exist
as clear water; or they have vanished like steam into the thin air of
free-flying ministries and "independent" churches, accountable to
no-one. As it is best to water flowers with the fluid version of
water, these five equipping ministries will have to be transformed
back into new—and at the same time age-old—forms, so that the whole
spiritual organism can flourish and the individual "ministers" can
find their proper role and place in the whole. That is one more reason
why we need to return back to the Maker's original and blueprint for
the Church.
8. God does not leave the Church in the hands of bureaucratic
clergy
No expression of a New Testament church is ever led by just one
professional "holy man" doing the business of communicating with God
and then feeding some relatively passive religious consumers
Moses-style. Christianity has adopted this method from pagan
religions, or at best from the Old Testament. The heavy
professionalization of the church since Constantine has now been a
pervasive influence long enough, dividing the people of God
artificially into laity and clergy. According to the New Testament (1
Tim. 2:5), "there is one God, and one mediator also between God and
men, the man Christ Jesus." God simply does not bless religious
professionals to force themselves in-between people and God forever.
The veil is torn, and God is allowing people to access Himself
directly through Jesus Christ, the only Way. To enable the priesthood
of all believers, the present system will have to change completely.
Bureaucracy is the most dubious of all administrative systems, because
it basically asks only two questions: yes or no. There is no room for
spontaneity and humanity, no room for real life. This may be OK for
politics and companies, but not the Church. God seems to be in the
business of delivering His Church from a Babylonian captivity of
religious bureaucrats and controlling spirits into the public domain,
the hands of ordinary people made extraordinary by God, who, like in
the old days, may still smell of fish, perfume and revolution.
9. Return from organized to organic forms of Christianity
The "Body of Christ" is a vivid description of an organic, not an
organized, being. Church consists on its local level of a multitude of
spiritual families, which are organically related to each other as a
network, where the way the pieces are functioning together is an
integral part of the message of the whole. What has become a maximum
of organization with a minimum of organism, has to be changed into a
minimum of organization to allow a maximum of organism. Too much
organization has, like a straightjacket, often choked the organism for
fear that something might go wrong. Fear is the opposite of faith, and
not exactly a Christian virtue. Fear wants to control, faith can
trust. Control, therefore, may be good, but trust is better. The Body
of Christ is entrusted by God into the hands of steward-minded people
with a supernatural charismatic gift to believe God that He is still
in control, even if they are not. A development of trust-related
regional and national networks, not a new arrangement of political
ecumenism is necessary for organic forms of Christianity to reemerge.
10. From worshipping our worship to worshipping God
The image of much of contemporary Christianity can be summarized, a
bit euphemistically, as holy people coming regularly to a holy place
at a holy day at a holy hour to participate in a holy ritual lead by a
holy man dressed in holy clothes against a holy fee. Since this
regular performance-oriented enterprise called "worship service"
requires a lot of organizational talent and administrative bureaucracy
to keep going, formalized and institutionalized patterns developed
quickly into rigid traditions. Statistically, a traditional 1-2 hour
"worship service" is very resource-hungry but actually produces very
little fruit in terms of discipling people, that is, in changed lives.
Economically speaking, it might be a "high input and low output"
structure. Traditionally, the desire to "worship in the right way" has
led to much denominationalism, confessionalism and nominalism. This
not only ignores that Christians are called to "worship in truth and
in spirit," not in cathedrals holding songbooks, but also ignores that
most of life is informal, and so is Christianity as "the Way of Life."
Do we need to change from being powerful actors to start "acting
powerfully?"
11. Stop bringing people to church, and start bringing the church
to the people
The church is changing back from being a Come-structure to being
again a Go-structure. As one result, the Church needs to stop trying
to bring people "into the church," and start bringing the Church to
the people. The mission of the Church will never be accomplished just
by adding to the existing structure; it will take nothing less than a
mushrooming of the church through spontaneous multiplication of itself
into areas of the population of the world, where Christ is not yet
known.
12. Rediscovering the "Lord's Supper" to be a real supper with real
food
Church tradition has managed to "celebrate the Lord's Supper" in a
homeopathic and deeply religious form, characteristically with a few
drops of wine, a tasteless cookie and a sad face. However, the "Lord's
Supper" was actually more a substantial supper with a symbolic
meaning, than a symbolic supper with a substantial meaning. God is
restoring eating back into our meeting.
13. From Denominations to city-wide celebrations
Jesus called a universal movement, and what came was a series of
religious companies with global chains marketing their special brands
of Christianity and competing with each other. Through this branding
of Christianity most of Protestantism has, therefore, become
politically insignificant and often more concerned with traditional
specialties and religious infighting than with developing a collective
testimony before the world. Jesus simply never asked people to
organize themselves into denominations. In the early days of the
Church, Christians had a dual identity: they were truly His church and
vertically converted to God, and then organized themselves according
to geography, that is, converting also horizontally to each other on
earth. This means not only Christian neighbors organizing themselves
into neighborhood- or house-churches, where they share their lives
locally, but Christians coming together as a collective identity as
much as they can for citywide or regional celebrations expressing the
corporateness of the Church of the city or region. Authenticity in the
neighborhoods connected with a regional or citywide corporate identity
will make the Church not only politically significant and spiritually
convincing, but will allow a return to the biblical model of the
City-Church.
14. Developing a persecution-proof spirit
They crucified Jesus, the Boss of all the Christians. Today, his
followers are often more into titles, medals and social
respectability, or, worst of all, they remain silent and are not worth
being noticed at all. "Blessed are you when you are persecuted", says
Jesus. Biblical Christianity is a healthy threat to pagan godlessness
and sinfulness, a world overcome by greed, materialism, jealousy and
any amount of demonic standards of ethics, sex, money and power.
Contemporary Christianity in many countries is simply too harmless and
polite to be worth persecuting. But as Christians again live out New
Testament standards of life and, for example, call sin as sin,
conversion or persecution has been, is and will be the natural
reaction of the world. Instead of nesting comfortably in temporary
zones of religious liberty, Christians will have to prepare to be
again discovered as the main culprits against global humanism, the
modern slavery of having to have fun and the outright worship of Self,
the wrong centre of the universe. That is why Christians will and must
feel the "repressive tolerance" of a world which has lost any
absolutes and therefore refuses to recognize and obey its creator God
with his absolute standards. Coupled with the growing ideologization,
privatization and spiritualization of politics and economics,
Christians will—sooner than most think—have their chance to stand
happily accused in the company of Jesus. They need to prepare now for
the future by developing a persecution-proof spirit and an even more
persecution-proof structure.
15. The Church comes home
Where is the easiest place, say, for a man to be spiritual? Maybe
again, is it hiding behind a big pulpit, dressed up in holy robes,
preaching holy words to a faceless crowd and then disappearing into an
office? And what is the most difficult—and therefore most
meaningful—place for a man to be spiritual? At home, in the presence
of his wife and children, where everything he does and says is
automatically put through a spiritual litmus test against reality,
where hypocrisy can be effectively weeded out and authenticity can
grow. Much of Christianity has fled the family, often as a place of
its own spiritual defeat, and then has organized artificial
performances in sacred buildings far from the atmosphere of real life.
As God is in the business of recapturing the homes, the church turns
back to its roots—back to where it came from. It literally comes home,
completing the circle of Church history at the end of world history.
As Christians of all walks of life, from all denominations and
backgrounds, feel a clear echo in their spirit to what God's Spirit is
saying to the Church, and start to hear globally in order to act
locally, they begin to function again as one body. They organize
themselves into neighborhood house-churches and meet in regional or
city-celebrations. You are invited to become part of this movement and
make your own contribution. Maybe your home, too, will become a house
that changes the world.
Why and for whom this book was written
This booklet is the product of many people in many countries, and
draws on the learning experiences of a wide variety of servants of
God. Not only have I physically been writing the notes for it over the
last 2 years in Colombia, USA, Germany, Switzerland, England, Sudan,
Egypt, Cyprus, Saudi Arabia, Muscat, Dubai, India, Sri Lanka,
Bangladesh, Korea, China and Mongolia, but I have been able to discuss
these issues with numerous Pastors and Missionaries and Christian
Leaders. Most important of all, I wanted to listen intently to normal
Christians and their dreams and experiences. I am thankful for all
those inspiring moments, visits, listening to stories, having
discussions, drinking tea. And I am also inspired by a host of
valuable books and other materials; they are simply too numerous to
mention.
Jesus has given us the commission to go and make disciples of all
nations. It is the growing conviction of many Christians around the
world, that this will only be ever achieved by having a church - the
shopping window of God - in walking distance of every person on the
globe. The church - the secret and powerful society of the redeemed -
must again become the place were people can literally see the Body of
Christ, were his glory is revealed in the most practical of all terms
- hands on, down to earth, right next door, unable to overlook or
ignore, living every day amongst us. The process to move towards the
goal of whole nations - countries and people groups and regions -
being discipled by a mass dispersion of the presence of Christ has
come to be known as "Saturation Church Planting," the process which
God seems to choose in nation after nation to mobilize all his people
to work together towards that ultimate goal. The word saturation means
to "fill to the brim", to make full of, to reach a critical mass. God
is the God of Nations. You will quickly see that planting a few
churches here and there is just not enough. What will it take to see
whole nations discipled, with millions of inhabitants and tens of
thousands of villages, with longstanding nonchristian - or worse -
pseudo Christian - traditions and customs and formidable spiritual
forces of their own, with poverty and urbanization and any conceivable
difference of opinions, colors, castes and clans, tribes and language
groups? Many have told me, often enough with tears in their eyes, that
their nation will not truly change its values and be discipled by
anything artificial, by being briefly touched for a fleeting moment by
the abbreviated Gospel of a rather short-lived campaign or program, by
an evangelistic Blitzkrieg or even by the type of church that has been
there for the last 5, 50 or 500 years. Nothing short of the very
presence of the living Christ in every neighborhood and village of
every corner of the nation will do. He has come to live amongst us -
and stay on. We therefore need to plant and water churchplanting
movements that plant and water other churchplanting movements - until
there is no space left for anyone to misunderstand, ignore or even
escape the presence of Jesus in the form that he has chosen to take,
while on Earth - the local church.
This book focuses on the question, what type of church will it take
to do just that? And how do we plant those type of churches?
It is a vision statement in the sense that it tries to capture and
express the visions, hopes and expectations of many Christians around
the globe for a New Testament type church that will truly disciple -
and not only fill - nations;
It is a manifest in the sense that it declares a threefold
conviction: that without a return to the New Testament simplicity of
housechurches; the empowering Five-Fold ministry to spawn a flood of
quality housechurches; and the strategic process of saturation church
planting as a united effort of the Body of Christ, we will continue to
fall short of being obedient to the Great Commission. The number of
people alive today - more than 6 billion - is more than all those in
history combined. If ever we needed to recover a New Testament church
to disciple the nations, now would be a good time.
It is a churchplanting manual in the sense that it will explain how
to plant housechurches. As every company knows, it is best to develop
a working prototype of a product first, and then head for mass
production. If we know what type of church we want, we will also know
how to plant and multiply it.
Why no models?
For some good reasons, I have tried to resist the temptation to
describe a multitude of models, which could be used as a blueprint for
copying. I also have avoided including issues like "six easy steps to
plant a housechurch-movement", because I believe it is neither easy
nor advisable to take formulas and existing models and make
Xerox-copies of them. One reason is: I simply do not believe in
copycat-mentality. It is more important for spiritually significant
principles to sink in and to be grasped, then to simply take a 5-step
outline and copy it. Instead of importing spiritual success-stories of
others I would find it much more natural if we all search for the
ways, which God has ordained for out time and our places to put into
practice, what we feel he has revealed to us. I do not want to spare
anyone of us this creative tension. Another reason is, that many are
looking for a proven truth, a foolproof method and model, a concept
which a sufficient number of others have already tried out and tested,
before they take "a leap of faith" and go and do likewise. This "play
it safe"-mentality, I would suggest, is a spiritual way of hiding fear
which sounds very reasonable, and we may leap, but not really out of
faith. The core secret of followers of Christ to do the works of Jesus
is not that they demand academic and sufficient statistical proof
before they act, but the faithful and obedient desire to follow
Christ's word and do what He said, no matter what.
What about the existing church structure
Nobody lives in a vacuum, and many of us will have grown up in
denominational structures or work in areas with an existing church
history. We will be unable to turn back the wheel of history
altogether, but nowhere in the Bible are we also challenged to
stoically take the Status Quo for granted , but "to be perfect as God
is perfect". This book is not written to suggest that housechurches
are the only possible way of Church. However, it does suggest that if
we want to see whole nations discipled according to the biblical
command of Jesus, we will not be able to accomplish much without
radically returning back to New Testament principles and dynamics of
Church. The focus and perspective of discipling the nations is very
different from maintaining a certain church tradition or sitting in
the ivory tower of theoretical reflection. If housechurches are a
valid expression of the Church - which I am advocating here - then we
need to embrace it at least as one of many valid forms of Church, and
see it's potential unfold towards discipling the nations. I believe
that God has been blessing the world through the existing Church
structures, and has done and is still doing uncounted miracles of
transforming peoples lives and doing good in ways too numerous to
mention. But even the Church should never settle for less than it has
been made for. I believe churches - including housechurches!- come in
all grades and shades of human works coupled with the work of God, an
ever changing mix of spirit and flesh, as long as we will occupy this
earth. But, as it is for us, we are all called to lean as much towards
the works of the Spirit as possible, and to root out the works of the
flesh, if we can. This is humanly impossible, and let me say it
already here: the Church of God is God's invention and humanly not
"doable" or makeable; it cannot be fabricated nor manufactured, but
will only emerge as we yield ourselves to God and become His very
junior partners and stewards in His work of calling back His creation
through His Church unto Himself. But there is hope! God, in His
sovereign ways, is able to do the undoable: to make wine out of water,
to make donkeys talk and ,water flow from a rock, part the sea - and,
most astonishing - even use ordinary humans for His divine glory. This
book is not advocating for you and me to dream up and paint a perfect
and almost romantic picture of Church and admire it from a distance
like in a museum, but to get personally involved as a response to what
God is calling us to do. In this book, I have made plain what I feel
God is calling the Church to be, or to become, and I am willing to be
personally involved locally and globally for that task. I must confess
that I do feel very inadequate at times, loaded with any amount of my
own various Church traditions and many inadequacies and biases. This
also means that I am painfully aware that this book is only an
introductory and unfinished statement, which I am more than happy to
admit. But even the unfinished nature of this book is part of the
message: deus semper major, God is always bigger - than we think. Yes,
we have seen something, but yes, it is also only a part.
But most of all this book is intended to inspire, cheerlead and
celebrate those Christians who will be God's instruments of gathering
the harvest in this last leg of history. As many prophets tell us, it
will be a generation of nobodies, without faces and titles who lead
God's movement on Earth to fulfill its calling. They will do it under
persecution or celebrated in talk shows (which one is worse?), under
unspeakable difficulties or walking on red carpets, despised or
adored, ridiculed or consulted, cheated or honored, scorned or quoted,
tortured or pampered, unknown or known, with frequent flyer cards or
walking bare foot. In other words, this is a battle cry for ordinary
followers of Christ, who, through their humble, self-denying and
obedient lives, will be made extraordinary in purpose and power, and
therefore flood this earth with housechurches, the presence, knowledge
and glory of Christ, like the waters cover the sea.
1. The Reinvention of Church
Bridging the church gap
It is an interesting phenomenon: never in the history has there
been a phase with more significant and global growth of the Christian
Church. Some statistics say that between 2.000 and 3.000 churches are
planted every week. The worldwide evangelical church has grown from
about 150 million in the year 1974 to about 650 million in 1998, and
is today, according to C. Peter Wagner and Ralph Winter, the fastest
growing minority on earth.
And yet, at this time of great excitement - and even triumph in
some groups, the level of dissatisfaction and frustration with "church
as we know it" has probably also reached global proportions. We read
of many people "coming to Christ" every day, and we rejoice. But we
usually do not hear much of those numbers entering membership rolls of
local churches, and even less we hear about the silent exodus of
people slipping out almost unnoticed of the back doors of churches
again; they were attracted, but not contained; interested, but not
inserted into an enveloping fellowship; harvested and cut, but not
gathered into the barn; touched, but not transformed; turned to
briefly look at The Way, then turned away, disappointed with what they
saw.
God yes, church no
In a research done in the early 90's in Netherlands, Amsterdam,
young people have been asked whether they were interested in God. 100%
of them answered yes. Then they were asked whether they are interested
in church, 1% said yes, 99% said no. I remember that most Pastors who
heard this story used to indicate that something is seriously wrong
with those Youth in Amsterdam, since everything - can it be any
different - is right with the church. Today I reluctantly like to
consider it the other way around. Maybe the Youth of Amsterdam has
some lessons to teach the church which we have been rather unwilling
to learn. Maybe we have fallen so much in love with our own traditions
that we are almost unable to truly "hear and feel" the world from our
safe and "holy" distance.
Non-Baptized Believers
Another research conducted nearly a decade ago by Dr. Herbert E.
Hoefer, former Director of Gurukul Theological College (Madras, India)
reveals that more than 200,000 what Hoefer calls "Non Baptized
believers in Christ" secretly exist in this city of 8 Million. This
growing number would call themselves Christians, but do not go to
church, for a variety of reasons. One reason they state, however, is
that they are attracted to Jesus, but not attracted to the church as
they have experienced it.
Ask almost anyone who is not yet a Christian what crosses his mind
when he hears the word "evangelical Church." Chances are, you would
not like what you will hear. It is amazing how well, many Christians
are able to hide or brush over their own deep frustration with the
church. "Look to Jesus, not to the church," they say. And we know deep
down that something is desperately wrong with that statement.
There is a buzzing activity about the church and missions like
never before today. But - also like never before - Pastors are
swapping churches, dropping out of ministry or applying for
"sabbaticals," missionaries are burning out, and many ordinary
Christians simply leave their churches without returning back.
Countless Christians have told me that after trying this model of
church, that recipe of revival, riding this wave and catching the
spirit that way, attending this "life changing seminar" and that
"anointed conference" their lives and their churches are still
dreadfully the same, and they are prepared to give up or just hold on
for dear life.
The crisis of Missions is a crisis of the Church
"I don't like books on missions", says Stephen Gaukroger, President
of the Baptist Union of England and Wales, in the foreword to Patrick
Johnstones book "The Church is bigger than you think". "They usually
tell me what I already know and then make me feel guilty for not doing
more about it!" The traditional understanding of missions encourages
churches or individual people to "go, give or send". But many times
this leaves a bad aftertaste, because we never know when we have gone,
done, spent or sent enough. Patrick Johnstone says it this way: "We
live in a time when our perception of what constitutes the structures
of the Church has been molded by inadequate theology and distorted
patterns inherited over the centuries. Few realize the impact of these
distortions on congregational life. We soon find out that bashing
congregations with a mission challenge or attempting to prick
consciences in public meetings bears meager fruit. We find that the
church has inherited a mind-set or worldview which has excluded
missions altogether". It is no surprise to me that churches who are
not built on apostolic and prophetic foundations (Eph. 2:20) have no
apostolic and prophetic mind-set. This is to be expected. The crisis
of traditional missions is a crisis of the church. If mission is the
natural heartbeat of an apostolic church, it is an expression of God's
grace manifested in apostolic people, not a church trying to fulfill
it's mission quota. We need to take the "legalistic whip" out of
mission, and I suggest we start at the very heart of missions, with
our understanding of the church. I suggest that the whip is not only
evident in missions, it is at home in the church as a result of a lack
of grace and an overdoses of legalism, which often creeps in where the
apostolic and prophetic ministry are missing and are being replaced by
dutiful teachers, beautiful pastors and daring evangelists.
But I intend to point out later that as church is reinvented,
mission will be completely revived, too. "When the church rejects it's
mission, the Church ceases to be the Church", says Donald Miller. But
when the church again becomes the church and accepts it's apostolic
and prophetic nature, then it can become God's instrument of
transforming and discipline neighborhoods and nations. And an
individual church can be used by God, in the spirit of global
partnership, to pour it's oil on other peoples´ fire, so that the
light increases and the world may see whom it has overlooked for all
too long: Jesus Christ.
The Church-gap
Many Pastors know and even say "that the church we preach about is
very different than the church we preach to. That's the very reason
why we preach."
If even pastors admit that, what about new Christians?
"In the days of coffee bar evangelism," says English Churchplanter
Terry Virgo, "there were conferences held on how to bridge the awful
gulf between the coffee bar and the church. It was meant for new
Christians to help them to cope with dead, irrelevant, formal church
services. Once they were told that this cold, unchanging monotony was
the people of God enjoying abundant life. Some, therefore, even
suggested a half-way house, where people could be prepared for church
life."
In the original days of Willowcreek Community Church in Chicago,
which has seeker-oriented worship services - worship experiences
tailor-made for those seeking God, where not-yet believers are
specifically made welcome and given a comfortable, non-embarrassing
and "safe place for a dangerous message", they were well aware of the
"church-gap", the fascination of people with the person of Jesus, and
the dissatisfaction of many with the local church. At that time,
however humorously, they suggested a sevenfold strategy of Evangelism:
1. Spend quality time with Non-Christians; 2. Protect them from the
church. 3. Witness to those new friends about Jesus Christ. 4. Protect
them from the church. 5. Lead them to Christ. 6. Protect them from the
church. 7. When they have matured a bit and are ready even for a
culture shock, introduce them to the church for the first time.
Who follows up whom?
A missionary told me about a church of about 200 in Europe which
wanted to invite Non-Christians for a "special event service". With
the help of a lot of advertising, 50 new people attended this special
event. "Of course, very few of them actually came back to church. But
we are following them up," he said. I was amazed. If 50 non-believers
attend a church service and go away fairly indifferent and not exactly
thrilled with this experience, why is it that the church does not bear
the consequences? Should it not be on its own knees trying to find out
what has obviously desperately gone wrong with itself, that so many
people can come in touch with it - and go rather untouched? Could it
be that the church would much rather have to follow-up itself, than
bothering unimpressed and indifferent one-time visitors with spiritual
sales-techniques? After 1.700 years of post-Constantine Christendom,
can we afford to still discuss how to change the world without being
ready to change ourselves? Maybe we all need to follow the advise of
Rick Warren in his book "The Purpose driven church", to "stop asking
God to bless what we are doing, and start doing what he is blessing".
The Third Reformation
German Church Growth researcher Christian A. Schwarz suggests that
we are in the era of the Third Reformation. The first reformation
happened in the 16th century, when Martin Luther rediscovered the core
essence of the Gospel: salvation by faith, the importance of grace,
and the centrality of scripture. It was a reformation of theology.
The second reformation occurred in the 18th century at the time of
the Moravian and Wesleyan movements, where personal intimacy with
Christ was rediscovered. It was, he says, a reformation of
spirituality, which, born on passionate knees in front of a loving and
personal Savior, gave birth to a whole new era of enthusiastic
missions and evangelism.
However, all of this was still very much pouring new wine into old
wineskins, and sewing new patches onto old cloth. The Roman Catholic
Church and Mass System was very close to the Old Testament
temple-centered worship patterns, complete with frankincense, priests,
sections for the lay people and clerics, and an altar. Luther did
reform the content of the Gospel, but did not change the basic
structure of the "worship service". This
reformed-Roman-Catholic-Jewish meeting-pattern was baptized by
Baptists, anointed by Pentecostals, misused by Cults, renewed by
Charismatic Christians, put into uniform by the Salvation Army,
dry-cleaned by Quakers - but was never really radically changed. The
"services" were still essentially performances, audience-oriented
masses, usually formal and liturgical religious events, where many
spectators and consumers observe a few very involved religious
specialists performing for them and with them.
The third and last part of the Reformation is, therefore, a
reformation of structure. It is not suggesting to make a few cosmetic
changes or alterations here and there, but to build according to New
Testament patterns altogether. If that means that we have to start all
over again, then this is exactly what it means, and this will be what
it will take.
Let me try to say this with a few illustrations and pictures:
Large cars during the Oil Crisis
During the oil crisis in the 70s it was fairly difficult to sell
large cars, because petrol was so costly. Carmakers were scratching
their heads, looking at the heap of unsold cars in their warehouse.
This does remind me sometimes of the situation of the churches in a
number of nations. Is the model of church we are offering simply too
costly, too big? Does the market require another product?
Clogged assembly line
Along a similar line, I would liken the situation of churchplanting
in a number of nations with a clogged assembly line. The product (new
church) seems to be extremely hard to sell and sits figuratively on an
assembly line clogging it up for lack of excited customers who want to
buy that product. Result: The system shuts down, the work inches
forward, people become more and more frustrated. Could it be that we
have become specialists in reproducing assembly lines, but have failed
to spend enough time in examining our prototype product?
Solving the Puzzle
Imagine a young boy, unwrapping a new puzzle and immediately trying
to put together the pieces. He pulls out a piece of cardboard from the
puzzle box, depicting a red race car (he loves red race cars!). All
excited about this new toy, he tries to assemble the pieces according
to the red race car blue print. But somehow or other the pieces do not
seem to fit as they should. He manages to bend them and tear off an
edge here and there in order to make them fit with a little
"convincing force", but something seems to be very wrong. Finally his
father comes to his rescue. Dad immediately spots the problem, takes
the beautiful cardboard with the red race car on it - and turns it
around. And lo and behold, on the "other" side is a beautiful tree,
the "original" . The red race car was only the advertisement for
another puzzle of the company! The boy sighed with relief, and tried
to put together the pieces according to the new original - and within
minutes he was done. What was wrong before? He had all the right
pieces, but the wrong original. He had unquestionable and honest
motives, but quite simply the wrong blue print.
Spiritual Xerox-machines
Could it be that this is, in short, the situation of a large part
of Christendom today? We have all the right pieces. The word of God;
People; houses; prayer; motivation; money. But could it be that we put
them all together according to a wrong original? Our very own beloved
red race car? Has the unthinkable happened that someone sinister has
cunningly slipped us an unpractical blueprint? And could it be that
here we stand, transfixed in front of our spiritual Xerox-copy
machines (translate bible schools, publishing houses, seminaries or
leadership-producing programs), and keep hitting that green button
which says "Copy" and wait for it to make copies of what we are
convinced to be a biblical, canonized, unquestionable Bible- and
history proven first-hand "original."
I can imagine Satan, the enemy of the Church, having no problem
with even the most frantic evangelistic or mission activities and
programs - as long as it is all about making copies of "red race
cars", of a pattern of Church which is not seriously endangering his
satanic claims on mankind. Maybe it is time for us to stop scratching
the surface of humanity and allow God to re-invent and recreate Church
in all of us. It might start with us re-examining our blueprints and
turning around our originals.
Stop starting with the church
Most of us will have grown up or decided to be part of one
Christian denomination or another, and we will usually see and
interpret Christianity - and even the Bible - through reading glasses
of our own familiar tradition, "our way of belief and practice". Which
tradition is right? As Argentinean Evangelist Juan Carlos Ortiz once
pointed out: "There are more than 22.000 denominations in the world.
How lucky are you, that you happen to be just in the right one!" Since
then, not only has the number of denominations risen to between 24.000
and 30.000, but many start to understand that most problems of today's
churches do not lie so much outside the system, but inside the system,
that is, inside our inherited, learned and dear patterns of belief and
practice, the way we "do church."
Who is to blame?
"Our bookshelves are full of Christian books and videos. We have
churches on every major street, more staff people than ever before,
large Sunday school departments, cell systems, mega- and meta-church
seminars. We have Christian bumper stickers, political action groups,
huge parachurch ministries - and in the midst of it all, we have lost
every major city in North America", says Ted Haggard of New Life
Church in Colorado Springs in his book "Primary purpose - Making it
hard for people to go to hell from your city". He goes on to say:
"Rather than rethinking our methods and challenging our own
effectiveness, we try to escape responsibility for the eternal
damnation of those in our communities by blaming others for our own
spiritual ineffectiveness."
The traditional church - biggest barrier to belief
In a study in 1994 under the title "Barriers to Belief" in
Scotland, says Rev. John Campbell, "many have indicated that one of
the greatest barriers to belief in God is the Church itself." If the
problem is the system, then even our best solution is part of the
problem. That leaves even the most dedicated, visionary, passionate
and revived Christians trapped in a system which is sucking their very
energy and is simply overpowering. The way forward, therefore, may not
be hidden in slight changes and adaptations to some new forms in
"Church as we know it", but in a much more radical rediscovery of the
very nature of Church itself. The quickest way to "Church the
unchurched" may very well be to "unchurch the Church." Bob Hopkins,
one of the initiators of the Anglican Church Planting Initiative in
England, has therefore recommended to "stop starting with the Church".
What this implies is that we might want to stop taking today's
Churches and its "worship patterns" for absolutely granted. It seems,
after all, that God has been waiting for a long time throughout
history, ready to give the right answers to those asking the right
questions. Housechurches, in other words, are the missing link between
spirituality and society, between Jesus and his Body, between heaven
and earth.
A stumbling block or a treasure
Jesus compares the Kingdom of God to a man who finds a treasure
while ploughing a field (Mt 13:44) and then goes on to sell all his
possessions to buy the field - and the treasure. What first looks like
a stumbling block, a misplaced rock, interrupting the daily routine
and initially annoys and upsets the fixed agenda of "ploughing the
fields day by day" even in traditional church life, may turn out to be
the greatest find of a persons life. Let me forewarn you a bit: This
may happen to you too, as God speaks to you about housechurches in His
own ways. Maybe the answers to the questions of so many of us are
hidden, but close, waiting to be stumbled upon, locked behind a
forbidden door other people do not even think exists. We may find it
out of unbearably agony with the status quo, because we seriously
search and then find, or as a result of a simply accident. But at this
point, housechurches may yet be something completely unthinkable,
literally unheard of, something which even sounds almost heretical in
the beginning, but becomes clearer and clearer as we move on through
the fog of tradition and reread our bibles. However, take a piece of
advise from the parable of the hidden treasure. As you discover it, do
not go to town and make a big announcement on the market place. Hide
it again in the field, go and sell all what you have, and then go buy
it and do whatever God shows you to do.
"Reconstructing" the Church
Many Churches who are desperate for renewal - or at least change -
tend to overlook that you cannot produce a new quality in the Church
by changing the structures. Management-Guru Tom Peters says, renewal
and reformation is out - revolution is in; a company does not really
need a CEO- a Chief Executive Officer, but a CDO - a Chief Destruction
Officer, regularly dismantling blocking traditions, because it is so
much easier to rebuild according to a new pattern than to restore and
renew an outdated one. Changing a church by changing some outward
forms is as futile as trying to change your mentality by putting on
another dress or walking backwards from now on to stop you from going
to cinemas. Adding a new mission statement or any other cosmetic
alterations without a radical genetic reformation of the church will
only lead to frustration - like sewing a patch of new cloth onto old
cloth, which, says Jesus, is bad advise. Revival and reformation truly
starts with a complete rediscovery and reconstruction of the core
essence of the church, with New Testament DNA, the genetical code of
God, supernaturally empowered with growth potential from within (Mark
4:26). This spiritual seed material is, like any grain of wheat,
equipped and able to develop it's own appropriate structures from the
inside-out, without instruction from outside; it simply unfolds itself
according to a creational blueprint within, it unzips. It's soil is
literally the soil of nations and peoplegroups. The result of this
incarnation, at least in New Testament times, was a housechurch
movement, that swept the city of Jerusalem like yeast in a dough, or
like an unstoppable virus, in maybe less than two years.
Biotic principles
Almost all life forms are based on the multiplication of organic
cells. Unlimited growth is against creational principles; but not
multiplication. My friend Christian Schwarz has studied what he calls
"biotic" principles, patterns that operate within God's created order
of organic life. This lead him to develop what he calls "Natural
Church Growth". Many insights are drawn from agricultural and
biological contexts where growth is definitely according to the divine
pattern and method, and not like the humanly-devised artificial
patterns of mechanical production and growth. These biotic principles
stand in stark contrast to the "technocratic" methods which govern
machines. They are as different from each other as a robot is from a
human being. One is a machine while the other is an organism. The
"machine" or "robot" model functions very well in the world of
technology but fails in the world of biotic, organic growth. When we
understand that the church is a creation of God, a "biotic" organism,
we must look for God's natural, organic principles to understand how
it grows. Biotic principles utilize the minimum amount of energy to
produce the maximum results, an effective "all-by-itself" development.
This avoids the church to become manufactured, but allows it to be
recreated by the Spirit of God according to God's creational patterns.
We simply labor in vain if we follow only man-made patterns or
formulas, even if they are handed to us in the form of good and
cherished traditions. Some biotic principles are
Structured interdependence, meaning that the way the parts of an
organism are inter-related are more important than the parts
themselves. All organic cells arrange themselves not in a chaos guided
by chance, but according to a creational and inbuilt pattern were each
cell or organ is linked with others. In terms of church multiplication
this means that no issue or topic or aspect should be seen or even
treated in isolation of all the other aspects and parts.
Multiplication. Unlimited growth is not the ideal - multiplication
is. The fruit of an apple tree is not an apple, but another apple
tree. The fruit of a church is not a convert, but other churches that
plant other churches.
Energy transformation. This is the principle that observes how
existing forces (even contrary ones) can be used positively towards a
desired goal. This is also how an organism fights a virus; not in a
head-on collision, but using much of the energy of the intruder to
defeat the intruder. Through a vaccination process former
health-destroying energies are transformed into health promoting ones.
Many churches use the boxer-approach to life instead, using energy to
reduce an outside "attack" to zero, and then, in a second strike,
deliver it's own message.
How to break the "20-Barrier"
I have read a book written by Bill M. Sullivan, titled "Ten Steps
to breaking the 200-barrier". The very healthy intention of Sullivan
fits ideologically into the mainstream of the Church Growth movement
of the 70s and 80s: Good churches grow big, and very good churches
grow very big. Anything that stops a "healthy" church from growing is
a barrier, and those barriers are bad and must therefore go. The idea
of the "200-Barrier" is simple. Statistically most churches stop to
grow somewhere between 100 and 300 people, on average at about 200.
There are good cultural, sociological and even architectural reasons
for that. One is structural, an inbuilt problem of the traditional
One-Pastor-church: There are only so many people (in the USA: 200) a
Pastor can personally and effectively care for. He may have a lot of
space in his agenda, but a quite limited space in his heart; and
people realize that. Result: The growth grinds to a halt, the church
hits an invisible ceiling, the "200 Barrier". However, I suggest there
is a much more important barrier to overcome: the "20-Barrier". How do
we break it?
The invisible line: from organic to organizational
As any family get-together will teach us, we can accomplish the
goal of fellowship without the need to be heavily structured. Families
can get along quite well without a master of ceremony, a word of
introduction, a special song, a sermon by father and a vote of thanks
by mother. These things happen at weddings and other festivals, but
not in everyday life. Church, however, is not an artificial
performance, it is for everyday life, because it is a way of life.
There is, in each culture, a very important numerical line we can
cross: from the organic to the organized, from the informal to the
formal, from spontaneous to liturgical. I call this most important
line the 20-barrier, because in many cultures 20 is a maximum number
where people still feel "family", organic and informal, without the
need to get formal or organized. Organisms are structured, too, and I
am not advocating a total absence of order and structure. But,
different to an organized series of meetings which are typically
structured from outside, organisms are usually structured from within.
The nature of a meeting defines and therefore limits the size of a
meeting. If we cross the "20-barrier", the group stops to be organic,
and starts to become formal, and even feel the need to follow a set
agenda. Effectiveness in relationship and mutual communication goes
down, and the need for someone to coach and lead the meeting goes up.
As a result, the housechurch looses it's main original attractions,
changes it's values, and starts to develop totally different dynamics.
It often simply stops functioning by itself, spontaneous and lively,
lead invisibly and unobtrusively through the inbuilt family mechanisms
of fathering and mothering, and needs to be literally "run",
organized, and visibly lead into a new and organized life form - if
there is such a thing. The original organism is then a thing of the
past, still alive, but trapped into a formal structure that chokes it,
conditions it, and ultimately could prevent relational and spontaneous
fellowship in the name of organized fellowship. Biblical koinonia
means fellowship or sharing, giving generously and participating and
sharing something with someone. One of the fatal aspects of this
line-crossing is that the original organic form of fellowship usually
looses it's internal reproduction potential, and can only be cloned
and copied or even literally manufactured and finally mass produced
with huge effort from outside that greatly ignores and overrules it's
own inbuilt explosive growth potential. It is a fact of church history
that it has always been a swift step from organized religion to
institutionalism and fossilization.
Person number 21
One of the most important decisions in terms of the structure and
future of a church anyone can possibly make, therefore, is what you do
when person number 21 walks through the door. Structurally, that
brings the church into the red phase. You either continue growing
upwards and become organized and loose your housechurch-dynamics, and
may ultimately hit the 200-barrier, or you divide the housechurch into
two or three units and multiply it, thus growing sidewards. You may
not even notice a 200-barrier this way.
A wedding a week?
Life in any culture has two aspects, the private and the public,
everyday-life and the special events, celebrations of weddings,
function and festivals, funerals and traditional happenings. Both
aspects of life have their own and valid ways of expression. Everyday
life is usually expressed in the family, the basic cell unit of every
society and culture. Families are usually very organic, informal,
relational and consist of whatever it takes to share lives. Weddings
and other functions are extraordinary events, for which everyone duly
prepare; they are usually formal, need heavy organization and are
often highly structured.
Imagine you would have to attend a wedding each week. It follows
the same basic pattern, has even the same bridegroom and bride, and
maybe even the food is the same. After some weeks the excitement would
considerably wear down. You would know what to expect, and you know
what's going to happen next. It still would remain a nice thing, a
beautiful tradition, but it would feel odd to have the same type of
festival each week.
We need to be careful not to do this with church. Jesus has shown
us a way to live, not only a way to celebrate. Both aspects are
necessary, both are good. But everyday life is not like a wedding, as
any married couple can tell us. If we allow church to take on only
"celebration structures", we will start celebrating "a wedding a
week", and our behavior will soon be far removed from real life and
cease to make sense to ordinary people. It would become an artificial
weekly event and performance. If church is a God-given way of
community life, and if life takes place in the basic unit of a family
living in a home, there is nothing more appropriate for the church to
be a housechurch, to be the church based in simple, ordinary, everyday
homes. Housechurches are not only a way for us humans to express
community, they are one of God's means to achieve community.
Small churches may already be far too big
Creation itself teaches us that nothing healthy grows endlessly,
but stops growing at a point and starts multiplying. Bigger is not
necessarily better or more beautiful. Could it be that in this
perspective - to grow a church bigger - everything is right - expect
the direction in which we look? Could it be that the problem is not so
much to break the 200-barrier on the way up, but the 20-barrier on the
way down? If real church growth spells m-u-l-t-i-p-l-i-c-a-t-i-o-n,
then growth may not be upwards at all, but sidewards. Has all that
talk about "big is beautiful" tricked our thinking? If yes, maybe we
will have to cut out a Zero in our mindset: an average church would
then be just 8, 10 or 12 people; a large church has 15, and a
megachurch sports 21.
Could it be that the average "small church" of 25 or 45 people,
which is trying to rent a hall, or sanction a building fund, just
bought a pulpit and still saves for an overhead projector, is not at
all too small, but already far too big? They have crossed the
organism-organization line long ago, trying "to grow up like all those
other churches", not realizing that they already have become quite
heavy and inflexible, structurally bloated and deformed, just like
someone with a waterbelly suffering from his own weight, and only kept
going and inching forward by the relentless activities of a busy
"Pastor" or leader with his co-workers?
Worldwide the average size of churches is around 100. Only a very
small percentage of churches become bigger than 200, and many are in
the 40-60 bracket. The average Sunday-morning attendance of the
Lutheran churches in Germany, for example, was 23,5 people in the year
1993.
Shrink in order to grow
Maybe it simply requires a true apostolic gifting - which is
statistically speaking fairly rare - to transform any given church
into a megachurch. For many churches it could be a liberation to be
allowed to become what many of them already are: slightly overgrown
housechurches struggling with their own size and the unspoken original
they are trying to become. Would it not be much more practical for
them to head the other way, and become smaller, to move into the
direction of housechurches, to "grow down" rather than keep on
striving to "grow up"?
Elton Trueblood once said: "The church must be smaller before it
can be substantially stronger." I agree. But if we take this one step
further, this would also mean that the church of the future will have
to become much smaller, before it can become substantially bigger, by
becoming much more numerous. Statistically, it will have to shrink in
order to grow.
Swiss Prophets about Switzerland
A friend told me recently, that God had shown him a prophetic
vision of the Thunersee, the "Lake Thun" near Interlaken. There he
observed many small groups of Christians baptizing people. "The Lake
Thun will be the biggest baptismal lake in Switzerland", God told him.
"But why are those groups so small?" asked my friend. "They are
housechurches," God told him.
Another senior friend of mine, now in his 70s, told me of a vision
he had, where God had shown him in prayer that a new form of church
will spread in Switzerland like wildfire: housechurches. As a result
of this move of God there will be a large gathering of approximately
200.000 Christians at an open-air ground near the city of Luzern in
the year 2.001, where those Christians will form themselves into a
unity and speak collectively with one voice to Switzerland as a
nation.
Pastor Mike Bickle from Kansas, USA, once told that God had
"revealed to him that he is going to change the forms and expressions
of church within one generation to the degree that it will not be
recognizable any more." That was in Cairo in the year 1982. The future
will tell whether it was God or just a dream. Rick Joyner, a prophetic
teacher from Charlotte, USA, says it this way: "I see such a sweeping
return to Biblical Christianity coming, that the very understanding of
Christianity, by both the world and the church, will be changed. This
does not imply any kind of doctrinal changes as to what it means to be
a Christian, but a change that causes us to live by the truths we
proclaim. This will be reflected when we truly become known for our
love for one another".
I do respect Amos 3: 7-8 and the biblical ministry of prophecy, and
I am far from encouraging anyone to pick up stones of tradition and
throw them at prophets. What if those visions - which are only part of
a growing flood of voices amongst God's people today - are really from
God? What would that mean for us as Christians? For our churches?
Could we simply smile a bit about that nice - but surly absurd! -
thought, turn the page, cut onions, water the garden, go out in the
evening, finally order that overhead projector and carry on with
"church as we know it?"
Cell - Congregation - Celebration
In Church Growth terminology we differentiate between three levels
of church, 1. cell, 2. congregation and 3. celebration. I would very
briefly like to explain what these terms mean.
The cell is typically housebased and sociologically small, between
3-20 people. It's purpose is relational fellowship, and it functions
mostly organic, that is, members are often in direct contact with each
other and therefore a natural part of each other's lives.
The congregation is sociologically of medium size, usually between
20 and 200, and functions more formal, organized, usually has a
Pastor, co-workers, a type of worship service, and various programs.
It often tries to serve a parish, and functions usually in a
"sanctuary" of any type, a building specially used for religious
purposes. Members do not have direct and natural contacts with each
other, because the meeting is too large and not structured to allow
for that.
The celebration is typically a large (200+) gathering of Christians
of an area, expressing their unity in Christ, celebrating what God has
done and will do for them, anticipating Christ's return, typically
lead by Christians with apostolic and prophetic ministries.
Celebrations can happen in the open air, in stadiums, conference
centers or any other large area. People have no way of being in direct
contact with all present, and are "happily lost in the crowd".
The Small and the Large
Biblically we find two of those structures or levels, the cell and
the celebration. In the New Testament we read of the church regularly
meeting in houses, that is in "cell-sized units", and meeting in
Salomon's Temple court, or in the open air, in big numbers.
Of those two, the cell, that is the housebased church, was the
natural habitat, the normal and most common form of Christians getting
together. Once the Jerusalem Temple was declared out of bounds for
followers of "The Way", they kept on meeting in homes. When the
celebration was not possible, the cell lived on.
The risen Christ strongly identified with the church in the houses,
and did not urge them anywhere to form "Christian synagogues" or build
religious buildings. When Saul was persecuting the churches and broke
into homes to drag out Christians, Jesus asked him in his Damascus
encounter: "Saul, why do you persecute me?"
During the first three centuries after Christ, church historians
tell us that the housechurch was and remained the normal and natural
way of Christians sharing their new lives together. There will be a
more detailed account of the housechurches throughout the ages in the
next chapter, so I can be very brief here. Only after Emperor
Constantine in the 4th century was there a radical shift in terms of
church structure. The congregation/cathedral-type church was
introduced, the church became an audience, housechurches were
marginalized and ultimately forbidden. No one could function as
Christians privately, without the sanction of the state and it's
acknowledged and ordained "orthodox" church.
The mouse married the elephant
The result of this developments was a structural compromise, a
marriage between the mouse (the cell) and the elephant (the
celebration), giving birth to a most unusual creation, the
congregational-type church. It was, in many ways, a strongly
professionalized church, with priests fit for a king. It developed
it's own specialized buildings for religious purposes, removing church
from everyday life into relicts from the Old Testament religion, with
priests, altars and heavily symbolic rituals, where most visitors were
bound to become spectators, and could not really be participants any
more.
As a result of this compromise the church lost two of it's most
powerful dynamics. The congregational church was basically an
overgrown housechurch and an undergrown celebration, and therefore
missed out on both very important aspects of the cell and the
celebration. The cell provided family dynamics, a private and stable
home and organic place of belonging and accountability to Christians,
whereby the celebrations were places charged with a somewhat grandiose
and truly public atmosphere, were the small housechurches reconnected
with the big picture and each other, heard apostolic teaching and
encountered prophetic vision. This often created an excited
pull-effect drawing in more people on a public level, and such
gatherings could literally shake a city or region.
Fellowship without fellowship
The congregational-type church with it's semi-private atmosphere,
it's limited fellowship possibilities and it's professional clergy was
a political solution which suited the state and conveniently fitted
into the religious "patterns of the world" at the same time. It was,
in many ways, a triumph of the religious spirit, a return to the law
and religious patterns of the Old Testament and even pagan religions,
from which Jesus wanted to liberate mankind. Let me remind us that the
problem is not the Old Testament at all. That is and remains a crucial
part of God's revelation to mankind. The problem is carrying over Old
Testament principles into New Testament times, ignoring the dynamic
development of God's relationship to mankind, where He established the
Kingdom of God over and beyond the ethnic focus on the people of
Israel.
Since this new congregational structure was powerfully enforced by
the state and church laws, it forced it's content - the quality - to
adapt to the new structure. In the New Testament, the content defined
the form, that is, the quality defined the structure. Now this process
was reversed, and the form molded the content, the structure defined
the quality.
This meant that organic and natural Christian fellowship had to be
adjusted and fit into a new container, the formal church building, and
therefore had to be watered down to fill out the new bigger structure.
Ultimately, fellowship was thinned out to almost homeopathical doses,
and started to loose it's impact on the Christians themselves as well
as on society. The "fellowship without fellowship" was born.
The end of the Lords Supper
Another victim of this process was "the Lord's Supper". Since it is
quite difficult to feed a cathedral full of people with real food, it
degenerated into a religious and symbolic ritual, offering microscopic
sips of wine and a small wafer, often enough only to the "clergy"
while the masses looked on in pious amazement. This meant that the
"Lords Supper" was a supper no more, and lost it's powerful meaning of
a redeemed species doing the unheard of: people, irrespective of
classes and caste, revolutionarily sharing real food with a prophetic
meaning, having dinner with God, expecting his physical presence at
any time just like after the resurrection. It thus became "the
Eucharist", a pious and symbolic shell of the original meal of a tasty
lamb that Jesus shared with his disciples. By AD 150 the Eucharist and
the love feast were two distinct parts of the Lord's Supper. Biblical
commentator William Barclay says it like this: "The celebration of the
Lord's Supper in a Christian home in the first century and in a
cathedral in the twentieth century cannot be more different, they bear
no relationship to each other whatsoever."
Did Procrustes work over the church?
It reminds me of the famous giant Procrustes in Greece, who
forcefully made travelers between Athens and Corinth to lay down on
his big bed, and if they were found too short for his bed, they were
cruelly stretched with ropes to fill the length of the bed, breaking
their bones in the process. If they ever happened to be too long, they
were unceremoniously cut down to fit the bed also.
The structural lie
Today, 1700 years after those developments, we have become so
accustomed with the congregational-type church, that many find it hard
to even imagine any other form of "real church life" or "worship
services". Those historical events created a powerful system, a
uniformed pattern, a sanctioned and later even sanctified structure,
which has molded the experiences and the mindset of people over long
centuries, and has created a distorted picture of church that is not
any more true to its original. This whole process canonized and
institutionalized a devastating mediocrity, a middle-of-the
road-solution, simply functioning in religious and political
correctness of the day. The congregational church became a "structural
lie," because it paints the right message in the wrong colors, casts
the right material in wrong forms, fills the water of life into
contaminated bottles, takes the redeemed sinners and forms them into a
harmless species of nice churchgoers and program participants. It
makes heavenly promises, but does not deliver them on earth.
In short, it became a self-defeating structure, standing in it's
own way, hindering itself, creating the very problems it wants to
solve, frustrating and breaking the hearts of millions of people who
searched for God and found the congregational-type church, a
caricature of God's supernatural family on earth. Only true spiritual
heroes and outstanding characters were ever able to rise their head
above the polluted waters of this system and make a difference for
some time, as we will see in the historical chapter. But whatever they
changed, whatever they pleaded for, whatever renewal, revival or
reforms they proposed until this very day, was swallowed up soon
enough by the unchanging system of Christendom, by the structure of
church they did not dare to touch.
Five elements of a cathedral-church
American veteran missionary and author Bill Beckham, in his book
"The Second Reformation," describes a congregation- or cathedral-type
church like this: "Since the time of Constantine in the Fourth Century
the church has functioned primarily as a 'Cathedral'. At least five
important elements are identified with this "Cathedral" way of being
the church:
1. A Building (a 'Cathedral' or 'Church');
2. A Special Day (Sunday);
3. A professional leadership (priest, clergyman, holy man);
4. A special service, performed for the people (ceremonies,
services, interpretation of dogma, motivation) and
5. A way to maintain itself (tithes and offerings).
In spite of different types of church government, different
architectural designs of buildings, different titles and clothes for
leaders, different worship form, and different theologies, churches
for the most part have functioned through this 'Cathedral' form.
Whether Catholic or Baptist, Presbyterian or Pentecostal, 'High
Church' or 'Low Church,' urban or rural, large or small, rich or poor,
Western or Eastern, churches have been 'Cathedral' in nature. This
'Cathedral' system has survived political upheavals, rearrangement of
world maps, great social changes, theological heresies, the Protestant
Reformation, and numerous movements. It's adaptability has been
nothing short of amazing. Using a combination of the Roman
governmental and feudal systems, Emperor Constantine developed a
church structure that has lasted for seventeen centuries. The
'Cathedral' structure has had the capacity to absorb all major
movements into its structure without changing its own basic form."
Principles, not procedures
I am not proposing to revitalize and reinvent the New Testament
church straight out of the book of Acts, faithfully copying all it's
cultural forms and expressions, because we are living in different
times and places. Our cities look much more like Corinth than
Jerusalem; many countries live in a postmodern and post-Christendom
era; however, we can and should learn from New Testament principles,
without copying all it's time-specific and cultural procedures; we
should take the New Testament quality of church very serious, but
develop structures, methodologies and procedures for our own time and
cultures and people groups.
From inherited to emerging mode
"The West has compressed celebration into congregation, and
forgotten the homes," says Rev. Bob Hopkins of the Anglican Church
Planting Network in England, and goes on to ask: "Is congregation the
concrete in which our view of church is set? And, I might add, is this
view captured by national pride and church culture?" Europe now boasts
of a strong residue of Christian history and structures, but the
church has largely lost the people." That is why Anglican Robert
Warren speaks of the "inherited mode of church" and an "emerging
mode", a new - or possible very old - form of church reemerging
according to New Testament patterns.
In order to point out some of the differences between the
congregational churches and the New Testament house churches, here is
a selective list of key areas were they differ greatly. I am sure this
list could be prolonged further:
| |
Congregational Church |
The New Testament Church |
| Place |
meets in sanctuaries |
moves from house to house |
| Main functionaries |
Pastors, Teachers. Evangelist |
Apostles, Prophets, Elder |
| finances |
tithes and offering |
sharing all they have |
| lifestyle |
individual |
community lifestyle |
| Evangelism |
outreach, action, programs, specialists |
natural discipling of neighbors; multiplying
itself |
| battle cry |
getting people into the church |
getting the church into people's homes |
| Size |
big, impersonal groups |
small, intimate groups |
| teaching style |
static, sermon -centered |
kinetic, discussion-style |
| most important task of a pastor |
lead the church program preach good sermons;
house visits etc |
equip each believer for task of doing the ministry
themselves |
| centre |
worship service in a religious building |
the ordinary house is the centre |
| Keyword |
become a member! |
Go and make disciples! |
| Ministry |
performance oriented |
equipping oriented |
| Mission |
sending specialized missionaries |
church sends itself as a multipliable unit |
Cell church, BEC, Housechurch
Today there are three main movements, each advocating in different
ways a return to a "cell-based" house centered church. Most of those
movements would say: "You can do with cell and celebration, but the
congregation is quite dispensable."
The three different streams are
1. The classic "Cell church" advocated for example by Ralph
Neighbor, William Beckham, or Yonggi Cho.
2. The BEC (Base-Ecclesial Community), mostly within the Roman
Catholic Church
3. the Housechurch Movement, maybe best known today from China and
Vietnam.
While the cell church looks and sounds almost the same as the
housechurch movement, it is not. There are very significant and vital
differences, which I will point out later. The Base-Ecclesial
Community is a long-lasting small group experiment within the Roman
Catholic church, and might very well develop into a cell church
structure within that church. This book focuses on house churches.
Advantages of house churches over traditional churches
I am aware of at least twelve advantages of a cell-based
housechurch movement over a traditional congregational-style church:
1. Discipled multiplication
Housechurch is a model centered on multiplication and discipleship
with huge growth potential, because the "cell" is the multipliable
unit itself. Mentoring, multiplication and discipleship is the heart
of the concept. Congregation is not by definition a discipleship model
and structurally tends to prevent mentoring and discipleship.
Discipleship never really is only "one-on-one", it is a function of
community. Next to the Holy spirit, peer pressure may be the strongest
teacher on earth, as any parents of teenagers will agree. The
housechurches allow for a redeemed use of peer pressure, living out a
healthy and loving accountability with each other, learning a new
kingdom value from each other and, being friends and family with each
other, helping each other to be collective do-ers of a new paradigm,
were no-one is left to individual and secret struggles, and therefore
quickly matures.
2. Persecution-proof structure
Through it's small and flexible way of life and it's
"persecution-proof spirit", housechurches can develop into an almost
"persecution-proof structure", as opposed to the very visible and
immovable traditional "church with a cross on it's steeple."
3. Free from Church Growth barriers
Once careful attention is given to prevent housechurches from
moving from an organic to an organizational mode, housechurches can be
multiplied through mitosis, an organic cell-reproduction process, and
the overall growth of a movement is virtually free from "church growth
barriers."
4. Involves many more people more efficiently
Congregations are often program based, where most programmes are
organized at the congregational level. They have proven to be quite
inefficient and resource hungry, usually involving 20% of exhausted
members of the church doing the work for the other, more passive, 80%.
In the housechurch, almost everyone can be easily and naturally
involved, and "dead wood is cut out". Since involved people are
fulfilled and therefore happy people, the overall quality - and
efficiency - of the church grows.
5. Breaks the pastoral care-dilemma
The housechurch model breaks the pastoral care dilemma - a known
and self-defeating problem of the congregational church: as numbers
grow, the pastoral quality usually goes down, because the Pastor
cannot tend to all his sheep any more.
6. Provides a place of life transformation and accountability
The housechurch is an ideal setting to change values, transfer life
and therefore transform lifestyles. An analysis of the western church
shows that the congregational model is almost totally ineffective at
changing basic values and lifestyles. Many Christians end up with the
same lifestyle of people around, and therefore become
indistinguishable from society and loose their prophetic edge.
Housechurches provide a place of radical transformation of values,
reordering life, offering mutual and organic accountability, where
even a redeemed peer pressure, "the most powerful teacher after Jesus
himself", is made to function for good, and not for bad.
7. The house is a most effective place for new Christians
Much has been written about the inward looking mentality of the
congregational church, whereby the church and it's programs is the
center, and everything else is rotating around this hub. This
structure traditionally resents new people coming in, "messing up the
order and the situation." The congregation is, statistically speaking,
a most unfriendly zone for new Christians, also accounting for
unbelievable large drop-out rates of up to 99% in so-called
"evangelistic-follow-up programs". In contrast, the "cell" or
housechurch is a most effective, natural and welcoming zone for new
people to come and stay in touch with the Christian community. It
provides spiritual fathers and mothers, not teachers and paper. It
also reverses the general direction of the perspective of Christians:
instead of getting people to the church, they are getting the church
to the people.
8. Solves the leadership crisis
Housechurch-leaders are Elders, and they are just that: older than
most, without necessarily being "elderly". Elders do not have to be
skilled Masters of Ceremony and learned teachers, but modest and
authentic fathers and mothers with obedient children will do nicely to
start with. They are by then already many years into living a maturing
life and passing the test of time, not freshlings from a seminary able
to perform some religious functions. This leadership is easy to find
and develop anywhere without time-consuming schools for religious
specialists. It depends on initial and ongoing apostolic and prophetic
input and support, ministries, which in themselves can be multiplied
and therefore match and grow exponentially with a multiplying
housechurch movement. Traditional Sunday- or Bible Schools and
seminaries are mostly static and addition-based leadership development
systems which grow linear, at best. They are an informational system,
not a transformational system, as Beckham rightly points out.
Therefore they cannot match a multiplying movement of housechurches
with an exponentially growing need for elders.
9. Overcomes the clergy-laity division
"Nowhere in the New Testament do we find references to a pastor
leading a congregation", says Barney Coombes. The housechurch does not
need a Pastor in the traditional sense at all, because elders,
functioning together with the corporate giftedness of the housechurch
to maintain and multiply the life of the church. This therefore breaks
the curse of the clergy-laity division, which the congregational
system reinforces.
10. It is more biblical
We cannot afford to ignore biblical revelation for too long and get
away with it. Tradition is a strong teacher, but God's word is more
reliable and simply better. Even in an age of Postmodernism and
relativity, the Bible still teaches absolutes. However, the Bible
absolutely does not teach us to call a holy crowd gathering on a holy
day at a holy hour in a holy sanctuary to participate in a holy ritual
performed by holy men in holy clothes against a holy fee to be the New
Testament church. God's work done God's way still attracts God's
blessing. Even in Moses' time God exhorted him to build "according to
the pattern". It is worth to struggle even with our own trusted
tradition for the purpose of regaining biblical truth, because it is
not tradition which sets us free, but the truth of God's word.
11. Undeniable cheaper
The congregational church can be defined as "plot plus building
plus priest plus salary plus programmes". The housechurch is "people
plus ordinary houses plus faith plus shared life", which is undeniably
cheaper. As congregational or cathedral-type churches cost enormous
sums of money to establish them, and more money to maintain or even
propagate the system, the cells and housechurches literally make
money, because they produce more than they consume. In an age where
there seems to be an endless battle cry for more money for "the church
work", we should not overlook alternatives and be good stewards of
God's financial talents he gives us.
12. It resurrects the City church
The church in the New Testament was named according to it's
location, not denomination. With a new wave of housechurches, this
also opens up a way back to the "city church," literally the church of
the city, all Christians of a city or region together, meeting
regularly or irregularly in city-wide celebrations, were the cities
most gifted Christians and humble servants of the Lamb forget all the
titles and politics, and in a new maturity sacrifice their own name,
denominationalism, reputation and single-handed success to the single
advancement of the Kingdom of only one King, the Lamb of God. Imagine
the thrill of the public when this collective city-based and authentic
leadership regularly casts prophetic vision, teaches apostolic
standards, stands united, blesses each other and speaks to the world
with one voice. What the devil has tried hard to prevent at any cost
will again come true: that "the Romans," "the Ephesians," "the
Corinthians," "the Church of Jerusalem", Vienna, Singapore, Baghdad,
Khartoum or Montevideo will reconnect with each other, form itself
into one supernatural corporate identity and movement under one single
lord and master, and speak with a collective and powerful voice to
their city and nation. What happens at the small level of
housechurches will eventually spill over on a larger city-scale, where
the church will "excel at the small and therefore excel at the large".
Instead of Christians being regularly excited top-down through
imported motivators and speakers at artificial conferences based on
names and topics, the healthy, authentic and infectious joy and
excitement at the house level will bubble up and express itself
citywide, where no one can overhear it any more, and people will
repeat the statement made first in Jerusalem: "You have filled our
city with your teaching!" And if ever God should choose to repeat
instances like at Pentecost, where 120 upper room Christians suddenly
face the challenge to accommodate 3.000 converts in one day, they
would be prepared, because the flexible structure of multiplying
housechurches would already be in place.
2. Housechurches in History
Rediscovery through the valley of the Dark Ages
The New Testament church was a growing church, says Dr. Alan
Kreider, and from history we know that it kept growing for quite some
time. According to an Epistle to Diognetus written in the late
second-century "Christians, day by day increase more and more." In the
middle of the third century Origen exclaimed: "Multitudes of people
are coming to faith". Ramsay MacMullen, ancient historian in Yale, has
estimated that in each generation some 500.000 people were added to
the church up until the conversion of Emperor Constantine in AD 312,
until the church finally made up between 5 and 8 percent of the
population of the Roman empire.
Multiplying housechurches
The Christians during the New Testament times and immediately after
that were literally meeting in house churches, usually in the largest
rooms of its members. Church Historians agree that they could have
rarely been more than fifteen or twenty people. Once a housechurch
grew bigger than that, it usually multiplied by simply starting
another housechurch nearby. If not, this growth immediately caused
problems. Origen, preaching in a home in Ceasarea, once complained
that "some have hidden in remotest corners of the house to occupy
themselves with profane stories."
Join the candidates for death
Although Christians were not constantly persecuted, and times of
relative freedom was interwoven with subtle or fierce persecutions,
every Christian knew that persecution could break out at any moment,
due to a local crisis, an imperial edict, or a "wolf" that had
penetrated the lambs as a lying informer like Judas, about to betray
the followers of Christ to the Herods of the day. This was what Paul
calls "the fellowship of the sufferings of Christ", as he writes from
his prison cell to the Philippians (Phil 3:10). Tertullian writes: "We
are besieged and attacked, they kept us prisoners in our own secret
congregations." Every Christian was, by definition, a candidate for
death. If one wanted a soft life, or go ahead in respectable circles,
one simply did not become a Christian. When a Christian, under
pressure or interrogation, simply affirmed: "I am a Christian!", it
had a powerful ring of authority to it. The power to face persecution,
however, came for many Christians from a vivid vision of the future,
the living expectation of the imminent return of the Messiah. People
knew that this person was ready to die for this statement, and that
caused awe or consternation. Persecution was so much part of the lives
of the Early Christians, that it molded their thinking - and their
structure! In a separate chapter further down, "The Persecution proof
church", I will discuss this further.
History: more than propaganda written by the victors
There are two ways to read the Bible: we can read our experiences
into it, and search for "confirmations" from the Bible to underline
what we already "knew"; or we can read the Bible even against our
experiences, which can be substantially more painful - but liberating
in the process. The same way we can approach history. Either history
will be, as a common communist slogan says, simply "propaganda written
by the victors," an interpretation of history to fit and justify the
present rule or Status Quo; or history becomes the science to truly
discover the facts of the past, even if they do not seem to fit the
picture we have of our own history.
If we now look for reasons for the multiplying and growing
housechurch movements in the New Testament and the first few
centuries, we might be surprised to miss what we expect to be there,
and startled to find some quite different dynamics.
No Evangelism
A case in point is Evangelism. If we are convinced, for example,
that "Evangelism" is what we all need to do, we will soon start to see
Evangelism literally on every page of the Bible, even if it is not
there at all. Except for Philip (Acts 9) and the five-fold ministry
(Eph. 4:11) there is almost no mentioning of "Evangelists" or
"Evangelism as we know it" in the New Testament and the records of the
Early Church at all. Alan Kreider speaks of a "telling silence of
encouragement to 'evangelize'. The New Testament does not speak about
evangelizing as a "plain preaching activity," and Jesus seems to be,
in fact, outspoken against going "door to door" (Luke 10), a very
common "evangelistic method" in some countries. There is, however,
much emphasis on the "making of disciples". Arthur Darby Nock says
that in the history of the Early Church "there was little, if any,
direct preaching to the public masses; it was simply too dangerous."
The church not only had a message, it was the message. And because the
church in itself was "good news", there simply was no need for
proclamation style Evangelism or going door to door. Only when the
church as a structure became "bad news", an ill-matching structure for
an explosive message, did the need for special "good-news"-enterprises
emerge. Evangelism without a functioning church model is Evangelism
because of the lack of a working church model, which provides
literally out-of-body experiences and even out-of-body conversions.
Many historians therefore disagree with English writer Michael
Green, who states in his otherwise excellent book "Evangelism in the
Early Church: "There can be no doubt that ... open air evangelism
continued through the first two centuries". The pagan Caecilius, a
contemporary of the early church, reported that Christians were
"silent in public, but chattering in corners." This also meant that in
times of illness or crisis their neighbors, who have learned to trust
them, would feel free to turn to Christians for help. Baptist Mission
Professor John Mark Terry, in his book "Evangelism, a concise
history", reflecting the thinking of our present time, sees Evangelism
as something do-able, then re-interprets the Bible and history from
that perspective and goes on record to say: "Wherever Jesus went, he
presented the gospel." The evangelism-worldview Terry describes is
full of "evangelistic keywords" and methodology: touching, witnessing,
sharing, ministering, preaching, telling the good news, and doing
Evangelism; he even goes as far to say that "Jesus was using a number
of different evangelistic methods". We need to be careful not to
reinterpret Church history through the reading glasses of present
styles and methods of "Evangelism". Jesus, as well as His Body, the
Church, did not only have a message, He was the message. He did not
have the gospel, He was the gospel. The gospel is not a set of
doctrines, but a redeemed lifestyle reflecting God's qualities. What
the early Christians did was not "life-style evangelism" true to a
proven method, but their normal everyday life had powerful in-built
evangelistic implications, true to a loving and compassionate God.
No Missions
Georg Kretschmar points out, that "the recruitment to faith was
never institutionalized, there was no organizing the congregation for
missions." The impact of the church as an entity was so strong, that
most early Christians did not even pray for the conversions of pagans,
but, according to Yves Congar, a Dominican scholar, they prayed for
the prosperity and peace of the people. There is, says Norbert Brox,
an "astonishing absence of thinking and talking about missions." The
reason for this "absence" is very much the same as for the "absence"
of Evangelism: the church in itself was the mission. The "Missions
Journeys" of Paul and his companions were not understood as "Missions
as we know it" by Paul himself, but emerged as titles in the appendix
of Bibles to hand drawn maps of the Mediterranean centuries later.
Paul was simply doing apostolic and prophetic ministry, and so was the
church that had been planted and emerged through these ministries.
Since the church was the mission, it did not so much send out special
"missionaries" - it literally sent out itself, in the form of
multipliable units, by sending out embryonic units of a local church
of two and three, which carry within themselves the vision and virus
of church, ready to infect whatever they touch.
No attractive worship services
Although the church in Corinth was still open to outsiders, from
the mid-first century onwards pagans were usually neither admitted to
Christian meetings nor invited at all. After the persecution under
Nero in the 60s of the first century, most Churches closed their doors
to outsiders. One of the functions of the deacons even seemed to have
been that of an "ecclesiastical bouncer", the typically heavy set
person who in today's world stands at the door of private clubs and
bars to evict, if necessary by force, unwanted elements. They had to
screen the wolves from the lambs, as the "Testament of our Lord", a
mid-fourth century document describing the functions of the deacons,
explains. Paul was warning the Galatians against "false brothers,
sneaking in to spy out our liberty in Christ" (Gal 2:4). The
fellowship meetings of the Christians were not meant at all to be
attractive for outsiders, because they were not designed for them.
Mid-third century Bishop Cyprian in Carthage compared the church with
the "enclosed garden" of Songs of Solomon (4:12). Even a catechumen,
someone in daily Bible training under an instructor/teacher was firmly
dismissed before the Christians did their secret rites, the prayers,
the Holy Kiss, baptisms and the Lord's Supper. The Christians were
very much what Celsus, a critic of the early church, called a "secret
society."
Worship in the New Testament is never mentioned to be the reason
Christians gather together, and surely not consisting in singing a
number of songs. It is an obedient and sacrificial lifestyle of a
person which, yes, sometimes does sing, but does this because the
whole life is living worship. Abraham knew this well, and as he went
up to Mount Morija to sacrifice his only son Isaac, he told to the
waiting servants that he is going up "to worship" (Gen 22).
No mainstream
Christians in the early centuries often called themselves
"paroikoi" (1. Peter 2:11), resident aliens, or "the alien next door".
The understanding they had of themselves was not to be settlers and
dutiful citizens with a special religious persuasion, but to be "a
colony of aliens", at home everywhere, fully at home nowhere. When
people became Christians they were "converted to marginality", as
Brazilian Eduardo Hoornaert said. Rather than being part of the main
social establishment they were part of a "counter-culture", an
anti-society, secret and mysterious to many, loyal to "another king",
a distinctively different spiritual tribe. Paul describes himself to
Felix: "I admit that I am a follower of The Way, which they call a
sect" (Acts 24:14), and was known as the "ringleader of a sect, a
troublemaker" (24:5).
How and why, then, did people become Christians?
If it was not for systematic evangelistic programmes, mission
outreach and invitations to attractive worship services, how did
people become Christians? And if becoming a Christian meant to join an
outcast and secretive society, endanger their social success and
potentially end up as a candidate for death, why did people want to
become Christians?
As we will now look at some of the historic reasons for large
numbers of people who decided to join the church then, we might find
clues to similar developments now. Again we should not fall into the
trap and copy historic methodologies and procedures from another time
and space 1:1, but learn from the underlying principles and be highly
creative and flexible in their outworking in today's cultures and
people groups.
Beyond the fact that Christians lived in organic and easily
multipliable housechurches, equipped and guided by the five-fold
ministry (Eph. 4:11), some of the main reasons for people becoming
Christians in ancient times, according to numerous historic studies
done by Alan Kreider and others, include:
1. Curiosity
Quite opposite to many of today's churches which are trying to be
attractive to the world, welcome visitors with sweets and visitors
cards, display signs at the entrance reading "Everybody welcome!",
have outreach campaigns of any size and type, focused on getting
outsiders to come to church, and are generally trying to be at least
seeker sensitive or even seeker driven, the early churches worked on
very different dynamics. One of them was the insatiable curiosity of
people. People are by nature adventurous and curious, seeking "to go
where no one has gone before". Many today wonder why the occult
movements and secret circles and societies like the Freemasons are
still flourishing. The answer is: they appeal to man's basic instinct
to be a tribal being, with the strong need to be part of an exclusive
family, group and tribe, for which humans are ready to undergo almost
any sort of initiation process. Jesus knew this, and had something
like a dual communication style, one for those "inside", and another
for those "outside", "Jesus spoke to the multitudes in parables, and
He did not speak to them without a parable." (Mt 13:34). This pattern
seems to continue in the church: preaching was for those outside,
teaching for those inside the church. Jesus was very firm on this dual
pattern: "To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the
kingdom of God, but to the rest it is in parables, in order that
seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand" (Luke
8:10). Even his words about the "narrow gate" created a powerful
curiosity and an almost feverish excitement amongst many to know the
mysterious message and movement of Jesus. Do they know something we do
not know? Jesus knew that the "Mystery of the Gospel" is not like
"pearls thrown before the pigs", but duly discovered, sought out, and
only then found, quite by revelation.
People were not admitted to freely enter churches, and it only
sparked and heightened their interested.
If I tell my four-year old son not to open that drawer under any
circumstance once I leave the room, I prophetically know, which place
he is almost magically and irresistibly drawn once I go out: that very
forbidden drawer.
Today we are sometimes in the danger of pressing home answers to
people who have not even asked the r |