Kind Words about Lutheranism

I'm for people following Jesus and I've got no problem with 31 flavors of believers in the world as long as we don't embarass Jesus by the way we treat each other out in public. That said, I recently replied to a question about what I value most in my own Lutheran theological heritage and I thought I'd also share that here. No doubt many of these things are shared by other traditions as well. (I imagine my #1 is pretty popular.)


What I most value in my Lutheran heritage these days are the things that I think are assets for effective mission to postmodern North America.

1. The centrality of grace. I can't imagine mission making any sense without that a priori.

2. Minimalism. Lutheran theology can be as ornate as anyone's, but I think that at it's heart the "Lutheran impulse" is towards minimalism. The Solas steer in that direction. The concept of adiaphora parses essentials from non-essentials, which is minimalistic. "The canon within the canon" has this feel too. What this means to me is that Lutheranism has a leanness in it's DNA, and the leaner it gets the more portable it becomes, and that is an asset for moving out far and fast in mission.

3. Mystery. Again, Lutheran theology can be extremely Modern and rationalistic, working to explain everything and tie up every loose end so that it all "make sense." But Lutheran DNA has a lot of mystery encoded in it that just doesn't get expressed as much these days. We readily talk in terms of "both/and," "already/not yet" and the simul of being both saint and sinner. You could even bring in things like Two Kingdom theology and the Law/Gospel dynamic itself. What I see in all this is an embrace of things that exceed human understanding - mystery. An that, I believe, is what makes Lutheranism a natural fit for the emerging postmodern conversation which is critical for missional effectiveness.

4. The priesthood of all believers. The amount of freedom this affords us in ordering congregational and worship life is truly exhilarating and almost totally uncapitalized on (among Lutherans). This is what has opened the door wide for me - as a Lutheran - to embrace the house church movement which has enormous potential as a missional strategy. Luther himself actually proposed HCs as the preferred mode of Christian community. You can find that on my website here. "Mutual conversation and consolation of the saints," a very close also-ran for sacramental status, so I hear, also comes in here.

5. The Bible is not the Word of God, Jesus is. That may not be the way it's usually put, but it get's the point across. Someone else already mentioned the idea of the Bible as the rough cradle in which we meet the Christ child. That way of engaging scripture is HUGE to me, and especially so, again, for mission into postmodernity.

Hunter's Three is Enough Groups: Three People, Three Activities

A little more information has just come out about the Three is Enough groups that Todd Hunter is developing and will be introducing at the Conversational Evangelism Conference in May. Here is a description just now added to that website:

"Todd is forming Three is Enough Groups as an antidote to the massive image problem currently ascribed to Christians and Christianity. This unfortunate viewpoint stymies most attempts at evangelism. TiE Groups have a double meaning: they are three friends or colleagues doing three simple and humble activities together (reading, praying and serving others). Functioning in members’ most natural places of community – the workplace, school, or at the local coffee shop. TiE Groups will go on the Journey Inward of spiritual transformation and the Journey Outward of serving others. Spiritual transformation into Christlikeness has always been the true goal of Christian faith—now it is utterly strategic. TiE rescues evangelism out of the program category and relocates it back in the natural context of spiritual formation."

Three Is Enough Groups – Spirituality For the Sake of Others

Here's an exciting piece of news I just received April 3rd.

Todd Hunter - former President of the National Association of Vineyard Churches and former CEO of Alpha USA - is launching a new ministry to focus on spiritual transformation and evangelism.

The details are still pretty sketchy at this point so It's not yet clear what his "Three Is Enough" groups will look like. It may be a reference to the idea that three people is enough for a powerful spiritual community, or that having three things to focus on in a small group is enough.

Here are a couple of excerpts from the e-mail I received announcing this. (The whole message is pasted below.)

• Hunter has a passion for evangelism but is convinced that Christianity in America has a massive image problem that stymies most attempts at evangelism.
  


• Christianity needs to be re-practiced in order to help make followers of Jesus in this generation.
  


• Three Is Enough Groups..... are designed to show people how to undo un-Christian faith by showing them that heaven is not the goal of Christianity - it is simply the destination. Being the servant - otherly people of God - is the goal.
  


• Hunter will encourage churches and lay leaders to begin forming Three Is Enough Groups to help individuals pray, grow and serve.

Apparently, this is going to be rolled out at the Conversational Evangelism Conference coming up May 16-17 in Lakeville, MN. I happen to be going to that so I'll be able to report back on it here.

This new endeavor is being launched through Off The Map, an excellent group led by Jim Henderson that has done some pretty innovative things around evangelism, notably the E-bay Atheist and Jim and Casper Go to Church. I've been very impressed by these folks!

You heard it first here! Stay tuned.



(Full content of original e-mail, sent from Jim Henderson at Off the Map:)

Todd Hunter Transitions

Many of you are Todd Hunter fans and have been following his progress since his leadership of The Vineyard. Todd has been actively seeking to support organizations that are missional and evangelistic. His passion is spiritual formation for everyday people. He has been a leader in rescuing evangelism out of the program category and re locating it inside spiritual formation.

Todd has recently decided to launch his own movement called Three is Enough. You will be hearing much more about this over the next couple of years. Off The Map is proud to have the opportunity to support Todd’s new vision and partner with him to communicate it through writings, media and events.



Three Is Enough Groups – Spirituality For the Sake of Others
Todd Hunter, former CEO of Alpha USA, launches new ministry to focus on spiritual transformation

Boise, ID, April 2, 2008

Effective April 1, Todd Hunter (51) transitioned from his role of National Director at Alpha USA to launch a new ministry focused on helping pastors and lay leaders reach a generation that has become disenfranchised from the church.

Under the new non-profit, Society for Kingdom Living, Hunter will develop his writing, speaking and professional activities in the areas of conversational evangelism and the 21st century church. Hunter has a passion for evangelism but is convinced that Christianity in America has a massive image problem that stymies most attempts at evangelism. With the basic premise that Christianity needs to be re-practiced in order to help make followers of Jesus in this generation, he is developing resources and events that include writing a series of three books, the first to be published by InterVarsity Press, developing conferences, and teaching at key seminaries.

His first major conference to be held in Minneapolis on May 16-17 features conversational evangelism pioneers Mark Mittleberg, Becky Pippert, Dan Kimball and Garry Poole and Rick Richardson. Hunter has asked Jim Henderson and Off The Map to produce these conferences.

Hunter will begin this ministry by teaching and consulting on Three Is Enough Groups. These groups are designed to show people how to undo un-Christian faith by showing them that heaven is not the goal of Christianity - it is simply the destination. Being the servant - otherly people of God - is the goal.

Through his writing and teaching, Hunter will encourage churches and lay leaders to begin forming Three Is Enough Groups to help individuals pray, grow and serve. Keeping the groups small and focused insures that evangelism can happen anywhere, in the midst of people’s busy lives. Meeting in their most natural places of community – the workplace, school, or at the local coffee shop - Three Is Enough Groups will go on the Journey Inward of spiritual transformation and the Journey Outward of serving others. This will be done through the power of the Holy Spirit, for the sake of others - the least, the last and the missing.

Hunter will continue to be a consultant to Alpha USA and will remain on the Board of Directors and Executive Committee. He will have an active role in promoting Alpha, teaching on Alpha’s practices, building relationships and advising the organization on strategy.

Why House Church? Community.

This is part four in a four-thread topic.

Please Note: Although I'm "defending" the idea of house churches here, I don't think it should be an either/or proposition, or that conventional congregations should be abandoned wholesale in favor of nothing but HCs. I see value in both, and I'm eager to see hybrid and partnership forms develop as well. But since HC is appearing as the "new thing", it's natural for it to need more explanation, which is what I'm trying to provide.


Community. Lastly, I also think we should explore the HC form because it provides the most natural context for the rich life of Christian community Jesus wants us to have. By “Christian community,” I’m referring to the kind of shared life we find described in the “one-anothers” of Scripture; things like love one another, care for one another, encourage, admonish, comfort, serve and so on. Most of these simply can not be done readily in a large group gathering like Sunday morning worship, if they can be done there at all. Yet a HC provides a very natural context for encouraging, comforting and such. So I think the work of the Kingdom will progress better if the primary expression of Christian community is the one in which you can readily practice these key marks of community.

The importance of community and investing in the kinds of gatherings that promote it is even apparent to those who don’t believe. You may have heard of Matt Casper, an atheist who was hired by a Christian to visit and comment on a wide variety of congregations. You can read all about his visits in the book Jim and Casper Go to Church. But here’s a quote I found on another blog in which he himself talks about community:

“The “community” at some churches seemed to disappear with the first note of the recessional, if it was ever there at all. I think “community” goes out the window when you have 2,000 (Saddleback), 7,000 (Willow Creek), or 16,000 (Lakewood) people under the same roof. What you’re seeing then is simply mass mentality, no different than a World Cup game, a rock concert, or the Nuremberg rallies. It’s when these mobs would break into smaller groups that the community focus would kick in. And the smaller the church, the larger the sense of community. I attended a house church where the sense of community was so incredible, even a non-believer could feel it. And these house church people were/are committed to working together to make the world a better place and held each other accountable.

It’s a simple fact of human nature: the more people there are, the less individual accountability there is. And the message of Jesus is ALL about individual accountability. The biggest problem facing the entire world may be people saying, “Hey, that’s not my problem.” Johne Donne put it best: ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. Basically, the big churches let people feel like they were doing something to make the world a better place, when they weren’t really participating at all.”

Striking words for us to hear – especially as they come from an atheist who's been to a lot of churches.

Why House Church? Discipleship.

This is part three in a four-thread topic.

Please Note: Although I'm "defending" the idea of house churches here, I don't think it should be an either/or proposition, or that conventional congregations should be abandoned wholesale in favor of nothing but HCs. I see value in both, and I'm eager to see hybrid and partnership forms develop as well. But since HC is appearing as the "new thing", it's natural for it to need more explanation, which is what I'm trying to provide.

Discipleship. The stewardship questions from the previous post press us to look into the utility of a HC form. Once we do, I believe we find the strongest reasons yet for supporting this expression of the Church. I think we’d agree that the most important thing in making and growing disciples is the movement and power of the Spirit of God, which can happen in any size gathering. But next to that, I would say that the most important thing for discipling is conversation with believers about Jesus. In the absence of that, it’s hard to see people readily coming to faith or growing in it. But here’s the critical turn: what is the best context for conversation? Clearly, it’s small groups – even down to the level of “two or three gathered in my name.” And so, to put it simply, I think the Church should invest most of it’s time and energy in the context that is most supportive of effective discipling. The House Church form is far better structured for this than a conventional church, where most of the time and energy and resources are used in support of a large group gathering that effectively precludes conversation.

I should hasten to add that I do think there is value in large group worship! (And buildings and clergy, for that matter.) But I think the discipling goals of the Kingdom are calling us to invert our priorities: small groups and HCs first, with large group as an addition, rather than large group as the norm, with a handful also in small groups or HCs.

Why House Church? Stewardship.

This is part two in a four-thread topic.

Please Note: Although I'm "defending" the idea of house churches here, I don't think it should be an either/or proposition, or that conventional congregations should be abandoned wholesale in favor of nothing but HCs. I see value in both, and I'm eager to see hybrid and partnership forms develop as well. But since HC is appearing as the "new thing", it's natural for it to need more explanation, which is what I'm trying to provide.


Stewardship. The stewardship of time, energy and money is one of the most powerful arguments in favor of the HC form, in my opinion. Conventional congregations require lots of money to pay for buildings, salaries and programs. HCs require vastly less money. The time and energy involved in crafting and presenting a weekly conventional worship service is again, very substantial – ask any pastor or church musician! Worship in a HC; much, much less. And of course, there are meetings. From that one perspective alone, the HC model cries out for serious consideration.

That’s the “input” side of stewardship: consumption of resources. From the output side, we also need to ask about the return on all that investment. How effective are conventional congregations in the core tasks of the Kingdom: making disciples out of people who don’t know Jesus; growing mature disciples out of people who do know Him? In North America over the last 60 years at least, I believe the evidence is clear: conventional congregations have not been very effective in either. Now, I can’t really say yet how effective HCs are in North America. That jury is still out, though we could look at the evidence so far. But even so, the ineffectiveness of conventional congregations calls for us to at least investigate the HC form to see if it might serve the Kingdom better.

In addition to input & output, there’s the question of stewardship of assets. It is very common to find churches that struggle to make ends meet while maintaining a congregation that is a fraction of the size their building can serve, yet their net equity in the land alone is in the millions of dollars. That money belongs to the Lord. Is that the best use He has for it? It’s sobering to me how much that situation resembles the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30) where one servant just hid the money buried in a hole in the ground rather than risk investing it.

Why House Church? Good Questions!

In another thread on my blog, some folks raised questions about the whole idea of house churches and I wanted to lift that up as a topic in it's own right. After writing some replies to their questions, it became clear that several threads would be even better! So below is an introduction.

Please note: Although I'm "defending" the idea of house churches here, I don't think it should be an either/or proposition, or that conventional congregations should be abandoned wholesale in favor of nothing but HCs. I see value in both, and I'm eager to see hybrid and partnership forms develop as well. But since HC is appearing as the "new thing", it's natural for it to need more explanation, which is what I'm trying to provide.

So then, these are the concerns I found in the posts:

• Promotes Separatism; don’t splinter the Body
• Plenty of Churches already
• Stewardship: better to invest in existing churches
• What’s the point? What purpose does the house church serve which is not being met by the church as it already exists?
• We don’t need “missionaries” because the Church is already here

I'm going to say just a bit about separatism first, but focus on Stewardship, Discipleship and Community in the three posts that follow.

Separatism. Separation and the formation of new congregations is not unique to HCs, and can happen for good or bad reasons. Good reasons might include exceeding space limits, reaching into a new community either geographically or culturally (e.g. Paul to the Greeks, Peter to the Jews), language barriers and so on. Bad reasons abound: fights over minor points of doctrine, personality clashes and childish intolerance of others, selfish & consumeristic insistence on wanting Church to be done “your way” etc. So the creation of a new congregation should be evaluated both by motives and by fruits, to see if it is pleasing to God or not. (It should also be noted that having lots of different groups & congregations is not inherently bad. It can be part of God’s intent for the various “parts of the Body.” Being distinct doesn’t mean you’re not unified in Spirit and purpose.) Since the issues around separation apply equally to new HCs and new conventional congregations, it can’t be a critique of the HC form per se, so I won’t focus on this but we can discuss it more on this thread if people want.

Defining Terms: Conventional Congregation

I'm about to put up a slug of posts that often refer to "conventional congregations" so I thought it would be good to say what I mean by that.

I use conventional to refer to congregations that share the following four traits.

Property ownership, i.e. a sanctuary for worsip etc.

Pastors or clergy by other names, meaning people who are trained as professionals, typically with a post-graduate degree, and usually receive a significant salary as part of the congregation's budget.

Programs including Sunday School, Youth Groups, Bible studies etc. that people are encouraged to attend in addition to Sunday worship.

Presentational Worship - services where a small number of people present the service for the larger group and invite them to participate.

I find this a helpful sketch becasue it covers a wide swath of congregations from many different theological traditions and sets up helpful contrasts with what is normative in house churches, which typically differ on all four points.

Home-Front Missionaries: A Paradigm for House Church Planting through Denominational Congregations

I consider it a good thing that the Church can express itself in multiple forms: "two or three gathered together", house church, small church, megachurch, para-church, denomination and various points in between. Like parts of one Body (1 Corintians 12) each has different strengths and weaknesses. The question is, how best to work together?

I've given some thought to that. In particular: How might a denominationally-oriented conventional congregation support and nurture a house church expression?

The idea I keep coming back to is that such a congregation could support a pastor as a house church planter in the same way they have often supported missionaries sent overseas to plant churches. This could even take the form of a formal pastoral call within the practice of the denomination. The key would be to have the same kind of expectations for these "home front missionaries" as you have for the missionaries who serve overseas. And, you'd need to have the same expectation for the house churches formed as you have for the churches formed overseas. For example:

• We don’t expect the evangelized people to join the sponsoring congregation “back home.”
  
  


• We don’t expect the new congregations to look like us, but to reflect their own, indigenous culture.
  
  


• We don’t expect the new congregations to suport the missionary financially - that’s our job back home. But we do look to them to develop and support their own indigenous leadership in order to carry the work forward and grow the Church among their own people.
  
  


• We don’t expect to see the missionary show up at the home church very often, except perhaps on occasion in order to share stories about the work and renew the partnership relationship. We certainly don’t expect the missionary to care for the members of the home church!
  
  


• We don’t expect the converts to become members of our denomination, but we hope and anticipate that they will be blessed by the theological, spiritual and cultural gifts we have as they gather themselves into their own “denomination” (or whatever larger expression fits in their context and culture.) We do hope and anticipate that they will emerge as a natural partner with us in the work of the Kingdom.

I think using the "overseas missionary" as a paradigm for "home-front house church planters" can be very helpful, as long as people can accept that it’s mission work, not just another tactic to get more people into the sponsoring church. In my own Lutheran tribe, I see no insurmountable barriers to this approach. In other denominations, it could present more or less of a challenge institutionally.

I'd like to hear comments and critiques around this idea, especially from anyone who knows of something similar to this already in use.

Tim

The Pipe: A Visual Metaphor for Humanity, Sin, and "Atonement" (but not penal substitution).

Yeah, that title is a mouthful but it helps with the search engines.

Okay. I've had this Pipe metaphor in my bag of tricks for something like ten years now. It represents God's intention for human beings by saying we are created to be like "L-Shaped Pipes" - connected to God as the Source, receiving love, life and forgiveness from God as the "flow," and directing that flow out through us towards the world and our neighors. When the flow goes that's human fulfillment which we experience as joy.

A lot of the fun with the Pipe comes from extending the metaphor by asking what kinds of things can disrupt the flow. So you start talking about clogs, dents and leaks etc., which themselves are pretty potent metaphors for human heart conditions. I'll be writing more about that in posts to come, I promise!

But I surprised even myself when I discovered how the Pipe can be applied to illustrate how being "united with him in a death like his" (Romans 6:5) leads to new life. The trouble is, you pretty much have to see it to get it. Words and even still images are pretty ineffective in conveying the 3D mechanics of it all.

So there it sat, until Emergent Village came calling.

The folks over at EV put out a call for new Atonement metaphors, looking especially for those that aren't based in "Penal Substitution." Well, that was the bait I couldn't resist so I finally sat myself down and recorded the illustration in a two-part video which I posted on YouTube. Each segment is about 4-5 minutes. You can also view them through these links:

The Pipe: Part 1

The Pipe: Part 2

I've got a few comments and observations to add, but I think I'll let others chime in first, except for this. One of the things I like most about this metaphor is that it doesn't necessitate centering the work of Jesus on issues of guilt, punishment, justice or forgiveness. Rather, it turns our attention to "the problem of sin" as being a condition we are in and unable to get out of on our own. This metaphor shows both how death is the necessary transition from this condition, but that death only leads to life if one dies with Jesus.

So - does the video work in getting the ideas across or do I need to make some changes? Comments and critique of the metaphor are invited!

Tim

Priesthood of All Believers

Some wonderful Lutheran maverics over at A.R.E. (A Renewal Enterprise) just put up a comment on "What’s the golden nugget in Lutheran theology that is the most underutilized?" Their answer, the Priesthood of All Believers, finally got me to say a couple of things out loud that I've been thinking silently for too long. Here's a recap of what I wrote in a comment on their blog:

Well, I agree that the P of AB is the motherlode of underused gold, but I think it’s a lot more explosive than most people think! (Sorry for mixing metaphors there.) The idea that all believers are capable and authorized for all “priestly” ministry - including sacraments - has always been in our theology but only rarely apparent in our practice. Instead, we’ve reserved vast swaths of ministry to professional clergy (like me) “for the sake of good order.” Well, I’ve finally begun to ask “How’s that working out for us?” Put another way, since we don’t seem to be doing well at all in either making disciples or growing them, then what exactly is good about our order? The fact that it's orderly?

Thinking about my answers to those questions led me finally to look at the house church movement, an expression of the Priesthood of All if ever there was one. Plenty of room for unhelpful order there, too, I’m sure! But I have a lot of hope that the results will be better. And truthfully, I think that Lutheranism at its core is built for both house church and the postmodern world. But that’s another topic. ;)

The Huckabee Bible Quiz

If you’ve been following the presidential primaries, you may have noticed that Mike Huckabee often refers to Bible stories in his speeches. What you may not know is that when he does that, most people in the U.S. have no idea what he’s talking about!

A recent story done by National Public Radio took several Biblical allusions from Huckabee speeches and went in search of people who could identify them. Most could not, which wouldn’t surprise you if you knew that 50% of Americans (and that includes Christians) can’t name any of the four Gospels, or know that Genesis is the first book of the Bible. But it should surprise you to learn that every person they asked had been raised in a Christian home and gone to Sunday School.

Want to see how you’d do on the quiz? Here are the four quotes. Do you know the Bible story each one comes from? I'll put the answers in the first comment to this post. In fact, why not add a comment yourself and let us know your score!

1. "It's the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of 5,000 people."

2. "Sometimes," the former Arkansas governor told his supporters, "one small smooth stone is even more effective than a whole lot of armor."

3. "We've also seen that the widow's mite has more effectiveness than all the gold in the world."

4. "It's almost like when the prophet was looking for a king. He came down, looked through all of Jesse's sons, went through a whole bunch of them, and said, 'Is this all you got?'"

I hope you did well.

Why does this matter? Well, consider this: Huckabee has a message he is trying to get out to people. He is using Bible stories as a way to get it across. But people will never get the message if they don’t know the stories. In the same way, God has a message that He is trying to get out to people, including you. God uses Bible stories to help get the message across. But if you don’t know the stories, do you think you’ll understand the message?

Have you read your Bible lately? I highly recommend it. After all, Someone is trying to communicate with you.

100 Cups of Coffee #3 - Paul Anderson

I first met Paul Anderson several years ago at an event for Pastors he was leading at North Heights Church, and I was impressed by his genuineness and warmth. Then earlier this year I learned that he had become involved in some kind of house church expression so I sought him out and we’ve had some wonderful conversations.

History
Some time in 2005, Paul had some young adult believers living in his home (in addition to his own family) as a result of his gift for hospitality. Some of these were people who had come home changed from service in Iraq, and had leadership gifts. They began to pray together and were drawn to an image of a spiritual “fire” starting in the Twin Cities, where their role was not to try and create a centralized bonfire around themselves, but rather to help start lots of fires in many locations. It was an uncomfortable image that stretched them to think about “going out,” so they began to think of their own gathering as a kind of training or Boot Camp for that work. As they talked about this with others, more people started to gather, typically young adults in their early 20s. Gatherings were monthly at first, but started becoming more frequent and over time became a weekly event. The group grew and grew and now typically has 50 to 60 people attending, packed into Paul’s home, sitting on stairs and so on.

Leadership
From the outset, Paul has resisted the temptation to lead or control the group. He serves primarily as a mentor, and meets with the people who are the de facto leaders just before the whole group gathers. The group actually talked about formally identifying leaders but decided against it, so the leadership circle is a fluid, porous group. In essence it is a self-selected group of servants. This avoidance of closed structures (my term) also showed up in a discussion of whether they should establish a website for the group. There was concern that defining the group might end up confining it. Paul sees this as a part of the move towards centered set identity (in contrast to bounded set) and you can see it reflected in some of the quotes below in my “Tidbits” section. (For more on bounded vs. centered see Frost and Hirsch p. 47, or go here for some nice visuals: http://www.3dff.com/php/viewtopic.php?t=386.) Paul does provide a little bit of structure, simply working to ensure that for any given gathering there is someone ready to lead the people that come. Though he is a resource to the active leaders, Paul only rarely acts as the teacher in the large group so as not to set up some kind of external (“professional”) standard that others will then think they have to live up to.

Gatherings
At about 6pm, Paul typically will meet with the leaders he is mentoring. During this time they may discuss broader issues related to the community, but the focus tends to be on preparing for the evening’s gathering. By 7 they turn to prayer, again, largely but not exclusively pointed towards the gathering which gets going at about 8:00. In the gathering there is usually about 30 minutes or so of worship led by 3 or 4 people who were in preparation since the 6:00 meeting. After that, someone will share “a word” with the group that can be teaching, exhortation, personal story etc. Occasionally someone from outside the group may speak here. After this, there is discussion in impromptu small groups focusing on what was just shared. At that point, people are invited either to stay in the room for open prayer or go out to the dining room for food, or move back and forth between both. People often linger for about 2 hours and sometimes return to Paul’s home in between gatherings.

Community
Paul uses the term communitas to describe the kind of relational network he is seeing, a term that is distinct from community. This is a concept I’m still new to, but I gather that it refers to a kind of bonding through challenging experiences – a “fellowship forged by fire” – and a shared life that extends beyond the times of group gathering. Frost and Hirsch have also written about this, notably Frost in Exiles.

Mission
I’m not well-informed here, but Paul did mention that the group has been active in supporting some of its members in short-term international mission trips to Thailand and Brazil. An ongoing connection to a Thai church is emerging. Although there is a desire for the gathering to be “here for the people who are not yet here,” Paul reports that he is seeing more discipleship of current believers taking place, as opposed to new believers being birthed.

A Few Tidbits:
● Personal sharing is common in the group time. People are eager and often ask; “When can I share?”

● Some have said; “This is more like church than church!”

● Some have wondered; “Are we a church?” The sense of the group is that for those who think they are a church, they are. For those who think differently, that’s OK.

● Some have asked; “Can I make this my church? Would that count?” Paul’s sense is that the majority of people involved still have a connection to another, traditional faith community. But for most, this gathering really is their primary faith community.

Everything but the House Church Kitchen Sink?

It's past time for a little personal update.

Since the beginning of November I've been working as a part time interim associate pastor at Gethsemane Lutheran Church in Maplewood, MN. I rather fell into this position since I wasn't really looking for a conventional church job. The pastor there is Rick White, a good friend of mine. He found himself short-handed after his FT associate pastor retired, and when it became clear that it was going to take some time to find the right person to hire he asked me if I could help out for a while as that process unfolded. For various reasons it was best to set that up as a formal interim position, expected to run for a year.

There have been a lot of great things for me in this situation. I'm glad to help Rick out and it's fun and easy to work together since we've known each other for a good many years. I've been very warmly received by the folks at Gethsemane and it's always a plus to be affirmed when I offer my gifts. I've been doing a fair amount of preaching - especially this month as Rick is out for three weeks recovering from shoulder surgery - and I do enjoy that. The interim position also helps me maintain my clerical standing as an ELCA pastor: once the interim is over I'll have another three years to figure out how to stay on the roster while working on HCs.

And I should say, getting a paycheck is a pretty big plus, too!

At the same time, it's presenting some challenges. My main desire is still to find a way to serve in the house church movement, and my work at Gethsemane takes up nearly all of my "free" time for that. Since Kisten is full time at Trinity, I'm taking the lead in parenting and homemaking these days, so "free time" is a pretty limited commodity. That's at least one reason why this will be just my fifth fresh blog thread since November. (If I'm not more diligent, people might get the wrong idea and think I've run out of things to say!)

On the other hand, I would not be at all surprised if the Lord found a way to leverage this part of my journey into my house church work so that it wouldn't end up as a delay or detour at all. I've known from the start that I want to nurture HCs that have meaningful links and partnership with larger church expressions - congregations and denominations, most notably. So I'll need to have a relationship myself with a congregation that wants to be a part of the venture. Perhaps that will open up for me with Gethsemane. Rick is one of my strongest personal supporters of what I'm hoping to do, and I've made no bones about it to people in the congregation that I'm not looking for a permanent, regular church job because of my interest in HCs. So it's a conversation that will be occurring naturally.

So, as a parent, spouse, PT pastor, PT caterer, and would be blogger and HC explorer I do feel like I'm back in my plate-spinning mode sometimes. But as I recently said on my Facebook page: "Tim is living a good life!"

I thank God for that!

Tim

(P.S. - The plate-spinner in the image above is a real guy named John Park who apparently does this for a living - keynotes, tradeshows etc. Need someone for an event????)

A Multiplying House Church in Columbus, OH

I use a Google search tool to monitor blogs for the keywords "house church" and find interesting things that way. Here's part of a longer post from a HC in Columbus that has multiplied once, and doubled in size just because of a change in venue.

Our house church has been meeting at our house for almost two years now. We've had a great time, we've grown, even divided/multiplied and commissioned one couple to keep planting house churches in their neighborhood. All very good things. Then just in the past two weeks we had a few things happen that seem to be showing us that we need to move on, move out to where God is working.

Luis and Laura are a sweet couple from Ecuador who are friends of Maria's that she invited to come to our house church. They have been coming for about the past three months, to our house. Then a little over a month ago they had a baby and since it is cold, they don't want to take their baby out any more than they have to. So we had church at their house a few weeks ago. Then this past week we asked them if we could just start meeting at their place every week so they wouldn't have to take their newborn out in the frigid weather. They also mentioned that they had some neighbors that might want to come to the meeting. Well when we met on Friday evening, their neighbors not only came but they brought two other families with them! So, our house church practically doubled in size in one night! The one couple came specifically because their 5 month old daughter has a blood infection and they wanted us to pray for her. (Which we gladly did!) Keep praying with us that she is healed completely.

I've been reading about how if we want to start a church planting movement we have to get out on other people's turf and the new disciples will bring others to follow Jesus as well. Now we're seeing it get started.

Accountability Without Objective Truth?

I lurk a lot and participate occasionally in an online forum hosted by Easum, Bandy & Assoc. In a recent post, someone brought up an article from The Ooze that was wondering how accountability will be affected now that people move so freely (and frequently) among different denominations and teachers.

I was caught by an underlying issue that relates to Postmodernity and posted this reply:


Interesting material.

Just as an observation, and not directly to the question of post-denominational accountability (or the lack thereof) let me point out one thing:

The author refers to "...thinking and behaving in ways that are consistent with various authors, and not simply the Biblical truths."

That's way too facile and frankly a false dichotomy, because there is no absolute consensus on what are "The Biblical Truths." Even there, you still have to wade into the opinions of "various authors," denominations, traditions and so on.

There has always been a plurality of ideas in the Church, even about "the basics," but I think we've insulated ourselves from that by staying siloed in our own denominational cohorts. Now that the denominational lines are being crossed and fading out, we're encountering the diversity that was already there.

I'm left musing, though, that maybe lurking below the question of accountability to whom is the issue of accountability to what. What I mean is, there seems to be an assumption that accountability to this teacher or that needs to be resolved by appeal to revealed, propositional "Truths" found in the Bible. Now, setting aside my point above (that you still need to choose your teacher who can tell you what the BTs are), one can also question weather BT is the only possible ground for accountability.

There is at least one alternative ground, which is accountability to a person, namely Jesus, who doesn't just reveal true facts but somehow is Truth.

Of course, it's still messy in practice. Especially since the Biblical witness is intricately involved in mediating our relationship with Jesus. But I think this is one of the main things that the Postmodern critique of the Modern mindset is raising: Objective Truth is not the only way to conceive of the ground of reality and faith.

Anyone have thoughts to share on that? I'd love to hear them.

House "Church" Emerging Outside the Church?

Do these quotes have a familiar ring to them?

• ...one rainy Friday night, the young worshipers sat in concentric circles in the basement of an office building, damp stragglers four deep against the walls. In the middle, Megan and Rob played guitar, drums and sang, leading about 120 people through the liturgy...
  
  
• Without a building and budget...
  
  
• (They) have shrugged off what many participants see as the passive, (clergy)-led worship of their parents’ generation to join services led by their peers...
  
  
• (Participants) are looking for “redemptive, transformative experiences that give rhythm to their days and weeks and give meaning to their lives,” ....an experience they are not finding in traditional... institutions
  
  
• "there’s a joyfulness to the singing, the community, the breaking of bread together.”
  
  
• “My friends who I play football with and have beers with are leading service here. I feel like if I wanted to lead a service, I could, too.”

If you've been reading about things going on the the house/simple/organic church movement, or event the emergent church more broadly, you've probably encountered plenty of statements just like these. Except for one thing. None of the quotes above are referring to the Church and none of the speakers are Christians.

They're Jews.

I'm very excited about what I see happening among my fellow Christians these days, but I find I have a particular delight to discover that similar things are stirring in the Synagogues as well.

Apparently, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is up to all sorts of interesting things these days!