Conference Announced! "Unfinished Business: Bringing the Church Home"

I'm very excited to announce a conference that I will be hosting in November to dig into Luther's proposal for house churches! (TLDR folks can get straight to the registration page here.)

It was nearly 10 years ago that I first posted on this blog the little-known proposal that Luther wrote, in which he described lay-led, home-based faith communities. Since then it's never been far from my mind.

Now it's time to start a conversation and see what emerges from that. Like when Luther posted the 95 Theses expecting to start an academic debate and things kinda took on a life of their own. Just a little bit.  ;)  So here's the lowdown:

Date: Saturday, November 18th
Time: 9am - 2pm
Location: St. Stephen's Lutheran Church
                 West St. Paul, MN
Cost: $10 (includes lunch)

Registration Page
Facebook Page

What to expect:

We'll set the table with some information, first by looking at the text of Luther's proposal and any historical attempts to put it into practice. Then we'll have a quick fly-by of contemporary groups that are exploring ways to be church that are similar to Luther's proposal. With that as a starting point, the main focus of the conference will be working together to assess the pros and cons of this approach, and the arguments for and against putting it into practice.

The conference is open to the public. It will be of particular interest to people who are looking for renewal in the Church, and for those who have become frustrated or disillusioned by the challenges of the "standard model" for congregational life, with it's dependence on property, programs, professionals and presentational worship. (These people are often referred to as the "Dones," as they are "done with church, but not with faith." For more on them see my posts here and here.)

When the conference is over, I  will have print materials, summaries of conversations, and no doubt video of some sessions/presentations that I will be making available. If you would like to be notified when these materials are available, just fill out the form below and I will keep you in the loop.

Hope to see you there, and please, SPREAD THE WORD!!!

Tim

Mailing list for resource updates:

House Churches and the ELCA?

There's been some house church activity in my ELCA denomination over the years and now there's a one-day conference coming up to explore this direction October 23-24! If you've followed this blog much, you know that's a topic near and dear to my heart. I've got 55 posts with that tag... so far, and pretty much started this blog in April 2007 in order to advance this conversation. I'll be there. Care to join me?

You Shall... Good News?

Here's a little something we Lutherans like to call "Law and Gospel" from my daily SOAP devos this morning:

How Salvation Sounds in Lutheran Ears

The way that Lutherans tend to think of salvation is really nicely represented by the following passage from Ezekiel. Note how the activity of God has priority and primacy throughout, and obedience emerges at the initiative of the Spirit who has already been given. Even the awareness and regret over one's sinfulness shows up as an after-effect, rather than a prerequisite for the arrival of the Spirit and the gift of a new heart. (Gotta love the irony here: only a new heart is capable of regret over sin it seems.)

Ezekiel 36:24-31 NIV

24 “‘For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. 28 Then you will live in the land I gave your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God. 29 I will save you from all your uncleanness. I will call for the grain and make it plentiful and will not bring famine upon you. 30 I will increase the fruit of the trees and the crops of the field, so that you will no longer suffer disgrace among the nations because of famine. 31 Then you will remember your evil ways and wicked deeds, and you will loathe yourselves for your sins and detestable practices.

Membership Decline in the ELCA

Yes, numbers don't tell the whole story.  Yes, "membership" is not the best or only indicator of congregational vitality, much less faithfulness.  Yes, for some people this is old, old news.  Yet I continue to find people are generally unaware of the decline we are experiencing in my tribe, and those that have a sense of it don't readily have a sense of scale to go with it.  So, let me provide the visual that has haunted and energized me since I first began to attend to it about 10 years ago.

Primary data from Loren Mead, Transforming Congregations for the Future,
with more recent statistics added.

As a percentage of the US population (which has continued to grow year after year) this shows a trend of decline, unbroken for half a century.

However people may parse the causes and debate the responses, it's been clear to me since the get-go that a response is needed.  And given the "inertia" stored in a system with such a long-term shape to it's life (spanning at least two generations) I've always expected that the response will need to be very, very significant if it is to "turn things around" in any meaningful sense.

My own response has been to explore the possibilities for Christian missional community outside the core conventions of congregational life: pastors, property, programs and presentational (large group) worship.  This led me initially to folks in the house church movement, and more recently to those who are focusing on making disciples per se.  

They have a nifty saying: if you plant a church, you may or may not get disciples.  But if you make disciples, the Church will arise.

So, I am now moving my top ministry priority into directly discipling and equipping leaders.  Not just "church leaders" in the typical sense.  Leaders who will directly disciple and train others.  I am learning how to do this from the folks at 3dm, as I have found their material and approach to be excellent, and their theology to be wonderfully lean and hugely resonant with Lutheranism.

Agitating the Lutherans (Again)

Here's a little inside baseball for my Lutheran readers. I've been pressing the house church conversation on some Facebook forums and thought I'd collect a couple of my posts here as well:

"Along with the anxieties over wandering away from theological orthodoxy, another panic point in the house church conversation among Lutherans is presiding at communion. ("Panic point" is a bit condescending... sorry about that. Couldn't resist the alliteration.) Case in point, Clint Schnekloth posted a comment about the "Babylonian Captivity" of the Eucharist expressed in our extreme avoidance of having non-ordained people preside, and it's elicited over 500 comments in just over 2 days. That's called touching a nerve."

"Our theology staunchly affirms that the validity of the sacrament is NOT dependent on who presides. Yet our practice consistently and powerfully contradicts, and IMO trumps our theology in the minds of laity and many clergy."

"The "good order" standard is a huge leverage point I think we need to lean on as much as possible. It's one of the greatest assets of Lutheranism, because it points us to the importance of pragmatism. When I look at the entirety of our congregational life - everything from these kinds of presiding questions to the huge investment in large group weekly worship - I just keep asking; just how good does anyone think our current "order" is??? Blessed as we are with hugely valuable insights in theology, our key temptation is to evaluate "goodness" solely based on theological concerns. Meanwhile, our practice for shaping lives that enflesh the richness of our theology is manifestly ineffective."

The Future of Church?

A thread got started in a Facebook forum for ELCA pastors in response to this simple post:

"The future of the Church.  Discuss."

I bit.  Here's what I wrote.  Probably needs some unpacking... let me know which parts make you go "Huh?"

The larger community gathers monthly, with Luther-style Third Order/house church groups gathering the other weeks. At the monthly you get full meal deal celebration worship and a sermon/message/teaching that's been a month in the making. No more time pressure to be done in an hour. Plus the band/choir is awesome because they get a month to prep for every gathering. Always linked to a community meal. Prayer requests and praise reports from the weekly groups. In the weeklies, you have a month to process and work on applying the teaching in a supportive accountability, shared-life community. Parents collaborate and support each other in nurturing the faith of the kids. Pastors get to take the time saved from the weekly worship cycle and devote it to mentoring the leaders of the weekly groups. Oh, and since you only need the building one Sunday a month you can have the whole thing shared by four congregations and cut your facility costs by 75%. Even more if you can team up with some wackos who think it's OK to worship on some other day of the week. Yeah. Something like that.

Church Can Be Less Expensive

I just spent a couple days at Funding the Missional Church with a diverse group of church folks ranging from large conventional congregations to bi-vocational church plants.  Funding is a problem all around.  A lot of the funding problem is rooted in the assumptions we bring to church life  Assumptions that come with big price tags:

• The pastor must be full time.
• The pastor must be an academically trained professional and paid as such.
• You need excellent musicians.
• You have to have a building. and so on.

I noticed one assumption however that seems to keep escaping notice, and yet is a huge factor is setting the "cost structure" for a faith community:

• You have to gather the entire faith community for worship every week.

In my Lutheran Tribe, we like to talk (among the academically trained professional clergy, anyway) about the Freedom of a Christian. Well, what if we considered how we could serve the Kingdom if we explored the freedom we have from that fifth assumption?  Just as one example, what if the whole community gathered monthly on a Friday night, renting from an existing church, and home-sized groups gathered weekly, perhaps following the path described by Luther himself?  

Point is, church can be different, and it can be way less expensive.

Along these lines I am always glad to hear from my friends at Simple Church who are very big on keeping the Gospel as portable as possible.  So let me lift up a recent post from them on keeping things simple (which also tends to be less expensive) that begins with this wonderfully challenging quote from a Filipino church planter; "Never do anything in church that a one week old Christian would be unable to duplicate." 

Hyperbole?  Perhaps.  Worth reflecting on for people called to equip others?  Absolutely.

Sunday Services: the Blind Spot and Sacred Cow in Church Decline

Dave Householder has written a bracing post about the decline of the Lutherans in North America that is well worth reading. He gets extra credit for leading off with this; "This article is not just for Lutherans. It applies to most North American faith families." I expect the comments are really good too, but with 90 at last count I confess I lacked the fortitude to actually read them all!

He cites ten factors contributing to decline, including:

• Low birth rate
• Poor retention of the babies we do have
• Staggering ineffectiveness in evangelism
• Unwelcoming if not toxic parish communities
• Little or no effective use of media

Decline has been an ongoing topic of my blog. I've integrated several of his points into the "pond metaphor" where you can easily see why the church used to grow but is in decline now. I even threw together a metric for "evangelical effectiveness" that is pretty jarring to look at.

But after reading David's post I still think that one of the most significant issues is going unnamed: the inherent ineffectiveness of Sunday morning gatherings, both for discipleship and for evangelism. Yet we persist in making these gatherings the centerpiece of our faith-life culture, and investing the vast majority of our time, energy and money in maintaining them as I've discussed here. Sunday morning, large group, presentational, professionally led, property-dependent worship services are, I'm afraid, both our biggest blind spot and our most sacred cow.

And this central assumption about the way to "do church" is perhaps the most unifying feature of North American Christendom. It can't be much of an overstatement to say that we all do it that way. No wonder then, that the decline spans the decades so readily and cuts so easily across denominational lines, and the liberal/conservative divide.

Large group gatherings are not bad. But as the centerpiece of faith practice they can never be effective in spreading or nurturing the faith. That requires face to face, heart to heart conversation, which is notoriously difficult to have in a pew, disrespectful during the preaching, and drowned out by the performance be it the organ or the band.

What the Bishop Said: Four Values that Point towards Lutheran House Churches

Recently I heard my Bishop speak, and just about everything he said made me think about house churches.

Peter Rogness is my Bishop and a very fine Bishop he is, IMHO. He was speaking to a gathering of local ELCA clergy and shared with us the four core values that he envisions guiding the shared work of our congregations. It's good stuff! Here they are:

• Relationships are more life-giving than programs or structures;
• Outreach is fundamental;
• We are “repairers of the breach;”
• Being Lutheran is an asset.
  

As he was introducing each of these to the group, I was doodling/taking notes on a plate. Each time he introduced a value I found myself thinking; "Well, that fits with house churches." (It's sort of a mental reflex for me now. No matter what anyone says about anything, I'm likely to be thinking about how it relates to house churches.)

So for the next few posts I'm going to take each of those values in turn and talk about how I see it pointing us towards an emphasis on a house church expression. Stay tuned!

God's Short List

I volunteered the other day to read some theology and blog about it in connection with a project Tripp Fuller is doing over at Homebrewed Christianity. He got so many applicants he's having to sort us out with some questions on a registration form, including this one:

What is the most interesting God question in your mind today?

So, with a little box to fill in, here's what I discovered I had to say about that:

I'm interested in minimalist Christianity from a practical standpoint, because the smaller something is, the faster it can be copied and spread. I blogged about this under the heading "Viral Christianity" here: This drives my interest in Simple Church, House Church, Organic Church, Todd Hunter's "Three is Enough" groups and so on. It also is part of an ongoing exploration into my own theological heritage (Lutheranism) which, while it can be as baroque as the next guy's, has certain features lurking at it's core that I think make it ripe for radical self-pruning.

That's what I think about anyway. To re-frame it as an answer to your question, maybe I'd put it this way; "What's on God's short list of the things that really, really mater for the Church?"

Nothing like a good question to get things moving.


So, what do you think is on God's short list?

And what would your life, and your church look like if you used the same list?

Media Scan - Recent Articles of Note

Local/Cell-Church: The Minneapolis Star Tribune has an article on Julie Jacobs and her cell church network, Frontier Fellowship. Julie was the first person I profiled for this blog in my 100 Cups of Coffee thread. The article gives a nice introduction to her work and her cell-church approach, and it's good to see the point in print that it's not intended as a rejection of larger/conventional congregations or as a competition for members. My only quibble is where Julie says that "Home churches are trying to grow big enough that they can get a building" in contrast to cell churches that aspire to grow in order to multiply into more cells. (Frankly, I'm skeptical that Julie would make that kind of sweeping generalization.) Obviously, some HCs do aspire to get back in the building, while others intend to grow by multiplication instead. Most of the people I'm in contact with who are active or interested in house church forms are interested in growth by multiplication and are pretty passionate about steering clear of buildings.

National/House Church: My Google Alert service constantly scans the web & blogosphere for me in search of key words and phrases and sent me a surprising notice yesterday. Someone over on the Huffington Post was talking about house churches! This I had to see. Turns out it came up in the post Small Is the New Big in Progressive Politics by Rob McKay. The article is about political organizing strategy and "whether the Democratic Party is about short-term voter excitement or permanent citizen engagement." In that context, he makes these observations:

This new group of efforts focuses on local leadership, small circles, and cultural organizing. They are taking their strategies from the anti-slavery movement, groups like craigslist, and most surprisingly, a new Christian movement. "We keep saying that the evangelical churches gave Bush the White House," Erin Potts, a leader in strategic thinking for groups as diverse as foundations and big rock bands, said. "If we want to know, we have to study it and see what works. And what works, is culture and small groups. The emerging house church movement has a very dynamic and interesting strategy."

Potts and other organizers note that while overall church attendance has steadily declined since the 1990s, a new form of church has taken off--the house church. Unlike traditional churches, the house church movement doesn't meet in a specific house of worship, but instead, as the name suggests, in people's homes. While traditional churches have hierarchical leadership, the house church meets as a circle of peers, and while churches try to grow the membership of a congregation, house churches purposely splinter into smaller groups as soon as a circle gains more than a handful of members.

The success of the house church movement is staggering. Membership is well into the millions. One study suggests that 70 million Americans regularly attend or have experimented with a house church.

I think it wold be pretty ironic if political groups took more and better notice of the HC movement than Christian denominations and congregations. Ironic, but in a way not surprising. Like people in the business world, politicos are driven by a powerful zeal to get an outcome; elections won and policies enacted for one, profit and market share for the other. This drive can lead to experimentation, risk, innovation etc. and it's commonplace to see churches learning from the business world - although typically after quite a lag. But sometimes it seems that urgency, drive and passion are more prevalent in politics and business than in the Church. Profit and power more motivating than sharing the gospel? "Irony" isn't enough to cover that; it's just plain sad.

Moving right along, and to something more encouraging, here's my third newscatch.

Denominational/Emergent: My denominational magazine, The Lutheran devotes its cover article for June to Emergent/emerging ministries with profiles of three examples within the ELCA and a study guide. I haven't read it yet so I can't comment on the content But I will say that my little heart went pitter-pat when I read this among the study guide questions:

If you had a school, home or prison where people proclaimed the gospel and
celebrated the sacraments, would that be the church? Why or why not?

If you're familiar with my blog, you'll know I believe that is a question for which we have an answer - and a very, very Lutheran one at that.

Luther on House Churches

Most of the people I talk with about house churches are Lutherans. One of my favorite things to do is to find out whether they know that Luther himself proposed house churches as the natural, even preferred context for people who were serious about following Jesus. (He calls these people the ones who are "desirous of being Christians in earnest and are ready to profess the Gospel with hand and mouth.") It's great fun to see the look of surprise on their faces - especially the ones who went to seminary and, amazingly, somehow never encountered this fact!

I've got the relevant section from Luther's writings uploaded in my "document vault" but I've neglected to post it here so now's the time to fix that. Here is the key excerpt, with citations at the end. Friends, and Lutherans especially, you'll want to take note of the following:

• Self-organized


• Home-based


• Lay led


• Full sacramental life


• Stewardship and social ministry


• Simple catechetical instruction


• Ideal context for loving accountability after Matthew 18


• "Form and Order" are not imported but emerge spontaneously from community life.

I also enjoy pointing out that Luther gave two reasons for why he did not implement this: 1) he lacked the "requisite persons" (leaders, presumably), and 2) no one wanted to do it. So he decided to wait "until those Christians who are most thoroughly in earnest shall discover each other and cleave together." Well, we've got lots of people capable of leading this now, and lots of people who want it, and I can tell you, there are a whole lot of people discovering each other and cleaving together.

Anyway, enough from me. Here's the Old Man himself:

But the third sort [of Divine Service], which the true type of Evangelical Order should embrace, must not be celebrated so publicly in the square amongst all and sundry. Those, however, who are desirous of being Christians in earnest, and are ready to profess the Gospel with hand and mouth, should register their names and assemble by themselves in some house to pray, to read, to baptize and to receive the sacrament and practise other Christian works. In this Order, those whose conduct was not such as befits Christians could be recognized, reproved, reformed, rejected, or excommunicated, according to the rule of Christ in Matt. xviii. Here, too, a general giving of alms could be imposed on Christians, to be willingly given and divided among the poor, after the example of St. Paul in 2 Cor. ix. Here there would not be need of much fine singing. Here we could have baptism and the sacrament in short and simple fashion: and direct everything towards the Word and prayer and love. Here we should have a good short Catechism about the Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord's Prayer. In one word, if we only had people who longed to be Christians in earnest, Form and Order would soon shape itself. But I cannot and would not order or arrange such a community or congregation at present. I have not the requisite persons for it, nor do I see many who are urgent for it. But should it come to pass that I must do it, and that such pressure is put upon me as that I find myself unable with a good conscience to leave it undone, then I will gladly do my part to secure it, and will help it on as best I can. In the meantime, I would abide by the two Orders aforesaid; and publicly among the people aid in the promotion of such Divine Service, besides preaching, as shall exercise the youth and call and incite others to faith, until those Christians who are most thoroughly in earnest shall discover each other and cleave together; to the end that there be no faction-forming, such as might ensue if I were to settle everything out of my own head.

This material can be found online at the Hanover Historical Texts Project, and in Volume 53, pp. 63-64 of Luther’s Works, American Edition.

Mega Church, Micro Church, and ELCA Pastors in Ecclesiastical Limbo

One of the groups I've encountered that is working on House Church/Simple Church multiplication in the US is House2House. I recently noticed this comment on their blog and it caught my attention:

There have been several instances of mega-churches being in contact with the simple church movement with an amazing openness to what we are doing. One is asking how they can bless us, another how they can get involved in starting organic churches and others wanting to learn more. What would happen if the mega and micro learned to co-operate?

It made me think about Willow Creek's Reveal study and their conclusion that they need to help people become "self-feeders" because merely participating in church programs was leaving people spiritually stalled. (And this at a church with really well developed programs, I'm sure!)

It also made me think about the possibilities for experimental/missional co-operation that might emerge within my own Lutheran tribe. I'm in conversation with some folks denominationally now on that very topic so we'll see where it goes. I believe large and small expressions of the Church are meant to be partners and have unique gifts to share that come with their size. I'd like to be a part of making that happen.

So far however, what I'm seeing in my tribe is more sobering than encouraging. The other day I looked through the list of contacts I've accumulated of people in my denomination who are trying to explore the house/simple church expression as a way to grow the kingdom. Most of them are "on leave from call" which is a kind of ecclesiastical limbo for a pastor in the ELCA. (I'd be there myself if I hadn't happened upon an Interim Associate Pastor position, and I expect to be right back in "on leave" when that job wraps up.) So what I see is that there isn't a ready way for these folks to pursue this work while maintain their standing in the denomination. They end up hanging by a thread, and the clock is ticking, becasue after three years "on leave" you come off of the clergy roster.

I wonder... will my denomination will find a way to hang on to these comitted, risk-taking evangelical entrepeneurs? I sure hope so!

The clock is ticking.

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.

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

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. ;)