House Church - A Review

May 18th, 2007

It’s been a bit over a month since Renovation Church officially launched. I want to put down a few reflections. We have three home churches in our church. The format is that we meet once a month together as a large group and the other weeks are in the homes.

My involvement - My company donated an office for Renovation use, which is cool, because I can hang out with Renovation people during the week. I volunteered to take on the website, since we weren’t able to find someone to do it, and it’s been fun to do. Last Sunday I spoke at our home church and had a great time. I help out with meet & greet during the monthly celebrations. In the future if Cindy and I feel the pull to do so, we’ll start up our own home church, but I’m not going to move until I feel some serious internal motivation to do so. I’ve done too much ministry where I feel externally motivated, and that just lead me to bitterness and burn out.

Thoughts on the process - I’ve never seen a church plant be so undeliberate and unplanned. There was no long term mapping of the direction. There is a vision - a church of house churches. We’re basically playing by ear and creating as we go. This is an uncomfortable situation, because there’s some uncertainty as to what’s going on and what’s coming up, but at the same time, as long as the process continues to be intentional and deliberate we could shape a culture and process that is life giving and that works well. It’s a very experiential kind of planning.

Thoughts on House Church - I’ve found the house church experience to be a family experience. I don’t have to ask my kids how Sunday school was, because I was a part of it. We can talk about what we did and learned. Even when I spoke last Sunday, the kids saw it as “our family” leading. I even gave them small parts to share during the meeting, and I bounced ideas off the kids, which was really helpful. (They had no idea what “self-discipline” meant, but they knew what “self-control” meant. That was huge for me to be able to teach on the verse that I taught on: 2 Timothy 1:7). On the bummer side is that the people I first met when we were in pre-launch are people I only see once a month now. And if I start my own home church, that’ll be the case for the new friends I’m making at my current home church. I’m excited about what we’re doing with our monthly celebrations. Keith wants to turn it into a festival. Can’t wait to see how that turns out!

That’s it for now. It’s time for me to play some Wii.