In Western society it’s difficult to do life together, but it does happen, it can be sustained and it can be life-changing. I pray these stories encourage you to keep meeting, keep searching and start gathering. This story is told by John White.
I’ve been married to Tami for 35 years. I have two children from a previous marriage and three grandchildren. I grew up in Charleston, WV. Our family moved to Bethesda, MD when I was 14. I attended college at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, VA and then Fuller Seminary in CA. I was called to a church in Denver, CO and pastored three traditional churches in Denver over the next 25 years. I left the traditional church world in 1998 and started involving myself in the house church world. I planted several house churches in Denver. Beginning in 2002, I was the US Coordinator with a global church planting ministry called “DAWN” (Discipling A Whole Nation). DAWN ended in 2007 and we started our own ministry, called “LK10” in 2007. The LK10 Vision is to fulfill the Great Commission by seeing a “vibrant family of Jesus” (ie, house church) in easy access of every person in every region and people group on earth.” The LK10 Mission is to connect and equip spiritual mothers and fathers who are the necessary component for a vibrant family of Jesus.
We were church goers growing up but it wasn’t until the move to Bethesda and involvement in a great youth group that I understood about a personal relationship with Jesus. I invited Him into my heart as a 10th grader. I immediately fell in love with the Bible and with the youth group in addition to Jesus. Throughout high school and college, I loved being involved in making disciples and leading small groups so it was natural for me to go to seminary to prepare to be a pastor. After seminary I was called to a Presbyterian church in Denver, CO. I spent the next 25 years serving in three traditional churches.
After 25 years of leadership in traditional churches, I was beginning to be disillusioned with the church. I had been behind the scenes and knew, as they say, “how the sausage was made”. Although I was in good evangelical churches, the politics and administration were exhausting. About that time (in the mid 1980s), I began to hear about house churches in China. I knew nothing about house churches but the topic fascinated me. I began to reread my NT and discovered a startling fact. All of the churches in the NT met in homes and functioned like small spiritual families. No one talked about that in seminary!
Around that time, I also came across a verse that I had never seen before. It described what actually went on in NT church. Yet, I had never heard anyone preach or teach on this verse. 1 Cor. 14:26. “When you come together, brothers, everyone has a word of instruction, a hymn, a revelation a tongue or and interpretation. Let all of these things be done for the edification of the church.” The word that most impacted me was the word “everyone”. Apparently, everyone contributed in NT church. Amazing! At that time, I was on the pastoral staff of a church of 4000 so the idea of everyone contributing in the church gathering was impossible.
In 1989, I was asked to plant a new church. This gave me a chance to begin to implement 1 Cor. 14:26 (what Jim Rutz called “Open Church”) in the new plant. We continued that experiment until 1998 when that church came to an end. At that point, we fully moved into house churches. What we learned was that 1 Cor 14:26 was really designed for a small group setting.
I also learned that seminary and traditional church leadership had not prepared me for house church. House church was not big church shrunk down into a home. It was, rather, “a whole different animal”. I began the journey of learning the skills and practices necessary for a healthy house church. I had lots of unlearning to do!
In my years at DAWN, I had the opportunity to share what we were learning with around the world. Then, in 2008 we began our own training organization which we called “LK10”. (Based on the belief that in Luke 10 we see the clearest picture of how Jesus himself began fulfilling the Great Commission). Our desire was to serve the thousands of “Dones”. The increasing number of people who were done with church as they had known it but not Done with God.
We started LK10 with two questions that we were asking Jesus. 1-How can we do church in such a way that sustainable transformation occurs. We didn’t just want to do meetings. We wanted to see people be transformed into the image of Christ. 2-How do we do church in such a way that viral transformation occurs. (As opposed to the top down, programmatic church planting I had experienced in the traditional church).
As we had an increasing number of people coming to us for training in how to do organic house church, we began incorporating what we had learned into a simple six week online course that we call “Church 101”. That became the first step in an in depth training process.
We have been doing exclusively house church for 26 years. Still doing it. In the past 16 years, we have trained 1300 people in our Church 101 Course. Most of them are continuing on with some form of house church.
We have a learning culture which means that we are continually experimenting to see how we can grow and improve. For instance, we learned that Church 101 is a far more powerful learning experience when the groups are led by trained facilitators. As a result, we have developed an in-depth process for training great group facilitators. Another challenge was that a few people signed up for Church 101 who didn’t understand what it was. So, we now have everyone go through and Intro call first to help determine if it’s something Jesus wants them to do.
We have a far greater sense of being in community, of not being alone. We have heart level connections with people locally and beyond. We have lots of teens especially in our house churches. They love being in church where they have a voice. Most groups struggle because the people don’t have the same DNA (values and practices). And, they lack training in relational brain skills. We train everyone to be in a CO2 (Church of Two) first. (Two people connecting as close to daily as possible with two rhythms of attention). House churches made up of multiple CO2s are far stronger. It’s very important to be part of a larger community of people with the same DNA for continued training and support. Most leaders trying to do house church without that support will struggle.
Joy Fueled Amazon link. Relational Revolution Amazon link.
To read an short excerpt from Relational Revolution click here.
LK10.com website.
Stories from the Revolution podcast.