The House Church Life by Bill Wagner can best be described using his own words. “These pages capture the kinds of conversations we had, the lessons we learned, and the values that quietly shaped our community – discipleship, accountability, responsibility, restraint, worship, love, and life lived in the presence of others.” The excerpt below is […]

The excerpt below is from A Meal With Jesus by Tim Chester. Hospitality involves welcoming, creating space, listening, paying attention, and providing. Meals slow things down. Some of us don’t like that. We like to get things done. But meals force you to be people oriented instead of task oriented. Sharing a meal is not […]

This excerpt is from a small book entitled The One Thing: Christ in You The Hope of Glory by Milt Rodriguez. Singular vision is important. In the Song of Songs, it talks about having dove’s eyes. A dove has peculiar eyes; a dove can only focus on one thing at a time. And doves, by […]

Excellent textbook on the early church. Rediscovering The New Testament Church by Anthony Jacomb-Hood is a 300 page work with ample footnotes and appendices. Not for the casual reader, this is an in-depth work. The excerpt below is about leadership in the New Testament church. The most profound teachings about leadership in the New Testament […]

Great thoughts from Leland Yialelis. Christianity is the only one of the world’s great religions where the primary focus is forming communities where every person is an agent of loving kindness. Christianity’s primary focus is the “one another.” Christianity was designed to be a religion without rituals, a religion without sacred places, sacred spaces, a […]

The first half of You Are The Church by Steve Lorch covers the fundamentals of how to study the Bible. The second half explores fellowship, communion, prayer, evangelism, baptism and church leadership. The excerpt below focuses on fellowship. This book is an easy read and highly recommended. There is perhaps no greater statement regarding Christian […]

I recently spent some time with David Dyer, author of a book I really enjoyed entitled Let My People Go! You can read an excerpt here. David also completed The Father’s Life, a translation of the New Testament. You can obtain a copy at no cost by requesting it at www.agrainofwheat.com. (From David Dyer) This […]

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 Joel Davis. Some 18 years ago, a friend and I who were both trained […]

Before Buff Scott, Jr. left Cherokee, Iowa for Phoenix he took out an ad in the local newspaper. Published in 1988, his words still ring true today. INTRODUCTION The story has been told that American missionaries, upon reaching foreign soil, are confronted with barriers such as: “If you have come here to unite us, go […]

This is the second excerpt from the manuscript of Leland Yialesis. For more than 1500 years Christians have been taught that the purpose of gathering together as Christians was for the experience of worship, specifically to worship as a group congregational worship. But after 1500 years of a congregational worship-based Christianity we find a Christianity […]

The excerpt below is from a manuscript by Leland Yialelsis. It is one of the best works on relational gatherings I have read and it is highly recommended. If you are interested in understanding the heart of why gatherings are so important, you should put this one on the top of your list. This hasn’t […]

If you attended church you most likely never had the opportunity to administer communion. So what happens when you’re part of a relational gathering and the topic of taking communion arises. Robert Schmidt’s short book (70 pages) The Bridal Banquet – Holy Communion for House Churches and Small Groups has a chapter devoted on how […]