Category: Books / Videos

In this book, Henri Nouwen compiles his thoughts into three sections: reaching out to our innermost self, reaching out to our fellow human beings and reaching out to God. In these three sections, he writes about moving from loneliness to solitude, from hostility to hospitality and from illusion to prayer. Although this book is not specifically about organic church, there are some great thoughts like the excerpt below on community.

The word “community” usually refers to a way of being together that gives us a sense of belonging. Often students complain that they do not experience much community in their school; ministers and priests wonder how they can create a better community in their parishes; and social workers, overwhelmed by the alienating influences of modern life, try hard to form communities in the neighborhood they are working in. In all these situations the word “community” points to a way of togetherness in which people can experience themselves as a meaningful part of a larger group.

Although we can say the same about the Christian community, it is important to remember that the Christian community is a waiting community, that is, a community which not only creates a sense of belonging but also a sense of estrangement. In the Christian community we say to each other, “We are together, but we cannot fulfill each other…we help each other, but we also have to remind each other that our destiny is beyond our togetherness.” The support of the Christian community is a support in common expectation. That requires a constant criticism of anyone who makes the community into a safe shelter or a cozy clique, and a constant encouragement to look forward to what is to come.

The basis of the Christian community is not the family tie, or social  or economic equality, or shared oppression or complaint, or mutual attraction…but the divine call. The Christian community is not the result of human efforts. God has made us into his people by calling us out of “Egypt” to the “New Land,” out of the desert to fertile ground, out of slavery to freedom, out of our sin to salvation, out of captivity to liberation. All these words and images give expression to the fact that the initiative belongs to God and that he is the source of our new life together. By our common call to the New Jerusalem, we recognize each other on the road as brothers and sisters. Therefore, as the people of God, we are called ekklesia (from the Greek kaleo=call; and ek-out), the community called out of the old world into the new.

Since our desire to break the chains of our alienation is very strong today, it is of special importance to remind each other that, as members of the Christian community, we are not primarily for each other but for God. Our eyes should not remain fixed on each other but be directed forward to what is dawning on the horizon of our existence. We discover each other by following the same vocation and by supporting each other in the same search. Therefore, the Christian community is not a closed circle of people embracing each other, but a forward-moving group of companions bound together by the same voice asking for their attention.

It is quite understandable that in our large anonymous cities we look for people on our “wave length” to form small communities. Prayer groups, Bible-study clubs and house-churches all are ways of restoring or deepening our awareness of belonging to the people of God. But sometimes a false type of like-mindedness can narrow our sense of community. We all should have the mind of Jesus Christ, but we do not all have to have the mind of a school teacher, a carpenter, a bank director, a congressman or whatever socioeconomic or political group. There is a great wisdom hidden in the old bell tower calling people with very different backgrounds away from their homes to form one body in Jesus Christ. It is precisely by transcending the many individual differences that we can become witnesses of God who allows his light to shine upon poor and rich, healthy and sick alike. But it is also in this encounter on the way to God that we become aware of our neighbor’s needs and begin to heal each other’s wounds.

I have included some excerpts below from Paul L. Wachtel’s book written in 1989, The Poverty of Affluence. These excerpts were compiled by my good friend Jon Zens who introduces his thoughts on the subject in the first chapter below. The post is lengthier than usual, but I hope you take the time to read it through.

There can be little doubt that an aggressive individualism reigns in America. The “community sense” that used to be stronger here is virtually lost in the 21st century. But, does what is calling itself “church” even foster and cultivate living community, or does it contribute to the individualistic status quo? In the midst of a culture that is falling apart, the Body of Christ is to be an organic setting where the multi-faceted wisdom of God is manifested in and through the saints-a new humanity, a new community which is radically counter-cultural-a setting where the only medium of exchange is love-a family community where Christ’s shared life is lived out among the brothers and sisters as the visible Life expression of Christ in and to a needy world. Wachtel mentions “the widespread yearning for greater closeness to others.” It is clear that folks will not find this in the culture at large. Many are looking for love in all the wrong places. Will they find that “greater closeness to others” in Christ’s ekklesia? Jon Zens

Something about our commitment to (economic) growth seems akin to the phenomena observed in individual neuroses. For me the heart of the notion of neurosis is the occurrence of vicious cycles in people’s behavior in which their sense of security is undermined by the very efforts they make to bolster it. In what follows I shall examine how our quest for economic growth has been both a cause of drastic changes in the way we live, and a cornerstone of our efforts to deal with the anxiety generated by those very changes…

In explicating further, I wish to begin not with economic growth per se but with the sense of community and its decline. For most of human history people lived in tightly knit communities in which each individual had a specified place, and in which there was a strong sense of shared fate. The sense of belonging, of being part of something larger than oneself, was an important source of comfort. In the face of the dangers and the terrifying mysteries that the lonely individual encountered, this sense of connectedness-along with one’s religious faith, which often could hardly be separated from one’s membership in the community-was for most people the main way of achieving some sense of security and the courage to go on.

Over the past few hundred years, for a number of reasons, the sense of rootedness and belonging has been declining. In its place has appeared a more highly differentiated sense of individuality, implying both greater opportunity and greater separateness…

This does not mean, of course, that some sense of community, and some secure ties to others do not remain. We could not survive without such ties…While there is much truth in the common claim that individualism arose in the Renaissance, that claim must be understood as referring to individualism as a vector that began to challenge that of rootedness as the central force in society, not as a new phenomenon altogether.

The facts of our separate bodies, our separate pain, our separate deaths, as well as the differences in temperament and personality…preclude the possibility of a complete absence of individual identity and a sense of separateness…This understood, it may be stated strongly that we have witnessed a striking increase in the sense of separate, differentiated identity and a corresponding sharp decline in the sense of community and belonging.

The sense of belonging and shared fate has been further eroded by the social and geographic mobility that are far more characteristic of our society than of previous ones…One out of five of us moves each year. Today our place in the social order is less clearly demarcated and less securely held. We have no reserved seats. We must win our place.

We have friends, of course, but they are friends who have chosen us…Jeremy Seabrook refers to the “strangers who live where neighborhoods once were”…

Our enormously greater capacity to predict and control events, to alleviate pain and hunger, to provide leisure and abundance should have made us happier, Life now shouldn’t be just different, it should be better, much better…That, I think, is not the case…

Our present stress of growth and productivity is, I believe, intimately related to the decline in rootedness. Faced with loneliness and vulnerability that come with deprivation of a securely encompassing community, we have sought to quell the vulnerability through our possessions…But the comfort we achieve tends to be short-lived.

In all eras people must find means to reassure themselves in the face of their finiteness and mortality. We are all ultimately helpless to a far greater degree than we dare admit. Our fragility before the forces of nature (both those outside us and those within that cause pain, disease, and aging), as well as the certainly that death is our ultimate earthly destiny, are unbearable to face without some means of consoling ourselves, and of giving meaning and purpose to our lives.

Religion, as well as the sense of belonging to a community, once provided that means for most people. But over the years the progress of science and the development of newer, more efficient modes of production undermined religious faith, as it did the traditional ties between people that, together with religion, made life livable…The older ways did not disappear, but they ceased to exert the exclusive dominance they previously had…

The accumulation of wealth and material comforts, rather than secure rooting in a frame and context, began to form the primary basis for quelling the feelings of vulnerability that inevitably afflict us. Increasing numbers began to base their hopes and dreams on the evident progress in our ability to produce goods…

The economist Fred Hirsch noted that a decline in sociability and friendliness has been characteristic of modern economies. He noted that friendliness “is time consuming and thereby liable to be economized because of its extravagant absorption of this increasingly scarce input.” Hirsch suggested that the time needed for consumption of all that has become within economic reach may “reduce friendliness and mutual concern in society as a whole”…

If we are to fashion an alternative capable of luring us away from the attractions (and concomitant costs) of the consumer way of life, clearly restoration of the sense of community and connectedness to others must be at the heart of it…This kind of change will require considerably more attention to context, to support groups, and to the mutual sustaining of values and assumptions…

The consumer society has not left people in higher spirits. Far more than joy or contentment with their present materially comfortable status, Seabrook found disillusionment, sense of hopes betrayed. A sense on the part of parents that they had lost touch with their children; a sense on the part of the children that they had been set adrift; a fear of muggers, rapists, vandals; a diminished sense of being able to count on others for help-these were some of the things that seemed to accompany and to spoil these people’s increased affluence. The loss of community is one of the great problems we face as a society, and one of the great burdens for a very large number of individuals…

Few of us would explicitly avow that we have chosen to rely on products instead of other people, and, fortunately, the bonds of community and interdependency are too important to be severed completely. But the widespread yearning for greater closeness to others suggests that for many there is a sense of superficiality about these connections, even when things look good “from the outside”…

We are faced with having to learn again about interdependency and the need for rootedness after several centuries of having systematically – and proudly-dismantled our roots, ties, and traditions. The tallest trees need the most elaborate roots of all. To make use of our technology in a way that enhances rather than degrades our lives, we must take account of our new understanding of ecological limits and interdependence.

Many of us have felt discomfort in our spirits while attending institutional church. We’re not quite sure what’s wrong so we suggest tweaks to help things run smoother hoping that will fix the problem. It never does. This recent (2024) book by C J Penn reads like his personal journal as he begins to remove the graffiti from God’s masterpiece.

His honesty is refreshing and the pages are filled with scripture and quotes from others. Like the Matrix movie he takes the red pill and documents his journey out of church religiosity. Throughout the book he encourages readers to start their own journey.

The first half of the book flowed nicely but then I came to Chapter 16 entitled “Christian in Name Only” which seemed to be completely out of character. His disparaging remarks on Trump and on his Christian supporters and his remarks about the pro-life movement were concerning.

Mature Christ followers know the temptation on relying on politics to save the world. Politicians will never save the world and legislating morality doesn’t work. It’s completely legitimate to write about how Christians can get overly zealous about politics and politicians, but the writings here railed against one politician and one political party.

Honestly, I didn’t read the rest of the book. Hopefully, the author will rewrite this chapter presenting a more general view of politics and religion which I agree is well needed.

This hard-hitting book was published in 1966 by Clyde Reid. The full title is The God-Evaders: How Churches & Their Members Frustrate the Genuine Experience of Christ. Many books talk about the dysfunction of the church structure but this book focuses on the mutual evasion by the clergy and the laity in experiencing the genuine Christ. If you find this online, it’s worth reading. The short excerpt below talks about “The Law of Religious Evasion”.

Churches tend to be more interested in programs and buildings and statistics than in persons. Never before has the spiritual poverty of our present religious structures been so clearly revealed. As a student put it to me so vividly one day: “The church stands in the way of Christ. You tend not to believe in God because of what you see in the church.”

To suggest that a revision of the order of worship or the liturgy will solve the problem is naïve. To rely on a new and up-to-date theological understanding is not enough. To insist on better preaching as the answer is to base our hopes on a false premise. We must look further and deeper than we have looked thus far. In this spirit I suggest the following insight as one of the dimensions of our difficulty.

We structure our churches and maintain them so as to shield us from God and to protect us from the genuine expression of Christ.

On a conscious level, we are gathered and organized in our churches for religious purposes, but on an unconscious level we have other motivations which take precedence and which contradict and nullify our spiritual intentions. Our behavior reveals all too often that unconscious resistance rather than conscious intention is determining our actions.

The church as a group tends to emasculate impulses toward Christ, corral them, then render them safe and harmless so they cannot upset the comfort level of the body.

This emasculating process is carried out in a number of subtle ways in the churches. We structure the services of worship as to prevent genuine worship. We use the clergy as buffers to protect us from the direct impact of religious influence. We invest great energy in the defense of doctrines which stand between us and God, rather than opening the way for a deeper relationship.

One of the bedrock answers that helps me to understand why we structure our churches to evade God is simply our fear of God. If we expose ourselves to His influence, we cannot be sure where it may lead us. If we follow Him, we may be led far from home. God represents the unknown, and the unknown is always frightening.

My wife and I had the pleasure of meeting Jon and Dotty Zens a couple of weeks ago. It was an honor spending time with them and hearing stories of their travels around the world. They have been encouraging relational fellowships since 1977 so their knowledge is not only based on the Word but founded on real life experiences. 58 to 0, How Christ Leads Through The One Anothers is a fabulous book. It’s meatier than some of his other books, so be prepared. I have included an excerpt below. You can check out his website here.

Years ago, Vernon Grounds wrote an article about “the fellowship of porcupines.”  He noted that all of us are capable of poking one another in hurtful ways. The DNA of Christ in us longs for a community of shared life in Christ. But, as Henri Nouwen observed, the path to vibrant community “is hard and full of difficulties,” (H. Nouwen, Reaching Out, p. 46).

From the Lord’s perspective and purpose, He birthed the ekklesia on earth to express and display His Son. And through the ekklesia, He makes His wisdom known to the principalities and powers that rule in the heavenlies, thereby, His reign and love in the ekklesia will be seen by the watching world, (Ephesians 3:10; John 13:35).

Thus, despite the numerous obstacles and challenges to a believing community, fully functioning ekklesia is not optional, but the vitality and the heart of God’s eternal purpose in Christ. Followers of Christ on earth are faced with living in a serious tension within the messiness of His family, yet nevertheless, continuing to pursue Him together as those captured by His eternal purpose for His Son to have a Bride.

Nouwen crisply captured the essence of community when he called it “a joyful togetherness of spontaneous people,” (H. Nouwen, Reaching Out, p. 15). 

So why do we find it so difficult to live the shared life of Christ with others? Why does a believing community seem to blossom so infrequently? I think it would be beneficial to touch upon some of the formidable challenges that we must wrestle with in the context of community.

Every culture has its peculiar characteristics that give believers a sure test of faith as they follow Jesus. Here are four to reflect upon.

1. Mobility: In our era, mobility is an issue in most places in the world. But in America it seems that many people are too mobile! Folks do not remain in the same place long enough to establish community with other believers. They are always moving for a variety of reasons. This makes it not only difficult, but near impossible to develop community together. Usually the parting takes place before the bond of Christ takes root through knowing Him in and through one another.

2. Distance: Many Americans drive long distances one-way from home to the church building of their choice. The fact remains that deepening relationships cannot be built from a distance. Living within reasonable proximity to one another facilitates community Life. Authentic community is the everyday things and everyday life that we share together.

3. Individualism: We live in a culture where, for the most part, people have built walls around themselves, and they don’t want to let any body in. People live in subdivisions and have never met their neighbors. “Jeremy Seabrook refers to the ‘strangers who live where neighborhoods once were’…. It may be stated strongly that we have witnessed a striking increase in the sense of separate, differentiated identity and a corresponding sharp decline in the sense of community and belonging,” (Paul L. Wachtel, “America, Land of Lost Community,” Searching Together, 38:3-4, 2012, p. 29).

Given that believers have usually been infected with forms of individualism, it takes a fresh revelation from Christ in order for them to see that in the Spirit they are part of a Body in which they receive from and give to the other parts, (1 Cor. 12:13).

4. Materialism and Consumerism: Most Americans feel pressured to devote a lot of time to obtaining and maintaining their things and their career.  Building Christ-centered communities will involve each follower re-visiting how they use their time, money and resources. Community flows out of believers giving priority to Christ in others, not to pouring time and resources into things that will perish. Bruce Springsteen captured the spirit of this in “Blood Brothers”:

We played king of the mountain out on the end away
The world come chargin’ up the hill, and we were women and men
Now there’s so much that time, time and memory fade away
We got our own roads to ride and chances we gotta take
We stood side by side, each one fightin’ for the other
We said until we died, we’d always be blood brothers

Now the hardness of this world slowly grinds your dreams away
Makin’ a fool’s joke out of the promises we make
And what once seemed black and white turns to so many shades of gray
We lose ourselves in work to do and bills to pay
And it’s a ride, ride, ride, and there ain’t much cover
With no one runnin’ by your side my blood brother

It is with great sadness that we must observe that the churches people see on the street corners are not counter-cultural, but for the most part they acquiesce to American cultural norms. Is it any wonder that we do not see the Life of Christ in believers coming to expression in vital community? The very church structures themselves-both the buildings and the hierarchy-tend to foster mobility (people hopping from one church to the next), distance (relationships are not developed), individualism (no cultivation of body-life), and materialism/consumerism (church budgets need so much to pay for the buildings, the upkeep, their image, and the salaries).

Del Birkey’s well researched treatise on House Church was originally published in 1988 and re-released in 2019. It reads like a text book so if you’re into scholarly works, this book is for you. I hope you read the following excerpt carefully, it’s essential to model when doing life together.

The original Christian small group had gathered together with their Master-Teacher. The end was pressing upon him. His society had sought him for signs. He refused to give the kind they wanted, but he did signal his most significant clue for all who would follow him. He conquered with the sign of a towel. With the washing of their feet he established the symbol for servant work. He declared, “I have given you an example” (John 13:15). This lesson was forthrightly simple. Jesus wears the towel-apron of a servant, and we must wear it, too. After all, he said, “No servant is greater than his master” (v. 16).

In this manner, Jesus contradicted all other models of influence and self-importance. The one who makes the towel his or her badge is not the one who maneuvers for a place in the power structures of life. “The sign of the towel was not a put-on. Servanthood was not a role Jesus played on earth’s stage, but his real character.”

Jesus gave servanthood to his body, the church. Jesus conquered  with the sign of a towel, and he gave that quality of attitude to his disciples. Leadership in his body is not the real issue-servanthood is. Life in his church is not the same as life in secular society. On the contrary, kingdom life calls for an entirely new model, not merely a new definition.

Jesus clashed head on, therefore, against centuries-old authority structures. He turned the whole issue of authority on its head and recast it into an issue of servanthood. Jesus acknowledged that the Gentile model of leading was rigidly hierarchical. After a minor scuffle over who was to get the seats near the king (Matt. 20:25-28), Jesus unveiled the kingdom model. The Lord went to the core of the problem. He said, “Their great men exercise authority over them” in such a way as to achieve outward behavioral conformity to their ways.

Jesus had a better idea, however. His leadership ethic in kingdom work would achieve inner heart commitment to God’s ways. The way of authoritarian leading, he said, “shall not be so among you!” Instead, if you want to get ahead, you will have to succeed at serving. If you want to be first, you must be the very last, the servant of all (Mark 9:35). Greatness among his followers, he
declared, will be measured not in quantities of personal rank and acumen, but in qualities of personal humility in servanthood.

A little later, after a bout with the religious elite leaders, Jesus further contrasted the two models of leadership (Matt. 23:1-12). Faulting and chiding them, he made the distinctions stark. They created a faulty dichotomy between word and deed, but his teaching made them synonymous. They laid heavy burdens on others, but in the kingdom all are brothers and sisters and share. They maintain high visibility for personal praise, but Jesus said that whoever acts proudly will surely be brought down. They gave preeminence to those with titles, rank, and power, but Jesus said the preeminent will be the last in the kingdom. He said they should stop calling their leaders with pompous titles. The Gentile model worked from the top down, the kingdom model from the bottom up.

The church confirmed its servanthood in its ministry. The reason is simple and Jesus’ conclusion could not be clearer. “One is your Master, and all you are brethren” (Matt. 23:8). Evidence gathered from the occasional letters to the New Testament house churches and the other epistles provide ample principles and insights for the practicing of servant leadership in Christ’s church. It is not a question of whether or not we will have leadership, but rather a question of how it will be put into effect.

It may be, suggests Marlin Miller,

that the equivalents for our word “leader” in the first century culture were not used for the Christian church because of the shifts in understanding that took seriously Jesus’ teaching that “among you there shall be servants and not rulers.” The old language for leadership was linked with the language for ruling and domination.

The language of New Testament leadership is one of horizontal relationships, of leading and following, of voluntary submission and service toward one another. The only final authority believers acknowledge is the absolute authority of Jesus as Lord (Phil.2:10-11).  He has no other intermediaries.

This servant leadership in the house church takes initiative in helping the group form a consensus rooted in the Jesus tradition and moving in the direction of fullness in Christ. If we see that kind of servant leadership in the sociological context of the house church, it makes much sense. It can manifest itself more wholly in the context of small size and direct interrelationships.

Furthermore, the kind of persons equipped to be elders in the New Testament house church are the kind of persons who demonstrate the qualities which encourage and build family solidarity.  In this way, the house church context provides a congruity between such characteristics of leaders and the biblical style of leading. 

Miller concludes:

We have discovered a pattern of leadership in the New Testament house churches which provides both the model and the characteristics of what leadership should and can be in the house churches of our time. The recasting of authority, from the right to rule to the freedom to serve in a community of mutual subordination, is a biblical model which goes beyond both the restoration of hierarchical structures, on the one hand, and egalitarian individualism on the other.

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Jesus Unveiled is a relatively new book (2019) by Keith Giles. Filled with down to earth advice and practical guidelines for doing organic church together, it’s a book I would highly recommend. Below is an excerpt from the book about “What The Church Isn’t”.

As we’ve seen, the New Testament uses several words and metaphors to express the character, function, and personality of the Church.  Namely, the Church is a Body, a Bride, a Temple, and a Family.

Now that we’ve spent time exploring what the Church is, let’s take a hard look at what the Church isn’t. The New Testament doesn’t ever refer to the Church as an organization, as if it were a corporation or an industry. Instead, the Church is referred to as an organism. Therefore, according to the Apostles, and to Jesus, the Church that God designed is not intended to be thought of, or to be treated, like a business.

The Church that God always wanted is a family. This means that pastors are not synonymous with CEOs. It also means that the people in the Church are not to be thought of, or treated, as employees, commodities, tithing units, or assets. Instead, they are our brothers and sisters in Christ and should be treated as such-with love and respect.

This is about more than mere semantics. What you believe about something, how you talk about it, how you think of it, actually affects your behavior towards it or concerning it. So, I have found that, if you think of the Church as a business you will begin to expect certain things from it that you wouldn’t expect from a family, and vice versa.

For example, no one expects the family to grow in size each quarter or post an annual profit. Families don’t work that way, but corporations do. A father would not treat his daughter like an employee. Nor would he base his relationship on how much revenue she contributed to the family. Corporations may act that way, but families do not.

For a long time now, especially in the West, the Church has turned her gaze to the world of big business. She has based Her identity on a corporation rather than the organic, family-based, relational design laid out for us in Scripture.

Scripture makes it clear to us that the Church is an organism; a living Body made up of living parts which function best when they are interconnected. God’s design for His Church is relational.

“The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ.” (1 Corinthians 12:12)

A family is a social unit made up of people who share a common ancestor and engage in shared activities and beliefs. The family is grounded in love and it takes strength from the quality of the relationships developed over time.

Healthy families love each other in spite of difficulty, or hurt feelings. Families forgive and share.

Families pull together in a conflict. Families support one another and encourage one another. But when a family is run like a business it is impossible to maintain any of these foundational values of love, loyalty, sharing, forgiveness and protection.

A business is grounded in a completely different set of values. A business is a collection of talented people recruited to advance the interests of the company, build recurring revenue streams and add value to the business.

Whenever an employee becomes unproductive he is eliminated. 
Whenever a more talented employee is recruited, others are down-sized or let go. A business is ultimately about making money and growing larger. A business is mostly concerned with gaining market share and outperforming the competition.

So, if we treat the House of God like a business we will suddenly find ourselves engaging in activities that serve to grow the business and eliminate the competition.

Ideas such as love and family and service and community may become phrases used as metaphors to describe the activities of our business. They will not be expressed or embodied, in any real way, by those within our organization.

A business is concerned with growth, not with how happy, or healthy the employees may be. A business is concerned with numbers, finances and outward signs of success, it is not concerned with forgiveness, community or love.

The people who make up a family are called brothers and sisters. They are treated with love and respect. They are all valued for who they are as people, not for what they can do to improve the bottom line.

The people who make up a business are called employees. They are treated as assets which the company may exploit for financial gain. Employees are regarded as individual components which contribute to the overall success of the business. They are valued for what they can add to the company, not for who they are as people.

The Church, as Jesus designed it, is relational and organic. According to the New Testament, God’s plan was for His people to operate like a family, where He is our Father. He created a church that operates like an organism where He is our head, not like a business where we set up certain people as CEO’s and treat people as employees.

Clearly, the New Testament reveals that the Church is a family,  an organism and a Bride. It is never referred to as a business venture.

As we’ve seen over and over again, the mission of the Messiah was to build a suitable temple for God to dwell in. Jesus alone is the one who is qualified to build the temple of God, and we are that temple. We are a spiritual house of living stones “not made with human hands” but by the nail-scarred hands of God’s only son.

Put another way, the only true temple of God is the one that is being built by Jesus, not one built by any man, pastor, teacher or leader.

Blessings and don’t forget to subscribe below.

This 520 page monster of a book by Rad Zdero is for serious scholars. It is a compilation of articles from over 35 leaders, practitioners and academics from around the world. The book contains sections on the origin of house churches, house church movements throughout history, house church movements today (2007) and practical lessons on starting a house church. The excerpt below is from a chapter entitled Constantine’s Revolution: The Shift From House Churches to the Cathedral Church (AD 300 and Beyond)

In the first century AD, a mere 40 days after his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ entered the heavenly realm to sit at the right hand of Power. After three long years of public ministry, punctuated by victories and challenges, he left a noble commission of making disciples of all nations to his small motley crew of followers. Yet, not many years later, first century believers had become known as those that had turned the world upside down.  They were able to make good strides in their journey of spreading the message of Christ to the then-known world through the empowerment that they received from the Spirit of God. In the process, they birthed new communities of faith in new linguistic, cultural, and geographic soil. Their preferred strategy initially forged by the apostles themselves-was that of an expanding network of simple, small, reproducible, grassroots house churches, as borne out by even the briefest survey of Scripture and described in detail by scholars. These home-based and house-sized groups were characterized by Spirit-led participatory meetings, consensus decision-making, the Lord’s Supper as a full meal, baptism of adults immediately upon profession of faith, co-equal teams of unpaid leaders, and recognition of apostolic teachings and practices as authoritative in all respects. House churches were networked together through occasional citywide meetings and by traveling apostolic teams that circulated from group-to-group and city-to-city.

In the second and third centuries, the Jesus movement continued to expand its influence through the faithful witness of its adherents. Bright minds, brave hearts, and able hands were put to the task of preaching the gospel, healing the sick, casting out demons, clothing the naked, fighting false teachings, and facing both sword and flame, believers preferring to die for Christ rather for living for Ceaser.

Many spiritual giants emerged during this era, especially those collectively known as the Early Church Fathers. Ignatius of Antioch (c.35.-c.107) wrote seven powerful letters to the churches while being taken by soldiers to Rome where he was literally thrown to the lions in the Coliseum.

Justin Martyr (c.100-c.165), a one time pagan philosopher, turned to Christ and thereafter used his verbal and written skills in rationally defending the Christian faith against skeptical philosophers, antagonistic governors, argumentative rabbis, and so-called Gnostic Christians, eventually being scourged and beheaded for his beliefs.

Cyprian of Carthage (d.258), a pagan rhetorician who converted to Christianity only 12 years before his martyrdom, became an important Christian leader whose writings influenced thinking on the nature of the church, Christian leadership, and the sacraments. These are but a few of the characters in a long line of Christian martyrs, thinkers, and influencers.

Yet, subtle shifts began to creep in amongst the churches. The Early Church Fathers, whose sincerity should not be doubted, nevertheless, advocated for moves away from apostolic approaches, toward a more institutionalized understanding of the church. These shifts included the development of clergy who were distinct from the ordinary so-called lay Christian, a hierarchical approach to one-man leadership, formality in worship meetings, a pre-baptism probationary period for adults, the beginning of infant baptism, the observance of special holy days, a gradual
rejection of miracles and spiritual gifts, and a rigidity in doctrine.

Doubtless, some of the centralization and control were well-meaning responses by the Early Church Fathers to the external challenges posed by heretical fringe groups that were gaining momentum (e.g. the Gnostics) and Roman imperial policies that vacillated between grudging tolerance (e.g. emperor Trajan) and outright persecution (e.g. emperors Decius, Gallus, Valerian, and Diocletian) of the Christian faithful.

To be sure, there were similar challenges that even the first century churches faced, which the letters of the apostles often addressed and which Jesus himself denounced in the book of Revelation. However, the apostles eventually died and were not able to check these tendencies personally in later generations.

This was all merely a preparation phase for the coming full-fledged institutionalization of Christianity under the emperor Constantine in the early fourth century AD, which finally displaced the early grassroots house churches with ‘The Cathedral Church’. This institutionalization, as we shall see, affected the church’s freedom, faith, form, and function.

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Edited by Jon Zens, Searching Together is a journal published quarterly by Quoir. This issue from 2015 contains thoughts from Jon Zens, Dennis J. Mulkey and T. Austin-Sparks. The excerpt below by Jon Zens is from a section called Christ Alone:Five Challenges Every Group Will Face. You can obtain this copy by clicking here.

A brochure promoting a conference put on by the Willow Creek Church in Illinois announced, “Thousands of leaders across North America gather together to hear speakers from all over the world, participate in interactive dialogue, and have practical training-which focuses on helping the church raise up leaders, as well as helping leaders in churches develop their leadership gifts.”

The truth is, since 250 AD the visible church has been all about leaders. If you read church histories, the great bulk of the content is about this leader and that leader. It cannot be denied that what church has been about is “leadership.” The thousands of books about leadership and the many aspects of “pastoral leadership” testify loudly to the lop-sided emphasis on this subject that dominates the church landscape.

Jesus, however, did not share our inherited views about leadership. When talking about the religious leaders of His day, He noted that they liked to be greeted publicly as “Rabbi, Rabbi” (in our day it would be “Reverend, Reverend”). Christ told His audience, “don’t be called ‘Rabbi,’ for I alone am your Teacher, and you are all brothers and sisters.”

He went on to assert, “don’t call anyone ‘Father’ on earth, for One is your Father in heaven. Neither be called ‘leaders,’ for One is your Leader, the Anointed One. The greatest among you will be the one who takes care of others.”

Jesus told us rather clearly not to be called “leaders,” yet history of the church is mostly about people wanting positions with titles so that they can be set above others as “leaders.” Even in groups meeting outside mainline churches, the emphasis often still falls on “leaders,” and much energy is devoted to continually training more non-leaders to become “leaders.”

How can we expect it to be clear that Jesus is our Leader when we spend so much time focusing on human leaders? Our Lord specifically said that calling humans “leaders” would detract and deflect from His singular Leadership. Typical concerns about “leaders” should never be an issue in organic groups. Function together for a period of time as a priesthood of all believers, and see what He reveals in your life together down the pike.

The topic of “leadership” comes up all the time in groups on Facebook. In this instance I responded, and my thoughts speak to why worrying about leadership is vastly premature in believing groups.

[David Munley:] In your view, how does God develop leaders?

[Jon:] Given the flow of church history and the accretion of assumptions, this is a question with many layers of concerns that could be addressed.

But in a nutshell, I would say that Father is not focused on developing leaders. His purpose is to see Christ formed in His people. When believers function as simply brothers and sisters in a community for a length of time, the expression of Christ and specific aspects of giftedness blossom in His Bride.

It is my observation that this is the crucial dimension absent from the great majority of “church leaders.” They have rarely lived out the life of Christ in the body for sustained periods of time as non- leaders. The NT speaks about “knowing” one another. This reality comes only through long-term relationships.  A huge problem is that many leaders are not “known.” You know a person when you’ve seen them function in all the vicissitudes of life as a brother or sister.

As I said in 58 to 0-How Christ Leads Through the One Anothers: “In the NT, the organic way for everything to develop is through the functioning of all the living stones together. To focus on leaders without having first a functioning body is to put the proverbial cart before the horse-with far-reaching dire consequences. If a group is filled with Jesus and his guidance, ‘leaders’ will probably not be on their minds; if a group lacks the fullness of Jesus, they will probably become fixated on the need for ‘leaders.’”

[Billie Ritter Ford:] I think a leader is one who steps out ahead of the group and says let’s try it this way.

[Jon:] That’s true, but what many miss is that anyone in the body can say, “let’s try this.” Everyone participates in the Spirit’s leadership. We are used to just looking at a few as “leaders.” But the Lord brings leadership out of all the saints as time goes on-if the open opportunity and loving atmosphere are present. Spirit-leadership can be seen as shifting and floating among the whole priesthood.

Father removed Moses and Elijah from the scene, and when the three disciples looked up, they saw only Jesus, and the voice from the Shekinah glory proclaimed, “This is My beloved Son, hear Him.” How could our One focus be any clearer?

The body of Christ must listen to the Lord. Each person in the body, and the body as a whole is able to hear the Son’s voice. We want to hear from our Leader. In order for His leadership to prosper among us, we must stop looking to one or a few, and cease calling people “leaders.”

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