It’s been a month since Hope Chapel Mana`olana, my church body here on O`ahu, made the change to the house/garage/beach church model. Enough time to begin to measure some results.
First of all, what has this looked like?
It’s been meeting with some friends for BBQ, surfing, worship & hanging out at Kakaako Park. It’s been early morning coffee & catching up with a friend. It’s been late night Wii Tiger Woods Golf & accountability with another friend.
It’s been creating an environment at my house where some family members - who would never “go to church” - have felt comfortable discussing God. It’s been not feeling the obligation to rush out the door on Sunday morning.
It’s been an evolving picture, but it’s all a move toward eliminating this church-as-a-destination way of thought that’s become THE model for modern Christianity. A model that personally changed my life and has been given years of opportunity to be effective, but has achieved generally mixed results and has alienated countless numbers to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
This new model is an attempt to return to our roots as an interconnected, interdependent network of believers passionately pursuing Jesus Christ together.
The metric is simply “am I growing to be more like Jesus?”
For some the answer has been “yes, absolutely, finally!” and for others the answer has been some extent of the opposite.
Personally, I can draw direct parallels from the things I’ve observed in myself & others to my experience of leaving the corporate world & pursuing my entrepreneurial vision. Extremely freeing, at times unnerving, and seemingly not for everyone.
En·tre·pre·neur: a person who organizes and manages any enterprise, usually with considerable initiative and risk.
I’d say that for most, when you pull the structure of corporate hierarchy or institutional religion out from under them, they don’t have what it takes to stay afloat. Or in their panic, they simply don’t see the life raft that’s right beside them.
Over the course of time, a radical new paradigm will be vehemently opposed, then ridiculed, then accepted as being obvious.
Someone told me that a while back and it’s proven valid in several situations in my life. It’s been the experience of some of my brothers & sisters with this new church model. Trust me, there’s been vehement opposition! Just as there was when I told people I was leaving the “security” of life as an employee months ago.
Satan loves transitional periods in our lives. It’s the perfect opportunity to cripple us with fear & self-doubt and send us running back to a more familiar, comfortable, secure model of living. I often still feel this as an entrepreneur.
But if we are passionately committed to our new vision and cling to our identities as beloved saints, priests, warriors, and children of God, we can take this fear captive & send it back where it came from.
All I want in this life is to live fully & freely in Christ and to be the absolute fulfillment of the man he designed me to be. That should be a vision of yours as well. And by all means make it happen, whether it’s in the familiarity & tradition of a sanctuary, in the freedom of “Christ-epreneurialism,” or both.
** If you’re curious about the home church paradigm, read “Pagan Christianity” by Frank Viola & George Barna. It asks questions every single believer should be asking about the modern Christian church concept.
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Posted in Faith, Life | Comments (1)
Posted on January 26th, 2009
Wow! Your church is doing some amazingly “out there” things! I’d like to hear how it’s going so far! How do you manage to Disciple new Believers, and maintain UNITY within your church body when you are split up at different homes and other venues?
How do you hold each other accountable and maintain a church body cohesiveness?
Who is accountable to whom?
I have wondered for years if we might need to evolve into more of a home-church environment in the last days, and I definately believe we are in the last days!
Still, there are some major things to overcome, such as a few of them I asked about here.
I now go to an awesome church, much larger than I would have chosen by my own personal taste (before I came, but somehow they have managed to maintain unity, and a sensitive cohesive closeness. They are finding ways to remain accessible and personal, so that you can find and build relationships with other Believers and you can be held accountable and encourage one another, etc.
Our mission is simple: “Building Solid Lives” based on Luke 6:46-49 and we have an intensive, 6 course Discipleship program called “Operation Solid Lives” (OSL) that is absolutely life-changing - even for those of us who have known Christ for many years!
The teaching here is deeper and more profound than any other I’ve heard in my decades of being a Christian, and even though I have had excellent, well-educated, anointed and gifted Pastors up until now.
Our Pastor was called by God to plant this church back in Jan., 1999, and it opened it’s doors in April, 2000. We now have almost 4,000 members, and God has lived up to His promises! He told our Pastor He wanted a church body where He could “do what He wants to do!” and He IS allowed to do that through us!
My hope and prayer for your church body is the same! Listen to what God tells you is your body’s mission, and allow Him to “do what He wants to do!” He will most certainly show up and bless you!
Seek Him and His face… and lift Him up, and He will draw men unto Himself! (He will build His own church!)
Two other major reasons we are prospering and growing… we demand unity and won’t tollerate strife or complaining. No gossip. No complaining. No causing discord among the Brethren. If you have a problem, lovingly go to the source and work it out with them. Don’t air “dirty laundry”. Don’t give Satan a foothold!
The other thing is “We read our Bibles EVERY DAY! In fact, we have a reading schedule so we are all “on the same page”!!! This fosters even more unity, because we are all in God’s word on the same issues at the same time! It is often that we discuss with one another what we are all reading (AND JOURNALING) on each day! Yes, we Read, AND JOURNAL every day! This is a major source of our power and allows God to speak to us.
In our Discipleship program, we agree while in each course to “Fast from Secular Media” like TV, Radio, Video Games, Movies, etc. We flood ourselves with the Word of God through reading our Bibles, memorizing scriptures each week, and listening to CD’s of specially chosen messages on the subject we are concentrating on. In addition to this, we meet once per week to be held accountable by showing that we have been Journalling, recite our memory verses and to hear a special message in person by one of our gifted Pastors.
When you block the distractions out and flood youself with God’s word, you can hear Him more clearly!
Take some time with Him today! Get into His word, and seek Him. If you wish to find out about our reading schedule (where we go through the Bible every year together) and how you can download messages for free, feel free to visit http://www.gototherock.com Bless you!!!