February 13th, 2008 ·
This last week, I led a workshop at a national organic church conference. Most of the leaders had been, or were committed to house church forms. The increasing disinterest away from traditional or contemporary ways of church has given thousands of US leaders enough curiosity to look for alternative ways to worship, do church, and engage the world. As Missio has been focusing on incarnational ways of church, we’ve seen an increasing number of people ask us, “what do you think about this trend toward house church or simple church?”
To be honest, we’ve reserved the right to make any judgments at this point. We hold our tongue for several reasons. One, if there’s ever a time to experiment, deconstruct, and reconstruct, it’s NOW! When you know your cruise liner is taking on water, it doesn’t make much sense to judge those who are strapping on their life preservers and hopping in the little dinghy’s! To those who blindly disregard this new direction, we would ask, “on what grounds does the attractional church have to judge any other form of church at this point in our history?” When we’re losing approximately 2% of our present churched population every year, and we’re not reclaiming much new conversion growth, I believe the responsibility to prove or defend certain methods of ministry fall not on the experimenters or research and developers, but on the present forms to prove “why they should get to keep doing the same thing, if it’s not working.”
Yet, to those who blindly accept new forms as the next great thing…BEWARE. It’s not as easy or “simple” as they say, and it is causing as much tension in the lives of these leaders as we see in the lives of existing church pastors.
