I’ve been studying the different characters that appear in the Book of Acts recently, starting with Paul. I’ve often puzzled over apparently contradictory passages from Acts and Galatians that talk about what Paul did immediately after his conversion–whether or not he visited the apostles in Jerusalem. As I revisited this question, I remembered a book… Read More
Category: House church
The word, “missional” has become something of a buzz-word over recent years. Several friends such as Linda Bergquist and Alan Hirsch were involved in writing a Missional Manifesto which was published last year to help describe the term. Here’s the first sentence from the manifesto: God is a sending God, a missionary God, who has called His… Read More
The term, organic, means natural, nonchemical, living, and alive. When applied to church, it refers to something that grows naturally. Two people have popularized the name, organic church within the simple/organic/house church world. Neil Cole was the first one to do so with his superb book, Organic Church: Growing Faith Where Life Happens, which God has used to… Read More
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What’s in a name? Simple church
Why the term, “simple church”? We love the story that gave the title to our book,The Rabbit and the Elephant, now republished in paperback as Small Is Big!: Unleashing the Big Impact of Intentionally Small Churches. It goes like this: Imagine you take two elephants, for our purposes, a male and a female, and you lock… Read More
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What’s in a name? House church
Very occasionally, I experience the almost surreal experience of being the person learning most from what I am teaching. The context in this particular instance: I was part of a team that was training people in a country hostile to the Gospel in how to identify the person of peace and start multiplying simple organic… Read More
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What is church?
The New Testament uses a number of different pictures of church: church is Christ’s body (Rom 12:5); it is a temple built with living stones (I Pet 2:5), it is a family (Eph 2:19). The metaphor of family is very helpful. Family is neither a building nor an event. Healthy families will get together often,… Read More
Last week the church that meets in our home came together on Friday. In one sense, it wasn’t an unusual time, but God worked powerfully. We had a new family with us this week, friends from work brought by someone who comes along when he can. “Build your own salad” was on the menu, people… Read More
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What church isn’t
In the last series of posts we looked at how a legacy church might transition to a network of simple/organic churches. A less disruptive way might be for a legacy church to run a second track where only those who have vision for the change get involved in the new expression of church. Whichever way… Read More
Why is transitioning a church so difficult? Because when existing Christians get involved in simple/organic church life they have to go through a process that our friend Wolfgang Simson calls “Death Valley.” And it’s usually a slow and painful journey. Jesus told us in the parable of the wineskins that those who have tasted the… Read More
Even though David Havice has faced challenges in transitioning his legacy church to a network of simple/organic churches, he is still committed to simple/organic church. Here’s the conclusion of my interview with him. You can view the first two parts of the interview here and here. Felicity: I know with the benefit of 20:20 hindsight,… Read More