Articles
Your Christ Is Too Small
The promise of the New Covenant is this: “„I will put My laws into their minds, I will write them upon their hearts. I will be their God and they shall be My people. And they shall not teach every one his fellow-citizen, and everyone his brother saying, „Know the Lord,‟ for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest. I will be merciful to their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.‟”
How to Prepare for Simple Church
By contrast, the churches described in the Bible engaged in Participatory Church. This kind of church requires preparation on the part of all of it's members. This is new. We haven't been taught how to do this.
What is an Organic Church?
Organic Church. I've been using this term for around fifteen years now. Today it's become somewhat of a clay word, being molded and shaped to mean a variety of different things by a variety of different people.Incarnational Practices
Simple Church Basics - Part 1: What Is Church?
Our first challenge in grasping what God intends church to be, is to stop looking at it through the lens of our background and through the lens of 2,000 years of "church" as a formal institution.
Combating Heresy in the Organic Church Movement
When teaching about the organic church, a question I am asked more than any other is how we handle the threat of heresy. I understand this concern and want to address it in an intelligent and articulate manner because it is very important. The organic church movement is not going to last if we simply ignore the challenges it faces. But I also believe that the issues that are raised in response to our movement can find solutions that are not only satisfactory but even better alternatives to the way the church has addressed these issues in the past. If the organic church movement is not a move forward toward better health and wholeness, then it is not worth pursuing at all.
Listening to God as a Church- Making Jesus the Head
In Alcoholics Anonymous, The 12 Steps are read out loud at every meeting.
For those of us who are still in detox from programmatic Christianity, there is value in repeating what we have said before: the simple church revolution (reformation?) is not about doing conventional church in a home. It's not "Honey, I shrunk the church!" It's not 20 minutes of singing, 30 minutes of Bible study, 10 minutes of prayer and then refreshments. (Or, any other prepackaged way of meeting.)
"OK. If it's not about that, what is it about?"
Let's Stop Planting Sterile Churches!
"I have a question I've been wanting to ask you for four years," I said to Charles Brock, author of Practicing Principles of Indigenous Church Planting, when I met in the Philippines a few years ago. "You go into the poor areas of Manila, you plant churches rapidly, they always produce their own leadership, they are never dependent on outside funds and they always reproduce.
Simple Church Networks vs. The Cell / Small-Group Church
It is vital to understand that house (or simple) church networks are not the same thing, in any way, as churches with small groups (even if those small groups are called "house churches."
The cell church (I will adopt the term "cell" church to refer to all types of small-group-based churches) has been a strong movement in North America over the past 30 years while the house (or simple) church network is only just beginning to emerge.
Discovering Participatory Church Meetings
About the Site
All across the world, people are gathering in small groups to serve and worship God, be family, and encourage and affect each others lives. These gatherings are called by many names including simple church, organic church, and house church. Whatever you call it, the people involved value incarnational ministry to the lost, living radically for Jesus and each other, and are willing to get rid of anything that gets in the way of being fully devoted followers of Christ.
Detailed...