I had a great chat with Frank Viola yesterday, can’t wait to share it on the podcast in a few weeks.
We discussed his book Reimagining Church along with the idea of organic churches. Thought this was a great illustration shared by @darrinreeves today (you can click on the images to see them larger) ::
Which would you prefer? Which do you feel like you’re apart of? Which would you rather be a part of?
I was thinking back today after several things were said this morning by folks in my tribe.
I posted this on March 25, 2006 ::
Richard, Phil and I met this morning at the Waxahachie IHOP for coffee, fellowship and discussion on this “new thing” we’ve begun.
I don’t know if any of us are sure on how we should classify it. Is it a house church? Emergent church? House of prayer? It’s so fluid right now and exciting.
I jotted down a few notes and thought this would be a good place to keep track of them and maybe get some feedback.
Here are some ideas/visions we discussed:
No building – the church is not a building, its the people. We want to think out of the box with meetings in homes, not a big spacious auditorium.
A heart of ministry and worship – maybe self explanitory, but we want to have a heart that’s reaching out and ministering to people while we worship God.
Relational – we don’t want anyone to feel like a number, or just a dude sitting in a pew, seat whatever. We want to build relationships and in that fellowship, learn from each other and grow together.
Constant communication – we want to build a community where people feel comfortable sharing ideas, prayer requests, concerns, needs.
Diverse.
Smaller groups – in each house church group we invision smaller groups that meet outside the typical “community meetings.” Such as women’s groups, mens groups etc.
Christ seekers – we don’t claim to know everything. We’re just souls seeking God and a Christ-like life.
Multiplication – we invision the community growing and multiplying. How great would it be to know that every Saturday or Sunday people are getting together in a house in each neighborhood in Waxahachie, or Dallas, or Texas or the US to pray and draw close to God.
Ministry – we need to be involved in doing ministry in our community regularly. Whether we have 3 people or 30 people, we need to be out working in our community and sharing God’s love.
10-15 people ideal – each house group will grow till 10-15 people are gathering weekly. From that, smaller groups will split off and start their own house groups in their neighborhood.
Monthly corporate meetings – each month all the house groups will gather for worship, sharing and testimony to share how God is working in their lives/groups/communities.
Ownership of faith – group members take ownership in their faith and put it to use.
Tithing – each person should be responsible for tithing to the church/community. This brings up a whole other topic of issues that we’re not familiar with. Non-profit organization, bank accounts, etc. Something to study and look into: what is tithing? Is 10 percent scripturally required, or is that “man’s standard?”
So those are some of our thoughts and ideas we discussed this morning. I’d love to hear other ideas and thoughts. Especially from those of you already involved in the emergent/house church movement.
So many thoughts, dreams, visions, imagining etc. More to come.
When we think about mission trips, we offer want to go and build churches. Perhaps we’re going to build the wrong type of churches. Perhaps rather than building a church building we should be building “real church” that’s based on relationships and friendships that last forever.