Tag: community

Looking back at the House of Prayer

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.

140 characters of prayer

I feel like I’ve been sending a lot of prayer–related txt messages and tweets lately. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. I actually have only heard positive things from folks getting them (however please let me know if you’d rather not receive them).

I’ve found that txt messages, Twitter and e-mail have turned the traditional “prayer chain” into a rapid fire prayer blast. Within seconds/minutes folks all around the world can be updated with the latest prayer needs.

I’ve used txt messaging and e-mail for some time now. And with my new phone I love the ability to assign folks to message groups so I’m not selecting multiple people each and every time I send a message out.

But I have to wonder if there’s still yet a better way to send out rapid-fire prayer needs/requests. If more folks signed up to Twitter it could really become an informational network where folks could chose to receive updates via the web or txt messages. Perhaps an alternative Twitter feed could be setup just for prayer requests/alerts.

I wonder what it would take to build a system for churches or ministries where prayer alerts could be entered into a system and a message would be sent to Twitter, Plurk (get the most responses from Plurk), Jaiku, etc feeds (140 characters max of course), sent to those requesting cell phone updates, and then a longer more detailed message could also go directly to an RSS feed that could be subscribed to via traditional RSS readers and or e-mail.

Ultimately folks could subsubscribe, unsubscribe and also choose how to receive the prayer alerts.

Is this asking too much? Am I over thinking this? Is it already there? I bet with a little planning a system could be built using WordPress and a couple different plugins.

Hmmm…. could lead to some great possibilities.

What do you prefer? How is your church spreading news/announcements/prayer requests? Still using traditional mediums like bulletins, announcements and prayer chains? Are you on the “cutting edge” and using txt messages, or RSS?

Share you thoughts and ideas!

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Tribal Life

I spoke to my tribe yesterday and encouraged them to think about new ways to express & understand Christian community. (You can listen to the message online via the encounter website.)

Got one comment about me turning into Karl Marx – but I think it was in jest and if that’s the worst they can say… it was a good day ;-).

As I think more and more about my tribe, and Christian community other thoughts are crossing my mind.

I keep asking myself this same question, “So what does this tribe, this community, this oneness look like?” As I mentioned yesterday, “I’m not entirely sure — especially in modern America.”

But I do know this ::

Jesus told his disciples, “By this all men will know you are my disciple — if you love one another.” — John 13:34 & 35.

Seems that Christian brotherhood and sisterhood and community and unity were very big on Jesus’ plan/plate.

In the Hebrew Scriptures we read about the “tribes of Israel.”� The 12 tribes whom God called upon to be different in their culture. To be set apart. To be unique.

He calls them to accept the foreigner into their homes.

He calls them to ignore the idol worship of their neighbors.

He calls them to put their trust in Yahweh rather than in a king, or a Pharaoh or a President.

He calls them to honor the Sabbath — a day you set aside all your business of the 24/7 consumerism and focus on God — the creator of it all.

And so the Hebrews get very accustomed to this calling of being “separate” from the world (not that anyone’s ever really figured that out).

And then Jesus shows up on the earth and starts telling everyone that he was forming a new tribe.

A tribe where the Hebrews would join together with the Gentiles. No wonder they got upset and had him killed. That in and of itself could be considered blasphemy.

A tribe for all who were baptized into Christ and have clothed themselves with Christ.

Where there is neither Jew nor Gentile, Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for we are all one in Christ Jesus.

It’s a radical idea and I believe it calls for radical changes in our thinking and behavior.

When the tribe succeeds – everyone succeeds!

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encounter goes living room

Yesterday we had a different Sunday morning experience for encounter. Rather than gathering at the Civic Center, we met in 10 different homes around Ellis County. Each group was given a DVD (video below) and the DVDs were followed up with some discussion questions.

We had a great time yesterday morning!

I keep hearing more and more reports from folks who said they really enjoyed their get togethers which came in all sizes. I think the smallest group was 4 or 5 and the largest group had over 20. At least 100 people participated in encounter goes living room and I think everyone who participated was impacted in some way.

For those of you who missed out… or would just like to watch it again… here’s the video from the DVD we watched ::


encounter goes living room from Jonathan Blundell on Vimeo.

Along with the video, each group discussed the following questions ::

  • what would the experience of church be like if it was less like a presentation, building, or club and more like a spiritual home of people each living to fully serve Christ and others?
  • what would it take for people to get to that level of understanding and living?
  • what would difference would it make to people far from God if the church had the feel of a spiritual home?
  • what difference will these truths mean for you?

For those who couldn’t make it – feel free to watch the video, read the questions and share your own answers and thoughts.

Thanks again to all the host homes and leaders who made yesterday possible! You all did a great job!

Change for the better

Shared this with our community 2.0 leaders today….

Hello community 2.0 peeps…

Last night at our community group the three of us (yeah it was a slow week :-)) sat and talked about a number of things from prayer, to leadership, to future community groups etc. etc. We each talked about how refreshing Sunday at encounter was this past week. How it was a change from the ordinary and really seemed to spark something new.

It made me think about how often we get set in a routine even in our weekly community groups.

This morning, Small Group Dynamics touched on that as well. If things are starting to get “stale” or “traditional” in your group maybe it’s time to change things up a bit. Here are some of the things they suggested…

  • Change the expectations. If people expect to gather around a Bible study or a DVD curriculum or even around social interaction, the presence of the Spirit will be minimal. If people expect to meet with God and trust Jesus’ words: “Where two or three gather in my name, there I am also,” then people will seek something different in the group’s life even if they do not know how.
  • Shorten the Bible study to make room to wait on God together.
  • Take the risk of allowing silence during the meeting.
  • Vary the agenda from week to week.
  • Eat together. You might be surprised by this one, but I have found food as essential to connecting with one another and in inviting God’s presence into our midst.

    • I know some of the groups have had “coffee house night” and met at a local coffee house. Its not only given a change of pace for the group members, but also opened opportunities for discussions with others.

    What other ideas have you and/or your group done to change things up and keep it fresh?

    Texting in church

    Mars Hill Church in Seattle has begun welcoming Txt messaging during their Sunday morning services as part of a Q&A with pastor Mark Driscoll. This is also something they’ve been doing at several conferences the church has been a part of or hosted.

    We’ve discussed txt messaging at encounter but haven’t quite put into effect yet. I love the idea of interaction between the congregation/lay people and the pastor during the service and the interaction between each person in the congregation.

    We had a unique experience yesterday at encounter (no video/audio/picture archives were made) where we sat up 3 unique rooms with chairs all facing inward so we were “forced” to look at one another rather than simply stare at a stage or screen where someone talks and sings “to us.”

    I loved it. Felt very community like. Fit right in with the taking of the Eucharist or communion (coming together in union). We moved from room to room as Brian spoke about the blood and body of Christ and in the final room we sat gathered around a cross where Brian spoke of Christ freeing us from our bondage. He offered an opportunity for folks to share what this freedom in Christ meant to them.

    Usually when we have times for response we get limited numbers of response but something about yesterday really encouraged the interaction. We had people from all sides of the room speaking out and sharing their thoughts. Several even played off one another.

    I think this type of interaction is vital to our churches. I hope we can see more of it.

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