Starting a Church for Dummies (2)
The Holy Spirit can only build a strong body, if every member gets involved. A body with some limbs not functioning is a cripple. The main challenge in starting a church is to create an environment where every person can participate. Here are some hints.
- Every person should be free to say, “This is what I think the Holy Spirit is saying,” even if it sounds dumb.
- The Holy Spirit prefers to break up what he has to say and give bits to different people. If only one person speaks, we will miss most of what the Spirit has to say. If the dumb donkey has seen an angel and heard from God, the entire body needs to hear from it.
- The best way to encourage honesty is for leaders to be honest about the dumb things that they have done.
- The Holy Spirit cannot be seen, so spirit-lead leadership should be invisible (dumb). People who are used to leading or teaching should learn to act dumb (be quiet) and let the Holy Spirit speak through other people.
- One question that gets people thinking and talking is more valuable than ten minutes of “teaching”.
- Every meeting will get stuck in a rut at times. A spirit-led leader should be able to move it on without saying much and no one noticing.
3 comments:
Ron, you act like this would work with a bunch of dummies, like, oh let's say some smelly fishermen and some drips who work for the tax office. It'll never work, I'm tellin' ya, it'll neeeeever work.
You are singing my song and stealing my thunder. I actually participate (You'll note I didn't say attend) such a meeting on friday nites from 7:30-10ish, It's real church.
I have a blogpost I have in the can that I haven't yet posted called the tale of 3 churches. One is the Friday nite gathering, one is sunday mornings 90 minutes and the other is sunday nites. 3 very different experiences and very different productivities.
It's been good because you soon start to see what the future looks like. It doesn't look the way the church world thinks.
More organic, more basic, more like what you describe.
The issue, spirit led leaders who know how to allow and form the word of the Lord as it comes forth.
In the End he/she (yes I am one of those pagans who believes women can lead churches) can bring in for a landing what the Spirit of God has been saying.
People go home full, fired and ready to do ministry.
What a concept. Eph 4.
Thanks Gene.
Steve, you are right. Especially if one of the dummies had been to terrorist school. :-)
Ron
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