My Life and Books (2) Being Church

After I had completed my theological studies, I was invited to be the minister of a Presbyterian church at Waikaka Valley in Southland, New Zealand. It was a rural parish near Gore. Most of the parishioners were farmers, so I felt comfortable with them and understood the seasons of their lives.

When I arrived in this parish, a verse of scripture really spoke to me.

See to it that you make everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain (Ex 25:40).

It is quoted in Heb 8:5. I probably found it there.

I knew that I needed to do everything according to God’s pattern. The problem was that I did not have a revelation of what that pattern should be. I had to work with what was already established, so I took on the traditional pastor role.

I enjoyed the preaching and teaching aspect of being a minister. People responded well to my messages, and appreciated what they learnt. However, I struggled with most of other aspects of ministry, especially providing pastoral care for grieving and hurting people. The only thing that saved me was that most farmers are resilient, so they rarely go to a minister for help.

I did not feel like a leader, but I was expected to be one. I felt like I was expected to be skilled in many tasks, but was only skilled in a few of them. I was expected to be a Jack of All Trades, but master of only one. This frustration forced me to go to the scriptures. I knew it was not just me that was wrong. I realised that there was something wrong with the ministry that I was trying to do, too. So I decided to study the New Testament and see if I could find out how ministry was supposed to work in the church. I guess I was looking for God’s pattern.

What I found was astonishing. I discovered a variety of ministries that God needed in his church. They needed to be committed to each other and serving the body. I discovered the key ministry is the elder.

I preached what I had discovered in a series of eight sermons. They were quite radical, so I did not know how they would be received. I needn’t have worried, because the farmers loved them. They thought they were very sensible. One of them said, “You really need to put these sermons together into a booklet, so other people can read them”. (Thanks Geoffrey Lietze.)

I took his advice and I put them together in a little booklet called “The Bride of Christ”. I got a couple of thousand printed, but they disappeared like hotcakes. There was no internet back then on which to promote them, so news about the booklet mostly spread by word of mouth.

People who read the booklet wrote that the Spirit witnessed with the message. Some said that God had been saying something similar to them. I am not sure that many put it into practice, though.

A few years later, I realised that some parts of the booklet, were not clear, and that people had not understood the message. So I decided to rewrite the messages to make the meaning clearer. God told me to take all the stuff that was negative about the church out so it did not distract from sharing a clear vision. I put in several diagrams to help make the message clearer. This new revised book is called Being Church Where We Live. It is the message of my eight sermons to farmers made clearer.

Being Church Where We Live is the most important thing I have written. It is the foundation on which everything else sits. The other writing that I have done about politics, economics, God’s plan for history, and the Kingdom of God, does not make sense if this book is not understood. They will not be practical, if they are not built on the foundation of Being Church.

Being Church Where We Live explains how a group of people who have chosen to follow Jesus can support each other in a neighbourhood church by giving and sharing. By living close together, they will establish a place where the authority of Jesus is acknowledged and the spiritual powers of evil are squeezed out.

Each neighbourhood church will be led by a team of elders with complementary and balanced giftings: one will be prophetic, at least one will be an evangelist, and several will have a shepherd gifting. They will be bound together by love and submitted to each other for spiritual protection. They will watch over those who have chosen to follow Jesus. Neighbourhood churches grow and multiply by sending apostles into a new neighbourhood to establish a new community. These communities of love are the essential foundation that makes possible everything described in subsequent books.

When my wife was typing out the sermons for the original booklet, she said, “How can you be a minster of the church when you believe this stuff?” Initially, I did not see the inconsistency, but eventually I was convicted to practice what I preached. So in 1984, I resigned from the ministry and we moved our family to Christchurch, leaving work and home behind. God was good and provided for us in amazing ways during that change of season. I was able to obtain a position working as an economist for a large professional organisation.

Why?

Jesus said that he would build his church,
so why do we build church buildings all over our towns and cities
where his people are hidden away and cannot be seen by the world.

Jesus told us to go into the world to tell people the good news that he has rescued them
and confirm this truth by healing the sick, casting out demons and opening the eyes of the blind.
so, why have we told his followers to come to a church building each week to listen to a pastor speaking
and watching him trying to heal the sick and casting out demons at the front of the meeting.

Jesus told us to wait until we had received power from on high,
and then go and do what the Holy Spirit told us to do, nearby at first,
and then gradually spreading out across our city and nations.
so why do we tell people they must gather for fellowship once a week, when he told us that we should love one another (all the time, not once a week)?

Jesus told us to go out in twos and threes, and he promised that he would be with us,
so why have we tried to bring his followers together in hundreds and thousands.

Jesus has given us a gospel that can change hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit,
so, why have we tried to change peoples’ behaviour by voting for our government to bring in tougher laws.

Jesus told us to seek his kingdom,
so why do we add the label “kingdom” to what we are doing
when his Kingdom is his will being done on earth as it in heaven?

Being Church Where We Live

To celebrate Jesus’ death on the cross, by which he disarmed and defeated the spiritual powers of evil, and triumphed over them by destroying their hold over the world, and to speed the coming of his Kingdom, the Kindle version of my book called Being Church Where We Live will be available for $1.00 at Amazon US and £1 at Amazon UK. This offer lasts for 48 hours. If you do not have a Kindle, you can download a kindle app and read in on your phone or tablet.

Church Reset

Many people who are widely recognised as prophets (Lana Vawser, DC Lake, Anita Alexander, Kris Vallotton) are saying that God is calling a “Reset” for the church. I witness with this call, but I am worried that none of them are saying what they mean, or what God wants to change.

When I think of the word “reset”, I think of a factory reset of my smartphone. It is a drastic action, because it solves problems, but you end up losing a lot of stuff that was precious. I have only done it once when I was really desperate. Therefore, I presume that a reset will mean radical change for the church, and that much of what seems important to us will have to be let go.

The prophetic people are talking about a change in governmental authority, but they are not very clear about what that means. Maybe they do not know what it means themselves, but it often seems like a different group of people controlling the church. Or Christians leaders controlling civil governments.

The prophetic people are saying that God is giving new blueprints, but I do not see the new blueprints anywhere. Maybe they do not have them yet, but it is confusing, because a call for change needs to tell people how they should change.

I sense that despite the call for a reset, most Christian leaders are only interested in tweaking the existing church model. I do not detect an appetite for serious change, even amongst followers who “like” prophetic posts. No one is willing to give up the pastor-executive model of leadership, driving to church on a Sunday, sermon-centric discipling, which make the modern church what it is and move to a relationship-based way of following Jesus. Despite all the talk about the Kingdom of God, I sense that no one really believes that the Kingdom of God can come in fulness in our time, or how that would happen.

I seem to be on a different planet. Forty years ago, when I started as an enthusiastic young pastor, the word I received from the Lord was Hebrews 8:5.

See to it that you make everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.

Two or three years on, and frustrated that things were not happening as I had hoped, I realised that I was just doing what other churches and pastors were doing. I had not bothered waiting to get the pattern/blueprint from God on the mountain.

So, I put everything aside, and began seeking God and studying the New Testament to see how the church was meant to function. What I discovered was radically different and utterly challenging, but I got a strong sense of what Jesus wanted the church to be. It cost me my job and my house, because I could not continue in a role which was not part of Jesus plan.

I published my insights in a little booklet called the Bride of Christ in the early 1980s. It had a great reception, mostly by word of mouth (because this was before the time of the internet). In a short time, the 2000 copies that I had printed were sold out. But nothing really changed. I then realised that readers had enjoyed my critique of the church, but had not understood the alternative blueprint that I was describing. So I rewrote the book to make the pattern much clearer and called it Being Church Where We Live. The Lord told me to leave out everything critical of the existing church and focus on sharing the vision, which I did.

The response has been interesting. The book is radical, so I expected criticism. Yet not one person has come to me and said, “What you have written is not consistent with the scriptures”. I do not expect to be right on everything I write, but not one person has said, “I agree with a lot of what you wrote, but I think you have got that bit wrong, or missed this thing which is important”. No one has even said, “I believe that God is saying something different” or even “What you describe will not work”. Instead, the response has been almost total disinterest.

So I have to conclude that most Christian leaders and their followers are not really interested in making serious changes to the way that they do church. They prefer to stick with the pastor/executive model and going to church on Sundays. I presume this is why the blueprints for the reset are missing.

I realise from working on numerous IT projects over the years, that most people just want the new system to do what the old system did. They can’t visualise how new technology could change the way that they do things to make their work more effective and more efficient. Most IT projects fail to deliver their potential, because they get stuck on replicating what was done in the past, because people cannot visualise how things could be done differently and better.

This seems to be the situation in the church. Very few people have the ability to visualise a church different from what they know. This is where we need prophets to share a radically different vision for the church. And then we need radical leaders, who will give up the security of what they know, and are comfortable with despite it not working, and have a go at something different.

I don’t expect people to follow my way. I know that my version of the pattern on the mountain is not perfect, or complete. I would be quite happy if followers of Jesus found a different way of changing and pursued that. What I struggle with is complacency about the status quo. It is clear that what the church is currently doing is not working as it should, and is not viable through a crisis, so we urgently need a different way of being church.

I wish that there were many prophets and other people sharing their understanding of “the pattern they have received on the mountain” and different blueprints to stir up people who cannot see beyond the what they have now. And I wish that more people were willing to have a try at something really different. The future of the church depends on it.

Having to shut down church services to prevent the spread of coronavirus has been a wake-up call for the church. Paul people are talking about a new normal, but I worry that when the current crisis is finished, mortgage and salary commitments will force leaders back into the existing, but inadequate, model of church.

When I was young, I thought I was part of a radical generation. I realise now that we were probably deceiving ourselves. I hope the rising generations are truly radical and bold enough to take up the challenge to be the church that God needs to win the world for Jesus and establish his glorious Kingdom.

Doing Church During a Crisis

The shutdown for coronavirus protection has exposed the inadequacy of the modern way of doing church.

Pastors are talking about virtual church, digital worship and online services, as if they were something revolutionary. The reality is that these methods are far from the “body of Jesus” that Paul described.

Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body… Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many. But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. As it is, there are many parts, but one body (1 Cor 12:12-14, 18, 20).

Paul was not describing a virtual church or digital body.

An online service is a good way for a pastor to speak to all his/her people at the same time, but the body of Jesus is more than a weekly sermon. If the people of the church need to hear from their pastor to know what to do in a new situation, something is seriously wrong. If they have been taught how to hear the Holy Spirit speak, he will tell them what to do. And if people start listening to sermons online, they will soon discover there is far better teaching available online that they can get from their pastor.

Online services enable people to listen to the pastor praying and agree with the prayers, but it is far more important that they pray under the leading of the Holy Spirit themselves.

If people like to worship while listening to Christian music, there is plenty available online. They don’t need their church worship team making their selection for them. They would be better following the leading of the Holy Spirit, who knows what will inspire and encourage them.

The internet can be used to communicate words and music, but it does not channel the Holy Spirit. He lives in the hearts of God’s people, and that is where he works.

The stuff that strengthens the body of Jesus cannot be done in an online church service.

• The gifts of the Holy Spirit cannot flow.
• Sharing with people in need cannot take place.
• Discernment of spirits cannot take place
• Healing and deliverance cannot occur.
• The one another stuff is not possible.
• Discipleship cannot be done.

A digital church service is a very sub-optimal way for the body of Christ to function. Virtual church is not real church.

Paul used the technology that was available in his time to communicate with the churches he had established. He made extensive use of letters to connect with his friends and churches, but he understood the limitations of written communication. He wrote that he longed to be with the Romans so that he could impart a spiritual gift to them.

I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong (Rom 1:11).

Paul understood the limits of written communication. If he had lived in the internet age, Paul would have used it, but he would not have seen it as a substitute for meeting with people. He understood that the Holy Spirit prefers to move in the midst of a few followers of Jesus who love each other and have gathered to serve Jesus.

The church should be glad that it has had a trial run of a crisis. The current lock-down will end after a few months, but I can think of several circumstances that would cripple the church in a similar way.

• A prolonged period of persecution by the state in which church buildings are locked and pastors are arrested.
• A war that prevents people from moving far from their homes.
• An economic crisis that means people cannot afford to drive their cars to church.
• Economic sanctions that limit people’s ability to travel.
• Weekend and evening curfews following a military coup.
• A fuel shortage that limits the use of motor vehicles.
• A serious epidemic that prevents all travel and movement
• Marauding thieving gangs that make all travel far from home dangerous.

The church has experienced these types of events frequently throughout its history, so they are not abnormal.

The coronavirus shutdown has demonstrated that the operating model of the modern church is only viable in good-times. The irony is that most Christians believe that there could be hard times ahead, but they have opted for a good-times church.

I hope that when the current shutdown comes to an end, pastors and church leaders will not just go back to their good-times way of operating. I hope that they will think and pray about discovering a way of being church that would remain viable through both good times and hard times.

One way that God is using the current bad situation for good is giving the church a trial run of hard times (without being life-threatening for most people). I hope that pastors and church leaders will take the opportunity to learn from the experience. If your pastors are not thinking seriously about this issue, then I suggest that you challenge them to do so.

Here is a truth that we cannot afford to ignore. A church that can only meet by people driving to a church building once a week will not be viable in hard times.

I presume that most church leaders are hoping that the crisis will soon be over so that things will go back to normal. If so, they are missing what God is saying to the church in this season. Getting back to normal is not getting back to good times. The bible teaches that tribulation is normal for the church. Jesus said,

In the world you have tribulation (John 16:33).

If Jesus said we will have tribulations, why would be happy with a way of doing church that is only viable in good times?

The current crisis is a fairly-mild, temporary trial, but it is a clear warning that a good-times model of doing church is really rather fragile. We urgently need a way of being church that can cope with good times, hard times and tribulations. We would be foolish to ignore the warning and carry on as normal.

NT Evangelism Strategy

1. Evangelists should be led by the Spirit to a place where God has prepared people and wants to do things. This will usually be a public place where a crowd is likely to gather. Jesus was always in the right place at the right time (John 5:19). He exercised his ministry in public where the Holy Spirit was moving.
   

   One day as he was teaching... And the power of the Lord was present for him to heal the sick (Luke 5:17).

   Evangelists should follow the Holy Spirit to the place where a crowd will gather.

2. Once in the right place, the evangelists should then identify the person that the Father wants to heal. The Holy Spirit will point him out. When Jesus went to the Pool of Bethesda, he chose the paralyzed man out of the great number of sick people waiting by the pool (John 5:3). He was the one that the Father wanted to touch. Sometimes the person will come to the evangelists. The lame man at the gate of the temple came to Peter and John asking for money, but the Holy Spirit wanted him healed (Acts 3:3). When Paul was at Lystra, he saw a lame man whom the Holy Spirit had given faith to be healed (Acts 14:8,9).

3. Having identified the person that God wants to heal, the evangelists should lay hands on them and pray for them to be healed in the name of Jesus. If the Holy Spirit has indicated that he wants the person to be healed, he will do what he said he would do and make the person whole.

4. When the person is dramatically healed, a crowd will gather. An evangelist will take the opportunity to preach to the crowd. They will explain that the healing is a demonstration of the grace of God and the power of the gospel.

5. The evangelist must be prepared to pray for all people who come seeking healing. When they see what the Holy Spirit can do, many will come looking for God to touch them. They will be looking for God’s mercy, so he will not disappoint them. In the evening after Jesus had healed Peter’s mother-in-law, the whole town gathered at the door and Jesus healed many who had various diseases (Mark 1:30-34). The same thing happened when Paul was on the island of Malta and prayed for a sick man. All the rest of the sick on the island came and were cured (Acts 28:8,9).

6. All who respond to the gospel should be baptized.

(From BCWWL p.118).

Cry for Community

The need for Christian community is greatest in modern cities, where migration and urbanization have broken down traditional community relationships. Social mobility prevents stable relationships from developing and family life is breaking down. People feel like cogs in a machine and life is characterized by loneliness and personal insecurity. In this bleak environment, people are crying out for real community. Worse still, these people do not see the modern church as an answer to their heart’s cry. They see it as another institution that meets personal needs with programs run by professionals (BCWWL p.35).

Being Church Where We Live

Many Christians all over the world have become dissatisfied with existing forms of church. Some are so frustrated that they have stopped going to church at all. These people are not troublemakers or backsliders, but are some of the best people God has. They have become disillusioned with a church that absorbs all their time and energy, but seems to be going nowhere.

People who know in their heart that God has something better, and want to go "hard out" for it, need to read Being Church Where We Live. It offers a radical vision, based on the scriptures, that will stir their hearts and explain God's purposes for his people in these times.

If you have friends and acquaintances who would benefit from reading my book Being Church Where We Live and would like some free copies to give to them, send an email to getrad2@yahoo.co.nz with your name and postal address, and note whether you would like 5 or 10 copies. Unfortunately, this offer is limited to people living in New Zealand.

Free Book

The Kindle version of my book Being Church Where We Live is available free for two days beginning Saturday 7 April 2018 at 12:00 AM PDT.
Key Themes for Radical Christians

• Building Relationships
• Power Pairs
• Making Disciples
• Spiritual Protection
• Balanced Ministry
• Role of the Apostle
• Prophets in the Church
• Real Pastor/Teachers
• Healing Evangelism
• Dynamic Deacons

New Testament Evangelism Strategy

1. Evangelists should be led by the Spirit to a place where God has prepared people and wants to do things. This will usually be a public place where a crowd is likely to gather. Jesus was always in the right place at the right time (John 5:19). He exercised his ministry in public where the Holy Spirit was moving (Luke 5:17). Evangelists should follow the Holy Spirit to the place where a crowd will gather.

2. Once in the right place, the evangelists should then identify the person that the Father wants to heal. The Holy Spirit will point him out. When Jesus went to the Pool of Bethesda, he chose the paralysed man out of the great number of sick people waiting by the pool (John 5:3). He was the one that the Father wanted to touch. Sometimes the person will come to the evangelists. The lame man at the gate of the temple came to Peter and John asking for money, but the Holy Spirit wanted him healed (Acts 3:3). When Paul was at Lystra, he saw a lame man whom the Holy Spirit had given faith to be healed (Acts 14:8,9).

3. Having identified the person that God wants to heal, the evangelists should lay hands on them and pray for them to be healed in the name of Jesus. If the Holy Spirit has indicated that he wants the person to be healed, he will do what he said he would do and make the person whole.

4. When the person is dramatically healed, a crowd will gather. An evangelist will take the opportunity to preach to the crowd. They will explain that the healing is a demonstration of the grace of God and the power of the gospel.

5. The evangelist must be prepared to pray for all people who come seeking healing. When they see what the Holy Spirit can do, many will come looking for God to touch them. They will be looking for God’s mercy, so he will not disappoint them. In the evening after Jesus had healed Peter’s mother-in-law, the whole town gathered at the door and Jesus healed many who had various diseases (Mark 1:30-34). The same thing happened when Paul was on the island of Malta and prayed for a sick man. All the rest of the sick on the island came and were cured. (Acts 28:8,9).

6. All who respond to the gospel should be baptised.

Being Church Where We Live, p.105.

Hierarchy

Large human organizations need a hierarchy of authority to transmit information and to direct actions. Messages and instructions pass down through the hierarchy to the people on the bottom. Reports go back up in the same way. Hierarchy also allows decisions to be made at the appropriate level. The person at the top sets the general policies and rules, but delegates simple decisions down the hierarchy to an appropriate level of responsibility. Difficult or important decisions are delegated back up to the top. A hierarchical structure is very effective, but it is also dangerous, because it concentrates power in the hands of a few people.

Satan is a major user of hierarchy. He probably invented it, because he had no other way to control his empire. He is confined to one place in space and time, so he has to communicate and implement his decisions through a hierarchy of demons and evil spirits (Ephesians 6:12). His problem is that many of them are deceitful and rebellious. They disobey him frequently, so his will is not always done. When reporting about events in the world they often lie, so he is often in the dark about what is going on. Satan is at the top of a large, unreliable and unstable empire. He is a finite being, so he has to use hierarchy to control his organization.

God is not constrained in this way. He is omniscient, so he knows everything that is happening, everywhere in the universe, all the time. He is not dependent on reports up a hierarchy. God is also omnipotent, so he has the ability to decide what should be happening in every situation in the universe at the moment it occurs. He can speak to any person in the universe, whenever he chooses, so he does not need to work through intermediaries. Therefore, God has no need for hierarchy.

God does not need hierarchy in the church. He knows what is happening to every Christian all the time, so he does not need anyone to report to him. He has a personal plan for every Christian, so he does not need to delegate decisions down to a church leader. The Holy Spirit lives in every Christian, so God can communicate his will directly to any one he chooses. He does not need to speak through a hierarchy. If every Christian obeys the voice of the Spirit, God’s will will be done, without the need for any intermediaries.

Being Church Where We Live, pp.46-47.

Preparing for Victory

We are living at a pivotal time in history. While things are going badly for the church, the situation is even worse in the world. You don’t have to be a prophet to see the dark clouds on the horizon. The kingdom of man has over-reached itself and is rotting from the inside.

Christians should not be pessimistic about the future. God is in control and is working out his purpose. He is refining his church into a holy and beautiful bride. He is shaking the nations, so his people can establish the Kingdom. We can share in that victory, if we understand his plans and get ready for battle.

The shaking of world system will be a great opportunity for the church. In times of crisis, power flows to those who understand what is happening and are ready for action. Joseph understood what God was doing, so he was able to use the seven good years to prepare for the seven bad years. He rose to power during a crisis, because he understood what was happening and knew what had to be done.

The times are urgent. We should be using our time to prepare for the political, economic and social upheaval that is coming. We should be joining together, so we can advance God’s Kingdom when the kingdoms of the world collapse and fall. Radical change is needed, so we can shine brightly in the darkness and share in the victory that God has planned.

Being Church Where We Live, p.6.

Being Church to Kingdom Community

When the times get tough, many Christians will be unable to go to church.

They will have to start being the church where they live.

When Christians are really being church where they live, the neighbourhood where they live will become a kingdom community.

The gospel will spread from neighbourhood to neighbourhood as people and communities are transformed.

When kingdom communities spread throughout society, the Kingdom of God will have come.

The Kingdom reaches its fullness in an area when the neighbourhood church has transformed into a Kingdom community.

Countdown Deal

My book Being Church Where We Live is available as a Kindle Countdown Deal for the rest of the weekend. Starting at $0.99.

Being Church

Over the last few months, I have been preparing an American edition of my book called Being Church Where We Live for release. This book gives a new vision for the church for the next season. When darkness spreads, old ways of doing church will fail, and the Body of Christ will need a more resilient way of being church. I sense that the times are getting close when Americans will really need this book. I want it to be available in a format that American’s can afford when times get really tough. It is available on Amazon now for an introductory price of $8.00 until 15 February, so grab one while you can.

Ascension Gifts

Much has been written and said about the restoration of the ascension ministries. Yet, most evangelists are still in para-church organisations and few churches have a functioning evangelist. Most prophets are still in the wilderness, while very few churches have an authentic prophetic ministry. Pastors are everywhere, but very few Christians are being effectively discipled (pastored). Most modern apostles look like traditional bishops, with more of the Spirit, and less of the regalia.

Being Church Where We Live explains that the ascension ministries are just roles undertaken by elders. By bring these giftings “down to earth”, they become relevant to all Christians, rather than being limited to a few superstars.

Mid-sized Clusters

Mike Breen has some interesting stuff about mid-sized clusters. I must admit that I am uneasy about mid-sized clusters, if they morph into mid-sized meetings. I do not want to go there, because that was what we had before the mega churches came along, and it was not great.

Nevertheless, I think the number fifty is important. In Being Church Where We Live, I described five Christian leaders with strong relationships with each other. If each of the five is discipling three or four others, and some have families and a couple are discipling someone else, that is ten people connected with each one (the number Jesus discipled). If each of the five leaders are doing the same, that would be fifty people making up this relationship set, to borrow a neutral term from mathematics.

Each of these fifty people are connected to the rest of the set by relationships. They would not all know each other well, but they would each know a few of the others really well. This is not a group in the usual sense of the word, but they are each connected together through their leaders to every other person in the set (by two degrees of separation, to use the jargon).

If the five leaders are balanced in their giftings, all spiritual resources needed should be available to any person within the set wherever they need it. The leaders will influence all of the fifty people in the set sufficiently to develop a common culture, (or way of doing things).

This set of Christians can function effectively, without the entire set ever meeting together. Meeting together for worship might be encouraging, but meeting to receive teaching would be pointless, because everyone would be at a different stage in their Christian walk. The Holy Spirit would be speaking to the leaders and to everyone in the set, so they would not need to get together for a common teaching.

Being Church on Kindle

My book called Being Church Where We Live can now be purchased from Amazon.com as an electronic book for reading on your Kindle.

If you do not have a Kindle, do not worry. You can read the book on Kindle for PC, which can be downloaded free.

Numbers

An alert reader of my book, Being Church Where We Live, asked the following question.

It seems to me that the number of Christians you say should be in one Church is rather high. You talk about 40 people in one Church. I don't know about your house, but most houses here in Europe are simple too small to fit so many.

My initial answer was rather unthoughtful.

This is a good question. In Asia where people live closer together, a number of forty would be okay. People are much more used to jamming into a room. Here in New Zealand, people seem to need a lot more personal space and each one needs a chair. We find that once a group gets up to twenty the dynamic changes, some of the quieter people stop participating and a few do all the talking. So the number would have to vary according the size of houses and the cultural dynamic.

After further thought I realised this answer is a bit misleading.

The really important point is that the size of a church should be governed by the quality of the relationships and not the by the size of meeting place.

The groups that we have been involved in have not really got much beyond being groups that meet on a Sunday. Part of the reason is that the people still have to drive to get together. The other reason is that people are not yet ready for committing to a deeper community. Because the focus is on meetings, the size of the meetings has been critical to the functioning of the groups.

I arrived at the number forty by coming at this from a different angle, by looking at the relationships a church needs to be mature. First to have a balanced leadership, you need four leaders, and ideally you would have at least one more learning to be a leader. If the church is in a growth situation, each elder should be discipling six newer Christians (half of what Jesus managed). That is at least twenty-eight people. By the time you add in spouses you have about forty.

In my view, a church that is functioning really well could have that number. If they live in the same locality and are committed to the one another stuff, the real growth will be taking part in a whole variety of relationships and activities. The weekly meeting will be of much less importance in the ongoing life of the church. If the people are committed to each other, they will found a place to all meet together, even if it has to be outside in a public place.

If the size of the meeting place is the determinant of church size, the church will not reach its full development. This has been our experience. For example most of our groups have just had a couple of leaders, which means we do not have a full balanced leadership. One result is that some of fourfold giftings have been missing. In the last couple of groups, there has been no leader with an evangelistic calling. The consequence has been that most of the growth has come from existing Christians, and almost no new conversions.

We must not allow the size of living rooms constrain the development of the church. A mature church will need more than twenty people. Getting back into houses is good, but it is not a total panacea. We must not let it prevent our churches from reaching full maturity.

Cry for Community

The need for Christian community is greatest in modern cities, where migration and urbanisation have broken down traditional community relationships. Social mobility prevents stable relationships from developing and family life is breaking down. People feel like cogs in a machine and life is characterised by loneliness and personal insecurity. In this bleak environment, people are crying out for real community.

Unfortunately, most people do not see the modern church as an answer to their heart’s cry. It is seen as another institution that meets personal needs with programmes run by professionals.

A Church doing the one another stuff should be really attractive to those who are crushed and alienated by the impersonality of our modern world. Love will draw people into their community.

The church has a long experience with community, but it has generally been out of the reach of most Christians. A Christian community that is only open to an elite, or requires retreat from society, is irrelevant in the modern world. We need to bring community life down to earth, so it can function in a modern city.

• Each Church should be a Christian community. Community lifestyle will be normal for all Christians, not an optional extra for superstars and misfits.

• These communities can function in any city with whatever housing is available. Special buildings are not required and there is no need to move to the country.

• No money or assets are handed over to the Church. This eliminates a problem that has troubled many Christian communities.

• Community lifestyle will be open to everyone, regardless of their personal circumstances. Anyone will fit, provided they are committed to living the Christian lifestyle in relationship with the rest of the Church.

• Christians can live as part of a community while continuing with their existing work and interest activities.

• People will be free to choose their level of commitment and what they want to share.

• People can change their level of commitment according to their stage of life. Young single people may get really involved in community and sharing. Couples with younger children may need to withdraw slightly.

• If something goes wrong with the community, people can escape by moving to another house or “walking away” from the Church. This provides protection from the domination or control that has destroyed many Christian communities.

True community can be built in city. I can see a city that is made up of a large number of Churches that are also small communities. Each community will involve of all the Christians living in a neighbourhood or apartment building. Love for Jesus will unite them together.

Christians should be leading the way and creating residential dwellings that will support a communal lifestyle. These should use resources efficiently, so that housing becomes affordable for everyone. Ironically, the only community-style housing developed by modern property developers are retirement villages for people that are “finished living”, and gated communities for those who are “scared of living”.

Community should not be a primary goal for Christians. Our goal is to live in total obedience to Jesus in fellowship with other Christians; community should be an unintentional by-product. The first Christians did not decide to live in community. By surrendering to Jesus and committing to fellowship they became a community by default.

A Church is a community of people living in the same locality and caring for each other within strong relationships.

This full series of posts can be found at Radical Lifestyle Church.

Much of this material comes from my book Being Church Where We Live.