I noticed that on the Flying Zehrings post Joel wrote that he would hope that I would blog about our recent experiences of where we believe God is leading us.
Well, it started two years ago on a whim. My friend Kadi and I were on our way to Youth Specialties (a youth workers conference) in San Diego. One of the speakers, who also happens to be my all time favorite speakers, was Francis Chan. He just wrote a book called "Crazy Love" which I haven't finished so I can't comment on yet. But he was also talking about his recent sabbatical that he took from pastoring a church. The whole theme of the week was about telling a story. And Francis talked about how churches were today. He said something from the stage that stuck with me. He said, "If all we had was the Bible to use to show us how church was to be, would it look the way it is?" I was pretty much kicked off my seat. I didn't even need to think about it, the answer in my mind was no.
At this time, I was a youth pastor at a church. I was loving what I was doing but I was plagued with this thought. I took it to the staff and tried to talk about it but I couldn't get a peace about what they were saying about this topic. I was confused and very much trying to figure out what it all meant for me and my calling into full time ministry.
At one point, I threw the idea out to Joel about starting a house church. You know doing it how it was done in the Bible. I had no idea what that meant or that house churches even existed. In my mind if a church was meeting in a house it was a church plant. But Joel started taking this idea and running with it .
But my mind was made up. I was called into full time youth ministry how was I suppose to start a house church with this calling. Well, it turns out, having a baby, changes it all. Once Nathan was born and I spent 3 weekends in a row at camps without my newborn, I was ready. God was leading us for over a year to take this step of faith. A step of faith with our future church, our finances and our ministry to people.
We were ready to walk away from the institutional church and start a house church. But of course, we still had no idea of how to do it. So we found the small pocket of house churches or simple churches and started networking. What we weren't prepared for was the way these bodies of God were "doing church" was not what we believed God has laid on our hearts to start.
We are looking to start a church in our home, that does life together. Its not a once, maybe twice a week thing. We want Bible studies that are discussions not sermons, we also feel led by God to have meals together, to "break bread", to serve and witness to others together, we want to help the widows and orphans. We want the Lord to be the leader! No pastors, just facilitators. We want there to be unity with the tithes and offerings. We truly believe that God has laid all of this on our hearts to seek out how to make this happen. Please prayerfully remember this when you think of us.
Is it lonely? Yes. We have stepped away from the comfort of an institutional church with a heart not to sheep steal. So with that means setting aside friendships and relationships that we value so much. We didn't want to, but that kind of comes with the territory. We are wandering right now but we fully believe and are at complete peace about this new calling on our life! Joel and I are more than willing to talk more about this with anyone! So it looks like we may just start one up and meet as a family until some one else joins us. But we are excited and we are ready!
Sorry for the extra long post, but that is the benefit of a blog. Its my heart spilling out onto a post!
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