Churchless Christian

Sean is 6 and has cancer. He is the nephew of Darrin and Dianne who have a house church in Glenfield. He has a very vicous form of cancer and his Mum and Dad are desperate to see as many people as possible to be praying for him and his family and medical team. You can see more and read more at Sean's blog at http://www.homeschoolblogger.com:80/sean

Sorry I got the link for Lonnie Frisbee's amazing and tragic story wrong, it's www.lonniefrisbee.com If anyone buys the movie of his life on DVD, send it to me afterwards as I am strapped for cash to buy it my self at the momment.

I am currently writing a reflection on the importance of rejection in the Christian Story and how we as Christians have become the biggest rejecters instead of rejectees so to speak. A classic example of this is Lonnie Frisbee (pictured above) who was rejected out of the Histories of the Vineyard and Calvary chapel movements he helped start. See below for more info

Imagine if John the Baptist came of age during the 1960s counter culture, the charisma of Jim Morrison flowing from the mantle of an Old Testament prophet. Meet Lonnie Frisbee, a seeker turned Jesus freak evangelist who compelled thousands towards a profession of Christian faith. It was during a trip into a canyon that Frisbee claimed that God gave him a vision of his future as an influential evangelist to the hippie generation.

Four years later the vision would be fulfilled as pictures of Lonnie baptizing teenage converts were splashed across the pages of Time and Life magazines forever celebrating him as an icon of the Jesus movement.
Despite the stories of spiritual prowess that surround his life, his enduring struggles overwhelmed him. And even though he was the charismatic sparkplug igniting the rise of two worldwide denominations (Calvary Chapel & Vineyard), his name has all but been removed from their histories. Frisbee: The Life and Death of a Hippie Preacher is the powerful story revealing the risk-taking nature of God, aligning himself with the most unlikely of characters as if to send out the message (yet again) that everyone is invited to participate. www.lonniefrisbee.com

Talking of Institutional Church Short Memory Syndrome. Oral Roberts University website managed to delete all mention of one of there most famous students within hours of him beginning to experiance some difficult times (I am meaning Ted Haggard here). It is great to see your old mates sticking by you through thick and thin. See the commentary on selective Haggard editing at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leOnaJqDOXo

How special is this, I heard about this through a discussion group I am on.

We've just done our first funeral as a home church group. My Dad and
Mom, (ages 84) are both part of our HC gathering. After being ill for a
little over a year, Dad went to be with Jesus November 15th. We
followed his request to have a very simple graveside service. Each part
of the service was led by a family member or friend. The funeral home is
still in shock but we think it was a grand event. If you would like more
info, go to: http://library.beau.org/~vickir/pics/memorial.html

It has been now Two and a half years since we as a family changed from attending Institutional Church to attempting to live our lives as the Church. Reflecting back on this period I have written down the 13 things I have loved most from becoming the Church and going House to House.

1. Sunday has become a day of rest instead of a day of busyness. This was perhaps accentuated for me, being a minister in my former life. Being able to sleep in on a Sunday morning, read the paper and have a leisurely breakfast is pure bliss. It has become a day of resting, eating and spending quality time with other believers.

2. Having the time and flexibility to make a difference in my community and build real relationships with those who are not yet believers. I have so much more time now that I am not involved with church programming.

3. Being freed from the costliness of running Institutionalised Church. It has been awesome to see others (and experience ourselves) the power of being able to pour our giving into things such as the poor amongst us, our community and missions instead of structures and salaries. To realise that being the church costs nothing.

4. Being able to lose the separation of the sacred (church world) and the secular (work and school world) that I once had. My religious behaviours are no longer such a big a block to being a testimony to Christ as it once was.

5. Being able to meet more people both believers and non believers from diverse backgrounds as I now belong to a church without walls instead of before where I was surrounded by walls of my own making that defined who belonged and who did not.

6. Seeing the Priesthood of Believers in action for the first time in my Christian walk. No one being paid to lead but every member sharing, ministering and making decisions.

7. Learning to rest and trust in God like Mary. Starting to learn to do nothing and wait. Letting go and letting God. It’s made me realise that to function in Institutional church I was a real Martha (and you needed to be to make it work). No striving just thriving.

8. The New testament becoming more relevant (especially the Epistles) as a guide to life and church practice. As someone said to me once, the Epistles are written with the assumption that you were meeting as a small intimate number so it is far more relevant and un-needing of interpretation if you are gathering as a small group.

9. Spending more time with my wife and children instead of always being out at meetings, music practices and cell groups. Learning to go on a spiritual journey together in God as a family.

10. Seeing how different those who have become believers are in this way of being the church compared to those we saw come to Christ in the Institutionalised way. It’s hard to explain but they are different. They have grown faster and more confidently. They know the Bible, they are not reliant on others or programs to flourish. It is common for them to quickly start contributing to the life of the group, to be taking the good news out into there relationship connections. In a sentence they go to God when in need instead of a person.

11. Being able to see how the five fold ministry can and does work in this organic setting, when it never could or would in the institutionalised settings of the traditional paradigm. This has been incredibly liberating for me who always felt that I was a square peg in a round hole in the old days.

12. Being able to enter different homes and experience the ups and downs of others lives as we have gone house to house. Getting beyond the masks which people wear.

13. Seeing the birthing of a ministry of food. Constantly having people gather around our table (my wife is a wonderful cook). Constantly gathering to eat in other peoples homes. Eating, partying, and drinking all different kinds of wine from around New Zealand and the world. Seeing more and more people installing spa pools for me to relax in, Praise the lord!

LET GO AND LET GOD

Notes from Christian apologist J.P. Moreland

Christians transformed from the most intellectual people in the community to people who separated faith from reason. During this period, there were three Great Awakenings that although “good” in some ways, were harmful because they overemphasized “blind-faith and feeling to the exclusion of thought and mind.”

“[It] should have been both, but instead the mind was laid aside and religion was identified with fervency of emotion and feelings,” explained Moreland. “So the acceptance of the Gospel during these awakenings was understood as a matter of the heart instead of the whole person including the way people think in addition to how they feel.”

Moreland lamented that Christians were the ones who planted 117 of the first 124 universities in the United States “dedicated to the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ and the propagation of truth to the glory of God.”
The apologist also noted that it was common practice among Baptists and occurred occasionally among Methodists to ordain men to lead a local church if they expressed a calling to preach despite their lack of Biblical knowledge.

“That is an expression of an attitude that learning doesn’t have anything to do with discipleship or being a Christian,” said Moreland.

“Instead of faith being a trust in what I have reason to believe is true – where faith is an expression of reason – faith became the polar opposite of reason,” explained Moreland. “So reason instead of being something that helps a person exercise faith – the more you know about God the more you can trust Him – faith, reason, and knowledge became polar opposites.”

“Faith became a simple act of will in the absence of knowledge or reason,” he said. read more here http://www.christianpost.com/article/20061119/23549.htm

Because we are broke at the momment we have done the flower and vege gardens on $10.00 this year. Not a bad job if I say so myself, even the the kids have done an avante garde garden again.

I looked after the kids from Friday to Sunday (as well as Geoff and Kids) as Kim went down to a organic women's sleepover weekend.  These womens weekends seem to happen about once a term.  Some comments about womens weekends compared to "womens conferences" that are all the rage in organised church.

Kim has said to me that for her this is a brillant way of connecting together with other believers, of being real, sharing about real life, getting recharged and refoccussed.  At the same time because it is once every 10 weeks, it does not distract her away from being the church in real life. 

At the momment it would be fair to say that this Kim is finding most of her Christian community through these expressions of gathering not house church so to speak as we work through this in between stage.

TEN THINGS ANYONE WHO JOINS IN A TWENTY FIRST CENTURY MISSIONAL CHURCH PLANT SHOULD NOT EXPECT

1.) Should not expect to regularly come to church for just one hour, get what you need for your own personal growth and development, and your kid’s needs, and then leave til next Sunday. Expect mission to change your life. Expect however a richer life than you could have ever imagined.

2.) Should not expect that Jesus will fit in with every consumerist capitalist assumption, lifestyle, schedule or accoutrement you may have adopted before coming here. Expect to be freed from a lot of crap you will find out you never needed.

3.) Should not expect to be anonymous, unknown or be able to disappear in this church Body. Expect to be known and loved, supported in a glorious journey.

4.) Should not expect production style excellence all the time on Sunday worship gatherings. Expect organic, simple and authentic beauty.

5.) Should not expect a raucous "light out" youth program that entertains the teenagers, puts on a show that gets the kids "pumped up," all without parental involvement. Instead as the years go by, with our children as part of our life, worship and mission (and when the light shows dim and the cool youth pastor with the spiked hair burns out) expect our youth to have an authentic relationship with God thru Christ that carries them through a lifetime of journey with God.

6.) Should not expect to always "feel good,"or ecstatic on Sunday mornings. Expect that there will ALSO be times of confession, lament, self-examination and just plain silence.

7.) Should not expect a lot of sermons that promise you God will prosper you with "the life you've always wanted" if you’ll just believe Him and step out on faith and give some more money for a bigger sanctuary. Expect sustenance for the journey.

8.) Should not expect rapid growth whereby we grow this church from 10 to a thousand in three years. Expect slower organic inefficient growth that engages people’s lives where they are at and sees troubled people who would have nothing to do with the gospel marvelously saved.

9.) Should not expect all the meetings to happen in a church building. Expect a lot of the gatherings will be in homes, or sites of mission.

10.) Should not expect arguments over style of music, color of carpet, or even doctrinal outlier issues like dispensationalism. Expect mission to drive the conversation.

O AND BY THE WAY¦ one Should not expect that community comes to you. I am sorry but true community in Christ will take some "effort"and a reshuffling of priorities for both you and your kids. Yes I know you want people to come to you and reach out to you and you’re hurting and busy. But assuming you are a follower of Christ (this message is not for strangers to the gospel) you must learn that the answer to all those things is to enter into the practices of "being the Body" in Christ, including sitting, eating, sharing and praying together.

Plagerised completly from http://www.reclaimingthemission.com/2006/11/warning-list-for-those-who-would-join.html

I have lived through the Hell of being munched by fleas this week.  The most annoying thing about this is that they have eaten me and no one else has hardly been touched, they can at least spread out the suffering.  But there are positives from this trauma.

1.  I have cleanned every fabric in the House.
2.  I have never vaccuamed so much in my life.
3.  My suffering has brought me closer to Christ.
4.  After tripling the suggested Flea Bomb doseage (I used 7 Flea Bombs) I Know nothing will survive for long in this house
5.  My kids have started glowing., so I can find them at night which will be great.

I am becoming concerned that the Organic Church Movement / Emergent Church etc etc is becoming moribound in talk, yet we the talkers are not really living out the incarnate life of Christ that we trumpet so much. Website after website, blog after blog is full of chatter about this life on the other side yet we seem to be trapped into the mindless talk and analysis from which we were trying to flee from the modernist Church. One of the most irritating, frustrating (and in the end, the most depressing) things about church was the endless fads through books, seminars, articles, conference speakers which we rushed to and fro from, with out getting down to the nitty gritty of daily Christian Living. Yet I sometimes wonder if on the other side we are are even worse at this.

It's all talk and no action

All Information does not equal Knowledge. Most Knowledge comes from Experiance. We are being once again packed full of Information but have little knowledge of the Kingdom we are seeking

Its like the Native Bush is New Zealand. In the bush are some of the largest trees in the world such as the kauri, and some of the most beautiful ferns in the undergrowth. But alongside these are thousands of creepers such as Cumulous which is a parasite which creeps around all the trees and strangles them and lives off these plants. I wonder if all this talk is becoming a bit like these Creepers. Enough of them will strangle a Kingdom.

I realise that I am most probably a creeper and that does bother me. I have given away the ownership of the discussion group, and am considering flaging the website to try and do my bit to save the forest so to speak.

For what we share to have the power to transform and bring change it must come from the experiance of what ever we are talking about.

More youth leaders are preaching the alarming exit of college students from the church yet churches don't seem to be grasping the significance of the loss of even one youth. "I'm fearful that we as a church in the U.S. are using the word 'lost' incorrectly," says Youth Transition Network coordinator Jeff Schadt. A theological span of church groups and college ministries are unanimously behind the effort to transition high school youth to college nationally so they more readily retain their Christian faith. The former "Ministry Edge" dropped its name and existence this month to birth the Youth Transition Network, sponsor of LiveAbove.com, involving some 40 leaders from major ministries such as Campus Crusade for Christ, InterVarsity, the Navigators, Chi Alpha Ministries, and the National Network of Youth Ministries. Today 70% to 80% of youth who are involved in a Christian ministry in high school. Read on here http://www.christianpost.com/article/20061112/22831.htm

Wayne O'Leary popped in yesterday.  He has been ministering around Tauranga, Taupo and Gisbourne areas in the last few months, and seeing God doing some neat stuff.  Thanks for sharing with me yesterday Wayne, I needed to hear it.

Did you like the champagne bottle candles that I found for Kim's birhtday?  The perfect accesory for the wine obsessed wife.

What are Christian leaders to make of the spectacularly painful experience of watching Ted Haggard this past week? The president of the National Association of Evangelicals and pastor of giga-church New Life Community in Colorado Springs, Colorado, gradually admitted to purchasing methamphetamines and the services of a male prostitute. We asked Leadership editor-at-large Gordon MacDonald to reflect on what we should learn from this episode.

It is difficult beyond description to watch Ted Haggard’s name and face dragged across the TV screen every hour on the news shows. But as my friend, Tony Campolo said in an interview last week, when we spend our lives seizing the microphone to speak to the world of our opinions and judgments, we should not surprised when the system redirects its spotlight to us, justly or unjustly, in our bad moments. Read the rest of the article here
http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/archives/2006/11/the_haggard_tru.html

The Haggard Truth by Gordon MacDonald

(sorry to bring up Haggard again, just really appreciated this article)

Had Kim's B'Day BBQ last night.  We had a dessert Wine with the Cheese Cake.  That's yummy, so sweet and naughty, I've never had dessert wine before, but I will again (well I thought that untill Kim told me the price!).  Do you know they pick the grapes for this when they are frozen about 3am in the morning?
Selaks Premium Selection East Coast Ice Wine (Product of New Zealand) www.selaks.co.nz

78 Days till Third day hits the stage.  Bought Kim the new Album 'Wherever You Are'  www.thirdday.com Kim likes the album, I dont think it's that great.  All the songs sound the same to me.  Sam is getting the 'Parachute 07 Compilation CD' today to gear himself upto party www.parachutemusic.com

Parachute is a great example where small gatherings can also during the year access the bigness of the Church gathered.  Unlike Normal Church goers, I do not believe you need this every Sunday (A Big Corporate expression), but for myself I do feel it's a positive once or twice a year.  Where ever I travel, Gatherings of Christians talk about the power in going camping together as a group, and the deepening of relationships with each other and God that happens, which does not happen through out the rest of the year.

In memory of Callum Edwards.  Callum was a contemporary of mine at Waikato University.  He was my cell group leader, and first got me involved in public speaking etc.  Callum was a very straight up and honest guy, who told you when you were drifting off the straight and narrow which was what I needed in my early days of my Christian faith.  I have not seen him for seven or 8 years being at wrong ends of the Island.
I understand Callum died while playing Hockey on Monday night in Wellington.   He must be about my age (around 36 or 37). Please pray for his wife and child.

Sorry to be going on about the Ted Haggard thing, but it appears by the numbers over the last few days visiting this blog, that a fair few people are using this as a reference point to the unfolding story. My last post hopefully on this topic is to point to the Article in Christianity today "I am a deciever an a Liar" which covers things well http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/novemberweb-only/144-58.0.html Okay folks, thats that on that topic. Hopefully back to happier fireworks

Had a great visit from Sean & Anne Kearney yesterday.  Really interesting to talk about and hear his vision of what Church, Ministry etc should be.   Awesome to see Gods faithfulness and abundance in there lives as they continue to serve him.  Shaun has a treasure trove of resources and thoughts available at www.kingdomline.com

Emotions and shock are still running high with Ted Haggard stepping down.  This is the article in the N.Z Herald today
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/search/story.cfm?storyid=000D5BAD-40BF-154E-919383027AF1010E Usually the Herald does not cover this sort of religous event.  I suppose it's the downside of the Church being so political and visable at this time.

Still cleanning up from the fireworks, the lawn has total burn marks in it, well at least it is a little less to mow!

Everyone is talking about Ted Haggard and his indiscretions. Ordinary Everyday Christian is covering this topic really well http://ordinaryeverydaychristian.blogspot.com/ For me, when I was in mainstream church ministry, I enjoyed and used heavily Haggards books and resources heavily, especially his cell group material which I thought was brillant.
I really related to Haggards Church Planting beginnings where he started in his garage using two oil drums as a pulpit. He was (and is) a humble guy who thought of others especially his city. Today his politics and set evangelical beliefs are divergent from my own, but I still give him credit for the impact he has made in my life.

Haggard is less at fault then the screwy Church system that we seem so trapped into. No man can handle being at the top of God's tree. We really need to get back to that New Testement model of plurality of leadership. How long does it take for Christian Joe Bloe to realise how disfunctional it is to sit under one man? God must get so bugged by that. The enormous spiritual presure placed on the top guy is impossible. The reality is that the large majority of Pastors are hiding scary things in their personal lives from there churches, this is not healthy. Pastors and there wives divorse at a higher rate then secular society yet are technicaly the champions of the sanctity of marriage. This kind of thing is going to carry on in the current religous system more and more because it does not work, and it does not reflect the new testement.

Had a great night doing the pyrotechnics last night. We made the most of it, in case it's banned next year.

We made our first contibution to utube on Friday, well the lads did... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MIkRJCmnzI

I finally wrote my 10 convictions that I have come to out of this desert experiance, last week, which I mentioned in an earlier thread. I will post it in the next day or so after I have cleanned it up. They are personal to me and may not mean much to others, but hopefully it will catylise myself into this new stage of the journey they call 'faith'.