Upcoming Organic Church Movements Conference - January 26-28

House Church Finances - A Response

The Parousia Podcasting Project & Website Update

Just For Fun

"A Gathering Of Angels . . . And A Time To Dance" (No Potluck)

 

 

This week's newsletter represents my small contribution to an on-going e-mail discussion regarding the issue of House Church finances (and the lack thereof). It is a much needed and on-going discussion which was prompted by an open letter published by Roger Thoman. I hope shortly to be able to post all of the e-mails which have been exchanged thus far (I need to clarify with all of the participants that this is OK). When we are able to do so, I will post them on a page (in order received) where they can be read in their entirety. I have found much wisdom and balance in the exchanges, and I believe you will too. For now, you're stuck with just me. PS. We're updating our address book, so if you get a duplicate newsletter, let me know and we'll take care of it.

 

Blessings,

 

Maurice

 

Late Note - Organic Church Movements Conference - January 26-28

 

Gale & I will soon be headed for the Organic Church conference in January in Long Beach, CA. Scheduled speakers include Reggie McNeal ("The Present Future"), Wolfgang Simson ("Houses That Change The World") and Alan Hirsch (co-author,"The Shaping of Things To Come"). With CMA's permission I am taking podcasting equipment to do interviews with speakers, workshop leaders & others. We're excited about going. Our registration's paid and we've bought our plane tickets (no driving this time). If you would like to help with our expenses for this trip (roughly $300 for a hotel room and miscellaneous travel-related expenses, plus I still need to pick up a couple of studio-quality mics), please let me know via REPLY. Even though its late, I would still encourage any of you who can make it to be there. It should be excellent. For more info go to the CMA website. Here's the link: www.cmaresources.org/greenhouse/conference.asp.

 

House Church Finances - A Response

It happened the week after Christmas, that "dead zone" when everyone is "out" for the holidays. I dropped by the business of some friends who have supported our ministry for a couple of years now. It’s a family owned auto body repair business. The husband was tied up and after I had waited for several minutes his wife, Linda, said, "Maurice, if you don’t need to talk to Art, why I don’t just take care of you." She led me into their private office. We engaged in holiday small talk while she wrote out their monthly support check. As she handed me the check she said, "You’ve really been on my mind this week, and I just want you to know how much we appreciate what you do." Then I saw it. The check was for more than three times their usually generous monthly gift. I literally looked at the check, then at her, and said, "Linda, are you sure . . . ?" She replied, "The work you do is hard (referring to our work with the homeless community and in the West Central Neighborhood), and we appreciate it." Still recovering from her generosity is said, "Linda, my work isn’t hard. I love what I do. This," I said, holding up her check, "is what’s hard, asking people for money. It’s the hardest part of what I do. I was wondering how we were going to pay the rent next week. Now I know." She looked at me with a knowing smile. We chatted some more. Then she went back to work and I left for home (and the bank!) with one more profound example of how God provides for us when we least expect it. The funny thing is that Art & Linda aren’t involved in house church. They attend a local Lutheran Church, but they have been faithful supporters of our outreach work in the community.

I share this story for a couple of reasons. First, it just seemed appropriate to this discussion regarding house church finances, a story that Roger (and perhaps others of you) could relate to. Second, I think it highlights an important truth, namely, that whether we are full-time ministry people who "live by faith" or marketplace tent-makers, all of us are trusting God to provide for us (how many times have those of you in the market place been "surprised" by the business that has come in the door at a critical moment when you were wondering how you were going to pay the bills, much less support your ministry passions). My friends Art & Linda "live by faith" in the marketplace and give out of what God as blessed them with.

I am a latecomer to this discussion. Roger sent me his post several weeks ago and I promptly filed it away in my "House Church" e-mail folder (thanks for re-sending it to me John. I found the original after I received your copy) where it languished until the various responses to it began to arrive. The benefit of being late to the discussion is being able to read the excellent responses which have been posted thus far. The responses by John White and Felicity Dale are indicative of the balance and maturity which our corner of the house church movement enjoys today. But as Roger’s paper highlights, such balance is not universal. There is a genuine danger of the house church movement polarizing into competing camps of "tent-makers" versus "full time" house church planters. And that is a dispute in which there are no winners.

I genuinely feel somewhat inadequate to contribute anything original to this discussion. However, that being said, I will try to offer a few personal observations which I hope will be relevant. I will preface what follows by saying that I do not believe that there are any "cookie cutter" answers which will apply to all situations. There may be broad principles of agreement (such as my own "radical sacrificial giving" versus "radical sacrificial living" interpretation of New Testament giving), but each person’s situation will be uniquely guided by God and His purposes for that individual and for His Church. To do otherwise is to put God in a box of our creation and to impose that box on others. My own experience is similar to Roger’s . . . just completely different. When on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ in the late 1970s, and then during seminary, my wife & I raised support, "lived by faith" and even served on a church staff (working under Frank Tillapaugh at Bear Valley Baptist Church, and working as adjunct faculty at Denver Seminary). After graduation we decided that we had "had enough" of living by faith and decided to go into the marketplace and work to support ourselves and do ministry. I experienced varying degrees of success, but eventually we ended up in bankruptcy. Yep, we lost it ALL (long story, short outcome). In the midst of that trauma we distinctly heard God’s call (yep, you guessed it) to once again live by faith; one of those "now are you willing to trust me" moments. Funny how losing everything changes your perspective on just how "risky" it is to "live by faith." At that point we made a personal commitment that we would pursue house church ministry full time and trust God to meet our needs. Since then we have "shopped" the local food bank, I have worked part-time (eventually sensing God saying I couldn’t realistically do both), served as interim pastor for a local Assemblies of God church in transition, and seen God meet our needs in amazing ways as we pursued our journey into house church ministry. Some of you have been privy to particular moments of our faith journey, as we either made needs known through my weekly e-mails or shared how God provided as we stepped out in faith (such as our journey to the House2House conference in Denver back in September). Along the way we have received our share of notes from believers telling us how our walk of faith has encouraged them, along with notes from others basically telling us to "get a life . . . and a job" (not an exact quote, but close, and edited for any children who might inadvertently read this. Christians, you either gotta love ‘em . . . or arrange for the Klingons to incinerate ‘em!).

Gale and I have "come to terms" with our 5-fold calling to live by faith while laboring in the House Church movement. We have come to realize that, for reasons which only God understands, He has called us to be "spectacles" in the process of doing so. Why? Because, as I wrote in my e-letter for September 8, if we as aspiring 5-fold house church leaders are unwilling to embody these kingdom leadership values and actually BE spectacles and fools for Christ in plain view of those we are seeking to equip and build up, why should anyone in our house church networks who follow and imitate us be willing to be spectacles and fools? As Wolfgang and others have so eloquently stated in the past, we will reproduce who we are (and what we live out), not what we teach. In this new season into which God is bringing His Church, we must understand that as we aspire to significant 5-fold ministry (whether apostolic, prophetic, evangelistic, pastoral or didactic), God fully intends to challenge each of us to live foolishly for Him at that point where our obedience to Him touches upon our greatest fears. For some, that foolish obedience will involve tent-making. For others, it will involve living by faith. But for each of us our "foolish obedience" will represent the confrontation of our fears and the out-working of God’s call upon our lives.

As some of you may be aware I have recently been writing on the subject of Intimacy with God in House Church. Why God has led me to write on this topic is somewhat of a humorous question for me, since I regard myself as someone who, on a good day, feels about as "anointed" as a sack of Home Depot hammers. But I have picked up a few insights along the way, one of which is this: Intimacy with God is in some way a function of our willingness to receive and respond to His promptings in our lives. What does this have to do with House Church finances? I have written elsewhere that I believe the New Testament paradigm is one of radical sacrificial giving to support radical sacrificial living. For the individual whom God is prompting to be a radical sacrificial giver to His work, intimacy means hearing God’s voice telling him (or her) to give and responding radically with, "O.K., God. Should I hold any back or should I just go ahead and give it all." That’s radical sacrificial giving. The other side of the equation is the individual whom God is calling to live radically and sacrificially with an all-out commitment to live by faith while pursuing ministry. On the one hand, God calls some to radical sacrificial giving (In the words of John Wesley, "Gain all you can, save all you can, give all you can"). On the other hand He calls some to radical, sacrificial living.

O.K, time to wrap up this "word-fest" and cut to the "bottom line." One of the reasons we are having this discussion is simply that there presently isn’t enough money to go around. People who should be in full-time ministry aren’t able to do so due to the lack of available resources to support them. Our two "pat" answers are: 1) God is obviously calling them to find secular work (I’m sorry, to whom is it so obvious?), and 2) It apparently isn’t God’s will for them to work full time in the ministry. Hmmm. I have a problem there. It isn’t God’s will for children to die of hunger and AIDS in Africa either, but it happens every day. So, what’s the problem? The problem, both in Africa and in House Church, is people who either don’t know God’s will or who choose (for whatever reason) not to do it. Do any of us feel like arguing that if all believers in the house church movement engaged in radical sacrificial giving, that there still wouldn’t be enough resources to fund the work God is calling us all to do? No takers? O.K. then, what should we do?

Allow me, first, to agree with the observations and recommendations which have already been voiced in this conversation. I deeply appreciate the mature voices represented here who have thoughtfully and prayerfully considered and responded to this issue. Thank you. We are all in your debt.

Second, may I suggest that we agree that there is no "one-size fits-all" answer to this issue (including my distinction between those who "give radically and sacrificially" and those who "live radically and sacrificially". It is more a rhetorical device intended to highlight some spiritual truth, than a hard and fast principle to guide all future behavior or discussion). God is going to raise up some people to become marketplace believers whose call and passion it is to fund His work. Others He will raise up to gain their living from the ministry because they have been called to labor full time n the vineyard. And, yes, he will raise up others who consider it an adventure to do both (i.e., tent-making to support their ministry passions).

Third, can we agree to stop taking our "money cues" from the secular world? I fear that we are bringing a significant degree of cultural baggage to our discussion. Our culture expects people to "work for a living." You either work for someone else who pays you a check which you use to pay your bills, or you are self-employed, in which case you "work for yourself" and "pay yourself." In church terms this means you either work for a Church or for a Christian organization which pays you, or you are a "tent-maker" who works for himself and pays himself. Whether Christian or secular, these appear to be the two options (with variations, of course). But I believe there is a "third option" which Wolfgang Simson expressed at a house church conference here in Spokane a couple of years ago, "I work for God, and He pays me."

Fourth, clear, biblical and balanced teaching on this subject and such concepts as "radical sacrificial giving" and "radical sacrificial living" will help to clarify the issue for those who are questioning, learning and growing while validating both sides of the equation.

Toward An Apostolic Strategy For House Church Finances

As some of you are aware, about a year and a half ago I began publishing what I called "A House Church Manifesto: Toward An Apostolic Strategy For Rapidly Multiplying House Churches". The goal or vision was to work toward something resembling a comprehensive understanding of what it would take to see a rapidly growing and effective house church movement in an area. The idea was not original with me. I borrowed from Wolfgang who shared the outline of such a strategy when he was here in Spokane. Let me get to the point. It seems to me, from my limited perspective, that we need to begin thinking, talking and writing toward something similar in the area of house church finances. When confronted with differing opinions on a critical topic the early church leadership came together in Acts 15, heard from all sides of the issue, sought God’s guidance and then produced a "position" which "seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us" (15:28). Is it possible that we might do the same? Might it be possible for us to focus our conference gatherings more on specific problem solving on specific critical issues such as finances, post modern outreach, house church leadership (5 fold ministry). I don’t know. These are just thoughts to consider.

"You Can’t Get To Acts 4 Without Acts 2"

I believe it was John White who told me in an e-mail that the late J. Edwin Orr, professor at Fuller and dean of revival students everywhere, once said that the "ordinary" work of the church is like drawing water out of a deep well with a long rope and great effort. But seasons of revival are like a monsoon when your problem becomes what to do with all the water you suddenly have. Such times represent not the "ordinary" work of the church, but the "extraordinary" work of God in a season of divine visitation. Teaching on a biblical, even Apostolic, strategy for house church finances represents, in my opinion, the "ordinary" work of the church. Does it need to be done. Yes, of course it does. But much of our discussion is centered around the events of Acts 4:32-37, and that discussion begs a crucial question, namely, what was it that produced the radical sacrificial giving which we see there on such a wide spread scale (we’ve all seen individual acts of generosity like this)? To couch the question in Orr’s terminology, does Acts 4 represent the "ordinary" work of the Church’" or the "extraordinary" work of God during a season of divine visitation? The answer to that question will tell us much about where we are . . . and about where we need to go. I recently dropped by to say ‘hi’ to a member of our house church network who is a mature 5-fold prophetic voice in our midst. He works at a mattress store in Spokane. As I walked in his first words to me were, "I’ve really been giving this a lot of thought lately, and house church simply won’t work without a move of the Holy Spirit." Don’t ya just hate it when the prophetic cuts straight to the chase?! While this may offend some, I believe it to be a true statement: Despite our protestations to the contrary and our frequent quoting of Acts 2:41-47, we are not yet an Acts 2 house church movement. Our vocabulary is outpacing our experience. We are, to date, doing what can generally be described (in Orr’s terms) as the "ordinary" work of the Church, simply in new and different locations. House church is new, it’s exciting and it’s challenging. But in a very real sense, we are still drawing water from a deep well with great effort. We are still awaiting that monsoon of God’s Spirit which will signal to all that an extraordinary visitation is underway, filling the channels of our house churches and transforming us into the radical sacrificial givers and radical sacrificial "livers" He wants us to become. Then our problem will be a new one: what to do with all of the resources which God provides.

Wahoo!  Our podcasting setup is now functional, although there are still some things we want to add. If you want to see a picture of our setup, and see what more is needed,  click on this link:  http://www.parousianetwork.org/Parousia_Podcast_Project.htm. We are planning new podcasts (all of our recent newsletters will soon be available as podcasts) and I am musing the possibility of doing a regular (perhaps weekly) "House Church Roundtable" with various House Church/Organic Church leaders & practitioners to discuss current critical issues in our movement. Your suggestions (guests, discussion topics, etc.) are welcome. Stay tuned . . . literally!

 

Just For Fun

 

After last week's newsletter a reader wrote the following: "In light of things eternal this is rather minute (unlike the contribution I believe you're making to house churches in general) but I just wanted to write and say thank you for including your sense of humor in the newsletter, specifically the links to the Muppets from youtube (which I'd never heard of until your newsletter, being as I am of the low-tech variety). Being "from" the sixties and now finding myself "in" the sixties, it was a joy to watch the clips you highlighted as well as many others you led us to. My wife and I sat in front of the computer and absolutely howled until we couldn't see the screen for the tears (the Swedish Chef was always our favorite). I couldn't remember how long it had been since we'd laughed that hard, and it was a gift from the Lord (and His servant) to do so again. THANK YOU so much. I know the day in which we live, and the things we handle related to the Kingdom, are indeed serious - we're reminded of that daily, whether we want the reminder or not. But it was good to remember that if "He who sitteth in the heavens laughs", it's probably a good idea if we do too occasionally (though He probably has more reason). Thanks again. I do enjoy the newsletter (not just the funnies) and have shared and quoted from it often. You are a blessing. Larry" Thanks Larry. I promise I have e-mails which prove that not everyone appreciates my "edgy" sense of humor . . . it's the Klingon in me (or as they say on the home world, "Perhaps today is a good day to die!").

 

O.K., there's a reason why we don't serve lobster at our House Church potlucks. It was an unfortunate experience, all captured on video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbJ_Y-repUg