Learn to experience Him together

What is an organic church gathering like? How do you do simple church? I’d like a dime for every time I’ve heard these questions. But they are unanswerable because they are the wrong question. There isn’t “a way” or “the way” to do organic church. There is not a simple church order of service. In fact, in my opinion, we need to avoid that like the plague. But there are lessons to be learned about this kind of experience. So, I’d like to tell a couple of real stories from my recent experience, and draw some lessons from them.

Lyle and Kristy’s House

A number of weeks ago we gathered at Lyle and Kristy’s house. Lyle felt that Jesus wanted him to set the tone for that meeting. He drew us together in his living room, asked a couple of questions, made a couple of brief observations and “it” happened. Somehow the Spirit of God’s presence became very obvious to everyone. Jesus had used Lyle to draw us to himself.

Different people made a brief comment or said a prayer. Others interacted with the comments or Bible verses that others had read. As some point Walt got up and started playing the piano. We had a wonderful time of Spirit empowered worship in the presence of the King. A few got little visual images of lessons that God wanted us to see. These were briefly discussed. Then we got up and had a pot luck dinner together around the table. But the conversation and fellowship continued. At that point it was more storytelling and friendly joking. The whole time was special.

Bill and Bab’s House

Each gathering will be different

We recently had another gathering where we brought different people from various churches in our network together. Of course we met in “house church format,” whatever that means. These people didn’t necessarily know each other well. Some were meeting for the first time. And, since I brought three of my friends from the Hispanic church, which is meeting in Cesar’s house (see Cesar, Man of Peace and Another Story from the Harvest), there were significant differences in culture and economic level, besides the fact that most of my friends are not bilingual.

What was interesting about this meeting was that the differences didn’t seem to matter. Walt and his friend Casey played piano and guitar and we sang some songs in English. Humberto and Gaddy downloaded some Spanish songs that my friends might know and those of us who spoke Spanish shared Spanish songs with the group.

Jesus used this as a time to share each other’s culture in love, respect and harmony. There was some simultaneous translation going on, but often in wasn’t really needed. My friends felt welcomed among the Gringos; welcome enough to share stories, songs and prayers. Then one of us prayed about the wall of separation being torn down, after which another read a passage from Revelation about the gospel being preached to every tribe and tongue. Later we just naturally broke into different groups, in the kitchen, a couple of groups in the living room, another in the den. All sorts of different ministry was happening in these groups simultaneously.

Lessons

  1. Every meeting is different. Let them be. Don’t try to squeeze them into a mold.
  2. Jesus leads these meeting through different people responding to his prompting. Don’t try to control that.
  3. Jesus often has a theme. Learn to look for it. In our meeting at Lyle and Kristy’s it was “love me and experience my presence together.” At Bill and Bab’s it was “the wall of separation has been torn down.” Next time it will be something else.
  4. No meeting will “have it all” nor does it need to. Jesus will build his agenda over time.
  5. Each person will come away from the meeting having learned a thing or two individually from Jesus. They might have been ministered to or prayed for by the group, had an insight, or have learned from what was discussed from the Bible.

We don’t need to plan this. Instead, we seek Jesus. Let him lead. Our planning has much more potential for interfering than helping Jesus’ agenda. Having said this, Jesus may give someone something to do before they come. God did that with Lyle. Hold these “agenda items” loosely. But, like Lyle’s setting of the tone; it might just be what Jesus wants.

  • What lessons do you draw from these stories?
  • Have you ever noticed Jesus setting the theme in your meetings? What was that like?
  • What are the potential pitfalls of trying to have an order of service in a simple church meeting?
  • Does it frustrate you that “we can’t have it all” in every single meeting? What would happen if we tried?
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