Here's the behind-the-scenes email for all of you, from Pastor Rodney, who is leading the effort:
First, we reiterated the purpose for the house churches. 3 key words:
- Hospitality
- Mission
- Discipleship
(We changed "evangelism" to "mission" because of the connotation of the words. Evangelism usually carries with it the stigma of programmatic approaches, and we want to approach people from a different perspective, namely that of people living centered around the mission of God. Looks like a semantics issue, but can affect the manner in which we talk about and do house church.)
The agenda for the week was as follows (we got through a lot of this, but not all).
What does a house church leader look like? How do house church leaders differ from pastors? The qualifications of a house church leader are just the same as those of a pastor (as they are just the qualifications of Godly men- 1 Tim 3, Titus 2), and house church leaders should even be able to teach, as it is a necessity in many cases within the house churches. The difference is in the role they fill. However, house church leaders should publicly set apart by the pastors with the laying on of hands and given the authority to lead, answer Biblical questions, disciple, refute false teaching, etc...They should be set in place, trusted, and encouraged to lead and trust their own ability to hear from the Holy Spirit (1 Jn 2.20), as well as understand and apply Scripture (1 Jn 2.27). The expectation for HC leaders should first be meeting Biblical qualifications for character, then:
- Shepherding ability (personal direction for the group as a whole, as well as individuals) Ability to facilitate and direct conversation in a group setting
- Hospitality (whether gifted or learned)
- Ability to facilitate or direct a conversation in a group setting
- Ability to train (disciple) new leaders
- Ability to identify giftedness in other people- and then empower them to use that giftedness within the HC and the larger church-as-a-whole
- Ability to take info from sermons and develop points of application for people in the HC
What oversight and direction should be expected from pastors for house church leaders? How do we train new leaders? House church leaders should have direct accountability and discipleship from pastors (at least for now). At some point, there will be too many leaders in training than the pastors can handle. As well, as house church leaders are released to do ministry, they should be developed and trusted to train other leaders. Either way, there needs to be one-on-one development specific to the individual leader. New leader training should be heavy on Bible, as well as the specifics of leadership and dealing with people. In the past, we have missed out on developing leaders' theology so that they would be able to correctly and efficiently give people Biblical direction and refute those who speak out of turn. All training in the past has majored on the specifics of leading a group, which is still good information, but not enough. We will be developing a resource for leadership training as we go through it with this group of current house church leaders, which brings me to the next point...
We talked at length about how to handle current relationships between HC leaders and pastors and what that relationship should be long term. We decided that, at least for now, we would get the guys together once a week on Tuesday mornings to start walking through some theology. We are going to begin going through Wayne Grudem's Bible Doctrine, the condensed version of his Systematic Theology. We will then be teaching that same material to our wives at home. The ladies are working on what will be best for them to connect, so we await their decision...
We did not get to the rest of the questions, because we spent much time developing the others (which was good and important), so we will begin here next week:
- What are reasonable expectations for growing/splitting house churches?
- How do we gauge evangelism within the house churches?
- How do we effectively move people from simple attendance in a HC to full participation?
- How do we gauge proper discipleship within the house churches? Is there a checklist?
I really want to figure out here what the proper gauge is for deciphering our effectiviness in the things we are supposed to be doing in house churches. The natural tendency of people is to major on what is right and cover over what is not. For instance, our house churches have developed some long and lasting friendships in the past. The fellowship has been quite beautiful. While that is both good and useful, it really does not fill any of the purposes of the house churches. We need some concrete milestones of sorts by which to gauge our effectiveness on both acting as a house church and developing other followers of Jesus. I would like to develop a format by which we disciple people and make the most of our time, so that we do not call merely "hang out" time discipleship. We, again, need specific gauges for which we can formulate questions or conversation points for leaders who will disciple others.
For example:
Part of the requirements for Biblical leaders is the state of the marriage and leadership of the family. Some of that information can be collected by simply watching (you can see if someone's children are well-behaved), but much of how a man treats his wife is not public and can only be discerned through either the Spirit's direction or asking the right questions.
Please pray through these ideas this week and be ready to dive in again this Sunday. I hope you guys are enjoying this and are encouraged as much as I am. We want to raise the bar for our church and really begin to make disciples, which depends very much on the house churches, becasue that is where the relationships are formed. So, you guys are pivotal in the process, and I appreciate so much your willingness to serve and build the kingdom.
Recent Comments