One of the things I love about house church is the ability to be flexible because the Spirit doesn’t move in a straight line. It is hard to turn a big ship but a small ship can be turned at a moment’s notice.
When you organize “Big church” worship everything needs to be planned and orchestrated to go off without a hitch. Any hitch gets talked about in the staff meeting and most likely the elders’ meeting – usually not a good thing!
Turning errors into wins!
One thing I love about house church is that errors and mistakes can get turned into huge kingdom wins. I have seen this happen in “Big church” before but I believe it is easier to roll with it in house church that big church.
I remember a time when someone had a tough time sharing the communion thoughts. In big church I might have thought, “oh no…this isn’t going well…how will we save the day?” You know what happened in house church? Someone walked up, put their arm around the person sharing the thoughts and prayed with and for them. Again, this can and does happen in big church – just not as likely in my experience.
Teaching Our Kids to Be In Tune
This past Sunday we ended our worship time by gathering up all the kids and having them sit in the middle of the living room assembly. We took turns speaking words of love, encouragement and blessing over them. As another adult spoke up, all the kids would spin around to that person…then the next and the next. There were tears. There were smiles. We will never forget it.
I had no idea if anyone would speak up when we opened the floor for that. It wasn’t orchestrated. In big church I would have never done that…I would have had people lined up to make sure it went smoothly.
Who is in Control?
I am afraid for all those years of organizing big church worship, I wasn’t allowing much control to the Holy Spirit. I was in control and that ruins things!
One of the other things we do is, the last Sunday of the month we call “potluck worship” where each person comes with something to share (song, prayer, testimony, etc). We are all watching during the week for God to move! And He does. And we talk about it! Before we begin sharing on those Sunday’s we sit in silence listening for God. When God moves, someone speaks. We are intentionally creating a culture where we are expected to watch and wait on the movement of God and it is powerful!
God is in control. God is setting the order of worship. We follow His lead!
An encouragement!
Let us create environments where when the Spirit moves, we move! Let us instill in the congregation the desire to hear from God and learn to listen to and for God. And let this become normal for our kids to see and experience! Let us get out of the business of being in control and orchestrating services so perfect the Spirit isn’t needed because God has us! 😉
If you want to hear more about the Spirit in the assembled church in Acts and what it can look like today, give this video a watch!
2 Responses
Hm, your one Sunday a month sounds a lot like EVERY Sunday in the early church: when gathered, each of you… Sounds a lot like your potluck Sunday… 🙂
So appreciate your thoughts, Matt. Met a guy who told me he grew up in East Texas with Holy God, Holy Jesus, and Holy Bible. I told him, I understand that real well. Different church, same doctrine. Thankfully, he and I know what that saying should have been and is to us now.