The SBC question / application was simply keeping with the theme of this blog … to have an impact upon the churches and ministries of the SBC.

Obviously, there is not a very large number of true house churches in the SBC context. It would be interesting to speculate what a significant movement would do to convention attitudes / policy / polity.

I have been pretty busy… relaxing… over thanksgiving break so I have not done much of any blogging. But I wanted to reply to your questions.

I am going to be rather brief (or as brief as possible). Answering these questions could turn into a post in-itself .

Where has God led me? Over the past couple years, God has really helped me remove some of my presuppositions about “church,” “pastors,” etc. Most of what I understood came from today’s modern traditions. I started to read scripture entirely differently without these presuppositions. I guess the biggest thing for me was to ask myself “why?”. Alot of times, when I tried to answer the “why?” from scripture, I came up short handed. It was very scary at first, but became pretty liberating. Through all of this, God has led me away from the idea of a vocational pastor and more towards the idea of all of his followers being ministers.

What are you doing now? My wife and I are currently in the process of trying to move, so it is a little difficult to answer this question. I currently work for a secular employer, where I come in contact with atheists, Muslims, and various Christians every day. I try to use this time to build relationships, share Jesus’ love, etc. I see this as a major part of ministry. Off work, I try to reach as many people as possible (which is usually difficult because I work 2nd shift – 1st shift next week!). Part of my blog is an attempt to discuss some of my ideas with people who agree and disagree… so we can learn from and encourage one another. I usually chat online a lot with various Christians and non-Christians. And my wife and I try to meet with the church as frequently as possible.

My father-in-law and I plan on doing something after I move (I’ll be closer to him). We’ll probably be hosting a bi-weekly gathering or something of the sort. We’re still talking about it.

God’s Glory,
Lew

I’ll agree. To go back to the tool set analogy, not every tool out there is actually a good tool. You have to check them out and see if they’re valid or not. But you have to distinguish between “this tool does not fit what God is calling my local church to” (or perhaps even “this tool does not fit what God is calling my local church to now“, noting that this might change in the future) and “this tool is bad”. Sometimes you even run into mixed tools – “Some parts of this tool are good, and some parts are bad”, and you have to try and redesign the tool to keep the good parts and get rid of the bad (which probably happens more often than we want to admit). You often don’t figure out the latter until you’ve actually tried the tool (which is what seems to be going on with Willow Creek). The problem comes when “This tool doesn’t fit what God is calling my local church to” is equated with “this tool is bad”. The call away from cookie-cutter churchianity isn’t a call away from discernment, but towards more discernment, just without taking a solely “thumbs up or thumbs down” approach.

As far as the Scripture, I can’t help but think of all the retired SBC pastors that are not up to running a church, but would be a perfect teacher in these situations. We have several in our small church.

If these house churches were to remain SBC, then they would adopt the BF&M and their accountability is to God. I not so sure they need a watchdog.

Personally, if I could find a “Family Integrated” SBC church in my area, I would check it out. The research shows that we are not doing something right when most of our youth leave the church after highschool, never to return. We have bought into age segregation. We have youth teaching youth. Our young women are in classes with other young women that cannot possibly be a Titus 2 woman to them. Our children are being fed entertainment.

I better stop now, but a age integrated (families), intimate, praying, mission action oriented, solid Word-based, use who God gives you, pot luck lunch fellowship church sounds wonderful to me.

Liz