My church journey part four.
Hi welcome to today's little lesson.
I've been sitting on this beautiful spot on a beach on the Gulf Coast of Florida while
the sun is just rising over the palm trees over here in the east, sharing my church journey.
And this, I think, is the fourth time I'm talking about this, and I've left the last
little lesson, and I hope you've watched the other three because otherwise you're breaking
into the middle of a great story here, okay?
Sitting there in my living room after I had left my last church that I pastored and pioneered,
and I said to my wife, "Wouldn't it be great to have a church that was just the bare bones
essentials?
You meet in a house, you know, you just worship with a guitar or a harmonica, or just a cappella.
You share the word.
People ask questions, you know.
Instead of taking up an offering to pay the mortgage, you can give the money to the least
of these or help evangelists, or help missionaries around the world, you know."
And my wife said, "That's a great idea."
And I said, "Let's Google it and see if anyone's ever thought of this before."
Now this was about 20 years ago, and I Googled it, and I was so shocked to find out that
there were tens of thousands of hits, and people were talking about it.
People were doing house churches, you know.
There were house church movements all over the world, and oh my goodness, I began to
read and read and read and study, and I bought books about house churches.
It was tough for my wife and I to start a house church because we traveled so much internationally
and domestically, and so we weren't around, and so it was tough for us to lead a house
church.
So we looked for a house church.
We had some friends, and we do have some friends who are in house churches, but they're different
flavors, like, you know, well, I don't want to go into all that.
But you know, and I'll just be honest with you.
Amongst the house churches that exist in America, there's a lot of different kinds.
Some are centered around some pet doctrine that the leader has discovered that nobody
else knows, and he gathers his little group around him, and he indoctrinates them so that
only they have the truth, and everybody else is wrong.
Some house churches are just a bunch of disgruntled people that got hurt because they used to
play the piano, but a better piano player started coming to their church and they got
demoted, and the other person got promoted, and they're all bitter about it, and so they
left.
Or, the pastor preached a sermon they don't agree with, you know, and so many house churches
consist of just bitter people.
And you can tell because that's all they talk about.
You don't want to be a part of a house church like that.
And if you're a part of a house church like that, either leave or just say, "Hey folks,
Jesus did say something here about forgiveness.
Maybe we ought to think about that."
So you have all these different flavors of house churches.
It was tough for us to start one, but eventually we did and we invited folks.
Some folks came.
Some folks came and went.
But, it didn't go as well as I had hoped.
And at the same time, and I'll explain a little later why, but as we investigated more of
the whole house church concept, house church movement.
Of course, many places overseas, that was all there was.
I mean, the house church movement in China was huge, and I've met house church leaders
in China who themselves have planted, you know, scores of churches that have planted
many other churches.
It exploded.
A house church explosion, and they truly are disciples of Christ who are endeavoring to
follow Him.
They're fervent in their love for Jesus and in their prayer and their witness.
It's the real deal.
But the house movements in the West, in many cases as we visited them, studied them, oftentimes
I came away with the feeling of people have found the least committed version of Christianity
that they could find.
We all come to somebody's house.
We sit around and flap our gums about the Bible, you know, and give our, many cases,
ridiculous opinions and twistings of Scripture.
And we have a meal and we watch football, and we call it church.
It's great.
We don't have to give any money.
We don't have to volunteer for Sunday School, no pastors wagging his finger at us, you know.
We love this.
And, so that really disappointed us, because by that time we had figured out that the point
of coming together is to help to make disciples and to be challenged in the word of God, and
to grow spiritually, and to seek the Lord.
To become more like Jesus, okay?
So, we tried that in our house church by going verse by verse through a book of the New Testament,
but looking back now I recognize that we made some mistakes.
Because I'm going to finish off this whole story by telling you about a house church
I'm involved in now in my house that I'm absolutely loving, because I learned a few things that
we were missing in that first house church.
And the one thing above all that we were missing in that first house church was really an intentionality
to grow spiritually.
And we were still kind of mistaken into thinking that the more we studied the Bible, and the
more knowledge we gained, that we're accomplishing the goal.
We're growing spiritually.
And unfortunately there were a few people in our house church who had some funny ideas,
and they were kind of locked into a babyhood face of Christianity, and they weren't really
open to any real challenges as far as their thinking and their interpretation of the word
of God.
And so, that kind of sucked the life out of it week by week.
Again, don't get me wrong.
We did, if you're in the word of God and you're discussing the word of God, and truth is coming
forth, it's going to benefit somebody, and there were people that were benefited, and
there's fruit that exists today because of our house church.
But eventually we had to shut it down because I just, I wasn't happy about it.
So, we went from, in my journey as I've shared with you over the last four times, from dead
unsaved church to kind of theological Bible study, to a good charismatic fellowship to
the ministerial phase of my life starting churches that needed buildings, and trying
to get more people to come and so forth, to then ultimately to a house church, and then
ultimately to no church.
And I quit going to church, or doing anything that would resemble what looks like a gathering
of believers, other than the fact that I happen to direct a ministry called Heaven's Family,
and I'm interfacing with Christians every day, okay?
I'm much, even not going to church, I was much more interfacing with the body of Christ,
you know, than way, way, way beyond any Christian who goes to church.
Because I'm teaching around the world, teaching when opportunities are given in the United
States, interfacing with our staff members, all devoted followers of Christ, and you know,
so I'm not missing out on those elements that most people need from church.
There was no danger of me backsliding by not going to church.
It might not be the case with you, okay?
So I'm not telling anybody don't go to church.
But my story has a happy ending because now I've come this complete circle after goodness,
40-some-odd years of this church journey of mine.
And, the full circle, and I can't wait to tell you about the happy ending of this full
circle, as the beach becomes a little more crowded here.
This is a famous place for looking for fossilized sharks' teeth.
Okay, hope to see you next time.
God bless.
Bye-bye.