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saying about the kids. I’ve never thought of them that way. But you’re talking about something bigger than

that, aren’t you?”

“You’re right, Roary. What I’m saying will also affect how you deal with each other. If you really want to

learn how to share Jesus’ life together, it would be easier to think of that less as a meeting you attend and

more as a family you love.”

“I like that. We’d focus more on our relationships than our activities,” Ben offered.

“Exactly,” John answered. “And be more focused on your relationship to God as well. He is the first

relationship. Anything valuable you experience in your life together will come from your life in him.”

“I think that’s why we really want to get this church thing right,” Ben continued. “We’ve all wasted so many

years in institutional church and have not found the life of God we wanted.”

“Have you found it here?” queried John.

“Not yet, but we’re working on it.”

“Tell me about your life together.”

“Well, we meet on Sunday evenings, usually with a meal and communion, then we have some praise time

before settling into a study.”

“Let me guess,” John said leaning forward. “When you first get together there is a lot of energy and

excitement. But about the time you start the meeting things get awkward. Even your sharings seem a bit

forced and artificial. When you finally end the meeting, the energy and excitement return as people pick up

and leave. Is that close?”

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“Did Jake rat us out, or what?” Marvin laughed. I held up my hand, shaking my head to make it clear I had

not. Marvin used to pastor another church in town before growing disillusioned with the amount of energy

required to manage the machinery. He’d gotten into ministry to touch people’s lives and ended up as the

CEO of an institution he didn’t even like. He’d quit three years ago and we stumbled across each other in

our own neighborhood.

“He didn’t have to,” John smiled. “Unfortunately a lot of home groups struggle with that.“

“To be honest, I usually dread when we start the meeting and always enjoy when it ends,” Marvin said.

“Do others of you feel that way?” I asked as people nodded their assent.

“As long as we see church life as a meeting we’ll miss its reality and its depth. If the truth were told, the

Scriptures tell us very little about how the early church met. It tells us volumes about how they shared his life

together. They didn’t see the church as a meeting or an institution, but as a family living under Father.”

“Are you suggesting we not meet?” Marsha interrupted sounding annoyed.

“No, Marsha, you’re missing the point. Meeting together isn’t the problem, but it’s easy to get stuck in a way

of meeting that is artificial and counterproductive. That’s why it feels awkward to you.”

“Yes, but we don’t have a praise team or the same person giving us a lecture every week. Isn’t this more

relational?”

“It can be. But it can also be a less-controlled replication of the same dynamic. We’re trying to get from our

brothers and sisters what we’re not finding in Father himself. That’s a recipe for disaster. Nothing we as

believers can ever do together will make up for the lack of our own relationship with God. When we put the

church in that place we make it an idol and others will always end up disappointing us.”

“Is that why Jake says you are against house church?” Marvin jumped in again.

“I don’t think I’ve ever said that,” John said turning towards me with a questioning look on his face. “That

isn’t how I think. But I did try to get him to think beyond it, as I want you to do.”

“We thought house church was a more biblical way to do church. It offers more participation and is less

controlled by clergy, less demanding of time and resources, and more relational than institutional church.

Isn’t that true?”

“Just because it meets in a home?” The skeptical look on John’s face said it all. “That isn’t always true of

home groups I’ve been with. Many have people in them who try to control the others. Don’t get me wrong;

I love the priorities you just outlined and I’m convinced that a home is the best place to live them. But I

know people who meet in buildings who are incredibly relational, and some who meet in homes who are

not. The location isn’t the issue, but whether you are caught up in religious games or helping each other

discover the incredible relationship God wants with us.”

“Didn’t the early church only meet in homes, especially as it spread outside Jerusalem?” Ben added.

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“As far as we know, yes.”

“So then that’s the way we should do it.” Marsha chimed in.

“Marsha, Marsha, why do you love that word?”

“What word?

“The same word that John hasn’t been using all night,” Roary broke in, then he turned to John, “I’ve listened

to you carefully and you haven’t used the word ‘should’ one time tonight. Is that intentional?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I’ve been told all my life what I should and shouldn’t do, especially about religious things. But you haven’t

talked in those terms at all. You seem to see this not as choosing between right and wrong, but simply living

in a reality that already exists. I thought you would tell us how we should do church.”

“If there is anything I’d say we should do, it would be to stop ‘should’-ing on ourselves, and others.”

Laughter flickered around the room and more than one person looked to their spouse asking what he had

just said. “Certainly there are things that are right and things that are wrong. But we’ll only truly know that

in Jesus. Remember, he is the truth itself! You will never be able to follow his principles if you’re not

following him first.”

John’s words hung in the air through an awkward silence. I could see the gears churning in minds all

around the table. I knew what they were feeling.

Marsha finally spoke choking a bit through tears, “I think you’re right John. The reason I follow rules is

because I don’t know how to follow Jesus like you’re talking about. I just try to do what’s right and I’m tired

of being attacked by people who say we’re in rebellion if we’re not in one of those blasted buildings on

Sunday morning.”

John leaned toward Marsha. “I know this isn’t easy. But just because people say something doesn’t make it

so. Jesus is teaching you how to live free. Others will find that threatening, as you will yourself at times. The system must devour what it cannot control.”

“That’s why we’re against the institution,” said Marvin.

“We may be talking about two different things here, Marvin. I want to expose the system of religious

obligation in whatever ways it holds people captive, but that’s not the same as being against the institution.

Don’t let it threaten you. There are lots of folks in it whom Father loves and he will keep drawing them into

his life just like he does with you. As long as you react to it, it is still controlling you.”

After a few moments Marvin let out a frustrated sigh. “I don’t know, John. I always thought the institution I

left wasn’t working because it had the wrong principles. I thought we were finally getting the right ones in

place so we could finally experience real church life.” Murmurs of agreement buzzed around the table. “But

you don’t see it that way?”

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“No, I don’t. If it helps, I think you’re finding better principles—ones that reflect more accurately the life of

the early believers. But keep in mind that following principles didn’t produce their life together. We can

observe what happened as they followed Jesus, but copying that won’t produce the same reality.

“Jesus didn’t leave us with a system; he left us with his Spirit—a guide instead of a map. Principles alone will

not satisfy your hunger. That’s why systems always promise a future revival that never comes. They cannot

produce community because they are designed to keep people apart.”

“Why do you say that?”

“By keeping the focus on services or rituals they make most people spectators. By holding up standards and

motivating people to conform to them they only encourage people to pretend to be what they are not or to

act like they know more than they really do. Questions and doubts are discouraged and people can’t deal

with the things they are hiding. Thus their relationships become superficial or even false because they only

let people see the shadow they want them to see, not who they really are. Feeling isolated they only become

more focused on their own needs and what others aren’t doing to meet them. They fight over control of the

institution, however large or small, so that they can make others do what they think is best. It is a story that

has been repeated for a couple of thousand years.” A few furtive eyes shot in my direction.

John continued, “To keep the system working you have to obligate people through commitment or appeal

to their ego needs by convincing them this is the last, best, greatest place to belong. That’s why so many

groups create false expectations that frustrate people and focus on each other’s needs, or even their gifts,

rather than on the ever-present Christ.”

“I can see those seeds already sprouting here,” Marvin sighed almost to himself.

“That’s why your meetings feel stilted. It’s hard to maintain an illusion of body life when you don’t have

planned activities that people can follow with little effort. But you do have the chance here to discover real

community. That grows where we share our common lot as failed human beings and the journey of being

transformed by Jesus working in us. It thrives where people are free to be exactly who they are—no more

and no less. As they learn to rely on him, they won’t have to use others to meet their needs but rather find

themselves laying down their lives to help others in the same way Jesus did.”

“Will that include unbelievers as well? Most house church literature I’ve read almost discourages outreach

as a threat to body life,” Roary said enthusiastically.

“Amazing, isn’t it? The self-focus priority of building ‘our’ group only demonstrates that we’ve missed the

reality of Father’s love. When we discover the power of his love we can’t hold it to ourselves. Not only will

it transform us, it will also seep out quite naturally with believers and nonbelievers alike. We’ll find

ourselves reflecting God’s life and character to others around us and we’ll even do it best when we’re least

aware of it.”

“Well I guess we can cancel our plans to go to that house church conference next month,” Ben said

mockingly.

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“Not necessarily. Just don’t buy all they’re selling. You’ll probably meet some wonderful people there who

are spilling out of the system and are just grabbing back at house church as a security blanket. God might

want you to know such folks. Just keep in mind the simplest lesson that has been repeated countless times

since Jesus was here: the more organization you bring to church life, the less life it will contain.”

“It just sounds like we shouldn’t be doing anything, John.” Marsha’s frustration was evident in her tone.

“That’s not what I mean. I just want to help you focus your efforts where they will bear the most fruit.

Instead of trying to build a house church, learn to love each other and share each other’s journey. Who is he

asking you to walk alongside right now and how can you encourage them? I love it when brothers and

sisters choose to be intentional in sharing God’s life together in a particular season. So, yes, experiment

with community together. You’ll learn a lot. Just avoid the desire to make it contrived, exclusive or

permanent. Relationships don’t work that way.

“The church is God’s people learning to share his life together. It’s Marvin over there and Diane back here.

When I asked Ben about your life together he told me about your meetings, but nothing about your

relationships. That told me something. Do you even know Roary’s greatest hope or Jake’s current struggle?

Those things rarely come out in meetings. They come out in the naturalness of relationships that occur

throughout the week.”

“But we’re too busy for that,” Marvin’s wife, Jenny, added. “We try to do that when we get together.”

I knew what John was going to say before he said it, “And is it working?”

“Is what working?”

“Are you accomplishing all of that in your meetings?”

“Not very well, but we’re trying to learn to do it better.”

“And we’re still talking about an ‘it’. We humans are notorious for taking something Scripture describes as a

reality, giving a term to it and thinking we’ve replicated the reality because we use the term. Paul talked

about the church that gathered in various homes, but he never called it ‘house church’. Houses were just

where they ended up in their life together. Jesus was the focus, not the location. As I said, you can have all

the right principles and still miss his glory in the body.“

“Now that is depressing,” Jenny said teasingly and the others laughed.

“Why do you say that?” John asked.

“Because we’ve been trying for nine months to get this right and now it all seems so futile. Maybe we should

just go back to a traditional church and make the most of it.” The groans around the room indicated that