As we have been living into this missional, simple Christ-lifestyle, interesting questions have begun to pop up…questions that one normally wouldn’t ask if “going to church” and being a decent member of society was all it took.

In Abilene, I am deeply connected with MRNA, a graduate program functions as a mission-sending agency. It trains students to think missionally, and prepares them for the post-Christian culture of North America. It helps them to ease into a new life with Christ, where he is the head to an organic body, a body that spreads right across the globe - spiritual families meeting in homes and in pubs, others functioning as new monastic communities, and others celebrating God through massive weekend festivals, and more.

So as this year progresses, the MRNA students have been encouraged to begin visiting some of the existing house churches in our city, to get a sense of what is going on citywide. This is where the question comes in:

Does “house church-hopping” make any sense whatsoever in this new paradigm?

ACU students are famous for sampling any number of congregations without ever really placing membership somewhere. And even if they cast their lot with one group, that’s not to say that they don’t have at least two or three other churches where they regularly attend services. In a paradigm that puts the individual first, where spiritual consumerism is top priority, church hopping as a reality makes perfect sense. But when “church” means “family of natural relationships” is there any way someone should even consider sampling from the buffet of choices?

One lady in an organic church here in town told her group that she didn’t feel like her needs were getting met and decided to move to another fellowship. As if severing ties with her family were as simple as showing up for dinner at someone else’s house. In reality this broke the hearts of those in her faith family, and through that conversation they discovered that if her needs weren’t being met, it wasn’t because the church had a problem, but because for one reason or another, this lady couldn’t find the “well spring” inside herself that Jesus promises all those who accept his invitation to abundant life. Through that conversation, life erupted.
First thoughts: Church hopping in organic churches is an echo from a past life. We are still feeling the ripple effects of the “me first” mentality that comes from many traditional churches. In High School, it was impossible for me to skip around between lunch tables looking for who could give me the best lunch and conversation.  I would have been seen as shallow and greedy.  When we begin to see our spiritual families as the organic relationships of our lives, bouncing from one table to the next for spiritual goods and services doesn’t make much sense.

Thoughts?

Last 5 posts by Mark

• God is Wholly - October 2nd, 2008
• The Great Moderation - September 30th, 2008

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 30th, 2007 at 1:50 pm and is filed under Accountability, Community, Holistic Faith, Learning, Mega-Church, Organic Church, Questions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.