Quick life update: Trina and I just got back from the National House Church Conference, and it was encouraging as always. We’ve made lots of good friends from all over the country through this venue, and it was good meeting up with many of them again. And there were so many others who were just beginning to envision God’s family life in new ways, which was also exciting for us to watch. Among these newbies were the new MRNA (Missionary Residency for North America) students! It’s been two years since Katrina and I were in the program’s internship year, but its still great to hang out with these guys and to welcome them into the program. I might write more about the conference and on our new buddies later on.

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If life is a dance, then who is our partner? Watch this moving video till the end:

How does this hit you? What does it say about life’s struggle, human nature, spiritually destructive forces, and the dance of God?

For me, I see in this dance the original intimacy we were ALL created in, a move toward corrupted insanity and ultimate isolation, and then the powerfully violent fight for life’s redemption with our partner.

God continues to confound the wise and stupefy our best guesses. It is clear to me that God is actively pursuing people right around this world, and in many places (more than we will ever know) he is under the radar, supplying nutrients to grassroots, underground movements of God’s People. Joel News once again discovers yet another story to give Father praise for!

The ‘grassroots’ house church movement in Bangladesh is beating its ten thousands, reports German missions strategist Wolfgang Simson. “In 1996 I was in Bangladesh, the third-largest Muslim country in the world, with only 600,000 known and organized Christians then. Only a few Muslims were coming to Christ, and found it extremely difficult to be integrated into the traditional churches. I spoke to the majority of Christian leaders connected to the Evangelical Alliance there about the need to start underground networks of house churches, allowing whole Muslim families to be discipled and multiplied. Many leaders shook their heads: ‘Impossible; unheard of; unpractical; difficult; deadly; ridiculous, maybe in China or India, but not here’ were some of the responses I got. Crammed into my airplane seat back home I felt like such a looser. Was it worthwhile to speak about these things at all? Should we not leave everyone just alone and do their thing?”

“A few days ago in Zürich a few of us met with a man we call Brother Abdul from Bangladesh. He told us a story that made me cry - and maybe you, too. That very year I was in his land, he, as a 19 year old teenager then, started to do the very thing I was preaching. But he did not hear it from me, but from God. He started a movement to disciple Muslims through underground house churches we call ‘jamaats’, and it has now, in 2007, after only a few years, become the largest single movement bringing Muslims to Jesus in the world! Again and again people checked and rechecked the statistics; it is for fact that more than 500,000 Muslims have become disciples of Jesus through this house church movement, nearly overtaking the number of all other organized Christians in Bangladesh together.”

Source: Wolfgang Simson

Could this kind of “great awakening” have happened if traditional churches had simply figured out the right evangelistic strategy? Would there even be enough seats in the pews of the church buildings in Bangladesh to accomodate for such an amazing influx of church-goers? Thank God that his work is not confined to a church building’s retail space or conversion strategy.

This is an intriguing video that only reveals about fleas what we already know about humanity - that over time we find ourselves accustomed to the limits that have been set around us, and are rarely if ever able to break free from our own prisons.

In many ways, this video, as well as a similarly symbolic movie, the Matrix, is an allegory of the human condition - that we are slaves to our own “Matrix” or “flea jar” and we will never escape, even if all restrictions are taken away. Much like the Matrix’s character Cypher, we would rather return to the Matrix power grid and live an illusion than live in a world without controls or limits.

What is really possible for followers of Christ who are not restrained by limitations the Evil One has placed on them? What might new believers, who have never been caught up in the trappings of a system that is designed to suppress them, be free to do or become?!?

It is these sorts of questions that reminds me that the organic church movement must remain out among the lost and the “unchurched”, rather than just sheep-transfer. Otherwise our homes will simply become a new place for us to erect our steeples. The “Matrix” will have found a new way to suppress the freedom of humanity.

I recently read a story (I’ll post it here if I ever find a link for it!) about a woman named Jinger. She was walking down a road in Boise, and a woman named Patty, who had felt prompted by God to stop, picked her up and drove her into town. Patty told Jinger about the love of Jesus Christ at a Bible Study she was headed to. Jinger accepted Christ that evening.

Later in the conversation at that Bible Study, they all began talking about starting simple churches. Jinger was facinated and asked a lot of questions. “Do we need a clergy for this? (no) Could she do this? (yes!) Would it be alright to start with her non-Christian family? (of course!). The next evening she had done just that. There was no formal training - only unbridled freedom to be the transformed light of Christ that she was created to be! Does she still have a lot to learn? Sure! But think about it; she didn’t think. She just took the joy and freedom she had and applied it to the best of her ability. She went from new Christian to church planter in just 36 hours.

And there are thousands more Jingers in this country already doing the same thing…but there are millions more who just keep getting passed on the highway - maybe because too many of us are stuck in our jars.

We left the Dale’s after some pizza and a refreshing shower and made our way toward downtown Austin. We were headed to meet Justin Christopher and Jeremy Story with Campus Renewal Ministries.

It all began when Justin was a student at the University of Texas and hated the idea that everyone back home just expected him to “survive” as a Christian on “that pagan campus”. (I guess UT around here is known as a pretty evil place.)But he wanted to do more than just survive, he wanted to be with God as he took back the souls that he loved so much! So Justin and a group of friends began praying. After they all graduated, Justin kept praying, and soon others began to join him. He became a campus minister for the Baptist Student Center, but his goal was far beyond incubating the Baptist kids who walked through the door. He called on every campus minister asking them to join him in prayer each morning for the UT campus, (as opposed to praying for MY ministry as some prayer meetings devolve into, or praying for my second cousin’s grandma’s roomate’s big toe).

While unity of these ministers was not easy at first, he promised that there would be no agenda except what God revealed to them during their prayers. For the last 15 or so years, it has been just that!

They have come to accept that many students on campus need something more than a weekly worship experience to fully embrace the Christ-life, so they have begun to plant little authentic faith communities (AFC) all across the campus.

But they aren’t doing this haphazardly - they’ve done their homework, and it seems that there are about 1000 people groups on UT’s campus (everything from fraternities to dorm floors to neo-nazi groups). In the last half a decade, they have seen over 100 AFC’s pop up throughout the campus with each year doubling the number they had in the previous year!

Each year they see dozens of new baptisms, and they are doing their homework here too. They don’t just want a horizontal convert (Presbyterian Student Group to Church of Christ Student Group or whatever) they want to see true advancement of the Spirit on campus, and they are seeing it!

Recently they just opened a prayer room just above a sandwich shop on the UT Campus. It was here that we had our discussion. There is an antechamber with lots of couches and snacks, but the real space on the loft was a room sectioned off to the left - it had bean bags circled up, a piano, a bongo drum, prayers written all over the walls, and a sign up board for 24/7 prayer. They wanted to see the whole campus soaked in prayer every hour of the day. Amazing.

And it all started with prayer. A prayer movement always precedes a church planting movement.  This is an example of the whole harvest force prayerfully engaging and seeking after the whole harvest field that they have been placed in.  I am thankful to Father for Campus Renewal Ministries!

Next up we’ll talk about our time on 6th street and a man with a master’s degree getting paid minimum wage (?) to be a missionary.

After only being gone for 4 days, it feels like an eternity since I’ve written on here, and I’m excited to share with you what God revealed to us in Austin, TX during our Urban Immersion experience. Over the next four posts, I’ll give you a spotlight on some of the events that took place, as well as some of the creative harvest workers doing some amazing things in that area of the world.

So Thursday morning bright and early (well, sorta…we had a few late bloomers that morning…ME!) we left for Austin in a caravan and made it with only a few potty breaks to Reimer’s Ranch - our first stop on the trip.

This was my first chance to “lead” a climb, which means setting up the course for anyone else who follows. Its a little trickier and admittedly my hands used a little more resin to keep from sweating, but in the end it paid off. We reflected later that evening on the experiences of the day and I realized that I am a leader. That is hard for me to take in sometimes, and most of the time I don’t feel up to the task. But it was helpful also to be reminded that even though I may be a leader, I will never lead alone. Someone is always helping me with the next step; finding the next hook to hold on to. And there is always someone attached by a rope to catch me if I fall.

The next day we drove into Austin and met up with Tony and Felicity Dale. They were doctors over in England and let the Lord use them in helping hundreds of doctors and patients to follow Christ. Back in 1987 they came to Austin to do the same thing, only to be severely disappointed. Over the course of 10 years they waited for the Lord to show them what to do next, and finally he did.

He helped them wrestle with what “church” was really all about. They began to hear that the Church is not restrained to pew sitters soaking in words from the “sage on the stage”. They read 1 Cor 14:26 where it says, “When you gather for worship, each one of you be prepared with something that will be useful for all: Sing a hymn, teach a lesson, tell a story, lead a prayer, provide an insight…”

Father was teaching them that the Church is about each and every person learning to use their gift, both in AND out of the gatherings.

Now they are leaders in with House2House Ministries, a go-to point around the nation (and the world) for helping people learn and get connected with organic church principles and participants.  Their website has the most extensive listing of house churches I am aware of.  They also put out an awesome print magazine by the same name, and help pull of a national House Church Conference every year to help raise awareness that God’s Church is leaving the building.

Felicity taught us about “Storying” which will probably be a blog post all of its own some day. Its a powerful, simple tool for sharing the stories and principles of the Bible to illiterate and alliterate cultures (like the USA). She told us of how God was leading hundreds of thousands to Christ in India and Pakistan, and how storying was a means of developing these new disciples in their own homes, with or without any real education. Pretty sweet!

In part 2, I’ll talk about an amazing renewal going on throughout the University of Texas campus.