The first stages of your homechurch

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Richard on October 8, 2008 at 1:21pm

This is a quetion Alex asked me in an other diskussion forum - I think it is good here.

Hi Ric,
I think you are right, although a mix of older christian and fresh ones seems to me ideal.
But what interests me most is the question of how you have tried to reach nonbelievers. Do you have a specific action plan for that (I mean: actually going out to the places where unbelievers live), or is it mainly through the members of your house church that you try to attract people to your group.

Alex

Permalink Reply by Richard on October 8, 2008 at 1:27pm

My Answer:

Hello Alex,
in the last 6-7 years, when our housechurch run, new belevers came through two kinds of activities. The first was a biblestudy group in the university I run - several asians get saved through this. Two of them, a chinese and a korean stayed in our housechurch. The other aktivity came through other part of my ministry, working as a life coach, also for nonchristians.

ric

Permalink Reply by Alex van Nes on October 8, 2008 at 1:54pm

That's great to hear! Especially because this happened in Europe!
I am especially interested in the aspect of evangelism and the combination of housechurch and evangelism. I'm completely convinced that housechurch will mean a great help in reaching the lost, in contrast to the traditional church. We have seen our old catholic neighbours visiting our housechurch already, people that would absolutely never come to a traditional protestant or evangelical traditional service on Sundaymorning in a building.
But I think that there is a great need in equipping our members in the sharing of their faith with others. Otherwise it will become just the specific job of the man with the gift of evangelism. So, if new people show up in your group, please let me know how they were contacted and why they decided to come.

Permalink Reply by Larry Erwin on October 24, 2008 at 2:47am

I have been a church planter for about 20 years. In 1989 and 1990, I led in the start with two traditional church plants in an African city of 1 million inhabitants. In 1991, I was initially introduced to the principles that today are the basis of the organic church movement. In 1992, my wife and I were a part of team that began applying these principles in starting churches among m-background believers. We were in West Africa until 2000 until we had to leave because of health issues. In 2001, we moved to France. Our initial simple church was with believers that had left other churches. Though this effort has had some rocky patches, it has allowed us to develop a ministry to non-believers through friendships. We spend our time networking and helping the people to form into natural communities and assisting those communities to become communities of faith. Currently we have to spend a year outside France. We are living in a town outside Amsterdam until next May.
Our initial approach to ministry is prayer. We have a network of several hundred people that pray for the ministry and the people we work with. We, along with indigenous believers and volunteer teams, pray in the areas (prayer walks) prior to and during the initial stages of the ministry. As we identify interested people, then we have individuals that pry specifically for those seekers on a regular basis. Prayer is our primary strategy.
We also spend a lot of time among the people – cafes, markets, community events, associations, etc. (Among our people group, initially you don’t really become effectively involved in their life until another person (normally another person from that people group) has introduced you to them. God has blessed us with some divine interventions that have allowed meeting people in other ways, but these are the exception rather than the rule. Out of the initial contacts, we develop networks through the contacts families and friends and they in turn introduce us to others and the network grows or develops into a new network.
Through regular contacts, meals, celebrating special events, etc we develop the relationships that allow us to move forward. Since we minister among a people that are extremely suspicious of outsiders, it takes time. We don’t use programmed materials and approach each network or developing community uniquely.
In our current town near Amsterdam, we have four men (two Dutch and two Americans) that have been meeting for prayer and discussion for a couple of months as we look at planting an organic church in the town.
Our major problem has been traditional church influence. Most of our simple churches have had to deal with outsiders telling them that are not doing things correctly and/or they are not a real church.
This is a rough explanation of our church planting approach.

Permalink Reply by Linden on November 1, 2008 at 6:53am

Most of the people who come to our group come as friends. People we have meet in our daily lives and work. The majority are not Christians.
We invite them for dinner and normally worship and prayer, bible study. It is about what we all want and need. People in the group disciple each other. Its very organic.

The major problem we have had is with a few "Christian" people who want to be in charge. They can not seem to let God be the one in control. Self-appointed apostles who have their own agenda not God's.

We have found that the sheep follow HUMBLE older sheep rather then teachers as stated in 1Corinthians 4:15 (the German word is zuchtmeister meaning hard disciplinarian)