God has been bringing to mind the relational ways that we are sanctified, that is made holy. The two most common of these are marriage and child-rearing. Both require an enormous amount of sacrifice to another person at the expense of yourself. And when the believer does either of these two things well, we die to ourselves and become more Christ-like.

Today, I’d like to discuss a third type of relationship that can sanctify and bear fruit – when Christian brethren dwell together in the same home, or at least very proximal to one another. When they share cooking, shopping, cleaning, space, time, discipline of children (!), and much more.

If one of my housemates pisses me off, there’s no going back to my home and complaining about it to my wife in private (as was the case if the “offense” [term used very lightly] happened during Sunday School)… it will be dealt with quickly, as its going to cause friction in every interaction every day until resolved. I’ve been angered and angered enough people to guarantee that that will happen if a home is to function.

Ultimately for every person that’s added to a house, that’s one more set of concerns, quirks, desires, and pet peeves that the entire rest of the house must be aware of and think of when making decisions. To make it work, all of the members must be willing to submit to one another in many many small things. Suddenly my decision to:

-stay up late,
-get a new job,
-get a new car,
-stop eating certain types of foods,
-have people over to our home,
-believe a certain thing,
-not be able to stand a certain thing

all effect more people than just myself, my wife, and my children. They effect everyone I live with and may live with in our community.

That’s not to say its always hard and its all about dying to yourself and sacrifice. Much like marriage and children, when it’s good, its really good. I’ve grown closer to people that I have lived with/am living with than I could have ever expected to if we hadn’t lived together. We’ve laughed till we’ve cried, gotten the most amazing hugs from their children, and made some of the best home movies ever. We gather to pray in good times and bad, and we cook and clean for one another. It’s such a blessing.

Well, that’s the end of the post! Mostly.

(Theological footnotes: These are the benefits of communal living [partially], but not why we do it. We do it because we feel this is what God has called us to. We don’t believe Christians living communally is a command of the Bible generally for all everywhere, but that some of the language used to describe the church gathering in Acts 2 can be mimicked by living communally. To become a part of our church, there’s no requirement or expectation that you will live communally, and no condemnation if you don’t.)

This video speaks of the divorce of “Word” churches and “Spirit” church. I want to offer up some thoughts on what defines these types of churches , what causes division between these groups, and how our group attempts to walk the middle line.

Word Churches
from the video – “We need to get back to: expository preaching, know our doctrine, earnestly contend for the faith once delivered unto the saints, the teaching of Luther, Calvin, Jonathan Edwards.”
Churches under the Word look to the Bible as the lens for their worldview. Living biblically, preaching biblically, evangelizing biblically are all paramount. Interpretation of difficult passages of Scripture is most often done by checking the Greek/Hebrew and checking the exact ways hard words are used in other verses. Verses about various mystic practices, be they prophecy, healing, or tongues, are usually avoided. Individual devotions are usually focused on a time of scripture and Bible study. Worship is usually led by a single person or team of people, with little or no time of open worship for individuals to sing apart from guidance.

Spirit Churches
from the video – “We need to get back to: the book of Acts – signs, wonders, miracles, gifts of the Spirit. get in Peter’s shadow, your healed. Lie to the Holy Ghost, you’re stuck dead. And until we have that kind of power, we go nowhere.”
Churches under the Spirit look to the Holy Spirit as the lens for their worldview. Walking with the Spirit, speaking by the Spirit, evangelizing in the Spirit. Interpretation of difficult passages of Scripture is most often done by asking the Spirit what this passage means globally, or just what this passage means to me. Dwelling on the finer points of doctrine is not usually a priority, as it is understood that doctrine does not transform, the Spirit does. Worship is either directed by an individual or small team, but most often there are open times for individuals to express themselves – whether this means singing apart from others, dancing, shaking, and whatever else the Spirit leads, as crazy as it may be.

You may not agree with those definitions precisely – I wouldn’t blame you, I honestly haven’t been a part of a huge sample of both types of churches. But for purposes of this discussion, that’s what we’re going with.

The Divorce

It would be bad enough if these groups amicably operated apart from each other. A mere “agree to disagree” if you will. But that’s not the case – as is the case in many divorces, there’s criticism on both sides of the fence. They may be well-meaning, they may even be true, but at the end of the day they divide. Here is my understanding of how each group views the other.

What the Word churches say about the Spirit churches: The baptism of the Holy Spirit isn’t real. Too much these churches do is based in emotion and conjured up. Being slayed in the spirit/tongues/healings/etc. is manufactured, misleading, not real… or worse, being led by leaders that deceive.

What the Spirit churches say about the Word churches: Bickering about points of doctrine and meaning of words does not glorify God. In fact, a solid doctrine and not listening for the voice of the Spirit is a wasted life. If you memorize the Bible but can’t hear what God is telling you now, who cares? Their worship is at best dispassionate and at worse, lifeless.

Don’t mishear me – the vast majority of people on either side don’t slander the others – but it doesn’t take very many people to convince a much larger group about the other “side”.

The Middle

So where does that leave us? With two sides that have split apart from one so far that there is no hope for reconciliation? I don’t think so. It can’t be that way. The worst part of this split is that each side is unable to see the other side’s great parts.

By no strength or planning of our own, our church has been a grand experiment in how the middle of this looks. As of this moment, a quick review of the adults in our group shows that we are very close to a 45/55 split for Word/Spirit-background believers. Its close enough that we have no choice to meet in the middle. What does that look like?

It looks like a community learning to find balance through the strengths of others.
It looks like seeking the Lord for what he would have us do.
It looks like encouraging the formerly Word people to step out in the Spirit and encouraging the formerly Spirit people to study the Word deeply and daily.
It looks like finding unity in things that are eternal and not fighting over things that are temporal.
It looks like pouring over the Word in matters that we are ignorant or lacking unity, and then seeking the Spirit in how to proceed.
It looks like a community that melts away differences and focuses on the Lord.

At the end of the day, you may just have to come and see. Words on a computer screen can only go so far… maybe I’m just making this all up. Maybe I’m all talk, no walk.

As I said in my last post:

“One of the values we hold dear to is hospitality – so I offer you an open invitation – we’d love for you to come visit us. From wherever, whenever you like, with you and as many friends as you’d like. We don’t even need very long notice – just give me a call on my cell phone: 770-309-8213.

See you soon.

When I use the word “church” in title, I’m referring to the the following things – the name, the structure, the doctrinal statement, your building (or your house!), sermons, traditions, the organization. Even crazies like us at our church have these things.

So what does God care about? He cares about people. He cares about his glory. He cares about people repenting and turning toward him. He cares about what he’s called his people to, whatever that may be. He cares about his Word.

So the next time you’re at church, look around. Are the things you do pushing you closer to God, or just taking up time/causing division/distracting you from the Lord himself? If they aren’t drawing you closer to God, why keep doing them? Aren’t these things just going to burn when it’s all said and done? I’m writing this just as much to myself as I am to you.

The reason we’re so ga-ga for our particular way of life and church is that it spurs each person individually and corporately to seek the Lord and to worship him. It pushes us to be dependent on him showing up for it to work. We believe, both scripturally and experientially, that this is what God is calling us to and what God desires for our church body.

We believe the Lord has spent the last two years tempering our church and dealing with some deep things in us personally and relationally. He’s taught us how to rely on him, he’s taught us how to rely on one another, he’s raised up leaders from the quiet and meek. He’s drawn the wayward toward repentance. He’s led us through times of prayer and fasting. He’s teaching us how to exercise our spiritual gifts.

And recently we’ve begun to sense him turning to change our focus. It has been a time to gather stones, but he’s turning us toward scattering stones, turning our focus outward. Part of that is people seeking us out because God is leading them. Part of that is discipling and mentoring, which we’re just on the front edge of. Part of it is outreach. Part of it might be you. One of the values we hold dear to is hospitality – so I offer you an open invitation – we’d love for you to come visit us. From wherever, whenever you like, with you and as many friends as you’d like. We don’t even need very long notice – just give me a call on my cell phone: 770-309-8213

So at the end of the day, what am I saying? Am I saying your church is un-biblical? Am I saying we’re the best and you should quit your church and join ours? No. I don’t know your church and I certainly don’t think we’re the best.

What I am saying is that I want you and your church body to be in the center of God’s will as both revealed in scripture and revealed to you personally by his Spirit. If you’re there, then by all means don’t change what you’re doing at ALL! But if you’re not, don’t just assume that that’s how it has to be. Sometimes the answer is to take it before God. Sometimes the answer is to bring it before the leadership of the church. Bottom line – God knows what he wants for you. Ask him, if you have his Spirit within you, you can hear from him. Ask him!

I’ll close out with a quote from one of those brothers I mentioned above. Britt said it best in his excellent Weekend at Bernies Christianity post:

At some point when I discuss these things, I get the usual statement from some: “Well, everyone is different. There’s no right way.” That sounds all nice and inclusive, but it can only go so far. I’ll give an example.

To be healthy you need to eat right, exercise, and sleep well. Lack in these areas cause problems, even serious problems unto death. There is plenty of freedom within these principles of health (what healthy foods you eat, when or how you exercise, etc). But to use that freedom to then justify eating junk food, complete inactivity, and insomnia is dangerous. There are some really creative arguments in the Church today as if living in an abusive way is healthy. And they love the one example they can find of the lady who lived in complete gluttony and self abuse and grew to be a hundred and eighty. Never mind the overwhelming majority of other people who have seen fruit from healthy living or died young from cancer or something from the lack of it.

The Bible says God has “ways.” Christ named Himself “the Way”. One of the names of the early believers had to do with their following the Way. There are ways, right ways, to do things, that are of Christ and not of you. And they produce fruit if you will follow those ways and try your best not to mix His ways with your own, or anyone else’s, really.

I have little to lose by calling dead things dead. I have everything, eternally, however, to gain by calling that which is of life, Life. Those that very creatively prop up Bernie can do what they do, but I’d rather tell the party-goers he’s dead and deal with whatever consequences occur. Better in the long run.

So I’ve stopped trying. Anytime I would otherwise have sought to persuade you of, I now take to God and intercede on your behalf. If it’s even worth discussing, He’s the only one who will be able to make you able to hear it. I could link a bunch of examples of the type of stuff I’m talking about, but that seems counter to the point of this post.

Either you’ve already set your heart against it and there’s no point arguing, or you don’t care and there’s no point trying to make you care. The beauty of being led by the Lord is that he is fully capable of leading me to the people who aren’t against it and do care – and He does. You may have your own ideas of what “it” is, but trust me, I have no one specific “it” in mind. This applies to any spiritual concept, even salvation itself.

The challenge seems to be in doing more than one thing well – here’s some examples of pairs of things that hard to do both well in one day:

work vs. family
time with friends vs. time with family
strategy/tactics vs. putting fires out/dealing with emergencies

Are you able to consistently accomplish two opposite tasks per day? More than two?

“There’s a level of maturity and self-control in being able to simultaneously disagree with a church’s structure and doctrine, while at the same time, being able to humbly join in worship at that church as if you were anywhere else.”

As I said above, this could be common spiritual sense. I guess that makes me spiritually dense.
This all came about in an interesting, round-about way. You see, a good friend of mine attends a very large church near to our homes. As he and I have become better friends, our conversations have turned to spiritual things, occasionally to how his big church and our tiny little house church are setup. And sometimes those conversations turn into arguments, or perhaps a better way to describe it would be “discussions.”

I’ve expressed how it appears to me that their worship services can seem more like concerts and less like worship, particularly when secular songs are a highlight of the service. How I am concerned that while the church is extremely effective at drawing people to the building, a large percent of the people can be completely nameless and uncommitted for their entire time as members. How spiritual growth, depth, leadership, and vision can be inhibited by merely the structure of the church.

And my friend has listened to my rantings with much patience. Probably with more grace than I gave him, based on my reading of the previous paragraph. And so I’ve cheer leaded house church, explained how our meeting is setup, how we try and let the Holy Spirit and no person lead the meeting. And how we are deeply involved in one another’s lives, and call those who would walk along with us to this same level of involvement.

Through all of this, my friend still decided to come and visit our meeting one Sunday evening. I was grateful that he was willing to try something much different than he was used to. The next weekend, on Sunday morning, I decided to wake up early in the morning on Sunday and go out to his big church with him. I think this surprised him, as based on my ranting, it would seem that I thought this church had fallen away from God and we’d be better off if it just closed its doors today. This is simply an ugly byproduct for my zeal for the way we do things at our church. As if we knew the best way. While I certainly believe it’s the best way (and that’s why I’m pursuing it), I don’t know everything that God’s doing and everything he’s leading people through.

Trust me, one of the primary temptations I face when visiting another church is a taking on a prideful smugness about how much better we are than these guys. How our worship is sweeter to God’s ears (not true), how our teachings are more deeply rooted in God’s word (who knows), how our members hear God’s voice clearer (like you could even know that!). If these thoughts and sins take over, then not only am I missing out on a chance to draw close to the Lord, I’m elevating myself and putting glory on my own church. This is something I have no desire to do.

So all said, God’s bringing my through this. I was able to worship and learn and engage when I visited his church that day.

One last thing – I have a few challenges to offer up to you:

– If you attend a traditional type church, have you taken the time to consider how your church operates, and what changes drastic or small could make a huge difference in member’s lives? Have you ever thought of attending a group with a radically different structure than your own?

– If you attend a house church/organic church/whatever type church, were you drawn to this type of church out of disdain or anger for the traditional church? Are you able to draw close to God and let distractions fade when attending a traditional church?

– If you don’t attend any church, examine in your heart why that is. If you have some specific reason about a specific church… well there’s lots of churches in the sea, don’t let a group of people be the thing preventing you from drawing close to God. If you just slowly faded away from God and/or the church… I can assure you he’d be glad to take you back.

Thanks for reading!

The recommendation was to consider taking Ambrotose, the headline product made by a company called Mannatech as a potential way to alleviate some of the issues Heather’s been having. His wife had had similar issues and had noticed a difference when taking Ambrotose.

A little background info – Over the past few years, I’ve had a decent number of friends (7-10) purchase Mannatech products and said that they had see a difference in their life. During the time that I first heard of Mannatech and heard a sales pitch for it, I did what I do for most things I don’t know much about – I researched it. This process tends to be a bit more detailed when said thing desires money from me =). This was in 2006/2007.

Before I get in to what my research “found”, a brief aside – I am a cynic by nature, and my primary means of researching topics tends to be through the Internet. I realize these two traits means that I could pretty much disprove any idea or theory anyone ever had, by finding some whacko writing about how it’s untrue on some no-name blog. As such please bear with me and keep that in mind, and I’ll do my part to try and be impartial and present the truth – if that’s possibe.

So anyway, at the time of my first hearing of Mannatech, my research was generally inconclusive. The company was not well-known, and there was not a large amount of information on non-Mannatech websites. I’ll freely admit that I was skeptical from the beginning. Furthermore, Heather and I were in generally decent physical health, and didn’t really have the money to put forth $50 to $100 every-other-month for something we didn’t truly need.

Since that time, out of curiosity, I’ll google a few words related to the topic every couple months – specifically, Mannatech, glyconutrients, etc. I’ll check the wikipedia articles, and find forums where the topics are discussed back and forth, by supporters and detractors.

Given that the below points get kind of wordy, I’ll go ahead and summarize as succinctly as I can:

Though I have reasons to be completely in doubt of Mannatech and the glyconutrients they market, I cannot say for sure that their products are fraudulent. The anecdotal evidence provided by my friends would indicate that they can have a positive effect, but points #2 and #3 listed below makes it difficult for me to support a company with a growing history of deception and use of multi-level marketing to sell it’s products.

That said, here’s the things that I’ve found over the past three years that support what I’ve just said above. Read on if you care, stop now if you don’t =).

1. There is a disconnect in the science presented by Mannatech. This first and foremost reason tends to be the purpose of me googling terms about Mannatech. A study that decisively proves that taking glyconutrients would raise energy levels, or cure a disease, or anything would go a very long way to silencing my concerns. Something that I could use, that would make my life better. Sure, that’s a very consumeristic viewpoint, but they’re marketing a product for me to buy, and it’s not cheap.

To date, I’ve not seen such a study , so I can only conclude 1 of 3 things:

a. Studies were done, but proved little to nothing, and were not promoted.
b. Studies were not done and will not be done, and Mannatech has no desire to make their product have definitive proof behind it. This is either because they don’t care about people like me, they’re satisfied with their word-of-mouth endorsements, or they know nothing would be proven. As I don’t buy any products from them, the “why” of this doesn’t matter to much to me either way.
c. Studies are in progress, and take a long time. Hence I continue to search the internet, in case c is the answer.

I know this may seem sarcastic, but I’d love to be proven wrong on this point. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t keep trying to find a study that proves such things.

2. There are indications of deception in the leadership of Mannatech. Two main indicators here:

a. Sam Caster, the founder of Mannatech, has had two business ventures before Mannatech declared as hoaxes and not providing the benefits as advertised by the Texas Attorney General’s office. link. This point by itself is not enough to make a huge difference, but doesn’t lend credence to Mannatech’s credibility.

b. Mannatech paid $6 million settlement in a lawsuit stating that Mannatech launched “an unlawful marketing scheme” that over-promised what the effects of their products would be, including potentially curing Downs Syndrome, cystic fibrosis, and cancer. link. Speaks for itself. I recall in the sales pitch I saw seeing a picture of a girl with Downs Syndrome, and then another picture of the same girl that did not appear to have DS any longer (as far as physical appearance goes). The implication was that glyconutrients was responsible for this change.

There was a seperate lawsuit, that Mannatech settled for 11.25 million, that was the result of similar claims being made. As it was settled out of court, Mannatech admitted no wrongdoing (unless $11.25 million out of your pocket means your wrong). link.
3. Mannatech is sold only through network marketing / multi-level marketing (MLM).

This one is more of a personal issue for me, and doesn’t necessarily say anything about the products efficacy. MLM raises two large red flags in my mind:

a. The inspiration that selling Mannatech will allow a person to reach “financial freedom” as mentioned on their Opportunity website. In MLM-speak, “financial freedom” is a euphemism for millions of dollars for little work. It’s laced with greed, which is ironic because….

b. Very few sellers in MLM networks break even, and even less of them make large amounts of money. The very nature of a business that requires exponentially more people for any one person to make money requires that the last people, the people at the bottom of these downlines, to completely lose out.

I’ll grant Mannatech that their marketing focuses more on the product than the opportunity to sell the product, but the point remains.

That’s all I have to say on this topic, for now. As always, your comments, emails, etc. are welcome.

- I run a custom firmware (Tomato) on my household’s router, and specifically purchased the model of router I did (Linksys WRT54GL) so that said firmware would work on it.

- I am in the process of setting up a home server with RAID’d disks, Terminal Services, and a custom DNS A record from the domain this blog is hosted on. We’re not quite there yet, but some of the components are ready to roll.

- My wife runs Ubuntu as the primary OS on her laptop. I think of all my nerd friends, I am the only one with this particular claim. She’s used it for about two years, and gets upset at me if I consider changing her away from it. She’s on 8.04 – Hardy Heron – right now. (seed of doubt – maybe it’s Heather that is the one true leet haxxor in our relationship, and I’m just the figurehead? hard to say. I tried to run Ubuntu on my work laptop for about a week, but some required compatibilities with IE that didn’t work in Wine, forced me back to Winders.)

- About half the time, I see a viral video somewhere between a short (8 hrs) and long time (2 weeks) before it “blows up.”

That’s off the top of my head. Feel free to add any or dispute any of the above claims as you see fit.

1. On House Church – Part One – Intro
2. On House Church – Part Two – The Meeting
3. On House Church – Part Three – The Monies
4. On House Church – Part Four – The Leadership

Today we’re going to talk about the house church/simple church model of “doing church.” The purpose of this post and/or series of posts is not to explain why other models are bad, but why house church is good.

But first, a short history lesson.

About three-ish years ago, our great friends the d10s felt that God was calling them to host a house church in their home. Heather and I were invited to be a part of this, as well as several others. Since then, we’ve grown and learned so much about the Lord, and about growing closer to one another in community. The meeting has changed nights, changed locations, changed members (both leaving and coming) drastically, and much more.

During this time we’ve learned a lot about church, what the bible says about church, and what to do in the event of all sorts of situations. And throughout that entire time, we’ve found our approach to be the most biblically sound approach to church, as laid out by the New Testament. That’s not to say our group perfectly lives out what we see in the Bible about church, but that our vision and what our meetings look like try to reflect what we see in the Bible.

Ben, in explaining what I said in the paragraph more effectively than I, said the following (paraphrase):

“Since we’ve started doing church this way, I’ve read through the New Testament several times. And with this way, there’s no ‘gotcha’ verses that I have to ignore or downplay to fit into my framework of church.”

That probably conveys my point as much as anything else I could say would. We’ve found a peace and steadiness in both our ecclesiology as well as our community that we didn’t necessarily find previously.

So where does that leave me as far as the traditional church goes? Do I hate it and everything it stands for? Hardly. I still feel honor and respect toward the traditional church goes, as well as many believers I know that are a part of it. I will say though that as a result of not being a part of this type of church after 3 years does make it more difficult to relate and understand the particular methods some churches employ – my thinking being that I’ve stepped back, and now some things just seem so alien, so strange.

In [potential] future posts, we can explore some of the specifics that makes what we do work, and what makes it different than what others do. If you would like such posts, you know how to contact me (and if you don’t: email, gmail chat, blog comment, facebook message, homing pidgeon, etc.).