My wife and I were called into the mission field in 2010, where we spent the next decade working with the underground Church. What we experienced there forever changed us in ways that we really didn’t understand.
We didn’t really have to wrestle with the realities of these changes until well after we returned home. For me, this journey wasn’t necessarily as clean and tidy as I would’ve liked. There were many unexpected twists and turns. But, we eventually realized that God wasn’t leading us back home just to leave behind what we gained abroad, but rather, he was bringing us back to bring home what we learned abroad.
For us, when we think about the Church, we think in terms of people — whose spiritual gifting could meet whose need — and how the Christian community can support the relationships in which people are mutually built up and loved. But we’ve found that western Christians tends to think in terms of starting programs, branding, marketing, and building the church organization. This line of thinking sees the church as being more about budgets, facilities, programs, staffing, and administration than being about people, relationships, discipleship, prayer, and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. From start to finish, we often felt like we were speaking a different ministry language.
Then I witnessed the darker side of ministry. I saw power dynamics within the church that enable the abuse and misuse of ministry funds. I saw wealthy individuals hold entire congregations captive to their will. The western church is too afraid of losing her wealth, her property, and her membership to really hold sin accountable in her midst.
So when we returned to the States, I spent four years in full-time ministry like a fish out of water, struggling against realities I didn’t understand until well after we transitioned out of full-time ministry and returned home to Kansas City. I was broken. I was wounded. And I wanted absolutely nothing to do with formal ministry. But we still loved the Church. We still believed that there is one, holy, universal, and apostolic Church, founded by the Lord Jesus, who is God’s people, gathered from every nation and generation. It was through the Church that we first heard the good news. It was through her that we learned the Scriptures and began to follow Jesus. It was through her ministry that we have received encouragement, correction, friendship, and care. And it was through her that we saw faithful examples of love, generosity, repentance, and perseverance in Christians who truly display the glory of the Lord to all the world. So, even though I had transitioned out of formal ministry, we spent the next three years searching for a church home to integrate into.
This part of our journey was important for us because it allowed us to experience church from the pews. Almost my entire adult life has consisted of being in church leadership. So I haven’t been able to see the church from the pew in a really, really long time. And this experience was eye-opening. We saw that what was happening at leadership levels was reverberating out into the pews. Leaders who are hyper-fixated on building church programs form disciples who struggle to make meaningful, authentic relationships. Leaders who don’t seek the Lord in their decision making form disciples who don’t seek the Lord in their daily lives. And leadership structures that aren’t transparent and accountable shape distrustful communities. All of this probably sounds obvious, but it was eye opening to see firsthand.
However, we also discovered that there are a lot of very good people in the western church. We saw people who wholeheartedly served their churches from a place of pure love. We saw people who were hungry for the word and who wanted to keep the word of the Lord because they love him with their whole self. But we also saw people who became discouraged and disconnected from the church. Seeing so many good people doing their best where they were to serve the Lord made me examine myself to see whether or not I was using God’s gifts to serve the Church according to his will for my life.
I discovered that God had been working in me all this time to heal my wounds and rekindle again the fire in my heart to preach and teach his word. He was showing me the wounds that exist in the western church, not to discourage me or make me bitter, but so that I could participate in his work to restore the western church. It’s not okay to simply critique problems without contributing to their solution. So, as no door opened for us to integrate into an existing Christian community and work from within that context, we were convinced that we being called to start something new in our city.
We know what it feels like to start a home-church. We understand the feelings of reticence and doubt. We have experienced the isolation. We have heard the condescending remarks about going to “real church.” But, we also know the intimacy of authentic fellowship. We have experienced uncompromising worship. And we have received the blessings that come from being in a community of committed believers who really know each other and use their spiritual gifts to build each other up in the Lord.
We believe that change starts small and begins with broken people who seek the Lord. Scripture shows us that God calls his people to repentance whenever they begin to be overwhelmed by spiritual apathy, by theological compromise, or by worldliness. We do not believe the western church is devoid of faithful Christians. But we do recognize that many of her institutions have been compromised, which is, in turn, producing more and more compromised Christians. Yet the Lord is always both reforming existing churches and starting new ones to prepare his Church for the next generation. He is always pruning and cultivating at once. So we believe it’s absolutely necessary for faithful Christians to join the Lord’s work of renewal in the Church. Some people participate in this work by helping keep established churches healthy. Others participate by helping reform them. And still others do so by beginning new works, which is where we see ourselves in the Lord’s work.
That conviction didn’t come easily — I resisted getting back into ministry for quite some time — but the more we sat with what we’d witnessed on both sides of the pulpit, and the more we sought the Lord’s leading for our family, the clearer it became that this wasn’t merely a random string of anecdotally bad experiences, but rather, it was a systemic pattern. I’ve written more carefully about that pattern in a letter explaining our reasons for starting a home church, but that’s not really the reason I’m writing this post.
I’m writing this post because we’re starting something new. My website is going to start focusing on home church ministry. I’m writing discipleship guides designed for home church settings. I’ll be writing posts dealing with questions that pertain to home church ministry.
If you’re discerning whether the Lord is calling you to start something like this where you are, and you’re working through practical questions about how to do that, or dealing with fears, doubts, or resignation, then I want to connect with you to encourage you and help you answer the Lord’s calling in your life.
And if you’re in the Kansas City area and looking for a home church fellowship, we’d love to welcome you to our table.
A Dedicated Faith 