thoughts on church experience

This is my preparation on what I will share at church meeting coming Monday.

I was part of a house church in Orlando, Florida for while before moving to California. What I am writing is what I perceived to be the motivations of various people who participated in that house church. In general, the members were people who have been leading and doing church for many years. Some were, at one point or another, in full-time or part-time ministry, both campus and community churches.

Perceived Problems

1. Our Christian experience is very thin

A typical life cycle of a believer (ideally) may be illustrated as follows--

• Introduced and enter into the faith
• Attend church
• Read bible
• Live a moral life
• Bring more people to church, either via evangelism or (more likely) membership transfer

Some questions may be raised--

• After a long period of time, say 10-15 years, is there more to Christian life than this?

• Am I measuring my spiritual growth, consciously or not, to the success of the church?

This means how good is the Sunday service, teaching, music, etc. It is also measured in noses and nickels (money and attendance.)

This is similar to a spectator sport situation which is spiritual pride. (Analogy: I feel good about myself if the Buckeyes football team is doing well. But I am a couch potato.) It has very little to do with real spiritual growth.


2. Church: Budget and resources

The budget is a moral document. Here are some problems with the budget and other resource allocation--

• Huge amount of money and work are spent on weekly 'production', equipment (musical instruments, sound systems, facility).

• Relatively less spent on pastor salary. Some end up having to raise their own support.

• Small portion devoted to charitable works.

• What I really value is what I spend my money and my time on. For example, if I say that I value my children education, but spend most extra money on my electronic gadgets, then I really value my gadgets more than my children education.

3. Community redefined

• The term 'community' is now being defined in an impersonal way
• Community as 'association' rather than 'relationship'.
  
• Biblical community is based on relationship.

• "Love is relationship or it is nothing"
• Love is personal (in a sense that love is from person to person) or it is nothing.
  
• Church services are not designed to be conducive to building up relationships. Therefore biblical community is not found in the church.
  
• This is depressing. If attenders (members and visitors) can not encounter the body of Christ in the church, then where?

• What is discipleship? Is the church a garden (collection of variety of plants) or an orchard (collection of the same kind of crop or trees).
• Garden: Each member allowed to be what God made him to be and grow. This takes a lot of work and time to getting to know each person and let them grow in the way they need to grow.
• Orchard: Members are formed or encouraged to fit the mission of the church. If they don't fit, then they leave. At best, this is very efficient. But is this what God has for his people?

• Church has become a spectator activity.
  

House Church

No church is perfect. This is what my house church looked like--

• We met 3 times a month. I heard that after I left, they changed it to they will not meet once a month to accommodate months with 5 weeks.

Here are the ways some of the problems are addressed--

Community

• Meeting in houses gave opportunity for hospitality.
  
• We always shared meals. Before teaching or sharing, we have a huge chunk of time to catch up with life and getting to know each other more. This is an extremely important time. It is the time relationships are formed. There is no prescribed agenda.
  
• People cook really good food (yummm).

Discipleship

• We either have teaching time, sharing time, or praise and prayer.
• Teaching is interactive. People can ask questions or exchange ideas. In this way, teaching time is always aiming to buildup the saints.
  
• Sharing time gives opportunity to getting to know new members or to keep up to date the recent joys or struggles.
• Communion centered (for many anyway).
• I also thought there was an emphasis on keeping Sabbath rest. Since we met on Saturday nights, our Sundays were free. We used that to refocus our lives to God, to acknowledge our dependence on him by ceasing from our works, spending time with our children, singing praise songs, praying, reading bible together, or going outside to swim.
  

Budget

• Facility is very low budget. We spent more on food.
• There were some instances where members have financial needs. We all give to help. For instance, members help pay for a large portion of a couple's (also members) adoption expenses.

Limitations

• Childcare has been tough. We agreed on blanket time where the children sit quietly with us. Fortunately, that worked out quite well.
• How do anyone find out about house church? There's no sign!
• We sometimes have to move meeting place so the hosts can take breaks from hosting.
  

we found a church (or it found us)

I have just moved from Florida to the Silicon Valley area for a couple of months. Finding a community of Christian faith to be part of is very important to our family. For a couple of weeks, we were attending a Lutheran Church near our house. But something amazing happened.

Before I started working, we visited a homeschool support group picnic. As I was explaining to a homeschool mom that I was going to start working for a company that makes laser for refractive eye surgery, she pointed out that there was another homeschool mom whose husband worked on something like that too. It turned out to be the same company. The next week, I met Jonathan.

Our families have a lot in common. We both have three children. Both our wives use Sonlight curriculum for homeschool. He invited me to his church (Grace Community Covenant Church) in Palo Alto. The church is almost all Asian Americans of various varieties. There are many families and children. We were struck by how hospitable the church seems to be. The people who attend this church seems genuinely happy to be there and everyone seems to help out in different ways.

My family have not attended typical Sunday service for three years. We have been a part of a house church in Orlando. It was quite hard to just sit on the pew and listen. I felt tempted to raise my hand and voiced my opinion or questions during the sermon. More on the house church experience in another post perhaps.

One of the reasons why we started attending GCCC is because Jonathan told me that the church's leadership really have a concern for building up a genuine community. This coming Monday, I am invited to visit a leadership meeting to relate my experience on the housechurch. I am still thinking about what to say. I hope the Holy Spirit will guide my thought in the next few days.