posted
One correspondent, chafas, called this popular phrase into question recently as lacking scriptural validity.
Laurie Ann replied:
quote:Christ-planting it is! Gathering of faith... I apologize sincerely for short-cutting what the scripture actually says, "Go to a village..." by using the word "church planting" to refer to taking the Kingdom to the next household. Jesus didn't give us an easy handle, did he. I'm open to some other abbreviation... since I don't see the phrase "Christ Planting" either, and it doesn't really give the mental picture we want to paint for people.
And fortunately, when God says "family" he doesn't mean the American version (father, mother, sister,brother) but the Biblical one... "Household of Faith" - meaning a man and his biological/marital family, their servants, their friends, co-laborers, neighbors... Think of Abraham... Job... Cornelius.
"He sets the lonely in families"... is what we expect for those who are alone.
Gene Edwards, Frank Viola, and other writers in the house church community are real keen on the idea (planting and planter). I cite these two guys as they have written extensively on the subject and regard the cp as indispensable.
I , with chafas, find the phrase somewhat objectionable and misleading. It does bear connotations of institutionalism.
What we can agree on for now is that, according to the parable of the sower, the gospel (Christ) is what's planted.
posted
Thanks for moving this rabbit trail to its rightful place, D! Sorry for creating it!
Patterson and Scoggins say it is surprising how many believers who would die before compromising on the CONTENT of the Bible, dismiss so easily the FORMS contained therein.
Perhaps we're in agreement here.
What did you mean by "Gene Edwards, Frank Viola, and other writers in the house church community are real keen on the idea." Is that the word church planting?
A great question is, I suppose, how far we want to go with renaming commonly accepted terminologies, which results in everyone having a jargon no one outside their little group can understand?
I'm finding myself painted into a corner a lot by this, "I don't like the word fellowship" ... " "house church' reminds me of the 80's" "Elders sounds too church-y" ... shepherd sounds like the shepherding movement... and also,so many terms that are only part of Christianese, but somewhat dispensable -- "dunking" somehow sounds too irreverent to replace "baptising".
So... can we talk??? (said with a Joan Rivers accent).
While defining our terms is important, simplicity requires sticking with our own language, maybe? "Words mean things..." but should we let arguments about words derail the main conversation?
Although I love the word "oikos". "Get together" has the right feel. "Gathering" would be great if it weren't already taken by a popular Program...
As we discussed with another family yesterday, perhaps it will only be in the lives of our children and grandchildren that we'll really see the kingdom, at least in America, getting out of the box - and having meaningful terminologies to discuss it with.
On the other hand, my husband seemed to be speaking prophetically yesterday when he said, "The whole organized church in America seems to be falling to pieces." If so, the life-giving alternatives may pick up steam faster than would otherwise be possible.
Blessings! Laurie Ann
-------------------- Posing as an Ordinary Housewife :)
You are about twelve to twenty-five people...who are setting out on the adventure of your lives. You are going to begin by meeting in a home. Together. That home is all you have. If the number is more than twenty, fine. Then it is simply a matter of two or three homes instead of one! We assume the presence of a genuine church planter among you. We assume that, from the very first day, it is understood that he will one day leave the church to gather on its own.
Please note that no attempt is to be made to meet without the help of the church planter during the earliest days. No experimentation. No "going it alone." You need that church planter. When you start out, please understand you are still at least six months before "trying it on your own"!
Go back and take a close look at the birth of all those Gentile churches. The church planter is at the center of everything going on. This is true from day one until departure day!
from Gene Edwards "How to Meet"
Any outside encouragement or help is fine but is it really this necessary? I doubt it.
What if there were only 8 people? What if the genuine church planter can't stay the full six months?
Where is a church planter ever mentioned ONCE in Scripture?
Didn't those who were scattered abroad go everywhere preaching Jesus? Did these believers have to wait for a church planter to arrive and set something up?
Acts 8:1 And Saul was there, giving approval to his death. On that day a great persecution broke out against the church at Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria.
Acts 8:4 Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went.
I disagree with Gene vehemently, unless you take into account that every American believer who has hung out in a church for more than six months probably has more gospel training than the 12 had before their first "missionary journey"! and qualifies as a "church planter" in the sense Jesus meant when he said,"Go!"
If by "church planter" Edwards means some kind of professional clergy with a title, then he and I part ways there.
I really believe the American church could explode if just a handful of professionals would look at their congregation and say, "Every man here who is saved, has a family and a house is going to start a church in his home next week! Here's a Bible, a list of the 7 commands of Christ and a quick laying on of hands. Report back one year from today. Go!"
La
-------------------- Posing as an Ordinary Housewife :)
posted
Stranger still is the fact that Edwards has made it public that he is one among only a handful of true church planters around. (I'll try to document that in the next few days.)
Look at the bodacious exuberance of the newly converted in the early church? They took the joyful news of Jesus immediately back to their homes and home towns. They idea that they had to meet certain criteria under the extended care of a "church planter" in order to become a real church is just another needless form of institutionalism.
Thousands of Jews would have eventually returned home after becoming believers during Pentecost - there simply wouldn't have been enough "church planters" to go around, nor would there need to be.
Praising his Name with you all wherever you may be!
quote:One is not around Gene Edwards' radical wing for too long before one experiences whiffs of arrogance. A common criticism one encounters by those attending the Southern House Church Conferences is that the Edwardsians only attended sessions led by Gene Edwards and didn't have much to do with anybody else at the conference. And lest the reader think that subjective assessment is erroneous, let us quote from a book written by four Gene Edwards epigoni, The House Church Movement - Which Direction? (Seed Sowers, 2001, henceforth HCM), which contains quotations typical of the style of Gene Edwards and his followers.
On page 13 we read, "Are there such firebrands anywhere out there in the house church movement? Out of hundreds of frontline leaders and thousands of quickly-ordained dictators called elders, there may be a few, if you count the entire world. But you can number these men of fury on two hands - maybe one." The not-too-subtle implication is that the authors are among the countable few. On page 149, they piously proclaim in all caps, "WE HAVE LIVED THAT WHICH WE HAVE WRITTEN."
One may be forgiven if the reader of "The House Church Movement - Which Direction?" takes out his five fingers and counts: Gene Edwards and the book's four authors. Gene Edwards and his followers appear to be fixated upon their own importance. They claim that there are at the most only ten church planters in the world (p. 13). This assertion is both ridiculous and insidious. To begin with, how could anyone possibly know that there are only ten legitimate church planters in the world? It supposes omniscience, which is absurd. And of course the very claim, when made by a group of men who assert it precisely in order to communicate that they think they are among that exclusive number, is not only symptomatic of lazy thinking, it is, more seriously, immature and arrogant in the extreme.
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