House Church Talk - Organization vs. Organism

[Claire Bennett]

I really enjoyed that post.  So here's a question.   How do you keep an organism from becoming an organization?  Can an organization reverse engineer into an organism?  I was thinking about what the difference is between an organization and an organism, and all I could come up with was life.  There are often pockets of organic life within an organization, but they are often difficult to find, difficult to join and exist in spite of, rather than because of, the organization.

Ok if I repost the article on my board, I would like to stir some discussion of house churches.  

I had an idea, maybe you'll think this is silly.  I would like to see house churches encouraged.  I think that if we desire an organic outcome, we can only assist this with organic means.  Classes or seminars about "how to housechurch" may be well-meaning, but miss the point.  I thought about how tupperware parties work ( or similiar stuff.)  The new recruit attends a Tupperware party to see how its done.  Then, the recruiter assists the recruitee in setting up their own party.  The recruitee invites the people, sends out the invitations, provides refreshments and the recruiter brings the materials and helps things along.  The more experienced person is always available for help and questions.

But, we have to stay organic.  Someone gets the bright idea of forming a organization to go around and start house churches.  Of course they have a set of doctines and practices that are unique to their group.  They now have an agenda, and they also need to finance their work, if it is to be ongoing.  So it ends up being more about conformity than about coming alongside to assist.  

Maybe every housechurch could dedicate one meeting a month to going out to assist other start-ups, in addition to bringing others in to see what you do.  

I think it is interesting, as we look at scripture, different letters were written to the various churches, addressing all their unique needs.  The authors could have written a generic letter and had it copied and sent everywhere.  I am aware that they letters were to be forwarded to the other churches, but that doesn't deny the individual ministry, where the Lord gave a word specifically to the needs of each believing community.