Category Archives: Organic Church

Planting Churches

January 3, 2012 By in Church Planting, Great Commission, Jail, Missions, Organic Church 8 Comments

This morning, as I was pulling out of my driveway to meet with some guys I had been discipling in the jail, I felt the Lord say it was time to plant a church among them.

Indigenous Church in the Local Jail

I’ve been mentoring and building relationships with a group of thirty or so men in the jail, as we periodically meet to discuss the things of God. Some are believers, and some are believers in the making.

This morning, I was prepared to share with them about slaying those giants in their lives which stood in the way of God’s promises.

But I felt the Lord say, instead, that it was time to actually start an indigenous church in their housing unit.

Church Planting

This sense that it was time to plant a new church among them did not strike me as the least bit odd. I am part of a fellowship that has planted various sister churches that are thriving in other housing units in the local jail, as well as in other improbable places. So the sole issue for me was simply being receptive to the Lord’s timing, by acting only when and how He says.

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Room at the Inn

December 24, 2011 By in Community, Compassion, Faith, Grace, Great Commission, Jail, Mercy, Ministry Leave a comment

Is there still no room at the inn?

It’s not too late:  Invite to your time of Christmas family sharing, or to your Christmas meal, that man or woman who recently was released from prison, or that person who has no family in your area and is alone, or someone who is destitute and living in the woods near your home (trust me, they are there).

Embrace

You and your family will bless them, and be blessed, more than you can ever imagine.

If you don’t know anyone to invite, call your local homeless shelter or battered women’s shelter. Ask for the staff person on duty. Tell him/her you want to invite someone to join your family Christmas morning, or to share a Christmas meal at your home.

Let them know if you are interested in inviting a family, or maybe just an individual or two, and ask for their recommendation. They will know the residents, and will do a good job introducing you to an appropriate person or family.

Some of my most enduring friendships have come from reaching outside my comfort zone to those who are destitute, abandoned, imprisoned or just plain alone. It will change you far more than them.

And please, don’t try to “fix” them – just be a friend. The rest just sort of follows naturally – including them fixing you as you open your heart and your life to those who you previously treated as “other” or only “helped” through impersonal “programs”.

Take a chance. Open your home and your lives to embrace the Joseph’s and Mary’s of our age.

This is true church. This is true religion. This is true grace.

~ Jim Wright

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Old Covenant Church

November 25, 2011 By in Church, Institutional Church, Leadership, Ministry, Organic Church 14 Comments

I think I’m slowly comprehending the profound cleavage that’s occurring today in how folks understand “Church”.

Old Covenant Church

The Old Covenant was a revelation about God – His nature and precepts – with a tabernacle/temple where people could go to find His presence and a priesthood to help get right with Him.

This is like many churches today, which do a wonderful job teaching us about the Lord, providing a place and an environment for us to experience His presence, and serving as a bridge between God and His people.

Many are content to go to church to learn about God, feel His presence, and have an anointed and appointed pastor and his worship team mediate from the front. It would be dishonest to deny that those can be truly amazing, life-affirming pillars for one’s faith.

But in the New Testament, is that God’s perfect will?

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The Road to Grace

November 21, 2011 By in Confession, Forgiveness, Grace, Institutional Church, Mercy, Organic Church, Redemption, Repentance 11 Comments

For the institutionally religious, the road to grace is the toughest journey they’ll ever face.

For me, this certainly has been the case. And although the road to grace has been a wonderful journey, there have been many bumps and detours along the way. But slowly, I’m finally starting to find my way forward.

It’s Jesus in me and Jesus through me, so that it becomes possible to have Jesus in us and Jesus through us.

So much of my life over the last five years has been about the Lord reducing me to that simple truth.

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The Question of Leadership

October 31, 2011 By in Elder, Institutional Church, Leadership, Organic Church 11 Comments

Choices

When folks start re-thinking institutional “church” and consider the idea of simple participatory fellowships, the first thing they often focus on is the question of leadership. That was true for me.

That’s an important issue, for sure. But the incessant focus on who will lead – and on creating proper leadership structures – typically comes out of the whole institutional paradigm they are trying to leave.

What we fail to realize is that elders (also called pastors, bishops and presbyters, depending on your translation) and deacons emerged in the New Testament from fellowship, and not fellowship from elders and deacons.

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Crossing Jordan

October 24, 2011 By in Institutional Church, Organic Church 13 Comments

As folks progress from institutional podium churches toward organic participatory churches, they often allow themselves to continue being defined by the institutional church (“IC”). This arises not so much because they retain the attitudes and practices of the IC, but because they are still holding onto the disillusionment that emerged when they began to see the IC’s shortcomings and unbiblical traditions.

Organic Church

For many of us, when we finally leave the IC there is a season where we perceive and react to things not out of freedom, but rather out of not wanting to be like the IC. When we remain in a reactive mode, however, we remain in bondage to our past IC experiences.

In that place of reaction, our reality is still shaped by the IC rather than by who God wants us to be and by His promises for us. By reacting to the past, we are not able to grasp the future.

The best analogy is Israel’s journey out of Egypt and slavery, into the wilderness, and finally into the promised land.

Eventually, in my own life, I had to get to the place where I not only was delivered from Egypt, but was willing to let God take Egypt out of me. Like with Israel, that happened in the wilderness. It was hard, and took several years, but it was necessary in order to then cross over the Jordan River into God’s promises – where there is life and freedom and joy.

The resulting fellowships that are emerging in our area, among those who also have made it to the other side of Jordan, are renewing and refreshing and were worth the journey!

For those still in transition, don’t expect to be able to bypass the wilderness. The wilderness is dry and scorching, but God uses it to burn out of us those things from Egypt that otherwise still define us. It is part of God’s plan, because it is not enough to take a person out of Egypt. Rather, we also must allow God to take Egypt out of us!

Church?

September 26, 2011 By in Church, Community, Faith, Fellowship, Ministry 4 Comments

Crossing The Chasm

Earlier this month I had the privilege of visiting a network of churches in Branson, Missouri, comprised of over a dozen recovery homes where people were ministering one to another in authentic community. In the context of that community of love, grace and fellowship, the Lord was using those whom He had redeemed from sin and addictions to bring healing and reconciliation to other broken people.

During the trip, I innocently made the comment that I was seeing an amazing example among them of what the “church” should be. One of the men I was talking to looked pained at my well-intentioned compliment, and responding by gently but emphatically stating they were NOT a “church”.

Over the next several days, I finally understood where he was coming from.

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Understanding the Seven Motivational Gifts

January 2, 2011 By in Church, Community, Faith, Fellowship, Gifts, Grace, Leadership, Mercy, Prophetic, Virtue 1 Comment

This PowerPoint presentation looks at the seven gifts listed in Romans 12, and the motivations and ways that different people use those differing gifts. More significantly, what is the resulting fruit when your church allows those seven gifts to be fully expressed in its structure, ministries, leadership, meetings and day-to-day fellowship?

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Ekklesia and Diverse Gifts, Part 3: What A Meeting Looks Like

December 21, 2010 By in Fellowship, Gifts, Ministry, Organic Church 5 Comments

So when we get together to be the church based on New Testament imperatives, what should our meetings look like?

To answer that, I’m going to present a composite example of a house church gathering (which was common in the New Testament), using our own local network of simple participatory churches from our own home county spanning the last twenty years.

I’m also approaching it from a common theme in the New Testament, which is using our differing spiritual gifts to edify and build up one another.

As a preliminary matter, this example assumes that there is a commitment by all to actively participate, and that everyone in fact has a vibrant walk with the Lord so that they have something to contribute.

Those are BIG, but indispensable, assumptions (but that’s a topic for another day!).

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Ekklesia and Diverse Gifts, Part 1: The Motivational Gifts

December 19, 2010 By in Church, Community, Fellowship, Gifts, Ministry 8 Comments

True church - ekklesia - in the New Testament is ministry one to another, as an expression Christ in us, among us and through us as we use our diverse gifts to encourage and build up each other. Ekklesia and Diverse Gifts, Part 1: The Motivational Gifts

It’s one thing to embrace Paul’s metaphor of being the Body of Christ, where everyone is a different part as we participate and minister one to another according to our unique spiritual gifts.

It’s quite another thing to figure out how to do that in practical terms, especially when we meet together and abstract principles hit cold, hard reality.

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The Church in the New Testament: Its Form, Function and Purpose

October 31, 2010 By in Church, Community, Elder, Faith, Fellowship, Gifts, Great Commission, House Church, Institutional Church, Kingdom of God, Leadership, Ministry, Organic Church, Pastor 2 Comments

Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride! In this PowerPoint presentation, all that you think of as “church” is about to be challenged so God can woo us back to being, once more, the multi-faceted, wonderful, exciting Body of Christ.

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Authentic Church

May 3, 2010 By in Church, Faith, Fellowship, Gifts 1 Comment

“So here’s what I want you to do. When you gather for worship, each one of you be prepared with something that will be useful for all: Sing a hymn, teach a lesson, tell a story, lead a prayer, provide an insight… Take your turn, no one person taking over. Then each speaker gets a chance to say something special from God, and you all learn from each other… This goes for all the churches — no exceptions.” The Message, 1 Cor. 14:28-33.

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Reboot

March 15, 2010 By in Church, Community, Culture, Fellowship, Gifts, Institutional Church, Kingdom of God, Leadership, Ministry, New Wine, Pastors, Transcendent 3 Comments

God seems to be laying a foundation for yet another of His periodic, history-changing interventions in the affairs of man. Over the last two thousand years there have been many such paradigm shifts, and it’s naive to think that our current, settled status quo will somehow be exempt from the unsettling but progressive advance of His Kingdom.

Paradigm Shifts

This newest paradigm shift is starting with pioneers who realize that God’s primary goal in history is to change not only individuals but also whole cultures and nations — as per the Great Commission.

Likewise, as with all prior interventions in history, His will is being applied to more and more aspects of His creation here on earth, just as it is in heaven — as per the Lord’s Prayer.

We also are coming to realize that the Kingdom of God — His will being done on earth (including all spheres of human endeavor) as it is in heaven — is bigger than the church. Nonetheless, we are beginning to understand that His Kingdom is not going to advance much further unless the church re-discovers her New Testament roots.

Admittedly, there is comfort in the familiar status quo of “church” as we’ve all come to know it. Some, however, are so hungry for God’s Kingdom — as it continues to progressively advance through history — that they’re willing hit to the reboot button and look afresh at God’ s purposes.

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True Ministry

February 27, 2010 By in Brokenness, Community, Fellowship, Gifts, Grace, Institutional Church, Ministry, Organic Church 6 Comments

Last night, we had one of our best times of “participatory church” as we seamlessly shared a meal, partook of communion, fellowshipped and ministered one with another — and none of it depended on me!

The last several weeks have been very emotionally and physically exhausting for me. On top of my best friend dying, I’ve been struggling to keep up with my various professional and counseling commitments while concurrently experiencing a particularly bad bout of chronic fatigue from my autoimmune condition.

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Improbable Church

January 31, 2010 By in Community, Fellowship, Gifts, Joy, Kingdom of God, Organic Church 7 Comments

The church that meets together at my home each Friday evening to share a meal, encounter God and minister one to another is an improbable assembly of believers and even not-yet believers. We cut across races, cultures, nationalities, social status, and so many other lines – producing a rich tapestry of interwoven lives.

It reminds me of Adullam’s cave, where “every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented” went to flee from Saul. While there, God began the process of forging them into leaders who eventually established and became pillars in David’s kingdom. 1 Sam. 22:2.

Likewise, if you saw us you would laugh and wonder, “what can God do with these people?” Yet, isn’t that God’s way: to establish his Kingdom on earth by transforming lives, cultures, nations and history not with the ordained, but with the ordinary?

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The Lost Art of Dialogue

October 18, 2009 By in Bible, Church, Faith, Fellowship, Leadership, Ministry, Organic Church, Truth 8 Comments

As last Friday’s church met over a shared meal (nothing fancy — KFC this week!) around a kitchen table, someone asked a question that opened up a great discussion on God’s sovereignty and human will. We must have spent at least an hour in dynamic exchange — with amazing questions, comments and seeking Scripture together as God’s truths opened up for everyone.

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The Church in D Pod

July 26, 2009 By in Faith, Grace, Jail, Joy, Kingdom of God, Mentor, Ministry, New Wine, Organic Church, Sovereignty 8 Comments

This Sunday, like most Sundays, I will be fellowshipping with the “Church in D Pod” at the local jail.

D Pod is a unit housing around a hundred men, and God has been pouring out his new wine in an exciting way among those inmates.

A couple of months ago, I started shifting my focus from “conducting” church services “for” the men. God was challenging me to start mentoring and training them instead to “be” the church by learning to minister one to another.

At the same time, God sovereignly arranged for two brothers from Africa — where Christians generally are way ahead of their American brothers and sisters on these issues — to be jailed in that unit. They, too, understood the concept of ministering one to another and started fostering authentic fellowship among the men.

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The Sunday “God Show” at Your Friendly Podium Church

July 19, 2009 By in Church, Community, Ministry, New Wine, Repentance, Tears 4 Comments

When did “church” become a podium-focused “God Show” watched by passive spectators for an hour or so each Sunday morning?

Where do we even find that in Scripture?

I believe that the days of the “podium church” and the Sunday “God show”are passing — where we gaze each Sunday past the back of the head in front of us to passively watch carefully scripted ministry delivered from a front podium through a tightly controlled microphone.

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New Wine Sucks

July 7, 2009 By in Community, Faith, Joy, Kingdom of God, Leadership, Ministry, New Wine, Organic Church, Pastors 3 Comments

As God brings forth new wine in a new generation, there’s a fundamental dynamic that can’t be ignored. To put it bluntly, new wine sucks!

In my younger days, I was an amateur wine maker. So I know what Jesus means when he says, “no one, having drunk old wine, immediately desires new; for he says, ‘The old is better.'” (Luke 5:39)

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New Wine And Old Skins

July 1, 2009 By in Community, Faith, Jail, Joy, Kingdom of God, Leadership, Ministry, New Wine, Organic Church, Pastors, Sovereignty 1 Comment

Here’s an interesting article, reprinted below, on how people will stick to what they believe or think even in the face of contrary facts or circumstances. As I’ve watched people react to challenges and controversies Something Newover the last couple of months, and to God bursting old wine skins as he brings forth new wine, I can believe it!

Isaiah 9:6-8 tells us that God’s Kingdom, from the incarnation onward, has been and will continue to be ever advancing. As such, God is constantly fermenting new wine — and providing new wine skins to contain it — as his progressive plan of redemption moves forward from one spiritual generation to each successive spiritual generation (which can include individuals of all ages!). God’s active and ever expanding intervention in history is clear, and his tendency to discard the old while bringing in the new is repeatedly seen in Scripture.

Yet it never failed to fascinate me, as a graduate student in church history back in the 1970s, to see how — time and time again — most Christians reject God’s new wine of new anointing for new generations. Instead, they choose to stick with their old wine and old wine skins.

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Post-Release Community

June 5, 2009 By in Church, Community, Conversion, Faith, Jail, Ministry 5 Comments

I’ve been meeting with various brothers who also minister in the informal Christian networks I’m part of, along with others, to discuss starting a weekly fellowship (possibly in my home) for ex-inmates. My burden is for men whose lives are dramatically captured by God in jail, but then stumble when they get out because they can’t find authentic Christian community in our churches.

Stuck in a RutI’ve been wanting to do this for a while, but health issues and distractions over problems in my local church prevented me. The church problems persist, but my health has improved and my heart is stirring once again over this. That’s causing me to ask whether it’s time to stop putting the Kingdom of God on hold while waiting for some who hold local church offices to climb out of their seemingly perpetual leadership ruts, to begin moving forward, and to trust that God’s provisions will follow.

Maybe, my heart is saying, the best outcome is to provide an opportunity and a motive for churches in general — including mine — to get their acts together and start being the church, rather than doing “church”, by showing what’s possible when people of vision become engaged with each other and engaged in what God is doing in the earth today. After all, the Kingdom of God is much, much more than “church”, although hopefully each of our local churches are part of that progressively advancing Kingdom!

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