Simple/Organic Church is not just a small church

Posted by Alan Knox on Aug 17, 2011 in blog links | 2 comments

Felicity at “Simply Church” continues writing very good and informative posts about simple/organic church. Her latest post is called “Honey, I shrunk the church!”

This post is the first of a series that Felicity plans to write on the topic of starting a simple/organic church.

However, in this first post, she gives a glimpse of what she’s NOT talking about. After sharing research about the millions of people who currently meet together outside of traditional churches, Felicity says:

My question is, “What are they doing?”

I suspect that many of them are doing what are friend John White likes to call, “Honey, I shrunk the church!”

They have taken what they have known within the legacy church and just shrunk it down to fit within the four walls of their living room. They have exchanged the steeple for a chimney and the pew for a sofa.

Someone has been asked to lead the worship; someone else prepares a talk. Another person is responsible for the kids. There is as much of a program as there was within the traditional church they left behind.

This is a very good observation. Simply meeting with a smaller group of people in a home does not create a church like we see in Scripture. (This is one of the reasons that I’m not a house church proponent.)

My concern is that the church (the people who are in Christ) meet together in a way that allows for mutual edification and live together in a way that proclaims the good news of Jesus Christ.

Will this affect the number of people who meet together at one time. Yes, I think so.

But the problems that affect the modern church will not be corrected by breaking it into smaller pieces of the same thing.