Don’t we need pastors to equip the saints?

As a former pastor, I viewed my preaching ministry through the lens of Ephesians 4 (below) and seriously believed that my twice-a-week sermons fulfilled, to a large extent, the discipleship mandate found in the Great Commission. I invested an enormous amount of energy and time out of my weekly schedule to study a passage of [...]

What about house churches?

When my friends and family discover that I have opted out of organized religion—not yet, but in the very near future—they will probably assume that I’m embracing a house church model, a little strange to most of them, but one they might see as an acceptable alternative. However, that’s not where my convictions are leading [...]

Do I Have to Go to Church?

Let’s assume for a minute that you no longer attend weekly church services, whether  those services take place in a cathedral, a mega-church campus, a rural church building, a rented facility (storefront, school, community center, etc) or even a home-based congregation. But you still believe, as I do, that people need to hear the powerful [...]

Do we have realistic expectations for others?

When I began the journey toward a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ and freedom from the tyranny of “religious performance and religious obligation” (to borrow a phrase from Wayne Jacobsen), I felt a strong compulsion to defend my decision and, more than that, to convince others to do the same thing. It was an instinctive [...]

“On Being Post-Congregational”

Steve Knight has put together an interesting blog post that you might enjoy reading. It triggered Fernando Gros to ask, “Is It Possible to be a Post-Congregational Baptist?“

So what would happen if all institutional churches closed their doors?

Yeah, I can hear some snickering out there and some of you are probably thinking…
That won’t happen until pigs fly!
I have a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you!
So hell finally froze over, huh?
Never in a month of Sundays!
One guy posed a challenge to Wayne Jacobsen, saying that the closure of institutional churches would [...]

Why are people leaving the church?

Tim Bower and Jason Loftis launched a website in February 2007, Letters From Leavers. Here’s just one small taste of one person’s anonymous letter:
Geez, I thought my past life was bad which was one of the reasons i became saved. After experiencing the church, the world is not so bad after all. At this point, [...]

Why “It’s Not About House Church”

Brent describes an awkward feeling when a recent meeting turned to all things “house church.” Following that meeting he wrote, “I’ve become bored with the whole discussion about models of doing church.” And then he wrestled with a description of the vision he believed God had given him, packaged into the following brief statement:
Simply Be. [...]

How does it feel “outside”?

Len Hjalmarson shares his own experience in “Leaving the Church?”
What if someone steps outside the well worn paths? What if we stop assuming that the Sunday gathering should be the pre-eminent experience of the Christian life?
Suddenly a lot of other answers that were taken for granted are less than obvious. The journey in search of [...]

How do we simplify our Christian life?

A great article on “Simplifying the Journey” over at The Thin Edge of the Wedge.