Notes and Articles

Discipling Viral Disciplers

by Roger Thoman

I no longer try to start simple/house churches.  I think house churches are great.  They provide a place for people to experience participatory, everyone-matters church life.  They provide a way for people to really connect into authentic, one-another community.  They often provide a place for people to recover from some of the pains caused by institutional church life.  But house churches are no longer the end game for me.

Jesus invited us to join him, organically, in the reproduction of life.  His church is a living, thriving, reproducing organism (Mark 4) that allows life-in-the-Spirit to spread virally from one disciple to the next.  His church is alive as illustrated by a seed (Mark 4) that brings forth 30, 60, or 100-fold reproduction.  That is the life of the kingdom…read more

 

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I found this somewhere quite awhile back and saw it again and thought it needed seen more. 

Dressed For Church

I saw him in the church building for the first time on Wednesday.

He was in his mid-70′s, with thinning silver hair and a neat brown suit.

Many times in the past I had invited him to come to church.

Several other Christian friends had talked to him about

the Lord and had tried to share the good news with him.

He was a well-respected, honest man with so many characteristics a Christian should have,

but he had never accepted Christ, nor entered the doors of the church.

“Have you ever been to a church service in your life?” I had asked him a few years ago.

We had just finished a pleasant day of visiting and talking….read more

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Why I Don’t go To Church Anymore by Wayne Jacobsen

Where do you go to church?I have never liked this question, even when I was able to answer it with a specific organization. I know what it means culturally, but it is based on a false premise–that church is something you can go to as in a specific event, location or organized group. I think Jesus looks at the church quite differently. He didn’t talk about it as a place to go to, but a way of living in relationship to him and to other followers of his.Asking me where I go to church is like asking me where I go to Jacobsen. How do I answer that? I am a Jacobsen and where I go a Jacobsen is. ‘Church’ is that kind of word. It doesn’t identify a location or an institution. It describes a people and how they relate to each other. If we lose sight of that, our understanding of the church will be distorted and we’ll miss out on much of its joy. Complete Article

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The Deepest Freedom by Wayne Jacobsen

The familiar voice on the phone brought back incredible memories of the friendship we had shared, even though it had been almost two years since we had last spoken. “What has God been doing in you?” he asked after we had exchanged pleasantries.Before I realized what I was saying, the words rolled off of my tongue: “Over the past few years God has defied to the nth degree every expectation and desire I had for my life.” I was so surprised at my own answer and how smoothly it had flowed from my lips that as I paused to think about it an uneasy silence hung on the line.After a few moments he spoke again, quite tentatively, “And is that a good thing?”I remember chuckling as I answered, “It is the best thing!”

“Really?”

“Yes! In every way, what Father has accomplished in me was far better than anything I had tried to produce for myself.”

I was probably as surprised by the answer as he was. My life is far from any idealized existence I’d been taught to dream. The last few years had brought many painful circumstances that I would have changed in an instant had I the power to do so, as well as a number of disappointed hopes that I thought were as much God’s idea as mine.

What I realized in that moment, however,  Complete Article

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A most controversial subject

The following articles and e-book links will help as you delve into the study of tithing.

As you read, these please pray that God will help you sort out this doctrine that has mistakenly been handed down to us by well intentioned people but also by those who wanted just to increase their own wealth.

Unfortunately, I was one who preached this too. Read More

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