A People who Persevere

House Churches Are More Satisfying to
Attenders Than Are Conventional Churches

House churches are more likely than conventional churches to satisfy the needs and expectations of their participants. That’s one of the key results from this week’s Barna Update, which examines the house church phenomenon more closely. You’ll also discover what house churches typically do, who is involved, and how people immersed in a conventional church feel about house churches. To find out more, please just click here.

As we enter 2007 and come to the end of our first year of this (old) new way of being church, I was struck this morning in my reading of Genesis by the story of Noah and his persistence in following the vision given to him by God. It was a call that would take all his time, involve his family, and cause him to appear somewhat out of his mind to those around him. He spent 120 years building a ship in a place where there was no great body of water for hundreds of miles. He did so without doubting or objecting because he had learned to trust God through years of living in close fellowship with him - he was 500 years old after all!

John Calvin once said, "true knowledge of God is born out of obedience", not necessarily a popular concept today. We see the same idea in the recent book title of Eugene Peterson (author of The Message), 'A Long Obedience in the Same Direction'. This challenges our sound-bite culture, a culture that looks for instant gratification, where there is an appetite for religious experience but not necessarily for a long apprenticeship to Jesus for growth in true holiness.

Jesus' words at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, reverberate around in my mind, "Not everyone who says to me 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven" (Matt 7:21). This of course is not meant to be a burdensome duty, but a joy-filled delight that reinforces and feeds our communion with the lover of our souls.

I pray for us all that this would be our pursuit in 2007, to know Christ, and for his joy to be in us and for our joy to be complete.