I’ve been thinking about the whole emerging church conversation and its relation to the house/simple/organic church expressions that are out there, for instance the Western house church movement. There seems to be some tension points here. Personally, I identify with both, feel rather comfortable in building bridges in between, and would not prefer to separate them even though they actually can be seen as two different “movements” (that somehow overlap each other). I see the whole house/simple church expressions as a stream of the bigger emerging church. I think the house church people emerges more from institutional Christianity with its clergy, programs, buildings and structures, whereas the emergent church people more emerges from modern Christianity (involving culture, mission and theology). There’s more than that, but that’s what comes to my mind for now. Frank Viola, who is an influential house church author and church planter in the US), wrote an open letter to the emergent conversation about what he thinks are the strengths and weaknesses in the ongoing emerging conversation.

I just want to emphasize, I’m not saying that the thoughts I present here would be “the way to do church”, absolutely not. God is bigger than our ways to make church happen and his spirit flows through all kinds of churches whether they are traditonal, contemporary, mega-church, house church or emerging church. I just have some crazy, un-proven, un-tested, and experimental ideas that I want to share with you, and hopefully get your comments on.

As I read through Frank’s article I was excited (as if God led me to the article and said: read). Many of the points he mentioned are exaclty what I’ve been thinking/dreaming of the last couple of months. For me it’s more like a vision, a direction, an experiment and an adventure - to do church in a “postmodern simple church way”. Frank’s two first points in his critique is to get rid of the modern clergy system and to use lay-men as leadership and church planting - two things that I can’t see happen among the emerging churches so far. At least I have not seen much of it (yet?).

Some things that I like with the house church movement:

• First, I am convinced over the necessity for christians to live in an open authentic community. To share life and all that. We have to think of what it means to live with each other every week, whether it is by a combination of meetings, blogs, phone calls, smses, prayers, concerns etc. I personally like a more liquid style, but others like it more solid.
• Second, I am also concerned about the whole church planting part, and how contemporary church has made this into something big that you can’t do if you haven’t seen an angel or two. The talk about planting reproducable churches exists here and I think it is being done too. I don’t know how they do it, but Peter Wagner says it is the fastest way for the church to expand (if we are interested in measuring, of course). A simpler church is easier to reproduce, right?
• And third, I want to experience a laymen-led church without the modern pastoral role. This is for many reasons. I’ve never really seen it in action except for some small house churches I’ve been a part of. Frank talks a lot about how Paul didn’t appoint elders in every case (in some cases he did) but left the new believers all alone. My main concern here is to maximize the participitation (with a focus on spiritual) which requires a new view on leadership. It’s not so much about “leading” by delivering sermons or keeping up a program. It’s more about being there as a spiritual (and earthly) father, or mother, among the community.

Along with these simple structures and church planting experiments I’d like to to adopt the postmodern rethinking processes that are being present in the emergent conversation. Things such as: rethinking theology and mission in a postmodern context, the “born-again thing”, heaven and hell, church as counter-cultural, narrative teachings, experimental alternative worship, interactive big gatherings, labyrinths and arts, ancient liturgy and more. As far as I know most emergent churches today are adopting the postmodern mindset but they still have clergy, programs and a similar structure as the church-as-we-know-it. To me they are just traditional churches with a postmodern touch and are not really embracing the paradigm shift that the house church people are talking about (and of course they don’t have to).

I’m just looking for those people who feel that they want to head a path combining postmodern minsitry with grass-root structures. I think there has to be a way to make church happen in a communal, organic and simple way at ordinary places, shaped with postmodern values and emerging theology, where the community are led by the spirit, infiltrating every cultural world they’re entering with the kingdom of God.

Someone having something similiar in mind?