I will here try to summarize the day two of the House Church Conference in Santa Maria which was held at the Santa Maria Inn May 6-7 2005.

Roger Thoman opened up by telling that if we have come here with the thought of to hear the “latest” model of church - we have come to the wrong place. I liked that opening. The day consisted of teachings on Organic Church, The Role of The Holy Spirit, Luke 10 church planting and The Wave is Coming. Also, I chose to attend the workshop ‘Simple church leadership’. I don’t cover everything here but I will pick some of the more interesting thoughts that came up.

I agree with Neil Cole’s explanation about the existing church foundations. Many church leaders have found themselves in bondage. Somehow they are very comfortable with it, and the cage is quite safe. Many once felt that they were called to something more, but now are content to push papers and manage a corporation called “church”. A leadership in bondage can’t lead people to freedom. He also mentioned that we have an upside-down kingdom. Leadership is not a position or title. Leadership in one simple word is: influence. Positions are weak. You can have no positions but much influence. Of course, there’s bad and good influence. The way up is down in the kingdom of God. Jesus wants us to put down titles and positions. The people in the upper room didn’t search positions.

Neil talked a lot about entering the organic church multiplication movement and the DNA of it. For this to work we have to eliminate the middleman between the people and God. We don’t need to have anybody there as our filter. We don’t need another Messiah. I like this one: “My goal is not to eliminate the clergy. My goal is to eliminate the laity so that all of us are priests.”. The problem with this radical change is that the people wants to be led and the leaders want to lead. Leaders enjoy being important and needed, but leaders need to step down from the pedistal and resist… Neil also teached about mission and the ‘man of peace’-principle, but I won’t cover that here.

Tony Dale pointed out the role of women. In the west leadership is domniated with men. The reason why women are so important is that in general they even don’t want to lead, they just want to serve. Men want to have positions. I like the question he asked about the role of the Spirit: It is possible that the Holy Spirit can lead thousands and thousands of churches at one time? He said that in many of our churches the Spirit is not allowed to lead. God is like a constitutional monarch who has the position, but no authority in his own churches. A Chinese man commented about the churches in the west: “Now I see how church can be when it is led by men. I hope that you will one day see how church can be when it is led by God.” Uww, that was a hard one! Tony also ephasized the importance of living out a community faith where everybody contributes.

Felicity introduced the Luke 10 principle - in other words, learning by participating. I think it is a good principle. Studying the bible together gives more than doing it alone. I won’t go into detail. Check Luke 10 Course Online.

The leadership workshop was maybe the best part in my point of view. Mostly it took the forms of question and answers, and and older man Harold, with his 30-years of experience in simple/organic churches, did the best to answer the tough questions about leadership, heresy, doctrine, deliverance… He made a good point: “Your worst enemy is your experience as a leader in a conventional church. You have to learn to talk less, talk quieter and to listen more. You should help people to connect with Jesus.”.

With my 1-2 year experience of organic/house churches, I think the conference was a little bit too ’simple’. But this is a new wineskin for many people and there’s a need for letting people to process and take one step at a time. There was a workshop where newcomers could ‘experience house church’ - good idea. The middle age was very high during this weekend and I don’t know why, but there seems to be a lot of 35-60 year old people practising simple church networks in California, and in other parts of the US too. There is a bigger annual conference held in Denver where more young people attend, a friend told me. I didn’t expect to see myself talking to an older woman about house church networks. “We have been doing it for over three years now”, she smiled.

There’s a wave going on in organic/simple/house expressions of church and it seems that it is increasing rapidly. For me it is an reaction to the centralized, instutionalized, clergy-dominated, program-based, corporation-like christianity that is known as ‘church as we know it’. It is an necessary renewal of an old wineskin. The wave is here and many are surfing on it. However, I see other waves too on the horizon. God knows how many waves are coming up. Let’s watch and see… and surf…

Related links:
- Other comments on the conference
- House 2 House (Tony & Felicity Dale)
- CMAResources (Neil Cole)
- House Chuch Blog (Roger Thoman)
- Simple Church - DAWN North America