Chapter 4
The mechanics
When I'm asked what it takes to do a home fellowship, I usually reply that you only need three things: a Bible, a guitar, and a room with some nice comfy sofas. Over the years I've learned that it's a bit more complicated than that, but there's no magic formula you can follow other than the one I've already identified: stick to the guiding principles and values we've expressed earlier concerning what it means to do church. Let's review these again in the form of an expanded mission statement for doing church:
The mission of the church is to advance the kingdom of God. This is accomplished by making disciples who are obedient to Jesus as King. Discipleship primarily takes place in home fellowships because that's where church really happens. Home fellowships are where people can experience God's kingdom and learn to love one another. They're also where everyone gets to play, which allows them to safely develop ministry and leadership skills without worrying about failure. In short, home fellowships are where people can become more like Jesus by learning to do the stuff he did (and continues to do through us).
Having examined principles and values in the previous chapters, let's move on to the how-to side of things and examine the practices, programs and personnel associated with doing home fellowships.
Practices
All forms of ministry can be broken down into a series of practices that can be taught, modeled and learned. Home fellowship ministry is no different in this regard. Practices are the attitudes and skills necessary for advancing God's kingdom through home fellowships. The following are some key practices we've learned, taught and modeled in our home fellowships over the years.
1. Depending on the Holy Spirit. In John 5:19 Jesus said "Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. He followed this up in verse 30 by saying "I can do nothing on my own." If this was true of Jesus, how much more will it be true of us his followers? Learning to depend on the Holy Spirit is a key skill we need to learn if our home fellowships are going to be successful in furthering God's kingdom.
Dependence upon the Holy Spirit is a skill that can be learned through practice. The basis for learning this skill is to understand that our relationship with the Lord is asymmetrical. While Jesus may be our friend (John 15:15) he is also our Teacher and Lord (John 13:13) which in the context of home fellowships means we are to obey him. Home fellowship leaders in particular must always remember that Jesus is the head of the fellowship, not themselves.
To obey Jesus we need to know what he wants us to do. Studying the Bible with a focus on applying what you learn from it is one way of growing as a disciple. The other way that's equally important is to learn to hear the Holy Spirit and be sensitive to his promptings. I shared briefly in the previous chapter in the section titled "The prophetic" how I began to learn how to receive words of knowledge in various situations. This kind of learning involves the risk of looking foolish if you should mistake indigestion for the Spirit telling you that someone in the group is suffering from stomach pain. Fortunately, making this kind of mistake among friends in a home fellowship is much less embarrassing than doing it in front of a large Sunday morning congregation!
From a practical standpoint there are several things home fellowship leaders can do to help others in the group learn how to be led by the Spirit. You can start the home fellowship gathering by inviting the Holy Spirit to come and lead the meeting. This can be done with words like "Come, Holy Spirit" or "We welcome you Lord" or something similar so that the group's attention is focused on the Lord instead of each other or on our own problems and worries.
Listening to the Holy Spirit and obeying him is actually how many of the home fellowships we've led got started. Ingrid shares a story to illustrate how this can work:
We started attending a large Charismatic church that someone in our former house church had told us about. One day as we were about to leave the church, I saw a young girl sitting against the wall beside the door. I could see she was in some kind of emotional pain. As I looked at her it seemed like the Holy Spirit was saying I should talk to her. So I said hello and asked her some questions and she responded and we struck up a conversation. Somehow I got on the topic of homegroups and their importance for the church, and she immediately asked if we could come and do one at her parents' home. She was living with her parents at the time and said her mom was a Christian and needed fellowship. In a way she was hiding her own needs by saying this. So we started a fellowship at her parents' home and soon others joined us from several different churches. We continued attending the Charismatic church on Sundays, but we started this fellowship on our own and it was independent of the larger church. Over the next year we helped the girl through a difficult time in her life and the whole family was strengthened and encouraged. Once we felt our work was over we ended the group but kept in touch as friends.
Ingrid's story also highlights something that you can frequently see in the life of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels, namely the value of ministering to a single person as opposed to trying to gather a crowd. Helping one lost sheep back into the fold brings joy to our heavenly Father.
2. Listening to one another. An important skill for everyone to learn to use in home fellowships is to listen to one another. Jesus commanded us to love one another (John 13:34-35) and love begins with listening. As members of a home fellowship share their griefs, pains and worries during a meeting, others who are present need to learn to be patient and wait their turn. As Paul reminds us in chapter 13 of First Corinthians, love is patient and kind, doesn't envy or boast, isn't arrogant or rude, doesn't insist on its own way and isn't irritable or resentful.
3. Ministering to one another. Healing and deliverance are powerful and exciting ways we can minister to one another in home fellowships. But a hug or a few words of encouragement can also work wonders. One time at a conference some from our home fellowship attended, I met a relative of a close friend. As we talked I found out he had been experiencing problems in his marriage and at his workplace where he held a middle management position. Seeing he was distraught, I gave him a hug and held him in my arms for a while and I could feel the tension draining out of him. Sometime later I ran into him again and he told me that hug had changed his life and things were much better with him. Physical touch is an important way of ministering to those experiencing stress or sorrow, and we have modeled this and made it a practice in the home fellowships we've led or been involved with.
Another important way of ministering to one another is by providing practical help where it's needed. One time our whole homegroup got involved in painting the house of a couple in the church we attended. Afterwards we ordered pizzas and sat around talking which led into praying for someone. On another occasion when Ingrid and I were sick and couldn't attend our fellowship to lead it, the others in the group appeared on our doorstep that evening bringing prepared meals for us to eat. And in our early groups when most of those attending were young, we often helped one another move to new apartments or into their first home. One could almost say that in addition to having a Bible, a guitar, and a room with comfy sofas, another requirement for starting a home fellowship is that at least one of the members owns a pickup truck!
4. Speaking to one another. Paul says in Ephesians 4:15 that "speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ." Sincerity in speaking is essential if misunderstandings are to be prevented and for encouragement to find its mark. As members of one Body we are told to encourage one another and build each other up (1 Thessalonians 5:11). To do this we need to open up our mouth. Because of their intimacy home fellowships are difficult to stay silent in or hide from others. Scripture also tells us to exhort one another every day (Hebrews 3:13) so speaking sincerely is not something to be done only occasionally.
As Christians living in a society fractured by social media, we need to learn to get in each other's faces sometimes and have the boldness to say what needs to be said so none of us gets lost along the way. This is especially important for leaders in home fellowships since they are supposed to be models for the others. In 1 Timothy 4:2 Paul charges Timothy to "reprove, rebuke, and encourage with every form of patient instruction." Googling the word "reprove" indicates that it means to "reprimand or censure someone" while to "rebuke" someone is to "express sharp disapproval or criticism of (someone) because of their behavior or actions." Ken told me a story once about a Christian friend who started talking to him about how in some cultures flirting is acceptable and even healthy and how he had been trying to learn how to flirt. Ken felt uncomfortable hearing this as his friend was married, so he said sharply "What's all this about flirting?" The guy stopped talking at that point and their conversation shifted. Later the guy told Ken that his words had hit him like a thunderbolt and made him realize he was treading a dangerous path.
Programs
Programs provide specific ways for expressing the principles and values of a ministry. Although home fellowships because of their size tend to be informal, this doesn't mean they shouldn't be approached programmatically. In the Summer 1993 issue of Equipping the Saints magazine, John Wimber outlined five priorities he believed were key to expressing what the Vineyard movement represented. These five priorities are worship, training, ministry, fellowship and sending. We used this as the basis for how we approached doing home fellowships.
A typical meeting might start with people arriving and having coffee and chatting with one another. Never underestimate the importance of good coffee for home fellowships! At one point the worship leader would pick up his guitar and people would start to drift into the living room or den where we were meeting. Some would sit on the sofa, some on chairs; others would cross their legs and sit on cushions; one or two might even lie face down on the floor. After pausing and inviting the Holy Spirit to come, we would worship together for 20-30 minutes. We didn't need songbooks or an overhead because the songs we chose were simple love songs to Jesus and we all had them memorized. This enabled us to worship with our eyes closed and our hearts focused on our Lord.
At the end of worship time we sometimes did communion together. Often someone shared a picture they saw during worship or shared a verse that the Spirit had given them to share with the group. After this we usually either had someone teach from Scripture for 20-30 minutes or moved directly into a time of sharing by asking questions like "How's everyone been doing?" or "So what's God been doing in our lives this week?" Teaching would incorporate or be followed by discussion, and both teaching and sharing would usually lead directly into ministry time.
What typically happened is that several of those attending would be facing challenges in their lives: health problems, difficulties at work, problems with their kids, and so on. If only one or two shared and the group was small, we would gather around each individual in turn and lay hands on them and pray for them. If 3-4 individuals needed prayer and the group was larger, the leader would usually say "Let's break up into smaller groups and pray for these people, feel free to use the bedrooms or go downstairs if you need more privacy." Sometimes a situation required practical assistance and group members would offer to provide transport or help with cleaning or whatever might be needed. Occasionally a problem was serious enough that the leader would make arrangements for dedicated ministry to the individual on some other evening, for example when the person needed extensive counselling or there might be some degree of demonization involved. At all times when we were praying for people during ministry time we were also trying to model for others how to effectively pray for the sick and struggling. As ministry time drew to a close the leader would usually say a prayer to bless and protect them and tell everyone they can feel free to hang around for a while longer. Additional teaching, ministry and fellowship would often take place after the meeting was officially over.
As you can see from the above description of a typical home fellowship meeting, our "program" was simply to try and touch base with Wimber's five Vineyard priorities. Worship, training, ministry and fellowship all usually happened to some extent in each meeting. Sending was what happened during the rest of the week as we separated and went out into the harvest. God would set up divine appointments for some of us and this often resulted in inviting someone new to come to the group. The key of course was to keep our eyes on the kingdom and not on our own needs or problems. But it's relatively easy to get excited about God and share your faith with others when you see him working powerfully in your own life and other people's lives each week.
Personnel
Personnel concerns are easier in home fellowships than they are in traditional churches but they are still important. There are two things to consider here: those in leadership and those being discipled. In reality all of us are being discipled since Jesus is the only true disciple-maker. A leader who thinks he or she has already arrived is one that still has a long way to go to reach maturity. But in reality, some Christians are further along in their walk than others, and the job of the leader(s) of a home fellowship is to help others make progress—and to enable others to help others—towards spiritual maturity and kingdom effectiveness. One way of conveying this is to say that while only a few may get to lead, everyone gets to play. And the fun is in the playing, not the leading.
I said leader(s) not leader in the above sentence for a reason. Most home fellowships that I've been involved in had only one leadership couple with the husband and wife working in complementary roles and supporting one another. Complementary roles are effective not because equality is wrong but simply because each of us has different gifts. In the home fellowships that Ingrid and I led together, I usually led worship, did most of the teaching, and set the overall direction of the meetings. Ingrid on the other hand would teach when God gave her something specific to say, often in response to someone's question or a problem someone was facing. She also took the lead in praying for people where the special anointing for healing she received at a Vineyard conference was clearly evidenced by the many healings that occurred in our fellowships. Both of us would also talk together before and after the meeting to plan what we should do and process what had taken place, the goal being to understand more clearly what the Lord wanted to do in the group. Remember that Jesus is management and we're only labor.
Having two couples working together in leadership, or a couple and another individual, may sound like a better approach than just having one leadership couple. And perhaps it is, sometimes. After all, three or four people should have more accumulated life experience and a potentially broader gift mix. The challenge however in the team approach is that everyone needs to be on the same page, especially with regard to the principles and values underlying the fellowship. Rick shares a story of what can happen when two leadership couples see the fundamentals differently:
I had attended a Pentecostal Bible College and was looking to start a church with someone. There was another couple in the church we were attending, they were popular with the youth and my wife and I got along great with them. So we decided to dive in and start a house church with them. That's where I made my biggest mistake. Assuming that we all believed the same things and had the same goals and values, we just charged ahead believing God was calling us to do this. The reality however was that by not first making sure our foundational principles and values aligned with those of the other couple, we were destined to fail because we were actually miles apart from the start.
Instead of seeking a second couple to share the leadership burden with, a better approach in my opinion is to try and identify a couple that could possibly be future leaders for a new home fellowship. I believe this approach is superior because it focuses on advancing the kingdom through multiplication. Since as we said home fellowships are where church really happens, it's better to have two smaller fellowships than one large fellowship. While giftedness and assertiveness are qualities to look for in potential leaders, there's another quality that ranks even higher in importance. Josiah shares something that illustrates this as he describes something he learned while attending a fellowship Ingrid and I led and hosted in our home:
I remember one of the first meetings we had at your place. You had made some time for us to pray and wait on the Holy Spirit and God was really moving among us! I remember we gathered around one of the girls attending to pray for her. We were all quietly waiting on the Holy Spirit to speak, and I remember getting antsy and wanting to break the silence. So I prayed something over her but it was out of the flesh and not the Spirit, and of course nothing happened. Then you said, "Now let's just wait and be quiet." Then you prayed a simple prayer saying God just wanted her to enter into his rest and she burst out crying and shaking. It was amazing to watch as the Holy Spirit was working on her heart!
What this story illustrates is the heart of a potential leader. By recognizing that he had tried to make something happen from his flesh instead of waiting for God to lead, Josiah displays the character of a true leader: someone who is humble enough to be teachable.
Of course not every home fellowship experience is amazing; sometimes messes happen. In the next chapter we'll examine some of the problems that can arise with home fellowships and some ways of trying to deal with them.
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