Can a home be a house of God?
December 24th, 2006
This morning there was a very interesting article in one of the regional newspapers here in the greater Chicago area — The Daily Herald. I was intrigued mostly by the research from Barna found within as well as some of the comments from various staff at area mega-churches.
If this home church concept continues to emerge and becomes the primary model of faith communities gathering to worship as twenty somethings and those in their thirties age, what happens to the many modern youth ministry models out there? What does youth ministry look like within this ’simple church’ paradigm? Does youth ministry go away? What do we need to change now to be ready? What must we do to prepare ourselves for a new kind of church? I would love your thoughts…
DOWNLOAD THE ARTICLE HERE: daily-herald.pdf
January 4th, 2007 at 11:04 pm
In many ways I think the home church movement falls under the same criticism as the home school movement. At first it sounded awfully reactive, and then it’s gained some credibility… and now there are networks to help it be all it can be. Some of the fears associated with home schooling including producing kids who were anti-social and unable to adapt, while the product has been quite the opposite. Perhaps we’ll see the next generation defying such labels, too… more relational as Christians and able to talk intergenerationally in ways their modern predecessors couldn’t.
But here’s the real question… I don’t think the issue is what youth ministry looks like in this paradigm in as much as what the youth pastor looks like. So many youth workers work hard to be Joe Charisma in order to keep their jobs… what happens when we have to find a new motivation other than job security to rethink youth ministry?
January 8th, 2007 at 8:42 pm
Good question Tony. It wil be interesting to see what will happen if ’simple church’ continues to emerge… do you think it will continue to emerge? You are a lead pastor now — how do you feel about the whole simple church concept?