Well, I can say I have been extremely busy. I just got back from a trip to Istanbul last night. I will be leaving today for a conference in Greensboro. My church is planting another church near Boston College so I have become the lead pastor at “the mother church”. I have been developing our leadership at our church and have asked three new people to come on staff. I have been dating a girl for 3 and a half months now. I am preparing for a mission trip to Tokyo next week. I will be moving into my own apartment next month. Like I said, I have been busy.

None of that is to make excuses for not posting on this blog and I’m sure many of you will look back through the first paragraph and say something about my lack of blogging being about the girl. Honestly, I am trying to figure out how to balance my time. I want to keep things in perspective and I view this blog as important for me to express my ideas specifically about church planting. I know that there have been several people express their gratitude for a blog like this and so I want to be consistent with my writing for my own benefit and if it is of benefit to others I hope you will join the conversation.

I want to get things started again by asking a question. I will preface the question with something I have encountered and have been thinking a lot about over the past two years. I probably won’t get much response to this post because most of my regulars have given up on me.

I have been thinking a lot about house churches. God has given me a vision of where we need to be as a church here in Boston and it’s not house churches…at least not in the way that I am hearing about them. I am hearing some really good things and some not so good things and just because I haven’t been led to do the house church thing doesn’t mean I think they are completely wrong ideologically or that no one should do it that way.

Actually, I believe the most important aspect of our church is our time spent in the homes. We have weekly Community Groups that are for the purpose of fellowship and following Christ together with a smaller group of believers. My vision is that those CG’s would be the first priority. Of course, there are people that come to our church that either understand that or they don’t and the ones who don’t are probably coming with their ideas that our Sunday night large gathering is the first priority…at least for them. And that’s fine, the vision doesn’t happen over night. Anyway, the point is, our church engages in “house church” without neglecting the regular gathering together of the ekklesia in our area. My concern is that in our effort to do something different that will connect with the next generation we will abandon some very important aspects of the church.

Another issue I have is that there are 300,000 university students in Boston. There are 16 million in the US. Very few countries in the world DON’T have a student studying in the US and the nations of the world are sending their very best to study here. As a church that is intentionally reaching out to college students, I believe there is a great harvest. I know the result of house churches is supposed to be multiplication…the very thing that we are doing in our church…but is that theory or practice. Is that happening with the house churches in the US? Is that happening in Boston? Jesus says that the harvest is plentiful, and I don’t want you to think that I judge success by numbers, but shouldn’t we be praying for a bountiful harvest? I believe there should be growth and, yes, even large numbers. The house churches that are isolated from one another, are they really New Testament in their concept? What is the glue that holds these groups together.

For us, our Community Groups are basically house churches and I want that to be emphasized above everything that we do as a church, but our larger gatherings are like the glue that keeps us together in the larger community. I’m not really making a big point here. I’ve just given you some brief thoughts about this question I have and I would like to hear your thoughts on the matter. Any questions. Any comments. I hope after such a long absence you haven’t given up on me being a part of the blogging world.

Related Posts:
Why College Students?
Students Reaching Students