Bridging the Gap between the Mega and the Micro Church at the 2009 House 2 House Church Conference, Dallas, Texas

Bridging the Gap between the MACRO and the MICRO CHURCH

While there were many streams flowing in the conference I felt that the overarching aim of Tony Dale and the House 2 House team was to allow some mega-churches to demonstrate how the gap is being bridged between the mega and the micro. There were several mega-churches represented that are involved with house/simple church.
Austin Stone in Austin, Texas. They form what they call missional communities which you can check out in more detail on their site. http://www.austinstone.org/what/missional_communities/
From their site: “Missional CommunityThe Austin Stone is a network of Missional Communities – small groups of people joined by a common cause or centered in a specific community who live life together intentionally, throughout the week. Missional community is the primary way to connect with others at The Austin Stone and pursue life on mission.”
-They shared how they are reaching out to unreached peoples in the community through simple church and they are seeing a growing desire of these followers of Christ to return to their birth nations with the Good News of Jesus Christ. 

APEX Church, Dayton Ohio
This is a Southern Baptist Church that is dedicated to making disicples through house churches. In the conference they pointed out that they are small churches that meet together in a large gathering and backed this up by stating that the Lord’s Supper is eatten in the house churches and not the large gathering. Some 60% of those who attend the large gathering are involved in the house churches.  http://apexcommunity.org/who-we-are/house-churches/ This page sates, “

Who We Are

A Network of House Churches

We operate as a network of house churches because we believe that they are a great environment for discipleship. Plain and simple. Being smaller, they allow disciples of Christ to be the church in ways that you simply can’t in a large gathering. The New Testament lists over 50 “one another’s” in which the church ought to be active. Love one another. Encourage each other. Serve one another. We simply cannot live life together as the church without opportunity to do these things… and these things simply don’t happen when the church remains a sea of anonymous people.”  This Southern Baptist Church is made up of house churches that gather together in a large group meeting. Check out their site.

Northland, Longwood, Florida
They call themselves “A Church Distributed”
This page of the churches site gives a lot of info. Check it out.
http://www.northlandchurch.net/about/

As I mentioned the theme was bridging the gap between the mega and the micro. House 2 House did a good job bringing several churches that are solid examples of MEGA using house/simple church ideas. The debate over this idea will not be going away any time soon. I did feel it was helpful to begin to focus energies where they need to be. Too often we fight one another rather than the ENEMY of us all. After all, “Jesus said, if they they are not against us they are for us……

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Some Resources off of Apex’s resource page

Apex site reads, “Many of these books have been influential in the life of Apex as we seek to be obedient to the commands of Jesus as the church. They challenge us to see the church for what God intends it to be, rather than what we may assume by our own experience.”

Brothers We Are Not Professionals by Jon Piper

A Church Every Half Mile by Jon Zens

Vintage Church by Mark Driscoll

Organic Church by Neil Cole

Houses That Change the World by Wolfgang Simson

Paul’s Idea of Community by Robert Banks

ReImagining Church by Frank Viola

Nexus: The World House Church Movement Reader by Rad Zdero

Loving God’s Way by Gary DeLashmutt

Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Life in Community by Deitrich Bonhoeffer
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Some online resources indicated by APEX are worth checking out as well.

Christ in Ya’ll by Neil Carter
http://www.christinyall.com/download.html

Porn Again Christian by Mark Driscoll
http://relit.org/porn_again_christian/toc.php

Bethany: The Lord’s Desire for His Church by Frank Viola
http://www.ptmin.org/bethany.pdf

Pastor Dad: Scriptural Insights on Fatherhood by Mark Driscoll
http://relit.org/pastordad/toc.php

Fight Clubs: Gospel Centered Discipleship by Jonathan Dodson
http://theresurgence.com/files/Fight%20Clubs%20by%20Jonathan%20Dodson.pdf

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Church Multiplication Associates (CMA) & CMAResources exist to support and encourage church multiplication movements by developing new resources focused on reproducing disciples, leaders, churches and movements from the place where you’re planted and finishing at the ends of the earth.

www.ptmin.org
Welcome to Present Testimony Ministry. We are dedicated to the centrality and supremacy of the Lord Jesus Christ, the restoration of God’s eternal purpose, and the organic expression of the church.

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This portion of the Conference was specifically for those leading a house church or a network of house churches and focused upon bridging the gap between the micro and macro. There certainly are a lot of misunderstanding out there. Part of this is due to the fact that each house church is unique. It is not a movement that has a single person at its head or has a single expression of church (the way it looks is what I am getting at here) so it is in this sense hard to describe. That is not a criticism though. Rather, that is just the way it is. I enjoyed this portion although it left me with many more questions than we had the time or format to deal with. It was a good beginning to bridging the gap.

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