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Editors Note:

Every day new visitors are coming to our site. In order to expose them to some of our best articles, and to create fresh discussion among those of us who have been active on the site a long time, we will from time to time repost an past article like this one. This article has been a favorite of many people. We invite you to read it for the first time or read it again. Take a moment to add your thoughts and commentary and let's learn together how we can honor and magnify Jesus and join Him in building His kingdom.

Word on the street is that people out there are tired of organized religion. Rather, they are longing for a genuine connection with "the supernatural" and with a community of friends.

In my normal time with the Lord one morning, Jesus spoke to me--not an audible voice, just that thought from nowhere that I've learned is often the way he speaks to me.

"Walk Oltorf Street," was what he seemed to say.

I would like to tell you that I immediately obeyed him, but that would not be true. It took me about two months, and it was only because a Texan summer was fast approaching that I finally obeyed what I had sensed him say.

A few months later, Tony (my husband) and I happened to be driving along Oltorf Street. We had some time to spare.

"Let's prayer walk Springfield," Tony suggested.

So we parked the car well away from the housing project and walked past the "Loitering is forbidden" sign at the entrance. We prayed as we walked. Suddenly, there was a huge downpour. The heavens just opened.

There was no way we could make it back to the car without getting drenched, so we ran for shelter  under a balcony where there were two middle-aged Hispanic ladies sitting in lawn chairs. As we chatted with them, they asked what we were doing there.

"We're praying for this neighborhood," we said.

Editors Note:
Every day new visitors are coming to our site. In order to expose them to some of our best articles, and to create fresh discussion among those of us who have been active on the site a long time, we will from time to time repost an past article like this one. This article has been a favorite of many people. We invite you to read it for the first time or read it again. Take a moment to add your thoughts and commentary and let's learn together how we can honor and magnify Jesus and join Him in building His kingdom.

When teaching about the organic church, a question I am asked more than any other is how we handle the threat of heresy. I understand this concern and want to address it in an intelligent and articulate manner because it is very important. The organic church movement is not going to last if we simply ignore the challenges it faces. But I also believe that the issues that are raised in response to our movement can find solutions that are not only satisfactory but even better alternatives to the way the church has addressed these issues in the past. If the organic church movement is not a move forward toward better health and wholeness, then it is not worth pursuing at all.

When God answered Rosa's prayers in such a clear way, we asked Rosa:

"Would you be willing to bring together some of your family and friends to hear about this Jesus who has been answering your prayers?"

Rosa jumped at the idea. But that same day, she introduced us to a friend who lived four doors down.

"You'll like her," Rosa told us. "She's a Christian just like you are."

Some call them house churches. Some call them organic churches. Some call them simple churches. We prefer to just call them churches. They are rapidly multiplying, simple communities of believers, meeting in homes, offices, campuses, wherever God is moving. This is the pattern common to many parts of the globe, and is now becoming more and more common in the U.S. as well.

In Alcoholics Anonymous, The 12 Steps are read out loud at every meeting.

For those of us who are still in detox from programmatic Christianity, there is value in repeating what we have said before:  the simple church revolution (reformation?) is not about doing conventional church in a home. It's not "Honey, I shrunk the church!"  It's not 20 minutes of singing, 30 minutes of Bible study, 10 minutes of prayer and then refreshments.  (Or, any other prepackaged way of meeting.)

"OK.  If it's not about that, what is it about?"

I sometimes think the Lord gave us the experience with Rosa and starting church in the projects because it so closely parallels Luke 10.

In Luke 10:1, Jesus commissions 72 disciples to go ahead of him in pairs to all the towns and places he plans to visit. Jesus had a strategy for the area--the disciples had to listen to his instructions, go where he told them and he would follow.

Jesus told me very specifically which street to walk because he planned to visit Springfield. My job was to hear him and obey.

The ability to hear God's voice  is vital if we are going to be on mission with God. He has plans for the area where you live. As you listen to him, he will give you a place to pray for, or put a person on your heart. Maybe he will say to you, "Get chatting with the person next to you in the grocery line--she needs to hear from me today." Or maybe he will put a people group on your heart--you will find yourself with an unaccountable burden to pray for skateboarders, or students, or the elderly. 

When we started a church in the low income housing projects, the first thing we did was to prepare the ground in prayer.

In Matthew 12, Jesus gives an illustration in his defense against an attack by the Pharisees. They accused him of casting out demons by the power of the devil. He replied, "How can anyone enter the strong man's house and carry off his property unless he first binds the strong man? And then he will plunder his goods." (verse 29)

If we are going to transition from church-as-we-know-it (a box) to a dynamic Spirit-filled movement, we will also have to transition from leadership-as-we-know-it to something else.

Alan Creech says the WHOLE thing has to be reinvented:

I mean full-time, paid staff pastors who preach every Sunday and do pretty much all the ministry and stress themselves silly over every little thing in the community. I think this will kill us if we keep this up. It's beginning to happen, but we've really got to re-envision what it means to be a pastor, leader, elder, whatever in our new churches. I don't think we can afford to keep the old pastoral paradigm alive any more. We can't do that and expect to happen what we want to happen in these communities.