House Church

I'm biased. I realize it and I'm not afraid to admit it.

I love house church. I love everything about it.

I love the fun things and the messy, hard, real family member things. Like tough conversations, like confessing our sins, like not playing church but being the church.

I also love the spontaneity of house church.

We are going into our fall season and the weather has been amazing the last few days. Every day has been around 84 (29 C) and around 66 (19C) at night. Every day has been the same and it's been perfect.

Benay thought it would be a good idea to have house church at the city's botanical garden today.

So a couple of days ago she started making some phone calls to the people in our house church. She also invited another house church. They in turn decided to come and invited some people who aren't a part of a church family as well as people from another church.

God's creation just naturally flowed in the conversation during worship. The songs just plugged in to the conversations about life and God. We prayed together, out loud while standing and holding hands. We shared the Lord's supper and then we all shared a meal together.

After our worship a visitor told me the only reason she came was because it was outside in the nature. If it is inside she usually doesn't want to be a part of it. She told me if we had another worship time outside then she would be there.

As we ate lunch I thought about how good our time was and how this is how God's family should be. Everybody was told to bring food for their own families as we were going to have a picnic after our praise time. Everyone shared everything they brought. There was no "this is for my family" mentality. People brought extra and gave to those that had none.

As I looked around I thought how really close this was to God's kingdom.

We were outside praising God for the outside that He made. We were a group of Brasilians, Americans and Germans. We were a group of men, women and kids. We were a group of white people and black people. We were a group of single people and married people. We were a group of recovering alcoholics and drug addicts. We were a group of biracial marriages. We were God's family.

And it was amazing.