Just one little example of Christian house meetings August 26, 2008
Posted by Zack in Missouri , trackbackHouse gatherings are a major feature of today’s evangelical/born again culture. House meetings are such a broad and diverse phenomenon in the church that it’s impossible to generalize about them. There is also some controversy about house meetings, or “house church,” and how to do them (and whether to do them). Some point out that house meetings were the first kind of Christian church. Others say that Christian communities need the guidance of formal organization. Some (perhaps most) say both are necessary.
Here’s one little glimpse at how one group of young Christians gathers and thinks about its gatherings. This email came from a new friend in Kansas City this morning. He and an overlapping group also gather at his house after church on Sunday evenings for a meal, conversation and the occasional card game, guitar jam or review of the latest dense theological book that Tim is reading. Here they’re restarting another kind of gathering after a summer break:
Greetings and hello and hey,
This Thursday, after a nice long summer hiatus, our group will be starting up our weekly Conversations meeting again. We’ll meet at 7 at the Freak Show (Sam and Adam’s apartment (since it’s centrally located, and not to far from public transport)) at 7. Bring something to contribute to delicious sandwich making. After eating, we’ll take communion, sing a song or two, and then pray for about an hour. It’s pretty laid-back, eyes-open, conversation kind of praying. We follow a basic structure of praying from large-scale things down to small-scale things. Hope to see you there.
Peace to you,
Timothy.PS. I’m culling from a pretty old list, and adding some new people, so please let me know if you don’t want to get any more emails on stuff like this.
By the way, you may have noticed that the posts on this blog are now rotating between three types:
- posts that engage Christians,
- posts that seek to explain aspects of born again Christian culture to people outside of that culture,
- and posts that have something to say to both audiences.
I’m saying this because the Christian audience will find this post absurd because I’m reporting something that is so commonplace to them. Timothy, who wrote the email, for example says:
Heh. Always cracks me up to think of our group in these terms. Feel free to post the email if you think it illustrates. It’s just another email to me. Tell all you’d like about us. We’re just trying to live in the moment, and live where we are, so if it’s of interest, that’s fine.
Timothy: I assure you that this kind of thing is fascinating to many people who are outside of any born again Christian culture.
One thing that many (including myself) will want some more info on: What is prayer all about? What do you pray for? Who do you pray for? What do you think prayer accomplishes? Why pray for anything when you say you believe that God has his own plan that we can’t really understand? How do you feel when you’re praying—and after? What effect does prayer have on your group/community?
And here’s a silly but vexing question from me: Why close your eyes when you pray? Why is there this feeling in church that you’re being seditious if you open your eyes while praying? What does it mean in Timothy’s group’s case when he says, “open eyed prayer?”
Tags: house church, Prayer, small groups
Comments»
Prayer comments:
1) Closing your eyes - to help you concentrate, to teach children to pay attention and not play, to help you imagine you are talking directly to God. Personally I pray with my eyes open most of the time in smaller groups or when I am alone, but often with my eyes closed in larger groups because I get too distracted.
2) Why pray - I think there are several reasons, a) because we follow the example of Jesus and others in scripture that talked to God, b) to share our joys and concerns with God, not because he does not know, but to give voice to them, c) to hear from God. Hearing from God may sound a bit mystical but especially when working in a group I find that nothing bonds a group together and focuses their work more than prayer. I am not talking about quick 30 second blessing before a meeting, but serious prayer where you spend hours praying through scripture, seeking God for a specific reason, praying for or over a member of the group that is in pain for one reason or another.
Other thoughts on prayer: I personally get frustrated by the grocery list prayers, where someone just rattles off all of the concerns that anyone could possibly have. When we do that, there is no time for the community to come in agreement with the prayer. When I lead small group prayer I try to ask people to pray in single thoughts/topics. Then ask others to join in around that thought or topic until it is clear that we are ready to move on and there has been some open space. Then the next person can pray their thought or topic. I also tend to ask people to pray their requests instead of spending the first 30 or 45 minutes of an hour of prayer sharing and then only having time for a few minutes of prayer at the end.
If you want to participate in long form prayer (several day events) that really have influenced me as I pray and lead others to pray go to a Prayer Summit. www.prayersummits.net is a groups that helps to facilitate prayer summits. These are geographically based gatherings for 3 or 4 days of usually pastors and/or para-church leaders where they come together to build community, seek God for the community, and be refreshed and encouraged.
I often have my eyes open when praying, and much of the early art depicting members of the church at prayer showed them with open eyes as well. I think it’s just a matter of personal preference. For many, closing their eyes helps them to focus better. For (perhaps more) others, it’s just how they were taught.
I think the most basic reason to pray is because we are told to
We are commanded several times in the Bible to pray, just as Jesus prayed to God the Father. I think it’s because our purpose in this life is fellowship with God, and we do that through communication with Him.
“In the spiritual life, the word “discipline” means “the effort to create some space in which God can act.” Discipline means to prevent everything in your life from being filled up. Discipline means that somewhere you’re not occupied, and certainly not preoccupied. In the spiritual life, discipline means to create that space in which something can happen that you hadn’t planned or counted on.”
–Henri Nouwen
Prayer is probably the oldest and most simplest form of insanity that human beings have ever engaged in. It starts with the mere premise that there actually is someone out there; that it’s not just make believe, not imaginary, but really, really, real. And, yeah, from any other perspective, it’s insanity.
So, when we pray, we seek that someone. We listen. We watch. We hope. And then, we experience ‘what we hadn’t planned or counted on’. But it isn’t an on/off thing. You don’t ‘pray’ once and then something happens (that would be planning for it, wouldn’t it?). It’s more like watching the sun rise. At 5am it’s dark, 5:01 still dark, 5:05 not as dark, and so on. As you continue to pray, both chronologically and seasonally, something is illuminated that you weren’t expecting.
Why is this experience different from those outside the christian culture? My guess is that they are hoping only in what they have planned and the unplanned is a little terrifying.
Adam said that prayer “starts with the mere premise that there actually is someone out there; that it’s not just make believe, not imaginary, but really, really, real.”
This needs qualification (not necessarily correction). Prayer wasn’t invented as some naive or idealistic reaction against atheism or positivistic rationalism. Prayer only seems “insane” to those constituted by those rather recent developments in human thought. Prayer has always been a part of human existence, and there is no empirical or historical evidence (nor could there be) for the rationalist doctrine that prayer is reducible to the expression of something like a primitive human need to transcend the horrifying limits of reality. Thus, in an important sense, prayer does NOT start with the “premise that there actually is someone out there.” That premise is self-conscious; it is aware that it exists in tension with the (supposedly) more natural premise that there isn’t anything out there. Prayer simply starts. When children are taught to pray, they are not taught to pray because “God is someone out there who listens to our prayers and answers them.” Children are simply taught to pray, and from the practice of prayer they infer that information about God. Put differently, prayer is not the logical next step after belief in God has been established; rather, who and what we understand/believe God to be is wrapped up in the practice of prayer.
This is not merely a quibble of semantics. This serves to show that prayer as a practice is logically prior to conscious reflection on the belief system that the practice of prayer entails, which in turn serves to show how basic and completely natural prayer is in the life of the believer. There is nothing mysterious about it; praying when we’re needy is as natural as eating when we’re hungry. Christians are not people who happen to pray. Christians are a praying people.
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Why do people pray? Most of this is conjecture and imagination but here’s what I see.
Man did not find God. Unless God initiated the contact Man was oblivious. God started the whole thing, God found Man, God made himself known. When Man came to his senses and realized that what just happened to him was something of the divine he tried to respond. That response was prayer.
All this to say, you do not start praying because you want to find God. You start praying because God found you.