Stories inspire more stories.

We can talk about house churches at Renew and how significant they are to our faith community – or we can tell you stories that are emerging from these Jesus communities.

Here are three stories that are worth telling:

1. One of our Lansdale house churches has committed to starting a community garden where the community is invited to participate. The produce from the garden will mostly go towards supplying our local food pantries with fresh, healthy and locally grown foods. They’ve identified land and are in the process of making this happen! They’ve just started a blog at http://lansdalegarden.blogspot.com

2. Kids are an important part of our community. A couple on our launch team that serve as house church shepherds (and are parents to two young children) told me that a few weeks ago their three year old daughter decided to stop “playing house” and instead decided to start “playing house church” and invited her mommy to sit down on the floor because she was about to start teaching. Even our children are picking up the importance of smaller Jesus communities and their role in our lives!

3. One of our house churches utilizes a prayer journal regularly to track what they pray for each week.

This recent entry is from a new Christian.

God,

Thank you for this House Church! I am so blessed to be a part of this group and witness all the love that continues to grow between each of us. “What is Love?” is starting to be a question that brings to mind several memories of various prayers, conversations, gestures, etc. involving all of the people in our HC. For all the nights that I have been timid and silent during our group prayers, please allow these friends to understand how much I care for them. And God, please allow them to see how much goodness they are bringing into my life.

“So, how exactly do house churches at Renew operate?”

We get this question quite often.

Each house church operates on what we call a “monthly grid.”

What we’re trying to do is provide some helpful direction and embed some strategic DNA without over-structuring the process.

What we don’t want to do is hand each house church shepherd a 1200 page manual and force them to work through it for the next 14 months before they become a leader of a house church. Instead, we provide our house church shepherds hands-on practical training and give just a few “rails to run on” and turn them loose. We encourage each house church to develop its own “personality” while still embracing and living out the values of the kingdom in the context of Renew’s unique expressions.

We give each house church a grid that includes only three things:

1. Exploring (2x/month) – each house church meets in someone’s living room to explore the Scriptures together to learn more about the Story of God and Man and discover what role we have to play in that ever expanding and unfolding Story. These times also include discussion and storytelling, a time in prayer, singing (if people in the house church are musically talented). Many house churches regularly share a meal together (where everyone pitches in and contributes). One house church is discussing Genesis, another is studying Mark and another is exploring poverty in Scripture & our response to it as followers of Jesus.

During the exploring time we encourage our house church shepherds to explore a passage and ask five questions:

(1) What’s going on in the passage?
(2) What do you like about this passage?
(3) What do you not like about this passage?
(4) What does this say about the character of God/Jesus?
(5) How can I/we apply this our lives very specifically and practically – within the next seven days?

2. Serving (1x/month) – each house church has ‘”adopted” a place where they are serving on mission beyond themselves in the name of Jesus. This could be a family, an organization, an elementary school, the needs of their own neighborhood block or another organization working to meet people’s needs. Specifically some of our house churches have adopted Manna on Main, the local chapter of Habitat for Humanity, a group home for mentally handicapped individuals, and a family that is struggling to make ends meet. Last week one house church served in the inner-city (Kensington) with Urban Hope while another house church served by collecting and donating 820 pounds of fresh produce for four area food pantries.

3. Celebrating (1x/month) – each house church hosts a party once a month. While this may sound strange, we feel it’s an important part of being the body of Christ. While followers of Jesus are seldom accused of throwing great parties or being known for being celebratory people, we should have a reputation for this! Jesus described the kingdom of God as a party (Mk 14:15-24). We believe that to be the people of God it is essential in understanding and expressing the hope that we have. We also believe that relational connection is essential for building strong communities – where we know others and are known by others. These parties could be the Super Bowl, a picnic at the park, hosting a Wine Tasting party, playing board games, attending a Phillies game together – whatever. It could be a lot of planning or very little. It can be a trip somewhere or in someone’s home. It doesn’t matter – as long as there is laughter and celebration and connection happening, we don’t care! We also believe this is a great time to invite others who are skeptical about church to come and join us as we have no other agenda other than to hang out, spend time together and party.

At the end of each month we ask each house church shepherd: “Did your house church explore (twice), serve (at least once) and celebrate (at least once) this month?”

Each house church can choose their own personal rhythm – when they meet (i.e. it could be every Tuesday night at 7 pm or they could change it up every single week…they can operate on a set schedule or change up the order of the grid each month. It’s simple enough that they choose what that looks like for their house church).   Certainly, they can meet more than that if they wish, but we ask that they develop a rhythm that involves these three areas.

We believe that this “monthly grid” is simple.  These rails to run on allow our house churches to be biblical, personal, portable (or reproducible) and viral.  It’s flexible and allows each house church to have its own personality.  And it’s been fun to see each house church’s personality emerge!

You don’t have to be spiritual.
You don’t have to a follower of Jesus.
You don’t have to have it all together.
In fact our only rule is that no perfect people are allowed.

Interested in knowing more about house churches or want to consider being involved in one?
Contact Tracy at tracycommons@gmail.com

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”
       -words of Jesus found in Matthew 11:28-30 (The Message)

There are a lot of exciting events happening in the month of April.
If you’re looking for ways to get involved with Renew or serve in and around the Lansdale community, don’t miss out on the following opportunities:

Wednesday April 1 :: 7 pm – Lansdale Farmer’s Market Meeting at the North Penn Community Health Foundation in the Walton Conference Room (1st floor). See Calendar for details.

Saturday April 4 :: 10 am – Railroad Plaza Cleanup (meet at the Kugel Ball near the Train Station)

Monday April 6 :: 7:30 pm – Doubt Night (Third and Walnut Bar and Grille)

Friday April 10 :: 4 pm - Good Friday Prayer Labyrinth + Reflection Experience (Stony Creek Park, Lansdale)

Tuesday April 14 – Manna on Main – Meal of the Month

Saturday, April 18 at 10 am to 12pm – Prayer Experience (Meet at Kugel Ball Park and disperse in prayer) Download the flyer to distribute here.

Sunday, April 19 at 10 am – Public Gathering at Marjeane’s Catering (corner of Broad and Hancock)

Saturday April 25 :: 12:30 – 3pm – Forum on Suburban Poverty (Lansdale Library Meeting Room)

Want more information?
Contact us at info@renewcommunity.org

Many of you have asked us – for quite some time now – “Do you have online giving available for Renew?”
Good news: we have been working on a secure online giving opportunity for quite some time and now it is available.
Check out the “Donate Now” button at the bottom right of our homepage if you would like to make a donation to Renew.

Thom Rainier in his book Simple Church said: “Every church should be able to say: this is how we intend to make disciples of Jesus.”
The truth is that most churches can’t articulate their clear intention to develop disciples.

The launch team of Renew is spending time discussing what our intentions are to make disciples/apprentices/learners of Jesus.
We believe we must be clear about how we intend to live out the Great Commission.
We’re asking questions like:
What does the process look like of becoming more like Jesus?
How do we work with intention in helping people become more devoted followers of Jesus without over-programming it?
How can we cultivate an environment where disciples are produced in order to produce further disciples?

Nobody just drifts into Christ-likeness.
Nobody wakes up one morning and says, “Wow, I’m not sure how it happened, but I guess I’m more like Jesus now.”
It happens with intentionality, purpose and discipline.
We’re calling this process spiritual formation.
Its the life-long process of working with the Holy Spirit, entering into rhythms and postures
for God to do his work in us to make us more Jesus-ish.

This past week we looked at 1 Timothy 4:8-15, noting that we enter into our spiritual training in much the same way that we enter into physical training. If you’ve ever joined a gym and worked out, you know that you experience soreness, but with consistency and discipline over time you begin to see growth and progress. Paul writes that this spiritual process happens in one’s life when our faith is evidenced in five areas: how I speak, live, love, trust in God and approach purity and holiness.

But what does progress look like? How do we know we’re growing? While its not objective and easily measurable, progress is the main purpose. From time to time, our launch team meetings begin by asking three important questions and discussing them together.
(1) where did we see God at work this week?
(2) how did we join God this week?
(3) how did we resist God this week?

Spiritual formation happens each week when we choose to join God more and resist him less.

So, practically and specifically, how does Renew intend to make disciples of Jesus?
We see four potential areas where we’re formed and shaped to be more like Jesus. We’re in the process of discussing these four areas of potential growth:
(1) our individual lives
(2) groupings of 2-3 people
(3) involvement in one of our house churches
(4) our public communal gatherings (scheduled to start up this spring)

We’ve spent time discussing what that looks like in our house churches.
We’ve spent time discussing what that will look like in our public communal gatherings.
We plan on discussing what that looks like in smaller groupings of people.
And this past weekend we focused on the individual element of our spiritual formation.

Each launch team member has committed to engaging in four personal practices on a daily basis.

(1) Scripture:
We engage with the God of the Bible by reading the Scriptures and asking five foundational questions.
-What is happening in the passage?
-What do I like about what I read?
-What do I not like about what I read?
-What does this tell me about the character of God/Jesus?
-How can I apply this specifically – in the next seven days?

(2) Prayer (in its various forms).

(3) Blessing others:
Every day we ask this question: “Who can I bless beyond myself today in the name of Jesus?”

(4) Work:
We see our work as being sacred, providing opportunities to be missionaries cleverly disguised as salesmen and teachers and stay at home moms and bankers and students. 1 Thess 4 says: “You should mind your own business and work with your hands so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders…”

These four rhythms help us to focus on being inward (our internal soul keeping), outward (serving and blessing others) and upward (our response to God, called worship).

If you missed the article that was published in The Reporter this week about Renew, be sure to check it out here.