Many of you have been asking what our new church looks like - i.e. "What is a House Church, anyway?" We answered most of those questions with a short and limited description - one that is somewhat vague due to the fact that we haven't even begun to get involved in a House Church (HC) yet. Many of our own questions will be answered as we begin to be a part of a HC in the next several weeks.

In the mean time, I'd encourage any readers out there to get a hold of a great book that I just finished reading this morning - "Houses That Change the World - the Return of the House Churches" by Wolfgang Simson. Simson does a great job of explaining the rise of the house church and cell church movements in recent days and putting forth a challenge to the reader that the Great Commission will only find its resolution within such a movement. It is a very easy read and very challenging. I want to share just a few paragraphs of the final chapter which hit on what the youth pastor at Bridgeway spoke about yesterday and a subject that God has been leading me in within the last several months - the idea of community with the Christian life. These paragraphs take it a step further and relate community to the task of discipling the nations...

It is part of the God-given task of the local church to 'disciple the nations.' Many of us are familiar with discipling one or two people; but how do you disciple a village, a street, a city, a region, a people group or a nation?

How did Jesus disciple people? He invited everyone, and chose some to be His special apostles. Then He shared His life with them, literally showed them how to live, how to die, and how to do the 'works of God.' The result was a mixed people movement: some followed Him, some rejected Him, and all knew about Him.

A disciple of Jesus follows his master in community with other disciples. Jesus never identified Himself fully with any one Christian, but He identifies Himself with 'the church,' His body on earth. An individual Christian cannot therefore bring 'the full gospel;' the local church can. The individual Christian 'knows in part,' is a member but not a representation of the full body. An individual Christian may act on behalf of Jesus as an 'ambassador of Christ' in a special mission or task. But every believer is ultimately 'dead to himself and alive in Christ.' The new life in the spirit is corporate, not individual. This is important, because it means that the place to disciple people is the local church.

This then has a further important consequence: the way to disciple the nations is through multiplying churches until we have enough of them. No evangelism nor Bible study nor discipleship programme, no matter how excellent and sound, will ever achieve what only the local body of believers can do: to disciple each other and their neighbourhood in real life, teach each other how to live in spirit and truth, change each other's values and lifestyles, offer accountability, correction, love, grace and forgiveness, and be an ongoing mutual encouragement to each other. Only this will make Jesus transparent to each other and the world around us, so that people will not only hear and read about, but truly 'see and understand' (Rom. 15:21) the gospel, so that all may know and see what there is to know and see about Jesus.