In the Eye of the Storm: God is Building His Church

In The Eye of the Storm

Part I printer friendly
The First Phase of the Church
The Spiritual Family Concept

Chapter 2

Belonging to a Spiritual Family

People today, psychologists and sociologists tell us, struggle with an intense sense of loneliness. They strive to find meaning in relationships, but hurt and frustrated desires result in increased alienation from others.

It does not have to be true of Christian believers. When a new Christian is born again, he is born into the family of God. "You are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God " (Ephesians 2:19). As part of a new spiritual family, he is able to be nurtured and cared for just as a natural baby is nurtured and trained by his parents. He is accepted and loved, fully and unconditionally.

The early Christians understood this love as they responded to the message of Jesus. Scriptures say that; "Now the multitude of those who believed were of one heart and one soul; neither did anyone say that any of the things he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common. And with great power the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And great grace was upon them all" (Acts 4:32-33). These people loved each other! Possessions were no longer important, love was!

With a visible, Christlike love for each other, they met house to house (Acts 20:20). Within a small group family setting, they were loved and trained. In these secure family relationships meeting from house to house, the early church could easily accommodate all those who were being added daily to the church. Larry Kreider, in his book House to House, describes the importance of being trained within a spiritual family setting,

We believe that some Christians never really grow to their full potential in God because they never had a spiritual father or mother to invest their life in them. Jesus invested the three years of His earthly ministry in the lives of twelve men. It was the most valuable time He spent on this planet: fathering His spiritual children.

New Christians desperately need spiritual families. True spiritual leaders are willing to be spiritual fathers or mothers to young Christians. One of the pastors who serves one of our local congregations told me recently that when he received Christ in his mid‑twenties, a 77-year-old man from his church took him under his wing and discipled him It made all the difference for this future pastor's spiritual maturity.

Home cell groups are a part of God^'s plan to establish spiritual families for the harvest of new believers who are going to be birthed into the kingdom of God in the coming days. New parents seldom feel equipped. They learn by doing. It may be scary to take the step of faith to become a spiritual father or mother to someone the Lord brings into your life. But it is a step of obedience that will bring eternal benefits.

Emily, a young girl from our church and only a young Christian herself, started to witness to Debbie, a mother whose children Emily baby-sat. When Debbie, a Jewess, accepted Jesus, Emily took her along to her cell group. Cell members introduced Debbie to Jean, a mature Christian willing to spend extra time with Debbie explaining scriptures, encouraging her and simply being a friend. When Debbie's Jewish parents disowned her for becoming a Christian, Jean and the cell group helped Debbie through those early difficult months. Over the next year or two, Jean discipled Debbie, rejoicing with her as God brought her victoriously through spiritual and physical crisis. Debbie^'s spiritual journey started when a young Christian took a step of faith and shared Jesus, then God provided a more mature Christian (along with a "spiritual family" or cell group) to invest time in Debbie's life to help her along the way.

When people feel loved and accepted in a family group, an outpouring of this love will spill out into the world. They will be concerned for those who never heard the good news and will want to tell others of the hope only Jesus can bring. Not satisfied to keep the good news to themselves, they will also reach out to become "disciple makers." They will make disciples out of people so more disciples can be reproduced.

A disciple is a person who learns to live the life his teacher lives. Soon he begins to teach others to live the life he lives. House fellowships, house churches, or cell groups provide an ideal setting for disciples to be made and for spiritual families to grow and mature together.

House Fellowships: Vessels to Fulfill the Great Commission

In II Kings 4:1-7 we read about a distraught widow who appealed to the prophet Elisha to help save her two sons from being taken by their creditor as slaves. Elisha instructed her to borrow all the containers (vessels) she could from her neighbors. From the last vessel of oil in her house, she started pouring and proceeded to fill all of the vessels she had borrowed! When the last vessel was filled, the oil stopped.

Are we going to prepare new vessels (cell groups) that will be flexible and have the potential to expand and grow indefinitely while they embrace new believers and nurture them? Or will we insist on using old, traditional methods which are limiting in scope and often reach a "growth ceiling?"

From a historical context, the cell group movement is nothing new. Jim Egli of North Star Strategies says,

The New Testament church also met in homes. As early as the account in Acts chapter two, we see both large and small group contexts. The believers met ^"in the temple courts" and "in their homes" as "the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved" (2:46-47). Throughout church history a similar pattern emerges—in the Anabaptist movement of the 16th century, the Methodist movement of the 18th century, and in the Charismatic movement of our generation, small groups have been the basis for outreach and discipleship. But the magnitude of what is emerging today is astonishing and it is gaining momentum. In a wide variety of cultures and settings, often unbeknownst to each other, cell groups are emerging with a passion to penetrate the world for Jesus Christ.

As you evaluate this movement, I encourage you to also evaluate yourself Do you have a sense that God wants to do a greater work in the world than has ever been done before? Are you wondering if there is a way for the church to empower every member for minis try and outreach as part of a supporting community? Are you willing to do whatever God asks to reach this generation with the love of Christ? ²

Although it is true that small group ministry is nothing new, the scope of this new form of church life emerging called "cell groups" is phenomenal. It is shaking the traditional church, and many are beginning to realize that radical changes are needed if the church can enter into her true destiny. Will we be ready with new vessels to contain the end time harvest? If we build according to God's plan, it is possible.

House Churches in Ethiopia

The cell movement is growing rapidly around the world. God is up to something. To illustrate, I want to share with you three areas of the world where cell ministry is growing by leaps and bounds—Ethiopia, Russia and China:

An exciting, modern-day example of a traditional church experiencing a great revival through cell groups and making many new disciples took place in Ethiopia. In 1982 half of all the evangelical churches in Ethiopia were closed due to harassment, legal banning, and persecution. The Meserete Kristos Church fell under a complete ban. All of their church buildings were seized and used for other purposes. Several of their prominent leaders were imprisoned for years without trial or accusation.

The church membership of that denomination at that time was approximately 5000 believers. The fires of persecution got hotter and hotter each year forcing them to go underground and meet in clandestine home groups. Nearly a decade later, the Marxist government fell. The same government leaders who closed the doors of the church buildings a few years before, led the procession of God's people back into the buildings. However, the church had grown "underground^" from 5000 to 50,000!

During persecution, these believers met from house to house in small groups. Hundreds of believers began to get involved in the work of ministry in those cell groups. They no longer were focusing on the church building or the programs of the church. Their time together was spent in prayer, reaching the lost, and in making disciples.

Focusing on Jesus and the church meeting from house to house takes our emphasis off of meetings and programs. We can focus on Jesus and the Great Commission. ³

House Churches in Russia

The spiritual need in this vast region of the world staggers the mind, but our God has a strategy. I have seen it firsthand in my many travels to Russia. Amidst overwhelming economic troubles and rampant alcoholism (statistics indicate that 60% of those in the work-force struggle with an alcohol problem), cell groups are exploding as people in a once atheist society turn to the living God. In 1992, I founded Home Fellowship Leaders, International, a nonprofit organization which supplies literature and training to cell group leaders worldwide. Within a year, we felt we had received a "Macedonian call" to Russia because the Russians were pleading, "Come and help us!" Our offices in Pennsylvania and Moscow started focusing and channeling our efforts into publishing, translating and distributing home cell group literature for Russia.

We can hardly keep up with the demand. Weekly we are inundated with letters like these:

Our church in Kurgan, from the group of seven people, became a church in which there are five groups of thirty people who attend regularly. I have three home groups a week and the material being sent by you is helping me a lot.

—South Central Russia near Kazakstan

There is no church in our village. No pastor. We are very thankful for your lessons and literature. We came to know Jesus Christ through you. Thank you for everything.

—Village near Yakutya, over 5,000 km from Moscow

When we gather together in the name of Jesus, the Lord is among us. Our group has already divided, new people are coming and God is doing miracles. One lady was unable to have children for twelve years, but God set her free from the curse and now we are "all" expecting a baby!

—Village near Mongolian border

Staffed by an American self-supporting missionary couple, the Moscow office resources hundreds of cell group leaders and churches across the Commonwealth of Independent States with regular lessons. Initial literature sent out tells how to start home cell groups, how to get people involved and how to be a spiritual family within the cell groups. The cell leader is then supplied with monthly Bible lessons, and he or she reports back monthly before receiving a new set of lessons.

A file is kept on each group, including a leader's personality profile. Knowing if the leader is inclined pastorally or evangelistically, for example, helps in giving counsel to the cells as they grow and multiply.

Up until recently, 95% of the Christian work in Russia has been evangelistic. Many evangelists realize they cannot possibly take care of all the people being saved if they try to do it within a traditional church setting. To illustrate, I know of an American evangelist who conducted an evangelistic crusade in Moscow where 8,000 young people turned out. During an altar call, 2,000 people responded!

These people were invited to a local church the following Sunday. On the first Sunday, out of the 2,000 people saved, 60 showed up at the church service. The next Sunday only 6 returned. The third Sunday, one lonely soul saved at the crusade showed up. By the fourth Sunday, no one who had been saved at the evangelistic crusade was at the church service. What a tragedy!

What can be done about so many new Christians needing to be cared for and virtually no follow-up ministry available? First of all, I believe this is a sad commentary on what happens when the body of Christ is not utilizing apostles, prophets, teachers, evangelists, overseers and so on in their proper place within the Body.

But we will talk more about this later in the following chapters. For now, let's look at the enormous advantage of home fellowship groups in helping to solve this problem.

If the young people saved at the evangelistic rally were given information on how to start cell groups themselves, they could go back to their communities all over Russia and begin to spread the Good News. I know of one evangelist with a university ministry in Russia who regularly teaches at his seminars the importance of the young people learning how to start cells and being discipled as they disciple others. He has already started 1,000 cells this way through the young people who are taking the gospel back to their home towns across Russia. It's working!

Cell groups allow regular people to immediately lead out as they are called of God. It's a heaven-sent way to operate. These local people are best able to reach and relate to their own particular culture.

Because cell ministry is carried on by Russian people, if religious freedom is taken away again, the groups can easily go ^-under-ground." The clandestine ability of the home groups, and the fact that people are not only saved but trained and discipled to reach others, is the great advantage of cell groups advancing God's kingdom in Russia.

Many in Russia are now realizing the benefits of the home fellowship vision because they see it working. There is a great need for cell training literature to be distributed to these leaders. It is not unusual for us to see one leader start 15-20 home groups in a few months' time.

And like many spiritual awakenings, most of these leaders are young people. Statistics in both Russia and China house fellowships claim that teenagers make up the largest percentage. We see young men and women of 15-30 years of age leading cells which are expanding and growing rapidly. What a joy it is to see God's Word falling on fertile soil and growing strong in people's hearts as the kingdom of our God is expanded and multiplied!

House Churches in China

Although the cell group movement is global and there are rapidly growing groups emerging on every continent, the movement in China must be the most remarkable. Reports have it that thousands are coming to Christ on the mainland every week, despite the new wave of repression since the communist hard-liners' return to power after the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Even so, committed Christians gather for prayer in one another's homes, copy Bibles and tracts by hand and circulate them among hundreds of worshipers. Christian workers usually have to be trained in secret. Underground Protestants recently passed the following message to Hong Kong Christians from a remote part of North China: "It is not unusual for us to have 40 to 50 people for a short-term training class, living together for 40 days in farm courtyards or caves. To avoid discovery, we often travel by night, moving from house to house."

An American Christian who has made many trips into the interior of China once arrived in a farming village at 4:30 a.m. His guides led him to a courtyard packed with men and women, all on their knees in prayer. There were nearly 600 people altogether, most of them native evangelists under 30 years of age. The meeting continued for three days almost without interruption. During short breaks, they bombarded the American with questions, "How do we preach? How do we run a house church? How can we get Bibles ?"⁴

The growth of the early church in the book of Acts was a house church movement. The explosive growth going on in China today is a house church movement. The early church growth and the growth of modern day house churches share the commonality of people being flexible, mobile and hungry for the Truth, without being bogged down by a "church building."

In the next chapter, we will explain more of the history of house churches and why they are so needed in today's world.

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