BY THE GRACE OF GOD, BECOMING TRANSFORMED INTO THE LIKENESS OF CHRIST
- Make Ready a People Prepared for the Lord - (Luke 1)
Greater Victoria
House Church Network
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Doug & Val Schuetze - Email
Excerpts from Val Schuetze
Winter 2002
"…We have…some good things to share. We had Tony and Felicity Dale over for a conference here and learned some very helpful things…In the fall we began to meet together in our home with the people that are in our immediate vicinity to read through a book of the Bible, discuss it and pray together. That was really fun and we are still doing it. We're trying to keep it small, and go to people in their homes to start other groups. So far we have one group doing Romans (actually just started the book of Revelation last time!).
A group of musicians meets a different day and we have been doing Col. It is having a break right now. Another group is going through Matthew (these people are new or pre-Christian and are very hungry). The Dales emphasized the idea of keeping things simple and easily reproducible. We had longed, for the five years that we have been doing this kind of thing, to see a number of small groups functioning, instead of having a big and cumbersome home group that ends up being top heavy just like the traditional church. This has been working so far. It is too long to share all that we learned but would love to talk with people some time. The Dales have a lot to offer. Seems like we are all learning and no one is a real expert, but I think that's one of the things that makes it so much fun, we're all exploring together!…
We began to go to a retirement home over
one year ago, every two
weeks. There is a small group there and we mostly sing hymns acapella and
share a small thing to encourage them. It is a totally different flavour,
since they are so accustomed to having an ordained person with a robe of some
sort doing all the ministry. We do it as an encouragement for them and they
do seem to enjoy it! Each group really is sooo different. I don't know if
I mentioned that we still do Sunday morning pancakes and have some worship
and prayer after that as well. That has been going on for many years (maybe
ten years?)…"
…some of the negative aspects…"…as for most of us, this
way of doing things has been fraught with challenges. Many people misunderstand
the goals and misread your intentions etc. so you will find that you are not
the most popular person in the church of whatever city you are involved. It
can look like very small potatoes to the big guys, and you can feel a bit
like an outcast. That's why the networking is so valuable, as it helps us
not to feel alone…
…We'd like to help as many people as we can in their quest for a new
kind of church and as a resource for those wishing to start house churches.
We do not necessarily agree with everything we have linked
to
as we have not had time to read through all of
the articles & sites