Body Ministry

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When we come together in house church, usually we start around six o’clock.  Sometimes we have a fellowship meal at five, have a nice visit, then go into the front room and ask one another what God has been doing this week in our life.  Different ones give wonderful testimonies, like how their marriages have been blessed by God, because they’ve found some things in the Scriptures and God has blessed them, or their financial position has been helped by God, because they cried to Him because they couldn’t meet their needs and God provided somehow.  All kinds of wonderful things God is doing in their lives; everyday things.  And that’s what we do for the first hour or so.

Then, after that, we ask the ones who have needs to come to the middle of the room, and we all come around them and put our hands on them and pray over them.  We ask God to help them in their needs.  Maybe there is sickness, or any other need, and we pray for them.  Someone may need work, so we pray for him—whatever the needs are.

A lot of brothers and sisters are very gifted in playing musical instruments.  Someone will sit down at the piano and start playing a beautiful hymn and everyone will join in singing.  Someone else will start playing the guitar, and we’ll join in and sing all kinds of different songs.

After that, a brother might get up and say, “The Lord’s been speaking in my heart this week,” on a certain thing and he’ll read from the bible what the Lord spoke to him about.  It’s really good that he shares in it—it really blesses us to hear it.  The Apostle Paul says that “brothers, when you come together, one has a psalm, one has a teaching, a revelation, one has a tongue, another an interpretation.  Let all things be done for edification.”

So we allow all these things.  It’s the body of Christ ministries.  That’s what the home church is—a body of Christ ministry.  Everybody is coming there expecting to be used of God.  All brothers and sisters—everybody--has a special gift and they all are used by God either to prophesy, or to read a scripture the Lord has shown them, and to explain that scripture, or whatever else their gift might be.  Someone might get up and teach about something.  Someone else may want to get into prayer some more.

That will go on for a couple of hours or so.  We don’t have a set time where everything is done—like organized religion—where there is a set time: ten minutes for this, twenty minutes for that.  We just let the Spirit lead.  We must be very sensitive to the Spirit, because the Spirit will guide the church.  It’s called Spirit-controlled, not man-controlled.  Man-controlled is the traditional church, where the pastor is in control, and everyone else pretty much sits in pews listening.  It’s done with lots of programs, and all kinds of activities, but that’s not New Testament Scriptural.  So this is why we like to have God move among us.

Each week it’s never the same.  God will always do something different.  He’ll keep to His Word—His Word never changes.  And His attributes never change, but He will do things differently, and He’ll involve different people.  Not the same people will come every week—never the same people.  There is a core that are pretty steady, but a lot of them will miss and go to other house churches and other places for the week, and then make the rounds back in two or three weeks.

The Spirit will quicken to each individual what the person’s supposed to do, and their gift.  In my case, when there’s a problem, the Holy Spirit will quickly bring to mind scriptures that address that problem.  Jesus is the answer and the Word of God has all the answers to any kind of situation that comes along.  The Holy Spirit will quicken these things to me and I will speak them, read them—and there’s the answer!  And many are blessed and helped that way.  This is what the house church is all about.  It’s Body ministry.  It’s ministering one to another.

So that’s what we do.  This can go on from six o’clock in the evening to sometimes as late as midnight.  But people can leave any time.  Some couples have young children who need to go to school the next day and they usually leave around nine o’clock or so.  So we all have freedom to come late, leave early, or whatever.  That’s what we do in our house church.

We’re trying to encourage people more and more.  We have meetings during the week for bible study.  We have one on Thursday night which is very good—on a practical life in Christ; how we’re supposed to act and live, living the gospel life.  On Monday we have another one: Disciple-shipping; what’s involved in making disciples.  So we have activities during the week as well.  Some nights we have prayer meetings.  We come and spend two or three hours just in prayer.  There’s always something going on.

Then we make our rounds.  There are other house churches we go to too.  They’re done in about the same format.  We try to do all things in love, and be patient with one another.  Like Paul said, “Even though I have authority to knock you down, I’d rather build you up instead.”  So we should have that same attitude that the Holy Spirit worked in Paul: not to jump on each other but to encourage and help each other.  So that’s what we more or less try to do.    

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