What does home church look like?

A while back someone asked us what our home church groups look like. Honestly, we try to practice church in its most simplest form. There are 3 segments with different parts that we usually roughly follow to practice worship, learning about God through His stories, and committing to live in obedience.

Here's an outline:

A- Ask

1. Ask- what are you thankful for? This is where we spend time worshipping God. Sometimes it's just talking about what we are thankful for, sometimes it's popcorn prayers, and sometimes it's Zambian worship songs. This part of our home church groups has become fairly spontaneous.

2. Ask- is there anything you need prayer for or a sin you need to confess? We spend time sharing and then praying for one another.

3. Ask- what did you learn last week and how did you follow through on your commitments? Church is supposed to be something that changes our lives, not just something we listen to. Each week we make commitments as well as commit to share the story with 3 people. We discuss how that went here.

B- Bible Story 

1. Share the story. We don't often just read from the Bible here. We pick a story, draw it out in 4 pictures, and then share it with our group. Honestly, it has become a wonderful way of digging into scripture for me during my own time and really learning stories better. It also helps most people remember the story better later.

2. Discuss- what does this story teach us about God and ourselves?

C- Commit

1. Like I mentioned earlier, we want church to be life transformational and not just head knowledge. After we've heard the story and discussed it we ask, what is one thing that you can do this week after hearing the story? The tricky thing about this part is that it has to be measurable. Someone can't just say, "I'm going to love more". They could say, "there's this one person who is difficult for me to love, so I'm going to go out of my way 2-3 times this week to encourage them". Each person makes a commitment and oftentimes we record these so we can check back in next week.

2. Then we want people to be going out and sharing what they're learning. Every person commits to sharing the story or the truth from the story with 3 people. We all name them so that it's concrete and we can check in again next week.

3. We practice telling the story. If the story is drawn in 4 pictures, we assign 1 person to each picture and practice telling it so that we feel ready to go out and tell it to others.

Yup, church can be that simple and transformational. I've loved doing church this way and it feels like it has so much meaning. You should try it sometime. Meet up with someone and just walk through these steps. It's simple, easy to follow, and I can guarantee you both will walk away having learned something.