The early Christians wrote songs to express their spiritual experience and revelation of Jesus Christ. Some of the earliest Christian songs appear in the New Testament. Two of the most powerful are found in Colossians 1 and Philippians 2.

In addition, a strong part of our Christian heritage is the practice of writing new lyrics to well-known tunes. This practice goes back to at least the Reformers. But I suspect it precedes that.

Some of our most beloved hymns were written to existing tunes that were known and sung by the general culture.

On February 4, 2012, I delivered a message to a Christian community entitled Living in the Divine Parenthesis. The night before I brought that message, I wrote a song as a companion to the talk.

The song was written to the tune of Wavin’ Flag by K’naan — a specific version of it performed by the Young Artists for Haiti. That version of Wavin’ Flag is amazing; the Young Artists’ voices are outstanding; the cause (the need in Haiti) critically important. Continue Reading…

The following article comes from the book Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It applies to any church, community, or relationship. It is one of the most profound and helpful things that Bonhoeffer ever wrote.

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Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a wish dream. The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and to try to realize it. But God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves.

By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world. He does not abandon us to those rapturous experiences and lofty moods that come over us like a dream. God is not a God of emotions but the God of truth. Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God’s sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it. The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community the better for both. Continue Reading…

When the Lord is having His way in a body of believers, God’s enemy will be sure to attack. Nothing so threatens the enemy’s kingdom than the church of Jesus Christ being expressed and standing for God’s timeless purpose and Christ’s fullness and headship.

Four things to keep in mind when such attacks occur (notice that I said “when”):

1. The enemy virtually always uses uncrucified flesh as the ground for his attack against a body of believers.

2. Those who are giving ground to the enemy aren’t aware that this is what they are doing: giving ground to him via selfishness and self-gratification.

3. The only way to close the gap is to die to self. God’s enemy has no ground by which to work then. Remember Jesus’ words: “Satan has come, but He has nothing in me.” There was no ground in Him for the enemy to use. Continue Reading…

You don’t know what you have until you no longer have it.

Ever since I began living in organic church life, an observation I’ve made is that when people no longer have the experience of body life, they virtually always say:

“I really didn’t know what I had! This is so rare. I long for that experience again.”

Note that I’m not talking about the vanilla house church experience. I’m speaking of the organic expression of the church of Jesus Christ in all of its depths, multifarious splendor, sublime realities, light, shade, and varying seasons.

We just uploaded to the podcast a message I delivered in Ireland years ago. It’s called Who Is This Woman? God’s Ultimate Passion. The message underscores just how important the ekklesia (as God called her to be) is to Him . . . and to those who have known her in experience. The talk is on iTunes also.

If you are experiencing the real thing, I hope you don’t disregard or take it for granted. Because you don’t know what you have until . . .

Farewell Church Buildings (some, at least). Click here to see what the Wall Street Journal is saying about it.

The untold story of the church building is fascinating. And the astronomical figure that Christians spend on buying and maintaining them is astounding (the data is listed in Pagan Christianity, Chapter 2).

Sometimes the economy has a way of making us rethink things. And today, many are being forced to rethink their edifice complex.

Way, way back in the year 1998, I delivered one of my first conference messages. The subject was the developmental stages of an authentic church. The message : “A City Whose Builder and Maker is God.”

“For he [Abraham] looked for a city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” (Hebrews 11:10)

In that talk, I traced the five steps of King David as he built the city of Jerusalem. Those five steps serve as a stirring and insightful shadow of how God builds His church today in a particular locale.

I hope you find the message of help and encouragement, especially those of you who are engaged in missional church and organic church.

For iTunes users

For non-iTunes users

The New Testament Is Plural (Us) Not Singular (Me)

by Jon Zens

As folks listen to local and media Bible teachers, most miss the fact that Christ’s body is missing from their use of the New Testament. More often than not the approach taken is individualistic – “how can Christ help me live the Christian life?” However, the NT was not written to individuals but to groups of believing people in various cities and regions. This does not come across in English translations for the most part because the word “you” in the Greek can be singular or plural. For example, the “you” in “Christ in you, the hope of glory,” is plural, and has in view the Body of Christ.

Think about it. The NT letters were sent to ekklesias (assemblies) – “when you come together as an ekklesia.” Even the letter sent to an individual – Philemon – still has a corporate (body) dimension to it – “to Apphia our sister, and to Archippus our fellow soldier, and to the ekklesia in your house.” Continue Reading…

Those who know me well are aware that helping the poor is something that’s very close to my heart. When I cut my teeth on organic church life over 20 years ago, our church began a ministry to the homeless. It was an enlightening experience for all involved, and God used it to teach me many lessons.

Beyond the lessons I learned about the nuts-and-bolts of working with street people, three other lessons come to mind:

* One was that church outreach projects (just like in-reach projects) are seasonal. If they are done out of season, they will bear little fruit. (I discuss the seasons that a Christ-governed, Spirit-led church passes through in Finding Organic Church.)

* Another lesson has to do with following our spiritual instincts versus trying to follow an external command. From the beginning, my ministry has been centered on learning how to live by the indwelling Life of Christ. We know the indwelling Life of Christ by spiritual instinct. The nature of that Life is love . . . treating others the same way we would want to be treated if we were standing in their shoes. Love, therefore, is how the Life of Christ operates and functions in and through us (see 1 John). Continue Reading…

I’ve written extensively on organic church life (see the links below this post). Reimagining Church and Finding Organic Church are theological and practical treatments of the subject. Yet the term “organic church” continues to be used for any group of believers that meets in a home. (This is a misnomer as we’ve previously discussed.) The concept of  authentic organic church life is very hard to get over to a person who has never seen it firsthand.

What follows is a report from a person who visited one of the organic churches that my co-workers and I planted and are working with presently. I’m deliberately not giving the city where this church exists as this is not an advertisement, and it will detract from the point.

I hope the report will give you a better handle on what organic church life looks like in living color. Similar testimonies of those who live in organic church life appear in the links below. Note that “organic church” is nothing other than the church that the New Testament envisions. Continue Reading…

Those of you who have read my books carefully . . . as well as this blog . . . know that I’m not an advocate of “house church.” Asking me if I endorse a house church is like asking me if I endorse plants. To which my response is, “what kind of plant are you talking about? I like crape myrtle trees, but I don’t like cactuses or poison ivy.”

House churches are like plants. There are extremely different varieties.

As I’ve often said, a house church is simply a group of Christians who hold their meetings in a home. That can range from a scaled-down version of the institutional church (very common), to a glorified bible study (even more common), to a once-a-week songfest accompanied by a potluck, to a grade-A, certified cult. Continue Reading…