Better Than Hippies, Pt 3

A new look at the House Church Movement of the future
By Wolfgang Simson

Editor’s Note: Wolfgang has been involved in the house church movement for years.  He is a scholar and visionary who manages to be both brief and substantive.  This is not fluff.  This content came from one of his recent articles.  For the sake of the casual reader, I have divided it up into smaller, more digestable chunks.  I’ve also added some bold sections and SECTION TITLES to make it easier to process.

CONTINUED…

Kingdomization

The answer is actually quite simple: Kingdomization. If democratization is the transition to a more democratic regime, kingdomization is the transition towards a monarchy. At least in theory many Christians know that Jesus is a King, even a “King of kings” and “Lord of lords”. Technically, that makes him an emperor. All the signs of the times indicate one thing: Jesus, the King of his Kingdom, is preparing his Bride for his return. In order for this to happen, Jesus has to do some intense housecleaning.

Centuries of ill management, defunct teaching and blatant religious consumerism has created self-serving systems to cater for the spiritual needs of its members while they basically pursue a Babylonian concept of life: work and earn, pay taxes and burn!

God’s word speaks of house churches – we built church-houses. The King speaks of wishing to own us – we discuss whether to satisfy him with a tithe, be it gross or net; God speaks of apostolic and prophetic foundations, and we basically build on anything else.

If the core of the problem is a lack of respect for an acting king and his decrees – the talk of a king that exists but does not govern, the solution is a return to his rulership. A king
who does not rule is like a genius conductor of an orchestra that ignores him and his notes and plays free jazz, blues, Mozart and German march music, all at the
same time.

This is why probably the strongest frequency of the Holy Spirit speaking today to anyone that has ears to listen is clearly this: “Return, you people who say you are following Jesus, to your King and his Kingdom. You, yes you? Seek first his Kingdom and the upholding of his constitution. Become a loyal law-abiding citizen in Christ’s Kingdom. A good bond slave of Christ. End your years of rebellion, your anti-machine mindset, stop being little more than a spiritual hippie, a consuming religious hobo, an opportunist waiting for the newest fad. Go and be properly naturalized in Christ’s Kingdom; go back to legitimate forms of Kingdom life in the area of sex, money, power and church. Rediscover the original genius blueprint for the ekklesia as an expression of the Kingdom of God, that realm of God’s uncontested rule.”

The Original Genius Blueprint

This ekklesia, as the New Testament clearly describes, is either an expression, an extension of the Kingdom of God, or it is not the Church of Jesus Christ any longer, but mutated into the Church of Man, a mere Frankenstein-version of the original Bride.

Such a church will become a death-trap for God’s callings and gifts, a graveyard of dreams, a dead-end road towards discipling our nations. But here is our chance: if we recommit, alone and in droves, to the voluntary rule of our loving King who has given himself for us – no expenses spared! -, we will join the biggest movement of the Holy Spirit in our days. It is about rediscovering the nature of the Kingdom of Christ, and with it the unbelievable liberation to discover that true freedom is not the ability to do as we want, but to do as we should, in the service of our King.

Globally, many are rediscovering that the Church the King desires for and blesses always was and is what it always has been: a kingdom-shaped ekklesia, not a market shaped ekklesia; an ekklesia that expresses itself both in the small – kingdom families, house churches and flat-structured house church networks – and in the large – kingdom celebrations, City churches, stadium-filling regional meetings in apostolic unity. It is the expression of a lifestyle of kingdom people – life 2.0 – that inspires and infects all the five significant areas of society: family, education, culture, business and politics. And to make it even more interesting, many are rediscovering what I call “Kingdom Economics” – the longforgotten, financial principles of the Kingdom that govern work and money in the Kingdom.

My theses is this: if we return to Jesus not only as our saviour but as our acting King; if we therefore accept and respect his royal design for his ekklesia, it will be re-founded on apostolic and prophetic foundations. And as form follows function, it will then, and then only, become that “missional movement” that so many are calling for, an apostolic architecture. And if we go another step forward and discard any self-serving, Mammon-breathed economic systems “made in Babylon” that we have tried so very hard to run our churches, businesses and ministries on, we might be well on our way to come to the climax of our Christian calling here on earth: to truly reflect and legitimately represent the glory of the triune God to a fragmented and shattered world in supernatural unity, and make disciples of all people groups. This will happen not under the enslaving fist of some religious dictator, out of anger and bitterness at the system, not because of outside pressure or our desire to ride and consume the latest wave, but in the embrace of that heavenly dancer who passionately loves his Bride.