For nearly 10 years, my husband and I have worshipped God and been discipled primarily through gathering in homes to do church – reading the Bible, praising God, sharing finances to meet needs, praying and eating a lot of food – a lot like the earliest believers (Acts 2:42-).
We’d love to share some practical things we’ve learnt from our own experience that might help if you are ‘stuck’ at home and desire to continue in being church.
1. Discovery Bible Study (DBS) – DBS is a simple way that millions around the world are spreading good news and being the church. A DBS is a simple, incredibly reproducible way for people to gather (even online) with their friends/family and worship God, meet each other’s needs and hear God’s voice for themselves through Scripture.
I love this quote, ‘The Word of God in the hands of the people of God with the Spirit of God is enough’. This might be a great season to discover just this!
Here’s a simple guide to run a Discovery Bible Study
These are also some helpful videos:
- City Teams – Disciple Making Movements
2. Zoom – For the last couple of years, we have been using Zoom as a great way to do prayer meetings, workshops and – now – even church and training online.
If you have a larger group meeting, Zoom allows you to break out into ‘rooms’ fo small groups as well as having a more stable image and sound quality.
3. Practice communal finances – In this time of instability, there are so many people who have financial needs all around us – it may be you!
This time may be an amazing opportunity to cultivate the practice of giving that the early church had — primarily oriented around meeting the needs of the poor and making sure no one in our networks is in need.
As part of the DBS process, we have practised over the years, our simple church communities live out ‘communal finances’. If someone’s rent needs to be paid and they don’t have money, someone who has money pays it. We have supported each other to get counselling, buy food, pay rent, travel overseas, whatever is the need. Our money is not our own, we share it and make sure our community is not in need.
Friends, overcoming fear is just the first step. There are many wonderful and exciting opportunities for us all on the other side of fear. We pray this is a time of discovering hope, deep relationships and the power of Jesus in new ways for you and your community.
Niro C – Melbourne