UK: Being church in a natural way
Chris Scilla from Bedford, UK, shares how meetings in his house church network are held naturally, where the Holy Spirit is given control. In 2001 Chris and his friend Roger started to meet every week for prayer, talk and mutual encouragement. They invited others and a simple church was birthed. They gathered as friends over a cup of tea and started to chat about life and needs of the people around them. From there someone shares a prophecy, tongue, vision or a word. Most things happened randomly, but at the end everybody agreed that there was a common theme of the meeting.
The meetings were led in a very natural way. Chris says: “We gather around of cup of tea and start chatting together about what went well this week, what didn’t and about needs of people we know of. Usually after 15-30 minutes someone starts to share a bible verse or a prayer. We give control to the Spirit and let Him lead the meeting. We regularly have prophecy, interpreted tongues, visions, prayers, and very significant Bible readings. But most exciting of all is the fact that every time we meet, a variety of these things would happen almost randomly, but by the end of the meeting everyone agrees that there has been a clear theme which was not of our own design.”
“We don’t have any authority than Scripture and Jesus,” Chris continues, “Leaders evolve naturally. People naturally connect with the people who are mature in the Lord and do have experience and wisdom. Sometimes you don’t even know who the leader is.”
Year by year more people joined their network and new churches were started. They named themselves: Focussed on the King network. “That’s our main focus: Focus on the King.” Today (February 2010) there are seven or eight little groups. “Most of them do have a Christian background, but right now there is a growing desire among some of us to reach out to the people in our neighbourhood. We helped with a youth camp and some want to help with the homeless. There are a lot of opportunities, but we want to wait on the Lord and hear from Him what He wants that we do. We look forward to the future, where new fruit will spring up in the Kingdom of God.”
Jonathan
Our passion is to make disciples of Jesus everywhere we go. We love to do this in the power of the Holy Spirit so that movements of small, simple churches who will rapidly multiply will cover the earth. We love to help people discover their dreams and encourage them to do and live out these dreams.
Last year we did the Church Planting eXperience (CPX) in Kansas City and Cambodia (www.allnations.us). A great experience where we learnt a lot about simple church planting. Right now we are working with young people in the Netherlands to help them follow Jesus. We also help other people in the Netherlands to start and build simple churches. Our goal is to go to Spain (Canary Islands) in 2011 to go and plant simple churches there.
About my personality: I am used to be I and D (in DISC terms). That means people oriented, inspirational, outgoing and dominant. Not too many details for me. A creative environment full of encouragement and people gives me energy.
On our team I will help with coaching, inspiring simple church planters. I also am responsible for the research part. This means contacting different SC-networks, connecting them and ask them questions. If you want to know more, please drop me an email.