Arrive in Heaven With No Family Missing
Home Church Explosion
Home Cell Church ExplosionJoel Comiskey did his PhD research on home cell churches and on the largest churches in the world built on those cells. He performed case studies spending about 8 days with each of the top churches.
In a way, I have become entirely sold on how indispensable these cells are to effective evangelism. Having been through different popular evangelism programs and having worked with and used several evangelism methods in the past, it would be more accurate to say I experienced things without having applied sufficient rigor to studying what I have seen and experienced. Yet I cannot help but make some observations regarding what I have seen.
One concern I have is regarding the nature of cults and how cults sometimes grow out of legitimate churches. At first glance, things I’ve seen in cults that I have also seen in some church settings have set off some concerns for some safeguards that we may need to have in the very DNA of the home cells that are created. For instance, there needs to be a healthy respect for authority, but an equal respect or the limits of that authority so that the fear of man does not create a lordship that competes and overthrows the Lordship of Jesus Christ in the home cell. What we want to multiply is the Kingdom of God — not the Kingdom of man. Abusive behavior, threats of extortion and gossip, manipulation, lying, and coming into practices that are condemning and under the rulership of the accuser of the brethren should be strictly avoided and spiritual discernment to safeguard against these things should be a part of the Christian fairly early on in his growth so this discernment is multiplied and cells grow in a way that is healthy.
One concern many people have had about the G12 movement is that some people have complained about feeling bullied or mandated to have exactly 12 disciples — not 11 and not 13, or they have felt compelled to grow their group or suffer punishment of one kind or another. Some have complained of being sleep deprived, tired, and burned out.
It would be wise to build the DNA of the originating home cell so that there is a motive to grow but not a motive based on something wrong. The end does not justify the means. Doing something evil to get something good is to declare sin is wiser than God, and this is not an attitude that should be tolerated in any healthy church.
But, please don’t mistake this for a suggestion that we should let everything run free and unstructured with no drive or concern under the guise of being driven by love and not legalism. Love brings about drive and commitment, but it differs from the motivations of spiritual abuse in that it does not burn out. A person may become tired or discouraged sometimes, but usually they will rest, pray, wait on the Lord, seek the Lord, and when the Lord opens the doors again to go through, the healthy servant of the Lord will go through them with thanksgiving and accomplish much for the Kingdom of God not by the power of man but through the grace of God.
That is what we want to multiply. Not a cult like compulsion that drives people to an early grave, but a love that drives them to a life that is so abundant and such a blessing that it takes people to heaven stripping away all false repentance and false salvation and false hope and replaces it with that which is real — real love, real faith, real salvation, real heaven.
Prodigals