There’s a lot to be thankful for this week. Things have been falling into place for our little house church, The Salvage Yard. We have all our legal ducks in a row and all is well there. Also,  The Salvage Yard Biker Church from Illinois has kindly allowed us borrow part of their name. We didn’t want to cause trouble with anyone and I have to say that they are a fantastic group of people. Please check them out on Facebook.

We have been making slow progress with getting our place ready, some with acquiring needed supplies and some learning from folks with some great ideas. This doesn’t need to be as complicated as I’m making it, but I really want to do this well. We find more and more people who were hurt by a church and would never step into one again, but aren’t really against God at all. They just wont play church. Well, I’m not going to play church here either. God is too important to me for that and I don’t want to get in His way.

So here’s the part that makes me cringe a bit. We can’t have anarchy. Unfortunately that means rules and some sort of a system. Ugh. Many of us have seen rules and procedure restrict a church to being useless or have seen it go the other way and it becomes Boss Hogg and her husband Roscoe P Coltrane and a bunch of boob deputies bullying people around. Those are some good reasons for people to stay away from a church, not ways to bring folks in.

The main idea of a house church isn’t to make it larger, 30 people is plenty, but to grow people within the church to become leaders and branch off and cultivate more house churches. That’s how it was done after Jesus was resurrected. Expand and divide. Still Paul and the others acted as overseers to keep the message accurate. Paul wanted to expand the geography of the Church( not the real estate), but sometimes he had to get after some of his church plants that went off track. Much of Johns Revelation was Gods different warnings to the young Christian churches. Many of them weren’t even 40 years old at the time Revelation was written.

I need a board of elders, Godly ( but not perfect) men, who have their noses in the word of God. I have two other men in mind and that should be plenty for our little house church. Hopefully with their guidance we can come up with the best ” soft ” rules. Just enough to maintain order and so everyone gets treated with kindness and respect. There will be no attire requirements or “goodness” requirements. You can’t fool God, so don’t put on a show for us. We’re all sinners saved by Jesus here. How you dress, drive, speak or sing doesn’t matter to God and it doesn’t matter to me. If you know nothing about Jesus and the whole “Christian” thing, you are especially welcome. There will be plenty of free food and we aren’t trying to sell you anything. Hopefully we can send you home with a stomach that is full, but sore from laughter and eager to come back again. We serve a good God and we just want to show you what that’s all about and answer any questions that you might have.

One of the other rules that I will insist on is that no money ever changes hands here. We don’t want your money. You do need to give it, but you aren’t going to give it here. We may suggest a mission of the month or you can give it to another local church, but leave your checkbook home. Having said that, if you want to bring some food to pass around( the meal is a large part of a home church) or a case of water or soda, that is certainly encouraged. Those things are a very large part of fellowship. Even Jesus didn’t fulfill His mission till He had a large(last) supper with His best friends. We’d love to have you participate in the food part, both bringing and eating. Don’t ever think that if you have nothing to bring that you aren’t welcome. We want you here and we just want to serve. Just be prepared to take some goodies home with you!

There is plenty more to come. I just wanted to keep you folks updated and share where we are right now. We have a soft target of mid March for our first service and services will be on Saturday afternoons so it wont conflict with those that would like to continue going to their traditional church. Bible studies and worship nights are also on the radar. We need your prayers friends. Pray hard