I have started a home church. Been going for 6 weeks now with one other dechurched couple.

I’ve become the de-facto teacher since others don’t have the time to do the preparation. But so far so good. Finding I have some things to learn about communicating the Word effectively to others. It’s one thing to study for yourself; it’s another to share it in teaching with others. I’ve taught before but I try to cover too much ground in one sitting. So I need to work on that.

I decided to teach on the ministry of Jesus through a harmony of the gospels (teaching all the gospels together), following the sequence of the Lord’s ministry as it is structured in the resource I’m using. I actually started with the ministry of John the Baptist because it’s so important and tightly linked to the Lord.

One advantage (among many) is we can go as long as we want, discuss the scriptures interactively, and dive deep. So learning occurs with deeper understanding. For example, we spent several weeks on the Baptism of messiah, contrasting it with John’s baptism of repentance. We explored the different baptisms conveyed in the scriptures and found some amazing things. (I think the significance of baptism is underestimated. Maybe worth a post.)

Worship is guided by songs collected from YouTube into a playlist. It actually works very well, better than expected. So we worship about 20-30 minutes, transition straight into communion (every week) as an extension of that worship, and then usually into an extended time of intercession. It works really well to maintain the continuity of worship through all of this without interruptions from other aspects of a service.

Then it’s time spent in the word and then we share a meal together and just talk and get to know each other better.

We start at about 10:30 and make a day of it. We usually are done at about 2:30-3:00 pm.

So far it’s working well, exceeding my expectations. Ideally, we’d like to get another 2-4 people involved who are of the same mind. No more than that. I think if we got to 8-10, we’d split off another church but continue to collaborate.

Full disclosure: I am not formally trained or educated as a pastor or Bible teacher and don’t consider myself as such. I am pursuing KHouse (the late Dr Chuck Missler) program which is a self paced biblical instruction.