Beloved,
Tonight I visited one of our VC house churches. The Speckled Bird House Church meets on Weds. nights in Northside in Ryan and Jesse’s artful and hospitable home. I went so I could get to know them and their community better and so they could ask me questions about what it means to be part of the Vineyard Central network.
I want to talk about that first part…. them. This was such a beautiful gathering of passionate, loving, caring, grace-full, heart-felt people. If someone were to ask me… “what is a house church?” I wish I could bottle this group and then give them as an answer! Jill and Jona led gently and beautifully (I know I’m overusing that word, but it is just so true). Jesse and Ryan offered hospitality with such natural grace and ease that they literally disappeared into the woodwork and everyone felt so at home. Everyone else pitched in, participated fully, and engaged deeply with all that was going on.
I hope it doesn’t bother them that I’m bragging on them like this – publicly, but both our network and the world should know about this gracious community of faith that is faithfully living out the Gospel. They are presently reading the book Abba’s Child by Brennan Manning. I was pleased to get a copy tonight and Sarah and I are going to read it. It looks really good. You can tell a lot about a book when Richard Rohr, Larry Crabb, Michael Card, and Rich Mullins are giving it high praise on the back cover. Anyway, what matters for the sake of our present conversation is this – the discussion of this book sparked intimate, vulnerable, heart-felt sharing tonight. Transformation into the image of Christ was taking place tonight. As Paul aptly says (and tonight Drew so very aptly proclaimed), “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”. Redemption was breaking old patterns and forging new ones. It was beautiful.
One of the questions that was asked tonight was about how Vineyard Central was part of the larger Vineyard Association. One of the things I have long admired about John Wimber and the Vineyard movement he birthed was the re-discovery of that oft forgotten member of the Trinity – The Holy Spirit. Too often churches have focused on Jesus or the Father and let the Holy Spirit just kinda slide by as a mere afterthought or nuisance. The Vineyard changed that in a big way. Our network stands in that same stream and re-members the Holy Spirit as essential to the Trinity (or maybe the Holy Spirit is re-membering us…). Tonight I experienced that at the Speckled Bird House Church. The Spirit was manifest… in simple ways – the humor and joy of friends together, the play of children, “Black church” reading of scripture (you had to be there!), and the sharing of lives.
It excites me to see such healthy churches gathered, like Speckled Bird. They remind me why I do this house church network thing. But more importantly, they remind us that there is great power in these little bands of Christ-followers who gather in living rooms, restaurants, coffee shops, and the like. I continue to see our network maturing … house churches and clusters of house churches all over Greater Cincinnati. All of them living out the simple, profound, and beautiful Kingdom-oriented life that I saw tonight at Speckled Bird. It is in these little missional communities that real lives are changed, where mission is birthed, and neighborhoods transformed.
I’ll close with this, if I could offer anything to those who gathered tonight it would have been a blessing. While sitting in the back, during the book discussion, I had a picture of myself standing in the chancel (front) of St. E’s, arms outstretched, in priestly garb, blessing this group of believers: “The Lord bless you and keep you; The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.”
Peaceably,
Aaron
