Church Structure

I’m not suggesting a church model

It may take some people a while to get this but I’m not advocating for a church model. I’m not pushing people to embrace home church or micro church or simple church (whatever you want to call it) or any other model of church.

But wait, isn’t that what I’m a part of?

Towards the end of 2024 I heard (insert famous prophetic leader) say at a conference in Nashville that micro church is what God is doing now. It’s where his next big move will take place. And when I heard this it both frustrated me and it made me sad at the same time.

It made me sad because I know this man speaks of something he’s not even a part of… but is simply riding publicly what has been on an upwelling trend in recent years (micro church networks are growing across the US).

It frustrated me because swapping models isn’t the answer. Home church isn’t the answer. Micro church isn’t the answer. No new model, structure, format or hierarchy is the answer.

As humans we are just as capable of devaluing, isolating, detaching and wounding in a small context as we are in a large. We’re just as capable of ignoring history and the New Testament so we can continue our anachronistic views here like we did over there.

We’re not meant for models. We are meant for—designed for— an attachment-based life; an existence filled with loving relationships that would build us into the people who look like Jesus: selfless, sacrificial, humble and capable of spontaneously loving our enemies.

No structure, no model, no hierarchy will ever accomplish that. Those things do not create family. The do not bolster emotional maturity or produce sacrificial love. If it worked that way we’d be able to identify which denomination has the best model (or best doctrine, theology, hierarchy, etc) because it would be overflowing with people who live and love like Jesus.

And when we saw it we’d be overwhelmed by it and all would adopt it.

But we don’t have that because it doesn’t work that way. Models don’t change people because they’re rooted in everything except relationship. And if you created a model centered on “relationship” it wouldn’t work because relationship exists outside of principle and rule. It operates and builds on value and selflessness.

So no, I’m not advocating for a church model. I’m advocating that we get back to God’s heart and stop focusing on so many things that were simply good ideas built by men with good intentions (sometimes).

Home church as a model can be just as broken, inept and abusive as any other model. But home church as part of a return to God’s relational heart and design as a loving family, and the context works better than any other.