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Is Jesus the focus of your home fellowship?

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What’s the #1 word I feel God speaking to our Home Fellowship?  “Get your eyes off yourself, and put them on Jesus!”  You’d think a few of us meeting in a living room would find that to be pretty easy.  Doesn’t the simplicity of a home setting lend itself to the kind of intimacy that would keep our focus on Him?  Not necessarily.

The one thing I love about home fellowships is the “one another” participation that the bible talks about in 1 Corinthians 14.26:

“What then shall we say, brothers? When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church.”

This is starkly missing in most traditional churches, and it’s one of the things that can make home churches so alive.  Our little group is big on participation, and I love that!  My wife is always telling me how much she loves hearing what others contribute.  In fact, I’ve seen more growth in her since the time we started meeting as a home fellowship, than all the time previous.  Suddenly, it was very interesting!  I think that’s one of the reasons God says in His Word, “all of these things must be done for the strengthening of the church.”  It really does make a difference to have all His body ministering in this way.

But I have also noticed that our greatest strength, can be our greatest weakness.  The atmosphere of intimacy that we enjoy as a home fellowship can lead to us talking about ourselves more than Jesus! 

Yes, that’s right; the blessing can become a curse!  The closeness of a home group naturally leads to sharing life’s good news and bad news with each other.  This is a good thing.  But it can also be our Achilles’ heel.

From wikipedia:

“An Achilles’ heel is a fatal weakness in spite of overall strength, actually or potentially leading to downfall.”

The freedom of sharing among ourselves can easily turn to talking mostly about ourselves!  While this is all well and good in it’s place, we need to remember we’re here for Jesus.  (This is one of the reasons I believe in having actual leaders in home settings; someone needs to steer the ship back on course at times!  Just because Jesus is our Head doesn’t mean that we can do away with leaders.  You’re free to disagree, but I don’t see a leaderless church in the book of Acts.)  In any event, Jesus needs to be the focus; not us!

It’s not hard to tell who’s the focus either.  Just listen to what’s coming out of your mouth!  That’ll make it clear.  Whether megachurch or minichurch, Jesus is to be our primary focus. I may be standing behind a pulpit, or sitting on a sofa; but is Jesus my focus?  Over and over again that is the message I hear Him speaking.

Tags: 1 Corinthians 14.26, home churches, home fellowship, intimacy, Jesus is our Head, leaderless church, participation, revelation, simplicity, strengthening of the church, traditional churches