I know there are a few of us that pine after a simple church: one that attends to Christian ministry without the extraneous trappings associated with “establishment” churches.
There is a certain Radical Reformation appeal to them mingled with a tinge of fire-eyed obsession that makes me shudder a bit. (Perhaps it takes the place of the “trappings.”) A few Simple Church proponants are hell-bent to reconstruct the Roman household structure in the church so every pater familias can be pope. You can imagine the kind of person that promotes this. No, thank you.
So I’m not sure how I feel good enough towards the whole Simple Church universe to start a new work, but I keep looking. I suspect it will come down to figuring out where standards and systems are needed to keep it from being a personality cult or a slo-mo martyrdom. There are different ways to get it done, so I’ll keep my eyes and ears open.
No guarantee that I won’t come back later and thing these sites are awful, but they look OK today:
- A 2004 Simple Church Conference sponsored by Friends United Meeting
- SimpleChurches.net, decent low-pressure resources reported blog-style.
- What Is Church ?, an article by Charles Moorse at Bruderhof.com
- All links go back to DAWN Ministries, it seems. Most of their stuff is very good, and that I’m not sure about probably isn’t intended for the North American experience.
