Back to the Basics of New Testament Christianity

 

 

Chapter 1

What Is an Underground Church?

 

 

Foreclosure on their house forced Jeremy and Megan to face the facts of Jeremy's problem with alcohol. Looking for a new start, they moved to south-central Pennsylvania from Long Island, New York. New to the community and feeling extremely lonely, one day Megan decided to take her nephew to a local park with hopes of making some new friends. Kathy, a young mother and small group leader in a local DOVE church, happened to be in the park that day and struck up a conversation with Megan.

Sensing Megan's loneliness, Kathy invited Megan to her home, to give Megan the opportunity to meet more people in the community. They exchanged phone numbers, and a few days later Kathy called Megan to remind her to come to their house the following Wednesday night. "Should we bring anything along to drink?” Megan asked.

"There's no need to bring anything,” Kathy said. "We're just going to sing a bit and then have a Bible study.”

When she got off the phone, Megan looked at her husband and said, "Hey, whadda ya know--it's a bunch of religious freaks!” But the lady in the park was so nice that Megan and Jeremy decided to go anyway. Jeremy liked the music, and they continued to go back. Within a few weeks, Megan made a commitment to follow Jesus Christ. Jeremy was happy about the change that he saw in his wife but hesitated to trust Christ himself.

However, a few weeks later, Jeremy had an encounter with the Lord while at his tree-trimming job. He was high up in a tree, cutting off a branch, when suddenly another falling branch hit him. It was a miracle he wasn't knocked to the ground. Knowing that someone had to be watching over him, he cried out to the Lord as he made a decision to follow Christ.

Before long, Jeremy and Megan began to serve as small group leaders at a DOVE church. Their story is just one of hundreds of stories that could be told of the lives we have seen the Lord dramatically change over the past thirty years.

It all started during the summer of 1971 when my fiancée LaVerne and I helped to start a youth ministry with a small band of young people who began to reach out to the unchurched youth of our community in northern Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. We played sports and conducted various activities throughout the week for spiritually needy youngsters and teenagers. This kind of friendship evangelism produced results, and during the next few years, dozens of young people came to faith in Christ with a desire to be incorporated into a local church.

Every Sunday night we took vanloads of these new believers to visit various churches in our community, because we wanted to help them find a local church of which they could be a part. After the church services, the entire group usually returned to our home for a time of praise, prayer, spiritual counseling, and just plain fun. Before long, some of the other leaders asked me to begin a weekly Bible study each Tuesday night for these new believers. Our desire was to teach them from the Scriptures what practical Christian living was really all about and assist them in being connected in a local church.

Those of us who served in this youth ministry were from various local churches, so we also attempted to help the new believers find their place in our congregations. Although the Christians in the local churches were friendly and helpful, something wasn't clicking. These young believers simply were not being incorporated into the life of the established churches in our communities. Some of the believers from unchurched backgrounds were getting married and starting families of their own, but they did not feel comfortable within the traditional church structures in our area.

 

The Need for Flexible Wineskins

We began to understand the answer to our dilemma when a church leader shared with us the following verses from Scripture. Although these Scriptures may have other applications, we sensed the Holy Spirit was using them to teach us about new church structures.

No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse. Neither do men pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved (Matthew 9:16-17).

This "new wineskin,” we believed, was to be a new model of church structure, tailor-made to serve the new believers in Jesus Christ. And what better place to meet than in a home!

A wineskin is like a balloon. It needs to be flexible and pliable. Putting a new Christian (new wine) into an old structure can cause the structure to break, and the new Christian may be lost. New Christians should be placed in new structures that are flexible and able to encourage their spiritual growth.

The Lord promised to pour out His Holy Spirit "in the last days” (Acts 2:17). We believe flexible containers must be prepared for the great harvest that is on the horizon. In Second Kings 4:1-7, the widow brought all the containers she could find to prepare for the blessing God was pouring out.

Notice that the oil stopped when the containers were filled. Is it possible that the Lord is waiting for His Church to prepare the proper containers so He can pour out His Spirit again?

During the Jesus Movement in the 1970s, thousands gave their lives to Christ, but many were no longer living for the Lord a few years later. There were not enough "new containers” willing to be flexible enough to embrace these new believers, so many "fell through the cracks.”

Now is the time to prepare for the coming awakening. We cannot force new Christians into our meetings--we must prepare new containers for the new oil. Forming new structures will enhance the Lord's commission to make disciples. We realize that many new types of containers (cell groups, small groups, house churches, local congregations) are needed and must be formed.

 

Are You Willing to Be Involved in the Underground Church?

One day in 1978, I took a break from farm work and youth ministry duties in order to pray for a few hours. I was startled when I heard the Lord speak to me through His still, small voice. "Are you willing to be involved in the underground church?” He asked. I was shocked. The words that I heard in my spirit were distinct, even piercing!

When the Lord spoke to me, although the words were clear, I didn't understand what He was trying to tell me. My mind raced immediately to the Berlin Wall and the barbed wire fences that at the time surrounded the borders of many communist nations. I thought of the persecuted Church meeting underground in nations that opposed the Gospel. It still didn't make sense, yet I knew I had to respond; I was hearing the call of God--what would become a life call.

"Yes, Lord,” I replied as tears formed in my eyes. "I am willing.” I chose to obey, even though I didn't understand what it all meant.

Soon after the Lord spoke to me about the underground church, I asked some of my Christian friends if they would be willing to meet with me each week for the purpose of enhancing our own spiritual growth. Two men responded. We began meeting every week for prayer, Bible study, encouragement, and mutual accountability. Within the next few years this "house fellowship” grew, and we started to reach out to new believers. Soon our living room was filled to capacity.

With leadership established in the first group, eventually my wife LaVerne and I were commissioned out to help another couple start a second small group. These groups served as a place for new believers to be nurtured and taught the Word of God. We had no desire to start another church. We felt there were enough churches in our community.

Then one Sunday morning in January of 1980, while sitting in our local Mennonite church near Lititz, Pennsylvania, the Lord spoke to me through His still, small voice. As I was waiting for the service to begin, the Lord spoke these words clearly to my spirit, "It's time to start something new.”

Although I had grown up in the Church of the Brethren, this Mennonite church was the congregation that I had become a part of when my wife and I married. I had married the pastor's daughter, served a year in the denomination's mission program on an island off the coast of South Carolina during our first year of marriage, and was a song leader for the Sunday services. While much of our time was taken up during the week reaching out to young people through a local para-church youth ministry, we had a genuine love and appreciation for God's people within our local church.

Nevertheless, I took this word from the Lord very seriously. After the service was over, a friend unexpectedly invited me to a meeting of church leaders the following day. At that meeting, I had the opportunity to meet the president of a local mission board who desired to see new churches planted. His encouragement spurred me on.

I told the other leaders of the two house fellowships that I sensed the Lord had called me to start something new. Others who were involved in youth ministry with us and still others in the Body of Christ in our area who had a similar vision came together to pray each week. It seemed clear that there was a need for a New Testament church that could be structured so it could be flexible enough to relate to believers from all backgrounds and assist them in their spiritual growth.

In the process of time, I slowly began to understand what the Lord had in mind when He asked me if I was willing to be involved in the underground church. An underground church is like a tree: its trunk, branches, and leaves are only half of the picture. The unnoticed half, the underground root system, nourishes the whole tree and keeps it healthy.

The underground church, we began to realize, was to consist of believers gathered together through a structure of small groups meeting in homes to pray, evangelize, and build relationships with one another. In this way, each believer is made an active and vital part of the Body of Christ.

When every believer is nourished and healthy, the whole church is strong. As water and nutrients feed the tree by climbing up through the root system, so the church is nourished and strengthened by what happens in the underground, or the unseen realm of church life--believers involved in small groups. It was becoming clear that these relationships in small groups would not be an appendage of the church, but in actuality, they would be the basic building blocks of the church.

When Jesus cursed the fig tree, nothing appeared to happen immediately; however, the following day the tree was withered and dead. Probably the roots underground had dried up and died instantly, but it took until the next day for the leaves to wither and die due to the lack of water that came up through the root system.

The enemy seeks to destroy the church in the same way--from underground. He attempts to use broken relationships and to attack the lives of individual believers in order to weaken God's people. But when the part of the church that is underground is strong, then the whole church will be strong and continue to grow.

 

Time to Step Out in Faith

In October of 1980, our group of approximately twenty-five believers met for the first time for a Sunday morning celebration in a living room. Five families had been commissioned out of our local Mennonite church the week before to start this "new church.” A small band of others also joined us at the inception of the new work.

We didn't have a name for our group until a woman in our group was praying and received a vision from the Lord. In this vision, she clearly saw four distinct capital letters with a period behind each letter [D.O.V.E.]. It appeared that the Lord was giving our new church a name. We sensed that DOVE was an acronym meaning, "Declaring Our Victory Emmanuel.”

"DOVE Christian Fellowship” had officially begun. There was an air of excitement among us as we met in three separate home groups during the week, pursuing the vision that the Lord had given. But there were also times of pain. Within the first year, the three original house groups became two. Instead of the groups growing and multiplying, it seemed like we were going backward. We soon realized that we had a lack of clear leadership for the group, causing confusion.

 

False Humility

We had encouraged the believers in the first house fellowships to designate no one person as a leader but instead to choose a team that would provide co-equal leadership. Each house group had two co-equal leaders, and the church at large was led by six co-equal leaders. On the surface, this sounded good and noble; in reality, it was a manifestation of false humility. Underneath the surface, there was struggle.

It's funny to recall now, but with six of us leading, we discovered on one Sunday morning that we couldn't come to a decision about who should preach the Word in our celebration meeting. Since none of us was giving clear leadership, no one preached! It would be fine for no one to preach if the Lord was truly leading in this way; however, when it is by default, it causes confusion and stress among the Body of Christ. This type of leadership structure will either cause a move of God to stop, or it will slow it down until there is clarity regarding God-ordained leadership.

Harold Eberle, in The Complete Wineskin, says it like this:

After observing many, many churches, I can personally tell you that no matter what form of government a church claims to have, there is always one person who openly or quietly holds the greatest influence over the church. Setting up the proper government is never a matter of keeping it out of the hands of one person, but putting it into the hands of God's person.1

Within the first year, this "leaderless group” came to the difficult realization of the need for clear leadership among us. Although we continued to believe that team leadership was important, we recognized the need for "headship” on each leadership team. Two spiritual leaders from our locality who had agreed to oversee and serve our fledgling group helped us through these difficult times. Two from the group of the original six co-leaders were set apart as leaders of the church and were ordained by a local denomination that was committed to supporting us during these early years. I was acknowledged as the primary leader of the leadership team.

During the next ten years our church grew to more than 2,000 believers scattered throughout communities in a seven-county area of Pennsylvania. These believers met in more than 100 small groups during the week and on Sunday mornings came together in clusters of small groups (congregations) in five different locations. The whole church came together five or six times each year on a Sunday morning in a large gymnasium or at a local park amphitheater for a corporate celebration. There was a real sense of excitement and enthusiasm about the things of God.

Whenever congregations renting facilities for Sunday-morning celebrations outgrew a building, we moved to a larger one, started a new celebration in another location, or started two or three celebration meetings in the same building on a Sunday. But the focus was not on the Sunday-morning meetings. The focus was on the church meeting from house to house throughout our communities each week in small groups.

Our goal was to multiply the small groups and celebrations and begin new Sunday-morning celebrations and new small groups in other areas as God gave the increase. We also found that it was often more econonomical to rent rather than buy buildings in order to have more money available to use for world missions. During these years, churches were planted in Scotland, Brazil and Ken-ya. These overseas churches were built on Jesus Christ and on these same underground house-to-house principles.

We had embraced a new wineskin, and the Lord had grown us from a small fellowship of young believers into a church-planting movement. But there were storms ahead. We would learn we had to embrace not only a new wineskin but the Vine!

 

 

Questions for Practical Application

1.   Describe a wineskin.

 

2.   Using the tree as a picture of the present-day underground church, how does spiritual nourishment operate? Are you being nourished spiritually and nourishing others? Explain.

 

3.   What is the most important or most appealing aspect of the underground church to you?


Chapter 1

1. Harold Eberle, The Complete Wineskin (Helena, MTMT: 1989), 144-145.


Last modified: Thursday, August 9, 2018, 12:56 PM