the story of 'engedi' in suffolk
'Engedi' started in 1999/2000. Several families moved from London to Suffolk to experiment with church life and to gain the freedom to enjoy God together without the restrictions of the Institutional Church and certain party lines to keep. We wanted to see what God had to say to us and not what a denomination dictated.

As with many others before us, we misguidedly assessed our church practice according to what we knew of church from previous experiences. After experimenting with cell church principles and finding that this was just a structure like any other, and that it still required very strong leadership to drive it forward and maintain it's momentum, we realized that our foundation was flawed and practically an idolatrous one. We concluded that the Holy Spirit was still active and that Jesus was still alive. No great revelation there, but knowing it and living it are two vastly different things.

Jesus should be our only true foundation. He should be our focus. Not a structure or a denomination or any thing that deflects us from pursuing Jesus. We want for our lives, our gatherings and our churches to be focused on him. For us to discover what Jesus has for us, we have thrown ourselves completely on him with no safety net. This is very scary but has proven to be a total release. In hindsight of course that is surely what the Lord requires of us anyway.

We now model ourselves entirely on what we can glean from the pages of the New Testament and what can be applied by the Holy Spirit. Jesus is alive and his Holy Spirit guides us as one man. We have no man-made structures to maintain, no salaries to pay and no building to upkeep. This brings with it new problems, but problems that we believe we are supposed to have and not those suffered by the established church.

Each person is responsible before God for the other members of the ecclesia. It is the responsibility of each believer to ensure they are developing their own walk with God and to hear from the Lord for the rest of the body. We are there for each other and look out for each other. It is no longer the responsibility of the paid professional to ensure that the body is cared for or ministered to, or taught, or served. It is the responsibility of us all. We all have to rise to the challenge and take up our job as an eye, or as a hand, or an ear, as members of the same body with Christ as our head.

In this time some have been saved, others have joined us, some have left, some have moved away, some have started new lives and we have made good friends of many - believers and unbelievers alike. We have tried to be flexible and maintain time for other people in our busy schedules. We have joined clubs and found social lives outside of church. This has meant for the first time we have been touching many peoples lives that we would never be able to with a conventional church setup.

With our emphasis on relationships and not having party lines to keep, we have emphasized the whole body and refrained from sectarian division, We have found that we have managed to maintain flourishing relationships with those that disagree with our practice and methods across the spectrum of the church. We are committed to the body of Christ and seek to live completely in harmony with all Christian groups. We are open-minded enough to realise that we haven't got it all sewn up and haven't cornered all truth. We therefore seek to find Christ wherever we can find him. It is our conclusion that he speaks to all in different ways. Ways that are relevant to them. What he has revealed to us is for us, but we love to hear his voice and remain open to all traditions. We can learn from all, and have fellowship with anyone that love the Lord Jesus.

We seek to please him and don't measure our success by numbers or sermons preached, but by the Kingdom of God being released in our lives and through our life together.

posted by alexander @ 4:53 PM    1 comments

1 Comments:

Great thoughts. The "traditional" setup of a building, paid staff and whatnot in churches is not what we should focus on. We should focus on building meaningful relatiosnhips with people, just as you said. Through those relationships we can show Jesus and find out who Jesus really is.
Thanks for your words. Very encouraging.

Patrick
Franklin, NC, USA

By  Anonymous, at 6:30 PM  

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