1. How many people are in your church?

20-30, depending on whether you count the kids, most of whom are too little to enjoy the meetings at this point. We are small. We don’t intend to be, we just are. You’d be amazed how rarely anyone comes around that is willing to move into a neighborhood and meet around the Lord so simply. I have a theory that folks have a certain need for religious traditions that is just too strong for most of them to deny. One can also expect a good deal of resistance from family and friends who do not understand why you are not happy with their kind of “church.”

2. How often do you meet?

Two to three times a week, although we primarily get together as a whole church on Saturday evenings. Sometimes the men meet together, sometimes the women meet together, sometimes we have planning meetings, sometimes we have parties and dinners, and usually we try to get together with a partner or a small group once or twice a week early in the morning to be with the Lord together. It varies from month to month, but we live very close to one another (on one or two adjoining streets) and we make an effort to see one another as often as we can. In fact, because we live so close, one way or another we see each other almost every day.

3. Do you alway experience the presence of Jesus in your meetings? (In what ways?)

Absolutely. We sing together and speak to one another and to the Lord during our times of worship (usually standing very close to each other, with our arms around each other). I have heard the Lord speak many times in this setting. The songs that we write and speak to each other are often very powerful, and have the ring of the Lord’s voice in them. During our times of sharing the Lord speaks frequently. Each of us is struck in a different way during the meetings with the presence of the Lord, although there are many times when His presence is simulatenously obvious to all. We had one of those meetings just two weeks ago. It was a beautiful meeting, and all that was shared fit together so wonderfully that we were all full of joy. That’s the Lord’s work.

But we also see Him in each other (and even in ourselves and our external lives) outside the setting of our meetings. Because we live together, we are involved in each other’s lives for better or for worse. Often the “worse” part is the place that the Lord comes out the most. The difficulties we experience with one another bring out the Lord. I have often felt the rising of pride and selfishness well up within me because of someone in the church, only to have them replaced with love and patience and contentment in spite of the circumstances. That’s the Lord, too. I find that living in such close proximity with my brothers and sisters provides this opportunity, and I never experienced that in the traditional church setting. The Lord was simply not central to our lives there. But He is here. No doubt. We are together here only because of our common desire for the Lord.

4. Do you exercise spiritual gifts (i.e. do your meetings look somewhat like 1 Cor. 12 ) ?

Our particular fellowship is not very sensational or charismatic in the popular use of the word. I mean that I have never heard anyone speak in tongues here, nor have we ever discussed that. We take the Lord as we find Him, and we are open to many things. But without the experience of supernatural “words of knowledge” or healings, we still sense His presence and hear Him speak to us all the time. I believe the Lord provides those things as they are needed, and I assume that we have not seen some of those things because they are not needed at the time. But we definitely see the evidence and the fruit of that Spirit discussed in that passage. We just don’t put forth any effort to label or categorize what He does among us.

5. If there is no leader, how do you make decisions?

Besides corporate meetings, we meet separately as men and women for the sake of hammering out pracitcal matters in the freedom of being with “just brothers” or “just sisters.” I find that I can be more open and frank when only my gender is present. This is a good place to share things of an intimate nature, and it’s also a good place to work out the “nuts and bolts” of church life. The sisters typically delegate logistical planning to the brothers, although they periodically take over that side of things for us (to show us how it's really done) for a month or two.  I'm sure the other brothers would agree that those times produce the best meetings we've had!

So brothers typically plan out themes and assignments for folks to do together, which feed into the content of our corporate meetings. By “assignments” I mean simply agreeing to look for the Lord together in a certain part of scripture, or in a book, or a group of songs, or whatever. We try to vary our meetings constantly and find the Lord in new ways every week. If the brothers ever come up with a really stupid idea, the sisters are not afraid to tell us, and we throw the idea out. That happens a lot. We value input from both groups, and neither group really has more power than the other. Ocasionally, we handle important matters in corporate meetings, but we don’t want practical matters to take our focus away from our fellowship with the Lord. That’s why we usually handle practical matters and planning as brothers or as sisters.

6. Have you ever had any major conflicts?

From time to time. I wouldn’t feel right sharing too many details, but life in this setting provides constant drama. This is never boring. People fight with one another, people get their feelings hurt. People make dumb decisions and take church matters into their own hands from time to time, which always leads to problems. But we talk through (or yell through) whatever comes between us until it is resolved. And we are always amazed at how thoroughly the Lord resolves even the stickiest problems between us.

7. Do you practice church discipline?

If we do, we don’t call it that, although it would truly be CHURCH discipline. I mean that we don’t correct anyone unless the whole church seems to have the same mind about an issue. We really don’t make it a practice, though, to correct each other unless it’s something really important. We “get onto” each other from time to time, but it is always gracious and tender, and it is always corporate. We would not trust something like correction into the hands of just two or three folks.

8. How do you guard yourselves against false teaching?

Well, we have no creeds among us. But each of us in our fellowship has the Spirit of Jesus inside of him or her, and there is a good deal of instinct involved in hearing the voice of our Shepherd. I think most folks underestimate that way too much. There is a check in our spirits about false teaching which has been overlooked. Besides that, every one of us in our church can read, and there are dozens of adequate types of Bibles (some with study notes below the text), and we have Christian bookstores. There is no shortage of Christian teaching on the fundamentals of the Christian faith. Plus we enjoy many books written by Gene Edwards, who originally planted this church years ago. Most folks know when they are getting into some train of thought which is not normal, and more importantly, if they were to voice something off-base in a meeting, it would be noticed by the brothers and sisters. There is safety in our numbers (even though ours are small).

Let me elaborate on that. I think there is much more possibility of heresy among groups that have a strong leader. For Christians to get very off-base (contrary to the inner witness of the Spirit of Christ within), there has to be an authority figure telling them what to believe. On the other hand, if no one person has such a position of power over everyone’s thought life, there is a great balancing power in the corporate voice of the church. Think of all the major heresies in Church history, and all the cults that abound today. There is always an authority figure who works out the heretical system of thought and then uses his persuasive position to mold the group into his own thought life. No one among us would have that power, because we do not afford any individual that opportunity. So there is a natural safety in our group.

9. Do you network with other churches?

Not as widely as we could. We enjoy occasional fellowship with other churches planted by the same church planters (Gene Edwards, Tim Richey, and others). The church planters hold conferences in areas with people interested in church life, and we often like to show up at these things, frequently meeting folks from other churches like us. But we are working on interacting more with churches not exactly like us. In our interaction with churches like ours, we try to avoid influencing the way things are done in other places, and they afford us the same treatment. Churches like ours value diversity and creativity, and we wouldn’t want too much “networking” to stifle that kind of variety.

10. What kind of relationship do you have with the institutional churches?

They don’t seem to like us very much. We’ve attempted arranging meetings with area churches, at Easter for example. But not much comes out of it. There just aren’t many that understand us, which takes its toll on some of us over time. Some friends and families in traditional churches have hard feelings about our nonconformity (others are quite gracious, by the way). That is hard to work around sometimes. And there are some among us who aren’t as understanding as they could be about believers who are content with traditional church life. But the bottom line is that we try to keep very focused on the Lord, and the “religious system” is therefore irrelevant to our daily life. We try to live and meet as if those churches are not even there, while trying to be open to anyone within those churches who is willing to have a relationship with us. We just don’t spend very much time speaking or thinking about the institutional church. Our focus is fairly “vertical” rather than "horizontal."

11. Does your church grow?

Slowly. We have spurts of visitors who pass through from time to time, often taking our advice and spending a weekend with us. Usually they have read some books by Gene Edwards and they want to see what his teachings look like in practice. But theory and practice rarely match as folks had imagined they should. The “real world” never seems to fit exactly with the world inside anyone’s head. Also, everyone carries with them emotional “baggage” and personal issues which often prevent them from jumping in here with us. Sometimes folks move in (with little prior notice to us), but those folks just as quickly move out (for various reasons) without us getting to know them very well. We are so open that we get folks from time to time who are wanderers by nature. In other words, if we do not grow, it is not because we are not open to folks coming in. It’s just that our kind of life is not for everyone, and often there is a high cost to leaving behind the worlds in which people live. We are out on a limb here, and it is high drama. It’s not for everyone.

Having said that, we have had three families move into the church in the last year, and we anticipate two more pretty soon.  So I guess we're going through a "growing season."  We hope it continues.

12. Have you ever sent out itinerant workers?

Our church in its present form is relatively young. We have no one living here who has been around long enough to exhibit that calling. But we try to help along their way anyone who comes and works with us. We try to give some support to Gene Edwards and Tim Richey, who have both had a hand in our formation. From time to time we will send brothers and sisters to other fellowships in order to be of benefit to them.  At some point you cease drawing a strong line between what is "working" and what is not.

Hope some of this answers your questions. I have to admit that a corporate life like ours cannot be fully communicated through one person. It’s communal by nature, so you should talk to more folks about the same questions.

(If you'd like to see what kind of responses these sorts of questions elicited from the other folks in my church, read the FAQ's from AtlantaSaints.com by clicking here.)