A Domocentric Church

Sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ the Redeemer Church, Manhattan, KS 07 Mar 2010 and 08 Dec 2019

Introduction

As we start into our church’s fifteenth year of existence, I want to take the opportunity to review the four core values of our church and expound on two unique ways we seek to do these things through Christ the Redeemer Church: The four values we have agreed to emphasize in Christ the Redeemer Church are:

  1. Exalting our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

  2. Equipping the saints with the Bible.

  3. Evangelizing the world.

  4. Encouraging godly households.

· The two ways we live out these values as a church community are Synagogically and Domocentricly.

Domocentric

Definition: Latin: domo = home (Domestic, Domicile)
We want to be a church where ministry is centered in the home rather than in a centralized building.

Freedom and dominion:

o Domocentric does not mean domesticated – lazily sitting around in your house.

o I do not think it a coincidence that this word domo/home is so closely related to words like domain and dominion.

o Our home is a place where we should have freedom - no other authority besides God Himself should set the agenda for what happens in the home.

o Our homes should be a place where a husband and his wife can map out what the Bible says life should look like and then experiment with fleshing out the best ways to realize God’s ideals on earth.

o Our homes should be a base from which we should fulfill:

§ the Creation Mandate to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and exercise dominion over … every living thing that moves on the earth” (Gen 1:28),

§ as well as the Great Commission (Matt 28:18ff) to “go into all the world and make disciples of all the nations…”

Is this the vision for the home you grew up with? If you’re a parent in this congregation, you probably didn’t grow up with this vision for the home.

Situation

1. G.K. Chesterton’s Assessment

2. Most of us grew up in a culture led by people in active rebellion against God, and one of those ways that they expressed their rebellion against God was to systematically marginalize marriage and the home.

3. Please don’t misunderstand me:

4. Another important aspect of our situation is that Christ the Redeemer Church does not have a building.

As we survey the situation we find ourselves in, what does the Bible say to us?

Biblical Basis

When God divided the nations of the earth at the tower of Babel, He chose to advance His agenda of redemption through a family. In Genesis 18:18 God said, “…Abraham will surely become a great and mighty nation, and in him all the nations of the earth will be blessed; 19 For I have chosen him, so that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice, so that the LORD may bring upon Abraham what He has spoken about him.” The family has always been God’s modus operandi.

In April 2008, I preached a two-part sermon on every instance in the ESV Bible of the words “dwell,” “house,” “home,” “tent,” and “family.” There were some 2,000 verses, and as I read through them, I tried to categorize them to show scriptural uses of the home. Here are the highlights of that study:

Commentary

“One of the most important methods of spreading the gospel in antiquity was the use of homes… The sheer informality and relaxed atmosphere of the home, not to mention the hospitality which must often have gone with it, all helped to make this form of evangelism particularly successful.” (Michael Green. Evangelism in the Early Church. p. 318)

Mike Acquilina, in an article which he wrote for Touchstone magazine entitled “Salt of the Empire” on Christianity during Roman times, wrote, “Christian charity, which usually began in the home, brought church growth. I cannot emphasize enough that this charitable activity was not so much the work of institutions as of families. The family was then, as it is now, the fundamental unit of the church.”

Howard Vanderwell, in his book, The Church of All Ages, concludes that, “Even though missions and outreach are a key part of the church’s ministry, we must acknowledge that more people have been brought into the Christian church by way of the Christian family and the instruction received there than through any other means.”

Jarrod Michael, in his Denver Seminary thesis entitled Household Approach to Ministry, commented on this, “[A]ncient Israelites and early Christians… saw their mission work carried out in their own homes, through their entire families and households… The modern church in America has strayed so significantly from the vision of the ancient Israelites and early Christians… [P]arents must once again take complete responsibility for creating a home that, by its existence and daily life, instills knowledge and understanding in the things of God and Faith… The Church is not the only ambassador for Christ; the person with evangelistic gifts is not the only ambassador for Christ; the trained missionary is not the only ambassador for Christ! Rather, each family, each home, is viewed as an ambassador for Christ, as well as each of the individuals who are a part of it.” He goes on to identify three essential elements of household ministry:

1. Communicating the Gospel

2. Leadership from the head of the household, and

3. Hospitality.

The Biblical role of church leadership

So what is the role of the church leadership in a domocentric church?

Summary

Each of us is building a house. We need to build it with faith in the Lord Jesus Christ to give it a firm foundation. He will dwell with us when we do this.

We need to look for the expansion of our house to embrace children, parents, employees, and others.

We need to vigilantly defend the purity of our homes.

We need to eat meals and live in our homes and create a culture in our homes that reflects the nature of God.

God shows us in scripture to use our homes as ministry centers where hospitality is offered, the sick and poor are cared for, the Gospel is proclaimed, and above all, God is worshipped.

Practical Application

If you are able to bring leadership to a household, determine to lead your household in Godliness. Be like Joshua, who said (24:15) “as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.”

Many of you are already using your house or apartment or dorm room for ministry purposes. I want to encourage that, and I want to do everything I can to equip you to be successful!

Each household will look different in the way it acts as a ministry center, because each household is composed of different people with different gifts. A dorm room with one person living in it will develop ministry differently from a large house with a large family living in it, and a family with a formal culture and a passion for hospitality and teaching is going to organize things differently than a household with a more informal culture and a passion for helping and counseling – and that’s fine.

This is where the specialization should come out in the church. In your homes is where your differences should shine.

But wouldn’t it be more efficient to centralize the ministries of the church under a professional staff? Sure. And it would be more efficient to centralize reproduction like Aldus Huxley suggested, with drones who are specialized in having babies, large childcare facilities which specialize in raising children, and the abolition of the private kitchen and the house. But that is not the way God designed us. He designed all the redundancies of millions of families that build their own houses, have their own children, and feed themselves. Efficiency isn’t the ultimate priority in God’s eyes.

Now, you may be saying, “We aren’t much of a family. We don’t have what it takes to take dominion and disciple the world.” This is looking at the wrong side of the tapestry. Do you think Noah felt up to starting civilization from scratch after the flood when he was 100 years old?
If modern man wanted to wipe out mankind with a flood and start over from scratch like God did back in the days of Noah, we would have chosen an elite team of young professionals, none of them over 40 years old, with perfect physical fitness, one of them maybe with a Ph.D. in metallurgy, one with a Ph.D. in carpentry and boat-building, one with a Ph.D. in zoology, and maybe a couple of beautiful women thrown in there, and they would form a super-team to rebuild the world. But that’s not what God did. He chose a family, Noah and his wife and kids, to start humanity over from scratch. That’s God’s way is to choose households and use them beyond their wildest dreams.

I was just listening to Geoff Botkin talk about his 200-year plan and I’m fired up for making one for my own family. Have you ever though of dreaming what God could do through your family 200 years from now? Seven generations later? Botkin is talking about bringing Christian transformation to every aspect of society in the USA, New Zealand, and Japan through the next seven generations of his family. What could God use seven generations of your family to do? Realize that in 7 generations of descendents making 12 disciples each, you could be the patriarch or matriarch of almost 100,000 souls, so dream big!

Your home, your apartment, your barracks, your dorm room is the place to start making disciples. If God gives you children, disciple those children. If you can adopt children, disciple those children. If you can bring students or others to live in your home, disciple those temporary residents. If you can invite neighbors and peers into your space for food, conversation, and even a Bible study, make disciples of your guests. If you can welcome international students, those are the “aliens and strangers” to whom God commands us to show hospitality (Lev. 19:34).

No one household is likely to be able to do all of these things, so don’t feel inferior if you can only do one; between all the households of our church, we can do all of these things as a church!